The Invention Man

The Invention Man

chapter one

Rodney Danville

Rodney Danville sat comfortably at his new desk in Bio Tech’s research department, enjoying his first day at work. Although he’d been in Bio Tech’s research labs before, now was quite different.

Touring the labs as a Jr. Scientist isn’t the same as having a real desk, with real research to investigate, he thought to himself proudly.

This was one of the proudest moments he experienced in his young life. He looked around noticing the researchers and how serious they looked, totally focused on their respective projects.

Damn, I can hardly believe this is happening to me. Here it is I haven’t even graduated from college yet and landed a serious job with one of the #1 pharmaceutical research companies in the country; shit probably the world, Rodney bragged to himself.

The first day he worked long hours at his research, fell asleep at his desk and didn’t go home. He woke up early the next day and immediately continued his research.

I know this is only a test. This is only a test. All I have to do is find the properties of this compound they’ve given me quickly and I’m sure they’ll assign me another project-a more important project than the one I have now. Stay focused RD, stay focused, he encouraged himself.

Rodney developed his research skills at an early age, but his adolescence was spent hanging out with the rough necks around his community. He wasn’t really in a gang, but he sure hung out and acted like a fool. He always stressed the point to himself that he was ‘acting like a fool’-because Rodney knew he was far from one.

He had asthma and any kind of excitement brought on attacks. When the attacks came he’d start wheezing and his chest would feel like it had collapsed, or it was shrinking around his lungs. Whatever it was made breathing next to impossible for him.

His attacks were terribly embarrassing and most of the kids stayed away from him because of them. If he wasn’t sneezing from the allergies, he was wheezing from his asthma.

It became so bad for him everyone started to look at him as if he was a freak, or something other than those allergies was wrong with him. Especially the girls, they avoided Rodney as if a plague, or Aids, or something terrible was wrong with him.

Most if not all of the cool gang members reached out to him and he soon started hanging out with them. There was one in particular who protected him. His name was Maxwell, but they called him Jacco and back when Rodney was around eleven or twelve, he invited him in. Jacco was a cool brother and took a liking to Rodney quite quickly.

You need to come hang with us so you can learn how to be cool. We could jump you in, he offered one day.

Since Jacco lived next door to Rodney’s uncle, Rodney used to help him with his homework, even though Jacco was two grades ahead of him. But if he were to accept the invitation to be jumped in, there would be no more school for Rodney. That was out of the question for him because even at an early age, Rodney realized the importance of attending school.

After helping him so much, when Jacco moved up in the gang he looked out for Rodney. Throughout hanging with them academics remained an important factor to Rodney. He was smart and wanted to stay in school, they didn’t.

Rodney wasn’t scared and could fight, but preferred not to. He learned to fight taking care of himself on the streets of LA and slap boxing with Jacco. That’s why he wasn’t afraid to be jumped in the gang; it just wasn’t his cup of tea.

Jacco became a full member of the PBG’s, which was a fledgling gang, but was starting to get noticed by the other gangs around town. One day he let them inhale his asthma spray and they swore they got high off it. After that, they all were friends.

Their chief rivals were the Player Gangsters, due to both gangs being mostly dope dealers. They didn’t really sport colors just the same suede jackets. They sold ‘speed’, ‘juice’ and a little weed for their money.

To them, Rodney was a little dude that had a funny inhaler and they allowed him to mess around with them. One thing about them, they used to get plenty high and after a while, so did Rodney.

Both gangs joined forces and became a new gang, called the NWA. That stood for, Niggas Wanting Action. Jacco started using his real name, Maxwell and became one of the leaders of the gang. He kept trying to recruit Rodney, since he was the chemist and use to cut the dope they sold. In time Rodney tried all of the stuff, but didn’t like it. The speed use to make him too jittery, and the juice was just weird.

In school, Rodney started focusing on chemistry and about his sophomore year he started to dedicate his studies to it. At first, all he wanted to do was find a way to get rid of the asthma.

There was only one time in his youth he came close to having a girlfriend and if it hadn’t been for her blabbing everything, Rodney probably would have realized his full potential of genius and went on to do something important in his life.

It was due to her that things went bad or soured in his life. He couldn’t take the taunts that stemmed from the rumor she started. It really wasn’t a lie type of rumor, the truth is Rodney really did cum fast and couldn’t get it back up. But nevertheless, he felt Mary Alice didn’t have to be so cruel as to tell everybody about it.

Mary’s mother was a nurse and they lived about ten houses down from Rodney’s uncle, on Cadillac St. Now talk about fine, Mary really was. She had the best shape in the whole school and all the dudes chased her. Her hair was long and sort of reddish brown and her eyes were a funny kind of green. Their house was raggedy and needed a coat of paint.

Mary’s family was different from his uncles’ inasmuch as they weren’t united in any way. Mary’s mother was never home, but to her credit she worked a lot. There was never a dad, or at least there was never one around that Rodney saw. Matter of fact, most of the time there was no grown up there and those kids were crazy, in a fun kind of way.

No grown up at home to discipline children makes for some wild kids, his uncle used to say about them.

There would always be music blasting from the front door being wide open. It never stopped amazing Rodney, but when he walked past their house it had an odor you could smell. He couldn’t describe it, but the smell was of old rags, or like the clothes they’d taken off was thrown in the corner and never washed. To say the house smelled stale or mildewed would be a nice way to put it.

It was one thing the whole neighborhood agreed on-she and her sister were the finest broads in the hood-and anybody could get that pussy, except Rodney.

Gail, her sister was a little older than he by about two or three years, but Rodney wanted her. She was tall with those same green eyes except her features were somewhat pointed, or she put her make up on so they would look that way. But she had a beautiful set of lips and her shape was as good, maybe better than Mary Alice’s.

Rodney would hint to Gail about getting her pussy, but by her being older, it wasn’t the right come on for her and she would ignore him. Back then, an older broad wouldn’t even look at a younger dude, not and expect to keep the respect of her girlfriends.

Sometimes, when she pretended to come on to him he’d get so excited, it would prompt his wheezing and he would need his spray. Rodney didn’t pay much attention to Mary Alice because she was younger than he. It was the same for dudes as it was for girls-a cool dude didn’t want to mess with a girl in a grade under him, but that all started to change when they got in the eight or ninth grade. Once they got to Jr. Hi, a dude could talk to girls in the lower grades and still would get respect from his partners.

One day, Rodney was almost begging Gail for her pussy. After that, when Mary Alice butted in is when all hell broke loose. She was standing in the hallway listening to Rodney talking to Gail and became disgusted.

Rodney, you need to get some of this hot stuff I have. It’s good, ain’t you heard? Want some? Mary asked.

What do you have? Rodney responded, sounding more innocent than he would have liked.

Mary Alice looked at him with an inviting glance while laughing heartily at his innocence. She laughed so hard she started choking and he had to steady her. When she straightened up, she grabbed his hand and guided it towards her crotch forcing him to rub her pubic hairs.

Some of this-fool, she offered invitingly.

Feel it, silly, she teased.

She had put his hand inside of her panties and it scared Rodney so, he didn’t know what to do. Slowly Rodney began to move his fingers around on her pubic hairs.

Damn, you don’t know what to do, do you? Put your finger inside and then smell it? she ordered.

Rodney did and when he smelled it his dick got hard so fast it was unbelievable. He’d never smelled pussy before and to him some kind of fish was the only smell that it could be related to.

Rodney had never felt any girls up, was fourteen and still a virgin. All of his buddies had gotten pussy many times, at least according to them they had.

You’re going to let me do it to you? he asked, starting to wheeze.

Yeah, she answered.

Now? he questioned grabbing his inhaler and spraying it into his mouth.

No better time than the present, she replied, as she led him to her room.

For the life of him there was no stopping his wheezing, so he sprayed again, hoping to gain some control. Mary didn’t look like she even cared about the wheezing, she just grabbed him by the hand and led him straight into her bedroom.

When they entered her room, it was catastrophic. In the corner by the head of the bed, was trash. A big pile of it lay smelling up the room. Under her bed was a large, smelly dog, eating the paper from the trash in the corner. Rodney noticed it was a big, white sheep-herding dog.

Her bed was the worst, it was in shambles. The sheets were supposed to be white, but they were beige from the filth and the pillows were even worse. They had chocolate smudges all over them-at least in his mind he hoped they were chocolate stains.

They got on the bed and she started trying to kiss him right away. Even though being young and wanting some pussy, the bed was so nasty Rodney had to force himself to overlook it. He had never French kissed before, but was glad practicing on his arm would finally come into play.

Kissing for Rodney had been mastered by practicing on his arm; at least he felt it had. He had to use his arm because no girl would get that close to him and in his solitude, sometimes he’d pretend to have a girl and his arm would be her mouth.

Move your tongue around. Dogggg-like this, Mary suggested, as she pushed her tongue against Rodney’s, moving his tongue back into his mouth.

Mary thrust her tongue around his mouth and against his tongue, repeatedly. All of the thoughts about kissing a girl came flooding to his mind. Then Rodney realized in all of the fantasies he had about kissing, his dick never got hard from it like it was starting to do then.

After a few minutes of kissing, she started licking and sucking his neck and after a while she was sucking it so hard it begin to hurt.

Damn, Mary, he complained, rubbing his neck.

I’m marking you, from now on you’re mine, she said.

You’ll have a big cherry on your neck tomorrow, she informed him.

Then she started taking her panties off. He noticed before, but now his dick was really hard from the foreplay. He dropped his pants, never taking off his shoes. To say it was exciting would be the understatement of the century. Rodney was about to get some pussy and it was 300 times more than exciting for him.

As she laid on the bed and spread her legs Rodney noticed his dick almost poked through his underwear. Rodney’s breathing became harder as his underwear dropped and he got on top of her. He felt an attack coming on, but didn’t care. At that moment, her pussy had total control of him and was completely desirable to him. The closer he came to getting it the more his chest tightened up.

When she put her hand on his dick to guide it in, he was breathing so hard passing out would have been a relief. The only thing that held him together was thinking, ‘damn, I’m about to get some pussy’.

The main topic dudes he knew talked about was pussy and now he was going to be able to converse with them. Mary guided his dick in and up to that point he’d never felt anything like it. His dick was in this moist, warm environment that felt out of this world. He moved his hips and rolled his body into hers. Maybe thirty seconds went by and cum spurted out.

This was his first time with sex and it didn’t occur to him he had done anything wrong. It also was his first time cumming, because he had never jacked off before and didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t a build up or anything, cum just spurted out inside her.

Mary Alice looked up at him and asked, What’s wrong with you, are you a fag? Tyrone Porter did that to me last year and look at him now, switching his booty like a girl.

Before any reply could be made she had pushed Rodney off of her.

Mary Alice, what did I do wrong? he asked.

Fool, don’t you know you ain’t supposed to cum like that, she admonished.

Wait a minute I was too excited, O.K, let’s do it again, Rodney proposed.

She looked at him and started to laugh, OK, you know what; you probably were too excited. I know you heard how good my pussy is, haven’t you? she asked, as she lay back down on the bed.

Hell yeah, I heard it from Garrett, he answered getting right back on top of her trying to stick his semi hard dick inside of her.

The more he tried, the more his dick went limp, until it was fully soft. For him it was so embarrassing it was beyond words. As bad as he wanted to get some pussy, he was at a lost for words as to what happened to him.

Rodney didn’t know it back then but the chemicals in the asthma spray made him respond that way. Those chemicals involved and sex didn’t mix. That’s another one of the reasons Rodney was so focused on sex and asthma once he matured. When he found out the combination of the spray and a hard on didn’t mix, he had to find a remedy. He needed the spray in order to live a semi regular life as a teen.

Mary complained, You ain’t shit and I don’t care if I did mark you; you ain’t none of my man. You’re a fag and I’m telling everybody about you.

Mary, don’t do that, please, he begged.

Get out of my room, she ordered.

Mary..,

Get out, she ordered again without looking at him.

Forced to leave her room, he was in tears and ran to his Uncle Clinton’s house without stopping. He ran straight into the backyard and started throwing rocks at the trees in the ditch behind his uncle’s house. He and his cousins used to try to hit the blackbirds in the trees when they were in the backyard playing. Now, it seemed he was trying to knock the trees down.

Those trees were in something like a ditch and he and his cousins used to play back there, all the time. At night it was scary to them because the trees looked like monsters. Sometimes when the wind was blowing they looked as if they were coming towards them and they’d scream loudly and his Aunt Lena would make them come in.

He stayed out there for hours, throwing rocks and talking to himself. Eventually, he decided it didn’t matter if she did tell everyone. Knowing that she would, he decided to not care about it.

That’s when inadvertently his anger was suppressed. It has to be, because in reality nothing would have soothed him more than going back and beating the hell out of her, and if he would have known what she was going to cause, he would have.

The next Monday at school, he was the laughing stock of all times. People were coming up to him, describing in detail what happened with him and Mary Alice. It seemed everyone at the school had heard about Rodney’s non-performance. Even the girls were taunting him about it.

The only way for Rodney to avoid those taunts was to study, so he buried himself in books and became smarter by the day. It’s around that time he started getting interested in medicine.

After a few months of dealing with the taunts, they stopped and he began to rebuild his soiled reputation-at least that was his intentions. During those few months though, the information he was absorbing studying so much engrossed him.

Most of the time he didn’t have to study because his I.Q. was so high his counselors thought he was close to being genius. Without studying Rodney already knew so much about the subjects he had at school, until he didn’t realize the value books had. He slowly became hooked on books and the knowledge therein.

The rumor Mary started stopped only to be replaced by his being called, a ‘nerd’. That was hard for him to take-a girl calling him a nerd. Imagine being called a nerd by a girl. In his neighborhood, being called a nerd is something close to being extricated from the community. In his opinion there was nothing worst, except being called a fag.

However, being taunted had a hidden benefit to it for him because it allowed Rodney to be around ten times more girls and the attention he’d get from the teasing was really quite pleasing. Therefore, for a while he accepted the nerd label; trench coat, glasses and part in his hair included, all of which contributed to his nerdy image. Add that to his carrying that spray around all the time, he looked the part.

After a couple of years, Rodney began to think he didn’t want that nerdy image anymore and started hanging out more with some of the gangsters he was acquainted with.

Rodney’s mother was there but barely, so early in his life he was nearly living on his own. The alcohol had taken her over many years earlier and her days were already numbered.

His mother was a drunk and died before him reaching the age of 15. Even though she didn’t act like it, she loved him and he really missed her growing up. There wasn’t a father around, so mostly he took care of himself, but no one talked down about his mother without hearing from him. She was a bright student in her own right. She just was sick and couldn’t help herself.

He first realized about his mother in the fourth grade, when she came to an open house at school. He had been begging her to come to one of the PTA meetings, or some other school function, but she never would. She always had to clean someone’s house, or do some other menial work to make ends meet. When she did come, she was buttered and toasted on both sides.

She stumbled into the auditorium and screamed out his name, Rodney! C’mere boy and help your momma find a seat.

He hurried over to assist her to a seat, while she kept on talking. He really wanted to ask her to be quiet but knew better.

I went to this same school, but they wouldn’t let me in the programs they did the other white kids! she said.

She was talking loud and at first what she was saying embarrassed him until she said, They are gonna try to do it to you too, watch and see.

As she kept talking, he noticed she was dead on target and responded, I won’t let ‘em do it, momma.

The same teachers that wouldn’t let me achieve, are still teaching at this school now. Still keeping as many blacks back as they can, she informed him.

Deep down inside he felt that’s what drove his mother to drinking. The fact they wouldn’t let her fully exploit her abilities and the racist people that wouldn’t allow her into college drove her over the edge. She had the grades, just no money. She was sort of a genius also, only not as profound as her son. She did her best to warn Rodney about people and what they wanted from geniuses.

It’s always best to not let those bastards know how smart you are, cause they’ll try to use and abuse you, she warned him.

Rodney didn’t know it at the time, but she was right. First, people do expect so much from you when you’re labeled a genius. Most of his genius was hidden; by being an ass hole in his youth and a drug addict all of his adult life. But on occasions, it surfaced.

In school, the things the teachers wanted him to do were too silly to him. He didn’t see any reason for him to bend spoons, or try to figure out a pattern to some stars or blotches. At first, that’s what they had him and three other students doing. The only one that could really do that stuff was Wallace C. Wetherby.

So after a short while he started to think, ‘forget what someone else wants me to do. I’m starting to do things for myself’. He wanted to do things that was evident couldn’t, or shouldn’t be done. But since he was a genius, it was always clear to him a way could be found to do it and get away with it. Guess what-most times he did get away.

It was easy for him to figure out ways to cheat the grocer out of ten dollars or whatever he could. The police never bothered him because when they’d stop Rodney, he’d start talking about something far over their heads and the police would admire it.

His asthma kept him and his mother at the doctor’s office, trying to get medicine to combat the attacks that would occur. At first, they didn’t come very often, but when they did, breathing would be next to impossible.

Evidently, age agreed with his asthma because attacks seemed to come more often the older he became. His attacks probably weren’t getting any worse; there was just more stimuli around that would promote one to occur.

Rodney always felt his asthma was the reason he didn’t have any girlfriends, that and his mother’s sickness. His mother use to be mean when she drank-so none of his buddies would want to play at his house. And the girls wouldn’t even consider him.

Chapter Two

late teen years

Uncle Clinton was a sharp ole dude and it was rumored that when he was younger he was a player. He wore his hair in a short natural and even though he was kind of chubby, he still looked cool. He had a neat little mustache that was always groomed and whenever he wasn’t working in the yard, he was dressed sharp.

He used to always tell the kids stories about what his childhood was like compared to theirs. According to him his childhood made stronger kids than today’s, did.

"You kids nowadays are