Burning Down The House pt 1

Here's another one of my reminiscing ass stories. I'll try to wrap this one up in two parts. It still counts as posting every day. Let's set the scene..

New Years Eve - Savannah, Georgia 1995

My homeboy Kareem and I decided that we would do something special for our ladies on New Years. I was 21 at the time and was dating Lisa. Kareem was with Chandra. We both were in pretty much committed relationships and feeling pretty grown up. The only problem was although we felt grown up, we both were poor college students living at home. This year, however, the problem was solved as Kareem's mother was in Atlanta visiting family. This meant that for pretty much the entire Christmas break, we had the crib to ourselves. We didn't get wild with it, but daily Madden tournaments and loud rap music were on the menu everyday. During one of our games, we came up with the idea of candlelight dinner, champagne and slow music for our sweethearts. Kareem was the chef, and I was working so I bought the food and liquor.

On this night, I got off of work at 7:30, and went home and showered and put on some grown man clothes. Well, what passed for grown man clothes for a 21 year old hip hop head who didn't go to church so had no ties. I threw on some creased slacks and a nice conservative sweater that didn't say FUBU or Karl Kani on it. I was looking clean if I say so myself. I drove across town to pick up Lisa, who had no idea what we had in store for the evening. I purposely withheld the details, and yet somehow managed to convince her to skip church that night, even though her mom wanted her to go. When we got to Kareem's crib, Chandra was already there and it was time to start our evening.

It was a real cool scene. Kareem had decked the place out with candles, scented ones he "borrowed" from his mother, and others just for dramatic lighting effect. One of our patented mixtape collaborations was playing on the stereo. Dinner was served and we had good conversation and sipped some cheap bubbly (well except for Lisa, who couldn't drink because of her anti seizure medicine. That's another story I need to tell one day.) Other than a minor mishap with the cork, (we never drank that kind of liquor) everything was lovely. After dinner, we headed downtown to watch the Peach drop on River Street. We walked hand in hand, and even had some out of the ordinary public displays of affection happening. Everything about that night exuded love and romance.

After the festivities downtown, we went back to Kareem's house. We had some more conversation and champagne, and after awhile Kareem and Chandra excused themselves and went in the back. Lisa and I went to Kareem's room to umm.. "sleep" on the water bed. It was some of the best "sleep" that we had. After we "slept" we fell asleep and woke up around 8 in the morning. We got dressed and I took Lisa back to her sister's house, then went home to crash. I took a shower and was sleep for about 30 minutes when the phone call came. I remember it like it was yesterday. At 9:42 AM on January 1st, 2006, the phone startled me out of my REM sleep. It was Kareem.

"Hey, man. Come get me. My house burned down!"