Paul Beatty: Slumberland

“You heard all that?” I ask this kindred spirit of phonographic memory.

She doesn’t answer. Too busy gazing at me with that skin-deep stare I don’t get much anymore. In an old gangster movie it’d be the blank, expressionless look Edward G. Robinson shoots a nosy flatfoot while deciding whether to ice him or not. Here on the streets of Berlin, it’s deciding whether to insult the black guy or not.

I’m expecting an impromptu ethnographic lecture on Orientalism and black infantilism or the standard “Hitler must’ve forgotten about you” rebuke. Instead she stands next to me shoulder to shoulder and measures off the difference in our heights.

“Height… slightly above average.”

Now she takes my chin and yanks it toward the streetlight to get a better view of my complexion.

“Skin color. . luminescent obsidian with a touch of purple.”

Roughly, like a horny sightless woman on a blind date, she begins to knead her heavy friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. “Leptorrhine nose. . kumquat-headed dolichocephaly. . thin, almost Scandinavian lips, the small conchoidal ears, the pronounced prognathism common to most of the Negroid race. . tufted, no, fleecelike hair. . I bet you’re either from Lagos or Los Angeles. Now, if you show me your penis, I can tell by the size, girth, and curvature what African tribe your male ancestors hail from. It’ll be purely for ethnographic purposes, I assure you.”

Man, these Germans, they either want to fuck you or kill you.

Sometimes both.

Just like everybody else.

Thanks to Barbara Richter, Thomas Wohlfahrt, Lou Asekoff, Britt-Beyer, Susanne Burg, Nicola Lauré al-Samarai, and Markus Schneider.

Sarah Chalfant and Colin Dickerman, a special thank you for your patience and unwavering faith.

Paul Beatty is the author of two novels, Tuff and The White Boy Shuffle , and two books of poetry, Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce . He is the editor of Hokum: An Anthology ofAfrican-American Humor . He lives in New York City.

*Obscure but seminal L.A. garage band that in 1982 had one groundbreaking gig at the Roxy during which the lead singer, Manuel Ozuna, is reputed to have invented crowd surfing.

*Every film post — Apocalypse Now has been directed by a lookalike hired by the movie industry to keep the dream alive.

*The first being a Budweiser tall boy I’d snuck into a Mothers Against Drunk Driving fundraiser.

* 1. If God exists, then he/she/it/whatever is like mad perfect.

2. If God exists, then he/she/it is the creator of the universe.

3. And if God is perfect, the universe should be perfect.

4. But the universe ain’t perfect, as evidenced by this specious-ass logic argument and the pathetic state of contemporary everything.

5. Matter of fact, if God exists, then there would be no need for if/then statements.

6. Unless, of course, the if/then statement is God.

*Adios Motherfucker: A popular and potent ghetto cocktail introduced to Berlin by Slumberland’s American clientele. Warning: This drink is strictly for professionals. Never drink it alone. Psilocybic. Liquid antimatter. Never mind about operating heavy machinery; you’ll have trouble lighting a cigarette. Good thing, too, ’cause it’s highly flammable.

*Gerald Early, Ph.D., Ken Burns Jazz . I remember the entire series word for word and note for note, but what I remember most is that no one ever mentioned Sun Ra. Not once.

*Once, in a fit of neologic haughtiness, I submitted nigriscence to my main lexicographer Cutter Pinchbeck at Kensington-Merriwether, who wrote back, “S’up wit chu, N-Word? Nigrescence is already an N-word.”

* Iceland Is Hot! tells the story of an African-American volcanologist who travels to Iceland to practice his craft, but fails to be taken seriously by the volcanological community there because of his inability to correctly pronounce fjord . Once ostracized, he correctly predicts the eruption of Mount Hekla and becomes a celebrated scientist, only to die of frostbite when he falls into a snowbank after being accidentally shot by his illegitimate son, Halldór, founder of the Reykjavik Crips, in a vicious sleigh-by shooting.

*The most embarrassing moment of my life came in college when Alizah Silverman caught me in the student union stuffing my face with McDonald’s and reading The Fountainhead minutes before I was supposed to march in a demonstration against corporate globalism.

*Oprah Winfrey was then in the process of buying the rights to the life story of every black American born between 1642 and 1968 as a way of staking claim to being the legal and sole embodiment of the black experience from slavery to civil rights. Thus carrying the historical burden that only she has the strength to bear.

† arrière-gardenoun (usu. the arrière-garde) unacted-upon ideas, esp. in the arts or among the people who have such ideas: Roland is a writer who’s never written and thus a longstanding member of the Venice Beach arrière-garde. Coined by Ferguson Sowell, inclusion in the Kensington-Merriwether Fourth Edition pending.

*Properly pronounced turnt out regardless of educational background or geographic locale.

*Sure, anyone can say ’hood and nigger with a modicum of credibility, but the infinitive to front implies a contextual and historical betrayal that goes back to the days when Java Man first fronted on Peking Man at the water hole. Big-brained mother-fucker hoggin’ all the arrowheads ’n’ shit. Today when most people say frontin’, they don’t even know they frontin’ on themselves.

*Generation @ is pronounced “Generation At.”

*My own IQ is said to fluctuate between 89 and 174. A quotient categorized as “haphazardly intellectual.”

*“Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

*Formally known as the Schaumschläger-28, but the “beater” in Egg Beater-28 was too, you know, aggressive.

*Funny, you can convey tone in a telegram, but you can’t in an e-mail. I think it’s because it costs money to send a telegram. If somebody cares enough to pay cash money to tell you something, it’s not so hard to infer what they mean. And if you can’t properly intonate Blaze’s telegram, well…