Happy Veterans Day

 

 

 Wade watched his son walk out alone through the tunnel.  He saw a skinny kid with a lot of feathered hair. He thought his young son looked like Shawn Cassidy, an androgenous looking teen star.  Luke held out his hand to the man who looked like Charles Manson in an olive green army coat.  The man with intense eyes left his son’s hand to hang in the air until he dropped it.

            “You came from Frisco?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “Are there still a lot of queers in Frisco?”

            “I don’t know.  I live in Oakland.  My mom works at Berkeley.  She said it was cheaper to fly out of San Francisco than Oakland.”

            “Berkeley huh?  Lot of fucking hippies at that school.  You’re not a Shawn Cassidy fan are you?”

                “No sir.  My sister is though.”

            Wade was a Vietnam veteran who had come back from an eighteen month, two tours of duty to Detroit.  He was an infantry sergeant whose job it was to walk from village to village through the jungle after Agent Orange, a defoliant, was used to cause the foliage to die instantly, making it possible to see the forest through the trees as the saying goes.

            Luke looked at the beat up looking house in a beat up looking area of a town he was born in but had not visited since being an infant.  In the front yard with knee high grass; behind a six-foot cinderblock wall with razor wire at the top and a sign that read, “Trespass if you want to go to heaven today”.  In the yard were three Doberman Pinchers.  The three dogs growled at Luke.  Luke was frozen with fear.

            “If you act like a scared little pussy, you’ll always get your ass kicked.  Don’t think them dogs don’t know you’re frightened like a girl.  Just be cool and they won’t fuck with you…  Hey, you got my money, motherfucke!r?”

            A chubby man with aviator sunglasses and a thick black moustache was loading his belongings into a car in the driveway at that same moment.  He had been renting a bedroom from Wade and decided to vacate upon not having rent money two months in a row.

            “Well, I have just recently become gainfully employed and will be able to send you money from Cleveland just as soon as I get my first check.”

            Wade held up his index finger motioning his renter to wait a moment.

            “Wait here.  I got a little something to give you before you go.  Don’t take off yet.”

            Wade went into his bedroom, brought out a double barrel 12 gauge shot gun and pointed it at his renter.  The truck lid was open.  Wade shot a hole in the trunk as his former renter raced off in his car.

          “Rule fucking one- be a man of your word and don’t bullshit people especially if they are not stupid enough to swallow bullcrap.  He thinks I would kill and I would.  He won’t ever send me a nickel.  He deserved the scare for being a lying ass deadbeat.  You hungry?”

           Wade took Luke to a Coney Island and let him order a hot dog with fries and a soda.  He thumbed through a book called Dianetics by a man named L. Ron Hubbard while smoking a cigarette.  Luke, an eleven year old boy wondered why it was that the man who was his father, never asked him any questions.  What’s your school like?  How’s your mom?  Does your sister ever ask about me?  After about five minutes of silence, Wade started to speak.

            “I had a friend named Lester.  A bad ass Jew boy who lived in Southfield.  He had a Dodge Charger and wouldn’t take no shit from nobody.  He went to reform school and when he got out, his family wouldn’t let him back in the house.  I had a job with your mom’s father working at a Plymouth plant and Lester was living with your mom and I.  Well old Lester had no fucking job and he was at home all day with your mom while I was working.  You were a baby and about a year later, your sister was born.  When your sister came out, she was born with a hook fucking nose.  I’m wondering where she got the hook.  Maybe a Jew with a hook nose himself?  I know your sister is Lester’s kid.  She looks like Lester in all them pictures your mom sent me.”

          Luke went on to hear the same story several more times before he returned home.  Upon returning home, Luke confronted his mother with the question about Lester being the father of his sister.  Luke’s mother slapped him and replied that Lester was a pig and the very idea of being accused of being with him, made her violent. 

            Two men came in to the restaurant and began quietly robbing everyone at the Coney Island.  Wade took notice and put down the book on Dianetics.  Eventually the men walked up towards Wade and Luke.  One man plopped down across from Wade, next to Luke as he picked his teeth with a toothpick.

            “Hey man, we collecting money foh little brothas of the poor.  We poor brothas and we collecting.  Take out all you got in your pockets and just be cool, dig?”

            Wade took a drink of his coffee with his left hand and rammed the barrel of his gun into the crotch of the man sitting across from him calmly.

            “I was in a village you ain’t never heard of or cared about some 10,000 miles from here.  Some motherfucker strapped a bomb to a kid who came up and begged for candy and then died and took two friends of mine with him.  I then rounded up ever man in the village, put a gun in their mouths like the one against your balls right now and sent them to see Buddha.  I would have no fucking problem pulling the trigger right now and splattering your nutsack all over the wall behind you.  I went to fight so that motherfuckers like you could coast, right?  Great country.  Now you two motherfuckers clean your pockets of the shit you just took and set it right here on the table.  I might then let you walk the fuck out of here.”

         Luke couldn’t eat anymore.  His teeth chattered uncontrollably.  His father asked if he was cold.  It was eighty-five degrees out.  Before Luke returned to Oakland, his father threatened people who looked at him, bumped into him, cut him off in traffic and even pulled out a sawed off shotgun to shoot at what he thought was pheasant in a field in inner city Detroit.  Luke never came to visit his father again.  Years later, a nurse from a hospital in a burn unit in Las Vegas was able to find Luke via Facebook to let him know that his father had been burned over 65% of his body in a house fire.  Most people die from the intense pain, Wade was a strong man who could endure great pain.  All his life he endured the pain of living a life that went wrong.  Was it society and war or just an inability to adjust to speed of life in America?  There’s no answer.

            Luke read through magazines and sent text messages to his wife back in Northern California.  Wade opened his eyes and saw a baby girl on the screen saver of his son’s laptop.  Luke was unaware that his father was conscious.

            “What’s your baby’s name?”

            “We named her Joyeaux…  It’s French.  We call her Joy for short.”

            “Everyone has fucked up names today, don’t they?  Who does your baby look like, you or your wife?”

            Luke smiled and looked at his dad before responding.  He wondered how it was that the man looking at him was more of a stranger than a random person on the street.  Luke asked himself often how it was that this man never contacted him and apologized for never being a part of my life.  He reasoned that you cannot miss something that means nothing to you.

            “Well dad…  I have to be honest with you.  Joyeaux looks like Lester…  How bout that?”

Dedicated to my dad, a Vietnam Veteran.  A man I’ve known since birth that I still really do not know.

Disney for Adults or Debauchery in Detroit

A good idea is really a good idea and leaves others to ponder why it was they didn’t think about it first. A place that serves coffee like heroin to addicts who need a fix just to function. A great idea worth a billion. Now Thomas Washington, no relation to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, bought land in Detroit for pennies on the dollar. After winning the Powerball at a party store on Livernois and some other street you don’t know or care about in Detroit, Thomas, who was living in his mother’s beat up two bedroom house south of 8 mile, bought a bottle of Thorn Rose sweet red wine and a Powerball ticket. Thomas’ chances of being hit by a satellite on a motorcycle travelling 62.5 miles an hour or 100 kilometers, which ever you prefer, was greater than landing the single ticket worth a half billion. Call it destiny with divinity. Now Thomas reasoned that his town wasn’t such a bad town. It used to be a good town and upon visiting Las Vegas for a weekend and a week in Dubai, Thomas decided that buying vacant land in Detroit and turning into a Disney for adults or debauchery in Detroit, was a way of turning millions into billions. After a few hotels and casinos popped up in northwest Detroit where a man-made lake was lined with love cabins and getaway destinations for lovers and others, big time investment followed. Soon came MMA matches, live sex shows and donkey shows. There were video game arcades for adults where they could redeem tickets to have relations with women from around the world or for hunks from next door. Hookah dens with hash and Marijuana, MTV reality shows, 5 star restaurants packed with stars and those wanting to be stars. Fake beaches and fake people flocked to Detroit to make the scene. Las Vegas became a subdued ghost town. Forbes had a picture of a beautiful hotel overlooking a shimmering lake with a young woman in a thong wading in knee deep water. The caption read, “Detroit- The key to America’s renaissance”. The author of the article commented on how it took a genius to tap into the hidden desires of man to create a vacationland of hidden fantasies for people from around the world. Thomas Washington was pictured in a bowler hat and a cane lined with diamonds, dressed in a suit which was handmade by a man in Italy who charged $20,000.00. Thomas took a puff of a Cohiba, took a sip from a $1,000.00 a bottle cognac in a gold rimmed glass. Thomas picked tobacco or lint off of his tongue before contouring his razor thin moustache and speaking in a quietly smooth voice. He paused ten seconds before answering the journalist which only made Thomas seem deeper than he was. “People are gonna do what they gonna do. I just make it fashionable to be a pig. When you have money, you a deep motherfucker. When you ain’t got a pot to piss in, you jus a dirty motherfucker… And that’s jus how shit is.

Das Capitalists

If you had your car towed in the city of Detroit, you made a tremendous mistake.  Chances are your car is not worth the cost to spring it and then you might have to find the one of the most miserable parts of North America to claim your vehicle.  Picture miles and miles of weeds growing through cracks in streets and sidewalks that used to be city streets.  One of the biggest towing companies in the nation is housed in inner city Detroit.  The owner had a morbid sense of humor.  He named his towing yard The Happy Valley Sunday Yard for Wayward Vehicles and Singing Frog Sanctuary.  It is quite wordy to be sure.  A wrought iron fence fashioned to look like the entry way to Auschwitz says in German, “Geld macht frei” or in English, “money makes you free”.

Clement had a handlebar moustache, listened to opera music and was working on his PHD in philosophy.  Clement inherited the pound from his dad who received it through death from his dad.  Clement was going through a master’s program at Wayne State University when his father passed on.  Clement immediately renamed the yard and fashioned the front gate to look like the entry way to Auschwitz.  It was very dark but it amused him.  A few old Jews recognized the gate.  One old Jew just laughed.

It was a warm Wednesday night and Clement was thinking about capitalism and whether America was possibly on the wrong track.  He thought about Karl Marx.  Clement had the ability to remember verbatim anything he read or said.

                “The commodity is the basic "cell-form" of a capitalist society, but capitalism is distinguished from other forms of production based on commodities in that here labor power becomes a commodity like any other. Moreover, because commerce, as a human activity, implied no morality beyond that required to buy and sell goods and services, the growth of the market system made discrete entities of the economic, the moral, and the legal spheres of human activity in society; hence, subjective moral  value is separate from objective economic value…  This motherfucker yelling on a cell phone.”

                “If you want your goddamn vehicle, you will pay $198.00 to have it again.  If not, it will be auctioned off to some other poor dope dealer.  Is that clear enough English?”

                “Fuck you, my friend...  I hope god punishes you for what you doing.”

                “I’m not a friend, my friend and god punished you for stupidity.  Park your car in front of the casino looking like a terrorist who is out to exploit all the vices of America before catching a flight that will not land and god punishes you.  That and Detroit’s finest capture your luscious ass on film.  No bartering.  I don’t need a goat, just greenbacks.”

                Tristan und Isolde played loudly while Clemente looked unblinkingly at beat up Fords and Chevys.  His busty and buxom secretary closed her eyes and listened to the music hoping that the animalistic tendencies of Clemente would take over and that he would bend her over his desk and be rough with her.  The intro to Tristan und Isolde was not like the Flight of the Valkyries.  Clemente could smell Veronica’s perfume but he was somewhere else.  Veronica heard Tristan speaking but could not comprehend what he was saying.

                “The economic crisis such as depression and recession that are rooted in the contradictory character of the economic value of the commodity (cell-unit) of a capitalist society, are the conditions that propitiate which has been collectively identified as a weapon, forged by the capitalists, whom the working class "turned against bourgeoisies itself…  God damn it!”

            A white kid with a cocked Detroit Tigers hat with a straight brim in red with a flashing gothic D, stood wearing a tank top or Dago T, baggy pants and a white pair of gym shoes.  He was covered in cheap tattoos, one being a tear drop next to his right eye.

            “Aye man, this is fucking bullshit, man…  I had my fucking flashers on and was in the Coney Island picking my shit up for thirty fucking seconds.  Y’all was waiting fo my ass to tow my shit away.”

            Clement held up a finger, picked up a book with a phony cover that read, literate guide to conversing with illiterates.

            “If your fucking ass had two ounces of sense, not to be confused with sensimilla, you would have taken ten extra seconds to park your shit in a legal spot for no money at all.  Instead you felt you was so important that you didn’t think yo white ass was held to the same bullshit as every other motherfucker’s motherfucking ass, correct?”

            “Fuck you, man…  Just give me my motherfucking car.”

            Paco pulled forward with the tow truck a 1973 Cadillac Eldorado, powder blue with 18 inch rims.  The white male studied his vehicle for signs of abuse.  He could find none.  This young man lived in a house with his mom, his sister, his sister’s boyfriend, their child, his previous children with two other women and three dogs and a 1973 Cadillac Eldorado.

            Veronica was turned on by Clemente’s indifference.  She ripped open her blouse and plopped down upon Clemente’s lap, grabbed his face with her hands until his face looked like a sharpei dog.  The music became soft again.  Veronica spoke.

            “You bet me that Miguel Cabrera would get 200 RBIs by the end of the season.  We have less than a month to go til the end of the season and he is hurt and stuck at 135.”

            Clemente smiled and took a sip of his tea.  He shook his head and rubbed Veronica’s curvy hips.

            “Yes…  Even though I am not a Detroit Tigers fan or a fan of baseball, I bet you that he would get 200 RBIs based on his work for his team thus far.”

            Veronica took Clemente’s index finger and put it in her mouth while he spoke.

            “And when Miggy comes up short…  Just remember that I get to put a mango in your ass and eat it down to the seed.  65 RBIs in a month would be a great accomplishment yet not possible.  Just wanted to let you know where things stand.”

            The music got loud and another car pulled up angrily.  Clemente took a sip of his tea, smiled and winked at his assistant.

            “Mango…  Oh boy…  Maybe I don’t understand baseball after all.”

Separate and Equal

            “So wait a minute?  You telling me that my friend is not allowed in here?”

            The manager wore a thin suit with a thin tie.  His hair was combed back with a grease based hair trainer and he was nervously chewing his gum, with his arms folded.

            “Hey Mack…  It may not feel like it to you but this is the south and the powers that are around here look the other way to what we have here so long as we don’t rock boats.  You follow me?”

            “Tens of thousands of Negroes are teaming around this town to get civil rights, voting rights, jobs and so forth and you won’t a let a Negro have a beer at your bar?  This is crazy.  You got a bar full of queers hiding the fact that they’re queer and they all hate that they gotta live double lives but there’s no fraternal bond here, eh?”

            The upscale bar frequented by well to-do white men, was a nice place that had live Jazz most nights and a cigar room for men to pick out cigars, have a cognac and get to meet other professional men.  You know…  The musicians, the patrons, the bartender and all the male waiters all stopped dead in their tracks and watched in shock and astonishment the fact that a black man had entered the discrete bar and sat down at the bar as if he were white.  Men whispered to one another.   Was this another Woolworth lunch counter gimmick?  A black man asks to be served just because he’s in a white establishment.  Gay or not.

             The bartender wouldn’t approach Clarence or Tom.  Everyone in the bar was aware of the large gathering of blacks in town and the speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The wealthy, white, gay patrons had their own crosses to burn.  Most were indifferent to the plight of blacks but didn’t necessarily feel solidarity with them over discrimination.

            “Listen, if it means so much to you to have a drink with your friend, get a room and a six pack and work it out yourself.  This is a business and I wanna stay in business…  You follow me?  So if there are those willing to look the other way on something’s but not others, I gotta respect that and as the owner of this place, you have to live with what I tell you.  So hit the bricks.  If you two can do this in Milwaukee or Minnesota, god bless you.  End of conversation.  Now get going.”

            Clarence and Tom walked out of the bar and into a black Ford sedan.  Tom lit a cigarette as Clarence drove.  Clarence hit the pre-set buttons on their government issued automobile to a black radio station that was playing doo-whop.  Tom thought to himself and then laughed.

            “I dunno if we were believable as a mixed queer couple.  Maybe the queers got some kind of hand signal or code words that they use with each other to identify other queers like the Masons or Elk.  All I know is that for whatever reason J. Edgar is very concerned that queer joints don’t start allowing blacks in them.  I can’t figure out the work detail sometimes.  We got a million out of town people that are probably all communist and we’re going into a god damn gay bar to make sure black fags are not drinking with white ones…  Pull over to that diner.  I love their hamburgers.”

            It was a diner in an all white part of town that blacks just knew that they weren’t allowed into.  No signs just the unwritten look of disapproval let any blacks know that being served at the white restaurant, frequented by whites for whites, was not worth forcing the issue.

            “I’m only gonna be twenty minutes or so.  You wanna wait here and I’ll bring you out a burger, Clarence?”

            “Naw…  No need.  There is a place better than this one where I can set my black ass down comfortably and eat like a human…  I’ll see you in an hour.  We can go in after that and write the report about tonight’s findings.”

            “Ok …  See you soon.”

When Pigs Flew Over Detroit

At 4:42 am on a July morning, angry clouds swirled and twisted as the sun behind a curtain of storm cover, began to light the sky.  A loud boom and a flash of lightning hit the Fisher Body 21 building and illuminated it like a Christmas tree for a solid ten seconds.  It was so beautiful to see the mother of all Detroit structural eyesores, shine as though rapture was going to take place at the site where chassis for Cadillac’s prestigious cars were once made.  It has since become a haven for urban dwellers that tag walls and break windows, those who harvest metal to earn money and those without a place to live. 

            A semi carrying canisters of nitrous oxide slammed into the back of a livestock transporter full of pigs being taken to slaughter to make things like bacon, bacon dates, bacon bits, canned hams, ham sandwiches and so forth.  The livestock transporter swayed hard to the left and then back to the right until the back end swung around and knocked the cab on its side.  Sparks flew as the two large vehicles slid for the length of two football fields.  A motorcyclist hit a large sow that had been released from the carriage and was running toward the motorcycle.  It took several seconds for the brain of the motorcyclist to accept that a herd of pigs were running full boat towards him at daybreak, with a really angry sky and cars dodging animals and other cars on interstate 75.  The motorcyclist hit a pig and flew over cars, over the barrier wall for the freeway and experienced the sensation of flying down a rollercoaster until he landed on the back of a scavenger’s truck that just happened to be driving under the freeway, filled with metal and a bedbug infested mattress to break his fall and save his life.

            A car full of potential terrorists that had flown from the middle east to Canada, had hit some strip clubs and Caesar’s Windsor casino before crossing the bridge to America to punish Americans for infidelity to god, over indulgence and a lack of discipline and morals, for their weaknesses in giving in to cravings and twisted sexual desires and the idiocy of what they have seen on satellite television on Maury Povich’s paternity and infidelity shows.  Infidels to be sure.

             The church bus on the way to a retreat in the Upper Peninsula hit a two hundred pound plus hog and propelled it through the air and through the windshield belonging to the men on a mission to punish Americans for being Americans.  They took it as a sign from Allah that maybe they were doing the wrong thing.  They rationalized that if during a severe storm, Allah sends a pig through your windshield, forcing you to touch a forbidden and dirty, bloody animal during Ramadan, and then maybe it would be best to return home or at least back to Windsor.

            A notoriously morally corrupt state trooper who had a knack for stopping attractive young women who were sure to be given a DUI for leaving the casinos drunk in the early morning hours, was touched by the storm and ensuing calamity of flying and running pigs, car crashes and leaking nitrous oxide.  The truck with nitrous oxide that hit the livestock truck that caused the motorcyclist to fly onto a bed on the back of a beat up old truck, which distracted the church bus driver, who hit a pig that sent the pig through the windshield of wannabee terrorists (you’re not actually a terrorist unless you’re successful) who then hit the state trooper’s vehicle that was parked on the shoulder while he received oral sex from a young woman who could never have afforded the $10,000.00 in fees for a DUI, all exited their cars and watched the former Marine turned state trooper, walk through the pile up of cars with his zipper down and his bloody detached cock in his hand.  The youth pastor of the church bus that was on it’s way to bring troubled inner city youth to a place they could have only dreamed of, exited the bus through a window and began to scream at the clouds.  The minister truly believed that Christ had returned and took what he needed and had left the rest for Satan to sort out.  The minister tried to quickly reason why it was that he had come up short.  Was it the underage girl he had a relationship with when he was young and impressionable at the tender age of thirty-four?  Was it the years of anti-war protests, LSD and free love back during the Vietnam days?

            “You cannot leave me!  I have walked the path I was shown and have shared your message for you.  I have acknowledged my sins and have asked you to become my personal savior.  How could you forsake me?”

            The wannabee terrorists, the church campers, the truck drivers all stood around as the skies poured rain, became windy and brought about hail.  Within minutes, the skies cleared and the nitrous oxide leaked and was inhaled by all that converged around the trucks.  At first a few people near the leaking tanks of laughing gas, began to giggle and then others whose days and lives were temporarily ruined came over to see if the group of people were laughing or crying.

By the time the paramedics arrived, they found a rather diverse group of stunned people laughing and hugging one another.  No apocalypse, no rapture, just a really bad start to a day in July.  A day when pigs flew over Detroit.

When Maeve Met Medgar

            “So if you cannot see, what can you describe to me to help me understand what you know about the color black?  As in black people.  I’m so interested to hear what you have to say.”

            A beautiful young blond and blind woman happened to plop down at the first table she could find at the food court in a mall she had never been to before.  She was pouring water into a bowl for her seeing-eye dog.  A tall man was eating an ice cream for 49 cents from Mc Donald’s.  Medgar loved eating soft serve ice cream going back to the days when he would visit his grandmother in Mississippi in summer months and take pocket change with him and his cousin to the Tastee-Freeze. 

            Maeve was dropped off by her aunt’s caretaker who was livid that the woman she had cared for, for close to thirty years while she declined with Alzheimer’s, willed her small fortune to her blind niece from Detroit.   Aside from assuming that she would inherit the home and money for being a friend and constant companion, Sarah had a thing against German Sheppard dogs whether they were seeing-eye dogs or not.  Sarah was Jewish and lost relatives in death camps at the hands of Nazi in Germany.  As a girl, Sarah heard stories of German Sheppards snarling and biting hiding Jews in cities in Germany.  Oddly enough, Sarah’s great-grandfather was a man who was responsible for creating chemical warfare during World War I and a pesticide called Zyclon A that was eventually modified to kill humans in Nazi death camps and renamed Zyclon B.  Sarah was related to that unique man attributed to a lot of death during two world wars.  A definite player in human history, German history, modern warfare and a German Jew.

In any event, Maeve would inherit a large Frank Lloyd Wright home in Oak Park, Illinois, Sarah the Caretaker and a few million dollars after the death of her wealthy aunt.  The end was drawing near and so Maeve moved from her small apartment in suburban Detroit to suburban Chicago. One warm summer day, Sarah dropped Maeve off at a indoor mall in a lower economic area that had very few Caucasians milling about to buy gaudy t-shirts, cheap jewelry, gym shoes and hip-hop wear.  Maeve was told by Sarah that the mall was a nice mall, with nice people just like at home in safe, homogenous Troy, Michigan which is a good fifteen miles from the muck and mire of inner city Detroit.

Maeve, unbeknownst to her, plopped down at the same table as the ice cream eating Medgar.  Medgar startled Maeve by speaking to her.

            “What a beautiful dog you have, Miss…”

            “Oh!  I’m sorry; I didn’t know this table was taken.  I’ll take another.”

            “No need, no need.  I’m just sitting here enjoying an ice cream and some air conditioning.  Can I buy you an ice cream?”

            “Thank you kindly.  I am on a strict diet.  I’m trying to eat as healthy as possible.  I have done research on partially hydrogenated products that are the causes of heart disease.  I’m trying to stay away from anything with too many additives.  This is my first week in Chicago and I’m truly lost here.  I told Sarah that I visited the Summerset Mall in Troy, Michigan nearly everyday.  So she decided to bring me here.  Is this a nice mall?”

            “Well, malls are malls, Right?”

            In Troy, the mall had a glass atrium with faux palm trees and resembled a place in Dubai. The mall had granite floors polished so that one could see their reflection and was as clean as if it had just opened.  It housed five star restaurants and top shelf department stores.  The mall near Berwyn, Illinois catered to lower economic people.  There was an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet and all the fast-food kiosks that one would find out on the boulevard.  People were obese and poor and people of color by in large.  Maeve didn’t learn this during her first visit.  Medgar, a sensitivity trainer for union workers who were disciplined for racial slurs, was between classes.  Most of Medgar’s clientele were white, blue collar, under educated and under cultured, suckled from the tit racists with a fear and disdain of others unlike them.  In order to keep their union jobs, they would need to take fifty-hour courses that illustrated the fact that all Americans were immigrants and that all immigrants had taken their turns as the lowest rung on the ladder.  There were also testimonials from Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans who had been discriminated against.  Most whites left more resolved in their racism but they learned to keep their racism private at work.

            “Black…  Hmm…  Dismal, dank, despair, no light.”

            “Light?  What is light? “

            “Something warm like the sun.  I can feel the sun.  The sun feels light and airy.  The smell of trees and flowers.  At night, it is cold and I hear the night is black and black is cold and it doesn’t have sun and warmth…  You know?”

            “Forgive me for asking but I just think it is so interesting to speak to some who is visually challenged…”

            “Visually challenged?  Please…  That is insulting.  I’m blind not stupid.”

            “Okay, as you wish…  Blind.  It is interesting to hear what the blind perceive.”

            “I see…  Sorry, I hear that all the time.  Just thought I would use that phrase even though I can’t actually see.”

            “Ha…  I got it…  So Detroit.  Motown.  What was that like?  Lots of black in Detroit.”

            “I was born in the city of Detroit and never went back.  All I heard was how screwed up Detroit was going back to the riots after Martin Luther King Jr.  From what I hear and know, Detroit was like Rhodesia and has become Zimbabwe and there were too many Robert Mugabe like mayors that ran the city into the ground instead of a Nelson Mandela.”

            “That is an interesting analogy.  Detroit went from being a prosperous white city to a bankrupt black city.  What do you think will save Detroit?”

            “White people, white money.  It’s okay to have a black city but you cannot exist without whites.  I have studied the differences between Chicago and Detroit and the whites have not abandoned Chicago.”

            “Did you know that Chicago had a few black mayors?”

            “Yes.  Did those mayors work with whites?”

            “You got me there, Maeve…  I am so glad that our paths crossed today.  It has been so interesting to me to get your point of view.  You being blind and discussing your views is like me being at a dinner party and being invisible.  Just listening and taking it in.  Good luck here in Chicago.”

            Sarah was standing off to the side listening and watching the interchange between a good-looking black man and a good-looking white woman, Maeve.  When Medgar departed, Sarah approached Maeve.

            “I didn’t hear everything that transpired between you and the gentleman at your table but I do want to make you aware that he was a black man.  Did you know that?  Did he tell you he was black?”

            Maeve furrowed her brow.  She felt duped and used.  Every black man she had come across in the past had a pseudo, bastardized Deep South accent.  Medgar didn’t sound like Amos or Andy.   He sounded white as if a color could have a sound. Maeve was embarrassed by the assumption that she was speaking to a white man and ashamed to admit it to Sarah who had been less than nice to here during the short amount of time she had been living with her and her aunt.  Sarah asked Maeve what he sounded like to her.  Maeve gave a snide answer.

            “Well Sarah…  He sounded much taller than he looked to me.  Can we go home now?”

Mod Night- Then and Now

            

            Many people, who knew Matt Luc, knew him as either Matt or Luc but not both.  Matt’s father was a fan of Westerns and the fictional character named Matt Dillion on the television show, Gunsmoke.  Luc’s mother was a fan of the French Jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty.  One person, two names.

            Luc showed up at the hip little club run by an old Mod friend who was intelligent, smooth, musically talented, physically capable black man, immersed in an urban white wonderland of chic lighting, boutique finger food, alternative music to alternative music among twenty somethings who had defected their mundane, predicable suburban upbringings for something beer commercials are made of.  Mike wore a pork-pie hat and smiled at Luc from behind the bar as he entered.

            Luc scanned the dim room looking for people he knew when there was a Soviet Union, leaded gasoline, Ronald Reagan and… Joan Rivers.  Those that remembered Luc remembered a moody Los Angeles kid prone to fist fights, a transplant that never really was a Mod.  He was a former Punk Rocker who was drawn to the energy of Ska.  Luc stood in the doorway in the same Florsheim penny loafers he wore thirty years ago, with the same Two-Tone checkerboard socks he wore in high school.  He wore a fitted black long sleeved shirt, black pants and a black Porkpie hat.  The song, That’s Entertainment by the Jam had just started playing through the speakers in the club.  The unmistakable strum of the first chord on guitar and the bass line. 

Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight

Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude

Getting a cab and traveling on buses

Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs

A song can bring one back like a scent, a photo or something said that brings on déjà vu.  Everyone in the room had the scene in common.  The idea of an all-nighter dance party with drugs and alcohol and the hope of casual one time sex was what drew the Mods together on Mod Nights. They had been trying hard to capture something that happened twenty years earlier in England.  Thin lapel suits, parka coats, bobbed haircuts, dessert boot shirts, Vespa scooters and toe tapping, finger popping Northern Soul, psychedelic rock with intermittent Ska.  Warm summer nights, dancing and eyeing someone who caught your eye.  Who are you?  Where are you from?  How did you get into this scene?  Where are you going to go to college?  What will the rest of your life look like?

            Not many could have imagined aging, shackled down by marriage, careers, offspring and bills.  Luc took a sip of his drink and thought about coming of age with his convertible Fiat, his Lambretta Scooter, his sanctuary of living on a quiet tree lined suburban street that he returned to after nights of dancing and romancing.  There was peace in the stability of returning home to sleeping grandparents who at that time, had the responsibility of paying bills, working full time and worrying about the world, the country and where the economy might be going.  We were going to live forever or at least a really long fucking time.  Thirty years is a long time and when you’re eighteen, it might as well be forever.

            The scooter girls, the lead singer from the local premier Mod band, the guy who was known for looking Mod, the guy who nobody could ever imagine in anything but a sharp three-button suit, who was the glue that kept it together back then and now.  They all listened to music, some danced, some drank, all reminisced on a warm summer night.  The way it used to be. 

            Luc never said goodbye to anyone.  He walked out as he walked in.  Once in his car, he put the windows down and forwarded the More Specials CD to a song called Enjoy Yourself and drove back to reality.

It's good to be wise when you're young

'Cos you can only be young but the once

Enjoy yourself and have lots of fun

So glad and live life longer than you've ever done

Enjoy yourself; it's later than you think

Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink

The years go by, as quickly as you wink

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself,

It's later than you think.

Never Tear Us Apart

“My old man dies and doesn’t leave me his antique cars, his house, his summer house, his condo in Florida, his restaurants but he leaves me a fucking horse?”

            “Yes…  A horse.  The horse is housed at the Hazel Park track and is a harness racer.  Your father saw to it that all the expenses for the horse are taken care of.  There is a note that goes along with this if you would like me to go ahead and read it.” Said the Attorney.

            “Sure…  Read the fucking note.”

            Nicholas,

                                 I had always hoped that you would have had my ambition to succeed and persevere.  You had extraordinary talent for ice hockey and were content living in my basement to play beer pong and X-Box.  The fact that I owned several Coney Island restaurants and you were content being counter help for minimum wage instead of helping me run things, sent up a red flag years ago.  I have left the chain of restaurants to your sister as well as my homes and cars.   You can have that beat up old home in Detroit that you now live in with your friend and I too leave you my horse.  I was given this horse as a gift and I am giving it to you as a gift.  I envision you and your bust-out buddy, sitting in the stands at Hazel Park betting your pittance against your own horse.  It is yours to do with as you wish.  Your mother always came to your rescue whenever I tried to push you along and you never amounted to much.  I love you, Nicholas but could not in good conscience give all that I created to you just to have it melt away.  Have fun with the horse.

Dad

            “My dad was always a tight waded motherfucker…  So when can I see my horse?”

            Nick finished playing morning pick up hockey with Anthony at the Hazel Park rink in suburban Detroit and showed up at the stable where their horse was housed.  In the stable was a small black man in a Speedo bathing suit and a pair of Timberland boots that was singing and doing Tai Chi moves.  He had long hair and was ripped, as he was petite.  Josiah sang the INXS song, Two Worlds Colliding.  Josiah was unaware of the two large white men watching him as he closed his eyes and sang until tears came to his eyes.

Don’t ask me
What you know is true


Don’t have to tell you
I love your precious heart


I
I was standing,
you were there


Two worlds collided
And they could never tear us apart



We could live
For a thousand years
But if I hurt you
I’d make wine from your tears



I told you
That we could fly
’cause we all have wings
But some of us don’t know why



I
I was standing
You were there,
Two worlds collided
And they could never ever tear us apart.

   “Fucking great…  I inherited a broken down horse with a gay Sammy Davis Jr. horse jockey.”

      The smallish black man stepped up to the two white men without fear.  He spoke like the Geico gecko which surprised the men even more.”

   “Take me for a fucking poofter will ya?  I’ve shagged more female white and dark meat in me loife than Colonel fucking Sanders could shake a stick at, mate.  Fuck with me and you’ll be feeding the fucking trees.  Now then…  Who the fuck are you?”

   Josiah’s great-great-great grandfather had been taken on ship from England and dumped in Australia.  Josiah’s ancestor was a former slave that was imprisoned and had found aboriginal people and mated with them.  Josiah wanted to be a singer and actor and was working his way to Hollywood from Sydney, Australia and was stuck in a quagmire, which was Detroit.  Josiah was talking with two career recreational, non-paid ice hockey players who never quite made it and they never made it because they lacked drive and dedication.  They coasted throughout their twenties and at the cusp of thirty years of age, they were about to become inspired by a Prince look-a-like who was determined to win harness races, earn enough money and move to California to be discovered.

      Josiah took the hands of Anthony and Nick and looked them intently in their eyes and began to sing again.

      “You were standing…  I was there…  Two worlds colliding and they could never tear us apart…  We were fucking brought together by a hoi-er being for the purpose of making it, mates.  Let’s not fuck this up, eh?”

      Nick and Anthony laughed hardy laughs and took their jockey to a Detroit Tigers game and then to the casino.  They got trashed and then formed a triumvirate.  Within a year, their horse won enough money for Nick and Anthony to buy a low-level minor league hockey franchise for $30,000 in the Michigan League.  On Friday and Saturday nights, you can find them playing for their own team at a rink in Suburban Detroit.  Patrons pay $5.00 to see fights and a little hockey.   Working at a coffee shop in West Hollywood, California is a singing, small black man with a strong Australian accent, passionately desperate to realize his dreams so much so that he inspires all those that he touches to try harder and keep hope truly alive.  Two worlds colliding.

These Days...

Strip the veneer of suburban strip mall hell

I can see it in the whites and the whites of their eyes

Don’t shoot! It’s just a hood. 

I know what I should; it’s just so hard

2/3rds of everything cooked in lard

chemicals, animals and minerals

expanding waists and universe

comfort foods and depressed moods

suicide, Kardashian brides- choose the number two with two sides.

Use a Geiger counter to measure the pleasure

By buying this product

Guaranteed to bring results quicker than a microwave

Jesus saves, seismic waves, Obama legacy in the land of the free and home of the brave.

By the way- we know what you’re thinking, we know what you’re doing

You terrorist, anti-social activist.  Encrypted scripted responses held close to the vest.

Try to hide what your thinking in these days of GPS

I'd Buy a Gun

Abe had a razor thin beard and moustache, wore tight jeans with pointy white shoes and smelled of cologne to the point that the bulletproof room that he did business behind, always smelled like Axe. Abe told people he was Persian and most Americans who asked his nationality assumed he came from the same land as carpets and cats that were also Persian too. Abe learned early on that claiming to be Iranian drew negativity to his gas station/pawn shop/video gambling hall. Abe changed his named from Abufasal upon learning that an American president by the name of Abe, set slaves free. “Bro… I was named after Lincoln. I’m on your side, bro. You want King Cobra or Olde English 800?” Abe was a quick study in Americana and learned fast that there was money to be made off of liquor, gambling, guns and desperation of the poor and addicted by loaning money and buying jewelry. Abe drove a Mercedes sedan that he bought off of a businessman in Johannesburg that was bullet proof and had the capabilities of spraying tear gas. Abe made thousands of dollars a day, lived in a nice house with his Russian girlfriend and life was good. Abe exploited a segment of society that was there for the taking. All was well until Illinois passed a concealed weapon law. Abe knew that people packing heat while drinking and gambling, could lead to trouble. One hot and humid evening, things came to a head. At 12:03am on a Friday in July, a woman wearing a black shroud from head to toe with only a slit for her eyes, ran her car into the back of a Dodge truck with Mississippi plates that read “Johnny reb” with a large confederate flag that hung across the back window. The owner of the truck, bred pit bulls and had just delivered three dogs to some “colored folk” on Chicago’s west side. Johnny Reb was purchasing Kodiak chewing tobacco, some gas, a Red bull and a Barely Legal Magazine. He would make Mississippi by daybreak if he drove through the night. A squeegee man came into the mini mart to report the fender bender to Johnny Reb. “Eh man… That yo red truck with the fucked up flag in the back?” “Yeah, what of it?” “Well them terrorist looking motherfuckers, side swiped yo shit?” Johnny Reb was about to walk out of the mini mart without paying when Abe locked the door. Johnny Reb pushed and pushed until Abe’s voice came on the loud speaker. “If you vant the Barely Legal, chewing tobacco and the Red Bull, you must pay for that first. I don’t have a lay away program for these items.” Just as Johnny Reb was getting his change, a female figure, escorted by a Middle Eastern male, entered the mini mart. She seemed to float in like a ghost. All Johnny Reb could see was her eyes. Johnny went out to inspect his vehicle and noticed green paint on his truck that was badly scratched. Johnny Reb came marching back. “All y’all sand Negroes gone hafta pay foh the damage to mah gawd damn truck.” The male brushed Johnny Reb off with a flick of the wrist. “I know nothing of your truck, sir.” “Yeah… Well this here man seen you hit mah truck… Tell em, dude.” “Did you call them negroes?” “Bitch, did you see them hit mah car or not?” “Bitch? Whose you talking to? You better git into yo damn truck and git the fuck back to Mississippi or wherever the fuck you from. We don’t sit at the back of no fucking bus up here.” With that, Johnny Reb pulled out a gun and pointed at the squeegee man and then at the Muslim couple. “You people up here are all fucked up and I ain’t got no time foh bullshit. We can do this the right way or somebody gone pay foh this with they life.” At that moment, in the mini market a Vietnam Vet pulled a gun, a Mexican gangbanger, A White Sox Fan, a Cubs Fan and a Baptist Minister and a frail white woman with two cats, a hybrid car with several Obama stickers all had guns drawn at each other in the mini mart. The only safe person was Abe behind the bulletproof glass. Abe pulled the microphone towards his mouth and slowly spoke. “This is America, man. People are created equal to do what they want and dress how they want and believes in god or not. Your forefathers didn’t die so that you could come up in this place and kill one an other. Independence Day should mean something to us all. You all came across the ocean on the Mayflower, right? I’m going to ask all of you to put down your guns and be sensible. Who wants a red wine or Jolly Ranchers? Lets have something here and chill out.” A shot was never fired that night, a day after Independence Day. A day that represented freedom from tyranny and to others, a day off with liquor and fireworks. Some might have reasoned that the fact that everyone in the mini market/gas station/video gambling/pawn shop had guns, helped diffuse the situation. Then again it could have been Abe’s words that touched everyone and made them take a step back and appreciate that they were Americans, living in the best, most capable and powerful nation that god ever thought of creating. Then again, it was probably the guns.

Mr. Rumsfeld Comes to Chicago

Chicago gave birth to a new mayor and we shall call him Emanuel (Matthew 1:23) Meaning God is with us in Hebrew.  This new mayor, who was once the president’s chief of staff, took the reins of the city of Chicago and came to realize that within the city of Chicago, there was a war going on that he could not win; gang violence that was leaving more people dead in the city of Chicago than in Afghanistan.

After brain storming with numerous people who came up with various weak strategies, the idea came to Emanuel to contact Donald Rumsfeld.  The same Rumsfeld that ran the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Rumsfeld came to the mayor’s office, had bourbon on the rocks and talked about some of the best restaurants he ever ate that were right in the city of Chicago.  The question came up of Rumsfeld on a strategy to stop the murders in Chicago.  Rumsfeld swirled his drink, smiled, squinted, paused and then spoke.

“Strategy is a general plan of action fashioned to achieve a major goal. It is the process by which goals are prioritized and resources marshaled to achieve those goals. Tactics are then used to implement the strategy. Strategy doesn’t begin at one point and end at another. It involves planning and evaluation, requiring trade-offs and decisions along the way. It takes work, thought, and time and then tactics.”

         The mayor raised one eyebrow, smiled like the grinch who stole Christmas and asked what Rumsfeld about tactics.  Rumsfeld, always elusive danced around the question.

         “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know… Follow me?  So if you follow a strategy, a true formulated strategy with a major goal in mind i.e. ridding Chicago of the current nemesis, you must be willing to deal from a position of strength and speak a language that can be understood and respected…  My question to you is how willing are you to truly take this on?”

         Rahm Emanuel allowed Donald Rumsfeld to turn closed Chicago Public schools into neighborhood detainment centers for questioning.  After a drastic drop in murders, the mayor was interested in seeing for himself how the magic worked.  The mayor and Rumsfeld sat behind a two-way mirror in what was once a neighborhood grade school and watched a pudgy man by the name of Sal who had a bushy moustache, smoked a cigar, conduct a questioning session.

         “Sal was one of our best in the old days,” said Rumsfeld.

         “Hey! Fucking look at me!”

         Sal grabbed a young eighteen-year-old man by the shirt around the collars and pulled him towards him with the cigar puffing into the face of the young man.  Sal then separated his fingers and open-handedly cracked the young man across the face.

         “I will ask you again what you know about the murders that occurred on your street while you were on that street…”

         “I don’t know shit…  I ain’t saying shit and fuck you.  Y’all ain’t let me sleep, it cold as fuck in here, you done let snakes out in this room and then they disappear, I pissed in my damn pants cause you got my hands tied up so I can’t get to my shit and then you keep playing that bullshit over and over.  555 and 666.”

         The mayor chuckled and asked Rumsfeld about the song.  It was the Heretic’s Anthem by Slipknot.

                  “I heard the song and a lot of it means nothing to me but the idea that we’re dealing with heresy and heretics sold me on using this song to try and induce the desired results.  I think we’re close on this one.”  Said Rumsfeld.

         “So you ain’t got nothing to say?”

         “I got this to say; fuck you, your cigar and yo fat white ass…”

         “Okay…  Time to go for a swim.  You know how to swim?  Every fat ass white boy knows how to swim.  Let’s go swimming.”

        

         The young man was bound securely to a bench, with his feet elevated. A cloth was placed over the forehead and eyes. Water was then poured on the cloth, and the cloth was lowered to cover his mouth and nose. 
 Breathing was then restricted for up to 40 seconds at a time; this caused an increase in carbon dioxide in the young man’s blood. It was designed to simulate suffocation and panic.  This last tactic worked.

         “Okay…  I know who killed that dude.  Imma tell you.  Just take me out this water.”

         Rumsfeld smiled, looked at the mayor who was stunned by what he just witnessed. 

         “And this is how it works.  Wash, rinse and repeat if necessary.  Just follow the instructions.”