Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

“Mom, I need some new tennis shoes.”

“What’s wrong with the ones you have on now? They’re damn near new.”

“These are skateboard sneakers. I can’t play basketball in these.”

“What, you stopped skateboarding?”

“I played basketball for the first time the other day, and I think I’m gonna be pretty good. Besides, the streets out here are all fucked up — cracks, potholes, broken glass. You can’t skate on that. Every time I fall, I get cut to ribbons and my wheels get all thrashed.”

“Well, what kind of shoes do you need?”

“I don’t know, something like the ones they advertise on television, I guess. Something expensive, I suppose.”

“Don’t people get shot for wearing those shoes?”

“Ma, it’s not the shoes, people get shot because someone decides to shoot ’em. Anyway, I’ll get Nick to go with me to the store.”

“Okay, I’ll give you the money tomorrow.”

A member of the film crew yelled “Sound!” and the beats to the Stoic Undertakers’ latest single, “Exhume the Dearly Departed and Take Their Watches,” kicked in. Reflexively, my eyes closed halfway, my shoulders hunched toward the ground, my right foot tapped softly on the stair, and my head began a faintly perceptible bob.

“Your taste in music sure has changed.”

“How can you tell? I thought you were tone-deaf.”

“When you used to listen to that rock ’n’ roll, your head used to bang so hard I thought it was going to snap off and roll into the street. Now you look like you’re strung out on heroin. Your body just teeters from side to side like you have an inner ear infection — reminds me of Gene Kelly in those sailor movies. Gunnar, why don’t you buy some tap-dancing shoes instead? It’ll be safer — no one would shoot you for your tap-dancing shoes.”

“Gene Kelly, Ma? Tap dance? Vaudeville is dead. You want me to change my name to Bubbles and start singing them ‘Call me Shine’ songs? No one would have to shoot me, I’d die of shame.”

“Geez, you’re sensitive. What topics of importance are these hoodlums singing about, anyway?”

“The spoils of war, I guess.”

My mother and I stopped to watch lead rapper MC Smarty-Pants wave his flamethrower over his head and recite his frenzied verse.

Aaaahhh yeah, I’m the ghetto fascist,

inner-city black Mussolini.

The cruel druid dousing your dick in lighter fluid

then eating it up like roast wienie.

Oh what the fuck, ketchup, mustard, relish;

I bar-b-cue niggers so why embellish the hellish

Full of hate, casting my fate with Satan I’m the

devil’s prime mate …

“What’s with all the homoeroticism? People talk about the white man’s penis envy. The white man ain’t got nothing on these genital-obsessed hip-hoppers.”

“I know, Ma. You should hear the guys at school. ‘Suck my dick, slob on the knob, lick my stick,’ non-fucking-stop. There’s this one boy whose nickname is Big Dick Black, and if someone asks him, ‘How big is it?’ he yells back, ‘Three fists and tip!’”

“I don’t get it.”

“Never mind.” I paused. “Mama?”

“Hmmm.”

“Where do poems come from?”

“Why? You a poet too?”

“Soon as I write a poem I will be.”

“It’s corny, but I think poems are echos of the voices in your head and from your past. Your sisters, your father, your ancestors talking to you and through you. Some of it is primal, some of it is hallucinatory bullshit. That madness those boys rapping ain’t nothing but urban folklore. They retelling stories passed down from chicken coop to apartment stoop to Ford coupe. Hear that rhyme, boy. Shit, I could get down and rap if I had to. MC Big Mama Osteoporosis in the house.”

“That reminds me, I did the family tree in Ms. Murphy’s class last week and everyone believed me. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Gunnar, what kind of poet do you plan to be?”

“I don’t know, the cool tantric type. Shaolin monk style. Lao Tsu, but with rhythm.”

“You’ll do the Kaufman legacy proud, I’m sure.”

The bullhorn crackled — “Okay, that’s a wrap” — and the video shoot was over. Hillside’s indigenous population stopped clamoring for attention. The Hollywood ethnographers were no longer examining the traditional native dances, and the dancers’ hands slowly dropped down to their sides, their rumps stopped shaking. Like photogenic Riefenstahl Nubians watching the white god’s helicopter pull away, the Hillside denizens watched the film crew coil the cables, load the trucks, and hustle off, leaving us to fight over the blessed remnants of Western civilization they left behind. My tribe wrestled for the rights to broken doughnuts and oily ham ’n’ cheese croissants, then scattered back to our hovels, triumphant from a good day’s hunt. Plastic cups clattered in the gutter; paper napkins and signed release forms fluttered about the village like lost leaves.

It occurred to me that maybe poems are like colds. Maybe I would feel a poem coming on. My chest would grow heavier, my eyes watery; my body temperature would fluctuate, and a ringing in my ears would herald the coming of a timeless verse.

Betty and Veronica sashayed up to my front gate, their faces powdered white with doughnut dust. This time Betty’s hair was in two ponytails that stood straight up and then branched off at right angles like antelope antlers. Veronica’s flapper-style pageboy was dyed silver and sprinkled with blue flakes. Betty slipped a pair of brass knuckles onto her right hand, tossed lightning-fast jabs at the fence post, and started cooing, “So Gunnar, I know you want to play hide-and-go-get-it with us.” Ping. The clang of Betty’s fist slamming against the fence sounded like a navy radar honing in on an enemy submarine. Ping. Ping.

“No.”

Ding. Ping. Ping. Pang. A hook and two jabs followed by a stiff right uppercut put a small dent in the post, and sparks flew off the aluminum. I could smell the tangy scent of charred metal.

“But I’m the only boy. That’s not fair, two against one.”

Ping. Ping. Bing. Veronica removed a lead blackjack from her back pocket. “Look, motherfucker, either you play or I gives you some bruise tattoos.” She whipped the satchel at the gate and it gonged against the Montgomery Ward “quality” insignia, sending the fence’s lattice into rattling waves. When the aluminum convulsions died down, Betty and Veronica about-faced with military abruptness and loudly began to count backward from one hundred. I clicked my heels and gave the girls one of those casual halfhearted Sieg Heil salutes and hurdled over the fence. I sped down the street like an escaped convict, trying not to panic and running through the list of hackneyed movie tricks for outwitting the search party.

Ninety-six, ninety-five, ninety-four

Rule Number One — Change your appearance.

I zipped through the Willoughbys’ back yard and ripped a burgundy-and-gold USC sweatshirt from the clothesline. Their bull mastiff, Thor, began to bark, but I pacified him with a scratch between the ears and a stomach rub. Then it was over the back fence, through the alley, and past the Thrifttown liquor store.

Seventy-three, seventy-two, seventy-one

Rule Number Two — Make an effort to disguise your scent.

Despite California’s water conservation laws and a completely inorganic front yard consisting of a small patch of Astroturf, a porcelain turtle, and a plastic pink flamingo, weird Mr. Quigley’s sprinklers were on full blast twenty-four hours a day. I ran under the makeshift waterfall and, soaking wet, made my way around the corner and into the courtyard of the Piccadilly Arms apartments.