My colored-pencil caricature looks terrible. I’m in the lower-left-hand corner of the drawing. I can’t speak to the Court allowing for unregulated corporate spending on political campaigns, or the burning of the American flag, but the best decision it’s ever made was to prohibit the use of cameras in the courtroom, because, apparently, I’m one ugly motherfucker. My bulbous nose and gigantic ears protrude from my bald Mount Fuji–shaped head like fleshy anemometers. I’m flashing a yellow-toothed smile and staring at the youngish Jewish Justice like I can see through her robe. Fred says the reason they don’t permit cameras has nothing to do with maintaining decorum and dignity. It’s to protect the country from seeing what’s underneath Plymouth Rock. Because the Supreme Court is where the country takes out its dick and tits and decides who’s going to get fucked and who’s getting a taste of mother’s milk. It’s constitutional pornography in there, and what did Justice Potter once say about obscenity? I know it when I see it.
“Fred, do you think you could at least shave down my incisors? I look like fucking Blackula.”
“Blackula. Underrated movie.”
Fred unclips the press laminate from his lanyard and uses the metal fastener as a makeshift roach clip to finish the rest of the weed in one mighty toke. His eyes and nasal passages closed tight, I ask him can I borrow a pencil. He nods yes, and I take the opportunity to remove all the brown-colored implements from his fancy pencil case. Fuck if I’m going down in history as the homeliest litigant in Supreme Court history.
During social studies, otherwise known in Dad’s curriculum as the Ways and Means of the Indefatigable White People, my father used to warn me about listening to rap or the blues with Caucasian strangers. And as I got older, I’d be admonished not to play Monopoly, drink more than two beers, or smoke weed with them either. For such activities can breed a false sense of familiarity. And nothing, from the hungry jungle cat to the African ferryboat, is more dangerous than a white person on what they think is familiar ground. And as Fred returns from exhaling a cloud of smoke out into the D.C. night, he has that Ain’t-I-a-Soul-Brother glint in his eyes. “Let me tell you something, my man. I’ve seen them all come through here. Racial profiling, interracial marriage, hate speech, and race-based set-asides, and you know what the difference is between my people and yours? As much as we both want seats at the ‘table,’ once you get inside, you motherfuckers never have an escape plan. Us? We’re prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. I never enter a restaurant, bowling alley, or an orgy without asking myself, If they choose this moment to come get me, how in the fuck am I getting out of here? Cost us a generation, but we learned our fucking lesson. They told you people, ‘School’s out. Ain’t no more lessons to be learned,’ and you dumb fucks believed them. Think about it, if the damn storm troopers were to knock on the door right now, what would you do? What’s your exit strategy?”
There’s a knock on the door. It’s a court officer gulping down the last of a prefabricated spicy tuna roll. She’s wondering why I have one leg dangling out of the window. Fred simply shakes his head. I look down. Even if I were to survive the three-story fall, I’d be trapped in a tacky marble courtyard. Walled in by thirty feet of overblown Colonial architecture. Surrounded by lion heads, bamboo stalks, red orchids, and a silty fountain. On our way out, Fred points to a small, Hobbit-sized side door behind a potted plant that presumably leads to the Promised Land.
I reenter the chambers to find an insanely pale white boy in my seat. It’s like he’s waited until the fourth quarter of the ball game to move down from the upper deck, sneak past the ushers to take a courtside chair vacated by some fan who’s left early to beat the traffic. I’m reminded of the black stand-up trope about white patrons returning to find “niggers in they seats” and drawing straws to decide who’s going to ask them to move.
“You in my seat, dude.”
“Hey, I just wanted to tell you that I feel like my constitutionality is on trial, too. And you don’t seem to have many people in your cheering section.” He waved his invisible pompoms in the air. Ricka-rocka! Ricka-rocka! Sis! Boom! Bah!
“I appreciate the support. Much needed. But just slide over one.”
The Justices file back into the courtroom. No one mentions my newfound tag-team partner. It’s been a long day. Bags have appeared under their eyes. Their robes have wrinkled and lost their sheen. In fact, the black Justice’s garment seems to be stained with barbecue sauce. The only two people in the courtroom who look fresh are the Jeffersonian Chief Justice and a mackadocious Hampton Fiske, each with not a hair out of place or displaying the slightest sign of fatigue. However, Hampton has one-upped the Chief Justice with a costume change. He’s now resplendent in an argumentative bell-bottomed, ball-hugging, chartreuse jumpsuit. He doffs his homburg, cape, and ivory-handled cane and adjusts his bulge, then stands aside, as the Chief Justice has an announcement to make.
“I know it’s been a trying day. I know that in this culture ‘race’ is especially hard to talk about, in that we feel the need to defer…”
The white kid next to me coughs an Animal House “bullshit” into his hand. And I softly ask this ghostly motherfucker his name, because it’s only right to know who’s fighting next to you in the trench.
“Adam Y___.”
“My man.”
I’m high as hell, but not high enough not to know that race is hard to “talk about” because it’s hard to talk about. The prevalence of child abuse in this country is hard to talk about, too, but you never hear people complaining about it. They just don’t talk about it. And when’s the last time you had a calm, measured conversation about the joys of consensual incest? Sometimes things are simply difficult to discuss, but I actually think the country does a decent job of addressing race, and when folks say, “Why can’t we talk about race more honestly?” What they really mean is “Why can’t you niggers be reasonable?” or “Fuck you, white boy. If I said what I really wanted to say, I’d get fired even faster than you’d fire me if race were any easier to talk about.” And by race we mean “niggers,” because no one of any persuasion seems to have any difficulty talking out-of-pocket shit about Native Americans, Latinos, Asians, and America’s newest race, the Celebrity.
Black people don’t even talk about race. Nothing’s attributable to color anymore. It’s all “mitigating circumstances.” The only people discussing “race” with any insight and courage are loud middle-aged white men who romanticize the Kennedys and Motown, well-read open-minded white kids like the tie-dyed familiar sitting next to me in the Free Tibet and Boba Fett T-shirt, a few freelance journalists in Detroit, and the American hikikomori who sit in their basements pounding away at their keyboards composing measured and well-thought-out responses to the endless torrent of racist online commentary. So thank goodness for MSNBC, Rick Rubin, the Black Guy at The Atlantic, Brown University, and the beautiful Supreme Court Justice from the Upper West Side, who, leaning coolly into her microphone, has finally asked the first question that makes any sense: “I think we’ve established the legal quandary here as to whether a violation of civil rights law that results in the very same achievement these heretofore mentioned statutes were meant to promote, yet have failed to achieve, is in fact a breach of said civil rights. What we must not fail to remember is that ‘separate but equal’ was struck down, not on any moral grounds, but on the basis that the Court found that separate can never be equal. And at a minimum, this case suggests we ask ourselves not if separate were indeed equal, but what about ‘separate and not quite equal, but infinitely better off than ever before.’ Me v. the United States of America demands a more fundamental examination of what we mean by ‘separate,’ by ‘equal,’ by ‘black.’ So let’s get down to the nitty-gritty—what do we mean by ‘black’?”
The best thing about Hampton Fiske, other than that he refuses to let seventies fashion die, is that he’s always prepared. He straightens a pair of lapels that sit atop his chest like giant tent flaps, and then clears his
throat; a purposeful gesture he knows will make some people nervous. And he wants his audience on edge, because if nothing else, it means they’re attentive.
“So what is blackness, your honor? That’s a good question. The exact same one the immortal French author Jean Genet posed after being asked by an actor to write a play featuring an all-black cast, when he mused not only ‘What exactly is a black?’ but added the even more fundamental inquiry, ‘First of all, what is his color?’”
Hampton’s legal team pulls cords, and the drapes fall over the windows, while he walks to the light switch and douses the courtroom in pitch black. “In addition to Genet, many rappers and black thinkers have weighed in. An early rap quintet of puerile white poseurs known as Young Black Teenagers asserted that ‘Blackness is a state of mind.’ My client’s father, the esteemed African-American psychologist F. K. Me (may the genius motherfucker rest in peace), hypothesized that black identity is formed in stages. In his theory of Quintessential Blackness, Stage I is the Neophyte Negro. Here the black person exists in a state of preconsciousness. Just as many children would be afraid of the total darkness in which we now find ourselves immersed, the Neophyte Negro is afraid of his own blackness. A blackness that feels inescapable, infinite, and less than.” Hampton snaps his fingers, and a giant photo of Michael Jordan shilling for Nike is projected on all four walls of the courtroom, but it’s quickly replaced by successive photos of Colin Powell sharing his recipe for yellowcake uranium before the United Nations General Assembly shortly before the potluck invasion of Iraq and Condoleezza Rice lying through the gap in her teeth. These are African-Americans meant to illustrate his point. Exemplars of how self-hatred can compel one to value mainstream acceptance over self-respect and morality. Images of Cuba Gooding, Coral from The Real World, and Morgan Freeman all flit by. With references to such long-forgotten pop icons, Hampton is dating himself, but he continues his pitch: “He or she wants to be anything but black. They suffer from poor self-esteem and extremely ashy skin.” A portrait of the black Justice smoking a cigar and lining up a ten-foot putt splashes across the walls. Causing everyone, including the black Justice himself, to have a good laugh. “Stage I Negroes watch reruns of Friends, oblivious to the fact that whenever a white sitcom male dates a black woman on television, it’s always the homeliest white guy in the bunch getting some love from the sisters. It’s the Turtles, the Skreeches, the David Schwimmers, and the George Costanzas of the group…”
The Chief Justice meekly raises his hand.
“Excuse me, Mr. Fiske, I have a question…”
“Not right now, motherfucker—I’m on a roll!”
And so am I. I pull out my rolling machine and, as best as I can in the dark, fill the tray with moist product. They can hold me in contempt, le mépris of everything. I don’t need anyone to tell me what Stage II blackness is. It’s “Capital B Black.” I already know this crap. It’s been drilled into my head ever since I was old enough to play One of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong and my father made me point out the token white guy in the Lakers team photo. Mark Landsberger, where are you when I need you? “The distinguishing feature of Stage II blackness is a heightened awareness of race. Here race is still all-consuming, but in a more positive fashion. Blackness becomes an essential component in one’s experiential and conceptual framework. Blackness is idealized, whiteness reviled. Emotions range from bitterness, anger, and self-destruction to waves of pro-Black euphoria and ideas of Black supremacy…” To avoid detection I go under the table, but the joint’s not hitting right. I can’t get any intake. From my newfound hiding place I struggle to keep the ember burning, while catching odd-angled glimpses of photographs of Foy Cheshire, Jesse Jackson, Sojourner Truth, Moms Mabley, Kim Kardashian, and my father. I can never get away from my father. He was right, there is no such thing as closure. Maybe the weed is too sticky for a clean burn. Maybe I’ve rolled it too tight. Maybe I don’t have any weed in there at all and I’m so high I’ve been trying to smoke my finger for the past five minutes. “Stage III blackness is Race Transcendentalism. A collective consciousness that fights oppression and seeks serenity.” Fuck it, I’m out. I’m ghost. I decide to sneak out quietly so as not to embarrass Hampton, who’s been working like a champion of justice on this never-ending case. “Examples of Stage III black folks are people like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Sitting Bull, César Chávez, Ichiro Suzuki.” In the dark I cover my face, and my silhouette cuts across a movie still of Bruce Lee fixing to kick some ass in Enter the Dragon. Thanks to Fred, the courtroom artist, I have an exit plan and can make my way in the dark. “Stage III black folks are the woman on your left, the man on your right. They are people who believe in beauty for beauty’s sake.”
Washington, D.C., like most cities, is much prettier at night. But as I sit on the Supreme Court steps, making a pipe out of a soda can, staring at the White House lit up like a department store window, I’m trying to figure out what’s so different about our nation’s capital.
The draw from an aluminum Pepsi can isn’t the best, but it’ll do. I blow smoke into the air. There should be a Stage IV of black identity—Unmitigated Blackness. I’m not sure what Unmitigated Blackness is, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sell. On the surface Unmitigated Blackness is a seeming unwillingness to succeed. It’s Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Alfre Woodard, and the serious black actor. It’s Tiparillos, chitterlings, and a night in jail. It’s the crossover dribble and wearing house shoes outside. It’s “whereas” and “things of that nature.” It’s our beautiful hands and our fucked-up feet. Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations. Unmitigated Blackness is essays passing for fiction. It’s the realization that there are no absolutes, except when there are. It’s the acceptance of contradiction not being a sin and a crime but a human frailty like split ends and libertarianism. Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it’s the nihilism that makes life worth living.
Sitting here on the steps of the Supreme Court smoking weed, under the “Equal Justice Under Law” motto, staring into the stars, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. It’s that all the buildings are more or less the same height and there’s absolutely no skyline, save for the Washington Monument touching the night sky like a giant middle finger to the world.
Twenty-five
The joke is that, depending on the Supreme Court’s decision, my Welcome Home party might also be my Going Away to Jail party, so the banner over the kitchen doorway says, CONSTITUTIONAL OR INSTITUTIONAL—TO BE DECIDED. Marpessa kept it small, limited to friends and the Lopezes from next door. Everyone is in my den, watching the lost Little Rascals films, huddled around Hominy, who’s the real man of the hour.
Foy was found innocent on attempted murder charges by reason of temporary insanity, but I did win my civil suit against him. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious, but like most of celebrity America, Foy Cheshire’s rumored wealth was just that—rumored. And after selling his car to pay his attorney’s fees, the only possessions he had of any real value were the only things I wanted—the Little Rascals movies. Stocked with watermelon, gin, and lemonade, and a 16 mm projector, we readied for an enjoyable evening of grainy black-and-white old-time “Yassuh, boss” racism unseen since the days of Birth of a Nation and whatever’s on ESPN right now. Two hours in and we wonder why Foy went through all the bother. Although Hominy’s enrapt with his onscreen image, the treasure trove consists mostly of unreleased MGM Our Gang footage. By the mid-forties the series had long been dead and bereft of ideas, but these shorts are especially bad. The late edition of the gang remains intact: Froggy, Mickey, Buckwheat, the little-known Janet, and, of course, Hominy in various minor roles. These postwar shorts are so serious. In
“Hotsy Totsy Nazi” the gang tracks down a German war criminal masquerading as a pediatrician. Herr Doktor Jones’s racism gives him away, when a feverish Hominy arrives for his checkup and is greeted with a snide “I zee we didn’t get all of you during zee var. Take zee arsenic pills und vee zee vat vee can do about dat, ja?” In “Asocial Butterfly,” Hominy takes a rare star turn. Asleep in the woods for so long that a monarch butterfly has enough time to weave a cocoon in his wild-flung hair, he panics and doffs his straw hat to show his discovery to Miss Crabtree. She excitedly proclaims that he has “a chrysalis,” which the ever-inquisitive gang overhears as “syphilis,” and tries to get him quarantined at a “house of ill refute.” There are a couple of hidden gems, though. In an attempt to revive the stagnant franchise, the studio produced a few abridged reenactments of theater pieces played totally straight by the gang. It’s too bad the world has missed out on Buckwheat as Brutus Jones and Froggy as the shady Smithers in “The Emperor Jones.” Darla returns to the fold and gives a brilliant performance as the headstrong “Antigone.” Alfalfa is no less engaging as the beleaguered Leo in Clifford Odets’s “Paradise Lost.” But for the most part, there’s nothing in Foy’s archives to suggest why he would go to such lengths to keep these works from the public. The racism is rampant as usual, but no more virulent than a day trip to the Arizona state legislature.
“How much is left on the reel, Hominy?”
“About fifteen minutes, massa.”
The words “Nigger in a Woodpile—Take #1” flash across the screen over a cord of barnyard firewood. Two or three seconds go by. And—Bam!—a nappy little black head pops up sporting a wide razzamatazz grin. “It’s black folk!” he says before batting his big, adorable baby seal eyes.
“Hominy, is that you?”
“I wish it was, that boy’s a natural!”