PART 3 - The Further Adventures of a Kid Called Casper
by The Duo
CONTINUED….
Tishawn was the LAST person I expected to save me.
Tishawn was my hated enemy, but seeing a familiar face in a place you didn’t know— and while you’re petrified with fear—well, that suddenly made him family.
He dragged me inside, sat me in a salon chair — his mom did hair (a beauty salon right in her living room) at home — and told me Donell was fine. Lamarque, his cousin, gave me dry clothes and a place to sleep in the den.
Later, Donell came in. I pretended to be asleep. He stood over me, and instead of hitting me or something, he gently brushed my hair off my forehead. He had spoken with Tishawn, his mom and Lamarque when he first arrived at the house. I don’t know what they told him. All I know is that, instead of waking me by yanking me up by my ear and cussing me out for ruining his time at the party, my moderately unhinged foster brother rather gently brushed a lock of hair off my forehead and let me sleep.
A small gesture.
But it changed something.
Did his normally self-centered, angry mind figure out my motives that night? Did he actually care that I’d gone looking for him because I was scared out of my mind? I still don’t know. All I do know is that he never slapped the back of my head again, though frequent death threats kept coming through the years.
Donell wasn’t built clean. He wasn’t one of those guys who could be sorted neatly into “good” or “bad.” He lived in the crack-era gray zone — that place where survival twisted people into shapes they didn’t recognize in daylight.
On one hand, Donell could be the first to throw himself into chaos. If a fight broke out, he was already in the middle of it. If a street beef simmered, he was the one turning up the heat. Trouble didn’t just find him — it followed him like a shadow that owed him money.
But then there was the other side.
The part nobody talked about because it didn’t fit the legend.
The same hands that could break a man down were the ones that fixed Ricky’s bike chain. The same voice that could start a war on the block was the one that told you to get inside when the streetlights flickered wrong. He’d scare the hell out of you, then turn around and make sure you got home safe.
He was protector and threat, shield and storm.
People feared him, but they also leaned on him.
They whispered about him, but they also trusted him.
He could be the cause of the violence or the one who stepped in to stop it — sometimes in the same night.
And that was Donell’s contradiction:
He wasn’t a villain.
He wasn’t a hero.
He was a product of a neighborhood where you had to be both to survive.
And once, when he didn’t know I was listening while he was on the phone, he referred to me as one of his brothers. More on that later.
Mr. Dickerson had to work, so we were home alone. He told us not to leave the area. Donell immediately invited his latest girlfriend over and began making plans for the day,
I suggested that he take us all (me and Ricky included) to the Par Three Miniature Golf Course. He ignored me.
But I overheard him on the phone:
“I don’t know about the guys in this house, dog. I mean, fine-ass Sonya’s coming over, and Ricky wants me to ditch her so that I can take him to Hahn Park. Dave wants to go to the Par Three. Don’t my brothers know the meaning of available pussy!?”
Brothers.
Plural.
Including me.
I had a fever that morning, a sore throat, but that moment healed me more than any pharmaceutical medicine could.
Not long after I got back on my feet, the Mount of Olives Father-Son Revival came up on the calendar. I wanted to go so badly it felt like something clawing at my ribs. I’d only been camping once in my life — Cub Scouts, years ago — but that one night had stuck with me. The cold air, the firelight, the quiet. I wanted that again.
But Ricky had oral surgery scheduled that same week. Vincent was too old. And Donell — poor Donell — was allergic to half the planet. So the whole idea of the revival got dropped.
Except… what about me?
I tried not to think it, but the thought kept circling back like a vulture: If Donell can’t go, then I can’t go. Because I’m white. Because Mr. Dickerson doesn’t want to show up with only me.
It was ugly. I knew it was ugly. But it didn’t stop it from feeling true.
Mr. Dickerson had never treated me like I was less than his other boys. He and Mrs. Dickerson fed me, clothed me, loved me better than any foster parents had any reason to. But still — still — I felt the sting. I felt the exclusion. And I hated myself for even thinking he’d do something like that.
I stayed in that bitter, heavy place until the next Saturday morning.
Vincent showed up out of nowhere, strolling into the hallway like he still lived there. “Morning, Pop,” he said, wrapping his arms around his father. I watched from the doorway of the room I shared with Donell, and jealousy hit me so hard it made my stomach twist. That bond — that easy, natural thing — would never exist between Mr. Dickerson and me. Vince was his only biological son. That meant something. It always would.
Mr. Dickerson broke away from him and turned to me. “Get cleaned up,” he said. “We’re heading to the Lakewood mall.”
I waited for an explanation, but he’d already turned back to Vincent.
“You won’t need to get Davey new sleeping gear,” Vincent said. “I bought that mummy bag and the Mobiflex three-man dome tent six months ago. They’re practically brand new.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Mr. Dickerson was taking me to the revival. He’d always planned to. The only person who ever doubted him was me.
The shame that washed over me was sharp and hot. I’d spent days sulking, convinced he didn’t want to be seen with me, convinced my whiteness made me some kind of embarrassment. But the truth was simpler, kinder, and so much more painful: he’d never once considered leaving me behind.
I don’t know how to explain it. It felt like being forgiven for a sin no one knew I’d committed.
Not all times were great though. I can remember the resentment I felt towards my foster brother Donell because of his friendship with a jerk I’ll call Ray.
This resentment sat in me like a bruise that never healed. I mean, Donell was my foster brother, but Ray — his homie, his shadow, his hype man — was the problem. Ray had that slick, mean streak, the kind of dude who smiled while he sized you up, already deciding what part of you he’d break first. And I saw it. I felt it. I knew exactly what he was.
But knowing didn’t mean a damn thing.
Because telling Donell the truth wasn’t an option. Donell didn’t do “conversations.” He did consequences. If I’d told him Ray was acting sideways, my foster bro wouldn’t have sat me down for a heart-to-heart. He’d have folded me like a lawn chair, left me blinking at the ceiling, and THEN gone to investigate. That was the rhythm of the house: Donell’s fists were the search engine, and “verification” was whatever happened after I regained consciousness.
Mr. and Mrs. Dickerson never saw any of that. I kept it quiet. They loved to say that if anyone ever tried to hurt me, Donell would be the first one out for blood. And they weren’t wrong — mostly. Donell would ride for me. He’d also ride OVER me if the mood struck. My foster bro was equal parts bodyguard and hazard.
Very complicated.
So I kept my mouth shut. I swallowed it — the anger, the fear, the certainty — because survival meant silence. And every time Ray came around, laughing that hollow laugh, I felt the resentment tighten in my chest. Not just at him, but at the whole crooked setup that made telling the truth a punishable offense.
Ray was Donell’s boy, always hanging around the house like a shadow with a chip on its shoulder. And from day one, he looked at me like I was some kind of malfunction waiting to happen. Not because I’d done anything. Not because anyone white had ever laid a hand on him. He just decided I was the type — the kind of white kid who’d wake up one morning, flip some invisible switch, and turn into a backstabbing, goose-stepping nightmarish feral dog that had to be put down.
He never said it outright. He didn’t have to. It was in the way he watched me, like he was waiting for the monster to crawl out of my skin.
The funny part is, I didn’t deal with half the racism people assume I did, living with a Black foster family in a mostly non-white city. Most folks treated me like a weird stray who’d wandered into the wrong neighborhood. But Ray? Ray hated me racially, and he hated me with conviction — like he’d been briefed on me by some higher authority.
And the thing that still messes with me is that he had no origin story for it. No white villain in his past (that I know of). No trauma. Just this belief that I was a delayed explosion.
Decades passed. I grew up. I didn’t turn into anything except a guy trying to make sense of his own childhood. But Ray? He’s still alive. Still out there. And get this — he lives in Nebraska now!
I swear, part of me thinks he’s still waiting. Sitting out there in the flat quiet, watching the horizon, convinced that somewhere, somehow, I’m about to flip that switch he always imagined.
But not all racism was imaginary.
There was a trip I took to Kentucky with my foster mom and her choir, The Mount of Olives Free Spirit.
Kentucky wasn’t supposed to be a battlefield. It was supposed to be a simple road trip — my foster mom’s choir had been invited to sing at some regional showcase down south, and I tagged along because it meant I’d finally get a chance to see my biological father. He lived out in Versailles, just outside Lexington. A quiet little town with pretty horse farms and ugly secrets.
That meeting — hell, the whole trip — went sideways fast. Mainly because my biological dad was an unmitigated piece of shit.
Confronting a narcissistic parent is like stepping into a funhouse built by someone who hates you. Every mirror is warped. Every hallway loops back into the same argument. You try to talk about the past, and they twist it until you’re the villain in your own memories. My dad didn’t just dodge accountability — he performed it. Mental gymnastics so wild it felt like watching a man wrestle his own shadow and lose. There’s a special kind of terror in realizing someone you share blood with has no bottom, no brakes, no capacity for truth.
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was a McDonald’s.
I’d gone in first — ordered, paid, walked out. No problem. Sun was out, people were inside eating, the place was alive with the usual fry-grease hum.
Then my foster mom and a couple of members of her choir walked up.
The staff told them the restaurant was closed. Mid-day. Doors locked. Customers still chewing inside. No explanation. Just that cold, flat lie people use when they think you’re powerless.
It was the first time I’d seen racism hit the Dickersons directly — not whispered, not implied, but slammed in their faces like a door. And it shook something loose in me. These were the gentlest people I knew. Compassionate down to the bone. The kind of folks who’d give you the shirt off their back and apologize for not having a better one. I couldn’t imagine anyone treating them with anything but respect.
But the world doesn’t care about your imagination.
Goodness doesn’t shield you. Sometimes it paints a target on your back.
And yet… the Dickersons didn’t break. They didn’t lash out. Mr. Dickerson, steady as bedrock, never let the ugliness drag him down to its level. He saw the evil clearly — he always did — but he refused to let it rewrite who he was. Mrs. Dickerson kept her warmth, even when the world tried to freeze her out.
To this day, I don’t understand how they keep their hearts intact. How they walk through fire and come out still human. Still kind. Still themselves.
But I learned something on that trip:
Evil doesn’t need a reason.
Goodness doesn’t guarantee safety.
And sometimes the people with the softest hearts are the ones who’ve survived the hardest things.
I felt so BAD the day this happened. I swear, I’m crying right now as I write this. And all this happened way back in the 1980’s. I just remember my foster mom’s face…
But she seemed to get over what happened pretty fast. Ans when I asked her how, she told me story. A story she dropped like a piece of shrapnel she’d been carrying around for years.
You see, after Vincent was born, the doctors didn’t sugarcoat anything. They told her straight: the operation they’d just performed meant she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. No gentle phrasing. No soft landing. Just a door slammed shut in a sterile room that still smelled like antiseptic and newborn skin.
And she took that hit. Full force. No shield. No warning.
So when I asked her how she got over what happened in that McDonald’s in Kentucky — the ugliness, the humiliation, the kind of moment that sticks to a person like grease — she didn’t flinch. She just looked at me with that calm, almost eerie steadiness she gets when she’s talking about something real.
“The worst thing in my life has already happened.”
That’s what she said.
Not dramatic. Not self-pitying. Just a fact carved out of bone.
And suddenly the whole picture made sense. That Kentucky incident? To her, it was noise. Background static. Something she could wipe off her sleeve and keep walking. Because she’d already lived through the kind of loss that rearranges a person’s insides. She’d already stood in the wreckage of a future she thought she’d have and learned how to breathe in it.
Once you’ve survived that kind of devastation, the world can still hurt you — but it can’t break you the same way again.
Now, in the 90’s…
Back in college, I had a relationship with a guy I’ll call Brian — a kid barely out of his teens with a sharp, boyish face and dyed blond hair that always looked like he’d done it in a dorm bathroom with a box of bleach and too much confidence. He had that childish button nose, those expressive blue eyes, and a smile that didn’t just brighten his face — it hijacked it. Lean, wiry, impossibly flat stomach, and a voice that always sounded like he was about to say something he shouldn’t. His emotions lived right on the surface, and he laughed like he was trying to win a championship in joy.
And bold?
Brian wasn’t just bold — he was recklessly bold. The kind of bold that makes you wonder if he’s ever actually been afraid of anything in his life.
One day my foster mom called, cheerful as ever, pretending nothing had changed since I came out to her. She invited me to Sunday dinner with the whole Dickerson crew — Mr. Dickerson, Vincent and Maya, Donell and Denise, Ricky. She liked to gather us all like she was running a family census.
Before I could even say “yes,” Brian snatched the phone out of my hand.
“We’ll be there, Mom!” he chirped. “We wouldn’t miss it.”
Mind you, he had never met her. Not once. That’s how bold Brian was — volunteering himself into family dinner like he’d already been written into the will.
After he hung up, he rubbed his hands together with a grin that said he was ready for whatever chaos came next.
“Can’t wait. Hope she makes soul food!”
For the record, Mrs. Dickerson was the only person I’d come out to at that point. So even though I showed up with Brian, everyone else just assumed he was my overly enthusiastic college buddy who didn’t understand boundaries.
Dinner was great — loud, warm, full of the usual Dickerson energy. Then everyone peeled off: Mr. Dickerson, Ricky, Vincent, and Maya went to the movies (pretty sure it was Clueless). Mrs. Dickerson went to play cards down the street. Donell left to drop Denise home.
Suddenly the house was quiet.
Just me and Brian.
And that’s when the trouble started.
The thrill of being unsupervised hit us like a caffeine overdose. We both got bold — the kind of bold that only shows up when you’re young, unsupervised, and absolutely certain you can get away with anything for the next hour.
The excitement of misbehaving on the sly was too tempting to ignore. Brian gave me that grin — the one that meant he was about to do something ridiculous — and I knew we were in for it.
Two college idiots.
One empty house.
And way too much adrenaline.
The mischief practically wrote itself.
He dropped to his knees before my feet and almost immediately started removing my Adidas. He declared that the smell of my sweaty un-washed socks was overpowering and wonderful! He was so turned on by my fragrance.
His tool was so hard at this point … he announced that it hurt as it strained against the fabric of his pants! But–apparently ignoring the discomfort—he started servicing my socks, reveling in their scent and sweat as he rubbed them all over his face while breathing in deep. He massaged my feet through my socks as he sniffed like crazy and began licking and sucking the sweat out of them. Peeling off one sock, he began gliding his tongue all over my sole and gave me a thorough foot bath—treating each of my five toes to their own individual cleansing.
Then he took hold of my other foot, which was still incased in my sweaty sock. I wiggled my toes around as he moved in close and began sniffing that foot. My size 10s were sweaty, and the smell was apparently too much for someone like him. He started tickling my foot with his index finger, my white cotton sock was still damp from sweat.
I started bucking and thrashing as his fingers ran up and down my socked sole before he finally yanked off my sock, exposing my bare foot. He immediately began to tickle my naked sole—commenting on how soft and warm and clearly ticklish it was. I thrashed and screamed as he spread my toes and tickled the smooth skin between them. I tried curling my toes to prevent him from getting between, but he just pried uncurled them and held them back with one hand and tickled underneath them with the other. He tickled like mad around the ball of my foot before moving down to the sides of my smooth heel where he tickled even more mercilessly.
After working about five minutes on my right foot, Bri moved on to my bare left. As before, he held my toes back as he tickled underneath them, going from the ball of my foot to the extremely ticklish center … and over to the sides of my foot and down to my heel. I squirmed, I thrashed, I screamed! The tickling was too much!
What happened next — and you’re not going to believe this — Donell straight-up caught us red-handed.
My former foster bro walked in and saw Brian going after my feet like a man possessed, tickling me with the kind of wild, unhinged energy usually reserved for people escaping from a burning building or trying to swat a bee.
And here’s the part that still cracks me up:
Donell didn’t even understand what he was looking at.
In that split second, his brain filed the whole scene under: “Two crazy white boys doing whatever weird frat-boy nonsense white boys do.” No deeper meaning. No curiosity. No concern. Just pure Donell logic: “Yep. Checks out.”
He didn’t see anything remotely questionable about it. Didn’t pause. Didn’t ask. Didn’t even give us the dignity of a full stare. He barely flicked his eyes in our direction — the kind of glance you give a raccoon rummaging through a trash can — and then kept walking.
Just strolled right past us and headed into the bedroom like he’d walked in on absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. No commentary. No judgment. No follow-up. Just Donell being Donell:
“Not my circus. Not my clowns.”
TO BE CONTINUED…