Action Bronson - F*ck It, Ill Start Tomorrow

Editor: Holly Dolce

Designer: Heesang Lee

Production Manager: Anet Sirna-Bruder

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020944918

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5

eISBN: 978-1-68335-919-7

Text copyright 2021 Action Bronson

Cover 2021 Abrams

Published in 2021 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS.

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Ive always had a sick confidence. Ive always felt like I was six-foot-two and shredded, like I could literally do anything. Like I could field a baseball with a gazelle-like skill. Like I could run the forty-yard dash faster than any human on earth. Like I could score a touchdown at any time and smash a baseball into outer space

But in reality, I am not six-two. I am five-eight with stilts on. With stilts on, and wearing roller skates. And Ive been around two forty, two hundred seventy pounds for most of my life.

I honestly think my confidence comes from growing up being short and fucking huskywe dont like to say the fat word, we like to say huskyand having to jump and run with all different types of ethnicities on the basketball court in Flushing, Queens, where I grew up with kids that were skinnier and better than me at jumping and running. Those street games every morning at the courts outside our elementary school? I was just able to make it there. The kids were skinnier and better than me, but I still made it happen.

As a kid, even though I was short in stature and husky, I was very fast and pretty good at sports, and I had tremendous moxie for my size. I had a lot of strength, that kind of explosive power you can have at my shape and size. I was even scouted for weight lifting because I was good at squatting, I was good at bench pressing, shoulder pressing. And I was also good at baseball at a young ageI remember in Little League we won a couple of championships for sure. I just hit the ball in a really wild, powerful way, like a ton of bricks even off a tee. I used to jack home runs off the tee. And even with my shape, I used to be able to do cartwheels for fifty yards and then do a cartwheel into a roundoff. I bet I could still do a roundoff, even now. Plus, I was smart, and I could make people laugh.

Look at Mr. Perfect over here, right?

Mostly I am kidding. Mostly I am making fun of myself. But Im really just saying that I felt like I was gifted, like I was a special child. I held myself in that regard, like, Oh my god, youre different from others.

I think part of it is you got to spend time by yourself to know who you are. You have to be one with yourself to be confident, and trust in yourself, because basically what you have to do is not give a fuck what other people think about you, and not pay attention to what everybody else is saying. So to be confident, you literally have to know yourself. Im an only child, so I had lots of time to know myself by just being totally by myself. By the age of ten I was doing all kinds of things alone. I was chilling alone and taking the city bus alone. As an only child growing up in my part of Flushing, in the 1990s, you got to really fucking go in on yourself.

Part of it is also, I think you have to have confidence in whatever abilities you do have, and then you have to believe you can do other things, and then you just go for ityou gotta just think that you can do a cartwheel, and then you can.

So I was short and I was huskyI made sure I excelled at hanging out. I made sure I excelled at making people laugh. I made sure I excelled at playing handball with my friends. And being pretty good at those things gave me this type of feeling, like Im six feet tall. I believed I could hit a shot from anywhere on a basketball court on anyoneits obviously not true, but once you believe that thing, you start getting closer to doing it. I had a crazy jump shot in my consciousness. In my consciousness, my jump shot was 100 percent. Whether its true or not, it helps to be able to tell yourself that, to be able to tell yourself that youre able to do these things. You got to kind of believe it if you want to do it, right? First you have to believe that you can, or believe that youre different, that youre special.

So thats why I say it was the New York City basketball court that made me. We would all play before we went into school, and wed all run out to it again at lunchtime. Everyone would be waiting at the door, like fucking dogs at the pound, then just run out to the court. This was at PS 200thats where the basketball courts and handball courts and shit like that were in my neighborhood. We played basketball, or sometimes we just ran, we just ran after each other, trying to hit each other.

Think about little boys from all over the world playing in the schoolyard together, just running and doing, like, fighting moves in the airnot really hitting each other, but more like at each other, lots of weird Ninja Turtletype kicks, thats what we would do. And its Queens: its a melting pot. After school I would go over to my friends houses, where it would be Indian, Spanish, Honduran food. You come over to my house, its my nonnas Albanian food. Your eyes are open to a lot of new things early on, youre not really scared of anything right out of the box.

We also played in the park behind my mothers apartment building. We called it Tire Park because they used to have a dragon made out of old tires in the dirt back there. Tire Park was easy for everyone because we would stay there all day and night and our parents would just whistle for us when it was time to come home. For lunch, my nonna would call me in: Ariyan! She would just call my name right out the window. Id go home, and thered be her fresh bread that shed bake in nice smaller rounds so she could fit three or four in a basket. She always had her peppers and tomatoes. The feta and chicken and rice. She made food for me, she made it for everybody, she just made food all day long.

Let me tell you all the things Ive done in Tire Park over the years: Ive smoked weed. Ive drank beers. Ive gotten head. Ive played box ball, Ive played tag. Ive played baseball and samurai showdown, Ive been on the swings. Ive thrown up. Ive gone in the sprinklers, which arent there anymore. Ive fucked in Tire Park. More than likely I had steroids on me at one point. I more than likely shot steroids in there, during my steroid years.

Ive hit all kinds of home runs in Tire Park, back when we used to play stickball or baseball with a tennis ball there. I loved stickball. I was an amazing fucking stickball pitcher and basherthats when you just bash the ball, as in, a basher is a big hitter. I just made that word up, but Ive been bashing balls my whole life, mostly at the batting cages out on MTA land by JFK airport, where planes fucking fly right by you. I also remember up the block from my crib theyd have a stickball league, and people would even bring beach chairs. Its a chill game, but its still competitive, like softball.