How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

The Black Penis and the Demoralization of the Western World

PLACE DES ARTS subway. The 80 bus, north. Get off at Laurier and Park. Bar Isaza. Steep stairway. Smoky landscape. Waves of black gold moving across the dance floor. Starched dashikis. Negroes in rut. A few dozen white mice come to play in the lair of the Black Cat.

“There they are.”

“Where?”

“At the back, to the right.”

“Okay, Bouba. I’m going to have a piss first.”

Men’s john. Two jet-black Negroes.

NEGRO ONE: You have to be quick with these girls, brother, or they’ll slip through your fingers.

NEGRO TWO: That’s the way it is!

NEGRO ONE: They came here to see black. We’ve got to show them black.

NEGRO TWO: What’s this black business?

NEGRO ONE: Listen, brother, cut the innocence.

You’re here to fuck, right? You’re here to fuck a white woman, right? That’s how it works.

NEGRO TWO: But a woman can be.

NEGRO ONE: There’s no women here. There’s black and white — that’s all!

STREAMING BODIES. Eighteen-carat ebony. Ivory teeth. Reggae music. Combustion. Black fusion. A white/black couple practically copulating on the dance floor. Atomic shockwaves.

BOUBA INTRODUCES me.

“My brother. We live together.”

The girls smile.

“What do you do?” one of them asks me.

“I write. I’m a writer.”

“Really? What do you write?”

“Fantasies.”

“What kind?”

“Mine.”

“Are they good?”

“We’ll see.”

The girl gazes sadly at the dance floor, then asks me what I think about it.

“Nothing — except that black and white are accomplices.”

“Accomplices! Where’s the murder?”

“The murder of the white man. Sexually, the white man is dead. Completely demoralized. Look at them dancing. Do you know any white man who could keep up with that madness?”

Hard-core cruise. Savage thrust. A few white guys gesticulating in the corner. Everything else is a black tide, washing over the dance floor, filling the room. Here and there a woman is trapped like a seagull with its feet caught in heavy oil. Brazilian music: slow, insinuating, languorous. The air is sticky. Opaque sensuality.

“Want to dance?”

It’s like moving into Amazon humidity. Bodies running with sweat. You need a machete to cut through this jungle of arms, legs, sexes and mingling smells. Spicy sensuality. She presses against me. No talking. The samba flows into our bodies. Sweat pouring down. Everything flowing. Effortlessly. We’ve got all eternity.

We go back to the table.

“Your business about sexuality,” she declares, “is a load of crap.”

“If you say so.”

“You’re just reworking the Myth of the Black Stud. I don’t believe in it.”

“What do you believe in?”

“Black and white are the same to me.”

“We’re talking sexuality, not arithmetic.”

“Sure. But. ”

“Since you’ve challenged me, I’m going to tell you exactly what I think. Black and white are equal when it comes to death and sexuality. Eros and Thanatos. And I think that when you mix black man and white woman you get blood red. With his own woman the black man might not be worth the paper he’s printed on, but with a white woman, the chances of something happening are good. Why? Because sexuality is based on fantasy and the black man/white woman fantasy is one of the most explosive ones around.”

“Emotions are black — isn’t that myth a little worn out?”

“It might be. But you can’t have whites winning coming and going. They say they’re better than blacks in everything, then turn around and want to be our equals in one area: sexuality.”

“What about whites who don’t think they’re superior to blacks?”

“Those whites, obviously, don’t have sexual hang-ups.”

A MERINGUE.

“Let’s give it a try.”

Koko, the Senegalese musician I met at the Clochards Célèstes, has a hot tip for me.

“This girl at my table is suffering an attack of the mystical heebie-jeebies over you.”

“Why would that be, brother?”

“She insists you’re the reincarnation of the Great God Ra.”

“As if I needed that.”

“If you want you can stop by my table.”

I let a couple minutes go by, then go over to where Koko is sitting.

“Hi, Koko.”

“Hi, brother. Sit down.”

The girl is as cool and composed as a pressure cooker.

“How are you doing?”

“Not bad.”

The DJ is playing reggae.

“You want to dance?”

“Okay.”

Brazilian music comes on.

“Should we stay?”

“Fine with me.”

It’s that easy when it’s working. Smooth as silk.

“Let’s get a drink at the bar,” she says. “It’s quieter there. We can talk.”

We sit down at the bar on the high stools and order drinks. I ask her what she’s up to these days.

“I’m reading.”

“What?”

“Hemingway.”

“Excellent.”

We finish our drinks. She asks me back to her place for coffee.

“I’ll come.”

“Are you leaving with that girl?” Bouba asks me as I get my jacket from the back of the chair.

“Looks that way.”

“The girl next to me says you dropped her because she didn’t agree with everything you said.”

“Tell her, Bouba, that all I did was beat her to the punch.”

“Looked to me she was hot for you. She told me it was the first time anyone’s ever put her down.”

“Tell her that times are tough for everybody.”

I wish them all a good night. The girl with Bouba, Miz Zodiac, smiles back. Miz Mystic too. A put-on smile. The other girl was waiting for me at the door.