by Paul Beatty
Coach is still rambling on; Scoby is sitting on a stool listening to Sarah Vaughan. That’s all he listens to now. I hear you, last time you saw him he was all Bud fucking Powell this, Bud Powell that, what happened to q through u? I asked him the same thing and he goes, “I ain’t missed shit—Quinichette, Rollins, Sanders, Shepp, Silver, Simone, Taylor, and any fools whose names start with u; niggers is too sappy. I ain’t got time for that free love ‘we’re all human beings’ saccharine jazz.” So I ask what’s so special about Sarah. “Sarah’s not one those tragic niggers white folks like so much. Sarah a nigger’s nigger, she be black coffee. Not no mocha peppermint kissy-kissy butter rum do-you-have-any-heroin caffè lattè.” The boy’s crazy. “She be black coffee”—what the fuck does that mean?
Scoby’s into the stuff you sent me; at the hotel or on the plane we’ll be listening to Sarah and Nicholas will make me read him a Chikamatsu play. Whenever the sake dealer and the loyal courtesan cross the bridge and start looking among the cherry blossoms for a place to kill themselves, Nicholas weeps with the star-crossed lovers. “I know what it feels like to live in a world where you can’t live your dreams. I’d rather die too. Why won’t they leave us alone? They fuck up your dream. They fuck up your dream.” The melodrama goes well with Sarah’s sultry-ass voice, though.
I’m beginning to see the sheer casual genius of Chikamatsu writing for the puppet theater. If I blur my eyes I can see the black strings attached to my joints and stretching to the skies. Ah, the freedom of fatalism. Now I can do what the fuck I want and blame it on the puppet-master. Watakushi wa nodo ga kawakimashita. Biru o ni hon maraimasho. Nicholas sees the strings, but he spends all his time looking for a pair of scissors. Every now and then the puppet-master hands him a pair of wooden scissors—Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, an open jump shot—and Scoby thinks he’s free, thinks he’s clipped his strings. The slack string is just a slack string.
I hear the bands starting up—I have to go now. Yoshiko, can you dome a favor? Please make an appointment for Scoby to see someone at the counseling office. I asked the coach to do it, but he thinks if Scoby is averaging nineteen points a game he’s fine. We get back next Monday. Thanks. I love you. Here is another handprint in ballpoint-pen ink. Please, rub it over your stomach and give the fetus my love.
The second-best part of the inkprint is that eventually the ink gets all over the basketball and all over everyone else’s hands and uniforms. Shit’s hilarious. Maybe you should make an appointment for me too. Aishiteru. See you soon.
Your husband,
Gunnar
Eleven
After the basketball season ended, the members of SWAPO and Ambrosia and my publicist from Gatekeeper Press asked me to speak at a rally protesting Boston University’s conferment of an honorary degree and a check for one hundred million dollars to M’m’mofo Gottobelezi, the African statesman with all the political foresight of Neville Chamberlain. I was to be the drawing card, the liberal, libertine, and literary nigger stamp of approval. I agreed to speak as long as no one put my grainy mug shot on the fliers.
Things looked different from the dais, behind a microphone, squinting into the spring sun. I was struck by how unaccustomed I was to looking down at people. Growing up in southwest Los Angeles, coming off a season of playing in places known as the Pit and the Hell Hole, I was always at the bottom, the spectacle, the fighting cock looking up. Looking up not out of any sense of great admiration, but because from the bottom there is nowhere else to look. On this earthly stratum we’re all dirt; I just happen to be Precambrian dust buried under layers of Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quaternary snobs. Some things are always on the top shelf, like paper towels in the supermarket.
I stood at the mountaintop, enjoying the view and waiting for my turn to speak. Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza burst with color and protest, an outdoor arboretum where the faces below bloomed like flowers in a meadow. Red and orange revolutionary spring annuals smoked joints, waved signs, and chanted. The yellow and cream-brown daffodils clung stubbornly to their alpaca sweaters and said “Excuse me” when the boisterous Puerto Rican and black townie snapdragons stepped on their Hush Puppies. Communist worker bees with propaganda pollinated minds made penetrable by eighty-degree weather; boom mikes swayed in the breeze like marshland cattails.
“If Boston University persists in lionizing and supporting killers and Uncle Toms like M’m’mofo Gottobelezi, we will not stand idly by and do nothing. This administration’s megadollar investment in oligarchical government is …” John Brown was trying to fire up the demonstrators. Spittle sprayed from his mouth, his tussled hair hung over one eye, his fist pounded the rostrum. He reminded me so much of Hitler at a Nuremberg party rally that I had to look behind me to check the stage for bunting with swastikas and steamrolled black eagles. “Uncle Toms like Gottobelezi must be …” There was that phrase again, “Uncle Tom”—the white liberal euphemism for “nigger.” No matter how apropos the label, I always wondered how come there are never any white Uncle Toms. How come the secretary of state is never an Uncle Tom? The director of the CIA is never a traitor to the white race or any other race? Only niggers can be subversives to the cause; everyone else is the “real enemy.” As if white folk understand the pressures on the African Bantu, the American nigger, to sell his soul in hopes of being untied from the whipping post.
John Brown said something about unity and looked over at me for confirmation; I spat on the ground, mouthed an obvious “Fuck you,” and gazed at the clouds. A silent act of dissension from the keynote speaker not unnoticed by the crowd. John Brown began to falter. He fumbled over his words, and his solidarity rhetoric began to fail him.
The crowd grew edgy and started pushing toward the platform. A middle-aged white man clutching a pen and a copy of my just-published book attempted to scale the platform, grabbing at my ankles: “Mr. Kaufman! Please sign my book—I understand now. I understand.” Scoby moved me back, pressed the sole of his shoe against the man’s sweaty skull, and booted him off the stage like Walter Slezak kicking the one-legged amputee into the sea in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. A white woman protested, exclaiming, “Hey, what about nonviolence?” To which Nicholas replied, “Who said anything about nonviolence?”
John Brown bailed out gracefully with an “I’d like to introduce the next speaker, Dexter Waverly, president of Ambrosia, the black student union.” Dexter strode to the podium, pandering to the crowd with stale slogans. “Power to the people!” he said. The crowd snapped back, “Power to the people!” and back and forth they went in a huge game of Simon says.
“Free South Africa!”
“Free South Africa!”
“M’m’mofo Gottobelezi sucks!”
“M’m’mofo Gottobelezi sucks!”
With the crowd roused to a frenzy, Dexter held up my book. “I’d like you to take your copy of Gunnar Kaufman’s phenomenal volume of verse, Watermelanin, and turn to page 133. Now read aloud with me from ‘Dead Niggers Don’t Hokum.’”
Every demonstrator from Boston local to university homesteader seemed to have a copy of the book. They read silently to themselves as Dexter read aloud.
… I am the lifelessness of the party,
the spade who won’t put on the lampshade …
I couldn’t hear the recitation very well because Nicholas was hugging me so tight my vertebrae popped like a string of firecrackers. When he released me, his wet cheek stuck to my face. “I’m proud of you, nigger.” I heard my name crackle from the loudspeakers and made my way to the podium. “Now it is with great pride I introduce star athlete, accomplished poet, black man extraordinaire, voice of a nation, Gunnar Kaufman. Remember, America, Boston University, the world is watching.”
A camera mounted on a crane swung down and bobbed in my face like a giant metal hummingbird. I looked directly into the lens. “Don’t do that,” the cameraperson whispered. I continued to look directly into the lens. When I was seven years old, my favorite television pers
onality was Transient Tammy. Sporting patchwork overalls and a floppy hat, Transient Tammy welcomed me home after school with a hearty “Howdy, vagrants.” Before introducing the last cartoon, she’d put on a pair of enormous sunglasses. These magic glasses gave Transient Tammy the power to see her bummy friends in television-land. She’d steal toward the camera, dirty knees bursting through her jeans. “I see Suzette in Arcadia, Ingrid in Alhambra, Anthony in Inglewood.” I peered into the camera, looking for my mom and Psycho Loco in Hillside, my father, but I didn’t see anyone, just my wall-eyed reflection in the lens.
The applause died down, leaving a hum in the air, and I nervously cleared my throat. I wanted to address the crowd like a seasoned revolutionary, open with a smooth activist adage, “There’s an old Chinese saying … ,” but I didn’t know any Chinese sayings, old or new. My hesitancy grew embarrassing. Yoshiko waddled over and ran my hand over the circumference of her bloated belly. I rubbed and smiled but still said nothing. I thought, If I were down there down among the mob, what would I want to hear?
Scoby broke the silence, shouting, “Thus do I ever make my fool my purse.” I laughed. The gathering laughed because I laughed. I decided I’d want to hear candor.
In the middle of the throng stood a commemorative sculpture. A slightly abstract cast-iron flock of birds in memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., who received his doctorate in theology from Boston University. “Do you see that sculpture?” I asked, pointing to this commissioned piece of artwork, which did not dedicate a small piece of the earth and time to Reverend King so much as it took partial credit for his success. “Notice them steel birds are migrating south—that’s BU’s way of telling you they don’t want you here.” The black people began to elbow their way to the front. I was speaking to the Negroes, but the white folks were listening in, their ears pressed to my breast, listening to my heart. “Who knows what it says on the plaque at the base of the sculpture?” No one spoke. “You motherfuckers pass by that ugly-ass sculpture every day. You hang your coats on it, open beer bottles on it, meet your hot Friday night dates there, now here you are talking about freedom this and whitey putting-shit-in-the-game that and you don’t even know what the plaque says? Shit could say ‘Sieg Heil! Kill All Niggers! Auslander Raus!’ for all you know, stupid motherfuckers. African-Americans, my ass. Middle minorities caught between racial polarities, please. Caring, class-conscious progressive crackers, shit. Selfish apathetic humans like everybody else.”
The crowd gave a resounding roar of approval. Here I was denigrating them and the people urged me forward. Candor, I reminded myself, candor.
“Now I’m not going to front, act like the first thing I did when I got to Boston University was proceed directly to the Martin Luther King Memorial and see what the goddamn plaque says. Only reason I know what it says is that I was coming out of Taco Bell on my way to basketball practice when I dropped my burrito deluxe at the base of the monument. When I bent down to wipe the three zesty cheeses, refried beans, and secret hot sauce off my sneakers, I saw what the plaque said. It says, ‘If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ How many of you motherfuckers are ready to die for black rule in South Africa—and I mean black rule, not black superintendence?”
Yells and whistles shot through the air.
“You lying motherfuckers. I talked to Harriet Velakazi, the ANC lieutenant you heard speak earlier, and she’s willing to die for South Africa. She don’t give a fuck about King’s sexist language, she ready to kill her daddy and if need be kill her mama for South Africa. Now don’t get me wrong, I want them niggers to get theirs, but I am not willing to die for South Africa, and you ain’t either.”
The audience hushed, their Good Samaritan opportunism checkmated. There was nothing they could say. “I’m willing to die for South Africa, where do I sign”?
I rubbed my tired eyes, licked my lips, and leaned into the microphone. “So I asked myself, what am I willing to die for? The day when white people treat me with respect and see my life as equally valuable to theirs? No, I ain’t willing to die for that, because if they don’t know that by now, then they ain’t never going to know it. Matter of fact, I ain’t ready to die for anything, so I guess I’m just not fit to live. In other words, I’m just ready to die. I’m just ready to die.”
I realized I’d made a public suicide pact with myself and stole a glance toward Scoby and Yoshiko. Scoby was nodding his head in agreement, while Yoshiko was pointing to her stomach and yelling, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
I swallowed and continued. “That’s why today’s black leadership isn’t worth shit, these telegenic niggers not willing to die. Back in the old days, if someone spoke up against the white man, he or she was willing to die. Today’s housebroken niggers travel the country talking themselves hoarse about barbarous white devils, knowing that those devils aren’t going to send them to a black hell. And if Uncle Sam even lights a fire under their asses, they backtrack in front of the media—‘What I meant to say was … The quote was taken out of context …’ What we need is some new leaders. Leaders who won’t apostatize like cowards. Some niggers who are ready to die!”
The crowd’s response startled me. “You! You! You!” they chanted, pointing their fingers in the air, proclaiming me king of the blacks.
Seizing the moment, Dexter Waverly snatched the microphone, put a warm arm around my shoulder. “Our new black leader, Gunnar Kaufman.” All I could think was What, no Scepter? Don’t I at least get a scepter?
The next morning the annoyingly perky hosts of Good Morning, America and its sister shows around the globe—Buenas Dias, Venezuela, Guten Morgen, Deutschland, among others—took over my living room, asking questions from leather swivel chairs.
“Buon giorno, Italia. Signore Kaufman, did you know that during last night’s reception for M’m’mofo Gottobelezi, Dexter Waverly killed himself in the college president’s office?”
“No.”
“Si, si, he held a knife to his throat and demanded that President Filbey rip up the hundred-million-dollar check and spit in Gottobelezi’s champagne or he’d slash his throat.”
“And what happened?”
“Filbey ripped up the check and spit in the Zulu’s champagne. Signore Waverly apologized for the interruption, read a death poem dedicated to you, then plunged the knife into his throat.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t you feel responsible, Signore Kaufman? After all, it was your speech that inspired Signore Waverly.”
“I don’t know. What did the poem say?”
Death Poem for Gunnar Kaufman
Abandoning all concern
my larynx bobs,
enlightenment is a bitch.
“That’s not a bad poem. But I don’t feel responsible for anything anyone else does. I have enough trouble being responsible for myself. Besides, it looks like Dexter’s death prevented one hundred million dollars from being deposited in the National Party’s coffers.”
“Bonjour, France. Monsieur Kaufman, but what about your endorsement of freedom through suicide?”
“My suicide, no one else’s.”
“Yes, but people are following your example. There are reports of black people killing themselves indiscriminately across the United States. Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Yes, send me your death poems.”
“Hyuää huomenta, Finland. Mr. Kaufman, isn’t suicide a way of saying that you’ve—that black people have given up? Surrendered unconditionally to the racial status quo?”
“That’s the Western idea of suicide—the sense of the defeated self. ‘Oh, the dysfunctional people couldn’t adjust to our great system, so they killed themselves.’ Now when a patriotic American—a soldier, for example—jumps on a grenade to save his buddies, that’s the ultimate sacrifice. They drape a flag on your coffin, play taps, and your mama gets a Congressional Medal of Honor to put on the mantelpiece.”
�
�So you see yourself as a hero?”
“No. It is as Mishima once said: ‘Sometimes hara-kiri makes you win.’ I just want to win one time.”
“Last laugh?”
“I don’t see anyone laughing.”
“This is Namasté, India. And when do you plan to commit suicide, Mr. Kaufman?”
“When I’m good and goddamn ready.”
Twelve
During the reading period before finals, Scoby’s behavior became increasingly bizarre. The school psychologist’s diagnosis was acute homesickness, and she recommended that Nick move in with Yoshiko and me. At first I too thought he missed the old neighborhood. Scoby tried to recreate Los Angeles in Boston. He plastered most of the walls at school with poems torn from my book. He planted palm trees along Commonwealth Avenue, got run out of Roxbury when he tried to pay some Puerto Ricans to act Mexican for a day. He brought home exhaust from the public buses, which he’d bottled in five-gallon water containers, and released the noxious gases in the apartment. We took day trips to gloomy Revere Beach, sitting under the concrete veranda, complaining about the sun’s setting behind us. “Gunnar, I hate this place. Everything is ass-backward out here, man. Here we are in May, fully clothed at a beach with no waves. The best pro basketball player in the city’s history is white. The women like meek niggers. People eat thick soup, drink green beer. The cops are fat. The fire trucks are green. If I see one more fucking shamrock … It’s getting so bad I thought I saw a leprechaun near the river the other day.”
The obvious solution was for Nicholas to go home, but there was no home for him to go to; the man in the mauve suit had returned and convinced his mother to sell the house and travel the country, skating in an old-timer roller derby league. My mom offered to put him up, but he was too proud.
He often called himself the forty-eighth ronin. Nicholas Scoby was a masterless samurai who missed out on the revenge at Kira’s castle in the winter of 1702 and the mass seppuku two weeks later. “Gunnar, what would the forty-eighth ronin do if he was stuck out here in Boston, Massachusetts, home of the frappe and the grinder, masterless and alone?”