Cool Horace said, “How you know I haven’t already found it?”
The sister answered, “If youda found it, Jesus would’ve put a glow in your face like the one he put in mine.”
Her Main man said, “I thought some good pot made your eyes shine like that.”
Her eyes lit up even brighter now with recognition, as she still stared at Jimmy Jay. He fought hard to keep himself from leaving, conspicuously and suddenly.
“Uh-uh!” From the signifying gathering.
The sister moved away from Horace. “The Lord will not bless you talking disrespectful to one of his disciples.”
“Bullshit!”
As they walked bug-eyed across the street and turned left, Horace was telling them how he knew the sister who was one of the Lord’s disciples. “The last time I saw that chick she was a natural fox. She was a model with a couple of minks, one of which she used to wear in the middle of July. I used to see her at all the parties, and she would always be tripped out, on pot or booze or pills or something.”
Jimmy Jay was breathing naturally now. He said, “She’s still tripping out. She went from one trip to another.”
Her Main man said, “Didn’t she?”
They walked one block and turned right, the eyes of the members of His Excellency’s cabinet growing wider and wider, like people in perpetual stupefaction. Jimmy Jay said excitedly, “Here it is! The greatest show on earth! This is the center of it, the big damn tent.”
When he finally caught his breath, HWB said, “So this is Forty-Second Street!”
Jimmy Jay sang, “The avenue I’m taking you to.”
HWB said, “The greatest show on earth!”
Even cool Horace Whitestick sounded excited. “Believe me when I tell you.”
On the corner of Forty-Second and Seventh Avenue two nicely dressed young men in bow ties and very very closely cropped Afros were selling newspapers. “Get your Bilalian News, brothers and sisters. Get your Bilalian News right here.”
They approached cool Horace. “I get it delivered to my domicile,” he told them.
“Good, brother, good!”
Jimmy Jay said, “Bilalian News? What happened to Muhammad Speaks?”
Cool Horace made with the burlesque. “That’s right, Bro. You ain’t no Afro-American no more. You ain’t no African neither. You ain’t even Black. You is a Bilalian.”
Jimmy Jay said, “The hell you say.”
“The hell you say is right.”
“Where is Bilalia?”
Well?
About ten or eleven steps from the closely cropped bow-tied nicely dressed Bilalians, a Black man cleanly decked out in a pale green suit like it had been ripped off of a table in a billiard parlor and a pale green polka dot sport shirt was preaching the word of God, calling on the wayward brothers and sisters to “Come to Jesus just now.” A disinterested crowd was gathering.
The cabinet lingered. Jimmy pulled at HWB. “Come on, country cousin.” They continued, awe-eyed down the honky-tonk boulevard.
Cool Horace told them, “If ever any one of you cats finds yourself alone on this mama-jabbing street, like you’re on the way to catch a bus down at the Authority, just walk straight ahead and don’t say nothing to nobody. Don’t look to your right or left. Anybody say anything to you, make tend you’re deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other one. Don’t give anybody the time of day, or nothing.”
The awe-eyed cabinet members looked from Horace to Jimmy for a translation of what sounded vaguely here and there as having a slight kinship with the English language.
Jimmy gave them a rather broad interpretation. “Like keep your eyes and ears open and your good hand on your wallet. I was walking down this mother one day, and cat bumped into me, and I said excuse me. He said, ‘Don’t mention it, brother.’ And like a conditioned reflex, I reached back to pat my back pocket. My wallet was gone. By the time I looked up again that mama-jabber that picked my pocket was long gone—around the corner . . . So, watch it!”
Barra Abingiba and Jimmy Jay slapped palms. “Hey! But you don’t have to worry about a thing. I know you brought your protection with you. I hipped you to that shit in front.” Barra Abingiba was the hippest African the fake PM had ever known or even heard of. Barra even walked with a Lenox Avenue limp.
Somewhere along the avenue, HWB had lost his way. He inquired timidly, frightened, “But what is, I mean, how can one walk down one’s mother and how big are cats that bump into you and pick your pockets and then speaks English?”
Mamadou Tangi said, “His Excellency obviously speaks in similes and metaphors and symbolisms.”
His so-called Excellency said, “Exactly so.”
Barra said, “You got it.”
They walked cautiously down the thronging throbbing boulevard with their left hands rigidly on their hip pockets. Somebody stuck his or her head out of a third-story window and shouted, “Jimmy! Jimmy Jay!” And the Minister Primarily almost jumped out of his trousers and simultaneously wet himself, almost, ungentlemanly. His breath came now in brief swift blasts.
But then a dude down on the street looked up and answered. He was not the only Jimmy Jay on the one and only Great White Way, for which he was profoundly grateful. Undaunted, they continued down the honky-tonk boulevard.
They stopped and stared at the advertisement of naked white women on the marquee outside of a theater. Cool Horace gave Jimmy Jay an elbow in the side, and Jimmy turned and watched, surreptitiously, a tall blond lady strutting by. She was wearing very high-heeled shoes and a miniskirt that “came up to her mustache,” in the words of Horace Whitestick. Didn’t quite cover the cheeks of her buttocks. She dropped her hanky, ladylike, and when she stopped to pick it up, you could tell what the dear girl ate for breakfast.
Thousands of people were out on the streets. Mamadou Tangi said to His Excellency, “This is truly the greatest show on earth. The rise and fall of Western civilization, hopefully.”
His so-called Excellency said, “Exactly so. But don’t make book on it.”
Now they stood near an art theater advertising a picture that was the last word in artistic cinematography with the provocative title of Guess Who’s Coming. “Hard-core porno.” “. . . Mixed Combo.” They could not help overhearing a great big voice.
Jimmy turned and standing very near him talking to another cat was a little-biddy Black dude who looked like a stand-in for Woody the Woodpecker in the very last stages of tuberculosis, profiling underneath a wide black hat so wide you could hardly see him. The sun couldn’t get to the dude and he was obviously turning pale for the loss of sunlight, visibly, every ticktock of a second.
In a froggy voice he proclaimed to one and all, “I know I’m a pretty motherfucka cause the whores tell me so!”
HWB asked timidly, “I say, do so many of the people have sexual relations with their mothers? I mean, habitually?”
Horace Whitestick cracked up laughing. Then he hunched Jimmy Jay again. “Look what I see yonder coming.”
A tall redheaded genteel lady, double breasted, was strolling down the avenue in a low-cut blouse, cleavage exposed entirely, nothing below it but some pinkish flower-patterned see-through panties. Her pubescence seemed afire. She was walking up the street unnoticed. Perhaps there were at least a hundred thousand on this block.
Now they saw a couple of Black clowns limping down the avenue in high-heeled sneakers, underneath wide-brimmed hats with built-in processed sideburns. Even hip Jimmy Jay found himself mumbling, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”
Cool Horace said, “There are clowns in every circus, and like you said in front, this is the greatest show on earth.”
And Jimmy Jay repeated, “The greatest show on earth—at least.”
Cool Horace improvised. “It is the most—at least.”
Barra said, “Believe me when I say so.”
They crossed over in the middle of the block to the left side of the street heading toward the Hudson Riv
er, according to Cool Horace. They stood there near the corner in front of the SUPERFLY BOUTIQUE, digging the wild and crazy scene. A dude was conferring with a couple of blonde-wigged bouffant-Afroed high-heeled Black women. This dude had curlers in his process with a red kerchief atop. Reading the riot act to tie genteel ladies of the boulevard.
“I don’t want to have to speak to you bitches about that shit again!”
Jimmy Jay, usually the cool one, lunged suddenly toward the big hair-curlered bastard. Cool Horace had to restrain him. He pulled Jimmy Jay away, and they continued down the street. “Baby, you were about to get yourself all messed up.”
Jimmy grumbled, “Goddammit, I hate to see womenfolks mistreated like that, especially Black ones, and by a Black man. I’d like to beat the shit out of the no-good bastard!”
“The only trouble with that is all three of them would have probably ganged up on you.”
“What’s his story, anyhow?” Jimmy asked, rhetorically. Jimmy Jay wasn’t stupid.
“The same as that mama-jabbing road runner over there on the other side.”
“And—?”
“Both of them are ladies’ men. Mama-jabbing pimps.”
Jimmy Jay said, “Both of them ought to be shot with shit and put in jail for stinking. A pimp could crawl underneath a sleeping rattlesnake without waking up the motherfucka!”
“Wouldn’t be no pimps if there weren’t no whores,” Cool Horace philosophized.
It was 12:25 by the clock on the corner, where the madness continued, unabated, intensifying. The theater listings on the marquees were not to be believed.
“PUSSY GALORE!”
“MEAT PACKERS CONVENTION!”
“BIG DICK RICHARDS!”
Near the corner in front of BIG DICK RICHARDS were gathered the faithful Onward Christian Soldiers of the Salvation Army with saxophone and tambourines just finished now with BRIGHTEN THE CORNER WHERE YOU ARE and moving blithely and determinedly into WHEN THE ROLL IS CALLED UP YONDER. Dressed they were in their blue uniforms and caps, trimmed in red. Except that two of them, young ladies, integrated (Black and white), stood there in the midst of them, singing loudly, clearly, and sincerely, in a different kind of uniform underneath outlandish auburn wigs, and wigged they were by unusual spirits, very very highly heeled, in skimpy skirts, that were also high almost above their bouncy buttocks. The tears streamed down the wigged ones’ eyes as they sang—
WHEN THE TRUMPETS OF THE LORD SHALL SOUND,
AND TIME SHALL BE NO MORE—
The Minister Primarily and his cabinet stood there for a moment, fascinated; tenderhearted HWB in tears for the wayward girls who had lost their way, and had clearly found themselves again. Their souls had been obviously converted.
One of the high-hipped auburn-wigged ones wiped the tears from her eyes and blew her nostrils and winked a smiling wicked wink at the Minister Primarily, who naturally returned the compliment. Who said that chivalry was dead?
They turned rightward now, across the boulevard, heading north up Eighth Avenue. In this block there were more whites than Blacks. Hustlers, pimps, whores, hopheads, the whole magilla. Frowsy-looking outrageously wigged funky-looking ladies strolling down the avenue, some white women in Afro wigs. Fat ones, skinny ones, and all in between. ALL MALE NUDE SHOW, ALL GIRL NUDE SHOW. LOVE TEAMS, TOPLESS—BOTTOMLESS. Art theaters all over the place. A veritable conclave of the thriving arts. Broadway Renaissance overflowing on Eighth Avenue.
HWB ventured timorously, “This certainly is an artistic community.”
Jimmy stared at HWB, questioningly. Surely Mr. Lloyd was being sarcastic. Cool Horace started his crazy giggle.
Barra said to his very proper countryman, “You got to be putting us on.”
“Putting you on what?” HWB inquired.
A bearded dark-haired white gentleman walked up to HWB and tugged at his jacket. His voice was like a foghorn in disrepair. “I want to hip you to something. Whole bunch of white bitches do anything you want them to. Fuck you, suck you, lick you in the arse. You Black boys will surely love it.”
This time it was Cool Horace losing his cool. “Take your hands off the man’s dry goods, motherfucka!”
This time Jimmy Jay pulled Horace away. “That’s Mafia, fool!”
“What is he, a Jew?”
“Hell naw.”
“Eyetalian?”
“He is not an Eyetalian.”
“What the hell is he then. He damn sure ain’t no Irishman.”
“He’s an Englishman,” Jimmy responded, “an Englishman of the first generation.” Jimmy thought of the teddy boys in Piccadilly Circus. He remembered Old Blue Eyes at Daphne’s London party.
“No shit?”
“I’m like Professor Higgins. I’m an expert on brogues and accents. For example, I can tell from the way you speak that you came from a little old bad cracker town in ’Sippi.”
All Horace answered was “No shit?”
They were standing in front of an “Art Cinema,” which proclaimed to one and all: “An Art Cinema of the Esoteric for Discriminating People of Distinction.” Jimmy Jay walked up to the ticket booth and purchased tickets and conducted them inside, burlesquing, “We is discriminating, esoteric peoples of distinction.”
It was so dark and funky inside he almost broke his ass several times as they stumbled toward the front. The crowd was getting restless, whistling, and stomping. Finally, the music started on the stereo loud and ear-drum-blasting. Black and Tan Fantasy. The venerable Duke of Ellington.
They walked into a row near the front in front of white folks stepping on feet and mumbling, “Excuse me,” and now all of them were seated.
HWB looked nervously around him. “Don’t any ladies of distinction attend the esoteric cinema?”
No one bothered to answer His-Wife’s-Unsophisticated-Bottom. Okay now, the show was ready to begin. An electronic New York voice announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to the Art Cinema of the Esoteric. This is an art theater of the highest cultural attainment. Our policy is never to lend ourselves to the encouragement of prurient tendencies or instincts. This serious adult art theater is for the cultural uplift of humankind. Art for art’s sake is the ultimate of all human endeavor. It is in this tradition and spirit that the Art Cinema of the Esoteric for Discriminating Persons of Distinction proudly introduces, direct from one year’s engagement in Las Vegas at the Follies Bougerre Brothelle Magnifique, the only show of its kind in the Big Apple. Again, we proudly present the female portion of that famous love team of Pussy Cat O’Malley and Big Stick Pritchard, give her a big hand, ladies and gentlemen. If anything at all in this presentation offends you, be sure to tell your friends about it.”
No applause.
The lovely lady with the long little-girl blue-ribboned pigtails danced slowly onto the tiny dusty stage with its encased electric fans blowing from each side. She was sweet faced and angelic and as innocent as a newborn infant. She was thinly clad in a tight-fitting dress with a long slit down the middle of her. The angel-faced one was twisting and grinding more or less to the beat of the music, which was blasting eardrums from the stereo establishment. Now it was playing I CAN’T GIVE YOU ANYTHING BUT LOVE, BABY.
By the time the piece was over, Angel Face had discarded her outer garments and had taken off her bra. The lovely Goldilocked maiden was not consumptively breasted in the least. Cool Horace made such off-the-wall remarks as “She keeps that up, she gon catch her death of dampness.”
There was a loudmouthed dude of Caucasian ancestry underneath a Texas hat several rows behind them, yelling, “Take it off, bitch! Take it all off!”
Jimmy Jay said to Cool Horace, sarcastically, “Somebody ought to teach that fool some table manners.”
Cool Horace said to Jimmy, “Don’t you recognize that idiot?”
Jimmy turned around and got a good hard look. “His flap ears look familiar, but his head and face have grown beyond my recollection.”
“That’s S
enator Bobby Lee Badcock from Lolliloppi County, Hot Shot, Mr. Prime Minister, Himself, Your Excellency, sir. He’s from Daddle-Do, Mississippi, about fifteen miles north of Rareback. Between Rareback and the county seat in Lolliloppi. He’s the knight in shining armor, defender of the Ku Klux Klan and the honor of southern womanhood, and especially whatnot. The baddest cracker in the US Congress. Just last month, he introduced a bill to send all the quote unquote ‘niggers’ back to Africa. I sure do wish I had a camera.”
The fake PM said, “I wish I had a goddamn pistol.”
The stereo establishment was detonating eardrums now with I DON’T WANT TO BE LONELY. By the time LONELY was done, Goldilocks was down to her natural clothing, wearing nothing but a beautiful smile. And it was plain to see she was a natural blond all the way down to the dampish downy just above her in-between.
The bogus PM leaned over to His Wife’s Bottom and whispered, devilishly, “She sure has got some pretty blue eyes.”
Barra whispered, “She’s got a very intelligent face.” Sotto voce.
Meanwhile she was wiggling around innocently in her altogether more or less to the rhythm of the music, as if it really mattered.
HWB whispered back to Jimmy, “She is not an excellent dancer, I think, perhaps.”
The idiot senator from the old home state was still shouting. “Take it off, bitch! Take it all off!” What in the hell did he want from the lady?
The music changed again, and Big Stick Pritchard entered upon the stage. He was a big handsome soft-faced Black man. Sweet Face danced over to him and they engaged in a long-protracted kiss. Jimmy Jay looked around him uneasily for the pyramidal-headed bastards of the KKK. Miss O’Malley unbuttoned and pulled off Big Stick’s shirt, affectionately, still squirming and twisting more or less to the beat of the music. HWB transfixed, watched a cockroach crawling calmly up Big Stick’s trousers. Tenderly she unbuttoned Big Stick’s fly, pulled his pants down. The cockroach by then had disappeared. Kneeling now, she cupped his crotch with her hand. The bigmouthed senator was quiet now. Jimmy Jay stared back at him. He was slobbering now; his lips were dripping. Big Stick stepped out of his trousers. Lovingly, she cupped the great bulge of his crotch again in all five of her gentle pinkies.
The Minister Primarily Page 28