We journey to the student’s homeroom in slow motion. Underwater rackets tinging me in the throat. My unrealistic golf shirt tucked in. Let’s face it, when was I an excellent golfer? Never, nilch. Murals in blood, handprint photographs of children’s faces—flash!—zebras showing off their high zones, ice cream cones splattered over every Black girl’s face. Have her lick it up for me. Lick it off. Lick with your lips full lushing me into perfectness and babyhood. Are you from the hood? Walk right by me, elephant sistah, stride like the baby fox and the rawr, rawr lion. These are tiles (by name) scattered over the walls of Sheth’s school far from randomly. Far. Scattered by art. Weirdly. I mean if you saw these tiles you would go crazy in your mind. Absolutely. Idiot tiles. Warning tiles. Tiles for dogs. This is my jungle, the only one I’ve ever known, not ‘Nam, not Ko-re-a, not 9-e-motherfucking-‘leven. No. This hallway. This hallway right here. This jungle. This place. Hallway three. Me and Sheth. And those Black girls passing by. Looking at you. Mhmmm. If I could see what was behind them eyes and them glasses. Honey! Weaving in and out my hair the way my booty sticks with the flow of these jeans—this is my jungle. This right here school is my jungle. There’s a Blackie—watch! I’m far from racist—I’m a racist’s racist. I’m racialism one step removed. I create that shit before I brush my teeth in the morning motherfuckers out in the parking lot doing jumping jacks! They gettin’ stronger motherfucker!! I SAID THEM MOTHERFUCKERS DOIN’ JUMPIN’ JACKS!!! Fuck. Stop it, Sheth. Slow it down. I’m in the flaming hell of the Vietcong and they brought the flamethrowers. Dorthy’s bicycle basket. Cave to resurrected voices of the seventh grade. Little Black jacks. There’s your principle teacher. Nodding with a worried look. Nodding worriedly—whatever. Blankly. Nodded blankly, with a worried look. It has to be both or there’s no tomorrow. She sat blankly, nodded with a worried look. There’s a jungle bunny—there’s one! Bunny cat with a rabbit back. Jack Black. Sheth tell me this. Tell me, when you’re coming out of a Black vagina (being born) and you turn around and look at that shit you’re coming out of, do you want to puke? Does the sight of those Black lips and that greasy hair make you want to puke. I know ladies. I’m the comedian, that’s my funny funny joke pie. I bake it in the middle of my story of a corrupt cop wherein I forgot to mention that I took a bunch of bribes, snorted some evidence coke, raped female prisoners (multiple) took their babies rubbed them in my pants for a little while got my stank all over them made them lick their lips with my schmegma. Do you like that Mmm kay. I don’t think I dislike Black people personally I think I just despise them culturally. Hair picks. Solid colored jeans. These are the type of things that will irk a White man out of bed in the morning! Hi-himminey and a hi-himminey ho. Slap this bitch who’s coming up on me here! Slap a motherfucking ho. I’m hip—I’m hip bitch—perhaps you’d like this 9mm down your throat! Sheth hold up hold up hold up my Nigga! I cadence back down into step with my house Nigga. Lock step. Lock step. Like I’m in the Indiana Jones movies. Black boots. Well-groomed hair. The gesticulations of an excellent public speaker. Everything Black and White. Need I go on? I was born in the 57th regiment—airmen, Black men not allowed, anti-pussy all-male regiment. Not for the feint of heart. No fags, lezs, or tranny core bullshit. No posting allowed. Check your shit at the door. This is where real men play.
Where real men play, down a long and lonely highway, El Paso, Texas. Gone and done and dusty in my eye. Sun up, sun down. Oranges, pinks, then blues. Before I went to high school. Before Daddy got his job as the principal. There’s a voice—there’s a voice in my head, I might have mentioned this. It tells me right from wrong (you might call it a moral voice) and it makes sounds like click, click and boom, boom. It says numbers like 1, 2 to tell me yes or no about a certain subject. Everyone has this. It’s like your internalized parent voice or your idea of God but mine is the President of the United States in all His Glory! Seal-sucked to the side of my head, internal memo, the high-speed connection we enjoy here is favorable, favorable. He tells me when to attack. When to advance. When to stand by. He speaks with me in code. Hand signals. Uses the national airwaves to pop right into my skull and download his crap all over my bacon pile of brains. Tells me, each time I load a suspect into the back of my cab car, how hard I should push his head against the glass. How long I should stand on this niggar’s neck. How long to give this one a choke hold. How long to press the zap button for this terminal-life Niggar here. Zap a Niggar in a fucking chair. Zap his unfavorable skull into the dirt! Mother-Niggaring whore, Sheth, is this what you have to deal with every day? Is this the extend of your pussy selection? Mother, Niggaring, whore. We’ve got to get you some White pussy on the double! Not my kid, but someones! Yeah, we’ll get you laid, you Jennifer Lawrence-lusting freak. Pittance, pittance. Get you some White Girl Pussy for sure! Much more valuable than Niggar pussy. Niggar pussy is half price! (But you’d fuck it in a pinch.) Niggar puss, two for one. Come here, son. Come under my arm. Put my thumb in your mouth and you just suck that Niggar till the toenail polish comes off. Let me tell you a story. It starts with a woman on a bus. Now White people who done know better done tole that woman not to sit down in the front of that bus. But that woman said she was tired. Let me tell you something. If that woman had been a White woman who sat down in the back of the bus, she woulda got a hard slap from my hand ‘cause she done did what I then there told her not to do! Do you see my way of understanding this story? Now if that woman had been a niggar man, and he had sat down in the front of that bus, that would have kicked in ‘The Gentlemen’s Clause.’ Which states. That if a Negra man puts his feet up in front of a White man that those White gentle of the men may put their feets up his fuckin’ ass! Ha ha!! This is cowboy shit. Astronaut shit. Apollo 13 shit. Tom Hanks shit. Serious shit. Not like the shit you have around here. Not this Tawanda shit. Not this Frederica shit. This is shit you’d never agree to if you were offered—you having a drink with me at Hooter’s? Not going to happen. If you liked White girl titties (which would take a hell of a Negro to do) and if you liked White girl pussy (which makes your Brown rod cum as if it was blown upon by Jennifer Lawrence herself) and if you liked White girl asshole, then maybe you’d say yes. But your kind doesn’t even drink alcohol—a 40? Nigga, please. I throw down a 24 pack of Molson Ice like yo mamma. Come sit on Daddy’s lap. What do you want to do to me? Cut off my dick? Go ahead. Feed it to me. Feed it so me nice and slow. Feed me my ears, motherfucker. Take turns raping me. You know you always wanted that cop hole, gaping for your large dick—a Cadillac—you get it at the dick store. We’d go out as equals and I’d introduce you to Walmart and Costco. But not the Walmart you’re used to, in the cities and the first ring of suburbs. I’m talking about in the second ring of suburbs, where we’ve kept wide checkout lanes and free food samples from you all these years. Yes, a White boy can walk onto a car lot and take a test drive of whatever car he wants. For you it requires a credit check. Or we just walk you off the lot saying, “Can I help you? Can I help you?” (Nah, man. I’m good.) Then you drive off in your green piece of shit, ass-falling-apart 1980s luxury car back to the West. You’re a crip? Think again. We’re in Ohio, you stupid piece of shit. You’ve got no reason for fighting here. There’s plenty of space. Green. Lush. White girls at every restaurant. All you’ve got to do is lean back. But you can’t do that, can you slim? Whether there’s White people around or not, y’all’ll be lightin’ it up just ‘cause that’s your nature. In the Army they use green aliens as their pop-up targets. I might as well make mine Negras, as much for their lack of shine as for the undying bile they rise up within me. For as long as you walk through this hallway, shooting glances all around us, I will be kneeling at one end shooting you right through your sweater and shooting every Blackness I see headed my way.