by Ishmael Reed
“That’s fine,” he said. “Tweet, tweet, see you soon.” (Click.)
The phone rang again. “Hello, Mr. Doopeyduk,” another voice said. “This is Poison Dart magazine, the magazine of black liberation. We are having a symposium on the role of the black writer in contemporary society. We will be covering such issues as: Should he glare at Charlie? Should he kinda stick out his lower lip and look mean? or should he just snag at Charlie’s pants legs until his mouth is full of ankles and calves and he gets the sweet taste of Max Factor on his tongue? We shall also be discussing whether the brothers should part their hair on the side or part it down the middle. These are grave issues and you as a friend of the liberation movement shouldn’t want to miss the discussion.”
“Look,” I answered. “I’m not an actor. I’m more of a clown.”
“Good, Mr. Doopeyduk,” the voice said. “So are we, tweet, tweet. See you soon.”
This thing was getting all out of hand. I would have to go to the only man who was capable of setting the matter straight: CIPHER X. I ran out of the house and up the stairs of the factory building and pounded on the door. Cipher peeked out, followed by heavy clouds of smoke.
“Look, Bukka, I’ll see you at the performance tonight. Right now I’m having a press conference, sweetheart.” But before I could answer, the door was slammed in my face. I rushed to the corner and bought the afternoon paper the ny whine.
BUKKA DOOPEYDUK HAS EVERY RIGHT TO KILL, CIPHER X SAYS. JACKIE COUGHS. BOBBY HAS HICCUPS. TEDDY OPENS TOYTALK FAIR.
read growing up in soulsville first of three installments
-or what it means to be a backstage darky
by Cipher (o)
I ran back to the loft. Press conference or no press conference, this kat wasn’t going to get me killed. This time I was trampled by reporters who flew down the steps and out of the loft to file their stories. (Man, I have to tell you that little J. Lapp Swine was keeping right up with them, galloping along like a jet-propelled groundhog.) I rushed into the office where Cipher X was pounding away at the typewriter.
“What’s the matter, my man? Can’t you see I’m writing this jazz review for Buck magazine?”
“Fuk Buk magazine,” I said, jabbing my finger into the very pulp of the ny whine. “Are you trying to get me killed? You said that all a BECOMING was was a fusion of light, sound and film, always expanding, never complete. What are you telling the reporters these lies for? I have a good mind to punch you out, you fuken maypolegrabber with a skinny neck.”
“Relax, my man, relax. I thought that you were hip. That you were into somethin’. But you’re turning out to be as lame as all the others. Those headlines bring in the bread, my man. We couldn’t eat without those headlines. Look at this,” he said, pulling a wad of dough from the desk drawer big enough to choke a horse. “Why man, these rich kats are coming down here busting their nuts over you.”
“But I’m not interested in fame or fortune. I just want to correct certain loopholes in the Nazarene manual. Sort of fortify the faith, so to speak.”
“Well, man, you’re interested in loopholes. I’m interested in hoopla hoops. I can’t see why we can’t collaborate-they both have diphthongs. This morning those diphthongs brought me twenty-five grand from some top government officials.”
“GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS?” I said, tearing to the window and looking to the street below for suspicious-looking cars.
“What’s your worry, my man?” Cipher X said. “They were in here all morning hopping around my er … er … maypole in the nude. They paid me twenty-five grand for twenty hoopla hoops.”
“Government officials?” I asked again, astonished. “What government officials?”
“Why, those kats across the Black Bay at the motel. They were up here this morning posing for some of my underground films. Didn’t you hear them panting in the rear of the audience last night? Why, they all thought you were raw and powerful. And ‘a little cute too’ as one of the high officials put it.”
“But didn’t they get upset at all the invective from that tape recorder? And what about the news stories?”
“Aw man, you got them kats all wrong. Why, they’re real swingers. You should see them up there getting away. Why, they stomp up a storm.”
“YOU’VE BEEN TO THE HARRY SAM MOTEL?” I asked.
“Sure, baby, they’re my best customers. Why, I just go up there and ring the bell like a little old Avon lady and stone take care of business. I mean, those kats are not like the creeps around here: eating a whole lot of dumb brown rice and taking up collections for a gallon of Paisano wine or kneeling and worshiping some big fat lazy gook. They are really TOGETHER. I mean, it’s a groovy nowhere, if you know how.”
I felt better.
“Here,” Cipher said, giving me a slim ruffled cigarette. “The kids up at Walden High School smoke these. Take a drag.”
I felt much better. “Well, Cipher, do you really think that I can make a career at BECOMINGS and study loopholes too?”
“Sure, baby,” Cipher answered. “Why, the art crowd is crazy about you. Look at what this kat in the Deformed Demokrat says:
AFTER BEING STUMPED BY CECIL TAYLOR AND ARCHIE SHEPP IT DID THIS CRIPPLED MIND SOME GOOD TO SEE OL BONES
“He said that about me?” I asked, pleased.
“Sure, my man, you’re on your way to big things. Now let me get back to my article before the typewriter gets lockjaw and gum in the keys.”
I walked out of the loft possessed. A BECOMINGS person. I was really on the way now. I went into a store and bought a cigarette holder, a beret and some shades. Then I went into the drugstore and purchased Band-Aids, gauze and iodine. I decided to buy Buck magazine to read one of Cipher’s jazz articles before going to bed. I settled back and leafed through the pages until I saw Cipher’s by-line:
HOW TO BE A HIP KITTY AND A COOL COOL DADDY O
The next month went by rapidly with Cipher and me playing to standing-room-only crowds in the Hamptons, Provincetown, Woodstock, and Fremont, Ohio. I was invited to make personal appearances on radio and television; but soon it became known-after an interview in the Deformed Demokrat-that I was a loner, preferring to remain near the midnight oil—as it were—shirt-sleeved and diligently poring over Nazarene volumes. After this they stopped pestering me.
All the hippy bishops from the Church of Christ’s Disciples sent me fan mail; some even went so far as to send me the rattlesnake leavings from their altars.
My name appeared in the newspapers each day:
DOOPEYDUK WARNS: FROGS, BOILS, LOCUSTS, FIRE, GLACIERS, ASTEROIDS.
One day I received a small linen cloth envelope. I enacted somersaults over its contents,
YOU ARE INVITED TO A BAD TRIP
AT THE HARRY SAM MOTEL. MUSIC BY CHET BAKER
FUN, STROBOSCOPIC LIGHTS, HOOPLA HOOPS AND
FRANK FRANKS (SMILE)
a driver will call for you at 12:00 A.M. August 6th, 1945
I looked at my gold pocket watch. (That was tomorrow night.)
Just as I started up the steps the telephone rang. On the other end a voice exclaimed, “Mr. Doopeyduk, this is the Allen Hangup Show again. We would like to interview you tonight on the subject of ‘Git It On.’”
“Look, my man” (going colored on the kat), “I cannot be participating in no show. I thought you fellows knew that I’m studying the Nazarene faith in my spare time. Why, just the other day Nancy Spellman and I were discussing game theory. The Bishop seemed quite worried.”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the voice said. “I neglected to say that Cipher and I are good friends and I thought-seeing as how he’s done you so many favors-you might do it as a favor to him. He and I run a head shop out on Fire Island. We give up strange recipes to people.”
“I’ll make an exception this time,” I said. “As a favor to Cipher, but in the future you won’t be successful enlisting me for the show.”
“O, WONDERFUL, Mr. Doopeyduk,” the voice answered. “See you to
night.”
We sat on a sofa behind a table with a tea service on the top. Allen Hangup had his blond hair done at Mlle. Pandy Matzabald’s Mudpie Salon. Little pockets of flesh hung underneath his eyelids. He was a middle-aged medium-height man wearing a mod tie. A man stood before us holding a card which was the signal for the show to begin. It was one of those informal programs in which the viewer could even witness the cameras wheeling in and out of the studio, bare except for a round platform supporting the sofa and table.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hangup began. “Our guest tonight is none other than the star of the Broadway-three-offs-removed hit, ‘Git It On.’ ‘Git It On’ has become such a box-office success that it’s being considered for the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts.”
It wasn’t warm in the studio, but nevertheless Hangup began removing his tie and moving a finger around his wet collar.
“It’s been unanimously acclaimed by the trustees of the Eugene Saxton Foundation and such magazines as Good Housekeeping. If you haven’t seen ‘Git It On’ before, see it now. It’s in its fourth week,” he started to say but then sticking his tongue over the side of his lip and panting, he lunged for my throat and throwing his papers to the floor shouted, “OKAY DOOPEYDUK, TELL US WHEN WE GONE GIT IT ON.”
“MAN, WILL SOMEBODY GET THIS KAT OFF ME?” I yelled. The man in the control room bolted through its door and came to my assistance, giving him a cup of Miltown and water. A commercial was substituted.
“DO YOU HAVE A CHINAMAN IN YOUR DUMBWAITER?”
When Allen Hangup was perfectly calm a man holding an earphone and bending on one knee reprimanded the moderator. “Hangup, we warned you about this. If you continue to break down each time ‘Git It On’ is the topic for the Allen Hangup Show, we’ll just have to call upstairs and see if J.C. can’t get somebody else for the gig.”
“I know. I know,” said Hangup, shaking his head sadly and turning to me. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Doopeyduk. It’s just that they’ve had twelve moderators before me who had the same problem. They expect you to be a passionless machine like those cameras over there. But I’m not a stone, an empty shell; I’m human and I get damp in the crotch like all the others (sigh) when ‘Git It On’ is discussed.”
“I can forgive passion,” I answered, “but the next time watch the vines, my man. They’re expensive,” I said, tidying my mussed suit.
“Just be careful,” the engineer said to Hangup and returned to the studio.
The commercial was concluding-“THEN TAKE DAT GOOK BY THE NECK AND SLAM DAT GOOK. …”
The show continued.
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the composed Hangup said, “what do you think about this grand place?”
“Grand? Are you for real? You call this FAR OUT grand? Why, the only issue is whether those kats up there in the watercloset (FCC rules were stringent) will get off their big fat rumps and come out.”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” Hangup continued, “why I haven’t heard such vile language about the land we all love since my years in radio. Such demagogic things to say about this country.”
“Land! Country! Man, those people have been up there in that foul nasty place for thirty years dripping feces everywhere they prowl and you got the nerve to talk about land and country. Are you off the wall?”
“Mr. Doopeyduk, this is the bastion of liberty and democracy, the citadel of fair play, the bulwark of individual liberty.”
“Aw man, cut out the stone walls. Why, anybody in his right mind knows that this is a BIG WAY-OUT BRINGDOWN,” I said, my voice rising. “There are things going on in HARRY SAM that will give you the willies. It bothers me ’cause I loves HIMSELF so much. Bats fly into his stomach walls and shit in his brain. And there’s horrible screaming inside as funny lookin’ monsters tramp through his testicles searching for food. Enchanted areas where the undead travel around on motorized golf carts. Why, I can go on for days. A bunch of ol people singing ‘Roger Young’ off-key, forgetting the words and trying to unload Hadrian’s rock on suckers. A collection of rusty trumpets and a wheelbarrow full of heroic couplets and fugues. Who in his right mind would want to buy a rock or a wheelbarrow full of dead verse? Why, just the other day I saw a man running out of a bar yelling: ‘Just like Munich, just like Munich.’ WHAT THE FUK DOES MUNICH HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING? You can only hear that kind of talk in some place where people pine over classical American vamps, where judges comb their hair with two-foot combs …”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” Hangup said, “surely you’re putting our audience on. Why, I never saw a nun raping a hun in Bronxville. Are you sure you’re not fantasizing?”
“Man, you can put your psychic elbows and shoulders in the way and block like a (beep) if you want to—but I don’t think it’s funny. I mean, if you keep on talking about Bronxville and places that don’t even exist, the place will be turned out. Pure and simple. Every damned cobweb will be ripped to shreds.”
“Mr. Doopeyduk,” the Hangup said, “we’ve had some weird customers up here on the show. Richard Nixon was on once discussing federal dog-napping legislation and so was a man who thought he had visited Mars. But you, Mr. Doopeyduk, by far are the most bizarre.”
“I don’t have time for tricks. I’ve spent the whole week studying watercloset seat covers and I’d just as soon go back to my work if you don’t mind. I think that I’ll hat up anyway because you don’t seem to be willing to run it down front.”
I walked out of the studio as a commercial for Radio Free Europe was quickly put on. Two minutes of barbed wire and Spike Jones playing “Ave Maria.” I was shook from the interview. I mean, didn’t this kat know that he’s living in a freak? If he doesn’t, somebody ought to pull his coat.
The next evening I ran up the stairs, my tuxedo draped over my arm. Once inside the room, I washed, shaved, dressed, put fresh Band-Aids on the craggy bruises which covered my face, applied iodine to swollen areas of my neck and wrists. I tried to do something for the lopsided nose and small slit that ran above my right eyelid.
A rap at the door was followed by Elijah’s voice. “Hey, man, there’s SOMETHING down here who wants to see you, looks like a strange-looking beast.”
It must be one of HARRY SAM’s drivers, I thought.
“Tell him I’ll be right down, Elijah.”
A man was standing at the bottom of the stairs. At least I took him to be a man because he wore a derby and smoked a black cigar; otherwise he was so short, he could have been a child. He wore a white smock, and bow tie of polka dots and butterflies.
“You Bukka Doopeyduk?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered him. “You must be one of HARRY SAM’s assistants?”
“That’s me,” the little man said. “We have to join the others down at the boat, what’s locked up at the pier.”
We went out of the house and climbed into an old Pontiac. I carried the black attaché case crammed full of notes on my knee. “Do you mind if I open the window?” I said to the derby, barely showing above the front seat of the car. I was choking on the smoke issuing from the cigar, in thick black bunches.
“Go ahead,” the little man said, steering the car, its sirens screaming terror at the stricken passers-by.
“Gee,” I said, leaning forward and gripping my knees, “I can’t wait until I get there and engage those bishops in a discussion of the Nazarene apocalypse.”
The man slammed on his brakes, almost sending me flying over the seat of the car. “Look. If you don’t mind, I would appreciate it if you cut out the yap. I don’t go for all the yakkity-yak while drivin’ the customers up to SAM’s. Unnerstand? I mean, I’m not innerstead in your ’pinions so if you want to go shooting off your trap, then swim the Black Bay to the party,” the little man fumed.
“I get the message,” I answered, leaning back into the cushions of the seat. Peppery little fellow, I thought, as we drove the rest of the way in silence.
We reached the pier where the plumbers’ battleships had been decorated for the occasio
n. We climbed out of the car and jaunted up the ramp to the ship. There was a spattering of applause as some of my fans recognized me.
My escort disappeared into the shadows, leaving me inside the stateroom with some of the guests—which included most of the nothing elements: Nazarene apprentices, Nazarene Bishops, judges and their manicurists, mechanical drawers, and Stephen Wolinski, the mayor of Buffalo, who had left the rest of his party atop the Empire State Building while he accepted an invitation to meet the Chief of State. The guests were doing a dance called the stomp which involved smashing your foot or kinda lifting it and merely stompin’.
In his hand, the mayor held a gift-wrapped kabalsa. Some of the others moved around the edges of the room in their own thing: hands in pockets and doing a mean blasé stomp.
The guests were being entertained by a group of rock-and-roll Nazarene apprentices from the Lower East Side who were playing recorders, lutes, drums, tambourines and electric guitars. They had taken the poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau—all white men with three names, dead many years-and set them to music.
Songs such as “Look at Dat Waterfowl Bending Its Skinny Neck in da Crick Ovah Dere,” “Ain’t Nature Grand?” or “Your Cock Was Nevah So Good but When I Laid Ya in the Calabash Field” rang out with authority over the Black Bay.
I leaned over the rail; NOTHING slipping out of sight before me as the boat picked up anchor and began its arduous push toward the island. It felt as if we were moving above the smooth slime of the Black Bay. I could see the old men trudging homeward after a day of clipping out articles from the old Harper’s Brothers magazine led by a spright-stepping octogenarian beating a bass drum.
In Soulsville the busted microphones resounded with the oratory of live ghosts protesting the mystery of the missing children.
Finally, midway through our journey the public-address system announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, the infamous Black Bay.” Huge yellow lights from the battleship aimed their beams on the nefarious waters. As far as the eye could see, long serpentine tentacles oscillated in the bay and what appeared to be white arms reached from beneath its surface. The silhouettes of peculiar-shaped animals leaped into the air-sometimes many feet high. It was a staggering sight.