Non-Straight Into Compton
by William Shakespeare a.k.a. Vanilla Shake
The year was 1989 and I knew I’d taken a wrong turn the moment the streetlights thinned out. Even if I’d had GPS back then it probably would have froze. That’s the kind of luck I have. I mean, one second, I was cruising toward the freeway, the next I was rolling slowly through a neighborhood I’d only ever heard about in warnings and gangster rap records. I was trying to reach a city called Buena Park, but somehow I segued into Compton.
My name is Leif Larsson. At the time I was eighteen, blond, closeted and stupidly confident — right up until the moment a group of guys stepped out from behind a parked car and boxed me in.
They didn’t yell. They didn’t even look angry. They just moved with that calm, practiced efficiency that told me they’d done this before. One opened my door. Another tugged me out by the arm. A third slipped behind the wheel like he’d been waiting for this exact model of car.
“Shoes too,” one of them said. He and his friends were Blood “gangstas” I assumed … because they were wearing mostly red and had red doo-rags. I was glad I wasn’t clad in Crip gangsta blue. Hopefully my Def Leppard T-shirt had no gang connections.
Because the shoes they were demanding were my brand-new Nikes, I hesitated — and that was enough. They tugged them off. One of the gangbangers even commented on how big my feet were before I sadly tossed my sneaks into the backseat, and the car peeled away with all my stuff inside.
Anyway, I stood there barefoot on the cracked pavement, heart hammering, trying not to look like prey.
I don’t know how long I walked. The ground was rough, littered with gravel and bottle caps and things I didn’t want to identify by touch. Every step stung. Every shadow made me flinch. I kept telling myself not to cry — that crying would make everything worse — but fear has a way of stripping you down to the bone.
By the time I saw the porch light, my legs were shaking. I didn’t even make it to the steps. My vision tunneled, my knees buckled, and the world just… folded.
I woke up to the smell of antiseptic and something warm and earthy — maybe tea. My head felt heavy, my body even heavier. I was lying on a couch I didn’t recognize, a blanket over me, and someone was kneeling at my feet.
“Easy,” a voice said. Calm. Older. Steady. “You’re safe.”
I blinked until the room came into focus. The 50-ish black man tending to me looked like he’d lived a full life — lines around the eyes, a little gray in the beard, hands that had done real work. He was wrapping my foot with a soft cloth.
“You passed out on my porch,” he said. “Didn’t feel right leaving you there.”
I swallowed hard. “My car… they took it. And my shoes.”
He nodded like this was the least surprising thing he’d heard all week. “Yeah. This neighborhood’ll do that if you wander in looking lost.”
There was no judgment in his voice. Just fact.
He gave me water. Food. A place to sit while my head stopped spinning. I told him my name. He told me his. We talked a little — or rather, he talked and I listened, grateful for the sound of a voice that wasn’t threatening.
At some point, exhaustion pulled me under again.
I woke to knocking. Loud, familiar knocking — the kind that said whoever was outside didn’t believe in patience.
The older man sighed. “Stay quiet a minute.”
He opened the door, and three 50-ish black guys stepped in like they owned the place. They were laughing, talking over each other, until one of them spotted me on the couch.
“Who’s the kid?”
The older man didn’t miss a beat.
“My nephew,” he said smoothly. Totally ignoring the fact that he was black as a Zulu and I was white as a Viking. “Visiting for a bit. Long trip. Wore himself out.”
They all looked at me. I tried to sit up straighter, tried to look like someone’s nephew and not a terrified blond barefoot stranger who’d collapsed on a porch.
One of them smirked slyly and shrugged. “Didn’t know you had family, Reggie”
“Lot you don’t know,” the older man said, guiding them toward the kitchen. Even from a distance I could smell cinnamon. “Now come on — I got coffee brewing.”
They followed him, and I exhaled what felt like the first time in hours. I later found out that these guys in no way believed that my blond blue-eyed self was a relative. But they knew that the older man (whose name I found out was Reginald Mayweather) was a homosexual who, more than once, would have a handsome young stud over at his place for a bit of hit-and-run fun. So, seeing a blond, fairly good-looking eighteen-year-old in his living room wasn’t that much of a surprise.
When they finally left, he came back to check on me.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “Didn’t want them asking questions.”
“You didn’t have to cover for me.”
He gave a small smile. “Boy, you showed up half-dead on my porch with no shoes. That makes you my responsibility for the night.”
Something in my chest loosened — something tight and scared and small.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he replied. “We still gotta figure out how to get you home.”
But the way he said it — steady, warm, like he’d already decided he wasn’t letting me face the world alone — made me believe I wasn’t stranded anymore.
It was the start of a friendship I never expected, built on a wrong turn, a rough night, and the kindness of a stranger who refused to let me stay lost.
Morning came in pieces — first the smell of frying onions, then the low hum of a radio tuned to some old‑school R&B station, then the realization that the blanket over me wasn’t mine and neither was the couch.
My feet ached, but in a dull, distant way, like they’d been convinced to behave for now.
Reginald was in the kitchen, moving with that unhurried confidence of someone who’d been up for hours. He glanced over when he heard me shift.
“Morning, nephew,” he said with a grin that told me he was still amused by last night’s performance.
I groaned into the couch cushion. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Then stop lookin’ like a lost puppy somebody dropped off on my porch.”
He slid a plate toward me — eggs, toast, something that might’ve been turkey sausage. My stomach answered before I could.
I sat up slowly, careful of my bandaged feet. “You really didn’t have to do all this.”
He gave me a look — not unkind, but firm. “Boy, you keep sayin’ that like I dragged you in here against your will. You collapsed. On my property. That makes you my guest. And my guests eat breakfast.”
I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. The food tasted like safety.
After a few minutes, he sat across from me, folding his hands. “So. You got people who’ll be lookin’ for you?”
I hesitated. My parents were three states away. My friends… well, they were more like acquaintances who liked that I had a car. And I wasn’t exactly eager to explain how I’d lost said car.
“Not really,” I admitted.
Reginald nodded slowly, like he’d already guessed. “Alright. Then we’ll figure it out.”
The “we” hit me harder than I expected. I wasn’t used to being included in anyone’s plans.
He leaned back. “Well, you’re here now, and you’re breathin’, and that’s what matters.”
I swallowed around something tight in my throat. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t,” he said. “You just listen. And you let somebody help you for once.”
I looked down at my wrapped feet, at the careful work of someone who didn’t owe me a thing.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I can do that.”
Reginald smiled — small, warm, like he’d been waiting for that exact answer.
“Good. Now eat. After that, we’ll see about gettin’ you some shoes.”
I don’t know what I expected the morning after — maybe awkwardness, maybe the urge to bolt — but instead I found myself watching Reginald move around his kitchen like he’d done this a thousand times. Not taking care of me, specifically, but taking care of people.
And something in me responded to that in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
He poured coffee, humming under his breath, sunlight catching the silver in his beard. He wasn’t handsome in the way boys my age were — sharp jawlines, gym bodies, hair gel — but there was something about him that felt… steady. Solid. Like he’d weathered storms I couldn’t even name. I learned that he’d been born in California, but his family’s roots were primarily in North Carolina. He had to be about fifty years old and had dark, tobacco brown skin and was solid with muscle despite his age.
I caught myself staring.
And then I caught myself catching myself staring.
I looked away so fast I nearly pulled a muscle.
“You alright over there?” he asked, not turning around.
“Yeah,” I said too quickly. “Just… thinking.”
“Mmh.” He set a mug in front of me. “Thinking’s good. Long as you don’t let it eat you alive.”
I wrapped my hands around the mug, grateful for something to hold. My heart was doing this weird fluttering thing — not fear, not exactly. More like recognition. Like something inside me had been knocking for years and suddenly found a door cracked open.
Reginald Mayweather sat across from me, elbows on the table. “You got that look,” he said.
“What look?”
“The look of somebody who’s been runnin’ from somethin’ so long he forgot what he’s runnin’ from.”
I swallowed. Hard.
He didn’t push. He didn’t pry. He just waited — patient, quiet, giving me space I didn’t know how to use.
“I’ve…” I started, then stopped. My throat felt tight. “I’ve been trying not to be something.”
He nodded once, slow. “And how’s that been workin’ out for you?”
I let out a shaky breath. “Not great.”
Reginald leaned back, eyes softening. “Ain’t my place to tell you who you are. But I can tell you this — whatever you’re scared of, it ain’t bigger than you think. Fear’s a liar. Makes shadows look like monsters.”
I looked at him then — really looked — and the truth hit me like a warm wave: I felt safe with him. Safe in a way I’d never felt with anyone. Safe enough that the walls I’d built around myself were starting to crack.
And beneath those cracks was something I’d been terrified to admit.
“I think…” My voice wavered. “I think I’m tired of pretending.”
Reginald didn’t smile, didn’t gloat, didn’t act like he’d solved a puzzle. He just nodded, slow and steady, like he’d been expecting this moment long before I had.
“Good,” he said. “Pretending’ll kill a man faster than any of these Compton streets out here.”
I felt my eyes sting, and I blinked hard. “I don’t know what to do next.”
“You don’t gotta know,” he said. “You just gotta stop runnin’ from yourself. The rest comes in its own time.”
He reached out — not to touch me, just to rest his hand on the table between us, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from it. An invitation, not a demand. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel ashamed of the way my chest tightened when I looked at another man. I didn’t feel wrong. I didn’t feel broken.
I just felt… seen in a way I hadn’t been before. Before I’d been seen superficially because of my looks alone … fairly handsome with big blue eyes and blond hair that made me look almost like a frigging Nazi. Now I was seen in a genuine way … and this was the beginning of everything.
It was a few weeks before I saw Reginald Mayweather again.
Life had gone back to “normal,” or at least the version of normal I’d been pretending to live. I got a new pair of shoes. I filed a police report that went nowhere. I told my friends some half‑truth about a mugging. I laughed in the right places. I acted like the same kid I’d been before that night.
But I wasn’t.
Something had shifted — quietly, permanently — and I kept catching myself thinking about Reginald. About his voice, his steadiness, the way he’d looked at me like I wasn’t a burden or a mistake. I’d never had that before. Not from anyone.
One Saturday afternoon, without planning to, I found myself leaving the apartment I shared in Buena Park and driving back towards his neighborhood. A neighborhood in the notorious CPT. The Hub City. Compton. My hands were sweating on the wheel. My heart was doing that fluttering thing again.
I told myself I just wanted to thank Reggie properly.
I didn’t believe myself.
His house looked the same — porch light off this time, curtains open, radio playing something smooth and old. I stood on the porch for a full minute before knocking.
He opened the door and blinked in surprise. “Well, look who’s still alive.”
I laughed, awkward and too loud. “Yeah. I, uh… I was in the area.”
“You were not,” he said, stepping aside to let me in. “But that’s alright. Come on.”
The living room felt smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I just felt bigger inside my own skin — like I was carrying something I couldn’t hide anymore.
He sat in his usual chair. I stayed standing.
“You look like you swallowed a confession,” he said gently.
I swallowed hard. “I… I’ve been thinking a lot. Since that night.”
He nodded, waiting.
“And I don’t know how to say this without sounding stupid.”
“Try me.”
I took a breath that didn’t feel like enough. “I keep thinking about you. About how I felt when I was here. About how I feel now.”
Reginald’s expression didn’t change, but something in the air did — a tightening, a listening.
“I think I’m…” My voice cracked. “I think I’m not who I’ve been pretending to be.”
He exhaled slowly, like he’d been expecting this but still needed a moment. “Leif…”
“I’m not asking for anything,” I rushed out. “I just— I needed to say it to someone who wouldn’t laugh. Or get angry. Or tell me I’m confused.”
He stood then, not close enough to touch, but close enough that I could feel the warmth of him.
“You’re not confused,” he said softly. “You’re scared. And that’s different.”
I looked up at him, and the truth slipped out before I could stop it.
“I like you. More than I should. More than makes sense.”
His eyes closed for a moment — not in rejection, but in something like pain. Or restraint.
“Lord help me,” he murmured, “I told myself I wasn’t gonna let this happen.”
My breath caught. “So you…?”
He opened his eyes, and there was nothing harsh in them. Just honesty. And something else I’d been too afraid to name.
“You’re a good young man,” he said. “And I care about you. More than I meant to. More than I should’ve let myself.”
My chest tightened. “Then why—”
“Because you’re eighteen,” he said, voice low but steady. “And I’m old enough to know better. Old enough to know how easy it is to hurt someone without meaning to.”
I felt heat rise behind my eyes. “You never hurt me.”
“I could,” he said. “That’s the part that scares me.”
We stood there in the quiet, the radio humming in the background, the air thick with everything we weren’t saying.
Then he added, softer:
“But don’t think for a second that I don’t feel something. I do. I just need to make sure it doesn’t swallow you whole before you know who you are.”
I stepped closer — not touching, just closing the distance between fear and truth.
“I know who I am when I’m here,” I said.
Reginald’s jaw tightened, like he was fighting himself. “And I need you to know who you are everywhere else too.”
It wasn’t rejection. It wasn’t dismissal.
It was care. Fierce, protective care.
And somehow, that made my feelings for him deepen instead of fade.
“So, how are your feet?” He asked in a jokey tone. “Those big ole beautiful size fourteen feet …”
“I knew you liked my feet! I actually sensed the admiration when you took care of my cuts!” I exclaimed with a smile. Without really thinking I quickly stepped out of my sneakers and peeled off my socks. “Take a look at them now … when they aren’t all cut up and injured, they’re almost perfect, eh?”
He nodded sagely in agreement, taking in every aspect of my size fourteens. And with my eyes, I gave Reginald the green light. He knelt before me and began massaging my bare feet … then slowly began ravenously licking them. And I liked what he was doing to my feet--washing my smooth soles with his togue, sucking my toes.
He loved it when I suddenly REALLY looked at him licking and sucking my toes. I knew there was an understanding between us that went beyond words. Romantic attraction was one thing; but add the foot fetish aspect to it and things elevated to a new, even more intimate level. I closed my eyes and was engulfed in a kind of ecstasy --feeling Reggie’s tongue as it moved up and down my saliva-slicked soles, sliding in between each toe, knowing how almost socially weird this was.
Reginald found my socks where I discarded them … and of course he smelled them and sucked the sweat from them. He even commented on how fabulously fragrant they were.
We sat down on the bed in his bedroom, and I placed my feet in his lap--and I felt as if I were on the edge of fainting when he began massaging my big feet in a way they never had been before. He started at the pad behind my toes and moved gradually to my heels, then back up to my toes. It was such a tender moment of trust and love. And soon his tongue is once again sliding gracefully up and down my size thirteens. And I moaned because the feeling of his tongue doing this was the absolute best feeling in the world. When he began to nibble on my toes, I actually did faint.
I woke to the soft scrape of a chair being moved somewhere down the hall — the kind of domestic sound he hadn’t heard in months. Morning light spilled across the guest room in long, honey‑colored bands, revealing details he’d missed the night before: the framed jazz posters, the stack of well‑read paperbacks on the dresser, the faint scent of cedar from the open window.
Reginald’s house looked different in daylight. Not safer — it had already felt safe — but truer. The kind of place built by a man who’d lived long enough to know what mattered and long enough to stop pretending about the rest.
I sat up slowly, the blanket slipping from my shoulders. My body still tingled from the night before — the fear, the exhilaration, the ecstasy of being foot worshipped so tenderly. Then there was the memory of Reginald’s steady voice and the way the older man’s cadence was so extraordinarily soothing. How good I felt made no sense—Reggie was older than my dad … only nine years younger than my grandpa!
I padded into the kitchen, still in my bare feet, still feeling strangely unguarded. Reginald was at the stove, stirring something that smelled like cinnamon and apples.
“Morning,” Reginald said without turning.
“Good Morning,” I said. “Your house… it feels like someone actually lives here.”
Reginald chuckled. “That’s the idea.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then Reginald glanced over his shoulder, eyes gentle but sharp enough to see through whatever mask I might try to put on.
“You want to know what happened last night after you fainted.” It wasn’t a question. It was a fact.
I swallowed hard. Then nodded.
Reginald sighed, then smiled and said, “I just looked at you lying there with drool oozing down one corner of your mouth. Then I stripped your limp body completely naked, lifted your ankles to my shoulder and was about to do what came naturally. But the smell of your feet propped on my shoulders distracted me. So once again I found myself licking your soles and sucking your toes, even while you slept on. I shot my load so many times as I did this ... Hell, I’m surprised I’m not taking a nap myself right now…”
I sat there at the table smiling, letting the warmth of the room settle into me. I didn’t know it then — couldn’t know it — but this morning would become one of the anchor points of my life. A moment I’d return to again and again, especially after 2011, when news reached me that Reginald had passed away quietly in his sleep.
When I heard the news, I didn’t cry. Not at first. We had known each other for over twenty years at that point …had many experiences together. But I didn’t cry immediately upon hearing the news that he was gone. I just sat down — the way you do when the world tilts a few degrees and you need a second to understand gravity again. My hands were steady. My breath was steady. Everything inside me was not.
Reginald had been the first adult who ever saw me clearly.
Not as a runaway.
Not as a confused kid.
Not as a problem to fix.
He saw me as someone worth sheltering, worth listening to, worth guiding. I didn’t have language for that at eighteen. I barely have it now.
The grief didn’t hit like a storm. It came slow, tidal, impossible to outrun. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just a steady ache behind my ribs that settled in and made itself at home.
I kept one of his old books — a paperback (Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”) with a cracked spine and yellowing pages. It’s followed me through every apartment, every city, every version of myself. I never told anyone why I kept it. I didn’t need to. Some things don’t survive being explained.
People talk about mentors like they’re characters in a movie, delivering speeches that change your life. Reginald never gave speeches. He asked questions. Quiet ones. The kind that made you stop lying to yourself.
What do you want for yourself, son? Not what you think you’re supposed to want. What do you actually want?
I didn’t know how to answer then.
I spent years learning how.
And every time I made a choice that felt like mine — truly mine — I felt that same warmth I felt in his kitchen that first morning. The smell of cinnamon. The sunlight on the table. The quiet certainty that I had been seen, maybe for the first time.
I never forgot him.
I never could.
Some people leave you with lessons.
Reginald left me with a direction.
And even now, decades later, I still wake some mornings with that sunrise in my chest — a reminder that the man I became started with the man who opened his door to a passed-out kid. A passed-out barefoot kid who woke up scared and who didn’t know where else to go.