Knucklehead, page 21
“Well . . .” I said, “I like to think of myself as one of the good guys.”
It was a real smile now. My purpose had found me.
C’mon. Say your line. Say, “Step out of the car, son.” Please. Please say it.
But he didn’t say his line. Instead he said, “Good! Good for you.”
He took a step back, hitched up his gun belt, and got one last eyeful of my interior. “You watch those stop signs, now.” I was expecting another boy at the end, but it was implied.
“Um . . . OK.”
He drove off. I sat there for a long time and watched the preening people, none of whom had noticed us. I tried to figure out how things could have gone so wrong so fast, and then turned back into nothing just as quickly.
I would like to think that Officer Dead Man had sensed that he was in danger. But no. When cowards realize they are afraid, they make things worse. He never knew.
My hands were shaking. I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Maybe he had a guardian angel. Maybe his guardian angel told him, in that intimate, believable way that only guardian angels can, that he needed to get away from me and climb back into his ride and go home to his beat-up wife and kids.
That was probably it.
My Nowhere Place.
Saturday, September 9, 1995
We were the last people on Earth, talking and fucking in the dark. Nights like that made me forget about the other stuff.
She’d just come back from the bathroom. I was incredibly thirsty, sweating across a corner of the bed and staring at the ceiling. I was thinking of making the journey into the kitchen for a cold glass of sugary crap but as soon as Sarah came back in she got down between my knees and started sucking my limp dick.
“My dad didn’t die the way I said.”
She blew me a bit longer. Then she got up and sat in the chair in the corner. She crossed her legs. She looked like a naked shrink.
I sat up. “It isn’t true that I never knew him,” I said to the floor. “Not really. I was young, but I’d been born.”
She was silent and still. Breathe. You have to do this.
“He died when I was four. And not in the ring. He died at home.”
“I know he died at home. You never told me he died . . . in the ring? Boxing?”
“I didn’t tell you that? OK. Good.” There had been so much lying over the years, and so many sex confessions over the last few months, I could no longer keep up with my stories. Still, it was doubtful I’d told her the truth. I’d have remembered that.
“Good. But I didn’t tell you when, I think.” I paused, hoping for another interruption. Silence. “I was . . . four. I was four. I was there. I don’t remember. Heart attack. That’s what I heard. He just died. My mom came home from work and found us. He just died. That’s what she says. I don’t remember.”
More silence. Fuck. Her poker face was as good as mine. Fuck fuck fuck. “OK. I was eight. That is the truth. He died in his sleep, in the bed at least, when I was eight and he was 29.”
“The same age you are now.”
“Yes . . . whoa. I didn’t even realize . . .”
“And you don’t remember? You don’t remember that?”
“No.” I looked up. Do it. I stared right at her face. “But I don’t mean I don’t remember that day; I don’t remember that year. I don’t remember the third grade.”
“Well . . . that was a long time ago . . .”
“No. I mean, it was a long time ago . . . but . . . I never remembered it. I didn’t remember third grade when I was in fourth grade.”
Still and silent again.
“And it’s not the only time that’s happened. Three or four times, I’ve lost . . . chunks . . . of time. Months. Once when I was a teenager. Once in college.” I had to turn away again. “It’s like amnesia, or a blackout. A few times in my life I woke up and I know I’m me but I don’t know where I am or how I got there. But I know I’m supposed to be there, that it’s my life. All the information is in my brain. Names and phone numbers and everything. I just have to . . . kind of do a walkthrough. To trigger it all. So I start from there. I get up and I go wherever I am supposed to be and I figure out what my life is. And I keep on going.”
More silence. It was like an interrogation.
“I think it just happened a little while ago.”
Then she was across the room and I was in her arms. “You don’t know how you got here?”
“No, not that recently. After . . . after Amalia died.” I almost never talked to Sarah about Amalia. I was afraid she would get jealous and try to make me choose in some way. And choosing a dead person when you are still alive is just foolish. “I remember . . . the end. I pretty much remember a little while after. Then . . . spots . . . here and there. Then I just woke up one morning, and it was like I said.
“It’s not a bad thing. Not really. I’ve never woken up in prison, or next to a dead body, like in the movies.” I laughed; she smiled. “I think . . . I think I am the same person. I never find myself in a life I don’t like, or that isn’t me. I think that I just . . . go away for a while.”
“To your happy place,” she said. I thought of Mr. Dr. Stewart—Papa—and immediately felt guilty.
“I guess. I don’t know what it is. My nowhere place.”
She leaned away a bit and stared into my eyes. “What would you like me to do?”
“Oh! Nothing! Seriously. Please don’t treat me differently because of this.” Impossible. “It might never happen again. And even if it does, it won’t happen for a long time, if it only just happened a year ago.”
“But if it does ever happen again, it’s good that I know about it, even if it doesn’t happen for 20 years, right? So I can help you.”
Because we will still be together, she was asking. “Yes.”
She held me tight again, and rubbed my back in big circles with her palm. It felt like she was burping me. I dug it.
“Here’s the thing, though.” My lips dragged against her neck. “I never told . . . Amalia any of this. Not any of it. I don’t know why. I couldn’t. I mean . . . I didn’t get to. I didn’t get a chance.” The rubbing stopped. She was still and silent again, and I couldn’t see her face. “I didn’t have time. I thought I was going to be with her forever. But we didn’t get enough time, and I didn’t tell her. I never told her.”
I guess I cried. She started rubbing me again, and humming. I have to say, it really hit the spot. Then she blew me, still humming, and that hit the spot as well.
Maybe Sarah was a little jealous of Amalia. Maybe she liked having something on her, knowing something about me that Amalia never knew.
Who am I kidding? She loved it.
Publish or Perish.
Tuesday, September 19, 1995
15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.
* * *
I ate my bagel and drank orange juice out the carton while I read this shit. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a point. It was that he was a madman, a murderer, a serial bomber, and they had published his manifesto in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Because he told them to.
It was dense and rambling and insane. I read every word.
140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society.
They are publishing mad bombers in the Times. They are publishing mad bombers in the Times.
212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying about it, since we can’t predict or control events 500 or 1,000 years in the future. Those problems must be dealt with by the people who will live at that time.
The bagel was gone. The OJ was gone. The Unabomber was still going strong.
They are winning. The lunatics are winning.
Sankofa Is a Tough Movie, Mang.
Tuesday, September 26, 1995
The Lakeway Theater is an Oakland art house that only shows movies—I’m sorry, films—the owners consider radical. This week’s screening: Sankofa.
And homeboy kept looking at me. Two men in the row in front of us, a few seats to our left. The one on the right was turning around and staring at me.
Sankofa isn’t just a movie about slavery. It is slavery. Watching Sankofa on the big screen is like taking magic peyote and going back in time to find yourself and your parents and your children on a plantation being tortured forever. Sankofa is a tribulation, a rite of passage, kind of like I imagine my first trip to Africa will be. And every time someone in the movie mentioned Uncle Toms or house [negroes], this guy twisted around in his seat and stared at me, and at my white girlfriend next to me. Every time.
I don’t know how many times he did it, exactly. But, again, he did it each time Toms or house [negroes] came up, and in Sankofa they come up a lot. After about 45 minutes, my brain told me: Next time, I am going to do something.
A little later, someone in the movie made a comment—something like, “That house [negro] is so in love with Massa that he won’t let the rest of us get free.” And the brother turned around and looked straight at me. And smiled.
I waited a minute. Then I got up and went to the Men’s. I drew my 9mm and racked one into the chamber. I took the safety off. I did not cock the hammer—that would have been crazy. But, set up that way, a pistol works like a revolver: just point and shoot. The Lakeway men’s room has no lock on the door and no doors on the stalls, but fortunately no one walked in on me. I eased Shooter back into his holster and returned, quietly, to my seat.
I sat in my big cozy chair and waited in the dark. For what, I did not know. Much of the rest of Sankofa was lost on me. I am good with that.
I looked around. I love the Lakeway. It’s a big theater, one of the last grand old theaters in Oakland. It has a chandelier hanging high overhead and angels painted on the walls. Only one screen. It was not crowded. We were surrounded by a handful of what would later be termed “the liberal elite.” Homeboy and his man and I were just about the only black people in the room. The only Latinos were ushers. There were no Asians.
Homeboy kept up with his turning-around shtick too, but it didn’t matter anymore. Even if he had never done it again, at that point it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Sankofa finally ended, and the survivors sat stunned while the credits rolled. The dim houselights came on. As Homeboy and his buddy stood up, he turned and gave me one last triumphant look. I stood up too.
I felt a big smile on my face as I moved toward him. “Ey, mang. Was that you?”
His little smirk wavered, but he said nothing.
“Was that you?” I repeated. “In the movie.” I gestured up at the screen. “The brother on the horse, in the field, with the whip. The deputy overseer. That was you, right?” I’d had no idea I was going to say that.
Only then did I get a good look at his face. It had a soft quality I’d neither noticed nor expected. I’d assumed I was dealing with badasses; we were in Oakland, after all. Maybe he was a badass with a soft face. Maybe he was a jock at Cal. But that didn’t matter anymore, either. Whoever he was, he had earned this.
“That was you, right?” I bared my teeth.
I watched Homeboy’s face go through changes. From arrogance to confusion to surprise to hurt and, finally, to anger. I was waiting for him or his friend to draw so I could murder them both.
Homeboy’s buddy appeared to be in shock—mouth open, eyes wide, fingers splayed. First Sankofa, now this. He’d had no idea this was happening. Sarah almost certainly hadn’t known that anything was going on either, but that didn’t show.
Now Homeboy was fighting back tears. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to go for a piece. Far from it. But he was also trying to find words. Trying to get his brain and his mouth working together again. His lips were moving but no sound came out, and his eyes struggled to focus on me. He looked like how I’d felt when hospital lunch-lady dude begged me to murder him, so long ago.
The only two words Homeboy could find in his mouth were fuck and you. “F-f-fuck . . . you!” he sputtered. “Fuck YOU!” He obviously wanted to elaborate, but it just wasn’t happening right then. A scan of his profile was inconclusive as to whether he was carrying. But by then it seemed more likely than not that neither of them was going to draw. And if they didn’t draw, I couldn’t murder them.
“Coulda sworn that was you! My bad.” I smiled at him for another second and then started shuffling out of my row, Sarah in front of me.
They followed us out. They kept their distance—maybe 20 feet. But Homeboy was still making his historic “Fuck you” speech. I thought we made for an interesting parade going through the lobby, though most people seemed genuinely not to give a shit. Perhaps this was a typical reaction to Sankofa.
I just wanted to go home. My murder trance was fading, and I was hungry. But there they were. The buddy was still, unwisely, going along for the ride. Homeboy didn’t seem so much mad at me as drawn. Maybe he was in shock too.
Sarah’s truck was three blocks away.
“F-fuck you! Fuck your mother!”
What?
I was glad for him that his mind was coming back to provide him with new material, but I had to wonder what kind of mind it was to begin with. I mean, who goes out of their way to try and shame somebody like that all through a movie that puts you through a lifetime’s worth of shame already? He ruined his own Sankofa experience ruining mine. What was that about?
“Fuck you and your white bitch!”
“Hey,” Sarah said. The parade kept moving.
Has he always been this way? Of course he has. No one just becomes like this. This guy is Black Police, Oakland version.
“Fuck you, [negro]!”
And what makes him so sure that Sarah and I are fucking? Or that we shouldn’t be? He has no idea where I’ve been. This motherfucker doesn’t know me. But he feels qualified to judge, to rate my life at a glance. To disapprove. If Amalia were still here, I’d have been sitting in there watching Sankofa with her. And Homeboy would have seen her with me instead of Sarah and he would have approved. He would have smiled at me for real and nodded and given me his blessing. He would have let me know that he approved of Amalia being alive.
At some point I had turned around. I was heading back toward them.
They both stopped dead, Homeboy’s mouth frozen in the midst of making the f sound. They had lagged about 30 feet behind by then. I walked fast.
I was aware that my new aggressive posture might force one or both of them to finally draw. They didn’t. I drew anyway.
It was like being on the other side of a mirror. This time, I was the one bearing down on someone with a gun in his hand. I could only imagine how slowly it was all happening to them. Like me back in Alphabet City, they didn’t budge, except that Buddy’s head slowly cocked to the side, just a bit. Grace would do the same thing when I made her ball disappear.
Closer. Am I their guardian angel? What if I am? Closer. Homeboy has been rolling like this for 20 years or more. It has taken a long time for his comeuppance to arrive. I owe it to him to make it good.
This is the thing about pistol whipping someone: they let you. I understand. You see someone coming at you with a gun in his hand and you assume he is about to shoot you to death. So when he raises it over his head, it’s like, Yay! My assailant is an idiot. He does not realize that he is holding Death in a Can; he thinks it is but a simple club. I will not disabuse him of this notion. The mind works like that. It’s not entirely wrong, either. A pistol whipping is a compromise, a settlement. You just don’t get to agree to it first.
I brought Shooter’s butt down right smack on top of Homeboy’s head as hard as I could. If I’d wanted to be a dick about it I’d have raked the front sight across the eyes. But I just wanted this brother to understand that he had miscalculated. That was my job.
I think he got it, because his eyes rolled up in his head and his whole body went limp and he poured face down onto the pavement and promptly set about bleeding. Heads bleed a lot.
His buddy watched the blood collect in a crack. “What . . .”
I pointed Shooter at the back of Homeboy’s head. Homeboy didn’t notice, but Buddy did. He blinked. “No.”
“Your man. He brought this on himself. He did this. Don’t forget that. Don’t let him forget it.” I swung Shooter over to Buddy. “And you might want to choose better friends.”
“Oh. Alright.”
Homeboy started moaning. I backed away. About halfway back to Sarah I turned and walked quickly but calmly forward. After a while I realized that I was walking down the street with a gun in my hand, so I stuck it in my pants. Then I pulled it out again, put the safety on, and stuck it back in my pants.
Once Sarah saw that I was finished, she turned and continued walking to the truck. I caught up with her as she was climbing in.
She started it up. “Could’ve been worse,” was all she said. I nodded.
She pushed the tape into the deck. Olde School Classics, Vol. I. We drove home to P-Funk and Cameo. Gangster shit.
