by Paul Beatty
My out-of-doors life in the new neighborhood was a reanimated version of the Spy vs. Spy espionage except that all the spies were black. Even the white, yellow, brown, Polish, and Pamela Kennedy, the lone Eskimo, were black spies. We didn't toss pipe bombs at one another but hurled firecrackers, dirt clods, and insults that would sting well past high school. Again I was laughing at myself, at my blackness, only now my color was less amorphous. It was defined by the height my pant leg dangled above the high tops of my sneakers, the shape of my skull, the whop-ness of my bicycle rims, the width of my nose, the emptiness of my wallet, and the circular outline of the unused condom permanently imprinted on its inner fold.
Nigger-themed jokes still filled the lull between school bells, yo mama this and yo mama that, but these gags had a different tone than the ones told in the old neighborhood. They were lyrical, united joker and listener rather than divided. They probed rather than goaded, and if told right I'd no idea I was listening to folklore.
Acculturation
A little black boy was in the kitchen watching his mother fry some chicken. Seeing the flour, he dabbed some onto his face. "Look at me, Ma," he said, I'm white!"
"What did you say?" said his mother. He repeated what he had said, and his mother gave him a resounding slap. "Don't you ever say that!" she said, yelling, "Now you go to your father and tell him what you said to me."
Crying furiously, he made his way to his father. "What's wrong, son?" asked his father.
"Mom-Mom-Mommy sl-sl-slapped me," he said.
"Why'd she do that, son?" asked the father.
"Be-be-because I-I said I was w-w-white," said the boy.
"What?" said his father, slapping him even harder. "Go tell your grandmother what you said! She'll teach you!"
Shaken and confused, he approached his grandmother. "Why, baby, what's wrong?" she inquired. "They-they-they slapped me," said the boy.
"Why, baby—why'd they do that?" asked his grandmother.
Repeating his story, his grandmother slapped him so hard she almost knocked him down. "Don't you ever say that!" she said. "Now what did you learn?"
"I-I learned," said the boy, "that-that I-I've been white for only two minutes and I hate you niggers already!"
My introduction to black, excuse me, Black literature happened during the summer between eighth and ninth grades when the Los Angeles Unified School District, out of the graciousness of its repressive little heart, sent me Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It was the first book I'd ever opened that was written by an African-American author. Notice I said "opened" and not "read." I made it through the first couple of pages or so before a strong sense of doom overwhelmed me and I began to get very suspicious. Why would a school district that didn't bother to supply me with a working pair of left-handed scissors, a decipherable pre-algebra text, or a slice of pepperoni pizza with more than two pepperonis on it send me a brand-new book? Why care about my welfare now? I ventured another paragraph, growing ever more oppressed with each maudlin passage. My lips thickened. My burrheaded afro took on the appearance and texture of a dried-out firethorn bush. My love for the sciences, the Los Angeles Kings, and scuba diving disappeared. My dog Butch yelped and growled at me. I suppressed my constant craving for a Taco Bell Bellbeefer because I feared the fast food franchise wouldn't serve me. My eyes started to water and the words to "Roll, Jordan, Roll," a Negro spiritual I'd never heard before, poured out of my mouth in a surprisingly sonorous baritone. I didn't know I could sing. Quickly, I tossed the book into the kitchen trash. For a black child like myself who was impoverished every other week while waiting for his mother's bimonthly paydays, giving me a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the educational equivalent of giving the prairie Indians blankets laced with smallpox or putting saltpeter in a sailor's soup. I already knew why the caged bird sings, but after three pages of that book I now know why they put a mirror in the parakeet's cage, so he can wallow in his own misery. After this traumatic experience I retreated to my room to self-medicate with Clavell, Irving, Wambaugh, the Green Lantern, Archie and Jughead; it would be ten years before I would touch another book written by an African-American. As my wiser sister Anna says, "Never trust folks like Maya Angelou and James Earl Jones who grow up in Walla Walla, Mississippi, and Boogaloo, Arkansas, and speak with British accents." Thank goodness they didn't send me her poems.
Still I Rise (and unfortunately write)
by Bayou Angel-You
You may force feed me earth mother bullshit
With your bitter, twisted dreadlocked lies
You may stomp me into poverty personified
But still, like my bloated bank account, I'll rise . . . (and unfortunately write)
The Lido Theater on the corner of Pico and La Cienega was an old-time movie house complete with velvet curtains, squeaky seats, and marble men's-room urinals that were five feet high and two feet wide and ornate as Egyptian sarcophagi. The summer that I discarded Maya Angelou was the summer the Lido developed a reputation for being rowdy. Once the genteel venue for Grated Disney fare like The Love Bug and The Bad News Bears and highbrow comedies—think Harold and Maude—in the seventies the Lido, feeling the pinch of the recession and the Westside's changing demographics, had changed direction. Now the double features were either splatterfests like The Exorcist and Beyond the Door or pornography like Looking for Mr. Goodbar and a scratchy print of Last Tango in Paris passing as art, but it was the havoc of the blaxploitation weekend marathons that filled their coffers and became part of Westside lore. I received my advanced learning in when and when not to laugh in that five-hundred-seat lecture hall.
For forty-nine cents it was Friday night at the opera, the county fair, the Improv Room, and Intro to African-American Studies all in one. The movies were just an excuse for public assembly. In a seat usually toward the back, but not all the way back, and next to the aisle just in case, I sat alone in the dark, a nervous but attentive member of an audience that was far more entertaining than the movie. In the Lido nothing was off limits; anything, no matter how cruel, could be funny. If the beating of someone's cousin wasn't funny at the time, by Monday, the first day school rolled around, it wrould be. The heckle, the firecracker, the gunshot, the "fuck you, pis"—it was all a matter of timing.
One weekend, not long after Nica, my friend Toi's sister, developed an adolescent je tie sais quoi known as "butter," a bunch of us went to the Lido. Since every Crip-in-training was courting Nica, and Toi was her brother and I his friend, for the first time I sat in the back. The back back. This was like living at the top of the hill. The Coke bottles got more roll, the spitball enfilade was glorious, the acoustics made Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" almost sound live and not Panasonic-transistorized. The main feature was Cojfy, a pimp / ho tragedy for which Pam Grier's bosom serves as the Greek chorus. The scene where pimp/dope pusher King George gets his comeuppance wasn't played for laughs, but when his mutton-chopped, white-turtlenecked, suit-that-looks-like-it-was-knit-from-a-Mondrian-painting-wearing ass gets tied to the rear bumper of a Ford Fairlane and is lynched by being dragged through the winding streets of Holmby Hills at sixty miles an hour, hitting every eucalyptus tree, curb, and garbage can along the way, everyone but me cracked up so hard I couldn't hear the screech of the tires or the white henchman's own wicked cackle. But by the time King George's skinless corpse finally came to a stop at the bottom of the hill I found myself rolling in the aisle. Was it the peer pressure? The obvious crash-test dummy staging? Freudian displacement? I don't know. That was one of the blackest nights of my life. There was a feeling of vengeful liberation in laughing at all that senseless pain and blood, but underlying that sense of liberation was caution, a sniggering warning that I might be next.
Quality of Life
A little black boy was sitting at a curb playing with a rather large pile of shit. Noticing him, an Irish cop inquired as to what he was doing. "I'm making a policeman," replied the boy, nonchalantly.
"A policeman?" said the cop, incredulous. "And just what sort of policeman would ye be makin', huh?"
"I'm making an Italian policeman," said the boy. At that, the cop broke into peals of laughter. "Wait here," he said. "Don't you move."
Making his way back to the station, he ran to his colleague Tony, who was, in fact, Italian. "Hey, Tony, " he said, "come with me, I want you to see something."
Finding the boy yet at his task, he said to Tony, "Ask him what he's doing."
"Hey, boy—what are you doing?" said Tony.
"I'm making a policeman," said the boy, emphatically.
"Ask him what kind," said the first cop, to which the boy replied, "I'm making an Italian policeman."
"Why you doing that?" asked Tony.
"Because I don't have enough shit to make an Irish policeman," he said.
It wasn't until I entered college that I found a piece of black literature funny. It was unintentional comedy, but nonetheless a start. My crew of conscious brothers and I were sitting in the student union rehashing books we hadn't read and dictating laws of governance for countries we'd never been to when bud-smoking Bernie from Chicago strode by with a copy of New Black Voices, the revolutionary primer. "Listen to this, fellas," he said taking a seat and slice of pizza, "Sacred Chant for the Return of Black Spirit and Power," by Amiri Baraka." His mouth full of molten cheese, Bernie recited the poem: " 'Ohhh break love with white things . . .' " His sharp intakes of air between lines failed to cool his burning mouth and his burning resentment. " 'Evil out. Evilin. Evil.' " I started to snicker. " 'They die in the streets . . . stab him . . . aggggg . . . OOOOO . . .' " It wasn't that I thought Baraka's lyrical vituperation funny, but the too guilty joy that accompanies hubris got to me. The sheer seriousness of the poem was funny to me. " 'Death music . . . Bring us back our strength.' "
Yet that poem called to me, and I began to explore a black literature that conveyed a purpose and pride with which I was unfamiliar, despite having been raised and chaperoned by a village of ex-radicals. I pored through Sanchez, Lorde, Wright, Toomer, Baldwin, Hansberry, welcoming the rhetoric but over time missing the black bon mot, the snap, the bag, the whimsy upon which "fuck you" and freedom sail. It was as if the black writers I'd read didn't have any friends. Where was the Richard Pryor cynicism? Ms. Keaton's sarcasm? Biz Markie's inanity? Where was the mumbling Cleveland folklore of Uncle Rufus, whose unintelligible tales told over the Thanksgiving table must have been hilarious because everyone who'd known him for the thirty years it took to understand his cigar-chewing shibboleth dropped their silverware to bust a gut when he got to the part about the fishing boat crashing into the breakwater. Where was Toi's fresh-off-the-skateboard tanka-like biracial honesty?
"I'm tellin' you white people are evil."
"How can you say that your own mother is white?"
"Then don't you think I should know what I'm talking about?"
It's always struck me as odd that there has never been a colored Calvin Trillin, Bennett Cerf, or Mark Twain. Hell, I'd settle for a cornball Dave Barry who'd write columns for the rap magazines titled "Snitches Get Stitches," "All Pimps Are Gay and All Lesbians Aren't," "Act Your Age and Not Your Shoe Size," and "Boogers: The Ghetto Sushi."
One can't attend a writer's conference without having to pay penance to the vaunted African-American oral tradition. Ironically, whenever a fellow panelist says to me, "Mr. Beatty, you've been awful quiet, can you say a little something about the African-American oral tradition?" I like to mime a reenactment of a toothless, mute, and gagged African captive asking his slave ship bunkmate to stop stepping on his toes. What is never discussed is the cognitive dissonance created by the perception that African-Americans write in a spoken tradition. One canon consists of songs, folktales, and insider apothegms that are deeply and invariably funny, whereas the other, as Danzy Senna once pointed out to me over Mexican food, comes out of a tradition of abolitionist "And ain't I an intellect?" activism aimed, then as n ow at whites. Save for Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, George Schuyler, Zora Neale Hurston, and a select group of others, the defining characteristic of the African-American writer is sobriety—moral, corporeal, and prosaic, unless you buy your black literature from the book peddler standing on the street corner next to the black-velvet-painting dealer, next to the burrito truck: then the prevailing theme is the menage a trois.
Hokum is my chance to recognize and thank the black upper-, middle, low-, and no-class clown for being more than comic relief. For being scapegoat and sage, unafraid to tell the world, as the Fool told Lear, "Truth's that a dog must to kennel," thus validating our humanity through our madness. This book is not meant be a comprehensive collection of African-American humor but more of a mix-tape narrative dubbed by a trusted, though slightly smarmy, friend. A sampler of underground classics, rare grooves, and timeless summer jams, poetry and prose juxtaposed with the blues, hip-hop, political speeches, and the world's funniest radio sermon, delivered by the Prophet Omega, founder and overseer of the Peace way Temple. The subtle musings of Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, and Harryette Mullen are bracketed by the profane and often loud ruminations of Langston Hughes, Darius James, Wanda Coleman, Tish Benson, and Steve Cannon. In compiling Hokum, I tried to focus mostly on literary works, but some of the funniest writers don't write, so also included are selections from well-known yet unliterary wits: Lightnin' Hopkins, Mike Tyson, and the Reverend Al Sharpton. Other selections come from public figures and authors whose humor, although incisive and profound, is often overlooked or rarely on display: Malcolm X, Suzan-Lori Parks, Zora Neale Hurston, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. DuBois.
These works, like Godard's films and David Hammon's art, are eccentric, liberating, and savagely comic, and make one appreciate that not everyone has guts and imagination to do the thing and do it well. Ishmael Reed said it best, Writin' Is Fightin', and I hope Hokum beats you down like an outclassed club fighter. Each blow plastering that beaten boxer smile on your face, that ear-to-ear grin you flash to the crowd to convince them that if you're laughing, then you ain't hurt.
Jesus
Homeboy went to Westchester and stood marveling at all the beautiful houses. Noticing one in which it appeared no one was home, he gained entrance through a window and began to steal. After a moment he heard a voice saying, "Jesus is watching you!"
Looking around, he saw no one, and, not being particularly religious, he went back to stealing. Then he heard the voice again: "Jesus is watching you!" Again seeing no one, he was about to return to his task when he spied a parrot in a cage. Approaching the cage with much swagger and bravado, he said, "Mothefucker—can you talk?"
"You goddamn right I can talk," said the parrot. "Whaddaya want me to say?"
"Tell me your name," said the homeboy.
"My name is Ralph," said the parrot.
Breaking into paroxysms of laughter, Homeboy asked who had been dumb enough to name a parrot that, to which the parrot replied, "The same one that named the rottweiler!"
"Acculturation," "Quality of Life," and "Jesus" as told by John Farris.
pissed off
to the highest degree
of pisstivity
In 1977, on a dreary Tuesday evening, Richard Pryor was snatched A off a slave galley by John Belushi and, while still in shackles, forced to host a one-hour comedy special on NBC, a fate so horribly cruel that one earlier captive had thrown himself overboard to face the sharks rather than the task of resurrecting the then struggling and career-killing network.
Pryor spends the entire hour battling writer's block. His struggle is understandable; after all, it's a daunting mission for anyone, much less a querulous black comedian, to go on national television and, as he stated in the opening scene, "explain who I am, be American." Dressed in a tuxedo, he wanders the corridors and studio backlots soliciting advice from everyone he meets. Black women in Easter bonnets on the studio tour caution him to be pious. The children want something for them that isn't corny. The NBC shoeshine
man, who hipped the corporate suits to his records and feels responsible for Richard's newfound success, wants his just due. Forty minutes into the show the idea-bereft host is accosted by his head writer, a tarn-, combat-boots, and, khaki-wearing black nationalist, and his surly band of script-doctoring afro-pick-wielding revolutionaries. The brothers have solved Pryor's writer's block. They have a script, a script that glorifies black unity and brings the message to people. Concerned the teleplay sounds a bit heavy-handed, Pryor asks if there's anything funny in it. Taken aback by his incredulity, one of the writers responds, "Funny? I'm talking about really funny. Dig on this here—in one of the sketches you slap this white broad upside her head and knock her to the floor! Ain't that funny, man?"
"That's funny?" Pryor asks.
"Yeah!"
"I could kick her a little too."
"Yeah!"
No, kicking the white woman when's she down (and when is she not?) isn't funny, but talking about it being funny is. Rarely is African-American humor anxiety displacement. For black Americans, a people Richard Pryor might characterize as being "pissed off to the highest degree of pisstivity," the fears that accompany being born in a country founded on persecution and propelled forward by paranoia are best confronted head on. Oh, there are a few mannered Negro humorists who repress their neuroses with sublimation, but the seething anger is visible beneath the calm facade. Take, for example, Bill Cosby's prime-time alter ego, Dr. Cliff Huxtable. The avuncular Cliff delivered babies of all colors and told wisecracks in every shade but blue, but, if you listen closely, these mush-mouthed quips were always threatening. Laced with rage and contempt for anyone black who earns less than one hundred thousand dollars a year and doesn't own a wine decanter, his jokes loomed over his targets like a father's strap. If one didn't stop annoying his patrician sensibilities, Bill Cosby would browbeat and ridicule one until the onset of appropriate white, I mean human, behavior. In a perverse way, Cosby's funnier now than he's ever been. Dressed in these garish suits looking like an aged pimp on disability, he parades from civic forum to civic forum, a sad, attention-starved clown, oblivious to the hypocrisy that despite his protestations against the supposed glorification of the African-American sociopath, he made a large part of his fortune off what my friend Victoria points out was a cartoon gang of ebonic-talking, perpetually unsupervised, and crazily dressed black males.