“You like him?”
“I think so.”
“Well what was all that about your loving his fucking face that left you unclear on whether you like him? It sounds pretty clear to me.”
“I’m not staying I want to fuck the kid. He’s off obsessed with Jennifer Lawrence enough that fucking his arresting officer wouldn’t be part of the gig. I’m sure! If you’d listened to me you would see that I just liked how he looked. Geez. Crap. I’m not divorcing you. I didn’t buy him a fucking ring!”
“Baby, forget about it. Come to bed. Right here. Right here beside me.”
I crawl into bed next to her. My old-ass wife with her old-ass back and her old-ass pussy. It was ok (you could cum in it) but it didn’t present the same ziiing that it used to. When she was young and perfect. When she wouldn’t let me have it. What is that about something good that when its owner doesn’t let you have it, it makes you go ziiing!?
I looked around our room. It was filled with maps, books, a large globe in the corner. I collect maps. It’s an unusual collection for a police officer but I like to think I’m a special officer. And I like to think I’m going places. And I like to have a collection—‘cause it gives me something to do.
We have large built-in bookshelves (which I built myself—weeks of labor, my daughter holding the flashlight). A 100-gallon saltwater fish tank, complete with a mantis shrimp. Those swirly lamps with six heads each—those we have two.
My daughter is down the hall. Her bedroom kept razor-neat through the instruction of Annabel and myself. Her lacrosse uniform (she refuses to cheer). Her stack of science and engineering textbooks (she’s set to enter University of Dayton’s Management Information Systems program when she graduates). Don’t ask me what MIS really means—I couldn’t tell you. But I know that it makes more money than police officer, so I’m happy for her.
And that’s it. We could have had other children but Annabel said no. She didn’t just say no. She stopped going to church, I think to prove her point—and she never came back. For a while Melissa and I went together. Then Melissa stopped, and for a couple weeks I went on my own, then I stopped too. Church without your wife and kid, singing all those songs and listening to those endless sermons—the whole thing was set up like a show. Quick stuff at the beginning, boring stuff at the middle, and then some fast music and we were all shaking hands in the corridor, eating donuts and drinking coffee and pretending to make conversation with the deacons and the old folks and I couldn’t help it but my eyes always ran to the youth group who stood in the corner, leaning against the partitioned wall and looking so cool.
We had a girl who worked at the station for a while—intern, brown hair, brown eyes. I looked at her that way, too. Hungry. For her pussy, yes—for that glorious puss—but I knew I would never have it. She’s my daughter’s age, for the sake of our Lord and Savior. Get your mind out of the gutter! But her charms entice me, her gifts are too great to resist! And I find myself staring at the back of her jeans, getting a peek at her red undies, wishing they were mine, that I was there, that she might think of me in a moment (the way I think of her) and that we might joy in our union. When I get to the end, though, picturing that intern’s face at the moment of my orgasm, it falls flat because my mind has not the power to image her face at that time. My processor overloads. There is smoke in my eyes. I can’t picture her face at all and it is horrible.
I stopped going to church. I still use those kids as masturbation fantasies. Tight flesh, gripped around tendons. Expressions of joy. Except I can’t quite get those expressions. Those intimate flesh configurations run to the quality of strangers, useless people making love in tenement buildings to the sounds of Simon and Garfunkel. Forgotten, them, any of the goodness. Any of the value inherent in us at birth. Black people copulating on springy mattresses, feeling none of the pleasure (or the pain) felt by White people when we fuck. How could they? I’m envisioning it. Crippled Black flesh crashing into each other like foil, creaking and crisping with a loose Black dick and a drippy Black puss, reaching the back of her wall, flagellating it, ripping it into shape, digging it, dragging it, doping it with a shot. That’s how I imagine Black sex.
White sex isn’t much better. A bunch of flabby skin with the only people able to enjoy it young people—unaware of what they have (at least I was) until it’s too late. You got slapped with a kid, a wife, and suddenly all the possibilities are gone. And you’re on a ride. A tunnel. With no way off.
What way off do I have? Death? Change careers—forget it. I’m on the one-day-at-a-time plan. Wake up behind schedule. Rip and run through work. Come home, see Melissa, see Annabel, watch TV, bed, sleep, sex (all of which I resent). All I have is taking care of the fish tank! That’s all there is at the base of my life, is one saltwater tank and a mantis shrimp. That’s everything there is.
Except Marty. My partner Martin Harris. He’s been my partner since my last partner got killed. Interval of six years. Marty started out a short Niggar couldn’t even shoot his gun. Wears his vest cockeye. Used to work undercover. West Dayton. Drug shit. Informant turned UC turned beat cop turned partner to the Whitest White motherfucker in that whole department—that’s me.
Marty was a fuckup—no question. Wore his gun on the wrong side. Forgot to load it. Tripped up the stairs at Central. Signed up on the wrong duty roster—his signup would have him mopping floors in the cafeteria, instead of responding to domestic calls with me.
I make it a habit to show Martin something new about being a police officer every time I do it. Every day—and I try to sneak it in—I instruct him in the ways of policing (the way we do it in Ohio), showing him how to tie his shoes, how to get the tip of his gun into the point of his holster, and which foods are becoming for a cop to eat.
For instance, a breakfast bagel with egg and spinach—not a cop food. Breakfast bagel with sausage and bacon—is a cop food. Orange juice for breakfast—not a cop food. Coke for breakfast—is a cop food. Do we have to do more of these or do you get the picture?
Martin is ok, though—for a Blackie. He signed up for this job. He should know what it entails. It entails a whole bunch of rounding up criminal Negras and sometimes blowing them away. That’s the job. That’s why I got into the job—aside from the fact I can’t do anything else. And cop is sort of prestigious. You’re seen as a leader of the community. I mean, Martin isn’t. There’s only so far a Niggar can go in Dayton whether he’s a cop or not. And Black people don’t exactly like the police. You can imagine, you’re a Black girl and your daddy comes home as a cop you’re prob’ly not all, Wow, Daddy, thanks for picking up my friends who were freebasing on the playground! Thanks for busting my boyfriend who deals meth—you’re really a friend to me! How can they love a cop in their neighborhoods? The cop is their enemy. A stone cold enemy of the people. I would think it was shameful to be a cop if you were Black. The downright enemy. Your sons—Black-faced idiot punks that they are—are prostituting your own kind right up the street! Martin doesn’t do drugs as far as I can tell, but it’s only a matter of time. He’ll end up ass-in-cell like the rest of them. It’s inevitable. They’re more susceptible. That’s what I’m saying. It’s in their blood. It’s in their DNA. To do drugs. To work as a prostitute. To fuck for money. To go to their fake churches with their fake pastors who don’t have any degrees and do that fake huffing-punching thing they do when they’re like Hey, uh. It’s my fire, uh. You will bring me the ligh, t! Washing in his holy ligh, t! It’s animal! It’s pantheistic! That talk is literally the combination of our natural language with African tigers and shit! Panting of animals! It’s bestial, I’m saying. It’s not even something the White devil would do—I find more solace in that horny Red beast than in the huff-panting of the Blacks in their so-called churches, their so-called banks, their so-called fried chicken places. You know, I used to like fried chicken as a child. We went to KFC. It was different then. Our skin was crispy, but it was clean. Then Church’s came in and set up their franchises all over the place and suddenly chicken was Black. They fucking owed that shit. And they still do, to this day. And that’s why when Annabel says, “Let’s get chicken!” and Melissa screamed “Yaaay!” in her childhood delight, I put up every hoot and holler that we not get chicken because it doesn’t have a coupon or it’s too greasy. But my mouth watered the whole time, and I wished for a day when even fried chicken was not colored by the presence of my darker brothers.