Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

One Halloween night Psycho Loco rang the doorbell in a black knit whodunnit mask and with a nickel-plated nine-millimeter in his hand. I opened the door with a mocking “Trick or treat?” and put a candy bar in his flannel shirt pocket. “Look at you, nineteen years old out here knocking on doors begging candy. Why you ain’t bag snatchin’, homie?”

Psycho Loco walked past me, snatched off his mask, and asked in a shaky voice if he could take a shower.

“Ma, can Juan Julio take a shower?”

“Yes, long as he cleans the tub afterward.”

After a few minutes I noticed clouds of steam drifting down the hallway and into the living room. He must’ve forgotten to close the door, I thought, and walked to the bathroom. Psyco Loco was standing naked, looking at himself in the mirror. Eye to eye with his demons and crying so hard he had tears on his knees. I pulled back the shower curtain and handed him a bar of soap. He stepped into the mist and slipped a hand into my mom’s loofah mitt and said, “Don’t go nowhere, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, trying not to embarrass either of us by acknowledging Psycho Loco’s pain. “Just don’t use my mom’s Australian chamomile shampoo. Use the red jojoba extract.”

I sat on the toilet and turned on the radio so I wouldn’t have to listen to Psycho Loco’s cathartic wailing while he scoured his skin raw through two weather reports and three traffic updates. When he finally got out of the shower, he told me to get dressed and meet him at the wall in ten minutes. I rinsed the tub clean of slivers of skin and curlicue body hairs swimming in rivulets of his blood like microscopic bacteria.

When I arrived at the wall, the Gun Totin’ Hooligans were waiting for me, their raffish frames casting impatient shadows in the moonlight. Smoking generic cigarettes, cradling unopened quart-size bottles of Carta Blanca like brown glass-skinned babies, they raised their eyebrows to say hello and cavalierly tossed up gang signs. Those who weren’t propped up against the wall in gangster leans squatted on the ground, flat-footed, perfectly balanced in the refugee tuck. The squat was a difficult position that most yoga teachers have problems assuming, but the disenfranchised in all societies do it with ease. I knew better than to assume the poor indigene pose. I always ended up on my tippy-toes, my wobbly equilibrium betraying my privileged upbringing.

Joe Shenanigans waved me over and I braced myself against the wall next to him. I folded my arms and wondered why Psycho Loco had invited me to the party. Joe offered me a sip of pink swill from a pint of Mad Dog 20/20, which I declined. It was tempting, but I heard that after drinking that shit you glowed the next morning.

“Thought you stopped drinking, Joe?”

“Only on special occasions.”

“Like what, sundown?”

“Watch your back, the paint is wet.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw a dripping scrawl that read,

Pumpkin raising hell in hell

October 31 R.I.P.

Happy Halloween

Pumpkin was dead. I tried to conjure up some grief, but it was hard to feel any sympathy for the pudgy redbone devil who had almost pierced my ear with an arrow in the Montgomery Ward sporting goods department.

“Who killed him?”

“Not for nuthin’, but him and Psycho Loco was trying to fuckin’ rob the fuckin’ Koreans.”

Joe Shenanigans was a skinny boy, black as a penny loafer, who claimed he was a Sicilian from a long line of mafiosi. He had a cheesy wisp of a mustache, and his skin sagged at the joints because his diet consisted entirely of frozen Italian foods like turkey tetrazzini, fettuccini alfredo, and chicken parmigiana with linguini. Holding a conversation with Joe was like talking to someone who was simultaneously channeling Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, and Mama Celeste.

“Badda bing, badda bam, badda boom, Psycho Loco and Pumpkin, the gun to Ms. Kim’s chin, ‘Open the register.’ But Mama mia, Ms. Kim ain’t listenin’.”

Ms. Kim was the half-black, half-Korean owner of the corner store. Fathered by a black GI, she was born in Korea and at age seventeen was adopted by a black family and raised in Fresno. To us, when she was behind the counter in her store, Ms. Kim was Korean. When she was out on the streets walking her dogs, she was black. Ms. Kim and I used to kid each other as to who had the flattest rear end.

“Ms. Kim busy cussin’ Psycho Loco out. You know how she be talking Korean and black broken English at the same time. ‘First you steal my eggs and now you’re gonna steal money? Naw, motherfucker. How you be so cold-blood? I feed you kim-chee when you baby. Break north befo’ I call mother.’ So Psycho Loco fires a warning shot to get her attention, and he hits one o’ dem huge inflatable Maelstrom 500 malt liquor bottles. The fucking ting falls on Pumpkin’s ass and suffocates him. Fugettabodit. Fucking jay.”

“You mean A.”

“Yeah, fucking A. Hey, where your boy Nick Scoby?”

“He’s listening to Miles Davis and refuses to come outside. Maybe tomorrow, he says.”

Psycho Loco situated himself in the epicenter of the gathering, looked over his incompetent troops, and spoke in a soft voice.

“Do we have a quorum?” he asked.

“Hell naw!” the boys responded.

With that Psycho Loco theatrically twisted the cap off his beer bottle. Most groups of boys pay homage to a slew of dead homies by saying, “This is for the brothers who ain’t here,” spilling a swallow of drink onto the sidewalk. Not the delinquents from the Gun Totin’ Hooligans. Though less elaborate than a Japanese tea ceremony, the GTH drinking ritual was equally reverent and definitely longer.

The Gun Totin’ Hooligans started out as a local dance troupe called the Body Eccentric. When Los Angeles’s funk music scene was in its heyday, kids from different neighborhoods met at the nightclubs and outdoor jams to dance against one another in “breakin’” or “poppin’” contests. After losing battles to companies known as the Flex-o-twists and the Invertebrates, the kids from Hillside often limped home with sprained ankles and broken bones from botching a complicated move. The citywide ridicule became unbearable when, after a humiliating defeat by the Lindy Poppers, a one-legged Hillside boy named Peg-Leg Greg beat a contestant to death with his artificial limb. To ensure the survival of the species, the dance troupes evolved into gangs and the war was on. Countless drive-bys and handkerchief purchases later, the Gun Totin’ Hooligans were the bravest but most inept gang in Los Angeles. Suffering more casualties than the rest of the city’s gangs combined, the Hooligans had developed a tradition that required that the thirsts of every parched and perished comrade be quenched. Thus the endless beer ceremony.

“Riff-raff, rest in peace.” Pour.

“Tank-tank, sweet dreams.” Dribble.

“Weebles, six feet under.” Splash.

“L’il Weebles, smoking weed with the angels.” Spatter.

“Baby Weebles, dozin’ and decomposin’.” Bloop. Bloop.

When GTH finally finished honoring their dead, they’d gone through six containers of beer and Psycho Loco was standing ankle-deep in a pool of beer foam.

The main reason for GTH’s high death rate was that initially the gang didn’t tote guns. They fought their enemies with antiquated weaponry such as blow darts, tomahawks, and spears. The founding members thought the moniker would be a good subterfuge. Who’d suspect a gang called Gun Totin’ Hooligans in a vicious gangland lassoing?

The gang owed its formidable notoriety to Psycho Loco’s ruthlessness. Tattooed with naked women and adorned with a chain of paper doll figurines, Psycho Loco’s arms resembled the kill tally on the cowling of a World War II airplane. The red Swiss cross on his right forearm represented the paramedic whose death had resulted in the bid upstate.