Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Sexy.

Sexy is John — what’s his name? What is his name? Dukes of Hazzard , General Lee, not the brown hair one he’s too husband-looking, the John one, damnit shit his name is John.

Sexy. Luke Duke sliding off the car trunk lifting one leg into car and squeezing his snake down the other leg, do other women see this or only me? Kim Clarke, you pervert, you nasty girl. He never wears a brief, that John. Schneider. Dukes of Hazzard ’s showing this week on the satellite dish, the only satellite dish I know is the big one outside the JBC TV station back in Kingston but Chuck put one up on his roof.

Yes, today I will think of how I love what he is about to do with his hair. Yesterday, I loved how he always took his cap off when he came through the door, yes ma’am . Any door. The day before, I loved how he calls me Miss Kim anytime I go on top when we fuck, no I don’t like it, don’t like it at all, the Miss Kim not the fucking, but I like that he likes it so much, of course he likes it the black bitch that finally makes him go wild — he must have heard the story about Jamaican girls two years before he even landed with a technical drawing kit and a cock-stand. Americans call cock-stands hard-ons, which makes no sense. No. He’s sweet. The man sweet, and nice so till, and he lifts me up with his two hands like me make out of paper but hands so soft so sweet and he lifts me up and put me on the kitchen counter and smiles and says hey babykins miss me? and I think about it more than once that yes, I did miss you, I did miss you because when you’re not here it’s just me and thoughts and I hate thinking, I fucking hate it gone to hell.

Leave the thinking to Chuck.

Leave the moving to Chuck. Leave the deciding what to take with and what to leave behind to Chuck. I like the second half of that thought much more than the first and ohshitjesuschrist.

Oh wait,

it’s a muffler.

It’s a blast from a muffler.

Jesus Christ breathe, Kim Clarke. Breathe in, out, in, out, in, out. That’s the third time I called myself Kim Clarke without thinking right before that I need to call myself Kim Clarke, or after saying look at that I called myself Kim Clarke. Even this thinking about Kim Clarke is about me reaching the point where I don’t even have to think about it anymore, or that other name. Fuck that person. See? I say fuck like an American, like Chuck who still says darn it — cute. Chuck and his motherfucker , every time he watched Monday night football it was about motherfucker this or motherfucker that or it’s called a spread offense, motherfucker . Nobody in the game uses their feet, but it’s football. I love how Americans can just claim something to be whatever they feel it is, despite clear evidence it’s not. Like a football game with nobody using any feet that takes forever. Last time he had me sit through that shit I said baby only sex should last this long and he called me his sexy little slut . I didn’t like that either, it was one of the two hundred mistakes men make every day with women they live with, and it made me wonder just how many women has he actually had sex with. I mean, he’s not bad looking. No, he’s cute. No, he’s handsome. Look, right now three thousand Jamaican women probably hate me because I’m with him. I have what you want, you pussyholes. Me, Kim Clarke. Come and get it if you bad.

Lie that. I know for a fact that Jamaican women not out there looking for a white man from foreign. Most of them can’t even figure out what they would look like naked. They think white men are all balls no cocky, which only prove that they’ve never seen a blue movie. Coming home in the sun, three p.m., Montego Bay feels like Miami, you never been to Miami, Kim Clarke. But still, coming home, going home I hope Chuck isn’t there. That was harsh. Uncalled for he would say, which he’s been saying a lot these days, making me think that everything that come out of me mouth tainted with something. That is not what I want to think, I just want some me time. There I go again talking like a hurry-come-up American for so long that now I can’t drop the Yankee talk even in my own head. Straight thinking please! I just hope he’s not there because I just want to sit in the settee and hear my own breathing and watch Wok with Yan on TV and just put the brain on rest because all of this, this living, this walking, this talking, this sitting in space that is still not my space is fucking hard work. Existing is hard work. No it’s not. It’s the living that’s bombocloth hard. I swear sometimes.

Are these gulls hearing what I think? Is that what they are doing outside? Listening to my thoughts and laughing. Does fly and roach spray work on birds? Maybe they would rip my skin apart and eat it. Fucking hate the damn birds. Fucking don’t know what to do with all these Chuck-isms I speaking lately. It just happens doesn’t it, some point where a man just start living all over you.

Chuck isn’t home. This couch feels nice. I fall asleep in the couch all the time but never fall asleep in the bed. Most nights I just lie on Chuck’s bushy chest to listen if his heart ever skips.

I really need to clean this house even if we’re leaving. Even if we’re leaving at the end of next month. Would have given anything to have cut this place loose in December. I want a white Christmas. I’ve been dreaming of a white Christmas. No, I’ve been dreaming of a faraway Christmas. The quicker I can get away from this godforsaken country, the better. When Chuck told me he was from Arkansas I think I asked him if that was near Alaska. He asked if I just love polar bears or lumberjacks. Whatever that meant. I rubbed his belly and said I have the big bear I love but he didn’t think that was so funny. American men are strange. Can’t take a little joke, but then find the most fucked-up shit funny. There I go, thinking like an American again, fucked-up shit, thinking like him. Today I shall love his hair. I will sink into this settee and close my eye and think about his hair. And what to pack.

They’ve had enough, really they’ve had just about enough from this comic opera of a government. Funny, this house is far from the road, right by the sea that’s roaring all the time with those white feather bitches cawing outside my window and yet traffic sounds still find a way to get down here. Like that damn horn interrupting my thoughts. But they’ve had enough really, he said they said. Time to cut this fucking place loose, his boss said. Enough of this government and this Michael Manley wanting to suck cash from the bauxite companies like they don’t already do enough to help this country. Shit, Alcoa transformed this fucking backwater island, sure they didn’t build the railway but they certainly put it to profitable use. And other things: schools, modern buildings, running water, toilets, it was a slap in the face really, demanding a levy on top of all we do for this country. And that slap in the face was the first shot heard around the world for Jamaica’s entry into communism, mark my words. Nationalization is always the first step, how these fucking people voted the PNP back into office is a fucking mystery to me, babykins . He’s said this little rant so often that I can almost recite it verbatim, even the mixed metaphors. So what about that pitch-lake you guys left that’s only good for gunmen to dump bodies in so that they will disintegrate without a trace? I say. Sometimes I have to remind even him that three feet north of this vagina is a brain. Still, even an American man don’t like when a woman’s too smart, especially a Third World woman whom it is his duty to educate. This couch is softer than I remember.

Two years since the election. Jamaica never gets worse or better, it just finds new ways to stay the same. You can’t change the country, but maybe you can change yourself. I don’t know who’s thinking that. I’m done with thinking, quite frankly. Every time I think it takes me to a bus exploding or me looking down the barrel of a gun. Shit, all that shaking is me, not the couch. I mean, settee. Goddamn, that man is changing me. I like to act like I don’t like it. But I don’t think I fool him. He looks at it as some kind of victory every time he gets somewhere with me, because truth be told I don’t let him get very far. That sounds harsh. I hope I’m not harsh. I can’t even remember how we went from howdy to him taking me out, his term not mine.