The White Boy Shuffle

by Paul Beatty

  This drunken belch

  leaves the last bitter

  taste of life in my mouth.

  CAROL YANCY

  Ms. Yancy died when she impaled herself with a turkey thermometer after the checkout clerk at Buy ’n’ Buy Supermarket refused to place the change in her hand. After a lengthy argument with store management, Ms. Yancy, ignoring the store’s no-smoking policy, lit a cigarette, then stabbed herself in the frozen foods section. Age ninety-four years.

  Both cheeks caved in with age,

  I pull on a Newport menthol

  one last time.

  FALASHA NOONAN

  Ms. Noonan, distinguished pianist and leader of the world-famous free jazz big band Infernal Racket, gathered her band members for one last rehearsal. During a piano solo, she scribbled this poem on her sheet music, then leaned into the strings and smashed the piano lid on her head. Age fifty-five years.

  Having annotated the sunset

  I double-time to heaven,

  talking whiskey and waltz with Monk.

  MERVA KILGORE

  Ms. Kilgore, a prolific writer from Philadelphia, published seventeen volumes of poetry, including her most highly regarded work, Ancestral Hogwash: Songs and Slurs for My No-Account Daddy. Ms. Kilgore was giving a poetry reading at an elementary school in the Philadelphia suburbs when the school’s white principal asked if she’d mind singing “one of those old Negro spirituals.” Hearing this, Ms. Kilgore recited the poem below, then, with her hand in the water pitcher, bit through the microphone cord, electrocuting herself. She was sixty-nine years old.

  Imagine this poem

  is cluttered with references to obscure

  figures of Greek mythology,

  antique birchwood bureaus,

  and a quaint New England bed-and-breakfast;

  then send it to The New Yorker

  *

  At night Yoshiko and I made soapsud sculptures in the heart-shaped Jacuzzi or wrote critiques of the free porno movies. Sometimes we’d have Psycho Loco drive us to cafés in the Venice and Wilshire districts for the multicultural poetry scene. Packed with mostly white poetry devotees fawning over poets of color, the readings were ribald contests where the audience judged the poetry for political correctness, the amount of white guilt evoked, and sexual bawdiness. All the poets received belittling introductions equating them to canonical bards: “Next up is UFO, the Unbelievable Funky One, or as we like to call him, the Flying Chaucer.”

  One night a poet known as Kwasi Moto, the Hunch in the Back of Your Mind, read a poem entitled “Uncle Sam I Am.” The Dr. Seussesque ballad was an account of how the poet’s rough upbringing was responsible for transmogrifying him into a red, white, and blue animal that raped white women and hunted down “nigras and Messicans.”

  Uncle Sam I am,

  do you like black niggers and white chicks named Pam?

  Yes, I could beat a nigger in the park,

  and eat a pussy in the dark.

  Would you stab a Mexican in a tree

  and blame the ghetto on TV?

  Psycho Loco looked on in amazement and loudly remarked, “I know they ain’t paying this motherfucker for this phony bullshit,” then unabashedly placed his silvery nine-millimeter on the table with a heavy thunk. The poet, visibly shaken, began to rush his lines and rattle his text.

  Because of the Anglo-Saxon

  I’ve no time for relaxin’

  shooting jigaboos and honkies named Sue

  for satisfaction.

  Unable to take any more cutthroat drivel, Psycho Loco snatched his gun, walked up to the poet, and stuck the barrel into his ear canal. “You so bad, read, you buster-ass mark!”

  In a sobbing fit, the poor bard continued.

  Uncle Sam I am,

  scared of no man,

  white, black, Klan, or tan.

  By the end of the poem, Kwasi Moto had shriveled to the floor, groveling and begging Psycho Loco not to shoot him. Freeing himself from the poet’s clutches with a jackbooted kick to the head, Psycho Loco leaned into the poet’s bloodied face. “You know what’s wrong with you? Your line breaks are all fucked up.” With a self-satisfied smirk, Psycho Loco returned to his seat and scanned the stunned crowd. “Well, who’s next? On with the goddamn show. Gunnar, you want a beer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And somebody get my nigger another beer.”

  Yoshiko laughed for two days straight, but mostly she and I stayed at home listening to the real L.A. street soldiers receive radio therapy.

  Station KQBK Sidewalk Talk recognize caller … This is Wilfredo from Pacoima … I want to say … I want to say … I’ve killed, and been killed, entiendes? But leaving mis vatos, it’s hard, ese … Kamila Parks aka K-Down … I’m tired of these triflin’ niggers … These mens today don’t respect theyselves, much less anyone else … Hey, yo Lace Love the Mad Body Slammer on the check-in … I’m calling to defend myself against the false accusations and prefabrications of the previous caller … I respect all womens of the world … So I hit the ho once or twice, y’ know, no big deal … Waddup, I’m Flip-out the Filipino Str-8 Player Boller from Artesia … I wanna say more attention needs to be paid to Asian gangsterism … The missionary school system be fronting on a yellow brother … They ain’t out to teach nobody nothing … Thanks to our guests … Father Glenn Fernandez, Dr. Stacy Ortiz, and ex-banger now community activist Chino “Ojo Negro” Aquadilla, this your host, Ras Vroom Vroom Nkrumah, signing off, and remember, all peoples of color need to come together and en español “color no equal dolor” …

  We chased sleep, our limbs interlocked under the Lysol-scented quilts, our fingertips playfully hiking up and down our bodies, trying to ignore the fold-out bed’s pointy prongs and rib cage-jarring metal bars by whispering potential names for the baby: Jessica, Aldo, Althea, Rosie, Hiroko, Marc, Doreen, Dallas, Octavia, Hiroshi, Joaquim, Corinthian, Marpessa, Sunday, Mamadou, Quo Vadis …

  On a Tuesday night late in her last trimester Yoshiko had her first craving: animal crackers (only giraffes, bears, and tigers), a blueberry slushie, and salted soybeans. Not too bad. I threw on some clothes and went out into the neon-lit night. Wary of being out alone and on foot, I decided to take the back streets to the 7-Eleven, which was a good two miles away. I darted past the ice machine and eased onto Arroyo Drive, hoping Yoshiko wouldn’t mind if I substituted pumpkin seeds for the soybeans, which would be impossible to find in the middle of the ghetto at one-thirty in the morning.

  Ten minutes into my mission I heard the sound of helicopter blades churning the hot air. Niggers must be fucking up, I thought, remembering the fun we used to have outwitting the police copters by crawling underneath parked cars until we reached safety. I turned onto Whitworth Avenue and suddenly found myself engulfed in a blinding waterfall of blue-white light. Instinctively, my hands shot above my head as I waited for the standard drill—“Face down on the ground, hands behind your head, ankles crossed. Move!” But no instructions were forthcoming. I waited a minute or two and looked for a police cruiser; nothing. No beat cops, only the helicopter hovering overhead and me standing in a fifty-foot circle of light, becoming more appreciative of the moon. What the fuck?

  I slowly eased down the street, and the tractor beam kept me at its center. If I moved two feet to the left, the spotlight moved two feet to the left, as if I were wearing a luminous Victorian whalebone dress that hula-hooped around my hips. I entered the 7-Eleven bathed in the eerie extraterrestrial light, and the clerk backed off a bit. I further terrorized him with a robotic “Take me to your leader,” and he shot out the back door. Gathering what I came for, I poured myself a blueberry slushie, left a five-dollar bill on the counter, and walked back to the motel.

  Yoshiko asked why her slushie was so warm and I told her about being followed by the police helicopter. She rolled her eyes. I motioned for her to follow me. Outside, we stood in the middle of Arroyo and waited in the dark. Nothing happened and Yoshiko grew impatient, sipping on
her tepid slushie and whining, “What? What?”

  “Wait a minute. You hear that?”

  I cupped my ears and in the distance could hear the rotor blades. Then a loud click and we were standing in the world’s biggest spotlight.

  “Cool.” Yoshiko smiled and handed me the lions and rhinos from the box of animal crackers. We sat at the bus stop, chewing off the ears of shortbread circus animals and enacting an urban version of Waiting for Godot.

  “You’re sure you don’t mind the pumpkin seeds?”

  “That depends. Do you want to grow carrots?”

  “Do we need carrots?”

  “Yes, carrots are good.”

  “Good as gold.”

  “There’s nothing better than a good smoke.”

  “Phlegm.”

  “Now there was a professional.”

  And so on until the helicopter peeled away with the dawn.

  *

  Yoshiko and I took midnight strolls through Hillside, our path lit by the huge flashlight in the sky. Yoshiko liked to pretend she was a newly discovered blues musician fresh from the Mississippi Delta cotton fields, on her first major tour. “Newport 1961.” She didn’t sing; she introduced herself, the band, and the song. “My name is Lipless Citrus Lime, and dese heah boys is the Dickless Wonders. We gonna play a country blues called, ‘We Gonna Play a Country Blues.’” She would close her eyes and hum and moan for about a minute, then bow to the invisible crowd, basking in the spotlight, saying, “Thank ye, thank ye” for another ten minutes. Once a week or so she’d march through the neighborhood carrying a sign updating the status of the baby. “When am I due? Five more days. Come to the natural birthing of the child. Reynier Park—free admission if you bring a clean towel.”

  Sometimes Psycho Loco would join us on our walks, dispensing his opinions with every swallow of his Carta Blanca. “What kind of black man would let his wife give birth in the park?”

  “You know, I think she’s doing it as a way of replacing Scoby. Giving something back to the community.”

  At first the light (and maybe Yoshiko’s odd behavior and Psycho Loco’s presence) scared everyone away. We’d come strolling down the street, lit up like circus clowns under the big top, and the crowd would scatter like kitchen roaches. Eventually, emboldened by our regularity, folks joined us in the circle, and invariably they stared straight into the light source. “Don’t look directly into it, you’ll go blind.”

  We induced labor, making love with the purple and gold dusk beaming through the grimy motel windows. I carried Yoshiko down the stairs and propped her in a wheelchair I’d stolen from the hospital and wheeled her through the streets of Hillside. It was like a one-float parade. Yoshiko’s sign read “When am I due? Now. Come to Reynier Park. Admission free if you don’t say, ‘Oh, look at all the blood,’” and she waved weakly at the people who lined the streets, shaking hands with those who came to the wheelchair to bestow flowers. The searchlight seemed especially bright that warm Friday night.

  When we arrived at the park, the neighborhood welcomed Yoshiko with a huge ovation. The stoical Gun Totin’ Hooligans provided security, Manny and Sally Montoya supplied clean towels and rubber gloves from the barbershop, and Ms. Kim brought refreshments from her new store. My mom was the midwife, and her obstetric skills were in evidence as she led Yoshiko to a small section of grass turned into a birthing theme park. There my mother had constructed an outdoor maternity ward out of tarpaulins, beanbags, and throw pillows. Next to this was a small bathing pool and a table lined with shiny medical supplies: sutures, scissors, a clamp, and a cellular phone in case of emergency.

  Yoshiko undressed and slipped into the pool, flopping around with each twinge of labor pain as my mom checked her blood pressure and timed the contractions. The locals filed by, shouting encouragement and wishing Yoshiko luck. After a few hours it was time; Yoshiko clambered onto the cushy mountain and squatted on the ridge of beanbags. My job was to massage her feet, feed her salted soybeans, and wipe her down with cold sponges. When my mother commanded her to push, Yoshiko looked me in the eye and squeezed my biceps to mush. I returned her gaze, trying to think of something reassuring to say, but all that came out was “Beautiful, beautiful.”

  Yoshiko stopped grimacing, and my mother placed a slimy guck-covered infant on her chest. It laid its teeny head on her breast; the mother smiled, and the baby made a gargoyle face that I called a smile. Naomi Katsu Kaufman was welcomed into the world with kisses. There was cheering, the blasts of car horns, and bottle rockets bursting in the night sky. A box of cigars attached to a small parachute landed next to the newborn. The card read, “Congratulations from the Los Angeles Police Department. Maybe this one will grow up with a respect for authority.” I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like my father’s hand.

  I lit a stogie and put an arm around my wife and child. “Ewwww. She looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

  “Gunnar.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  My mom put a cereal bowl in my hands and shoved me into the hallowed junction of Yoshiko’s spread legs.

  “Squat.”

  I did as ordered, hunkered in front of my wife’s swollen vulva and gently kissed her bloody perineum, and awaited the afterbirth. “Ma, this is fucked up. You know, this is my favorite cereal bowl.” Yoshiko reached between her legs and condescendingly patted my forehead. The placenta dropped into the bowl, a quivering bloody mass of now useless organ. Someone in the crowd asked when we were going to do this again. I answered, “Next week” and lifted the pulpy organ in the direction of the officers in the helicopter. “Thus behold the only thing mightier than yourself.”

  Yoshiko laughed and said, “Roots, right? Come over here and cut the cord, then give me a beer and a kiss.”

  *

  Every Friday night we held outdoor open mikes, called the Black Bacchanalian MiseryFests, under the LAPD’s simple but effective stage lighting. We jerryrigged a sound system using car stereos loud enough to drown out the noise from the helicopter. I was the emcee, Yoshiko the stage manager, and Psycho Loco did everything else. The shows lasted all night, and the neighborhood players read poetry, held car shows, sang, danced, ad-libbed harangues about everything from why there are no Latino baseball umpires to the practicality of sustaining human life on Mars. Sometimes troupes of children simply counted to a hundred for hours at a time.

  Every week there was at least one hour of Community Stigmas. Community Stigmas was a loosely run part of the MiseryFest where the neighborhood’s stigmatized groups got a chance to kvetch and defend their actions to the rest of the neighborhood. I’d call the registered voters to the stage to explain why they bothered, request that all the welfare cheats step forward and share their fraudulent scams, ask the panhandlers to say what they really thought of their spare-change benefactors, offer fifty dollars to any Muslim who’d eat a fatty slab of bacon. The most poignant nights were the ones when the recovered addicts stepped into the light to soak up the warm applause and address the crowd. “I want to thank all my cool outs who stood by me, but mostly I want to thank self for not giving up on self.” Then I’d ask all the current users to step up into the ring of light and speak out. The bold users would swagger into the circle, smoking their pipes, needles dangling from their arms, playing up to the boos like villainous wrestlers. The invitations weren’t always voluntarily accepted, and a few reluctant baseheads would be forced into the spotlight by disgruntled friends and family. No one could leave until he’d said something, anything from “I promise on my grandmama’s grave to stop” to “I don’t give a fuck. I’ll smoke till white people have feelings.” The drug dealers also got their say. Every third Friday we’d have Psycho’s Analysis, where Psycho Loco conducted these heartwrenching gangbanger tribunals. Some hoodlums would volunteer to bare their souls. They’d sit on wooden stools, speaking thoughtfully into microphones, unburdening themselves like war criminals, black gunny-sacks stretched over the heads of the wanted one
s to prevent the police from using an overhead skycam to identify them.

  Soon the Bacchanalian MiseryFests became gala events; colored folks from all over Los Angeles crashed Hillside to take part in the spectacle. To ensure that the Friday nights didn’t turn into a trendy happening for whities bold enough to spelunk into the depths of the ghetto, Psycho Loco stationed armed guards at the gate to keep out the blue-eyed soulsters. Questioning anyone who looked to be of Caucasian descent, the sentries showed those of dubious ancestry a photograph of a radial-tire-colored black man, then asked, “What’s darker than this man’s face?” Anyone who didn’t answer “His butt” or “His nipples” didn’t get in.

  The networks caught wind of the MiseryFest’s popularity and offered a bundle of money for the rights to broadcast weekly installments. We accepted the best offer and divvied it up among all the households in Hillside, and the television station agreed to the following conditions.

  • Build the Reynier Park Amphitheater and pay for its maintenance.

  • Build huge video screens throughout the neighborhood.

  • Use only colored camerapersons and support staff.

  • All broadcasts must be live and unedited.

  • Stay the fuck out of the way.

  The next scheduled broadcast was on the two-year anniversary of Scoby’s death. There were widespread rumors that I would use the national forum to immolate myself Buddhist-monk style and skewer my daughter Naomi on a barbecue spit rotating over my pyre. Niggers jammed the theater and filled the streets of Hillside to pay their last respects. Television expected the rest of the bloodthirsty world to tune in for the first live broadcast of a suicide.

  The fest opened with an hour of silence followed by a parade of local residents declaring their undying love for Nicholas, most of the tearful reminiscences starting with “I remember when that nigger wasn’t but about yea big …” But it was my show—I was his best friend, obliged to use the belles-lettres to fortify Scoby’s status as a sainted martyr.