LEN BIAS: CROSSOVER
A novel
By: Michael D. McClellan | September 19, 2010
It's midnight when I arrive at my dormitory suite on the Maryland campus, and all of my boys are there waiting for me. There's Bryan "Keeta" Covington, an all-ACC defensive back on the football team - big and strong, Covington led his high school to the state championship in 1982. My Washington Hall suitemates are all there - Terry Long, Phil Nevin, Jeff Baxter, David Gregg, Keith Gatlin. We're brothers first and University of Maryland basketball teammates second because we survived Lefty's practices and battled some of the best teams in the country. We look out for each other. Home boys. Brothers for life.
We decide to keep the party off the radar, low-key, just between us. Someone has picked up crab and beer, and we sit around doing what guys do, eating, drinking, watching TV, listening to the stereo. It's not loud, and not out of hand. The questions come at me by the dozens - questions about money, playing time, rookie camp, Larry Bird. Questions about Michael Jordan. Always Jordan. The comparisons popped up continuously during all of those interviews leading up to the draft. Are you looking forward to playing against Jordan in the pros? Who's going to win a championship first? Will you go up against each other in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest? On and on, always Jordan, even though we didn't play the same position in college, and even though Bird-Magic is the biggest rivalry in the league right now. Tonight is no different. My boys pepper me with the same questions, just like the media, except that they won't stop riding me. They want to know what I'm thinking, what I'm going through, what it's like to be the next great player for the Boston Celtics. I do my best to play along but I'm tired - wait, scratch that - I'm exhausted, and right now I need something, anything to pick me up.
That's when I decide it's time to leave. I'll be back, I promise my boys. I need to get out for some air. I need to clear my head. I'm instantly hit with their groans and static. C'mon, don't leave. The party is just getting started, they argue, and besides, it's too late to go running around. They want to know if I'm headed to another party, another dorm, or maybe blowing them off for a good time with some girl. Using my celebrity to get laid. I laugh and tell them it's all cool, that I'll be right back after I pick up some beer, and that I'll gladly answer all of their questions until the sun comes up.
~ ~ ~
This is the point in the dream where I detach from myself all over again, going from first person to third, and my ghost self watches helplessly as that alternate version of me slides into the 300ZX and heads off into the night. There are other parties on campus, and I would be the main attraction at any of them. Just by being Len Bias. The football players want me to hang with them at Allegany Hall, and I consider it briefly - I've built up my body in the weight room, working out side-by-side with these guys, and they all feel they've played some small part in my success. The know I'm back in town, on campus, and they want me to add star power to their party. Why not? I'm friends with many of them, and on top of that I've always had a hard time saying no. Part of me feels that I owe them an appearance and my guilty conscience tries like hell to talk me into it. Nah. Not tonight. Maybe some other time. I just don't want to stand around and answer more of the same. Not now. Instead I take a short drive off campus, to Brian Tribble's apartment. We're friends. It's late but he knows I'm coming, because back at Washington Hall I'd slipped into my dorm room and called him.
We're going out, I demand without introduction.
My lady is here with me, Trib replies.
Ten minutes, Trib. I'll be there in ten minutes. You can hang with that ho anytime. Tonight you're going to hang with me. Tonight we're going to celebrate in style.
~ ~ ~
Brian Tribble is not a student at the University of Maryland. There was a time when Trib was a Terrapin like the rest of us, but now he just hangs close to the campus, picking up women and dealing drugs. He has a magnetic personality, a well-spoken black man with large, hypnotic eyes and the voice of a jazz man. He's smooth, cool, sophisticated. Confident. I'm drawn to him instantly because he dresses and acts exactly the way I want to carry myself. Shy growing up, now I want to project that same coolness. He likes the fact that I'm popular, the big man on campus. A perfect match. For several months we work out in the weight room together - that's where he first sought me out, introduced himself, and where we became fast friends. I didn't realize he was a big drug player, at least not from the start, and by the time I figured it out it was too late. We were tight by then, and from what I could tell he wasn't a bad guy. A couple of months later he invites me over to his place, a small apartment on Marion Street, where he has two women waiting for me. We all sit around the living room, drinking Private Stock Malt Liquor, listening to Rick James on the stereo and talking hoops, when Trib casually reaches into the drawer of the end table and pulls out a bag of white powder and a small mirror. I'm scared to death but afraid to show it. I don't want these women to know I'm scared, so I drink my P-Stock and act like I've been around this stuff a thousand times. They seem to buy it, but not Trib. He knows the deal. I'm a drug virgin at this point. He's been trying to get me to try for several weeks now, but I've always said no and figured out a way to change the subject or move on to something else. But not this time. He has me cornered. He knows I want to look cool in front of these women. So when he pours out a line and offers a hit, I close my eyes and do the only thing I can do at that moment - I lean over that dirty mirror and ingest cocaine for the first time in my life.
~ ~ ~
Trib and I do cocaine together on five other occasions before tonight, spaced out over a two year period, always being careful with the time and place. Too much money at stake. Too dangerous. There are drug tests. I can't risk having a test come back positive, so our cocaine party sessions are always after the season, between April and September. Three of those sessions are back at his apartment, just the two of us and a couple of Trib's hoochie mamas, no big party scene because we don't want people talking. The other two times are back in my dorm room at Washington Hall, me and Trib with a couple of teammates who also experiment with cocaine socially. All five sessions are Trib's idea, his way of smoothing things out and blowing off steam, with me as the willing-but-paranoid participant.
Tonight is different. Tonight I'm the one calling Brian Tribble and asking to get things going. We jump in the 300ZX and head into D.C., stopping at a liquor store first. I sign autographs for the clerk - get used to it, Trib says with a laugh and a smile, suddenly wide awake and ready to party. You're a celebrity. I cringe at the thought. I don't think I'll ever get used that part of it, being stopped on the street by complete strangers or interrupted at dinner and asked to sign a napkin for Susie or Bobby. That's happened a lot over the past two weeks, and it's going to happen a lot more once I start producing highlight reel dunks for the Celtics. And I can't even imagine when Larry Bird finally hangs 'em up and the team looks for me to become Boston's main man...
~ ~ ~
If Washington, D.C. is the reigning Murder Capitol of the United States, we end up in the most dangerous part of that. Trib points and gives directions - a left here, a right there, until we're cruising past decaying buildings on the southeast side of town. The neighborhood is notorious for drugs and crime, and not the place tourists want to find themselves in, especially at night. Guys hang out in clusters, dealing drugs and looking for trouble. Prostitutes work the street corners. I'm feeling tight, anxious, but Trib feels right at home. He keeps talking about the NBA and telling me he'll come up to Boston for some of the games, while I feel like a target behind the wheel of my 300ZX. A cop car follows me for several blocks, and I can't keep my eyes off the rearview mirror. If I get pulled over and arrested here, two days after the draft...
Trib points to a corner stoop and tells me to stop. I'll be right back, he says. Lock the doors, this won't take long. He hurries out and I do exactly what he says before sliding down low in the seat. I don't want to be recognized, and I sure as hell don't want to end up shot.
The whole thing takes five minutes, but it feels like an hour. Finally, Trib emerges from the decaying row house and we're driving again, each light taking us farther away from danger. You're gonna like this, he says, and pulls a large bag from his jacket pocket. A friend wants to make sure you celebrate in style. Only the best for the best, m'man. High dollar stuff. Purest on the street. I'm angry that Trib has used my name to score drugs in this ghetto, but he assures me that his source can be trusted. I know better, but it's too late now.
How much?
On the house, Trib says. Consider it an advance. We'll work something out after your contract is signed and you're knocking down all of that NBA money. Right now it's time to party.
