Black & White
A Cat Oars Publication
Copyright 2011 Cat Oars
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Table of Contents
Introduction
R_Toady
Community Service
Ghostofmajestic
Lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel
Brimmer
Gone, There, Now
Leesbitch
Missionary Position
Meme_in_Situ
Found Floating in the River Lithium
R_Toady
Separate Way
TapasTonight
Black Leather, White Powder
Laiadevorah
Photographic Memory
Tejas
Missionary Position (Reprise)
Meme_in_Situ
White Dog in the Snow
Teenager
And Read All Over
CGT
Singed Black
Sandshovel
Trace and the Black and White
Brimmer
The Penguin and the Panda
TapasTonight
The Black and White Ball
Tejas
Neegee
Francais
Black Grounds on White Paper
Sandshovel
Black and White Hands
Litteratzi
No Help
Francais
Last Reunion
IAA
Light Assignment
Kohno
The End of the Age of Cannibalism
Joeebbe
Negative Time
Sheisty
Introduction
R_Toady
I GREW UP in a very ethnically diverse part of a mid-sized town in southeastern Pennsylvania. Although my grandparents were all extremely racist (you better believe there were lots of nigger jokes at that dinner table) my parents did their best to raise us kids to be fairly accepting of people of other races. (Except the Puerto Ricans, all of whom were lazy slackers, according to my dad.)
There was a black kid a few doors down from us we used to play with in the vacant lot across the street from our line of identical row houses. One day when I was about ten years old my brother and father and I were playing whiffle-ball in the field with this kid, I’ll call him Darren, who was incidentally about five years older than I and therefore really a little too cool to still be playing with us little kids. I was up at bat and he was catcher, with my dad pitching and my hyperactive brother running back and forth like a lunatic in center field somewhere. We had no bases, just a few uneven patches of dirt where the grass had been worn away. Darren was kneeling down on the bare swath of earth that served as home plate; to tell the truth I have no idea what the hell he was doing down there, but for some reason I decided to scare him with my practice swing, and so I pulled the plastic bat back and swung it as hard as I could and – whap! – it hit the side of his head. He screamed and fell to the grass, rolling around and crying, clutching his head as my dad came running over. I just stood there, still holding the bat, apologizing over and over. We walked him back over to his house; his mom was pissed but he was fine; no broken skin, no concussion. Needless to say we never played together again. I don’t know why I hit him; it certainly wasn’t done maliciously, but it wasn’t really an accident, either.
I don’t feel guilty or proud of it now; it’s just a dumb story to add to all my other dumb stories. No lesson, no allegory; but I thought it might serve as a good introduction to this collection of stories, written by contributors to the Literary & Writing forum on Craigslist. Given only the theme “Black and White” and a deadline of a month, we took free rein to do whatever we wished as long as it somehow fit this theme. The stories were posted on the site Nov. 14, 15 and 16, 2005. They were about photographs, newspapers, cop cars, a penguin and a panda, and more.... Given such an open-ended assignment, it is interesting to see that so many of the writers chose to take on the challenge of grappling with some of the more clichéd images associated with the phrase in question. I consider such a strategy rather daring: There is such danger of succumbing to triteness or predictability.
I’m reminded of Stephin Merritt, head of the musical group The Magnetic Fields, who decided to not just take on the almost completely played-out topic of love as a subject for songwriting, but to go as far as to make a triple album’s worth of “69 Love Songs” that range from silly to exquisite. Offering such a huge number of different styles and perspectives on this tired subject ended up breathing new life into it. (Of course, the catchy melodies didn’t hurt.) We took a similar challenge, likewise proving that it is indeed still possible to walk the razor’s edge of cliché without necessarily cutting oneself. (And we didn’t even have any catchy melodies to fall back on!)
I also find it interesting that most of the writers chose to take on the racial connotations of black and white. I usually tend to have an adverse reaction to stories about ethnicity or racism; I often feel that there’s not much more that can be said about these topics that hasn’t been said before. Furthermore, as most of those who tackled the topic here claim (or imply in their stories) that they are white, I admit I had to fight my own knee-jerk reaction toward what I assumed would be yet another collection filled with white people ranting about (1) How non-racist – honest-to-God-really-truly-you-gotta-believe-me – they are or (2) How horribly guilty they feel when they are forced to admit that they really could possibly be even just a teensy bit racist deep inside. Now, being as pink as a baby mole rat myself, I understand the tendency to err on the side of political correctness in the fear of offending someone. But the truth is, such a political approach often rings false and, more importantly, makes for dull reading. (As my story above illustrates – perhaps a little too effectively.)
I was pleasantly surprised by the final results of the project, however; not once did I feel embarrassed or that anyone was compromising or pandering to anyone in their work. As in the case of Merritt’s magnum opus, the sheer variety of strategies used to tackle the theme is what gives this collection its strength. From those loaded words, we created twenty-two pieces ranging in tone from lightly playful to darkly painful, touching along the way many of the shades of gray in between.
Portland, Oregon
Nov. 19, 2005
Community Service
Ghostofmajestic
WHEN I WAS TWELVE or sometime thereabouts, I was a Boy Scout. I wasn’t really any different from the thousands of other kerchief wearing, merit badge earning, square-knot-tying pubescents who were doing the same all over the world, camping and whittling and roasting marshmallows over campfires. I canoed the same rivers, memorized the same oath, and understood the value of dry socks. Actually, I wasn’t that good of a Boy Scout. I never got past the rank of Second Class.
One summer in some Midwest city (big enough to have a place known as the “projects”) I volunteered to help on a guy’s Eagle Scout project. Senior scouts have to perform a number of hours of community service in order to become an “Eagle.” It wasn’t just tying obscure knots or swimming a mile within a certain benchmark time. You had to show you were a good citizen to become an Eagle Scout. Mr. Model Citizen had decided to clean up a downtown cemetery in between two inner city housing projects. We loaded up the lawn mowers, rakes, and hedge clippers in the back of Model Citizen’s Chevelle and drove off.
Model Citizen also packed away a pair of shiny machetes to hack away at the tougher weeds and brush. So there we were, six Boy Scouts rolling down the highway in a souped-up Chevelle, taking the downtown exit, armed to the tee
th with lawn-care implements. I had never even been to this part of town. It was all concrete, liquor shops, pawnbrokers, and Church’s Chicken franchises. I wondered where one would have hidden a cemetery. Where could the dead rest around here?
We parked just outside a chain link gate. Father Dominic and another priest, a black priest, were chatting away, wiping their brows in the noontime heat. Father Dominic introduced Father Ronald, and shook Model Citizen’s hand through the open driver-side window. Father Ronald pulled a key off a huge set attached to his belt, and opened the padlocked chain link fence. We pulled into the inner city kingdom of the dead.
The cemetery was small, perhaps fewer than a hundred headstones from what we could see, but it hadn’t been cleaned out in years. Wild brush and towering weeds hid the names of those buried there from view. You could only see the tops of the granite and marble monuments. We filled the lawn mower’s gas tanks, unsheathed our machetes, wielded our hedge clippers and went to work.
I don’t know what compelled me to go over to the playground – maybe I was just bored with cleaning up graves – I spied through the fence on the far side of the graveyard. I had clearly outgrown swings and slides and seesaws. Perhaps I thought I wasn’t being watched. I was very wrong.
Getting off the slide, I was met by two girls, maybe my age or a bit older, several pounds heavier, at least three inches taller, and several shades blacker. I was surprised, a bit embarrassed at being caught on playground equipment, and I probably said something stupid like “Hi.” Here it all gets a little hazy.
One answered me with a swift right to the side of the skull. I was instantly on the ground. The other pounced on my chest, pinned my arms down, and began coming down on me with her fists, straight into the side of my head. Yes, I was getting beaten up by a girl. The other one must have been kicking my ribs in. Couldn’t see, only feel. I squirmed one arm free but I didn’t fight back. All I remember was Father Dominic telling me something about “turning the other cheek.” Every time the girl’s closed fist pounded my face, I would turn the other cheek. That cheek would swiftly feel the wrath of her other closed fist. I was getting my ass kicked by a housing project tag team.
After a minute of battering, the girl got off my chest. I heard her and her friend running away, laughing hysterically. Two other scouts had seen the carnage and had run toward the playground. I was still able to walk, and we made our way back to the cemetery. By the time I reached the Chevelle, a warm trickle of blood was flowing out of my nose. I could taste iron on my lip. One of my eyes was swelling closed. Mr. Model Citizen, Eagle Scout to be, was slashing the air with his machete.
“Let’s go kill all those niggers down there!” he screamed. He flung his cigarette to the ground. All the others were picking up their rakes and hedge-clippers. I whispered “no” and pulled on the sleeve of Model Citizen’s flannel shirt. I uttered something about cheeks, and dead people, and something about an oath. Again, it is real hazy. Nobody was quite in his right mind. I put some ice from the cooler against my head while I watched the other scouts looking out through the fence at the project towers only a little ways off. Some of them were cursing, their knuckles white on the chain link.
A little while later, while rolling down the highway back to the ’burbs, I imagined black kids running around with their arms cut off. The girl who had kicked my ass held up her sliced-off arm in her one good hand while yelling, “Look what that cracker Eagle Scout did to us!” Another boy hopped around on one leg while blood spurted rhythmically from his stump. Driving his Chevelle, Eagle Scout smoked another Marlboro and said something else about “niggers.” All the while, my cheek ached and throbbed. My neck was sore from all the turning.
Lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel
Brimmer
“BLACK AND WHITE.”
“You want him to shoot in black and white? Yeah, that could be interesting.”
“No. I don’t want him to shoot anything. Not from this screenplay.”
“Why? You told him one more pass on the script and we would take it to the studio.”
“It’s too black and white.”
“Of course it is. It’s about a race war.”
“Do you take pills to be this stupid or were you born that way? This is a complex issue and the writer only sees it in terms of black and white. Even the title is a judgment. ‘Bad Badge.’ He makes no effort to explore the gray areas.”
“A massive earthquake strikes L.A., the blacks and the Mexicans go on a rioting rampage when aid is slow to arrive in their communities, and the only people who can save the city are a band of rogue cops. It’s an action picture. What d’you want?”
“I want a human face on the rioters and looters. And I want the cops humanized too. Right now they’re goddamn cartoon characters. You’re gonna have to work a lot harder with this writer if you want to see this project fly.”
“Well, are you going to make me figure this out myself or are you going to give me some ideas?”
“Ideas? OK. Flashback to 1992, the Rodney King incident. Officers of the LAPD applied a flood of brutal blows to a black man while he’s down on the ground. Now, there was a certain herd mentality going on – there always is in situations like that – but at the end of the day those were individuals, unique people with their own reasons for doing what they did. What happened when they got home that night? What did they say to their wives? How did they handle seeing what they did displayed on national TV for the whole world to see? What they did looked animalistic but they weren’t animals. They were human beings with a complex set of emotions. That’s what I’m talking about. Are you writing this down?”
“No. This is my grocery list. Of course I’m writing it down. All right, I see where you’re going here. What about the rioters?”
“That’s the simplest fix of all. More than a quarter of the population of this country lives below the poverty line. Millions of people can’t afford the basic necessities of life. The distribution of goods in this goddamn country is subject to those who can best afford them, not those who most need them.”
“Aren’t you getting a little political now?”
“Absolutely. Didn’t I say I want to explore the gray areas? Hell, this isn’t even a gray area. This is the meat of the story. Look, the seizing of commodities – the looting, the rioting – is a natural force of circulating commodities that have been long denied to those participating in the action. Are you getting me?”
“I think so.”
“OK, let me put it in terms you’ll understand – hopefully. I was here during the Rodney King riots. I watched the city burn on TV in the comfort of my home just like millions of other Angelenos. And do you know what image stays in my mind? A black woman sitting on the curb outside a looted Payless Shoe Source slipping new shoes onto her kids’ feet. That’s not looting. That’s providing a basic need. That’s what this movie needs to be about.”
“So – we won’t be calling it ‘Bad Badge’ anymore?”
Gone, There, Now
Leesbitch
IT WAS RAINING HARD the night she died. At 7 p.m. she counted out her till, had her shift drink plus a few more, smoked a roach in the parking lot, and climbed into her Dodge Colt. At 8:19 p.m. the Colt sailed over the double yellow line into an old Buick.
The oldest of her children had a vision at the moment of impact. It was mistaken for an anxiety attack. She saw herself sitting on the ground with a body cradled in her arms. A voice told her this body was a husk, that everything familiar and real was gone from it, and that she should let go of it. The emptiness frightened her so badly she curled up with her clothes on in the shower and stayed there until the hot water ran out.
At 12:35 a.m., the doorbell rang.
“Steve, please go answer it. Somebody is dead,” she said to her roommate.
Her father was at the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“They called me first … It’s your mother …??
?
He waited in the hallway, then helped her down the stairs and into a rented car.
The youngest of the children was sleeping alone in her mother’s house. The oldest child woke her sister and told her. The screaming went on for almost two hours.
The middle child lived 3,000 miles away. His father no longer lived there. His stepmother put him on a plane. They picked him up at the airport later that night. Something broke behind his eyes but he did not cry.
The family all lived together in a hotel for the next few days. It rained and rained. The father and the oldest child made phone calls and arrangements, visited with the lawyer, and drank steadily. The middle child remained broken and watched cartoons. The youngest was taken to a doctor and sedated.
On the morning of the third day, a man came to the door. He was twenty-five, but he looked middle-aged. His suit and his hair were deep black, his voice was soft and flat. He looked at the three children standing in the doorway and handed over a small, brushed metal can with a white label. The children sat on the bed and held it for a few minutes before placing it on top of the dresser, next to the Bible.
On the last day, the sun came out. The sky looked and smelled like a sheet of clean glass.
They dressed in their funeral clothes and drove to the place where she had wanted to be released. It was a secluded and beautiful place. They chose a spot where they could walk out on a few big rough rocks, into the river. Their father stayed alone on the bank.
Each child took a handful from the little can. The older sister was surprised by the texture, like sand and shells. She rubbed her thumb over the ashes three times before she threw them in.