I had to get outta there real fast ‘cause those boys wasn’t doin’ nothin’ wrong they was jest drivin’ while Black, young, and bald in Oakwood Ohio, Centerville Ohio. And I was jest in me token blue roadster of the Subaru variety, sloping cars in the gaslight of the moonlight of Mars.
Slunk into me house and let meself upstairs where the child be chillin’, darling name of Melissa sleepin’ in da bed! Tucked in so nice and tight between those sheets, tight in those pants! She was tight in her underwear ‘till I saw me ole wife, Wifey Wifey Poo, in she under under pants! I run my fingers there.
“Shit, man.”
“I’ll drill you in your poo hole,” I say.
And I drill my fingers in between her cheeks.
“Ah! Oh!! Stop it! I’m sleeping where have you been?”
“Been catchin’ bad guys.”
“All night?”
“Takes a while, sometimes. When a thing takes a while, I take a while to do that thing.”
“Honestly.”
“I’m being honest.”
“Honey, please.”
“Everything I say is true. And everything I do is based on what I say.”
“Pshff.”
“How is the mistress of my house?”
“She’s—she went to sleep around eight, did all her homework—“
“I mean you!”
“You know, it may seem to one that you have fucked up but then you turn around and put that ace in my hole,” my wife says.
“I’m the ace in your hole,” I say.
“That’s right.”
“In your hole.”
“That’s right now don’t push it. You can have my hole right after I get back from the bathroom!”
She jumps out from between the covers and I see her pink pajama ass go ‘round the corner to the toilet.
“You’re the best White wife a guy could have!”
“White wife?” she questions.
“White wife,” I say to myself. “White wife. The right wife to a White guy. Prom queen?! Well, not really check. But one of the prettiest girls in the school, at any school. Bloody vag check!—check. Check, Nigras. Check. Turn down for what in my head this Black music is stuck with me. Snuck into my car from those west side calls from earlier. These are the kind of calls that turned baby fried in a microwave into a cliche.”
“What are you talking about, hun?”
“I’m talking about turning a baby into a microwave.”
“Come down here with me and sleep.”
“I had this call tonight. It was scary, hun. It violated my personal space and involved a Black kid watching Jennifer Lawrence on TV.”
“That part where she fell?”
“That part, yes. Where she fell. I’m no Sherlock Holmes but I think you think that I think that you’re trying to tell me something about this episode of JLaw stomping up that staircase—that it was central or somehow important to me as I struggle through my day. Why is it that you think that? Why indeed. And here I am and I say ‘Jennifer Lawrence on TV’ and here you are with ‘The part where she fell?’ like you were ordained to be here tonight in our darkest hour children missing this is just what I do at the end of the day. I rehash and unload the pivotals of my daily Rottweiler, Frank, Walker—good Irish names see you spend your whole life learning the rules (and subsequently to follow the rules) but I’m here all along and I rewrite the rules as—I—motherfucking—go—along.”
“Are you ready to fuck me?”
“There was this kid. And he was watching TV. And we went there on one of these fake calls, these fake noise disturbance or domestic disturbance calls where they 911 us in, giving us license to blow them the fuck away and they’re hoping to blow the kids away—that’s why they made the call, you know. Homicide by 911. Whoever came up with that? But we’re there, and this kid is staring up Jennifer Lawrence’s dress—as best he can—and I’m shot with something—myself—me, shot with it! Shot through. Eddies of flesh and gratification. Who Neuromanced me into the 10th grade except not really because a panel analyzed my reading habits, they discovered I’m reading solely middle-grade fiction, young adult doesn’t even begin to cover this. And they’re like: you’re half-ape with a 3rd grade reading level. And I’m like: Which half? Which half that’s a joke (see) so this kid—this kid. He blows me away with his silence. He’s standing there dropped his pencil—kid looks like a little girl. And not in that trans-y way. Not like a crossdresser. I mean there’s a guy dressed in drag way of looking and there’s just a pure—girl—staring back at me, JLaw in the background, continuing to trip upwards in her lofty trajectory starward, me and Anthony, Martin, the whole squad right there ready to blow a bomb up some kid’s ass. And this kid is giving me mouth. And I’m looking at—him?—trying to figure if he really is a boy or a girl—and he’s pretty! I mean whether he is or is not a boy doesn’t affect what I’m saying here which is that kid was attractive—for a Black—kid could turn heads—among a certain crowd.”
“So you’re saying this kid was attractive.”
“For a Niggar.”
“Of course. Matters of race aside. This kid was hot for a stone-cold Niggar.”
“Baby lie down.”
“I’ll lie down when I die down. Who said that?”
“No one. You did.”
“Tell me I’m smart, baby.”
“You’re smart, baby.”
“Tell me more.”
“Smart. You are. You were the smartest cop in this year’s trivia contest.”
“Knew me some trivia.”
“Knew you did. Come to bed, baby. Right here next to me and you can tell me your cop stories while you fall asleep.”
I get undressed while I tell her this one.
“Anyway this kid.”
“Pretty kid.”
“Real pretty kid. For a Nigra. But he had these high cheeks hit me like stones off the Serengeti. Stands of sun. Sedona Arizona. Mountain tombs. Walls on cave writing. Early early man. They rose to the bases of these eyes, Annabel. For thine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord!”
“Amen!”
“You sound like you’re sneezing when you do that. It sounds like the tiniest little cum!”
“You’re very naughty right before you go to sleep.”
“Think you.”
“You have very pretty pinkish cheeks.”
Annabel wiggles her nose.
“So. We had a horse-drawn carriage with armaments. Coupla diggly-doo cannons and some swamp rot powder. Came up the left firmament all in uniformed ways. Bunch of corridor parks in there. Ravines. Ramparts. Ravenous bullets fire from my muskets. The only reason I couldn’t fire is I thought it was female! Thought that little musket puppy was a bitch. And it flashed through my mind—thoughts of this bitch’s pussy and tits, all coiled up underneath that hoodie and furled inside that bitch’s cunt reception area, that this bitch was fuckable. I never thought that before—never about a Nigra.”
Annabel was sitting up in bed by now.
“I swear to you, sweets, I never thought it before. Never while working. And never about a person of the Blackness persuasion—never! Here it was my job to kill this Negro. Kill with extreme prejudice! We went through the door. Once you go through the door, that’s my job. I mean that’s what puts bacon on the table baby! Fuck. And here’s this Nigra. Black as a pretty black bitch can be. But is it a woman—is it a girl? ‘Cause it’s not just ‘cause I don’t want my name in the paper next to some West Dayton prom queen. Do they even have proms on the west side? I woulda thought they were done with celebration and besides no one wants to date a west Dayton bitch with all her thumb rings and finger rings—gold-platted hoop earrings the size of Texas. And I could not fire that gun. My weapon finger would not twitch. Upon the cross hairs coming up in that bitch’s head. Which wasn’t a bitch at all! He had hair—like—braids coming all out up over here and—beads—coming up this way over there and then this waist I saw his skin it was metallic—not just the usual ashy Brown. It was like King Tutankhamen had come down from on high and Mohammad was there too and they crowned this kid the male/female Most Attractive Among Black People To Date. The Michael Jackson of the Current Day, as a kid, as that dancing king sang his song of sixpence, baked in a pie. The thing I want you to know about this kid—“
“Is that you want to fuck him?”
“Ha ha. Very funny, Ann. You’re making jokes while I’m trying to tell something serious. What I’m trying to tell you, I’m not embarrassed about. It’s not something I want the office to know, however, because it could be used against me in a court of law. It’s not illegal—before you ask—well it sort of is illegal. I’m not sure. But if it is against the law it’s only slightly. I kept those two for questioning, tonight, way past the point at which we would normally keep them for questioning. And it wasn’t ‘cause I wanted to get them on some charge. We had him for disruption and endangerment at the house. I coulda booked this kid! I could have booked this kid for a lot worse than nothing and I didn’t. I didn’t. That’s a greater crime I could have did—that I didn’t. And that covers this lesser one: this kid and his mom—I kept this kid—I kept this kid at the station tonight and the reason I did it isn’t because of a crime he committed. It isn’t because of a crime he did not commit. I kept him there—because I like him.”