How to Make Love to a Negro without Getting Tired

My Old Remington Kicks Up Its Heels While Whistling Oh Dem Watermelons

HORIZON OBSCURED. I can’t make out much. I’ve been in isolation for three days with a case of Molson, three bottles of wine, two cans of Ronzoni spaghetti, five pounds of potatoes and this goddamn Remington. Next to the bell downstairs, I put up a sign that any idiot can understand: “Do Not Disturb: Great Writer Writing Last Masterpiece.” After three days of straight typing, the lower-case letters are beginning to look iridescent. The capitals resemble those hairy spiders from the tropics. The room pitches lightly on a sea of Molson. Waves of dense heat flow over my back. The consonants fornicate and whelp as I look on. The dishes pile up. The garbage can is overflowing. I’m suffocating. I watch, inert, as the cockroaches go about their business. The room is running in ultramarine humors. How not to consider yourself a genius under such conditions? This horrid heat! I can picture Homer, old Homer himself, typing out his first book, his Iliad, under the Mediterranean sun. Borges would have kept his anthracite suit at 88 degrees F. Bukowski too. Not Saint-John Perse, despite his Caribbean roots. All you need is a good Remington, no cash and no publisher to believe that the book you’re composing with your gut feelings is the masterpiece that will get you out of your hole. Unfortunately, it never works that way. It takes as much guts to do a good book as a bad one. When you have nothing, you can always hope for genius. But genius has refined tastes. It doesn’t like the dispossessed. And nothing is all I’ve got. I’ll never make it out of here with a so-so manuscript.

I WRITE by day.

And dream by night.

IN MY dream I walk past the Hachette bookstore on St. Catherine Street. I see my novel in the window under an enormous poster: “A Young Black Montreal Writer Puts James Baldwin out to Pasture.” I go inside. My book is positioned between Moravia and Greene. Good company. That book, holding its own, with that red and yellow cover and jazz look — that book is me. Completely me. I am those 160 tight little pages. Someone is going to come in any moment now, pick up my book and leaf through it, dubious at first then delighted, he’s going to go to the cash and give the cashier the $12.95 that will get him the book. The cashier will put my book in a Hachette bag and give it to him. The guy will go home with his new purchase: my book. And this man, miracle of miracles, will be my first real reader.

THE BOOKSELLER comes up to me. He recognizes me. My picture is on the end papers.

“Sir. ”

And this man, miracle of miracles, is the first white man to call me sir.

“Excuse me, sir. ”

I pretend I didn’t hear him. It’s such a novelty to my ears. I let it linger there a while.

“Sir. ”

“Yes.”

“I read your book.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Oh, how proper I’ve become!

“It’s very powerful.”

“Is it selling?”

Oh, how mercantile I’ve become!

“It’s doing very well.”

“Good.”

“Hasn’t anyone told you?”

“I was in New York. I got back last night. I haven’t even spoken to my publisher.”

“I see. Come into my office, you can call him from there.”

And I do.

“Hello. ”

“Who is this?”

“I don’t know if you’ll remember me. ”

“I don’t know either.”

“I sent you a manuscript. ”

“We’re having a bad season. Very bad. What was our answer?”

“The manuscript was called Black Cruiser’s Paradise. ”

“Where the hell were you? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“I was there.”

“There where?”

“I was in New York. I always go to New York this time of year.”

“Good for you. Your book is out and it looks like it’s doing well.”

“Is it selling?”

“Not so fast. ”

“I’m at Hachette.”

“Don’t listen to booksellers, they don’t know anything about anything. They’re just salesmen. They take no risks. None whatsoever.”

“Where’s the success, then?”

“The critics, my friend. The critics are bowing down to you.”

“I’m flattered. How much is that worth?”

“Don’t use that cynical tone with me, young man. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to act cynical with Madame Bombardier.”

“Miz B-52!”

“Not so fast. You’ll be going on Bombardier’s show, Noir sur Blanc. Fits you like a glove, wouldn’t you say? Meanwhile, we’ll work on what we have, and what we have is a superb piece by Jean-Ethier Blais.”

“Blais!”

“Himself in person, my friend, in fits of admiration. Get yourself a chair and listen to what Mr. Blais has to say: ‘I have never read anything so strong, so original, yet so obvious. This is the most horrifying portrait of Montreal I have read in years. If what this young man says is true, then we must conclude that our brand of liberalism is the most incredible hogwash that ever existed (something I’ve always suspected).’ And Pierre Vallières took five columns in La Presse to say: ‘Finally, the true Black Niggers of America! ’”

“Uhh. that’s nice of them.”

“That’s nice of them? Is that all you have to say? Don’t I get any credit? I know you authors, you write your little books in your dingy basements with delusions of grandeur about being Henry Miller. And when it works one time in a thousand, you act so innocent. Oh yeah, someone called and asked you to call them back.”

“Carole Laure.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Carole Laure. Carole Laure. CAROLE LAURE.

Carrel Or. What am I going to say to CL? I wrote a book with my guts to get a call from CL. And it worked — she called. What are you supposed to feel at a time like this? I can’t feel a thing.

“HELLO. ”

“Yes, this is Carole Laure.”

“I think you called my publisher.”

“Oh, it’s you!”

“I was in New York. My publisher gave me your message today.”

“What are you doing now?”

“What am I doing now??”

“Oh, I understand. Have you eaten yet?”

“Me? No.”

“It’s my treat. Where are you now?”

“Me?” I’m not entirely sure. “I’m at the corner of St. Catherine and Berri.”

“I’m not far. Do you know Prince Arthur Street?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

I’ve got a date with CL on Prince Arthur. On Prince Arthur. where on Prince Arthur? Oh, shit!

For fucking Allah’s sake! I forget to ask her where.

I can’t start looking for CL in every restaurant on Prince Arthur. I can’t stand Carole Laure up!

The literary section of Saturday’s La Presse is supposed to run an article on me with the headline “A New Genius.” Some genius! Can’t even make a date right.

CUT TO RADIO-CANADA, for the taping of the show Noir sur Blanc.

Miz Bombardier looks straight at the camera and the show begins: “The novel you will be reading this season is called Black Cruiser’s Paradise. It was written by a young black Montreal writer, and it’s his first book. The critics have greeted it with the most enthusiastic praise. Jean-Ethier Blais states that he has read nothing like it in generations. Réginald Martel says the book is the first in a search for new literary forms. Gilles Marcotte has spoken of ‘a filter of lucidity through which violence and eroticism of the most explicit sort acquire a certain purity.’ A junior college teacher in Montreal has included it in his course on Racism and Society. David Fennario is currently translating it into English, and plans to adapt it into a play he’ll call Negroville. ”

Miz Bombardier turns her attention to me.

“I read your book and I laughed, but it seems to me you don’t like women.”

“Negroes too.”

Miz B. smiles. I won the first round.

“But you do go a little far. ”

“When people reveal their fantasies, you’ll usually find something for everyone — or against everyone. Let me point out that for all intents and purposes there are no women in my novel. There are just types. Black men and white women. On the human level, the black man and the white woman do not exist. Chester Himes said they were American inventions, like the hamburger or the drive-in. In my book, I give a more. personal version of them.”

“Very personal indeed. I read your novel. It takes place around the Carré St. Louis. In a nutshell, it’s the story of two young blacks who spend a hot summer chasing girls and complaining. One loves jazz; the other literature. One sleeps all day or listens to jazz while reciting the Koran; the other writes a novel about their day-to-day experiences.”

“That’s it.”

“Let me ask you something.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?”

“Did all those things really happen to you? I ask because, in your real life, you live in the same neighborhood, off the Carré St. Louis. You live with a friend and you’re a writer, like your narrator.”

“Pure coincidence.”

“Perhaps. Your novel is the first portrait of Montreal from the pen of a black writer. Admit that you were a bit harsh.”

“You think so?”

“But your readers like that because they’re used to a more plaintive sort of Negro.”

“The ones in my novel never stop complaining.”

“Yes, but the tempo is different. They’re tougher, sharper, more pugnacious. They’re complainers, but they know how to hit back. Humor is their most effective weapon.”

“That’s the way life is. You parry the blows and you strike back.”

“Their weapons are quite different. Generally, blacks appeal to Africa, but your characters never do. Why not?”

“Because they live in the Western world.”

“But they’re Moslems!”

“True. Their faith belongs to Islam, but their culture is totally European. Allah is great, but Freud is their prophet.”

“Odd Moslems indeed!”

“The portrait is real. For when a black man and a white woman meet, the lie is the predominant feature.”

“Aren’t you painting things a little too black?”

“Last night I was in a bar downtown. A black man and a white woman were sitting next to me. I knew the guy. He was all but telling her he was a cannibal, fresh out of the bush, that his father was the big medicine-man in his village. The whole mythology. I watched the girl: she was nodding, in total ecstasy at finding a real bushman, homo primitivus, the Negro according to National Geographic, Rousseau and Company. I know the guy and I know he’s not from the bush. He’s from Abidjan, one of Africa’s great cities. He lived in Denmark and Holland for quite a while before coming to Montreal. He’s an urban man, a virtual European. But he’d never admit that to a white girl for all the ivory in the world. In the white man’s eyes, he wants to be a Westerner; but with a white woman, Africa serves as his supernumerary sex.”

“What about the girl?”

“She was beside herself. She had found her African. Her primitive.”

“You’re a harsh judge of people.”

“A harsh judge for harsh times. Don’t forget that the guy was wounded in his way too. Do you know what he told me in the men’s room? He asked me, ‘Do you know why Whites never say that a black is ugly?’ I didn’t know the answer; he did. ‘Because, so far, they’re not sure of our true nature.’”

“Can you elaborate?”

“We never say that a cat is ugly. Either we praise the animal or we keep quiet. We’re not entirely sure about animals. We say that the tiger is a handsome animal, but we don’t know what the other animals in the jungle think. And we never talk about specific tigers. We say, the tiger. It’s the same thing for blacks. People say, the blacks. They’re a type. There are no individuals.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”

“I may be.”

“How have blacks reacted to your book?”

“They want to lynch me.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I let the cat out of the bag. They don’t like being caught with their pants down. They say I’ve sold out, that I’m playing the white man’s game, that my book is no good and the only reason it was published was because whites need a black man around to carry on and give whites a clear conscience.”

“Is that your opinion?”

“I have no opinion. I make no statements without consulting my lawyer — unless they’re about writing. That’s not what the Moral Majority thinks. They say my book is the kind of trash that pollutes the reader, whose only goal is to debase the white race by attacking its most sacred object: Woman. You see, I’ve hit the jackpot.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

“What? Debasing white women?”

“No. Your black readers’ opinion.”

“To be a traitor is every writer’s destiny. I hope that’s the first cliché in this interview.”

“A final question: are you going to write another book?”

“Yes. Three others. It’s in the contract.”

“Good luck.”