The Sellout

Twenty-four

I expected the air-conditioning in the Supreme Court to be for shit, like it is in all the good courtroom movies: Twelve Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird. Movie trials always take place in humid locales in the heat of summer, because the psych books say crime goes up with the temperature. Tempers run short. Perspiring witnesses and trial attorneys start yelling at each other. The jurors fan themselves, then open four-paned windows looking for escape and a breath of fresh air. Washington, D.C., is fairly muggy this time of year, but it’s mild, damn near frigid, inside the courthouse, yet I have to open a window anyway — to let out all the smoke and five years of judicial system frustration.

“You can’t handle the weed!” I shout at Fred Manne, courtroom artist extraordinaire and film buff. It’s the dinner break to what has amounted to the longest Supreme Court case in history. We’re sitting in a nameless antechamber passing time and a joint back and forth, butchering the climax of A Few Good Men, which isn’t a great movie, but Jack Nicholson’s disdain for the actors and the script and the way he delivers that last monologue carry the film.

“Did you order the Code Red?”

“I might have. I’m so fucking high right now…”

“Did you order the Code Red?”

“You’re goddamn right I did! And I’d do it again, because this pot is fucking unbelievable.” Fred’s breaking character. “What’s it called?” It being the joint he’s holding in his hand.

“It doesn’t have a name yet, but Code Red sounds pretty good.”

Fred has sketched all the important cases: same-sex marriage, the end of the Voting Rights Act, and the demise of affirmative action in higher education and, by extension, everywhere else. He says that in his thirty years of courtroom artistry, this is the first time he’s ever seen the court adjourn for dinner. First time he’s ever seen the Justices raise their voices and stare each other down. He shows me an artist’s rendering of today’s session. In it a conservative Catholic Justice flips off a liberal Catholic Justice from the Bronx with a surreptitious cheek scratch.

“What does ‘coño’ mean?”

“What?”

“That’s what she whispered under her breath, followed by ‘Chupa mi verga, cabrón.’”

My colored-pencil caricature looks terrible. I’m in the lower-left-hand corner of the drawing. I can’t speak to the Court allowing for unregulated corporate spending on political campaigns, or the burning of the American flag, but the best decision it’s ever made was to prohibit the use of cameras in the courtroom, because, apparently, I’m one ugly motherfucker. My bulbous nose and gigantic ears protrude from my bald Mount Fuji — shaped head like fleshy anemometers. I’m flashing a yellow-toothed smile and staring at the youngish Jewish Justice like I can see through her robe. Fred says the reason they don’t permit cameras has nothing to do with maintaining decorum and dignity. It’s to protect the country from seeing what’s underneath Plymouth Rock. Because the Supreme Court is where the country takes out its dick and tits and decides who’s going to get fucked and who’s getting a taste of mother’s milk. It’s constitutional pornography in there, and what did Justice Potter once say about obscenity? I know it when I see it.

“Fred, do you think you could at least shave down my incisors? I look like fucking Blackula.”

“Blackula. Underrated movie.”

Fred unclips the press laminate from his lanyard and uses the metal fastener as a makeshift roach clip to finish the rest of the weed in one mighty toke. His eyes and nasal passages closed tight, I ask him can I borrow a pencil. He nods yes, and I take the opportunity to remove all the brown-colored implements from his fancy pencil case. Fuck if I’m going down in history as the homeliest litigant in Supreme Court history.

During social studies, otherwise known in Dad’s curriculum as the Ways and Means of the Indefatigable White People, my father used to warn me about listening to rap or the blues with Caucasian strangers. And as I got older, I’d be admonished not to play Monopoly, drink more than two beers, or smoke weed with them either. For such activities can breed a false sense of familiarity. And nothing, from the hungry jungle cat to the African ferryboat, is more dangerous than a white person on what they think is familiar ground. And as Fred returns from exhaling a cloud of smoke out into the D.C. night, he has that Ain’t-I-a-Soul-Brother glint in his eyes. “Let me tell you something, my man. I’ve seen them all come through here. Racial profiling, interracial marriage, hate speech, and race-based set-asides, and you know what the difference is between my people and yours? As much as we both want seats at the ‘table,’ once you get inside, you motherfuckers never have an escape plan. Us? We’re prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. I never enter a restaurant, bowling alley, or an orgy without asking myself, If they choose this moment to come get me, how in the fuck am I getting out of here? Cost us a generation, but we learned our fucking lesson. They told you people, ‘School’s out. Ain’t no more lessons to be learned,’ and you dumb fucks believed them. Think about it, if the damn storm troopers were to knock on the door right now, what would you do? What’s your exit strategy?”

There’s a knock on the door. It’s a court officer gulping down the last of a prefabricated spicy tuna roll. She’s wondering why I have one leg dangling out of the window. Fred simply shakes his head. I look down. Even if I were to survive the three-story fall, I’d be trapped in a tacky marble courtyard. Walled in by thirty feet of overblown Colonial architecture. Surrounded by lion heads, bamboo stalks, red orchids, and a silty fountain. On our way out, Fred points to a small, Hobbit-sized side door behind a potted plant that presumably leads to the Promised Land.

I reenter the chambers to find an insanely pale white boy in my seat. It’s like he’s waited until the fourth quarter of the ball game to move down from the upper deck, sneak past the ushers to take a courtside chair vacated by some fan who’s left early to beat the traffic. I’m reminded of the black stand-up trope about white patrons returning to find “niggers in they seats” and drawing straws to decide who’s going to ask them to move.

“You in my seat, dude.”

“Hey, I just wanted to tell you that I feel like my constitutionality is on trial, too. And you don’t seem to have many people in your cheering section.” He waved his invisible pompoms in the air. Ricka-rocka! Ricka-rocka! Sis! Boom! Bah!

“I appreciate the support. Much needed. But just slide over one.”

The Justices file back into the courtroom. No one mentions my newfound tag-team partner. It’s been a long day. Bags have appeared under their eyes. Their robes have wrinkled and lost their sheen. In fact, the black Justice’s garment seems to be stained with barbecue sauce. The only two people in the courtroom who look fresh are the Jeffersonian Chief Justice and a mackadocious Hampton Fiske, each with not a hair out of place or displaying the slightest sign of fatigue. However, Hampton has one-upped the Chief Justice with a costume change. He’s now resplendent in an argumentative bell-bottomed, ball-hugging, chartreuse jumpsuit. He doffs his homburg, cape, and ivory-handled cane and adjusts his bulge, then stands aside, as the Chief Justice has an announcement to make.

“I know it’s been a trying day. I know that in this culture ‘race’ is especially hard to talk about, in that we feel the need to defer…”

The white kid next to me coughs an Animal House “bullshit” into his hand. And I softly ask this ghostly motherfucker his name, because it’s only right to know who’s fighting next to you in the trench.

“Adam Y___.”

“My man.”

I’m high as hell, but not high enough not to know that race is hard to “talk about” because it’s hard to talk about. The prevalence of child abuse in this country is hard to talk about, too, but you never hear people complaining about it. They just don’t talk about it. And when’s the last time you had a calm, measured conversation about the joys of consensual incest? Sometimes things are simply difficult to discuss, but I actually think the country does a decent job of addressing race, and when folks say, “Why can’t we talk about race more honestly?” What they really mean is “Why can’t you niggers be reasonable?” or “Fuck you, white boy. If I said what I really wanted to say, I’d get fired even faster than you’d fire me if race were any easier to talk about.” And by race we mean “niggers,” because no one of any persuasion seems to have any difficulty talking out-of-pocket shit about Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, and America’s newest race, the Celebrity.

Black people don’t even talk about race. Nothing’s attributable to color anymore. It’s all “mitigating circumstances.” The only people discussing “race” with any insight and courage are loud middle-aged white men who romanticize the Kennedys and Motown, well-read open-minded white kids like the tie-dyed familiar sitting next to me in the Free Tibet and Boba Fett T-shirt, a few freelance journalists in Detroit, and the American hikikomori who sit in their basements pounding away at their keyboards composing measured and well-thought-out responses to the endless torrent of racist online commentary. So thank goodness for MSNBC, Rick Rubin, the Black Guy at The Atlantic, Brown University, and the beautiful Supreme Court Justice from the Upper West Side, who, leaning coolly into her microphone, has finally asked the first question that makes any sense: “I think we’ve established the legal quandary here as to whether a violation of civil rights law that results in the very same achievement these heretofore mentioned statutes were meant to promote, yet have failed to achieve, is in fact a breach of said civil rights. What we must not fail to remember is that ‘separate but equal’ was struck down, not on any moral grounds, but on the basis that the Court found that separate can never be equal. And at a minimum, this case suggests we ask ourselves not if separate were indeed equal, but what about ‘separate and not quite equal, but infinitely better off than ever before.’ Me v. the United States of America demands a more fundamental examination of what we mean by ‘separate,’ by ‘equal,’ by ‘black.’ So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty — what do we mean by ‘black’?”

The best thing about Hampton Fiske, other than that he refuses to let seventies fashion die, is that he’s always prepared. He straightens a pair of lapels that sit atop his chest like giant tent flaps, and then clears his throat; a purposeful gesture he knows will make some people nervous. And he wants his audience on edge, because if nothing else, it means they’re attentive.

“So what is blackness, your honor? That’s a good question. The exact same one the immortal French author Jean Genet posed after being asked by an actor to write a play featuring an all-black cast, when he mused not only ‘What exactly is a black?’ but added the even more fundamental inquiry, ‘First of all, what is his color?’”

Hampton’s legal team pulls cords, and the drapes fall over the windows, while he walks to the light switch and douses the courtroom in pitch black. “In addition to Genet, many rappers and black thinkers have weighed in. An early rap quintet of puerile white poseurs known as Young Black Teenagers asserted that ‘Blackness is a state of mind.’ My client’s father, the esteemed African-American psychologist F. K. Me (may the genius motherfucker rest in peace), hypothesized that black identity is formed in stages. In his theory of Quintessential Blackness, Stage I is the Neophyte Negro. Here the black person exists in a state of preconsciousness. Just as many children would be afraid of the total darkness in which we now find ourselves immersed, the Neophyte Negro is afraid of his own blackness. A blackness that feels inescapable, infinite, and less than.” Hampton snaps his fingers, and a giant photo of Michael Jordan shilling for Nike is projected on all four walls of the courtroom, but it’s quickly replaced by successive photos of Colin Powell sharing his recipe for yellowcake uranium before the United Nations General Assembly shortly before the potluck invasion of Iraq and Condoleezza Rice lying through the gap in her teeth. These are African-Americans meant to illustrate his point. Exemplars of how self-hatred can compel one to value mainstream acceptance over self-respect and morality. Images of Cuba Gooding, Coral from The Real World, and Morgan Freeman all flit by. With references to such long-forgotten pop icons, Hampton is dating himself, but he continues his pitch: “He or she wants to be anything but black. They suffer from poor self-esteem and extremely ashy skin.” A portrait of the black Justice smoking a cigar and lining up a ten-foot putt splashes across the walls. Causing everyone, including the black Justice himself, to have a good laugh. “Stage I Negroes watch reruns of Friends, oblivious to the fact that whenever a white sitcom male dates a black woman on television, it’s always the homeliest white guy in the bunch getting some love from the sisters. It’s the Turtles, the Skreeches, the David Schwimmers, and the George Costanzas of the group…”

The Chief Justice meekly raises his hand.

“Excuse me, Mr. Fiske, I have a question…”

“Not right now, motherfucker — I’m on a roll!”

And so am I. I pull out my rolling machine and, as best as I can in the dark, fill the tray with moist product. They can hold me in contempt, le mépris of everything. I don’t need anyone to tell me what Stage II blackness is. It’s “Capital B Black.” I already know this crap. It’s been drilled into my head ever since I was old enough to play One of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong and my father made me point out the token white guy in the Lakers team photo. Mark Landsberger, where are you when I need you? “The distinguishing feature of Stage II blackness is a heightened awareness of race. Here race is still all-consuming, but in a more positive fashion. Blackness becomes an essential component in one’s experiential and conceptual framework. Blackness is idealized, whiteness reviled. Emotions range from bitterness, anger, and self-destruction to waves of pro-Black euphoria and ideas of Black supremacy…” To avoid detection I go under the table, but the joint’s not hitting right. I can’t get any intake. From my newfound hiding place I struggle to keep the ember burning, while catching odd-angled glimpses of photographs of Foy Cheshire, Jesse Jackson, Sojourner Truth, Moms Mabley, Kim Kardashian, and my father. I can never get away from my father. He was right, there is no such thing as closure. Maybe the weed is too sticky for a clean burn. Maybe I’ve rolled it too tight. Maybe I don’t have any weed in there at all and I’m so high I’ve been trying to smoke my finger for the past five minutes. “Stage III blackness is Race Transcendentalism. A collective consciousness that fights oppression and seeks serenity.” Fuck it, I’m out. I’m ghost. I decide to sneak out quietly so as not to embarrass Hampton, who’s been working like a champion of justice on this never-ending case. “Examples of Stage III black folks are people like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Sitting Bull, César Chávez, Ichiro Suzuki.” In the dark I cover my face, and my silhouette cuts across a movie still of Bruce Lee fixing to kick some ass in Enter the Dragon. Thanks to Fred, the courtroom artist, I have an exit plan and can make my way in the dark. “Stage III black folks are the woman on your left, the man on your right. They are people who believe in beauty for beauty’s sake.”

Washington, D.C., like most cities, is much prettier at night. But as I sit on the Supreme Court steps, making a pipe out of a soda can, staring at the White House lit up like a department store window, I’m trying to figure out what’s so different about our nation’s capital.

The draw from an aluminum Pepsi can isn’t the best, but it’ll do. I blow smoke into the air. There should be a Stage IV of black identity — Unmitigated Blackness. I’m not sure what Unmitigated Blackness is, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sell. On the surface Unmitigated Blackness is a seeming unwillingness to succeed. It’s Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Alfre Woodard, and the serious black actor. It’s Tiparillos, chitterlings, and a night in jail. It’s the crossover dribble and wearing house shoes outside. It’s “whereas” and “things of that nature.” It’s our beautiful hands and our fucked-up feet. Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations. Unmitigated Blackness is essays passing for fiction. It’s the realization that there are no absolutes, except when there are. It’s the acceptance of contradiction not being a sin and a crime but a human frailty like split ends and libertarianism. Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it’s the nihilism that makes life worth living.

Sitting here on the steps of the Supreme Court smoking weed, under the “Equal Justice Under Law” motto, staring into the stars, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. It’s that all the buildings are more or less the same height and there’s absolutely no skyline, save for the Washington Monument touching the night sky like a giant middle finger to the world.

Twenty-five

The joke is that, depending on the Supreme Court’s decision, my Welcome Home party might also be my Going Away to Jail party, so the banner over the kitchen doorway says, CONSTITUTIONAL OR INSTITUTIONAL — TO BE DECIDED. Marpessa kept it small, limited to friends and the Lopezes from next door. Everyone is in my den, watching the lost Little Rascals films, huddled around Hominy, who’s the real man of the hour.

Foy was found innocent on attempted murder charges by reason of temporary insanity, but I did win my civil suit against him. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious, but like most of celebrity America, Foy Cheshire’s rumored wealth was just that — rumored. And after selling his car to pay his attorney’s fees, the only possessions he had of any real value were the only things I wanted — the Little Rascals movies. Stocked with watermelon, gin, and lemonade, and a 16 mm projector, we readied for an enjoyable evening of grainy black-and-white old-time “Yassuh, boss” racism unseen since the days of Birth of a Nation and whatever’s on ESPN right now. Two hours in and we wonder why Foy went through all the bother. Although Hominy’s enrapt with his onscreen image, the treasure trove consists mostly of unreleased MGM Our Gang footage. By the mid-forties the series had long been dead and bereft of ideas, but these shorts are especially bad. The late edition of the gang remains intact: Froggy, Mickey, Buckwheat, the little-known Janet, and, of course, Hominy in various minor roles. These postwar shorts are so serious. In “Hotsy Totsy Nazi” the gang tracks down a German war criminal masquerading as a pediatrician. Herr Doktor Jones’s racism gives him away, when a feverish Hominy arrives for his checkup and is greeted with a snide “I zee we didn’t get all of you during zee var. Take zee arsenic pills und vee zee vat vee can do about dat, ja?” In “Asocial Butterfly,” Hominy takes a rare star turn. Asleep in the woods for so long that a monarch butterfly has enough time to weave a cocoon in his wild-flung hair, he panics and doffs his straw hat to show his discovery to Miss Crabtree. She excitedly proclaims that he has “a chrysalis,” which the ever-inquisitive gang overhears as “syphilis,” and tries to get him quarantined at a “house of ill refute.” There are a couple of hidden gems, though. In an attempt to revive the stagnant franchise, the studio produced a few abridged reenactments of theater pieces played totally straight by the gang. It’s too bad the world has missed out on Buckwheat as Brutus Jones and Froggy as the shady Smithers in “The Emperor Jones.” Darla returns to the fold and gives a brilliant performance as the headstrong “Antigone.” Alfalfa is no less engaging as the beleaguered Leo in Clifford Odets’s “Paradise Lost.” But for the most part, there’s nothing in Foy’s archives to suggest why he would go to such lengths to keep these works from the public. The racism is rampant as usual, but no more virulent than a day trip to the Arizona state legislature.

“How much is left on the reel, Hominy?”

“About fifteen minutes, massa.”

The words “Nigger in a Woodpile — Take #1” flash across the screen over a cord of barnyard firewood. Two or three seconds go by. And — Bam! — a nappy little black head pops up sporting a wide razzamatazz grin. “It’s black folk!” he says before batting his big, adorable baby seal eyes.

“Hominy, is that you?”

“I wish it was, that boy’s a natural!”

Suddenly you can hear the director offscreen yelling, “We’ve got plenty of wood, but we need more nigger. C’mon, Foy, do it right this time. I know you’re only five, but niggerize the hell out of this one.” Take #2 is no less spectacular, but what follows is a low-budget one-reeler called “Oil Ty-Coons!” starring Buckwheat, Hominy, and a heretofore unknown member of the Little Rascals, a moppet credited as Li’l Foy Cheshire, alias Black Folk, an instant classic and, to my knowledge, the last entry in the Our Gang oeuvre.

“I remember this one! Oh my God! I remember this one!”

“Hominy, stop jumping around. You’re in the way.”

In “Oil Ty-Coons!” after a clandestine back-alley meeting with a lanky, chauffeur-driven, ten-gallon-hat cowboy, our boys are seen pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with cash down the crime-free streets of Greenville. The nigger rich trio, now dressed in top hat and tails at all times, treats an increasingly suspicious gang to an endless run of movies and sweets. They even go so far as to buy a destitute Mickey an expensive set of catcher’s gear he’s been admiring in the sporting-goods-store window. Dissatisfied with Buckwheat’s explanation for their newfound wealth—“I’z found a four-leaf clo’ber and done won the Irish Lottery”—the gang trots out a number of theories. The boys are running numbers. They’re betting on the horses. Hattie McDaniel has died and left them all her money. Eventually the gang threatens Buckwheat with expulsion if he doesn’t tell where the money is coming from. “We’z in oil!” Still harboring doubts and unable to find an oil derrick, the gang follows Hominy to a hidden warehouse, where they discover the nefarious darkies have all the kids in Niggertown hooked up to IVs and, for a nickel a pint, filling oil cans with crude drop by black drop. At the end, a diaper-clad Foy turns and mugs “Black folk!” into the camera before the scene mercifully fades out with the Our Gang theme music.

Finally King Cuz breaks the silence. “Now I know why that fool Foy went crazy. I’d go nutty, too, if I had some shit like that on my conscience. And I make my livelihood shooting motherfuckers for no reason.”

Stevie, a hardcore gangster as ruthless as the free market and unemotional as a Vulcan with Asperger’s, has a tear running down one cheek. He lifts a can of beer to Hominy and offers a toast. “I’m not sure how I mean this, but ‘To Hominy. You’re a better man than I.’ I swear the Oscars need to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to the black actor, because you guys had it hard.”

“Still do,” says Panache, who I didn’t even know was here and I supposed must be back from a long day on the set of Hip-hop Cop. “I know what Hominy’s gone through. I’ve had directors tell me, ‘We need more black in this scene. Can you black it up? Then you say, ‘Fuck you, you racist motherfucker!’ And they go, ‘Exactly, don’t lose that intensity!’”

Nestor Lopez stands up sharply, swaying for a moment as the vodka and weed rush to his head. “At least you people have a Hollywood history. What we got? Speedy Gonzales, a woman with bananas on her head, ‘We don’t need no stinking badges,’ and some prison movies!”

“But they’re some great prison movies, homes!”

“At least there were some black Little Rascals. Where was fucking little Chorizo or Bok Choy?”

Though Nestor has a point about there not being a Chorizo, I don’t mention anything about Sing Joy and Edward Soo Hoo, two Asian Rascals who, though by no means stars, had better runs than many a snot-nosed brat the studios trotted out in front of the cameras. I’m headed toward the barn to check on my newly purchased Swedish sheep. My baby Roslags are huddled under the persimmon tree; it’s their first night in the ghetto and they’re afraid the goats and the pigs are going to jack them. One lamb’s a scruffy white, the other’s a mottled grayish color. They’re shaking. I hug them both and plant kisses on their snouts.

Hominy’s standing behind me, I hadn’t noticed him, and, monkey see, monkey do, he plants a chapped liver-lipped kiss on my mouth.

“What the fuck, Hominy?”

“I quit.”

“Quit what?”

“Slavery. We’ll talk reparations in the morning.”

The sheep are still shivering in fear. “Vara modig,” I whisper in their quivering ears. I don’t know what it means, but that’s what the brochure said to say to them at least three times a day during the first week. I shouldn’t have bought them, but they’re endangered, and an old husbandry professor saw me on the news and thought I’d be a good caretaker. I’m scared, too. What if I do go to jail? Who’s going to take care of them then? If the First, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendment violations don’t stick, there’s talk of an International Criminal Court trial and charging me with apartheid. They never prosecuted a single South African for apartheid and they’re going to arrest me? A harmless South Central African-American? Amandla awethu!

“Come inside when you’re done out there,” Marpessa calls from the bedroom.

There’s urgency in her voice. I know she means now; I’ll bottle-feed the sheep later. Eyewitness News is on. My girlfriend of five years lies facedown on the bed, her pretty head in her hands, watching the weather on the television atop the dresser. Charisma sits next to her. Leaning against the headboard, her stocking feet crossed and resting on Marpessa’s ass. I find what little mattress space is left and climb into my dream ménage à trois.

“Marpessa, what if I have to go to jail?”

“Shut up and just look at the TV.”

“Hampton made a good point in court when he said that if Hominy’s ‘servitude’ was tantamount to human bondage, then corporate America better be ready to fight a hell of a class-action lawsuit filed by generations of uncompensated interns.”

“Will you stop talking? You’re going to miss it.”

“But what if I go to jail?”

“Then I’ll just have to find another nigger to have unimaginative sex with.”

The rest of the party is huddled around the bedroom door. Looking in. Marpessa reaches back, grabs my chin, and forces my head to look at the screen. “Watch.”

Weatherperson Chantal Mattingly is waving her hands over the L.A. Basin. It’s hot. There’s a surge of moisture moving in from the south. The excessive heat warning is still in effect for the Santa Clarita Valley and the interior valleys of Ventura County. For other areas expect seasonal temperatures with cooling until about midnight. For the most part, skies will be clear to partly cloudy, temperatures mild to moderate [whatever that means] along the coast from Santa Barbara to Orange Counties and much warmer inland. Now for the local forecasts. Not expecting any major changes from now till late evening. I always like weather maps. The 3-D effect of the topographical coastline map rotating and shifting as the forecast moves south and inland. The gradations in the colors of the mountain ranges and low-lying plains, they never fail to impress me. Current temperatures …

Palmdale 103°/88° … Oxnard 77°/70° … Santa Clarita 108°/107° … Thousand Oaks 77°/69° … Santa Monica 79°/66° … Van Nuys 105/82° … Glendale … 95°/79° … Dickens 88°/74° … Long Beach 82°/75° …

“Wait, does that say Dickens?”

Marpessa laughs maniacally. I shoulder my way past the homies and Marpessa’s kids, whose names I refuse to say. I run outside. The frog thermometer hanging from the back porch reads exactly 88 degrees. I can’t stop crying. Dickens is back on the map.

Twenty-six

One night, on the anniversary of my father’s death, Marpessa and I drove down to Dum Dum Donuts for open-mike night. We took our usual seats, the far side of the stage, near the bathrooms and the fire extinguisher, bathed in the red haze of the EXIT sign. I located and pointed out the other exits to her just in case.

“Just in case of what? By some miracle somebody actually tells a funny joke and we have to run outside, dig up Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle, and make sure their corpses are still in the fucking ground and it’s not black Easter? These fucking micro-Negro comedians they have today make me fucking sick. There’s a reason there ain’t no black Jonathan Winters, John Candy, W. C. Fields, John Belushi, Jackie Gleason, and Roseanne Barr out this motherfucker, because a large truly funny black person would scare the bejeezus out of America.”

“There aren’t many fat white comedians these days, either. And Dave Chappelle isn’t dead.”

“You believe what you want to believe about Dave. The nigger’s dead. They had to kill him.”

Someone at the club did make me laugh once. One time my father and I were there together when a stumpy black man, the new host, bounded onstage. He was unpaid-electricity-bill dark and looked like a crazed bullfrog. His eyes protruded wildly from his head like they were trying to escape the mental madness therein. And come to think of it, he was rather fat. We were sitting in our usual spot. Normally, except for when my dad was onstage, I’d read my book and let the sexual jokes and white people/black people bits wash over me like so much background noise. But this man-frog opened with a joke that had me crying. “Your mama been on welfare so long,” he bellowed, blithely holding the silver microphone like he didn’t need it and was there only because someone handed it to him backstage. “Your mama been on welfare so long, her face is on the food stamp.” Anybody who could make me put down Catch-22 had to be funny. After that, it was me who dragged Pops to open-mike night. If we wanted our usual seats, we had to get there earlier and earlier, because word was spreading throughout black L.A. that a funny motherfucker was hosting the open-mike nights. The donut shop would fill with black belly laughter from 8 p.m. — until.

This traffic-court jester did more than tell jokes; he plucked out your subconscious and beat you silly with it, not until you were unrecognizable, but until you were recognizable. One night a white couple strolled into the club, two hours after “doors open,” sat front and center, and joined in the frivolity. Sometimes they laughed loudly. Sometimes they snickered knowingly like they’d been black all their lives. I don’t know what caught his attention, his perfectly spherical head drenched in houselight sweat. Maybe their laughter was a pitch too high. Heeing when they should’ve been hawing. Maybe they were too close to the stage. Maybe if white people didn’t feel the need to sit up front all the damn time it never would’ve happened. “What the fuck you honkies laughing at?” he shouted. More chuckling from the audience. The white couple howling the loudest. Slapping the table. Happy to be noticed. Happy to be accepted. “I ain’t bullshitting! What the fuck are you interloping motherfuckers laughing at? Get the fuck out!”

There’s nothing funny about nervous laughter. The forced way it slogs through a room with the stop-and-start undulations of bad jazz brunch jazz. The black folks and the round table of Latinas out for a night on the town knew when to stop laughing. The couple didn’t. The rest of us silently sipped our canned beer and sodas, determined to stay out of the fray. They were laughing solo because this had to be part of the show, right?

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking with you? This shit ain’t for you. Understand? Now get the fuck out! This is our thing!”

No more laughter. Only pleading, unanswered looks for assistance, then the soft scrape of two chairs being backed, quietly as possible, away from the table. The blast of cold December air and the sounds of the street. The night manager shutting the doors behind them, leaving little evidence that the white people had ever been there except for an unfulfilled two-drink, three-donut minimum.

“Now where the fuck was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yeah, your mama, that bald-headed…”

When I think about that night, the black comedian chasing the white couple into the night, their tails and assumed histories between their legs, I don’t think about right or wrong. No, when my thoughts go back to that evening, I think about my own silence. Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear. I guess that’s why I’m so quiet and such a good whisperer, nigger and otherwise. It’s because I’m always afraid. Afraid of what I might say. What promises and threats I might make and have to keep. That’s what I liked about the man, although I didn’t agree with him when he said, “Get out. This is our thing.” I respected that he didn’t give a fuck. But I wish I hadn’t been so scared, that I had had the nerve to stand in protest. Not to castigate him for what he did or to stick up for the aggrieved white people. After all, they could’ve stood up for themselves, called in the authorities or their God, and smote everybody in the place, but I wish I’d stood up to the man and asked him a question: “So what exactly is our thing?”