Blackhumouristpress's Blog

February 9, 2010

The Crime of Life

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 6:21 pm
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Susan Hall had her first plastic surgery at age thirty seven, a face lift of sorts.  Susan had spent so much of her time in the sun down in Miami that her skin had a leathery feel to it.  The back of her hands looked like lizard skin and when she smiled, she had lines all over her face.  It was at a party that Susan caught a glimpse of herself in a decorative mirror on a wall and wondered who the old lady was.  How could she have gotten so old so fast, is what she thought as she drank her fifth glass of red wine of party of friends that she met through a social club that met on Wednesday nights to Salsa Dance.  The social group was mostly made of single white women and Latino men.  It all worked out well, the white women fancied Hispanic men and the Hispanic men loved the sport of bagging mentally fragile white women who really liked to dance.  And fuck.

            The forty year old birthday really hit Susan hard.  It was while she was under a man from Columbia whose name escapes me and Susan that the thought hit her that she could hit menopause and that she would be less attractive and then there would really be nothing left except old age and death.  Susan fought the effects of aging well.  Aside from the Salsa dancing, she took spin classes and used the stepper at home while watching Oprah and the View everyday.  Susan’s job was to not squander the ten thousand dollars a month that her father put in a trust fund for her.  Aside from her father taking care of her car payments, insurance on the condo and car, electricity, heating gas and condo assessment, Susan had to make due with ten thousand a month.  Around the 21st of every month, Susan had to start watching her checking account.  Her father hated overdrafts.

            So it was while under the short Columbian man that it hit Susan that she might only have forty five to fifty summers left and maybe only ten in really good health and waning sex appeal.  She began to cry and was inconsolable.  What’s-his-face from Columbia got dressed and left.  Susan stood in front of the mirror crying and crying.   Susan took her anxiety medicine and some sleep medicine but nothing really worked.  Her father couldn’t be reached; he was on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with three Filipino girls under the age of seventeen.  He was deep sea fishing and taking Viagra intermittently.  Ever since Susan’s mother left them all and moved to Italy, her father was never the same.  Susan turned to her psychiatrist, Ira who lived in and worked in a huge house along the shores of Lake Michigan in the City of Evanston. 

            Ira looked strikingly like Sigmund Freud and had sharp features and beady eyes that made him look marsupial in nature.  He crossed his legs in a comfortable chair in his office and dunked his tea bag over and over in a mug that had picture of himself and his partner Tom, arm and arm while on the beach in Aruba.  Ira mostly listened for the $100.00 and hour that he received from Susan’s father.  Ira himself had phobias about leaving the house at night, flying in airplanes, driving on two lane highways, groups of large black men and illness.  Ira was forever using hand sanitizers after touching anything. 

            Ira’s partner Tom was a pilot and a fitness fanatic.  Ira was usually at home cooking for Tom while he ran, swam and biked in his free time.  Ira took to speaking French to his parakeet that he name “je t’aime”.  That name eventually became “Tammy”.  It was at Susan’s lowest point that Ira had reached a crisis.  It was like two frantic women consoling each other on the day that Susan arrived at Ira’s home/office.  Ira was putting the finishing touches on a two foot sailboat that he had made while sniffling and crying when Susan walked in.  Ira tried to put a brave face on his distress.

            “Susan…  We are going to do something different today.  Instead of meeting in my office, we are going to go to the backyard and have… A funeral.”

            Nobody had ever died in Susan’s life before.  She had known and heard of people dying but had never been to a funeral.  Ira said a few words in French that sounded like nonsense to Susan, kissed his parakeet as he sobbed and pushed the sailboat out towards Michigan City, Indiana which would have directly across the lake.  Luckily the lake was like a giant bath tub that day instead of an angry writhing sea as it can often be. 

            Ira’s body heaved as he cried.  Susan put her arm around Ira and held his head to her chest.  Susan found Ira to be unbelievably frail and devoid of muscle tone.  Ira was having a nervous break down.  The shelf was coming down and all the China was crashing to the ground.  Luckily Susan was there.  Ira felt comfortable with Susan because she was fraught with anxieties and phobias too.  Surely Susan would understand.

            “I can’t take it any longer.  Losing Je t’aime is the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Toms become more and more distant ever since he has been on this health kick.  I’m home rinsing his goddamn ground beef of any fat, making scallops and salmon and that damn steel cut oat meal while he runs and bikes and swims.  I mean he looks absolutely like an Adonis right now, honest to god.  We go out and I’m afraid to walk away for a second.  It’s like having a Ferrari in mall parking lot.  You just want to run into Crate and Barrel and you can’t be sure it’ll be there when you come back… Anyway, he meets this man from the gym, another Jew who claims he has found Jesus.  A Jew has found Jesus Christ for fuck’s sake!  He couldn’t find Bin Laden and solve our lifetime quandary of making it from day to day…  No, he finds a good looking Jew who is part of a group called Jews for Jesus.  I shit you not…  At this moment, my man is in Haiti helping this Jew for Jesus build something or other.  I taught him French and he runs off with a latent, closet homosexual who doesn’t know he’s gay or Jewish, to rebuild homes for French speaking Africans in Haiti.  I begged him to go with and he told me flat out no.  I was so crushed…  I’m so crushed.  Je t’aime felt my sorrow and died out of empathy for me…  Mon oiseau…  Je suis tres triste ma petite Tammy…”

            Susan was stunned by the hair that Ira let down seeing as he was losing it quickly from his forehead to his neck.  Ira had always been all business and devoid of much emotion in the past.  Susan had decided that Ira was truly in worse shape than her and felt that she must help Ira out.  They went to movies, plays, museums and shopped together nearly everyday.  While sitting at a café together in the middle of the day, Ira read US Magazine and Susan thumbed through the Chicago Sun Times that was left by the previous patron who had sat at their table.  Susan checked out the weather for the coming week and then turned the page to the obituaries.  Susan could never remember ever really looking at them before.  She looked at pictures of the various old people who were really nameless and faceless and thought that within fifty years, she may make the obituaries and that 99% of the people looking at the paper, won’t know or care who she was.  Susan was going to die as anonymously as all those she was looking at in the paper.  The idea came to her suddenly to attend a funeral of one of those in the paper.  She would read up on them and then conjure up a story as to how it was that her life was tied to some dead person.  Susan was excited about the idea and Ira was in no frame of mind to fight her morbid interest.  Ira went along with not one visit but dozens until it got so that they were attending three to four a week.

            “Ira…  Here’s a good one Alvin “Bebop” Taylor, age ninety of the Pullman District.  Born March 6, 1920 in Mississippi.  Fought in World War II and was a local Jazz musician.  I think this will be a worth while visit,” said Susan.

            “What story are you coming up with this time?”

            “Golly…  I’m not sure but I think going to a black funeral is going to be a great experience.”

            Now with Google and all, Susan was able to find out things about those whose funeral she was about to attend.  She struggled to find anything on Bebop.  The twenty or so others never blinked an eye when Susan came up to console the families.  She always had a touching story about her mother or father who was quite close in some way to the dearly departed.  Her father had been a longshoreman, a soldier, an ambassador, a missionary and now a Jazz musician.

            Susan drove her late model Mercedes with Ira in tow into a section of Chicago that she had only seen on the news.  Crying grandmothers barely able to say that their grandchild was good and a good student and was minding their own business when a stray bullet killed them. Then there were fires, robberies, rapes and carjacking all stemmed from this poor area of Chicago’s south east side.  Every other business was boarded up and the ones that weren’t were barbershops, fried chicken fast food depots and churches.  The order that she and Ira were accustomed to, seemed to have vanished slowly as they traveled further and further from their enclave that really was tolerant or other ethnicities, races and social stratus beneath theirs, even though they did not live among them.  The realization was sinking in to both of them independently that it would not matter to anyone in that neighborhood that Susan had three bumper stickers alluding to her political and social leanings; Obama 08, Change and Hope.  Hope and Change hadn’t hit that section of Chicago that was not more than five miles from where Obama had lived when he was living in Chicago.  The residents of that area still held George W. responsible for the despair and difficulty in achieving change and rich white people in expensive cars too.

            It was like a carnival inside compared to the white services.  The crowded rooms were packed full of well dressed black people that laughed and spoke loudly in the hallways outside of the rooms where services were being held.  It seemed more like the lobby of a movie theater to Susan and Ira than anything else.  They asked around and found the room belonging to Bebop.

            All the other rooms were overflowing with those wishing to pay their last respects to a loved one, a relative or someone who was friends or related to someone who knew someone that was going to put out a really nice spread once they laid the deceased in the ground.  The tiny room belonging to Bebop had four people total in it.  When Susan and Ira walked in, there was a heavy set man singing a song about coming home while a minister stood behind a podium.  The organist never stopped playing when the odd white couple entered, walked up and took a seat behind the family.  The family consisted of an old black woman, her brother, her daughter and a nephew.  The family stoically listened to the canned and scripted words of peace meant to give the family some solace by the minister who couldn’t remember that his name was Alvin.  When it came time for someone to come up and say a few words, nobody budged, batted an eye or even looked up at the minister.  Susan was all hopped up on pills and red wine.  Had it not been for the three glasses of red wine, Ira would have been a basket case, which is funny when you take into account that he was a doctor of psychiatry.  Ira was free falling with Susan and he really didn’t stop to reason what idiocy was taking place in the name of recreation.  Susan should have thought better to have gone ahead with taking a seat in such a small and intimate gathering and she should have thought better that to get up and speak about a man that she did not know but was certain she could get all in attendance to buy her story.

            “You don’t know me or my brother … Robert and why should you?  We are here today because our father, a hidden gem of local Jazz in this town, had played music with Bebop in the fifties and sixties.  My father played where few white men have ever visited.  He was always in search of Dr. Kurtz somewhere in the heart of darkness…  Music spoke to his soul.  It’s a language that transcends so much and is something that brings us together.  My brother William and I want you to know that daddy thought the world of Bebop and thought of him as his own brother…  He had always said that one day we would meet Uncle Bebop…  We never did.  So much of life is made up of things we intend on doing but never get to and that is truly the crime of life…  May god bless Uncle Bebop and all of you…”

            With that Susan began to cry and rushed herself off the stage, clutching a handkerchief to her face.  Ira sat motionless for he was able to read the look of disbelief on the family member’s faces and was worried how this might all end.  Ira whispered to Susan that they should leave due to the intimacy of the gathering.  Susan pressed on.  When the funeral was over, she approached the daughter of Alvin Taylor.  The young woman was set on putting a stop to the façade.

            “I don’t know who you two are or what you’re up to…  My father spent thirty years in jail and died making love to a woman young enough to almost be my daughter.  He was a drunk, a wife beater and he couldn’t find a C note on a piano.  The paper assumed that since his nickname was Bebop, that he was the one that was the Jazz musician.  They mixed it up with dead person listed next to him on the next column who actually did play Jazz.  We posted this obituary so that if any of his other children that he sired out of wedlock, wanted to come forward to pay their respects, that they could.  Now what game you two sick bastards are playing, I’m not certain.  There is no pot of gold or kingdom if that’s what you’re after.  I’m going to give you the chance to leave now before I call security.”

            Susan’s face tightened and she couldn’t move.  It was pulling a flashlight out at night unexpectedly on an opossum.  She went into a catatonic state.  Eventually an ambulance came for her and she was hospitalized.  A doctor, who was less marginal than Ira, was able to determine that Susan had several personalities on top of the schizophrenia.  It might seem at this point that her life was headed for the craper with Ira but as luck would have it, things suddenly were looking up.  A young movie producer read about them wanted to make a movie about their escapades.  Susan was envisioning Meryl Streep and Larry David portraying her and Ira.  The producer was thinking more like Kathleen Bates and Woody Allen. 

            Susan asked very sanely since she was properly medicated sans booze why anyone would want to see a movie about her and Ira.  The smiling young man with money signs in his eyes answered the question with a question.

            “Who doesn’t stop to see what happens when two cars crash?”

            Susan thought about the comment a moment and then asked the young producer a very important question.

            “Okay…  Where do I sign?”

=

February 1, 2010

Chicago’s Finest: To Serve and Protect

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 10:09 pm
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  Matt was a musician that was mostly supported by his parents who resided in the suburbs of Detroit while he chased his dream to be a musician in Chicago.     Matt was an uncommonly good looking young man that also had the body structure where by he looked as though he spent hours a day in the gym when actually he did nothing.  No weights, no running or biking.  Sex was his only form of physical activity.  Mathew was having a lot of sex with multiple women.  Mathew was trying to make it playing his own music which was what everyone called alternative.  It was really just popular music geared towards white suburban kids who did not really care for dance music.  To make the lion’s share of his money, he played with three other guys at a place called the Cubby Bear Lounge which was across the street from the infamous, Wrigley Field.  It was on Wednesday nights that he played covers of famous songs with three other guys so that drunken patrons could come up on stage and sing live Karaoke. 

            Mathew had just played the night before and had woken up to a chubby blond girl who had a Chicago Cubs tattoo on her right butt cheek.  Her name escaped Matt.  He was really bad with names.  She will forever be known as the chubby girl who played rugby at a small college on the Illinois and Iowa border.  She was dear to him.  Matt left her

 apartment on Addison and drove home.

Matt was on his way to his apartment when two of Chicago’s finest happened to be behind Matt at a red light.  Officer Ciccone happened to notice the Michigan plates with an expired sticker.  They ran the plates and found out that Matt had an outstanding warrant for his arrest.  A few years earlier, Matt had taken money his father gave to him and bought a small house in Detroit.  It was not in the suburbs but actually in the city of Detroit.  The house was in the northwest portion of Detroit near Grand River and Seven Mile Road.  It was the anthesis of where he grew up in suburban Detroit in a 25,000 square foot house in Farmington Hills.

The house had been purchased for cash.  The old guy who sold it was a widower who had worked for AC Delco his whole adult life after returning from fighting in the Pacific during World War II.  His two children moved to Boston and San Francisco and had not seen their parents in years.  Of course they flew in for a few days at the time of the funeral.  Both of them spent most of their time continuing to do business on their Blackberry phones/computers when they weren’t consoling their father. 

            The old guy had purchased land with his wife and had always planned on retiring to the upper peninsula of Michigan.  They never got around to it before she died.  She was gardening and had pain in her shoulder for a few days that radiated across her chest.  She took a few painkillers.  The old lady and the old man ate their breakfast at the Radford Coney Island and read about the mayor of Detroit sending text messages on the city provided cell phone to his mistress.  Neither one of them knew what a text message was.  They still had a rotary phone. 

            After breakfast, the old woman put on her sun hat and weeded their backyard garden while the old man cut the front lawn.  The pain grew sharper even though it had been an hour since she took two strong painkillers.  She stood and before she could hit the ground she was dead.  The old man found their Golden Retriever sitting at her side.  She lay peacefully in the grass as if she were only asleep.  The old man thought about the day he met her at the USO and vowed to not get killed in the war, so that they could get married, have a house and raise a family.  As routine and mundane life was, as old and unattractive as his wife had become in fifty years of marriage, he cried as he approached her corpse.  As stiff as his back was, he sat on the grass on a cloudless day and stroked her straw like gray hair and cried alone.  It was soon after that day that the old man put his home on the market.  Matt offered cash and got all the old man’s belongings except pictures.  The pictures went to the Upper Peninsula with the old man, the dog and their Ford Truck.

            In little time at all, Matt’s girlfriend Amber had moved in as did several other people who crashed on floors and couches.  The house smelled of cat urine and spilled alcohol.  The grass was long and highly neglected.  It caught nobody’s attention.  Many homes in the area were sold for under market value or were abandon all together prior to being foreclosed on.  Many abandon places were used to house pit bulls that were used to fight for money.  A popular sport in Detroit. Young men trolled good areas looking for smaller domestic dogs that they could feed to the pit bulls.  In order to eat, the starving pit bulls would kill the smaller house pets.  This kept the dogs primed to continue fighting and killing.  Nobody had jobs to speak of and dog fights brought income to poor people.  Even though they no longer had jobs with GM, Ford or Chrysler, the under employed of Detroit still drove domestic vehicles. 

    Matt’s girlfriend Amber had him hooked on opiates of various kinds.  Matt’s girlfriend had a small business of dealing drugs from their home.  Matt pulled in to the drive way one evening and a dozen or more men in black uniforms surrounded his car.  Matt’s girlfriend escaped with her pimp who actually made her sell drugs and her body on the side.  Matt was arrested and was out on bail when he moved all of the sudden to Chicago.

Details were just that to Matt.  Little things like registering the vehicle were on his list of things to do that would never actually get done unless he was forced to do it.  It had been three years and Matt assumed that the State of Illinois would have no record of his arrest warrant.  The tag that was six months expired on a Michigan plate caught the police officer’s attention.  Speaking on the cell phone while driving within the city limits of Chicago was also a violation worthy of a citation.  Officer Ciccone once had a girlfriend who left him for a guy who owned a black BMW like the one that Matt was driving.  Everything lined up perfectly for Matt to be caught.

Officer Ciccone had once been in his twenties with a full head of hair and had raced around the northwest part of Chicago in his Trans-Am.  Officer Ciccone had his share of moving violations, parking ticket, driving under the influence tickets that caused him to lose his license and spend a short period of time in the infamous Cook County Jail.  The whole city of Chicago and most of the suburbs, fall into the jurisdiction of Cook County. 

Officer Ciccone had an uncle who was able to get him into the police force.  Two thousand applicants applied back in 1987.  The city of Chicago was looking for a minority female and instead they got a 100% Italian male… With an attitude.

Officer Ciccone prided himself on never losing a street fight despite the fact that he was five feet seven inches and one hundred fifty five pounds.  He was bald up the middle with bushy hair on the sides and a thick moustache.  The hair may have left his head but it grew strong in his ears, buttocks and back.  Officer Ciccone always chewed gum on the left side of his mouth and chewed in a slow circular motion clockwise.  Officer Ciccone hated every ethnic group available except Italians but hated young cocky,

good looking guys that reminded him of himself when he was young and vibrant.

“Look at this fucking guy…  Expired tags on an outta state plate, talking on the goddamn cell phone…  Run the fucking plates.”

Fearing that his car would be taken from him in the state of Michigan, Matt had the car registered to a fleeting friend by the name of Xavier Garcia.  Xavier Garcia was a national of Mexico who had also had brushes with the law.  His crime was that he carjacked a car in Indiana and took it across state lines to Illinois.  The police department in the suburb of Golf, sought to stop him for travelling fifty miles an hour in a forty mile an hour zone on a road called Golf Road.  Xavier stopped the car, climbed a fence and ran through the golf course.  The golf course led to a bike path in what they call a forest preserve.  A forest preserve is a large park like swath of land set aside to look like a forest.  Usually youngsters drink and fuck in the forest preserves.  Homosexuals and Heroin meet in the public bathrooms.  Heroin addicts are not necessarily homosexual but willing to perform homosexual acts for money.  Families and corporations also have picnics and people do jog and ride bicycles through them.  There is some positive activity.

As is usually the case, Xavier left behind an envelope with his name on it.  The police came looking for him at his previous apartment and were never able to find him.  They had new trails to pursue.  A warrant was put out for Xavier’s arrest.

“If you’re not Xavier Garcia, I need to see something really fast proving to me that you are not him, Mr. Garcia or we will be going for a ride in my vehicle…” said Officer Ciccone smugly while popping his gum.

I forgot to mention that Officer Ciccone had a first name which was Guido.  Guido grew tired of such an Italian sounding name and was given the nickname of Horse

one day in junior high.  The boys had to start taking showers after gym class and it was duly noted by all the boys that Guido’s penis hung down to the middle of his thigh.  Guido was embarrassed by this as a youngster but as time went on, it was a source of pride.  After a few cocktails or being spurned by a woman in a club, Horse would unleash his member to show women and men alike and spin it around like a windmill.  Horse’s penis was really one of his few attributes.  As a human being, he lacked empathy and was quite jealous of most men that he felt had one up on him.  Matt was just too young, fit and attractive.

“I… Think I left it at home.  If you guys could just follow me to my apartment, I could run up and get it”… Said Matt, while still looking through his glove compartment for something with his name on it.

“Oh that will be fine…  Are you hungry?  We could get a bite to eat along the way too…  Do you have any fucking idea how much bullshit we gotta deal with in a day?  That was a question to not be answered but one that should cause you to wonder.

  “Now Mr. Garcia, I am going to have to ask you to step out of that vehicle and place both your hands on the hood…  Am I fucking clear?  If you do anything stupid, stupid things will happen.”

With that, Matt rode in the back seat of squad car 2948 of the Chicago Police Department.  It smelled of stale alcohol, body odor and urine.  Matt had the handcuffs placed on his wrists, behind his back.  The two officers argued over which Chicago baseball teams were better.  Horse was born and raised off of Harlem Avenue near Grand Avenue in an area of the northwest side of Chicago called Montclair.  Horse had been a life long Cubs fan.

Officer Sean Reilly, being Irish from the Bridgeport neighborhood, home to both mayors by the last name of Daley.  Sean still lived in Bridgeport and loved the Southside.  He hated working on the north side but such is life.  They both went back to arguing about the Cubs-Sox series that was taking place at U.S. Cellular field, the home of the Chicago White Sox.

“The series is at Cellular because of the Gay Pride Parade on North Halsted.  You know that right?  The gay parade is more important to the north siders than the god damn Cubs.  The Cubs are fucking losers and always will be.  There won’t never be no World Series champions on the north side.  No fucking way.  In 2005 the Sox won 11 out of 12 games, and swept the World Series.  What have the Cubs done?  Not a fucking thing…” said Officer Reilly, with a toothpick dangling from his mouth.

“Get the fuck outta here with that south side bullshit.  Nobody gives a rat’s ass about the Sox.  They win the World Series and its on page fucking two.  The president meets with the girl’s Lacrosse team from Northwestern University but sends that black broad to shake hands with the Sox…Besides what the fuck you know bout baseball?  If

 they used a goddamn hockey puck, you’d know how to play the game.”

            “Alright, bitch…  You know what?  We’re going to the cages right now and settle this.  I could have gone to college on a division III scholarship for baseball.  You messed with the wrong Mick… Twenty dollars says I will get more hits on the fast pitch than you…” said Reilly.

“I’ll take your damn money and that still won’t prove that the White Sox don’t suck my big cock…”

The two officers drove squad car number 2948 with Matt in the back seat, to a miniature golf place that had batting cages.  They parked the squad car next to the cages in full view of Matt and asked him to critique them.  They both put in five dollars worth of quarters.  A foul ball did not count, there had to be contact.

Sean stripped down to his, if you’ll pardon the expression, Dago T.  He had a tattoo on his right shoulder that said in Gaelic, “Erin Go Bragh” with a harp under the words.  His left shoulder had a tattoo of the Chicago White Sox logo which is Sox in gothic letters.  Sean was tall and wiry.  He smacked just about each ball that came at him at a speed of 85 to 90 miles an hour.  Out of the one hundred balls, Sean had 78 solid hits.

Horse had forty eight.  When Horse was done, he took the bat and threw it at the mechanical arm.  The owner saw this and came out of his office.  He was an older bald man with glasses on.  He tried to curtail his anger since he knew the two men were police officers and their job was to serve and protect.

            “Are you goofy?  Whaddya doing?  You trying to break my machine?”  Said Sol, as he jogged out to retrieve his aluminium bat.

            “Your goddamn machine throws curve balls.  It says fucking fast balls.  I had more than one of them nearly bean me.  If I got hit by one of them, I’d sue you so fucking hard you’d think you got my whole shoe stuck in your ass…  You should be refunding me a fin for all them curve balls.”

            Solomon went back into the office where his wife was stripping the paint from her nails.  Her eye brows were removed and painted on with a black crayon like device.  Her dress looked like a night gown.  Eloise, the wife of Solomon, was talking to her sister who lived in Hoboken, New Jersey.  Eloise still had a New Jersey accent.  Aside from talking and stripping the nail polish from her nails, she was chewing gum, smoking and watching Jerry Springer.  Solomon yelled at Eloise.  He often yelled at her and she often yelled at him.

            “I told you the smell of that turpentine makes my eyes tear and my throat close up.  I told you not to smoke in here either.  If someone from the city comes, we’re going to get a $500.00 fine.  Tell your sister you’ll call her back, I need you to get off your fat ass.”

            Eloise took a drag of her cigarette, leaving bright red lipstick around the base of the filter.  She smiled and winked at Solomon.

            “No, no…  It’s just Sol crying about something once again…  The doctor told him that his heart is strong enough for Viagra.  He just has no interest in sex anymore…  He’s as useful as tits on a bull.”

            Solomon took two five dollar bills and handed them back to Sean and Horse.  Many officers shook down shop owners for free food and coffee.  Free swings at the batting cages were a new one for Sol.  The two officers got back into the car.  Sean

 proceeded to rub it in that he hit nearly thirty more balls than Horse.  Sean asked Matt who looked better.  Matt should have thought better to answer truthfully.  Horse got infuriated.

            “You think so, Garcia?  Let’s see what you think when some big fucking nigger has got a cock in your ass…  That’ll be a good going away present before they deport your fucking ass back to Mexico, you fucking beaner.”

            Now keep in mind while this is all going on, it is a warm sunny summer day in Chicago.  There are a few scattered clouds looking wispy against a blue sky.  Barometric pressure was at a hair over 29.62.  There was a chance of rain.  It was raining in

Davenport, Iowa but the wind was changing and it appeared as though all the rain would head north and east towards Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

            The president of the United States was on a farewell tour of the world.  He was having tea in Pakistan with a man named Musharif.  The general was about to step down.  Most Americans did not worry about this.  Some did.  The people of Pakistan were upset over this.  Coincidentally, within the same borders of Pakistan, in caves near the Afghanistan frontier was a man by the name of Osama bin Laden.  Two sworn enemies sharing the same country if for only a short day, it would have been like Churchill and Hitler separated in a public bathroom by a piece of metal between stalls.  Both men urinating and reflecting on the progress of defeating the other the man in war.  Hitler may have finished quickly and not bothered with washing his hands and never met Churchill.  This never did happen but as the saying goes, stranger things in life have happened.  You’ll have to excuse me, I do this a lot and not just when I write.

            And so the president was in Pakistan, a man named Obama was in North Dakota discussing how he would remove American troops from Iraq within sixteen months.

  Oddly enough, the people of the state of North Dakota were almost entirely white except for the reserves left for the former indigenous people of the region.  Custard may have lost but ultimately the natives lost the war.  Be all that as it may, a man African on his father’s side and some sort of a European melange on his mother’s side was holding a press conference in a state where few black men have bothered to tarry.  Across the country in Anaheim, California, was an older white man by the name of Mc Cain who had been held in a prisoner of war camp during the Vietnam War.  He too was trying to convince the nation that he was the right man to replace the man who was visiting Pakistan.

            Now keep in mind while these things are happening, the price of a gallon of gas is at $4.10 nationally for unleaded, $4.55 if you need Diesel.  A million homes are in foreclosure, large banking institutions are failing or being bought out by foreign investors.  The United States Dollar is worth less than the Canadian Dollar and yet the book you’re

 reading cost forty percent more to purchase within Canada.  Storms are flooding the Mississippi region from Minnesota to Louisiana and wild fires were burning from Sacramento, California to Reno, Nevada.  A tropical storm was just taking shape off the coast of Cape Verde near the continent of Africa that would bowl over small Caribbean Islands within a week.  People were being ignored in the Darfor region, China was getting ready for the Olympics, polar bears were dying in even larger numbers across the arctic region and the national debt of the United States was at 93,000,000,000 at that moment or 36,000.00 for all those living within the United States, legally and illegally. 

National league teams were playing American league teams in Major League Baseball and for many that was the most important thing happening that day, unless one was headed to jail.  None of the above had anything to do with anything.  I just thought you should know that other than this human interest story, there were much bigger things at play that nobody really cared enough about.

January 26, 2010

From Nirvana to Chlamydia

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 8:13 am
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Frank had decided that for the New Year, he would get into the best shape of his adult life.  This meant less booze, fast food, doughnuts, soft drinks, sugar, useless carbohydrates and just about everything else one might come to find and expect in the American diet. 

            If Americans are in the running for the fattest people in the world, Detroit, Michigan is in the running for some of the fattest people in the United States which in part, puts them at damn near the bench mark for obesity in the world.

            Detroit in January is inhospitable.  Detroit in July is inhospitable too but more so in January and so Frank made a pact with himself whilst drinking himself silly on New Year’s Eve.  It was the Men’s Health magazine that his girlfriend got him a subscription to.  Frank started to shop at Wholefoods, exercise more and concentrate on his girlfriend’s sexual needs all due to his new found reading material.

            Frank was going to the fitness club on Woodward in Royal Oak once a week on weekends but now he vowed to go four times a week.  He would lift weights twice a week and try to run ten miles per week.  Heading towards February, Frank was doing great.  The only thing Frank dreaded was the heavily tattooed introvert that he had befriended a year or so back when he was only attending once a week.  Frank knew that Miles only came to the gym in the late afternoons and if he happened to see Miles, he felt obligated to talk to him for as long as Miles cared to talk to him.

            Frank was a thin young man with glasses and dark hair.  He looked like any man rounding the age of thirty.  Many times Frank had seen Miles at the gym with his baggy sweat pants and cocked Tigers hat with a straight brim.  Miles was covered with tattoos like the Illustrated Man.  Miles appeared to be someone who was just released from prison.  For a young white man, he appeared to be caught up in the Hip-Hop culture when in actuality; Miles had been a lead singer/screamer for a Hard Core Punk band called Das Capitalists.  The bass player had moved to Detroit from Berlin to go to school at Wayne State and wanted to start an authentic Punk band.  The name was great but the band never got it together and eventually they disbanded.  Miles spent his days going to a strip club on eight mile road to eat a cheap lunch, watch Detroit Tigers games and look at tits.  It beat staying at home; eating a free lunch, watching the Detroit Tigers and listening to his mom tell him that he needed to find a job.

            The Tigers were the reason that Frank decided to make conversation with Miles one day.  He did it more out of nervousness than anything else since Miles gave every guy the stare down.  There is the three second rule with men; look directly at another man for more than three seconds and you either want to fight or date.  Miles wanted nothing sexually with a man but wanted to show that his hard spent hours in the gym, made him a formidable foe for any bad ass that wanted to stare back and not look away.  The third or fourth time that Miles gave Frank the stare down, Frank flicked his head up in a sort of male to male way of saying hello.  He then asked when the Tigers were playing.  Miles then went on and on about Ordonez, Granderson, Fernando Rodney and others.  Miles was much more a Tigers fan than Frank but Frank faked it well.  Frank had been at a bar when Verlander struck out over ten guys.  They discussed that and once football season came, they discussed other things because the Detroit Lions were so bad, they weren’t worth discussing.  One day Miles posed a question that surprised Frank.

            “Hey man, you know any chicks you work with that might wanna go out with a guy like me?  I’m down to earth and shit.  I know I look like I’m not but really I don’t go out much and I stay home and all.  My grandmother died and left me her place in Southfield and I just stay in the condo and watch TV.  I get panic attacks and shit and I gotta take some medicine.  Once I take the medicine, I’m cool to come here to the gym.  If I don’t take it, I can’t even take out the fucking trash.  Anyway, I’m looking for just a chick that’s cool and all to hang out with,” said Miles, in a bashful way.

            Now Frank worked at an office building where it was his job to take orders on computer for videos made in China or Taiwan.  They were mostly Public Broadcasting publications for people that donated all their earthly treasures just to keep Public Television afloat.  In the office was a woman who cleaned the office with jet black hair and tattoos up the wazoo.  Her name was Tina and she was born and raised in Boston.  Her accent was so strong that most people laughed at her behind her back.

            “Eh mistah, if I give you a few bucks, can you ordah a few dem tapes fa my daughtah.  She loves dem nature shows…  You know penguins and shit like dat…  I left my money in the caah.  When I go fo a cigarette break, I’ll run to the caah and get my caad.  You take the Discover caad, dontcha?”

            Tina had married a tattoo artist who was also a biker.  Her husband divorced her and went to jail but wrote her everyday while in jail for armed robbery.  Tina eventually softened up and went to see her ex-husband.  In the meantime, Tina was sleeping with anyone that would give her the time of day.  Frank did not know this about Tina.  What he did know was that she had a bunch of tattoos and his new found friend at the gym, Miles had tattoos also.  They had to have a connection through body art.

            Tina at first was happy as hell to have a steady boyfriend and one that would go to a Coney Island with her occasionally with her and her seven year daughter and watch movies at night with too.  Oh and then sex.  Sex was very important to Tina.  Miles was timid at first but then relaxed.  Tina felt she could confide some of her sexual escapades with Frank at work since he was after all the friend of Miles.  Miles lead Tina to believe that he and Frank were good buddies.  They actually were acquaintances at best but lonely guys will view a relationship differently and so Tina told Frank some of the things that were transpiring good and bad.

            “Miles is really good with my daugthah…  She likes him and all and that’s cool.  The sex is a little boring at times and I’m really tired of putting dildos in his ass.  At first I was like…  Okay?  But now I’m like… Dude, do you wanna dude in your ass or something?  What the fuck!  I dunno…  He’s cool and all foh now but I ain’t gonna marry him or nothing.  I mean the fucking pills he’s gotta take and the dildos and then he’s like, tell me you love me when were … you know… I dunno what you wanna call it.  Making love or fucking… He gets all fucking mouthy saying shit like I want you to be the mothah of my kid and then ten minutes latah he’s like, I wanna keep this cool cause I dunno if I want a serious relationship.  I’m like, mothahfuckah, you just wanted me to be the mothah of your fucking kids!  I dunno…  I ain’t complainin or nothing.  It was nice and all foh you to hook it all up.  He’s got some heavy shit to deal with and I gotta raise a kid, you know?”

            Frank would just nod and stare at the woman’s cleavage and wonder if her perky breasts were real or fake.  He’d wonder if she was good in bed or just average and then Frank would think about the dildo going up the tattooed man’s ass at the health club and did not want to see him change in front of him again.  Finally the relationship between Miles and Tina unraveled and Tina mentioned it in passing.  Tina went on to sleep with six different men and give her ex-husband a hand job during visitation at prison.  Miles began to go to an Evangelical Protestant Church close to his inherited condominium in Southfield.  Suddenly Miles had an epiphany and transformation and couldn’t see Tina again even though she would call or stop by his apartment on nights when all other prospects fell through.  Tina told Frank about this too.

            “He’s like a fucking Jesus freak now.  He won’t drink or have sex no more and he’s apologizing to me for shit we did.  I told him to get the fuck away from me…  Fucking freaks and losers are all I fucking get.  Where are all the good guys?  What about you, Frankie?”

            Frank stumbled and stammered and claimed to be in a monogamous relationship with someone that he was going to marry.  It was all bullshit but it sound plausible and really as long as what you say sounds really plausible, you could be president one day.  That’s if you don’t mind the immense frustration.

Now Frank slacked off and stopped going to the gym during the whole month of December.  He developed love handles and his muscles became atrophied.  It was the prospect of becoming thirty that gave Frank a kick in the ass.  Thirty was the threshold into old age.  It was the gateway to AARP and discounts to Old Country Buffet and Frank thought that if he did not stop existing as he did at the age of sixteen, he would balloon up to the size of a whale or worse.  When Frank became gung-ho and diligent again, he ran into Miles at the health club.  Miles got to tell his side of things to Frank.  Frank never let on that Tina had already filled him in on the things that were filling in Miles’ orifices.

            “Dude, where you been?”

            “Oh shit… December was a busy month… Parties and family and shit like that.”

            Miles didn’t understand how a dinner on Christmas Eve and a company party two weeks before Christmas, could stop one from working out for a month but somehow, everyone used that excuse.

            “I know what you mean, man…” said Miles, even though he didn’t.

            On the day that Miles stood in front of Frank’s treadmill, Frank was set to run two miles in under twenty six minutes, take a shower and meet a girl he met on the internet at a restaurant in Troy.  Frank had an hour to run and shower before getting up to Troy to meet his date.  When he saw Miles sauntering over with his baggy and saggy sweatpants and cocked baseball hat, he said to himself; fucking shit.  Frank was polite.  He walked at 3.5 miles an hour at a 2% grade while Miles talked to him.

            “Hey man, I know you and Tina are tight and shit cause you were friends from work and all but that fucking bitch gave me the clap…  I went in for tests because my dick hurt when I pissed and the doctor said I have Chlamydia.  I was like, what the fuck is that going to do to me?  I asked about AIDS and he said I won’t know for a few days.  I mean I can’t fucking sleep worrying about whether I’m gonna die or not.  I go for the tests and the bitch at the clinic tells me not to worry that even if I got AIDS, I ain’t gonna die right away.  I’m taking my fucking medicine and I can’t sleep and shit.  I’ m losing my mind.  I ain’t blaming you or nothing cause nobody told me to fuck her and I should have known cause her shit was fucking stinky.  I mean like I know we all get sweaty and shit but every fucking time it was nasty and then I thought too maybe its cause she had kids coming out of her shit and all.  I don’t know, man…  I been praying about this stuff and like I joined a prayer group and told them what’s going on and now they look at me like I’m fucking crazy.  I mean if I wanna change my life, I gotta start somewhere and now the church people treat me like I got leprosy and even like Jesus and shit went to the people with leprosy…  He who is with out sin throw the first rock and shit, you know?  Hey man, you wanna go get a beer and talk about this shit with me?  I been waiting to see you and I’m so glad you showed up finally because I was like ready to snap.  I was waiting in line today to try and get my license back after my DUI and some bitch cut in front of me on a cell phone and I yelled at her ass and they were gonna call the cops…  I just need to talk to someone…  You busy tonight?”

            Frank showered and tried to call his date but it went straight into voice mail.  Frank erased his voice message three times and then sent a text.  He knew that he might never see the woman again after canceling on the night of a date but he tried to explain the best he could.  After hearing so much lying, Frank decided to be honest.  This is how the text went.

            TRIED TO CALL YOU.  A MINOR FRIEND MAY HAVE CONTRACTED A VENERIAL DISEASE AND IS DISTRAUT.  I HAVE TO ATTEND TO HIM TONIGHT.  LONG STORY.  SAW HIM AT THE GYM AND HE DUMPED THIS ON ME.  DON’T WANT HIM TO HURT OR KILL HIMSELF.  IF WE CAN RESCHEDULE, THIS WILL MAKE FOR SOME LIVELY CONVERSTATION.

           Frank received nothing for about an hour as he listened to Miles complain about Tina over a half dozen beers a piece.  Then the text from his date came in.

            NO WORRIES.  I APPRECIATE YOU TELLING ME.  STAYING HOME WITH MY DAUGHTER TONIGHT WATCHING MOVIES ABOUT POLAR BEARS AND PENGUINS.  CALL ME DURING THE WEEK, WE CAN RESCHEDULE.

            And with that, Frank was reluctant to ever call the woman again.  Why?  Could have been the penguins.  Or other shit…

January 25, 2010

Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 6:52 am
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Now as the phone was ringing, Mort was watching a live broadcast of a fire happening at  a building that he managed that was owned by his boss, Steven Swartz.  On the phone was the janitor to the building by the name Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu. 

            “Boss, you gotta to come down here right now… It’s terrible…  I toll you last week that we gotta to fix the electricity… Come on, I toll you.”

            Dwight almost was given a name that was hard for Americans to say and so his parents chose the name Dwight.  It was during World War II that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, came to the small Romanian village that Dwight’s parents were from.  Dwight Eisenhower stopped with his entourage to have a cup of tea at an insignificant little café that was frequented by nobody but locals.  Dwight’s father ordered his wife to find their cousin who was a wedding photographer when he wasn’t fixing cars and made him stop what he was doing so that he could have a photograph with the famous general.  Up on the wall of that café was a mural sized photograph of Dwight’s father with his left arm around Eisenhower and his right hand shaking hands with the future president.  The picture remains to this day.

  Dwight’s father offered the general a pastry and a cup of coffee.  Eisenhower finished neither.  To this day in a Sub Zero freezer in Chicago,  is the cup of coffee with coffee still in it and a pastry with one bite out of it forever frozen in time.  Dwight Eisenhower Ilescu, made it on national television twice.  Once was to have chemists test the frozen products to ensure the validity of the claim.  The DNA matched.  Dwight D. Eisenhower in fact drank from the cup and took a bite of the pastry.  For this reason Dwight has always voted Republican.  He voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984 after becoming a naturalized citizen.

            Dwight was a dichotomy of sorts.  He hated Jews but realized that the key to his success rested in getting along and depending on them and working for them.  His hate stemmed from the fact that the Jews all seemed to find a way to really make good money without working quite as hard.  Steven Swartz, who owned the building that Dwight worked and lived in, never acknowledged Dwight even though Dwight fixed Steven’s plumbing at his house for free twice.  Both times it took his entire day off which was Sunday and Steven never even said thank you.  Steven did throw a bonus in his checks but Dwight wanted more than anything to have a handshake and a pat on the back.  If the supreme general of the European theater during World War II could wait twenty minutes in a café to have a mechanic take a photograph with a nobody in Romania, surely the president of a small company could take the time from barking at someone on his Bluetooth, to thank the man who made it possible to have his shit flow again down stream.  Into the abyss.

January 22, 2010

A day in the life of an American part II

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 8:33 am
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Now keep in mind that our hero in part 1, blended one day into the next without the benefit of any sleep.  He has spent over $15.00 on over priced coffee which included the obligatory drop of coin change into the barista’s clear box next to the register. 

            Trent’s mother has come unexpectedly with his her husband, Trent’s step father who is nearly three years younger than Trent.  His stepfather is a former Marine and a closet homosexual with a drinking problem.  Trent has driven over 100 miles since leaving home half of which were in a Smart Car.  He answered over 30 emails on his Blackberry as well as answered close to ten voice messages.  We find him pulled over on the north side of Chicago in part two.

2:20 pm- Trent has been pulled over by an Officer O’Malley in squad car 1592.  Officer O’Malley is fifty seven years of age, has twenty two percent body fat and a penis that used to get 4.75 inches long when it could become erect.  That was back when his body fat was under fifteen percent, over ten years ago.  Officer O’Malley enjoys watching sports, loves his nine grand children and his time share in Cancun.  He and his wife fall asleep watching Jimmy Kimmel on late night television in their matching recliners most evenings after watching the news.

            “I hate to do this to you but there is a law here in the City of Chicago and normally I wouldn’t give a driver a ticket but I sat behind you for an entire red light and then you made a left hand turn without using your turn signal.  I’m going to give you the choice of what I give you the ticket for…  Personally I would go for the cell phone as it will not go on your record,” said Officer O’Malley.

            Here’s the irony; Trent was on the phone with the Chicago Police Department, trying to get an officer to meet him at an apartment building where a tenant had adopted all the furniture in the foyer, for her own unit.  A water leak from an over flowing tub in the thief’s unit had caused terrific water damage to a unit below. 

            A section 8 tenant with five cats, called to tell Trent that plaster had fallen and hit her while she was asleep in bed.  The tenant had already called an injury attorney that she sees every commercial break on local television.  He was in her corner all along.

            “I’m on the phone with the Chicago Police Department right now!” Cried Trent as he held out the cell phone towards the officer.

            “Okay…  I’ll let you go on that account but I gotta ticket you for the left without a signal.  That was just plain stupid, sir.

2:47 pm- Trent walks into the lobby of the apartment that had been stripped of a table and four chairs.  Two lesbian officers stood annoyed with the janitor of the building whose name was Abulfasal and was born in Bosnia.  Abulfasal changed his name to Bud.  Bud had a wife and four children who lived in the one bedroom basement apartment belonging to the company that Trent worked for.  His wife is an illegal alien and Bud is missing a tooth.  The tooth came out while fixing a small plumbing issue in the building the year before.  He hit himself with a large pipe wrench while trying to loosen a rusted fitting that was leaking.  Bud underestimated his own strength.  He loosened the rusted fitting and took his tooth with it.  With no health insurance, his tooth did not stand a chance.

            Now the lesbian cops both played softball on the same team and were training to run a marathon.  Both of them had short cut hair and very pale white skin and spoke an octave lower than the voice god meant for them to have.  They were annoyed that Trent had left them waiting in the lobby for over ten minutes when they were in the middle of eating lunch when the call came through.

            The tenant opened her door to find Bud, Trent and the two female cops with low voices.  The tenant was trying hard to get off of drugs and find a job but the problem was that she just had a child three months earlier and had another one that was eighteen months old.  Both children were of mixed race or as they called them in the old days; mulatto.  She was thin and pale with greasy blond hair, with huge bags under her eyes and a black front tooth that was affected by heroin.  She was smoking a cigarette and trembling.  The father of the second child had just called her from Cook County Jail and needed to be bailed out.  She had no money and her boyfriend would have to stay until a court hearing and then maybe some extra for breaking the terms of his probation.  The young woman was really nervous about what would happen upon her boyfriend’s return.  Violence of some sort was expected but what was not known was to what extent.  She had some time.  Meanwhile she was at the mercy of Trent.  Trent looked at the sleeping infant in an old car seat and couldn’t ask for the woman to be arrested.  He ordered Bud to move the furniture back to the lobby and bolt it down.  The officers questioned Trent in the hallway.

            “It’s up to you…  We can arrest her, the kids become ward of the state and chances are the judge is going to let her go anyway…  Whaddya wanna do?”

            The tenant with the five cats could hear the conversation as she walked up the stairs with yellow Tweety slippers, holding an ice pack to her head.  Even though she was clunked pretty good on the head by wet plaster, she was absolutely fine.  She was hoping to win the lottery on this one and nothing was going to come out of it.  At that moment though she was full of hope as she climbed the stairs in her yellow slippers, holding the ice pack against her forehead, she interjected.

            “You better know what you’re gonna do, mister.  This is a serious situation…”

            It was a serious situation.  Trent at that moment was the closest he had ever come to quitting life completely.  Nothing suicidal but more like clearing the deck.  What Trent really wanted to do was go back to work and quit.  He wanted to tell everyone at work to go fuck themselves and try to have a nice life.  He then wanted to go home and tell his mother to plan her life better and send the Marine to rehab.  He then wanted to put it to his wife that they sell everything and open a wine bar in the Bahamas or maybe a miniature golf center.  Trent was ready to slow his life down.  After all, every work day was nearly identical to the one he was having and some times he would sleep and often times he was too wired to relax.  Trent wanted to live by the ocean where most every day was as beautiful as the next.  He wanted to drive his car on the left with a wheel on the right and watch cricket matches in the shade on days that he wasn’t selling wine or handing out putters.  All of these thoughts crossed Trent’s mind as he sat in stand still traffic late in the afternoon on Interstate 94 headed north even though the sign says west towards Milwaukee.  While Trent contemplated changing his entire life for the sake of saving it, he listened to the news about tens of thousands of some of the poorest people on the planet, losing their lives in an earthquake in Haiti.  The news was more or less subliminal.  Trent then received a text from his wife.

            “What’s the plan with your family for tonight?  Eating?  Food?  Please advise.”

            Trent really wished that she had not ended the sentence with please advise.  Most people who complained all day long in emails, always ended their emails in please advise.

            7:52 pm- Trent had brought home some deep dish pizza that Chicago was really famous for.  His mother, her husband, his wife and he all made small talk.  The kind of talk that when you try to remember what was discussed the next day it leaves one wondering what exactly was exchanged for hours?  Weather?  The baby?  The past?  It didn’t matter.  While everyone chatted, Trent scooped up their infant daughter who was fussing due to the fact that she was hungry and tired.  He changed her and got a bottle of formula ready.  His eyes grew heavy as he starred down at his infant daughter who was having a hard time keeping her eyes open and focused on him.  After all, he was one of two people she could now pick out of a crowd of strangers if she had to as she drank her milk in his arms.  Trent thought about all the meaningless but necessary bullshit for a moment while looking down at his baby girl and decided he was no better or smarter than the Salmon.  He like most, were just trying to fight their way upstream, against the tide for the benefit of their progeny.  That’s just how it goes.

January 18, 2010

A Day in the Life of an American Part 1

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 7:51 am
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Trent Kelly was one the fortunate Americans who had a job and for that he was truly thankful.  As a leasing agent for apartment buildings within and around the city of Chicago, he met people everyday that did not qualify to rent an apartment due to poor credit or no job.  They were all less fortunate.

12:38am Friday- Trent returned from playing four games of pick up basketball with young men from a Romanian Christian church who were roughly half his age.  Trent sat and watched the Cleveland Cavalier/Utah Jazz game that he recorded prior to leaving home as he ate roast beef with Munster cheese that had been microwaved.  No bread with the cold cuts and cheese.  Trent slams in a handful of blueberries and a small stalk of broccoli.  He remembers that they fight cancer and have antioxidants.  Trent doesn’t remember what an antioxidant is exactly.  He knows that it fights oxidants with vigor and it makes him feel healthier to know that there are less oxidants within him as a result.

            As Trent tries to decide whether he should have a glass of red wine with his sleep medicine, he watches Shaquille O’Neil miss two free throws and wonders how a man plays the game of basketball for so many years and is still unable to shoot over 50% from the foul line.  He wonders how the man does not take the whole summer in his palace overlooking the smog and over population of Los Angeles from his mountain side home and shoot free throws over and over until the rhythm is secondary just as putting on a panel on a Ford Taurus would be to some poor slob on an assembly line making a great American vehicle in Windsor, Ontario.  It’s a panel that gets put on the right front, just like the last one and ten thousand others before it and after it.  Ten thousand free throws per summer and one is bound to shoot at least 50%.  Lack of rhythm must be the key.

            A television time out it became time to decide whether to have a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot and wash that down with sleep agent that has Diphenhydramine HCI.  Just 25 little milligrams to help with sleeplessness.  Insomnia is a pervasive problem for Trent.  He goes to the bathroom and urinates and looks at his own face in the mirror while relieving himself.  He has dark rings under his eyes like a raccoon and a hint of crow’s feet around the eyes.  Trent thinks to himself that he probably doesn’t appear to be forty yet or at least what he perceived forty to appear like when he was twenty.  His hair is salt and pepper and for the mean time, it’s more pepper than salt.  His head is shaved due to the fact that it is thinning in spots.  Every week without fail, he visits a Ukrainian woman who was raised in the former Soviet empire and only learned to speak Russian.  She tells Trent as he fights sleep in the barber chair, that the current president of Ukraine is a piece of shit and hopes the man who lost in 2004, wins this time.  Trent only faintly listens as he tries not to breathe the breath of the Ukrainian woman who smokes a pack of Marlboro Cigarettes a day.  Trent didn’t realize that the Ukrainians had their own language and that their language was in fact not Russian.  Trent is not thinking about the president of Ukraine or his adversary or the cigarette breath of his female barber from a former Soviet region as he takes the Minoxidil and rubs it on his scalp as he has for years.  He has Minoxidil for his hair and Nair for his back with a spatchula to help reach those troubled areas of his back.

            The phone rings at a little after one in the morning right after Trent swallowed a little pill to help him sleep with a healthy poor of Fat Bastard Merlot.  Trent thinks about the temp girl who answered the phones at the office and how she was not supposed to give out his cell number to tenants but was supposed to give out his email so that he could receive emails instead of calls.  The phone played Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries as loud as could be.  The phone was in the bathroom next to the bedroom where his infant daughter slept.  The same song that played in Apocalypse Now when Robert Duval attacked by helicopter, the civilians on the Vietnamese beach, stunned his relatively new born daughter from her slumber.  While a fragile tenant cried about feces coming up from her toilet and the need for immediate action, Trent’s new daughter went off like a siren.  Trent’s sleepy wife staggered past Trent who was on his cell phone after one in the morning to attend to their child who was woken by a phone replication of a Richard Wagner song.  Trent’s wife didn’t care who it was that he was talking to as much as she cared that he was talking with his day time voice in the middle of the night.

            “I hope you’re saving lives tonight.  There are people in Haiti that are dying.  I sincerely hope nobody is dying,” said Trent’s wife, as she changed the diaper of their screaming new born who was fighting the diaper change with both arms and both legs.

            Trent added two scoops of Similac to four ounces of water and handed it to his sleepy wife who was sitting in a rocking chair, waiting for the liquid meal for their new arrival.  Trent tried to assure the woman that he would get a plumber the first thing in the morning. 

2:10am Friday- the Utah Jazz with roughly five minutes to go, had an eleven point lead on Cleveland.  Trent watched James Lebron undress the entire Jazz squad in a little more than three minutes as an email was coming in.  This is what the subject said;

            NO FUCKING HEAT AGAIN…

            Then the message went on to say…  I KNOW WHEREVER THE FUCK YOU ARE TONIGHT, YOU ARE QUITE WARM.  WELL I’M NOT, ONCE AGAIN, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.  STAY WARM.

            Now the tenant who wrote this was a stay at home father of twenty nine years of age with 18% body fat and a 3 and ¾ inch penis.  This tenant loves Xbox and comic books and saw Avatar five times.  His wife paid for the tickets each time as well as the popcorn with extra butter and the economy sized cola.  Trent got to play god with this particular asshole.  Trent pretended to be sleeping and would respond to the urgent message until after noon time later that day.

            Now one of the best finishes to a basketball game took place with five seconds to go in the game.  Like a good Disney finish, the Utah Jazz inbound the ball and got it to a man with the last name of Gaines who had been playing minor league basketball in Boise just days before.  In front of a sell out crowd, he hit a three pointer at the buzzer and solidified his chances of sticking in the NBA.  Another email came in.

            “Trent honey, its mommy.  I have decided to come and visit you, your beautiful wife and darling new addition.  I read my horoscope and had a dream about dying early and decided that since I have the time, I will be coming with my husband Bob to spend the week with you.  Life is short and you never know what could happen.  I’m going to need a car and hope that we will not be crowding you if we stay at your place… Hugs and kisses.”

            That single email kept Trent from sleep more so than anything else that could possibly happen.  Even with a sleeping aid and red wine, sleep would be postponed for the night pending the arrival of Trent’s mother from Vermont.

            Now Trent was born and raised in Los Angeles by a single mom who happened to be a hippy.  Trent’s mother was on her sixth husband.  This latest step father was three years younger than Trent, a former Marine and an alcoholic.  Trent got on line and found a motel called the Ambassador on Lincoln Avenue on the north side of Chicago and an independent car rental company that rented Smart Cars for his mother.

5:02 am Friday- Trent stops at a Starbucks.  An effeminate young man with skin tight jeans and two earrings on his lips asks Trent what he would like to drink in a southern belle lilt.  Trent for a moment remembered when being overtly effeminate was as dangerous as being overtly communist and wondered if communism and homophobia died simultaneously.

            Trent bench presses first at the gym.  Four sets of 235 then leg lifts push ups, pull ups and then curls.  Trent’s heart pounds as he takes a hot shower.  Next to him are two old Jewish men that small talk.  Trent listens in.

            “Mortie…  You’re late.  It’s one of the seven deadly sins isn’t it?”

            “What, what… Not getting my tired old ass out of bed and to the gym and for what?  I’ll still look like a wrinkled prune with ball sacks hanging down to my fucking knees…”

            That made Trent smile as he stood naked in front of the mirror, putting lotion all over his body.  Trent could see some muscle tone and a hint of a six pack on his abdomen.  He dreaded getting as old as the old Jews but knew with each day, the time was coming.

8:45am Friday- Trent picked up a yellow Smart Car from O’Hare airport and drove to Midway Airport on the other side of Chicago to greet his mother.  The Smart Car shook as it went 62.5 miles per hour on the Stevenson Expressway.  The news from Haiti was dismal.  The Blackhawks won and the weather would be sunny and above freezing for the fourth day in a row. 

            A Chicago Police officer in a bright yellow raincoat came up and yelled at Trent for pulling up in the fire lane to pick up his mother and her husband.

            “You leave that car for a second and I’ll have it towed…” said the cop.

            “I’m picking up those two people there,” Trent said, combatively.

            “And I’m telling you if you leave the car, it will be towed.”

            Trent had no way of knowing that the middle aged angry officer, had been sent to Midway to keep scofflaws and terrorists from double parking their cars because he had been caught grocery shopping and sleeping in his car by a news television station that was trying to point out just how lazy some police officers were and their abuse of power.  The cop hated standing out in the cold, telling people to move their cars all day.  Do you blame him? 

9:02am

Trent, his mother and step father, were eating at Brandy’s Family Restaurant on Cicero and 52nd Street.  The waitress looked a lot like WC Fields, red nose and all.  Everyone except the girl who rang people up and sat them, were morbidly obese.  Trent didn’t know exactly what to say to his mother and stepfather who he did not like.  He mentioned the fat people.

            “2/3 of Americans are obese now and 90% of them are in this room,” said Trent, while stirring his coffee.  Trent’s latently homosexual step father, who was three years younger than him, starred at Trent blankly.  Nothing was said by either Trent’s mother or the Marine.

            “Musta been a pain in the ass to get to Albany, New York with all that snow in Vermont.  Did you make it to the airport okay?” said Trent, searchingly looking for something to discuss.

            “Well I love to hunt and ski…  Chop down wood and just enjoy god’s green earth,” said Bob, in a manly and quite husky voice.

            Trent didn’t understand the answer to his question from Bob and did not press him for an answer that made sense.  Trent listened to Bob claims of being the outdoors man and couldn’t help thinking about the $1,000.00 phone bill he had to pay for his mother due to the fact that Bob rang up a doozy by calling1- 900 gay phone sex numbers while on a drinking binge.  Bob had no idea that Trent knew.  Trent told his mother that before he would help out with the outrageous phone bill, he had to know first what kind of 1- 900 Bob was calling.  Trent called one of the numbers and heard this recording:

            “You’ve reached The Man line…  Lot’s of interesting men are waiting to talk to men just like you.  Your seconds away from joining the fastest growing network where men meet men…  Just like you…”

            11:00 am- A mandatory meeting was called for all employees of the real estate office where Trent worked.  A bald man who looked like Dr. Phil with eyebrows that looked like gerbils, stood with his arms folded at the front of the room behind a podium.  The owner of the company came in late and the murmur that had filled the room immediately ceased.  The boss started the meeting with a red face and trembling hands.  He was so angry that he literally shook.

            “I called this meeting to put you all on notice.  Someone stole a gift from my desk while I was on vacation and yet nobody knows where it is.  Among us is a thief…  Secondly, I brought my eight year old son in the office and allowed him to look up Nick on Line from the front desk computer and come to find out that someone here was looking at a website called Goats and Blondes.  MY SON BELIEVES IN SANTA CLAUS STILL AND KNOWS ABOUT SEX WITH FUCKING FARM ANIMALS!  I had to learn this from my wife as she learned this while reading him Dr. Fucking Seuss before bed.  You are all being put on notice.  I have hired Mr. Dupuis to monitor everything that goes on in this place from here on out.  This bullshit ends today.  Mr. Dupuis… The floor is yours.”

            The boss received a gift certificate from his girlfriend at work while he happened to be away with his family over the Christmas holiday.  He received a text message from his girlfriend who had purchased a gift certificate to the Love Palace.  The Love Palace was frequented by couples looking for intimacy and fun.  The suite chosen by the girlfriend had a pool with a slide and a trapeze where she could lower herself onto her boyfriend.  The text message read as follows:

                        DID YOU GET THE GIFT CERTIFICATE TO THE LOVE PALACE THAT I LEFT ON YOUR DESK LAST WEEK?  I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY IT OUT.  I MISS YOU.  SEE YOU SOON.

            Upon returning, the boss panicked over the prospect of anyone seeing the card from his girlfriend.  He of course he yelled at his girlfriend for leaving the envelope on his desk instead of giving it to him.  Whoever stole it knew that it was safe to steal since; the boss could not divulge the contents.  The same person who stole the card also was looking at bestiality on line too.  I can’t say who it was.  It just wouldn’t be right for me to get involved in this.

January 10, 2010

Tourette’s meets TSA

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 10:21 am
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Lester Vandermere was born and raised in Warren, Michigan. Lester’s parents dropped Lester off with his mother’s parents as a toddler before they took off to concentrate on other things that interested them more about life such as drugs and stealing to buy drugs and so on. Luckily for Lester, he had grandparents that really loved him and treated Lester as their own.
At a young age, they began to notice some quirky things about Lester that they had not noticed with their own children or anyone else’s for that matter. Lester had the ability to mimic voices of just about anyone he heard around him and if it was particularly unique, Lester imitated the voice until some other voice caught his fancy. Lester too spent his time straightening things in his room to the point of exhaustion. Poor Lester would eventually just pass out as a young boy and it was rarely on his bed but on the floor while he was in the middle of correcting something he had already corrected such as color coordinating clothes or hanging them by size or alphabetically arranging baseball cards.
Baseball for as slow as it should be for a child diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder, ADHD and Tourette Syndrome, Baseball should have been like watching grass grow but it wasn’t that way with Lester. It was one of the few times he could sit in a chair without involuntary vocal outbursts, twitching or blinking. Lester’s grandfather took Lester to see the Detroit Tigers a lot and then got the idea to buy over 100 rubber coated league baseballs and paint a target in the backyard.
“All you gotta do is aim for this target and throw that ball as hard as you can… Now granddad wants you to occasionally hold the ball across the seams like so and then turn your hand like this when releasing the ball. Once you’ve thrown all these call me,” said Lester’s grandfather.
This began at about age eight and continued everyday irregardless of weather or season. Lester threw baseballs at a target on a fence everyday for hours and never grew tired of it. At age ten, Lester’s grandfather signed him up for little league baseball in Warren. The first day Lester ever got to pitch, he had the first perfect game ever recorded by a first time pitcher in his first game in the state of Michigan. Lester made the front page of the Detroit Free Press. Over time Lester continued to improve and never grew tired of throwing baseballs at a target. By Lester’s sophomore year of high school, colleges all over the country were offering him full scholarships. More than one Major League Baseball club sent a representative to watch Lester pitch for his high school. Lester could pitch a curve ball that looked like it dropped off a table just before arriving at home plate, faster than most men could throw a fastball. Lester’s fastball was unbelievably fast for a fifteen year old boy. Between pitches, Lester would have to pick up the rosin bag and bounce it twice on the back of his left hand and twice on the palm before yelling out profanity, wooing and heavy blinking. He was more amusing than Mark Fydrich ever was for the Detroit Tigers.
“Three pitches, fat ass! Three pitches… You get three fucking pitches, fat boy…”
Strike one. A belt high fastball that hovered around 95 miles per hour. The batter attempted to swing and was frozen.
“That’s one, bitch boy… Two more… Two more, you fat fuck…”
Strike two. Slightly lower than the first but above the knees right down the center of the plate at about 96 miles per hour. The catcher wore a padded batter’s glove inside his catcher’s mitt. The second pitch cracked as it hit the webbing of the catcher’s mitt.
“Just standing there with his thumb in his ass… Ha, ha, Lovie… Gilligan m’boy… Mere child’s play… Drown them all like puppies… Jimbo, let’s discuss all the options, son… Out of the way! Road hog!”
Lester loved imitating the voice of Jim Backus who was the voice of Mr. Magoo, the millionaire on Gilligan’s Island and the father of James Dean in Rebel without a Cause. Lester strung quotes from all three as he bounced the rosin bag on his left hand prior to throwing a curve ball that dropped about 18 inches at 88 miles per hour. The stands were packed and everyone stood and clapped with every strike out. The ovations were just white noise in the head of a talented young man whose mind was locked on Jim Backus at the moment. Television will do that to children, you know.
“Oh Magoo, you’ve done it again… Marvelous Gilligan, m’boy. Go get Ginger and tell her I’d like to drive her like a five iron… Pull a little to the left but play through it, Gilligan… Drive it right through the rough patches, m’boy…”
Some days Lester might take on the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, Jack Nicholson, George W. Bush, Marlon Brando. He might imitate the laugh of Charles Nelson Reilly or the faces of Robert de Niro. Lester’s grandparents were used to it and paid little attention. What did not go unnoticed were Lester’s grandfather’s racist comments. In school all the kids laughed at the unique voices and racist words that spouted from Lester’s mouth as his mind committed things to memory and replayed them often and randomly.
“Smithers! What is with all of these fat children?” As the voice of Mr. Burns from the Simpson.
“Now folks, we’re fixing to round up all the wet backs, chinks, pork chops, niggers, sand niggers, swami’s, snake charmers and the whole lot of them and send them to ah… send them to ah… California! That’s right. Send them to live with Arnold…”
And just like that he went from sounding like George W. Bush to Arnold Swartznegger.
“Commin-zee to Camp Cal-if-forn-ia… Veel help you to concentrate… In our camp…. Hee aye aye aye…. Ya… Dat vas a gut fun…”
One teacher learned that if she gave Lester a whole pack of gum to chew, it cut down on outbursts and tics. The rest just had to tune it out the best they could. The fact of the matter is that if you have a talent like savant, people tend to be very forgiving and most understood that for as unusual as it was for Lester to have not only Tourette’s but to also be Obsessive-Compulsive and have ADHD, he also had the ability to imitate voices and gestures and pitch a baseball unlike any young man his age. Lester barring any unforeseen problems was going to become a rich and famous young man soon. Everyone respected this.
Lester’s grandmother gave Lester the news, the night before leaving, that they would be going to southern California to visit several colleges that offered scholarships. Lester’s grandmother knew better than to tell him earlier. If she had told him a week in advance, he would have been packed and waiting at the door without sleep for that entire week. The night before leaving for Los Angeles, Lester’s grandmother packed a suitcase full of Lester’s clothes. Lester was obviously upset that the order of his things was being disrupted without any prior discussion. Lester took on the voice of Peter Lorre.
“Oh thees ees most disturbing… I’m not going to hurt you, my leetle friend… Don’t worry… Tell the fat man that I must have the Maltese Falcon… Eet ees most imperative that the fat man call me thees instant…”
Lester began to put away the clothes that were in the suitcase when his grandmother stopped him and sat him down to explain where they were going in the morning. Lester was so excited that he couldn’t sleep. He stayed up all night watching the MLB station and reruns on TVLand.
Lester and his grandparents arrived at the Detroit Metro Airport at seven in the morning two weeks after a terrorist tried to blow up the Detroit bound plane he was on and three days after another man claimed that he wanted to kill all Jews before boarding a plane in Detroit. Now picture a tall and lanky young man with pimples on his face, talking non stop, all the while changing voices and facial expressions. It had been a few days since Lester had watched the movie, Slapshot with Paul Newman. Lester spewed out lines from the movie while standing in the TSA security line.
“You naver naver want to take your stick like thees unless you are a stupid English pig… You go to the box and feel shame and then you go free… FAT ASS! WOO! You ever see so many niggers trying to get something for nothing? If it isn’t nailed down, you bet your sweet ass the niggers will have it,” said Lester, imitating his grandfather’s voice and facial expressions.
Luckily for the Vandermeres, there were no African-Americans within an ear shot of them except for the TSA official who was looking at passports, licenses and boarding passes. Mr. Caruthers, the TSA official was as shocked as he was angry about hearing such blatantly racist comments coming from the young man whose grandmother was rubbing his arm, telling him that he needed to talk about something else. It came time for the three of them to step up and give their credentials to Mr. Caruthers.
Mr. Caruthers was a large and strongly built black man with a deep voice. The voice reminded Lester of the times his grandfather would lower his voice and do an imitation of Amos and Andy. Lester’s grandparents feared something bad could happen and it was happening.
“How is yaw, Kingfish? How you be thaar, Kingfish? Now see haar… How’s Calpurnia?”
The three of them were herded into a room and questioned for about a half hour by several federal officials. One of the men recognized Lester from the newspaper and believed all that Lester’s grandparents were trying to explain about Lester’s quirks and outbursts. Lester signed an autograph on a piece of paper for the federal official who was a big baseball fan and had heard that Lester was one the top prospects coming up. Lester and his grandparents boarded the plane first and took the last three seats all the way in the back. Lester was thumbing through a baseball book that his grandmother had given him for Christmas. Everyone came in and took their seats and everything seemed as if it were going to be mostly copasetic all the way to Los Angeles until a young Italian man muttered under his breath to his brother, loud enough for Lester to hear. The Italian man was distinctly from Brooklyn. Both men had slicked back black hair and were chewing their gum in a loud circular motion, wearing tight faded jeans and t shirts that were too tight for both of them. It was perfect ammunition for Lester who had become calm despite being excited and apprehensive about his first flight on a plane.
“You ask me what they should fucking do is let the fucking Chinese run the fucking airports for about a year. The fucking Chinese don’t put up with no shit. You ever see this kind of shit happen in China? Fuck no! Let one of these A-rab cocksuckers pull this shit with the fucking Chinese. You’d never hear a fucking word about em again. In this country you’re like a goddamn celebrity. Wanna get on TV? Light your fucking balls on fire on a plane and you’ll wind up getting three square meals for the rest of your days in a goddamn prison and we get to pay for this shit… Let one of these fucks pull a box cutter or a crotch bomb on this flight… I’ll tear their fucking hearts out.”
Upon hearing the rant, Lester once again became unglued. After being detained again and having to face more federal officials and then meet with a psychiatrist and a string of social workers, the Vandermeres were allowed to go back home. It took all day and they were exhausted. Lester’s grandmother laid into her husband for ever saying anything questionable in front of Lester. Lester slept fleetingly as they drove west. After nearly a week on the road, they arrived in Los Angeles. Lester met alone with the athletic director who had originally played baseball in Hoboken in the minor leagues and grew up in the Bronx. The older man, who looked like he could have fit in with the cast of the Sopranos, extended his hand and asked Lester about the flight not knowing that they drove. Lester more or less repeated the words of the Italian man from the airplane. Lester’s grandparents listened outside the office to the hardy laugh of the athletic director that became nothing more than a wheeze and a whistle when he became too out of breath to laugh anymore. The door opened and the big man with cigars for fingers patted Lester on the back and shook the hands of Lester’s grandparents. Lester and his grandparents got into the minivan and headed onto the next school. The athletic director called the baseball coach on the phone to discuss Lester.
“The kid looks like nothing more than a corn seed… Yeah, yeah, I heard all about his problem before he got here. He had me nearly pissing in my pants… He looked at me making faces like Robert de Niro and spoke like Al Pacino for twenty minutes. I don’t know if he did that because he knows I’m Italian but it was very funny… Sure, sure. He’ll make the hall of fame some day and then take his voices on the road. I’d like to be there when he wins the World Series one day and gets invited to the White House to shake hands with the president. That’ll be one for the ages…”

January 4, 2010

The Mason Dixon Excuse

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 7:44 am
Tags: , , , ,

Colin Mason left Grand Rapids, Michigan to pursue his passion of being an artist in New York City. He found job in a coffee shop with a struggling black poet by the name of Deandra Dixon. Deandra wrote poetry about being black and poor and angry and a woman. A lot of her work was very abstract and really hard to read into but she had several poems published in anthologies whereby she never earned a cent. Deandra would read her poems at poetry slams and open microphone nights at small clubs in Brooklyn. After spending so much time with Colin in the coffee shop, Deandra decided that Colin was a safe catch. He was white, smart, fairly attractive and pliable. Deandra for all her militant black, feminist liberalism, she really wanted the old fashioned nuclear family and so she married Colin and they had a son. His name was Obama Mason-Dixon.
Obama of course was named after the president of the United States. He was conceived shortly after the election in November of 2008. Colin and Deandra drove in Deandra’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle to Chicago to take part in the historical moment in Grant Park when President Obama declared himself victorious in the 2008 presidential elections. Both Colin and Deandra cried as President Obama took the stage. They were both deeply touched.
Working at an independent coffee shop in Brooklyn, provided them enough money to make ends meet barely. Deandra had decided that she wanted to take their young son to visit her grandmother in Mississippi for Christmas. Deandra’s grandmother was getting old and Deandra feared that her grandmother might never meet her 31st grandchild and so Colin and Deandra left New York City on a Wednesday night late so that little Obama could sleep through the night. Colin was dead set against driving to the south with a black woman in a yellow Volkswagen with political bumper stickers plastered across the back. Deandra wanted everyone to know at all times how she felt about things. The several bumper stickers gave a thumb sketch as to her political leanings. Colin felt as though he had to comply if for no other reason than to ensure the safety of his wife and child even though he had never engaged in a fist fight in his life.
Colin snuck down to the south, carefully following behind those that needed to go ten to fifteen miles an hour beyond the posted speed limit of seventy miles per hour. Meanwhile, Deandra and little Obama slept like angels in the back seat of the Volkswagen while Colin listened to whatever he could tune into in their car radio. They arrived early on Christmas morning if you can believe this, in a town called Hot Coffee, Mississippi. It is roughly thirty miles north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. They just could not get away from coffee and Colin had been wolfing it down at every filling station along the way just to keep alert.
Now Deandra’s relatives were southern folk born and raised in the south and most never ventured out of the south for anything. None of them really had any desire to ever visit New York and so their only link to the northern world was Deandra. Deandra was an outspoken buxom young black woman in her late twenties who wore her in an Afro. Her cousins thought she was too intense and probably a bit crazy. They all decided that Colin fit the description of a compliant and subservient mate and so they felt sorry for him more than anything else. Colin had spindly arms and a sunken chest. He had no interest in football or college football. All of Deandra’s male cousins were all geared up to watch bowl games on television. Colin went for long walks on country roads and people passed by and looked at Colin like he was a Martian. Nobody messed with him but he was an oddity. New Years day rolled around and it became time for the great trek back north.
Colin made the mistake of buying a combination cheese and beef jerky all wrapped up in plastic. It looked safe enough when he filled up for gas and poked around the filling station/diner/locker room for truckers. Amid the confederate flag license plate holders and hats, sat days old donuts behind a glass case and so Colin opted for packaged products and a bottled water. The old woman with a cigarette dangling from her mouth and more wrinkles than a Shar Pei Dog, told Colin that was one of her favourites as she broke into an uncontrollable smoking induced cough. By the time Colin had driven to Meridian, Mississippi, something had gone seriously wrong within his intestines.
Colin tried with all his might to keep from shitting in his own pants as he broke out in full body sweats. He pulled off the highway and carefully walked as though he was trying to keep something in his ass and he really was. As Colin lowered his draws, the liquefied feces shot out of his anus at blister speed. It sputtered as it hit the tank and wall and dripped onto the seat. Colin trembled as the episode seemed to go on for minutes. Finally the uncontrollable need to relieve himself ended. He crawled into the backseat beside his son who was asleep with a pacifier in his mouth and pulled the Snuggle up to his chin as he shivered in the back seat.
“I think that cheese or beef jerky was no good. I think I got food poisoning… I’ll be alright soon. You’ll need to drive for a bit,” said Colin.
Now Deandra was not a patient driver. If seventy was good, ninety was better and so she flew down the left lane of the two lane interstate leading out of Mississippi towards Alabama. Just before the Alabama state line, a Mississippi trooper sat parked with a radar gun pointed right at blazing yellow Volkswagen.
“Oh Fuck!” Said Deandra, as she slammed on the brakes.
Officer Clinton Dixon, no immediate relation to Deandra, sauntered up to the driver’s side with one hand near his gun. Officer Dixon was a stern man who had served in the first Gulf War as a Marine and then returned home to Mississippi to be a law man. He was born Baptist, coached high school football, loved to hunt and thought George W. Bush was a darn good president. The “Buck Fush” sticker on the back of Deandra’s car angered Officer Dixon right off. The Obama sticker, peace symbol in rainbow colors and pro choice sticker only served to solidify what Officer Dixon was already thinking as he saw the neon yellow foreign automobile with highly offensive bumper stickers and a New York license plate. Officer Dixon posed a rhetorical question to himself as he exited his car; what in the hell is this damn world coming to?
“License, registration and proof of insurance, ma’am,” said Officer Dixon.
At the same time that Officer Dixon was learning that he shared a last name with Deandra, Deandra was learning that she too had something in common with the Mississippi state trooper. Officer Dixon could not bring himself to refer to Deandra as Ms. Dixon and so he used Deandra’s first name. This only angered her.
“Ms. Deandra, are you aware of the posted speed limits hare on this hare interstate within the state of Mississippi?”
“Yes sir.”
“Okay then Ms. Deandra… Cain you tell give me a reason why you was goin eighty nine miles an hour in the posted seventy mile an hour zone?”
“I was trying to pass some cars on the right.”
“That’s an excuse not a reason. A reason would be that someone was ill or dying. Anything short of that is an excuse… Now then what is the problem with that young man in the back seat of your vehicle, Ms. Deandra?”
Officer Dixon assumed that two young people had obviously been partying on New Years Eve and Colin was paying the price all day. Deandra told the officer it was possible food poisoning but he wasn’t buying the story.
“Ms. Deandra, if I was to find an open bottle of alcohol in your vehicle, I spect that the issue would not be so much food poisoning as intoxication… I will now ask you if you have been drinking?”
“No, I haven’t,” said Deandra, angrily.
“Spell your last name backward for me,” said Officer Dixon.
“What!?”
“It’s a simple question… We share the same last name. I want to hear it backward…”
“I cain’t believe this fucking bullshit!” Said Deandra, while gripping the steering wheel tightly.
Officer Dixon was shocked by the lack of respect. He felt that anyone with no regard for the unborn or George Bush, had no respect for order and further measures would have to be necessary. Colin stepped up to qwell the situation.
“Sir, I stopped for gas back near Heidelberg. I have the receipt in my pocket. I purchased some cheese with beef jerky and got sick within twenty minutes. I had to stop to use the restroom and I broke out in body sweats… We haven’t been drinking. We came down to visit my wife’s relatives here in Mississippi and are working our way back to New York City,” said Colin, calmly.
“Let me see your license.” Said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon could not believe what he was seeing. A Colin Mason married to a Deandra Dixon. Luckily he never asked for their child’s name. Officer Dixon blinked heavily, shook his head and gave the license back to Colin.
“Set tight…” said Officer Dixon.
Officer Dixon handed Deandra her license back and told her that she was two miles an hour from being taken into custody. She had the option of returning back to Lauderdale County Court for a hearing at the end of the month or pay the fine of $150.00 by mail. Deandra took the ticket without saying a word and got in the back seat so that Colin could continue driving.
Officer Dixon returned home to his pretty wife who was wearing a summer like dress. She was putting the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and greens on the supper table for her husband who was just stopping in to eat his lunch before going back to work. She did what any wife would do which is to ask her husband how the day was going.
“Well darlin… Picture this picture; a large black woman with a puffed up Afro hairdo driving a VW bug in bright yellah. Now she goin nearly ninety miles an hour and got some sickly looking white boy in the back huddled undah some blankets. She go by the last name Dixon and he go by Mason. They got themselves a baby asleep with a binky in his mouth and this woman is defiant as the day is long. I aks her if her boy been drankin and she swore at me. Ifin it wasn’t for the boy speakin up, ida hauled them in for any number ah reasons… Hares the kicker, love; hates Bush, for abortion, wants peace and is from New York City… All this wrapped up in one yellow bug…”
Mrs. Dixon laughed and gave her husband a kiss on the forehead. Having a good sense of humor, she had an idea for her husband.
“Honey… Why don’t we go visit New York City sometime. We kin use mah brother’s jacked up Chevy Blazer with the Confederate flag sticker on the back. If that ain’t enough, we kin git a “Rush was right” and “Charlton Heston is my President” bumper stickers. We kin bring shotguns and shoot at rats running loose in Manhattan… Wouldn’t that be fun, honey?”
Officer Dixon took a sip of his coffee and thought about the idea of going up north with the hoards of people, pollution, and crime and winced.
“Oh… The humanity…”

December 26, 2009

The Jewish Santa Claus

Filed under: Uncategorized — blackhumouristpress @ 9:43 am
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Eli had been a teenaged boy during World War II and wound up in several different concentration camps. When it came time to declare a trade or become worked to death or disposed of, Eli claimed that he could cut hair. Luckily for Eli, he really could. It was just one of those things like drumming, you either got the hands for it or you don’t. It was just a damn lucky thing for Eli that he could cut hair. His job was to cut the hair of all the German soldiers and officers that were in charge of the concentration camp. For a few moments a day, these monsters would talk to Eli as if he really were human. They’d talk about their wives and kids and how they thought the war was going. Many of the soldiers would tell Eli that they really had nothing against Jews. As clichéd as it still sounds, many were just following orders. They all told the war tribunals this too.
Eli cut thousands of heads that eventually were killed and turned to ashes. The will to survive was strong in Eli. At the age of twenty, Eli had nothing left for him in Europe as his whole family was killed by Germans in camps. Eli moved to the United States. He did a plethora of things to earn money and saved his money until he could afford to buy an apartment building in the city of Chicago. Before long, Eli bought many properties and managed them himself. As time went on, Eli had set up a medium sized property management company and a side business of owning coin operated laundry machines. Eli was swimming in money. By the time he was fifty, Eli could have retired but he didn’t. Instead he oversaw the business he had created. His sons grew up and went to work for him and took over the day to day operations of Eli’s property management company.
At the age of eighty eight, Eli had to take a slew of medicines just to keep him going day to day. Eli had to have angioplasty and angiograms and open heart surgeries. Eli had mild strokes, heart failure and so on. Luckily for Eli, he had the means to pay for the best doctors money could buy. Eli’s money helped talented young doctors prolong the inevitable. Eli suspected that his last holiday season was coming with his family and so he left his Miami Beach condominium to spend the “Christmas” and New Year time with his two sons in Chicago. Now both sons grew up good Jewish boys who went on to marry two gentile women and adopted their ways which included Christmas. All of Eli’s grandchildren celebrated Christmas and none were going to have a bar-mitzvah. Eli thought that was sad. Nobody ever wanted to hear the stories from the days of the concentration camps and how he was nearly killed many times. The kids all wanted gifts or money and wanted to be left alone. His daughters-in-law treated him like an old child and it all really made Eli very sick to his stomach. Eli felt that his last chance to be with the only family he had left had arrived in December 2009. As irritating as they were, they were the only family he had.
Eli still had his office inside the office building that he created way back in 1958. On the wall were pictures of him in good looking suits with dark hair, standing next to new Cadillacs and Lincolns. There were family pictures with his two sons and his young wife and even one of Eli shaking hands with the first Mayor Daley of Chicago. Eli sat at his desk that had not really been used in ten years and really appreciated the feel of the comfortable leather chair. He could hear his eldest son yelling at people on the intercom and yelling at janitors on the phone.
“You tell those goddamn deadbeats that I will have their fucking asses out on the goddamn sidewalk if I don’t have every cent owed on that apartment by January 1st. They can go to Mc Donald’s and get a goddamn job so that they can pay me my rent. Merry fucking Christmas… You tell them that…” Said Norman, Eli’s eldest son.
Norman was about forty years of age with three children. He owned a home in the suburbs with all new appliances, three cars, condos in Miami and Los Angeles, a boat and all the aggravation that goes with running rental buildings.
“Nester! This is the last fucking time I tell you to clean the lobbies. I give you and your family a free apartment. You don’t pay fucking rent and you run around doing painting all over town instead of maintaining my building the way it should be. Your number one responsibility is to me. You keep my building clean and tidy. If I come again and there are eighteen fucking Spanish names written with magic fucking marker on my mailboxes, you can find another job and place to live. You got a beautiful label maker which I bought and I expect you to use it. No dust, no ad papers on the floor, no chirping smoke alarms in the hallways and no bullshit calls from people who want to see vacant units who claim you never call them back. If I have someone call you and I will, you better take the fucking call… Are we clear on all this shit?”
Eli shook his head and closed his eyes as he listened. Eli never operated by yelling or threats. Eli understood what it was like to be dehumanized and never wanted to do that to anyone. He always felt there were other ways.
A young black woman made an appointment on Christmas Eve night to talk to Norman about the rent that she owed on her apartment. Norman was already frazzled but allowed the woman to come into his office and pitch a solution to her rent delinquency. Her six year old daughter sat next to her with braids in her hair with little white beads at the tips. She wore a Sponge Bob sweater and sat in the chair next to her mother with her arms folded. Bringing Trina with to beg Norman not to throw her out, was to play on his human side. It didn’t matter though because Norman was desensitized to poor people’s excuses for not being able to pay rent. They were all drug addicts, whores, and people without direction who were dumb and lazy and that was just the black ones. The Hispanics, Indians, poor eastern European immigrants and so on were almost equally as worthless in Norman’s opinion.
“Go ahead, I’m listening to you. What do you want to tell me that you haven’t already told the court?”
“I’m trying really hard to find a new job. I worked at the Subway by the train in Rogers Park and the people who own it, let me go an gave my job to one of they relatives who going to college here from India. I had always pay mah rent on time. I keep all mah things clean and I ain’t never been late befoh. I ain’t nevah complained about my leaking faucets and old appliances with broken knobs and freezer that don’t really freeze. I’m aksing you to please gimme time. Imma git a job soon an I’m willing to pay extra each month til I git caught up,” said Carina.
Carina was young and voluptuous as is the case with many young black women with young children in tow. Rather than taking drugs and sleeping around, Carina had been working at a Subway sandwich shop, taking one class at a time at a local junior college and taking care of her daughter that she had as a teenager. Carina moved from a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago’s west side to live and work among white people. Trina went to a good grade school in a good neighborhood and everything had been fine until Carina lost her job. It was a pervasive problem and she was not the only one under eviction. Others understood the system and worked the system over. They would destroy the apartments and refuse to pay rent for months almost years until the courts forced them out and then they would start over again with a new apartment and new company that may not screen their applicants well. Carina was not in that camp. She was a victim of the times. Carina was one of millions who were living check to check and the last check stopped coming.
“I’ve heard a million stories like yours. Here’s my bottom line; I have to pay a mortgage each month on that building. I pay for the water and the heat. I pay for the janitor and the insurance and if I don’t get rent, I have to pay out of my own pocket. If I have to do this everywhere at every building, how am I going to live? I should just do charity work for all those who can’t or won’t pay? I can’t do that. I have a family and bills to pay and this is how it all works. The court gave you until January 3rd. Pound the pavement to find a job. If you can come up with some money, I’ll work with you otherwise you’ll need to make some other arrangements… I’m sorry, that’s it.”
Carina left stoic, holding the hand of her young daughter who wanted to see Charlie Brown’s Christmas, ice skate downtown and look at the lights and displays at the stores that her mother could not shop at. Trina didn’t understand that she was about to be put out of her apartment with her mother and that there would be not one present or a tree for her. Instead they would have to find boxes and pack up what they needed and prepare to go to a shelter. Little children never understand things like that.
“Momma we gotta git home an git ready foh Santa Claus. He coming tonight aftah we go to sleep,” said Trina, while being almost dragged out of the office by the hand by Carina.
“I already done told you they ain’t no Santa Claus and nobody coming to our place. Hush up and lits go,” said Carina.
Eli rather than lecture his son about his tactics, went to his son’s doorway and told him he might or might not see him later at his house for dinner and presents. Norman was taken back.
“Pop… Jill and the kids are expecting you. You have to come,” said Norman.
“I have to do something tonight… We’ll see how it all plays out,” said Eli.
Eli had his driver take him around to stores at the shopping malls packed with last minute shoppers. It was angry chaos in the parking lots. Impatient shoppers ripping around the parking lot hunting for a vacant space for their cars, rushing around while talking on cell phones, clogging up the lines in front of registers. It was magnificent if you like humans milling about like ants on an ant farm. Eli joined in on the fast paced mess until he bought all he needed.
It was about eight in the evening when a knock came to the door of Carina’s apartment. Carina was in the shower and Trina knew better than to answer the door but she suspected it was Santa Claus and she was right. Trina ran up and hugged the large white man in a red suit that carried a bag full of things. Santa’s helper, a chauffeur in a black suit, set up a small fir tree and strung lights around as Trina giggled and opened several presents of clothes and dolls and chocolates. Carina came out of the bathroom with a towel around her head and one around her mid section. She stood in disbelief as her daughter sat on the floor next to a lit tree that had not existed just fifteen minutes earlier, opening presents and telling Santa just how good she had been that year.
“Tommy… He a little punk and all but I didn’t hit him even though he pulled on ma braids. I said I was gonna sock him in his jaw but I didn’t do it cause I wanted you to know that I been good all year… Foh the most part. I do all my homework and I help my mom clean up the apartment and I don’t cuss none and I go to church with momma. She said you wasn’t coming and you wasn’t real but I knew you would come… I just knew it. Thank you for all the gifts, Santa. You the best…”
And with that Trina hugged Santa as hard as she had ever hugged anyone before. Santa stood and handed Carina a money order to cover the back rent and much more. Santa also handed Carina a business card that had a number to contact someone for a job in the office of the coin operated laundry company still owned by Eli. Carina began to cry. Santa hugged her, patted her on the head and left with his chauffeur. Santa would probably not be showing up again in person but both Carina and Trina believed in the miracle that is Christmas. It can really be a magical time.

December 21, 2009

The weight of Paradise

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George sat in his apartment at the Paradise Inn with a view of the automotive repair shop that was across the alley from his room at Paradise. George’s room consisted of a desk with a television, a bed and a Gideon’s Bible on the night stand. The room came furnished and cost George $400.00 per month. If George were to go outside and stand in the drive way across from the Veteran’s hospital, he could see stars and planets at night or large letters like a heavenly beacon. The sign with fifteen foot letters reads; Miller Park. It was subliminal, George wanted and needed a beer and one beer would lead to another beer and so on.

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George took a large swig of his beer that had a woman in a dress holding a beer on the beer bottle itself. It’s the Highlife (registered trademark).
“For $19.95 follow these three techniques. Motivated for success to make hundreds of thousands per week. You cannot fail… Here’s how it works…”
George was born in 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He grew up and served in Vietnam. While there as an eighteen year old boy, he became addicted to pills and alcohol. While in Vietnam, George was exposed to a chemical that changed his life forever.
Agent Orange was given its name from the color of the 55 US gallons (210 L) orange-striped barrels it was shipped in. It is a roughly 1:1 mixture of two phenoxyl herbicides in iso-octyl ester form, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5 trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T).

2,4-D

2,4,5-T
Internal memos from the companies that manufactured it reveal that at the time Agent Orange was sold to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam it was known that it contained a dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD), a by-product of the manufacture 2,4,5-T. The National Toxicology Program has classified TCDD to be a human carcinogen, frequently associated with soft-tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In a study by the Institute of Medicine, a link has been found between dioxin exposure and diabetes
Three studies have suggested an increase in the risk of acute myelogenous leukemia in the children of Vietnam veterans, which might be associated with exposure to Agent Orange. A variety of other conditions have been suggested to be linked to exposure, but studies have failed to confirm a link with these diseases. Just 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of TCDD was released in the Seveso disaster causing widespread effects on people and livestock.

George changed the channel while lying in bed. He twisted another cap to the top of a fresh new bottle of beer while holding a cigarette between his index and middle finger on his right hand.

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On any given day, a million thoughts run through George’s head while drinking beer and taking antidepressants. The idea of visiting Thailand, Arizona, North Carolina, taking martial arts, learning to use the computer, the chemicals in beef and milk and then the afterlife.

Another cigarette, another beer, urinate, rinse repeat …

“The tribulation, seven years in length divided up in two parts is due to the fact that there are two empires and one is swallowed up during the seven year period. There are ten nations that will exist with this empire. To form this new empire, you must unite regions by culture and religion. The EU has put nations together. The United States, Canada, Mexico and South America will be joining together as a global economic unit. The question remains; who are the ten kings of bible prophesy? King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of an image that had two feet with ten toes… Are you following this? Two empires made up of ten nations at the time when the messiah comes back. Daniel chapter seven or Revelations chapter 13, you see the horns on the beast, there are always ten in number. There are ten Germanic tribes that overthrew the Roman Empire. Jesus was supposed to return at this time but Jesus did not return. I believe there is a possibility he is on his way now though. In 1954, the Plan of Rome that was devised by the Biderberg Group of Rome divided the world into ten global regions.
1. America, Canada, Mexico
2. South America
3. Australia and New Zealand
4. Western Europe
5. Eastern Europe
6. Japan
7. South Asia
8. Central Asia
9. North Africa and the Middle East
10. The remainder of Africa

The ten kings are the heads of these ten regions. Whether you like it or not, a new world order is coming…

It was all getting to heavy for George. The weight of gravity was getting to be too much for George.

The mass of an object is a fundamental property of the object; a numerical measure of its inertia; a fundamental measure of the amount of matter in the object. Definitions of mass often seem circular because it is such a fundamental quantity that it is hard to define in terms of something else. All mechanical quantities can be defined in terms of mass, length, and time. The usual symbol for mass is m and its SI unit is the kilogram. While the mass is normally considered to be an unchanging property of an object, at speeds approaching the speed of light one must consider the increase in the relativistic mass.
The weight of an object is the force of gravity on the object and may be defined as the mass times the acceleration of gravity, w = mg. Since the weight is a force, its SI unit is the Newton. Density is mass/volume.

George watched a nature show where the world spun like a big blue marble. It was hard for him to believe he lived on such a place that really is very insignificant in the larger scheme of things. A planet in a solar system and a solar system in a galaxy and a galaxy in a universe. George could go at any moment and the only one who would know is the woman who would have to clean his room.
The last bit of information scared the hell out of George before he closed his eyes and floated down stream to a happier place on earth; his own mind during sleep. In his sleep he felt himself flying out of control. Is it any wonder?

By the way, if Earth spun about 800 times faster, it would hurl us off the surface and into space.

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