Story Time with the Fresh Professor (Part One)

I wasn’t always the Fresh Professor. At one point, I was just another starving actor, trying to make a living. But stories change over time, as do professional desires.

This is Part One of my story. Enjoy the ride.

January 1998: New York City

I moved from Chicago to the Big Apple with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket and, as many New York stories begin, found an insane Jamaican to become my roommate. He never washed his clothes, smoked weed all day, spouted Black nationalist philosophies, and dated only White women. My roommate had an equally crazy “cousin,” whom I’m positive only claimed to be a relative so he could crash in our bathroom when he was drunk; some nights, he would bring back a woman and they’d have sex in our shower. This in and of itself didn’t bother me. That said, I was perturbed that he did it in our tub with his boots still on. Why not take your shoes off? Right?

C’est la vie. I suppose worse things could have happened … at least it wasn’t another dead body.

Oh yeah, that’s why I moved to the city in the first place.

August 1997: Chicago

He was dead. We knew this because he wasn’t breathing. We knew this because he had a hole in his head. And we knew this because we had never pulled…