They were doing a lot of telling us when life began and I said I said I’ll tell you when life begins. This logic of life begins at birth, beyond birth, it’s ridiculous. My sister asks me where did you get that idea? What? That life begins at conception and any termination date before or after is a sin!? That’s written in the pages of my religion. My sister says no it isn’t. It isn’t there! she says. Tha’s a blasphemer. Silly word but it does the trick. They’re doing a lot of telling us when we cannot vote. I’ll show ‘em a vote. Vote to change the fucking world. To make your momma wake up with a stomachache. Make her wake up with uh aneurysm. Heart attack. Die. Lemon women stoppin’ they conceptions with citrus—fruits of the Lord? T’ith die should cast upon thee, sinner, who casts thither among tither! Present t’ thee an ideology, complete in its perfection, whom looks beneath my chair. And wizards of light and lore, egg-beating sourpusses of might, magic, Mothersbaugh. They said, ‘We can tell you how to raise your babies. We can tell you how to treat your wife.’ We said, ‘We don’t need your education. We don’t need your sane and strife.’ I say those are the edges of sin, coming upon me, and I don’t need no sin! They think we simple but we like simple. The Lord our football-quarterbacking God—he’s simple, isn’t he? Isn’t he easy to talk to, giving me all the answers I expect, requiring nothing of me especially not that I treat my neighbors as myself. That verse is lost in my book. Compassion is no longer a byword. The consequences sound delicious (but then, I’ve never seen my sister’s head smashed among the cobblestones). Never known a revolution. But we practice for this. Every week and every weekend. Wives making the clothes and the hats we wear. Husbands forging the knives. We rehearse this shit. Planning for the second Civil War. And every week, when we go down to that field, do I consider putting a real bullet in for one of my neighbors? Yes I do. Because the world will not be free until the sun coming over the tree stand hits not a Negro head as it spreads throughout the city. It could have been a good city. It could have been a holy city. Now, no one goes to churches anymore. No one can name the apostles. When I was growing up we had to memorize Books of the Bible. It was hard! But we got through it, together. And Missus Polly Sue who sat next to me looked mighty fine! We grew muscadine on the fence by the mailbox—It’s a White grape! Nobody who knows muscadine has ever even met a Black person!—No! You’re an idiot! Unhand me!—I’ll never unhand you, fool, you are the rhythm in my rage and an old devil like me would never want to be without her rage.
It’s my sister. She’s possessed me. Let me tell you about my sister. She’s 56, three years older than me, three kids, divorced loser husband, “progressive” religion—aka faggot lovers, Niggar lovers, lovers of anything that moves, right? Just about. Right?? Just about!! RIGHT!? My sister invaded my head. I don’t know if she did it John Malkovich-style or voodoo-style, but she’s invaded my head, her responses have become my responses, ad finitum. Deus ex parti. Our Lord. Amen. My sister. You know, always a tomboy. Super smart. They think I’m rebelling against smartness in general but it’s really never in general—is it? I mean the guy in the movie, if he’s afraid of the enemy, it’s ‘cause the enemy reminds him of his dad. I’m afraid of my dad. He used to hit us and get drunk. This is something I lie to myself about—tell myself it never happened, tell myself he drank responsibly. But there really is that place right down in my middle where when I breathe all the way out, it feels hollow. And empty. And cold.
And if they beat us with bats, we’ll beat them with guns. We’ll show the meanest sides of us. The sides we would never show our children. Not on purpose. We tell ourselves this is men’s business—women’s business. Kids round up in the back yard and let the adults talk now. Get on now, Karen (slap her on the ass). Get up on now, little Carlton (slap him on the ass). Fuckbabies. Mothernutting fuckbabies. Get on out uh here now. Get now. Go on. Mothernutting accent-loving Niggar-hanging prepubescent cow. The adults are goin’ ta do some speakin’ now around the fire. Goin’ to do some drinkin’ now around that there fire! Get your Uncle Lenny in here, youngins. Now Uncle Lenny, how is it right/then/there than you did vote in that last election? Nor this way nor that, yer Uncle Lenny says. Nor this way nor that? I ask the bloke. He’s all swimmin’ and squirmin’ in his chair and I’m like over him like I’m a gangster in a movie, one uh them sports movies, a heist, like they throw the game or the whole season, is how I remember it. That’s how it happened—eh? How the whole thing went down, right there in your election booth. They had wires strapped to your pants? To your testicles? To your little footballs? We heard you might have slipped your hand and that lever pushed to the left—you catch my meaning? Might have had a leftward-leaning accident in the polling place this morning! Swerved off the left side of the road! Hit the left-leaning tree! Jumped over the crick with the left hook. Flushed down the commode which my left hand pushes. And I might have to punch up the left side of your face if you vote that way again, kid. Now get your ass on up outta here.
Holy hell politics love and football. You know, some people think it ain’t as simple as policing and churching. But it is. It is that fucking simple. Simple as rain at play in the fields of the Lord. As rows of corn. As a white girl in a white dress, one hand above the locks of maize in oblivion. Elysium. The Greeks and Romans holidayed there. And Greeks and Romans never had Black people, did they? I never see them in any of their paintings. It’s always usual, normal, White people. No blump in their middle like whaat?! I’m crazy—what? I’m cra—a—zay. Cray zay. Cray zee. Cree zee. What? Creezer zeezer. CRANKER YANKER! Lamaze proves too much. Yoga is a bore. Weren’t you the brother who voted for the guy who as President endorsed running some other candidate off the road? That’s what my sister will come to say to me. Didn’t you vote for the guy who ran a candidate off the road?? Only a faggot-ass candidate un-American socialist piece of shit!! Does this look like Chicago?! This is Dayton, Ohio. Dayton. Land of Oakwood and Centerville and Huber Fucking Heights. America’s Largest Community of Brick Homes. Schools. Churches. Football fields. Good solid American games. Hit your head up for some of them suicide vibes—eh? Kill the rest of your career. But represent, boys—represent your town for all you’re worth. Empty that bank. Brains right on the pavement. I’m not all about race. I’m about purity. My speech is right here on the surface—you’ll get what you see and I’ll give you what you pay for! You know what we do to thieves around here. Bicycle thieves. Thievers who go to malls and steal little Black jewelry for their little Black girlfriends. Who run through quiet neighborhoods doing foot stands on their bikes silently, slowly coming up on the back of your house. Where your baby lies sleeping. Where she swings and the back of her dress goes up toward the sky. Where she’s waiting silently for you. Tuggled up snug between the couch arm and a dog. And through that yard and through that lawn comes up a big Black creeper and he’s looking for you and more he’s looking for your wife and when he finds her he’s gonna get her, when he finds her—he’s gonna get her!! And what does he do when he gets her? He gets his dirty fingers and he unfurls his dirty cock and he tickles between her legs and he finds that pink that he’s been missing all his life he’s been missing that good pussy that good skunk he wants your wife he wants your wife HE WANTS YOUR WIFE!! His is the nature of sadness. His is the nature of the fingers upon a nose the hand around the neck. The suffocation! The elimination! Eradication of a kindly whisper known as death she sucks the breath from out the mouth the nose of prickly hairs I’ll stitch shut with Niggar’s glue it’s tool #1 in the exorcist shaving kit—enough to schluff a rat to sleep whose glacial calm resulted from an accidental encounter with the butter in the bottle in the bag.
These are the tiddles that tiddled my tiddler while that Mrs Smith woman was talking. She told me all about her financial problems and I said I can recommend my guy over at Fifth Third she says it’s not that type of problem. What type of problem is it? I said. She says The electricity won’t stay on. I said You’ve got to pay the bill! And that bitch drowned me out in silence. Let the whole station know my joke had fell flat. I’m kidding, I’m joking. Totally kidding! Hate to freeze a motherfucker out. Mrs Smith? Mrs Smith!
“Yes, young man.”
“It’s enough. I have had enough. With you. You tiny little woman. Miss Thing. With your pink-priss stockings and your matching shoes. You know this is a police station, right? You know we’re here to fuck with your son?”
“Haven’t you done that? Haven’t you done enough? Why don’t you go get my son?”
“I was about to go until you interrupted me,” I say.
“I’m sorry.”
“And. You interrupted me to tell me what to do. When that wasn’t your place. Do you know how much I hate to be told what to do by a pink-dress-wearing Negra piece of shit like you?”