Power & Beauty by David Ritz, Tip "t.i." Harris

that motherfuckin’ school. I didn’t need no school and neither do you. What you got to learn, boy, no school can teach you. Fact is, school can hurt you the way it hurt me. Made me feel like I wasn’t smart as everyone else. Well, truth is, I was smarter. And so are you.
    “Besides, those assholes ain’t giving up no love no how. You too smart for their namby-pamby asses. You too slick. You got too much going on. They don’t like that ’cause they don’t got that. You feel me, son? They out to destroy you just like they was out to destroy me. But I busted a move back then—oh, yes, I did. And you busting a move too. You don’t need those motherfuckers. You want an education? You want teachers? You want to learn what’s happening on the real? Well, I got the real, baby. I got the education and I got the teachers to set your young ass straight. I don’t ever want you going back to that school, not for another goddamn minute, not after what they done to you. One day—and it ain’t gonna be long—we gonna buy the land where that school sits and burn the motherfucker down. That’s what we gonna do. But before that, you will go to school, but not to no regular school. I’m talkin’ ’bout a school no one ever seen before. I’m gonna make up this school for you, and I’m gonna pick every one of your teachers, and they gonna teach you shit no one ever learns, they gonna teach you the real deal, baby, and when you graduate you ain’t just gonna be bad, you gonna be the baddest motherfucker this city ever seen. You won’t be bad as me—that ain’t ever gonna happen—but you’ll come awfully goddamn close.”
    Slim said just what I wanted to hear. He understood. Most dads would have either ignored my humiliation or told me to go back and face the music. I loved Slim ’cause Slim said fuck the music. Slim said fuck school. He knew that I didn’t belong there. He cosigned my get-out-of-jail-free card. ’Cause that’s what going back would have been. Prison. Once I learned what everyone really thought of me, once I knew that they’d been using me for the parties I’d been throwing and nothing else, I suddenly knew what I thought of them. I hated them. If they were going to shame me and judge me because I was living large and they weren’t, I was going to judge them for being narrow-minded fools.
    With Slim’s enthusiastic support, I was glad to leave high school at the end of my junior year. And even though I could hear Moms saying, “Paul, you got to complete your schooling. We’re counting on you to go to college, even to law school, son,” Slim’s voice was louder. Slim made it clear I was doing the right thing.
    “If you wanna be a man,” said Slim, “I’ll show you how to be a man. Forget those punk-ass instructors in school. I’ll get you some real-life teachers.”

Irv Wasserman
     
    M y first teacher lived in Chicago, which is where I moved that summer. Never in my life had I met anyone like him.
    “Gruff on the outside,” said Slim, “cream puff on the inside. That’s Irv Wasserman. He’ll teach you about survival, son. See, survival’s the first lesson. Reason you looking at a rich man when you look at me, boy, is that I learned that survival shit. Irv is the cat with nine hundred lives. They ain’t caught up with that motherfucker yet, and they never will.”
    I flew to Chicago first-class and stayed at the Hilton hotel on the lake. Slim, who made the arrangements, was always cool that way.
    “You go first-class,” he said, “and you feel first-class. You hang with first-class people doing first-class shit. It’s a beautiful way to live.”
    I was booked into the Hilton because the night I arrived Irv Wasserman was being honored at a banquet in the grand ballroom. When I checked in I saw his picture on a poster advertising the event. The Center for the Underprivileged had named him man of the year. He had a low forehead, thick curly hair, and a strong nose. In his photo,