by Sapphire
“Turn over,” I tell her.
“What?”
“Turn over,” I repeat.
“What for?”
“Nothing,” I say, and throw myself back down on her grinding. Pressing my lips to hers, getting no action. I know my dick would get hard if she would suck it or let me in back. I’m used to that. I lick the side of her face like Roman used to do to my scar. She giggles. Is she laughing at me? I feel like slapping the shit out of her. She pulls out from under me, pushes me over, and climbs on top of me. She’s grinding on top of me, eyes squeezed shut. She don’t want to look at me? I’m feeling her titties, feels great. I don’t know what’s wrong. God, please don’t let this happen to me. You know I got mad equipment. Please please please. She leans down kisses me, then she starts to inch up my chest till her pussy is in my face. I . . . I feel kinda trapped. I try to lick my tongue in there a little. Cough. She moves back down, her eyes open now, she gets on her side, pulls me on mine, she starts kissing me and rocking; I’m rocking back, but I can feel myself just hanging there. I want to die. She’s stroking me now. She stops. “Not in the mood,” she says soft. I can’t talk. I close my eyes, will myself not to cry.
SEXUAL HISTORY? How can I tell it except with my body as I move through space after space downtown in painted black boxes? I look at the latest review of us in Downtown Voice, the picture is of me naked, except for the black leather jockstrap, in arabesque. They call me what I’ve told Herd to call me, Jones—Abdul Jones: “. . . despite Jones’s infiltrating power . . .” then they go on to trash Scott’s choreography. “My name is Abdul Jones. Period. Shut up. I don’t care what I told you yesterday, today it’s Abdul. Get with that.” The article doesn’t mention Snake, or Scott, except by way of shitting on his choreography; My Lai’s like fucking Oprah or something, everybody loves her: “Virtuosic line . . . difficult intelligence opening into a cacophony of movement.” Cacophony? They mean she’s a fine-ass freak, but they can’t say that, can’t say, Hot. No one ever mentions Ricky.
Nothing about him should surprise me after the time we went out to bring back sandwiches and he refused to walk on the sunny side of the street, saying he was black enough. He’s what color? Fucking beige! Shit, compared to me he’s white. So why I’m surprised when he dumps on My Lai, I don’t know.
“If she’s Chinese and this is supposed to be a piece about identity, she should—”
“Well, number one,” Scott had said, “she’s right here, so you can address her directly.”
But he didn’t, he just kept digging till they both got nasty.
“Well, you missed a couple of meetings, but I’ll explain as best I can. I’m not really dealing with that identify thing like you’re talking about—you know: Chinese, Mexican, like, ‘Whoop whoop-de doo, I here and I so happy to be here, just give me some scented toilet paper and a green card—’”
“What would you know about that?” Ricky snapped.
“Nothing, motherfucker. And I ain’t Chinese.”
“Well, what are you, then!”
“Listen.” My Lai restarts, trying to be cool and calm. “The piece revolves around an atrocity committed by Americans—”
“That nobody knows about, that happened in another century.” Ricky again.
“Well, Ricky, isn’t that more the reason to do it?” My Lai.
“What about the politics of now?”
“This is now as far as I’m concerned. We got now because people fucking forgot then,” Scott says.
“What’s your real beef, man?” I ask.
“You. No, I’m just kidding. Look at what the strong companies in the city are doing. This shit we’re doing is getting too politico for me.”
“First it’s not political enough, not about now; then it’s ‘too politico’?” This from Amy.
“Are you trying to say good-bye?” Scott asks.
“I said it,” Ricky says, and grabs his bag and heads for the elevator.
“Later,” I say.
“Yeah, man. The best!” Snake.
I look at My Lai. “Cool,” she says.
Hey, my sentiments exactly. Fuck his barrel ass.
I want My Lai. She doesn’t scare me. We get our heads shaved together at the four-dollar barber school on Tenth Street. One of these days, I’m gonna ask her to pierce me. I know she did Amy’s navel. She usually wears a wide leather wristband; without it you can see the raised scars lighter than the rest of her skin on her left wrist. I nudge her with my knee, trying to get her to break the awkwardness of Ricky’s exit and get us moving again.
“Here, everybody,” she says in her director voice. “It’s a packet of Xeroxes on the My Lai massacre and Vietnam. Read everything. And see you at ten Saturday.”
I flip through some of it on my way down the elevator—Ho Chi Minh? I’m the youngest, but even so it’s not just me—no one here is old enough to remember Vietnam or even know a Vietnam veteran; I mean, they are serious grayheads. I read the shit when I get back to my room. This shit is crazy, unbelievable, but at the same time you know it’s true and, like Ricky said, long fucking gone. The world is on to the next thing, the new worst thing. Maybe Ricky was right, we should be too? Normal guys from normal families and shit did this—killed babies and raped girls, that’s worse than any shit I ever did.
I look at the print I got at the Whitney exhibit To Repel Ghosts, 1986, but I seen the real thing. Can I live this fucking life? On the other wall I have Undiscovered Genius, 1982–83: In the right-hand corner of the painting, a drawing of a slave ship, sickles, forks, axes.
Q: are not princes kings? The Dark (then under The Dark, is crossed out) (crossed out) versus the devil
Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi
meat a man with a guitar
flour
sugar (underneath written)
alcohol UNDISCOVERED GENIUS OF THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA
tobacco
corn
Who’s that? Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson? Modern genius, Jimi, Vernon Reid?
I looked at the painting, read My Lai’s Xeroxes, it’s not a lie. My Lai’s wrist? I stretch out on my silky sheets courtesy of Amy. Fuck her, she’s boring. I want My Lai. She gonna be my baby mama? Hah! Shut up, fool, don’t no bitches want you, you polluted by Roman and the fags at St Ailanthus? You shit. What you gonna do, rape her? She don’t want you. Maybe she don’t like black boys, a lot of them don’t. I look back at the painting and the blue wall above it. I see sky and a clothesline with one blue dress flapping in the wind on it and a teenage Toosie jumping up to snatch it. That’s la danse! I think, springing off the bed and jumping straight into the air. And that’s me. And that’s why I’m gonna make it, parents or no parents, school or no school, loft or no downtown funky chic. I put on some sounds, Bird Meets Diz, and read some more.
Heroin, that’s what he did; why don’t I? I don’t know, I don’t feel to do it, I never been around it; what made them do it, I know I would never get hooked, but what made them do it, what does it feel like, I don’t know nobody who does it. Snake said My Lai has; that bitch has done everything. Read some more from Greg Tate’s essay in Flybook in the Buttermilk:
If we want to compare him to anybody it’s Thelonius Monk, who also devised a style of grand complexity out of infantile gestures. Bringing us to Basquiat the wild child, who will be remembered as an enigmatic junkie who pollacked Armani suits, but who cataloguers knew was productive if nothing else. From the documented evidence, doodling, drawing, image-making, and writing turned up early as an obsessive reflex in Basquiat’s nervous system. Apparently, Basquiat drew images as frequently as everybody else was drawing breaths.
If we want to prove Basquiat was a serious artist to an unbelieving world, talk of sheer productivity is not going to get it. Actually nothing is going to do it, they’ve decided he’s worthless so why not say fuck ’em and be done with it. [That’s what I say.] Okay, I’ll try. So what is it that I want to
respond to in his work? Why is it significant to me? Okay, some of his intellectual obsessions: ancestry and modernity, originality and the origins of knowledge, personhood and property, possession (in the religious sense), slavery....
Why is it significant to me? I don’t know; I don’t have words like that inside me; when I think, it’s with a contraction of my torso, or a leap like a fucking savage. Savage! OOga BOOga. I’m gonna be like those paintings, like everything I ever loved. I’m gonna be that. And that means off your ass and PRACTICE till you drop.
meat
flour
sugar
I’m gonna get some fajitas, around six, four, I don’t know, lemme count my change, and some donuts, and then come back and work.
A COUPLE of days later, I’m at Astor Place Starbucks with Snake, and he comes out with this “what’s your story” thing.
“Say what?”
“What’s your story?”
I never think of my life as a story. I think of myself as a kid trying to make it. What fucking story? It ain’t been written yet.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You know, where are you coming from, gay, straight, uptown, downtown, out of town.”
I look at Snake. Shit, what do I know about him, what’s this all about? What, he’s the CIA now?
“I’m from Harlem, born raised. I’m straight. How about you?”
“Well, not so fast.”
“Whaddaya mean, ‘Not so fast’?”
“I wanted to ask you something else.”
“Like I exist to answer your questions, man?”
“Wow, don’t go hostile on me.”
“I’m not, man, but whas up with the Q&A?”
Who the fuck does he think he is? I feel like slapping him.
“So where are you coming from, up down gay straight?”
Why am I even doing this? I know where he’s coming from.
“I’m transgender,” he says.
Hmm, oh well, I thought I did.
“So what’s that? You going surgical?” I ask.
So why me, why is he telling this shit to me?
“It’s like a wrong body-assignment type thing, so it’s more spiritual than surgical.”
Getting your dick cut off. Does he really believe that?
“So what does that mean for you, you like to dress up or what?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“But you can ask me shit?”
“I don’t feel like a man; I feel like a woman.”
“So are you gay?”
“It has nothing to do with that, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, if I get . . . get . . . go forward, with the transformation, then, you know, I guess I’ll be, like, straight. A man, I mean a woman loving a man.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Why is this making me sick? “Lemme ask you something, Snake.”
“Shoot.”
“You’re going to get your penis cut off?”
“It’s called sex reassignment—”
“Don’t you love your dick?”
“I want to fuck like a woman.”
“And what about kids?”
“Oh, I’ll adopt if I get, you know, married. But man, that’s way down the line. It’s not that I don’t love dick, it’s just that I don’t want to be one.” He laughs.
I can’t believe he thinks that’s funny.
“Who wants kids anyway?” he says.
“I do!”
Wow, I hadn’t even thought about it before, I just assumed no, I don’t, hell no, but I do, I want kids, a girl, maybe a boy, I don’t know about a boy.
Snake’s not as tall as me, but he is definitely as—no, more ripped than me, and his chest is wider—where they gonna throw the silicone? Who does he become? Snake with some shit pumped in him and his dick cut off?
“Have you thought about how this would affect your dancing, man?”
“I’ll keep on dancing.”
“As a . . . as what?”
“As a dancer.”
“Ha! I like that, man!”
“So, like, Abdul, I ain’t trying to bend you over or no shit. So whas up with you, can’t nobody be your motherfucking friend, mystery man?”
“No, it’s not like that.”
“I need a cigarette break, let’s go outside.”
So talk to me, he says, and squats down like you see kids and sometimes old Chinese on the subway platform. Sucking on his cigarette, he waits, and I sit down on the sidewalk, cross my legs in lotus position in front of Starbucks, and tell him how hard it was when my mother died of cancer, then my father right after that in the Gulf War, but my grandmother used to dance at the Cotton Club way way back in the day, and she was into me getting lessons and that’s how I got in City Kids and Imena’s class at 135 City-Rec, and I kept studying and studying, and then you know I came downtown and got with you guys and shit. I don’t know why, but I decided not to open up to him, what did he really tell me about hisself, except he’s going to no-man’s-land? And I don’t understand that world, my dick is my friend; shit, sometimes I think it’s my only friend. He ain’t trying to bend me over—like fuck he ain’t. Well, I’m curious too. And since he’s trying to heist me, I just go ahead and ask him, is he hitting Scott, and what about My Lai, has Scott ever been down with her?
“No, he ain’t really gay, but I have fucked him, too much cognac and Ecstasy one night, but it’s always a cool bonding experience for me with these straight guys, you know. He used to go with this black Dominican chick, but his sister’s shit messed that up.”
“I so don’t get what you’re talking about.”
“Well, you know he’s a PC machine, parents gave him all this training and shit, and he wanted to choreograph and I guess, you know, be like the next Bill T. Jones. So that’s where he and Ricky and a whole lot of them got together with this deep abstract shit that didn’t really mean shit, and My Lai was throwing down with him as far as the money too, and it was cool. Well, you know, you came on in.”
“But what’s this big mystery with his sister?”
“Nothing, if he hadn’t been so square, he would have got in there with her, but, you know, his parents lied to him, and then he lied to himself, and then he stopped lying to himself, but he didn’t know what to do except be who he was, which was square. But what the hell! We are dancing and getting work—”
“And you still haven’t told me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“The money, his sister wrote a book and made a movie called Traders. Underneath all their New England shipping-scion shit, they were really slave traders. That’s how they made their money. And she challenged them, the siblings, to walk from the ducats. And none of them did. His thing was he was going to change the world with his art and he was going to use the money to right wrongs, yadda-yadda, you know how people trip. Don’t be so hard on un-homeboy. He’s trying to do right, but this has all been in the past year or so since the bitch went off on the family.”
“Let’s go, man, my ass is going to sleep sitting on this hard pavement.” I laugh. Wow, I think, that’s some totally bizarre shit, but I don’t care, I wanna dance with Herd, get a job, get in a college dance program....
I read in Stride’s newsletter that Roman is getting some kind of lifetime-achievement award from some American dance foundation.
“WELL, GOOD NEWS, we got a commission and we’re going to get paid to do My Lai’s piece at Dance Theater Studio,” Amy announces, hugging a clipboard to her chest.
It all sounds good to me, especially the money. Starbucks wanted a NY State ID or school ID, which I didn’t have.
“It’s not that hard, Abdul,” Snake said.
“Look, go down to 125 Worth Street between Centre and Lafayette. Tell them you lost your birth certificate. I did it. They’ll ask you to fill out a form with, you know, your mother’s name, mother’s place of birth, father’s name, et cetera,” Scott says.
She
said she didn’t know who my father was. He was gone and didn’t ever want us, and that’s the end of that, don’t ask me again, ever. I hated her for that.
“I did it,” Snake says.
“You got a valid photo ID?” Scott asks.
“No, I got a birth certificate. That’s what he needs so he can get a valid photo ID.” Snake.
“OK, My Lai did it—” Scott again.
“I think she did it in Connecticut.” Snake.
“No, she did it here. He can too. You need two utility bills or letters from government agencies,” Scott rattles off.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“No, listen, it’s not that hard,” Scott insists. “We switch the landline in here to your name. There’s electric and gas; we can get it switched to your name or add your name to the bill.”
“Do you have a Social Security card?” Snake asks.
“I know the number.”
“OK, so it’s all good,” Scott says.
“Shit, people come over here from Russia and shit and have documents. . . .” First thing from Amy.
“Probably with your name on it.” Snake laughs.
“Stop, Snake.” Scott.
“But you know what he means. Shit, Abdul was born here, and he’s walking around without documents?” Amy says, not backing down from Scott.
“OK, My Lai, you’re back on.”
I can’t stop eating her with my eyes, the long legs, short torso, dark red lips. I wonder how old she is; even Snake doesn’t know, and he’s got a file on everyone. What he does know is she has money, constant cash, and her own crib. That can only come from parents, drugs, or hoing. And she’s dancing 24/7, so she can’t be out selling nothing.
“Did everybody have time to read the text? Good, so you saw the roles. Listen up. Amy, you’re Lieutenant Calley and Sergeant Medina. Scott, you’re the Vietnam Memorial.”