How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: Essays

Laymon has had guns pulled on him by four people. One was a white undercover cop. Another was a young Black man who tried to rob him of the meager leftovers of a work-study check. Another was his mother. He has twice pulled a gun on himself.

When Laymon was 17, five years younger than Rekia Boyd was when she was shot by an off-duty cop in Chicago in 2012, his friend Troy asked him if he wanted to go to McDonald’s. As they left, Laymon held the restaurant’s door open for a scruffy-looking white man in a John Deere hat. The man thanked Laymon. Several minutes later, the man caught up with Laymon and his friends on the road, lowered his window, and screamed “n***** lovers” before driving on. On I-55, they pulled up beside the white man’s car and cursed at him. Then, the man pulled out a police siren and set it atop his car. When Troy drove into his apartment complex, the white man in the John Deere hat knocked loudly on the back car window. He held a gun in one hand and a badge in the other. He told Laymon to get out of the car, held a gun to his chest, and told him he was going to jail.