Manchild in the promised land

by Brown, Claude, 1937-

  Here he was, a faggot dealing drugs and wearing a raccoon coat. He used to wear the coat even in hot weather. It was

  June or July, and the weather was damn hot. And here was Knoxie standing up at the bar in his raccoon coat, while everybody else was in shirt sleeves. Nobody thought that | Knoxie was crazy for wearing the raccoon coat or for being a faggot, because there were a whole lot of crazy people around Harlem, and there were a whole lot of faggots. Nobody thought anything was wrong with faggots. Faggots were an accepted part of life.

  One of the biggest thieves around there was a faggot, Broadway Rose. They tell me that Broadway used to rule Rikers Island every time he went over there. Cats used to say that if you had Broadway as your woman when you went over there, it worked in your favor. He would say, "That's my man," and nobody would mess with you.

  All the kids in the neighborhood knew Broadway. He used to take them to the candy store or ice-cream shop. He even had them calling him mother.

  I remember one time I was going up on the hill with Reno and Broadway was coming down. He stopped and started talking to Reno. He looked at me and said to Reno, "He's cute. What's his name?"

  Reno said, "That's Sonny. He lives on the Avenue."

  Broadway said, "Yeah, I've seen him around." He put his arm around me and started talking, trying to play that girl role. He said, "Sonny, I'm gon put five dollars in my back pocket, and if you take it out real slow you can have it."

  I looked at Reno as if to say, "What the hell is wrong with this faggot? Is he crazy or somethin'?"

  Reno kept hunching me, as if to say, "Go on, man, go on.**

  The whole thing was that I was supposed to put my hand in Broadway's pocket and take some time getting the five dollars out and play with his ass. This faggot was about six foot four and big as a house. Since Reno kept hunching me to go on and do it and since he was a cat who knew what was going on, I thought. Shit, this is probably the best thing to do. He must know what he's doin'.

  So I went on and got the five dolllars out kind of slow and thanked him . . . played the part like I dug him. I said, "Thanks, baby, maybe I'll do you a favor one day."

  Broadway said, "Maybe someday I'll hold you to it."

  I asked Reno afterward, "What was that all about, man? Why you gon tell me to play with some faggot's ass?"

  He said, "This faggot is one of the best people you could ever know if you go to the Rock. Cats who're supposed to be

  real killers on the outside, when they come in there—like, if Broadway's there, he rules the Rock. A cat might think he's a killer, and Broadway might walk up to him and say he digs him, like, 'Look, you my man.' And if the cat squawks or acts like he's not gon play the game, he just punches him out, and that's that. On the other hand, if a cat comes in there and Broadway likes him and thinks he might be able to get a play out of him now and then, he'll tell everybody else, 'Look, that's my man, don't fuck with him.' They know this is law, because he runs the place."

  He was big enough. Broadway must have been a good 270 pounds, a good six feet four. He used to walk sloppy and slow, but anybody who's been in jail knows you can't tell how good a cat is with his hands by the way he walks or carries himself out on the street—or even in jail, for that matter. You never know until you see him in action.

  The people in the neighborhood were accustomed to faggots. Faggots were no big thing, neither were studs. There were a lot of girls who just liked girls. Some started at a young age. I remember once my little sister asked my mother, "Mama, is that a lady or a man?" It was a stud.

  Mama just looked at her and said, "That's a bull-dagger, baby."

  It was just like somebody telling a child, "That's a horse." This was how the people accepted it in the community. Nobody could be shocked at people being faggots. Nobody thought there was anything so crazy about it. A lot of people, if their sons became faggots or their daughters became studs, were disappointed and hurt. At first you'd hear about people putting their sons out because they became faggots, and putting their daughters out because they started liking girls. But after a while they always came back home. The family accepted it, the community accepted it, and everybody else accepted it. But, then, there was so much going on in the community. There were a lot of old women who just liked young girls. There were a lot of old men who just Uked young boys. Just about everybody knew who was who and who was what, and they just accepted it.

  I never met any faggots in Harlem who were in love with anybody. With them, it was sex, and they always wanted to try this sex thing with anybody who was willing.

  There were a lot of regular whores around. Sometimes you'd be in a bar. Some chick would be sitting around. You might have sold her some drugs, like when I used to be

  around selling cocaine and pot. She's turned her last trick, and she's got some money. You sit at the bar with her. The place is closing, it's time to go home. It might be a girl you have known for years. You might be good friends or good business associates, or you might have been in the same class at P.S. 90. She says, "You know somethin'? In all the time we've known each other, we've never been to bed." It's not really an offer, and it's not really a passing comment. It's more or less a challenge.

  Here's a bitch saying to you, all of a sudden, "I want to find out what's to you" ... in bed. With the whores, especially if you're friends, not good friends, but if you've known each other a long time, what she's saying is, "Do you think you're man enough to come share my bed tonight?" or "I want to try you out."

  You have to go along with it. Some of the chicks you might really enjoy yourself with. You become a wealthy rat. You get yourself another hole to crawl into on nights when you don't want to go home to an empty bed.

  But with faggots, I just couldn't see this.

  I was going through all kinds of crazy things. Harlem and life were becoming pretty confusing to me. Even though I lived downtown and worked and went to school at night, Harlem was still my point of relating to life and events and putting them together, my point of reference. It was becoming confusing because everything was changing and everybody was changing. I started trying to find out what all this changing was about.

  First of all, I started looking into the junkies, the faggots, all this sort of stuff. It had been going on for a long time, and I wondered about the people. Most of the cats I knew who were junkies said they did it because they wanted to, but I knew they did it because they wanted to be down. It was a hip thing to do, to know about—to be nodding. Not only that, it seemed to me that the junkies were running from things. They were running from people and life. Nobody expected anything from you if you were a junkie. Nobody expected you^ to accomplish anything in school or any other area. It was a good way to run from it all. You could just say you were a junkie and you were through. You were suddenly relieved of any obligations. People just stopped expecting anything from you from then on. They just started praying for you.

  I couldn't understand why people became faggots. Then I thought, Shit, somebody has to do it, and they just want to.

  Some girls wanted to become prostitutes. Some were prostitutes because they were strung out and had to support their habits. Some girls just liked selling cunt. Johnny D. used to say that prostitutes were cold bitches, that there was a difference between a prostitute and a whore. A whore could never be a prostitute. According to Johnny, the reason a whore couldn't be a prostitute was the first time somebody put some good dick to her, she'd be giving him money instead of making him pay for her body. To be a prostitute, a girl had to be kind of cold-natured and businesslike. There might have been something to this.

  It seemed that Carole had started going to Mrs. Rogers' church. Mrs. Rogers was Daimy Rogers' mother. She had four sons, and they were all junkies and had sheets on them. She'd had a hell of a lot of trouble with the boys. According to Dad and Papa, my grandfather, this was the way the Lord was making her pay for becoming a preacher. They said the Lord had never called a woman to preach, and any woman who got up th
ere and started calling herself a preacher was going against the way the Lord had made things and was going to have to suffer.

  Whatever the cause was, Mrs. Rogers was doing a whole lot of suffering. Danny and his brothers, Johnny, Dennis and George, had been fucking up right and left. Danny had gotten all shot up trying to stick up a liquor store to get some money for drugs. Johnny was doing something like seven years for trying to stick up a mail truck. These cats were some pretty good guys, and they had a lot on the ball, but they all got caught by the plague, all four of them.

  Carole was going so strong, I wanted to find out what had gotten into her, what was going on. One day, I just decided, "I'm gon go down there and check,this thing out.** When I went around to the church, I saw June Rogers. It was the first time I'd seen June since she was a little girL I hadn't hung out with Danny in a long time, and when I used to hang out with Danny, June was in a Southern boarding school. When June had almost finished school, her parents had to take her out of the boarding school because they didn't have the money any more. They had had to pay people off to drop charges against Danny and Dennis and Johnny and George, because these cats had been stealing to

  support their habits and had been messing with a lot of people. Mrs. Rogers was trying to keep them out of jail, and most of her money went to lawyers.

  June was a beautiful girl. She was like a walking dream. If you melted her, she would have been sweeter than honey.

  The first time I saw her, it turned my mind around. I knew I had to get to her. I had to make her mine. I sat there in church and listened to Mrs. Rogers talk all that godly stuff. I'd never paid too much attention to Mrs. Rogers after that time I came by her house after I'd gotten shot and she told me how lucky I was. She thought I should thank the Lord that He had put the bullet down there, because if the bullet had been just a little higher it would have hit my heart.

  I always thought Mrs. Rogers was a little crazy or something. She was too involved in all that godly business for me to pay much attention to her. She might not have been gone, but I couldn't listen to it. She was the minister, but I couldn't listen to any of that "Word" she was talking about.

  I had just come down there to find out how I could show Carole that this was all a lot of bullshit and make her put it down. When I got there and saw June sitting there banging on a tambourine, it just took my mind away. I couldn't think about anything. I forgot what I was there for. I went up to the collection plate and put in five dollars. She looked like a queen. She had long, jet-black hair. She had a candy coloring, like caramel or peanut brittle. She was tall and shapely. Lord, when I saw her, I wanted to get next to her so badly....

  I couldn't think of anything else for days after I went to that church, and I knew I was going to go back and back. I knew I couldn't take her out anywhere, because Mrs. Rogers wouldn't allow June and her younger sister, Deidre, to associate with boys. Deidre was about my age. June was about a year or two older. Deidre wasn't much to look at. I don't think too many boys would have minded her not associating with them.

  I went home and, since everybody was so religious, I prayed and prayed for the Lord to give me just one chance, one chance to get June Rogers down to my place. After a week or so, I got kind of impatient and saw that the Lord wasn't going to answer my prayer. I was going to have to take some action myself if that prayer was to be answered.

  I started talking to Carole. Carole was really sold on this Holy Roller thing. She was saying that "everybody needs God in their life," and that sort of business.

  I said, "Yeah, baby, it's a lot to that, and I been thinkin' about bringin' God into my Hfe."

  Carole said, "Oh, Sonny Boy, I'm so glad!" and she told me that she had prayed for me time and time again. She'd prayed for the Lord to touch me and give me the message.

  I said, "Yeah, baby, well, it seems like your prayers are finally bein' answered, because I think the Lord gave me the message. I feel like now the time has come for me to start goin' to church."

  I told her, "I'm gon start goin' every week," and she started waiting for me to go to church with her. I started going every Sunday, religiously. I'd sit there in one of the front rows and stare at Mrs. Rogers when she started throwing up her hands and sweating and hollering about the Lord and good Jesus. I'd pat my foot and look like I was leally getting the message. Occasionally, I'd even say an amen or a hallelujah. I didn't even know what it was all about, but I heard the other people saying it who were supposed to be in on that stuff, so I did it too.

  Mrs. Rogers started getting the feeling that I was a real good boy. I was working, and I gave a lot of money to the church. Every time I came, I would give them five dollars or something like that. I used to tell the people that the reason I started going to evening high school was that I wanted to better myself, that I wanted to get ahead in life, and this sounded good. The real reason was that I wanted to get the hell out of Harlem. I needed a change, and I started going because of that reason. But they liked the other one better, so I told them that. Mrs. Rogers thought that was real nice. As a matter of fact, she thought that I was a nice young man who was going to be something someday and that all I needed was God. I went along with it. , ,■

  After I'd been going to church about three weeks, I figured it was time for me to go into my act. I was having a fever to get next to June. I had to do it soon. I figured if I was saved, Mrs. Rogers wouldn't mind me coming by and taking June out sometime, like to a nice movie, a religious picture, something about Jesus or the Bible. I could take her to the museum or down to the Coliseum. All I needed was just one chance to get her down to my place, to my quaint little loft room in the Village. I knew she would like the idea. She was nice, and

  she was very religious. But I knew she had a lot of animal in her, and all I wanted was a chance to unlock that animal and let it out. There's just something fascinating about religious chicks anyway. It's the high potentiality for corruption that's so fascinating.

  On the fourth Sunday, I made plans. I put on a brand-new hundred-and-fifty-dollar suit, my thirty-dollar shoes, and my ten-dollar shirt and went uptown.

  I sat in the front row, and I waited for Mrs. Rogers to reach the climax of the sermon. Mrs. Rogers was a big, burly, dark-skinned woman. I suppose this was why most of her children were so nice looking—she was big, dark, and burly, and her husband was lean and real light-skinned. He looked almost white.

  This Sunday, Mrs. Rogers started throwing up her big arms and raising her voice and hollering about the Lord and how good Jesus was. When she really got excited and carried away with the sermon, she said, "Talk to Jesus, everybody!" She shouted it out; she threw both fists straight up in the air and preached at the top of her voice. The veins were bulging in her forehead, and the sweat was pouring down.

  June was banging on her tambourine real hard and getting excited too. Deidre was on the piano, and somebody else had a cymbal. Everybody was really going at it. I felt that this was the time—when Mrs. Rogers hit her most excited point —this was the time I'd planned to pull my saved scene.

  I jumped up and started hollering, "Oh, Jesus!"

  Mrs. Rogers looked at me and said, "Yes, son, call on Jesus."

  I started clapping my hands and jumping up and down and saying, "Oh, Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Please, Jesus!" This was the way I'd heard the people do it before when they'd been saved. After a while, I fell on the floor and started rolling around in my brand-new suit. This looked good; I knew it had to be convincing.

  I rolled down there for ten or fifteen minutes, and Mrs. Rogers came over. She took my hand and said, "Call on the name o' the Lord,^ son. Call on Jesus!"

  "Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, save me!"

  "Tell Jesus to come into your heart, son."

  "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, please, Jesus, come into my heart."

  "Call on Jesus." She just held my hand, and she said, "Call on Jesus, son, call on Jesus!" And she started squeezing it.

  I wanted to call on Jesus and say, "Jesus, please tell thi
s woman to let my hand go!" She was almost squeezing it off.

  Somebody would have thought it was her up there being saved instead of me. The times when she told me, "Call on Jesus," and I was saying, "Oh, Jesus!" real loud, it was the pain. She was squeezing my hand so hard, I was screaming to get away from that. I just went on calling on Jesus, and after about twenty-five minutes of this, I felt I had convinced everybody in the church that I was good and saved. I was all set to go on and get tight with June.

  I got up, and Mrs. Rogers said, "Son, the Lord is callin' you, and you almost came to Him just then. Jesus almost walked into your life. You just keep on prayLn'. You just keep on prayin', and I know you gon be saved, because the Lord wants to come into your life."

  I never felt so low in all my life. Here I was lying and rolling on the floor all that time, and this woman was saying I was almost saved. I was really disgusted, and I just never went back there anymore. I felt that it wasn't worth the time and effort. If I couldn't convince this woman I was saved, I'd never get next to June; she'd never let her out of the house by herself. I just chalked it up to experience—and to a cleaning bill.

  I stayed away from that religious thing and let Carole go on and walk that way if she wanted to. I felt that this was something. Some people needed religion. The junkies needed drugs. Some people needed to get drunk on Saturday night and raise hell. A lot of people needed the numbers. Me, I needed to get out of Harlem.