After all the volatility he is feeling - Joey wants to do something significant with his life.

My eyes are darting wildly around the room, searching for something to occupy them. Or maybe to enflame those eyes even more. Finally, they converge on my nightstand table. The copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the Professor had lent me a couple of weeks ago. I grab it maniacally, start flipping through the pages. Briskly at first, then browsing, then finally….reading…reading…reading…reading…
Next thing I know, I look at my clock radio - and it’s almost 5:30 in the freaking morning. Holy shit! I was so into it, I had no concept that four hours have passed by, just like that. This Malcolm X, man, he was the shit! This guy comes from intense poverty. His father is murdered by white men when he’s just a kid His mother is eventually taken away to a mental institution. He goes from a detention home in Mason, Michigan, to his half-sister Ella’s place in Boston. In a short while there, he finds himself right in the eye of the happening black culture of the time. All by the time he’s about fifteen years old! Basically around the same age as me.
I’m totally entranced by his description of the lindy-hopping that went down into the wee hours of the morning at Boston’s Roseland Ballroom. How black folks would just go wild into a frenzy on the floor. Sweating, soaking wet, the crowd cheering you on, then pounding your back, gleefully, as you got swept off the floor, exhausted.
Famous big bands of the era, wailing. Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Count Basie…man, that’s living!
I had always felt self-conscious and awkward when I saw the black kids showing off new dance moves to each other in the hall. I want to dance. I don’t want to be stiff! The white kids don’t care, they’re just content to sit in circles at their parties. Passing around a joint, and nodding their heads to Lynard Skynard and Judas Priest. But I want to let loose! I want to just fly, man! And in the back of my mind, someday I know I will.