MUD SPELLED BACKWARDS

            I am thirty-two years old as I write this. I’ve lived in New Jersey, Florida, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. I have driven across the country four times and traveled the East Coast from head to toe six times. I’ve spent significant amounts of time in New York City, Boston, San Diego, and Las Vegas. I’ve visited Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, London, Florence, and Rome. I’ve read more pages of history, from the cradle of civilization to the current crisis in Libya, than I can possibly count. And while I am far from an expert, I consider myself educated about genetic and evolutionary science. After all that, I have glommed onto one unassailable observation that I have yet to see proven beyond a reasonable doubt: people are stupid. But the following true story stands with a turd-like shine as an example of just how stupid we as a species can be.

            Years ago, when I still worked in film production, I was hired as a production assistant on a commercial to be shot in Center City, Philadelphia. On the day – as they say in “The Industry” – shooting was rolling along smoothly as can be expected in any barely controlled state of bedlam. I can’t remember precisely what time of the day it was, how many shots we had in the can, or what I was doing at the time; but at some point the Assistant Director approached the other PA’s and me. He calmly and respectfully – a rarity amongst AD’s – said that one of us needed to run to the convenience store down the street and buy some batteries. Being that it was a perfect opportunity for me to buy more cigarettes, I volunteered.

            I walked into the store, quickly found the batteries, and brought them to the counter. Standing behind said counter was a young dunderhead of indeterminate Eurasian origin. His unevenly trimmed five o’ clock shadow smartly matched his wrinkled, oversized powder-blue shirt. Spittle threatened to seep over his lazily hanging lower lip, and his brown bovine eyes sparkled with witless aplomb.

            I greeted the mouth-breather with a casual but pleasant, “Hi. How ya doin’?”

            He returned my greeting with a brief glaring clown-smile of teeth and oversized gums. The disconcerting grill of civility appeared suddenly, magically replacing the slack-jawed flytrap of a look for less than half of a second, then disappeared just as suddenly; as if he had accidentally brushed a switch to his facial muscles, noticed his mistake, then quickly toggled it back to its default setting.

            He scanned the batteries I had presented to him and deposited them into a bag. I then said, “And can I have a pack of Marlboro Lights?”

            At this the poor dumb bastard froze like a deer in the headlights of an alien mothership. His eyes locked onto the register, then shot up at me. “Wait – what?” he asked.

            “A pack of Marlboro Lights please.”

            The rube’s troubled eyes narrowed as his lower lip edged closer to the ground. He spun his head toward the wall of cigarettes behind him, then back to the register, then back to the cigarettes. I was watching a man experience the defining moment of his life, the moment that would secure his legacy and set the stage for the rest of his existence. This was the Twelfth Peril of Hercules. This was Einstein’s arrival at General Relativity. I would have been entranced had I not been thoroughly confused. What could possibly be the stumbling block in this equation? I thought.

            I took pity on the tragic simpleton, pointed to the Marlboro Lights behind him, and patiently explained, “The gold and white ones right there in the middle.”

            I don’t know what prompted his synapses to finally turn over, but after looking at me, then at the cigarettes, then the register; some electrical wave of wisdom invaded his cerebral cortex. The fear in his face was quickly, almost violently, dispelled by sudden epiphanous comprehension. His eyes widened and the corners of his mouth turned upward gleefully. He had figured it out.

            He looked me in the eye and said, “Oh! You want to buy them!”

            That, my friends, is STOOPID. 

ALL SHE EVER WANTED (LitBits #6)

       All she had wanted was to make Mom and Dad happy. It had been her passion. They had heard her sing Karaoke and deemed her talent formidable enough. They had insisted that she be a star – that she deserved it. If that will make them happy, she had thought. She had worried for her parents. They had contracted a team of harmelodic Sisyphi to mold the girl, to craft her sound, with money they did not possess – a lot of money, their dutiful daughter thought, for a housepainter and substitute teacher. Her parents had not prepared her for the embarrassment, the pandemical scorn. She had not prepared herself for the unimaginable. I did what they wanted, she wondered. I only wanted to make them happy. What did इ do so wrong?

THE SKY OVER GROVER'S VALLEY

            It was on a bright, starry night that the traveling circus rolled into town. All four hundred and twenty-six residents of Grover’s Valley were abuzz with anticipation. “‘Bout the most excitin’ to-do o’ the year ‘round these here parts,” Mr. Henderson the barber would repeat ad nauseum. “How robust and colorful those boys and girls there are,” the good Reverend Tinsley’s wife would editorialize with a matronly nod.

            Everyone was atwitter over the arrival of the circus. From Mr. Kearney, ensconced in his great log Xanadu atop Beardsley Hill watching his shadow move across the town, to Old Man Owens, fishing through the trash cans of the townfolks’ homes and Matterly’s Pharmacy for the most meager scrap of edible detritus, everyone was excited.

            Everyone but Roy Treadmore.

            Roy remained fixated on the same clear, star-peppered sky he obsessed over every night. He found it remarkable that the people of Grover’s Valley so easily ignored an indomitable and omnipresent source of wonder and awe. They had only to tilt their heads and feast their eyes on something beyond their comprehension. The sky above answered all their questions and posed some even their most formidable minds had yet to conjure. Each gleaming gaseous globe was a sphinx and the space between held the answers. If man looked to the heavens and saw only blackness, Roy decided, he needed to merely learn the language.

            Roy had considered trying to teach the people of Grover’s Valley. He had come to the town years before and quickly grown to like the simple, forthright men, women, and children who called it home. Roy had just as quickly learned, however, that what his neighbors possessed in sincerity they lacked in introspection. These were a people, Roy had learned, who contented themselves without delving past skin-depth. Perhaps that was why they ignored the infinitely deep sky above them.

Perhaps that was the appeal of the circus. There were trapeze artists, lion tamers, tightrope walkers, clowns, midgets, bearded ladies, wolf boys, men who were fired from cannons, and women who ate indigestible objects. They were oddities who had indentured themselves as professional fools. Freaks who engaged in abnormal behavior because, for whatever reason, they lacked other, more dignified, options. Desperation had compelled them to use their unenviable talents to entertain strangers who would laugh and applaud and cheer, and return home.

Would the traveling circus retain its charm under the close scrutiny the good people of Grover’s Valley refused to bring to bear? Roy doubted it. If the good people of Grover’s Valley were suddenly taught the subtle, painful touch of empathy, the tragic menagerie that so thrilled and ensorcelled them would turn into a horrific house of mirrors. They would be forced to confront their distorted image. They would resent themselves. And they would resent Roy for teaching them.

Roy Treadmore cast his wistful eye to the bright, starry night above and yearned for the day when he would return home.

TEMPERS FUGIT

             I am well aware of the fact that I am my own worst enemy. No one is perfect, but I doubt that many people can shoot themselves in the foot as completely or poetically as I can. Chief among my self-destructive tendencies is my temper. Don’t misunderstand me. I am far from a raging lunatic who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation. I do, however, have a short list of subjects that never cease to frustrate me to the point of distraction. And every once in a while those frustrations emerge in a concentrated density that forbids me from doing the intelligent thing. This was one of those times.

            A couple of years ago my boss asked me if I would like to go to a publishing convention in New York City. Being a writer who was willing to grasp at any pathetic straw of potential, I enthusiastically responded in the affirmative. It was then that my boss informed me that my attendance would be unpaid and I would be going on my day off.

            Those circumstances were far from ideal. Motherfucker, I thought to myself. But the experience could nevertheless prove to be advantageous or, at least, educational. In order to avoid the majority of the bridge-and-tunnel morning rush, I resolved to wake up early on the morning of the convention. Once there I would take in the scene and if, after an hour or so, it proved to be a fruitless waste of my time, I would simply leave and bomb around Manhattan for the day.

            Well, you know what they say about God and plans.

            On the morning of the convention I was awoken by the sound of my phone ringing. I answered it and I heard my father’s voice say, “Are you on your way yet?” I looked at the clock and saw that I had slept through my alarm for a good hour. After saying goodbye to my father and cursing some, I casually proceeded to shower and dress. There was no way I was going to avoid the morning rush, so what was the use of hurrying? Once in my car I quickly jumped onto the Jersey Turnpike and headed north to New York. It was fairly smooth sailing until just past Trenton. That was when I ran smack-dab into a veritable parking lot. God blushed at my choice of words. The steering wheel and armrest took some physical abuse as well.

            Now at this point my car, which I had bought cheap and used, was in the frustratingly irrational habit of running for a while and then, suddenly, dying. Completely. While in motion. Yes, Virginia, I had a narcoleptic car. And right there, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it fell asleep. Luckily I was moseying along at eight miles-per-hour and was able to coast to a stop on the shoulder.

            I promptly called Triple-A and told them that I needed a jump. Why a jump was able to slap a band-aid on an issue unrelated to the battery is beyond me, but, nevertheless, historically it had. I sat in my car on the side of the road, counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, waiting for Triple-A to arrive, chain-smoking cigarettes in a petulant huff with a rumbling thunderhead hovering over my skull.

            After an hour and change the Triple-A truck arrived. I explained to the driver the nature of the problem and asked him to jump the car. He then began to argue with me, claiming that a jump would not work. I reinforced to him my first-hand success at jumping my car. After a couple of minutes of automotive back-and-forth the driver begrudgingly jumped my car.

            And it started. I WIN!

            That was when the driver told me, not so fast, grasshopper; there’s a service charge. I was incensed at this news. This was why I joined Triple-A – so that I didn’t have to pay someone for this kind of shit. After some obscenity-laden protests, I demanded that he get his supervisor on the phone. He did and, after his expert recitation of contractual rigmarole, I realized that they had me over a barrel. I paid the truck driver, told him, “Tip? What tip?” got in my car, peeled back onto the Turnpike and – like a scene ripped from The Simpsons – slammed on my brakes after ten feet in traffic.

            For the next hour I crawled north. I watched the smog thicken, the landscape grow brown, and pillars of smoke multiply. I watched the green of the Garden State dissolve into a web of steel and stone through a red filter of fury. I trudged past the city of Elizabeth and immediately despised every woman who shared that name. I inched through Hoboken and vowed to never listen to Sinatra again. By the time I crept through the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, I would have considered its sudden collapse and my resultant tomb of concrete and Hudson River to be sweet release.

            Finally I emerged from the Tunnel onto the island of Manhattan and, with a beleaguered sigh, turned onto Third Avenue. The West Side traffic was surprisingly sparse and I made the lights for five consecutive blocks before I came to a stop at a red. Oh my god! Am I actually going to get there, I thought. Are there no more obstacles to navigate? Has the last boondoggle been foisted upon my path? Have I truly bested the minotaur and reached the center of this labyrinth? Is it really over?!

            What do you think?

            The light turned green and I calmly depressed the accelerator. Just as I was crossing the intersection, a helmet-less denim-clad douchebag on a motorcycle turned onto Third Avenue, cutting me off and forcing me to hit the brakes. All hope evaporated like cold water on a hot range. I hurled invective at the motorcyclist from inside my car, spontaneously creating new curses out of the linguistic ether. I was the Charlie Parker of profanity. There was nothing between the motorcycle and my car as we both came to a stop at the next red light, mere blocks from my final destination. I rolled down my window, stuck out my head and yelled at the douchebag, “HEY! Did you fucking see me at all when…”

            He never let me finish. He turned his head to barely look over his shoulder, held up his middle finger and yelled back, “Fuck you, Joysey!”

            I’m not sure if everyone, once antagonized past a certain threshold, arrives at a point at which they no longer care about the consequences of their actions. But I know that I do.

And at that point I redlined.

            I got out of my car, approached the guy on his bike and, just as he started to turn his head in my direction – POW!!!

            He began to fall and I turned back to my car without a word. I heard both him and his bike topple to the ground behind me. I continued to my car, still too enraged to take even the most fleeting satisfaction in my righteous outburst.

            But as I was walking to my car, I thought, That’s a long line of cars behind me. And they all have people in them. One of them might be a Good Samaritan – even if he is a New Yorker – and call the cops. And I did just assault someone, which, technically speaking, is a felony…

            Uh…

            I’m gettin’ outta here!

            I jumped in my car, made a u-turn, and sped back to the Tunnel and out of the city.

            It took me half of the drive home before I was able to laugh about the misadventure, but it took close to two years to understand what my temper may have cost me. Who’s to say what publishing figures I would have met at the convention. I might have met someone who worked at a publishing house. Someone with the ability to decide what gets published. Maybe someone who was looking for something particular. And just maybe I would have been that something. I would now be writing this story for a very different reason and with a very different moral. Who knows – I might be on my way at this point.

            But on the upside, I did get a great story about how I clocked a motherfucker in New York. 

HOW ARE YOU TONIGHT?

            Do I?

            Do I dare ask her out?

            How would I go about doing it anyway?

            The same way you always have.

            I can’t do that. She’s the hostess here and I’m a customer. You think she’s not used to guys hitting on her in here? It’s probably part of their training when they’re hired: How to Shoot Down Mr. King-Shit Diner.

            So? Why shouldn’t you be different?

            Because.

            Because why? You’re looking good, aren’t you?

            Yeah. I really know how to rock a gut here.

            What gut? So you got a little paunch. You see pretty girls with fat guys all the time.

            They’ve got money.

            You don’t know that.

            I’m willing to bet on it. Remember what’s-her-face from physics class? Gorgeous, only went with the most popular pretty-boys?

            Yeah, and she married a big, hirsute doughboy.

            Whose family builds bridges in developing countries. The guy’s loaded.

            But you met him for all of two minutes. You don’t know what he’s like.

            So what?

            How many women do you think are like her: they were stupid and shallow when they were kids, then they grew up a little and realized they wanted a man who would treat them right?

            Rich people aren’t nice.

            So you’re going to sit here and doodle because you figure Hostess-girl wants a rich prick?

            As long as the guy’s rich, they’ll deal with the prick part.

            She is flirting with you.

            No, she’s not.

            Yes, she is! Every time you catch each other’s eye, she gives you that shy little smile you like so much.

            She’s just being nice.

            She doesn’t smile at anyone else like that.

            I’m sure she does and I just don’t see it.

            What is wrong with you? Isn’t she cute?

            Very.

            What do you like about her?

            I like her voice. It’s high and a little nasally but not grating. It’s melodic and feminine.

            What else?

            Her body. It’s real. Her butt and breasts are just… perfect. Not magazine perfect, but, on her, they just work.

            And look at that – she’s even got a little paunch, just like you.

            I love the cleft in her chin.

            Someone’s smitten! An insignificant detail like that gets you…

            That’s not insignificant. That may be the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

            You’re crazy if you don’t ask her out.

            What’s the point?

            Don’t you want to be happy?

            I won’t be happy when she shoots me down.

            You can’t know what her reaction will be.

            I’m poor! I’m in so much debt I have to live with my parents! I spent the last two years of college flunking it from inside a bottle of whiskey! I’m thirty and I have to work in a call center for a bank! Every free minute I have I spend on my art in the vain hope of getting out of my shit existence to no avail! Who’s ever going to date me? Huh?

            “Hello.”

            “Hey. How was everything tonight?”

            “Very good. Thank you.”

            “Get your work done?”

            “Enough of it.”

            “Fourteen fifty-three.”

            “Helluva year.”

            “Huh?”

            “No, it’s… it’s just the year the Ottomans conquered Constantinople.”

            “Oh. So you ever worried about spilling food on your drawings?”

            “Not really. They’re just rough sketches and I’m just working out the composition of the panels. When I get home I’ll do the actual illustrations.”

            “Are you going to be the next Stan Lee?”

            “Well, he actually just wrote the scripts. But he was a definite game changer.”

            “Well, you have a good night.”

            “You too.”

            Omigod! What is wrong with me? “Stan Lee?”

            Oh, what do you know about comics?

            Exactly. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and not done such a bang-up job mortifying myself.

            Do you think he expects every woman he meets to be a comic book aficionado?

            Maybe. The creative ones have really specific standards. Especially when they’re smart! Did you hear him with the 1453 history, whatever he was talking about? And I’m like, “Oh!” He probably thinks I’m a mongoloid.

            He thinks you’re nice.

            A nice fat boobless mongoloid.

            Will you give yourself a break?

            Then why won’t he ask me out?

            Like you said, he’s a creative one. Maybe he’s shy.

            I’m giving him the green light!

            The shy ones need a green lighthouse. You know that. Next time he comes in, ask to see some of his work.

            No way!

            Why not? He’ll walk out of here hard if you say that.

            What if he shows me his work? Then what?

            Compliment it.

            How? I don’t know anything about art. I don’t know anything about anything other than waiting tables.

            You worked your way up to assistant manager.

            And that’s as far as a dropout with a kid is going to go. Just forget it.

            You’re not going to forget it no matter how hard you try. He’s going to keep coming in here. And every time you see him, it’s going to eat away at you. You’re going to look at him and see everything you want and it’s going to drive you crazy because you think you could never have it.

            I can’t!

            Yes, you can! But you refuse to believe that. So you’ll let him get away. Maybe another keeper will come along, but you’ll start having this same argument with yourself all over again and he’ll get away too. Then some asshole who thinks he deserves you – even though he doesn’t – will lay on you what he thinks is a real slick come-on. And by that point you’ll be so miserable and defeated, you’ll actually go with him. And you’ll hate every minute of the rest of your life.

            Look! You’re debating yourself over this! You wouldn’t be doing that if you didn’t want to go for the guy. So get over your fear and do it already!

            “Hi. How are you tonight?”

A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 3)

             One day I’m just walkin’ the streets o’ Harlem, livin’, like I always done. Next thing, I’m walkin’ that tunnel o’ light like they say. I still don’t know how I died – if a car hit me or a block o’ cement fell on my head. But when I get to that light, I see this musta-been African at this little desk and he’s writin’ in some book I can’t read. He looks up at me, got these big round eyes narrowed to slits between sleepy-lookin’ eyelids, adjusts his spectacles and he says I gotta go before General Concensus. I ask him, who’s this General and what’s he got to do with me and what’s rank matter in the Beyond and a whole lot o’ other questions. But the African don’t say nothin’. Just waves me on. So I walk away – or maybe float, I dunno – and I start headin’ toward this cliff, which I don’t know how I know that’s where I’m supposed to go. But I do and go to the edge of this cliff overlookin’… Zion, I guess. I dunno, but it was this real Eden-like place just stretchin’ everywhere with the sun in a blue sky, no clouds, shinin’ down on everythin’. Then all the sudden I’m face-to-face with this… I don’t what it was. It was a person and they was black but… but that’s it. They go, “I am General Concensus.” But I don’t see the lips move ‘cause I can’t tell what they look like. Everythin’ kept movin’ and changin’. The nose was wide and flat, then, the next second, thin and turned up. Eyes went from brown to green to brown to blue. The build was a skinny girl’s then a fat man’s and everythin’ in between. Even the skin. It was always black, but sometime lighter and sometime darker. And the voice was never just one voice, but a whole bunch o’ voices bouncin’ through a metal hallway and whichever caught your ear first was luck. And each voice called me one name or another: “Everyman. Drunk. Intellectual. Philanderer. Rebel. Faggot. Pioneer. Uncle Tom.” It kept up ‘til this ghostly silence hit me like a batterin’ ram, like all the air got sucked out all at once. Then the General goes, “NOT BLACK ENOUGH!” Lifts his arms, turns into a giant bat, and flies right at my face. Next thing, I’m here, just as old and run down as you see, but stuck in a time I’d left behind long ago, waitin’ for the General Concensus to agree on me.

            Handsome sat looking at Tex. He had been spoken down to before; by teachers, coaches, employers, colleagues, doctors, lawyers, the police. But no one had succeeded in making Handsome feel as wholly ignorant as this old black cowboy. “There are so many things wrong with that story, I don’t know where to start!” he barked as he sprung to his feet. “And I’m not going to bother trying.”

            “Every word was bible truth,” Tex calmly asserted.

            “Okay. Enough.”

            “Boy, don’t you…”

            “And don’t call me, ‘Boy,’ old man!”

            “Did y’even get the moral o’ the story?”

            “What moral? There is no moral. It’s a story about nothing.”

            “It’s about your life, boy!”

            “Oh yeah? I thought it was about what happens when I die.”

            Handsome watched the old man’s face assume the reverberant calm at the center of a terrible hurricane. Tex’s eyes narrowed and the warmth seeped out of them instantaneously as he shook his head with the slow foreboding swing of a pendulum. “Think you’re so smart,” he intoned. “You’re pitiable, boy, lookin’ down at the ignorant field nigga.”

            Handsome pointed a finger at Tex. “I didn’t say that.”

            “Ya don’t got to!” Tex cried and slapped away Handsome’s hand. He clambered off his stool and stood on his thin rickety legs eyeball-to-eyeball with Handsome. The young man was back on his heels, ready for whatever the coot was about to try. “Ya think I just swallowed that monster outright? Ya wanna know what I said?”

            I said, “Ya expect me to believe y’all are dead and conversin’ with me?”

            “No,” said Mudbone, “but we tellin’ ya anyhow.”

            I gotta admit, now they had me real curious. “Y’all don’t want money. I call horse hockey on your story. So what ya tellin’ me for?”

            Simple stepped forward and said, “ ‘Cause you, son, are our ticket outta here.”

            “I am?”

            “You the future. The future judges the Negro of old. Every battle the Negro waged is one less you gotta fight. Every step he took toward Zion, that’s one less step you and your future gotta take.

            “But like all men, a black man’s got his agenda and it might not jibe with his brother’s. Ya know how folks are, self-interest and all. I challenge your ideas, I gotta go. Your generating see Pops and his teethy grinnin’, they see him coonin’ for the white man. No place for that in the future. And it don’t matter how easier he made it for you. Don’t matter if me and Mudbone tamped down the path for black folks to show the white man we real people ‘cause I’m queer and Mudbone’s a womanizin’, blasphemin’, whore-born junkie.”

            Mudbone said, “But I ain’t queer.”

            Simple continued, “History’s a story, son, and every story needs a storyteller. Else it’s just motes o’ dust carried by the wind forever. White folks got lots o’ storytellers so they got lot o’ history. How much we got? Our history’s all spoken, passed word-o’-mouth and all. And we lost it when our ancestors got stolen from home. The storytellers we got now wanna ignore some stories. Why ya think only white folks talk about Africans sellin’ their own to the slavers?”

            “Racism?” I guessed.

            “True. But why don’t black folks talk about it? Maybe it don’t agree with what our storytellers think our stories should be. But it’s part o’ our story. We are all a part o’ our story. And we need someone to tell our side of it.”

            “‘And one day,’” Tex finished, “‘you may need someone to tell yours.’”

            Handsome walked down the half-forgotten side street, away from the quaint old coffee shop, out to Center Avenue. He stood at the corner breathing deeply, trying to compose himself. The weird old codger had not just riled him. He had prompted Handsome to tap into a deep reservoir of hatred he was less than proud of. But Handsome was angrier with himself than at Tex. He was infuriated that he had even for a nanosecond entertained the notion that he was oblivious to the sacrifices made by African-Americans past for his benefit. He was educated and knew that those African-Americans had done much more with far less than he ever would. Handsome’s blood again began to churn with tectonic aggravation, when he heard the vague exclamation of a young male voice to his left.

            He turned and saw three black teenaged boys huddled on the front stoop of a convenience store. They were ensconced in name-brand clothes two sizes too large. The diamonds piercing their ear lobes wrestled for the attention of strangers. Two of the boys wore baseball hats cocked at Dutch angles. The third boy sported a loose Afro replete with six differently colored picks. Handsome couldn’t understand what they were saying. It was a pidgin hodgepodge of English and slang he had never heard before. They spoke over one another, increasingly fast, increasingly loud, and increasingly garbled. Handsome shook his head, a grimace slapped across his face.

            Handsome silently mouthed to himself, niggers.

            And suddenly, realizing what he had just thought, Handsome froze. His immediate impulse was to turn and run back to the coffee shop, to speak to Tex, to tell the old cowboy that he understood now. But he didn’t. He didn’t want to turn around to find the coffee shop to have disappeared. 

A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 2)

            “Who this here?” asked Simple.

            “He’s our three. Who you think he is?”

            “Goin’ off the class of three you rope in, I thought he might be another fool don’t know Jim Crow from Jim Brown.”

            “Just shut up. He’ll do fine.”

            “Wait,” I said. “I ain’t familiar with pool with three people.”

            “Mudbone here didn’t bother tellin’ ya the game, huh?” Simple said.

            Mudbone said, “Ain’t my job to name the game.”

            “How long it been since you had any job?”

            “Last week and your momma pays well. How long for you?”

            Right about that time I started thinkin’ this might be some kinda hustle. But when I asked how much we was wagerin’, Mudbone said, “No money. We just playin’.”

            Well, that just ain’t right, I thought. How ya gonna play a game without stakes? But here’s the thing: Sure ‘nough soon as we started the game, I was havin’ fun. More fun than I ever had at dice or dominoes or cards or pool before. And not only was there no money changin’ hands, there was no rules. Ya shot ‘til ya missed, then the next brother shot. And Mudbone and Simple, they were some cutups. Simple started talkin’ ‘bout this girl he knew up in Harlem from back a ways and Mudbone starts castin’ aspersions.

            “The bitch got a triangle asshole,” he told Simple. “And you suck on her titties and glue come out!”

            Well, Simple wasn’t havin’ none o’ that. Told him right out, “I ain’t about to let my woman go slandered by some whore-bred bastard associatin’ with peanut-head reprobates and other assorted ne’er-do-well Negroes.”

            But  Mudbone came back at him, “Like you some prize, ya broke-ass Elmer’s imbibin’ muthafucka!”

            Now, I was havin’ fun, see. And even though I figured this was just Mudbone and Simple playin’ the dozens like they been for a mean spell, I didn’t wanna take a chance and let ‘em get all wrapped up in the back-and-forth and one o’ ‘em cross a line. ‘Cause ol’ as they was, those two looked the type who kept their fangs in their heads to the bitter end. So I said, “How long you two been here?”

            “Longer ‘an either o’ us care to remember,” said Simple.

            “Ya said your woman was up in Harlem,” I said. “That where ya from?”

            “Mmm. Not original. Lived on 125^th and Amsterdam for years. But I’m here now.”

            “How ‘bout you, Mudbone?” I asked him.

            “I was born in either Peoria, Illinois or Tupelo, Mississippi.”

            “Huh?”

            “Depends when you ask my father.”

            That struck me as off. Mudbone was ol’ himself so I figured his father wasn’t likely still livin’. So I ask him real delicate, “I ain’t tryin’ for insensitive, but I’d assume your father left the quick by now.”

            “No,” Mudbone said. “He’s alive.”

            “Mine too, though he gettin’ up there in years,” added Simple.

            That hit me like a switch on the backside and I started feelin’ like I did at the counter, like all the sudden I wasn’t me but the me I was was strange and off-puttin’. “How ol’ are ya two?” I asked ‘em.

            They looked at each other and this slier-than-a-fox smile come across their faces and Simple said, “Age don’t count for nuthin’ where we been and you goin’.” They both laughed like they was joshin’ me and just waitin’ to spring the trap.

            But the not-me feelin’ kept buildin’ up like a train engine people keep tossin’ coal in. This wasn’t no prank, I knew. That know ya have when ya sense somethin’ big comin’ ‘round the corner and ya can’t tell what it is, but it don’t matter ‘cause it’s so big and fearsome it could be Death himself and ya wouldn’t be surprised. “What y’all want with me?”

            That’s when Simple stepped forward. “Tex, boy,” he said, “we got no designs on you. I swear it. You gonna leave this place alive and you gonna live as long as you was gonna live if you never met us. But what you gotta understand…”

            “Muthafucka, we dead!” cried Mudbone.

            Simple turned to Mudbone and got loud. “Goddamn you! What do you think you’re doin’?”

            “Whatchu doin’, draggin’ it out and all? Kill the suspense already.”

            I put my hands up. “Whoa! Whoa! What do y’all mean, you’re dead?”           

            “Just that. We dead,” repeated Mudbone. “I ain’t smart ‘nough to dumb it down no more.”

            “You just shut your mouth,” Simple told his friend. Then he started walkin’ toward me. “S’true, son. We cast off the mortal coil some time ago. We been here since.”

            I started gettin’ angry and slammed my stick down on the table. “What’s the hustle?” I asked ‘em.

            “No hustle, boy,” Mudbone said.

            “Mmmhmm.”

            “Hand to God.”

            “Ya gotta do better than that,” I said.

            “What? Y’ain’t got room in ya for faith?”

            “I got faith in Jesus Christ – not two ol’ niggas with a ruse.”

            That’s when Simple put his hand to my face. SMACK!

            I was starin’ at him, holdin’ my face, nonplussed, when he said, “That, boy, is what we’re here for.”

            “That’s when he told me.”

            Handsome stared back at Tex with an incredulously furrowed brow. “Told you what?” he asked.

            “What happens to black folk when they die.”

A HANDSOME BLACK MAN WALKS INTO A BAR... (pt. 1)

            The coffee shop was hidden halfway down a side street off Center Avenue. A quaint anachronism amidst a concrete jungle of modernity, the coffee shop’s neon was dead and the canvas awning was frayed and sagged under its own weight. The Fifties hadn’t died. They’d merely retired to this unimposing dive tucked away within a future that had forgotten to decide their fate.

            Handsome, his stomach knotted in righteous hunger, noticed none of it as he marched through the door. He made straight for the counter, fell ass-first onto the closest empty stool and announced, “Shrimp basket and a Herschel’s.”

            The waitress behind the counter, a frumpy white woman with many strenuous years behind her and too many still ahead, topped a milkshake with a cherry and walked away. As famished as he was, Handsome was willing to exercise patience. He knew waiting tables was hard, thankless work and he was determined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

            After fifteen minutes in the nearly empty coffee shop, Handsome’s benefit of the doubt morphed into the undeniable fact that the wait staff – the white wait staff – was ignoring him.

            He had a hard time reconciling such pronounced unapologetic racism with the fact that he was its recipient. Here he was: Harvard law grad, magna cum laude, four months with the most prestigious law firm in Madsen, New Jersey. He was the first person in his family to graduate college and he would soon be the first to own his own home. His suit was clean, pressed and obviously expensive. Anyone should be able to take the most cursory look at him and find no reason to judge him to be anything other than an upwardly mobile contributor to the community.

            Save for one glaring trait.

            “They know ya not gonna tip,” said a voice with a pronounced twang. Handsome looked to his right and saw its source two seats down.

            He was a tall lithe black man with a checkered shirt and bolo tie underneath a fringed leather jacket. White tufts of hair at his temples and the back of his head sprung from underneath the bill of his Stetson. His head sat proudly atop his shoulders. Dignity ran through the folds of his grizzled features and bloomed from his gray handlebar mustache. “S’why they ain’t servin’ us,” he continued.

            “That’s stupid,” countered Handsome. “They don’t know that. I always tip at least twenty percent, even if the waitress doesn’t deserve it.”

            “But ya do see why they’d think so?”

            Handsome furrowed his brow suspiciously. “Look,” he said, “no offense, but you’re not one of those old Ruckus white-man-can-do-no-wrong brothers, are you?”

            The old cowboy shook his head as he moved the stool next to Handsome. “No. No, I ain’t that. But ya oughtn’t be so quick to cast a stone. Those boys just doin’ what they gotta to survive, ya know?”

            Now Handsome shook his head. “Abandoning and castigating your own race isn’t a matter of survival.”

            “Ya think the Romans threw every Christian to the lions? Don’ ya think some ‘em renounced and saved their skins?”

            Handsome sighed and wearily rubbed his eyes with heels of his palms.

            The cowboy slapped him playfully on the back. “Lord, this here’s got ya dander up but fierce, boy,” he said.

            “I can’t understand how you’re able to take it in stride like you are.”

            “Why’sat puzzlin’?”

            “Because it’s the twenty-first century. I’m not naïve enough to think racism should be dead by now. But this?” he asked in a raised voice, waving his arm around the circumference of the coffee shop. “This is like what you must’ve dealt with when you were my age.”

            “Oh, I dealt with much worse ‘an this here.”

            “Like what?”

            “Aaah, I ain’t gettin’ into it. Unpleasant memories and all, ya know?”

            Handsome nodded sheepishly. “Sure. Sorry.”

            “S’quite awright. What’s ya name, son?”

            “Handsome.” He extended his hand.

            The old cowboy clasped and shook it. “Tex.”

            Handsome couldn’t help but expel a single chortle. “C’mon! ‘Tex?’”

            “S’right.”

            “You from Texas?”
            “Small Knuckles, Arkansas.”

            “Then why are you called, ‘Tex?’”

            “Loooooong story. And not an interestin’ one.”

            Handsome paused and regarded Tex for a silent moment. He let out another sigh, more bemused than annoyed. “I’m sorry,” he started. “But you seem to have a lot to say for someone who doesn’t want to talk about himself.”

            Tex held up a single finger of correction. “Now, I ain’t shy. But y’all goin’ off two stories with no wisdom to impart. Ya want me to learn ya a thing?”

            “No disrespect, Tex, but I’m a graduate of Harvard Law and…”

            “What I got to teach ya,” Tex interrupted, “ya can’t learn in no college.”

            “Well, I don’t really have much need for street smarts. I’m employed with Chotchki & Casino and I’m…”

            “Ya wanna know what happens to black folk when they die?”

            Handsome stared back at Tex, gobsmacked, stunned by the temerity of the claim that such knowledge could be possessed. “What?” he spit out.

            “I’m gonna tell ya a story ‘bout myself. I was near ‘round your age, truck drivin’. I was haulin’ a load of hockey pucks up to Toronto. That’s in Canada…

            One afternoon I stopped at this diner a couple miles south o’ Akron. It looked real ol’ and at first I was thinkin’ it was goin’ wind up bein’ closed down. But I walked in the door and there was this waitress, genteel little dear from St. Louis, makin’ coffee, jukebox playin’, everything up and up and up.

            I sat down at the counter, just as unassumin’ as I’m sittin’ here, ordered some chicken. Few minutes later, she brought out this succulent breast, pipin’ hot and crispy and all, and I sank my teeth in and, like lightnin’ outta clear blue sky, I knew like I’d known my whole life, I didn’t like chicken. Never had.

            Now, I know that’s a nuthin’ thing, chicken. But after a life raised on chicken, never questionin’ it, to just know it all the sudden like? Strange. Like I didn’t know myself no more. It’s a scary feelin’ to not know yaself.

            I pushed the plate aside and I don’t know how long I was just starin’ at the counter, tryin’ to puzzle out what the meanin’ was. Then I felt this tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it’s this old black man, bent over and gnarled like an ol’ tree. “Say there, boy,” he said, “seein’s ya just ogglin’ the formica, you feel up to shootin’ some pool?”

            At this point I was beside myself. So I figured lemme just put my mind on sumptin’ else. And right at that point, gettin’ in a game sounded right about right.

            He lead me over to this ol’ ratty pool table at the back o’ the room where there’s his friend, jus’ as ol’, jus’ as black, but walkin’ upright more. “Name’s Tex,” I said.

            Ol’ gnarled tree said, “This here’s my friend Simple, and my name is Mudbone.”

DEATH OF LIFE (LitBits #5)

           A pulsar throbbed through the miasmic void, launched him past long dead orbs. He watched the cosmos furl into itself and cry to its birth. Sands fell skyward. Grains of stardust imploded. Wisps of the elements flagged into darkness. He passed a cradle wreathed in breath, ensconced in blue and green. He watched it die backward and careened onward to everything and nothing.  

SHE COMES FROM THE OCEAN (LitBits #4)

            She comes from the ocean. Where the water laps in lonesome rolls. Where beasts may sing you a lullaby. The air is rich and clean and silent. The ocean erodes the stone you wear. The earth drowns beneath your feet. You bob and lie with the heavens. Your bedding splits the waking world asunder. It leaves you content beyond the chasm. Where it’s cold and dark and there’s no one to hear. All that is good is nothing but yours.

            She comes from the ocean.