Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

When it was my turn to pay my respects, his diminutive Creole-colored parents shook my hand with tearful solemnity. “It’s mighty nice of you to stop by. Our son used to tell us how he beat you to a pulp when you first moved into the neighborhood. Good luck with the basketball and the poetry.” I looked into Pumpkin’s brittle face and tried to hide my indifference. Propped on one knee, I placed my elbows on the edge of his box and started to utter a phony prayer. Then I noticed a black-light painting of a black Jesus bathed in purple light hanging over Pumpkin’s body like a guardian angel, a lime-green crown of thorns imbedded in his fuzzy crushed-velvet Afro. Clearly Pumpkin was in reliable company. I asked Jesus if, after he’d taken care of Pumpkin’s wounds, he could help him clear customs and grant him permission to enter the afterworld despite the armaments, marijuana, and alcoholic beverages laid across his chest. I ended my request with an earnest “Amen,” loud enough for everyone to hear.

During the eulogy at Immaculate Lawns Cemetery, I was absentmindedly shooting imaginary jump shots into the empty grave when Psycho Loco told the reverend to shut up and asked me to recite a poem before they laid Pumpkin in the ground. I composed the following poem.

Elegy for a Vicious Midget

Pumpkin, his homunculus casket

only big enough for four pallbearers,

is lowered into earth

next to his grandfather

a diminutive light-skinned black man

who passed for white Munchkin

in the Wizard of Oz

offered a lollipop to Dorothy

then drank himself to death

with pint-size blended whiskey residuals

a squat family cries

and shakes pudgy fingers

at the wicked witch

of the West Side

The reading signified my unofficial ascension to poète maudit for the Gun Totin’ Hooligans and by extension the neighborhood. My duties were similar to those of a Li Po or Lu Chao-lin in the employ of a Tang dynasty warlord: immortalize the rulers and say enough scholarly bullshit to keep from getting my head chopped off. It wasn’t all bad. As word spread of my lyrical prowess, I earned movie money as a human Hallmark card, reading sappy epithalamiums at weddings and dour elegies at funerals.

Once in a while a poet from another fiefdom seeking to challenge my reputation would swagger into the neighborhood demanding a poetic showdown. We’d duel in impromptu verse; tankas at seven paces or sestinas at noon, no use of the words “love,” “heart,” and “soul.” I sent many bards home in shame. Their employers carried them out on stretchers as they frantically thumbed through their rhyming dictionaries wondering how they had fucked up a rondeau so badly. I heard that one quixotic laureate I defeated has taken an eternal vow of silence and crisscrosses the country playing the bongos at the graves of famous poets for food.

Home Grown

young G puts down his joint for a moment

and through red-slitted eyes

checks out his burned-out homies

sprawled all over mama’s burgundy leatherette corner group

asleep under a blanket of smoke

tucked in by the slow jams on the radio

who are these men

he’s grown up with

traded comic books with

been tested for VD with

what are they really like when none of the others are around

do they …

take bubble baths?

stop and stare at the setting sun?

like to vacuum?

watch the MacNeil/Lehrer hour on the sly?

the young G rousts his boys. “Hey!

All I know about you motherfuckers

is that y’all are niggers who care.”

one of his boys lifts his groggy head and shouts back,

“And that’s all you need to know.”

* * *

Two days after Pumpkin’s funeral I was in Psycho Loco’s living room helping him choose an appropriate eye shadow to go with his molé brown skin and the tight blue chiffon dress he was wearing. We’d narrowed it down to the chartreuse cinnamon and the peccadillo plum. Admiring his lusty visage in his compact, Psycho Loco flapped his false eyelashes, blew himself a kiss, and went with the peccadillo.

Today was the day the Gun Totin’ Hooligans would avenge Pumpkin’s ignominious death. Most of the boys wanted to dismember Ms. Kim, the owner of the corner store where Pumpkin died, but Psycho Loco talked them out of it, astutely pointing out that the families of every fool in the room would starve to death, because Ms. Kim carried them on credit for two weeks out of the month. It wasn’t very hard to find a scapegoat. The obvious choice was the Ghost Town Black Shadows from the Bilkenson Gardens Projects. The Shadows had been GTH’s arch-enemies for so long that gang members on both sides termed the animosities “the Crusades,” and here was the GTH strike force, dressed in drag and primping in preparation to go “Ghost-busting.” All the homeboys were “Hooliganed down,” flaunting their colors like rhesus monkeys in heat showing off their blue asses. They fought over who would have the largest breasts and who would wear the expensive Wanton perfume. They stuffed halter tops with blue toilet paper, daintily knotted blue scarves about their necks, smoothed pleated blue skirts, cringed as they slipped their blue-painted toenails into blue high heels and blue-steeled.25 pistols into blue leather handbags.

The idea was to roll into Ghost Town and take their hideouts by surprise. I wished the homies luck and was headed home when out of nowhere Psycho Loco grabbed me by my throat and planted a sticky kiss on my cheek.

“Where you going, Gunnar?”

“I’m going home.”

“You not coming on our little sortie?”

“Hell naw, not unless you got a bulletproof brassiere in the closet.”

“Look, just come. You play ball and write, this is what I do. I shoot motherfuckers. You know I’m going to be at every one of your games this year cheering your ass, so you come and cheer mine. You’ll be our date.”

I sat in the back seat of a convertible Volkswagen Rabbit, squeezed between Joe Shenanigans, who looked stunning in a Liz Claiborne pantsuit, and fat No M.O. Clark, who wore a Macy’s pregnancy jumpsuit set off nicely with silver hoop earrings. Pookie Hamilton drove and Psycho Loco rode shotgun. We went into battle, a three-car armada of horsehair-wigged corsairs sailing over the open concrete, sipping rum and listening to Pookie Hamilton tell sailor stories.

Pookie was something of a neighborhood celebrity. He had an unwanted cameo in Peace Officer, a nationally syndicated live-action video docudrama. In Pookie’s episode, a clean-cut white cop is driving down a dark street, quickly glancing from the road to the camera and explaining what it’s like to patrol the streets of West Los Angeles. A drop-top Volkswagen exactly like the one we were riding in speeds past the officer’s patrol car. The cop looks into the camera as if he’s talking to his partner and says, “See that. That nig … uh, turd … uh, guy is probably intoxicated.” The camera pans to the windshield; you see the Volkswagen swerving in and out of its lane. Every five seconds or so, a fountain of vomit spews out of the driver’s window. The police car’s red and white lights turn the freeway into a disco. The police officer requests to see Pookie’s license and registration. Pookie hands the officer his papers and accidentally drops a beer can onto the street. The officer asks Pookie to step out of his car and tells him that he is being stopped for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Pookie willingly but unsteadily steps out of the car to take the sobriety test. The cop says, “Sir, will you please count backward from a hundred?” Smiling into the camera, Pookie agrees and says, “Drednuh eno, enin-ytenin, thgie-ytenin, neves-ytenin…” The next scene shows Pookie handcuffed in the back seat of a patrol car and on his way to waking up with a hangover in jail.