Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

The whole ride over, I watched No M.O. Clark dig his fingernails into the palms of his thick hands, peel off layers of skin, roll them into tiny flesh balls, and pop them into his mouth. No M.O.’s goal in life was to be a criminal mastermind. He thought if he could remove his fingerprints, he’d be the bane of the FBI, a mystery thief slipping in and out of the Federal Reserve, leaving nothing behind but greasy smudges. The drawback to No M.O.’s plan was that all the sandpapering and scraping had turned his hands into a blistery mass of flesh so tender he got paper cuts from counting money. Unable to hold silverware, No M.O. ate nothing but marshmallows, cotton candy, and white bread. When feeling brave, he bought large bags of french fries and waited for the hot morsels to cool so he could eat them without scalding himself. A favorite GTH parlor trick was to get No M.O. so excited about his grandiose dreams he’d want to slap hands with someone in celebration of his genius. The sound of a No M.O. high five was a sickening splat not unlike the scrunch of a family of snails being stepped on. No M.O. came away from these handclasps alternately screaming in pain and blowing on his hand to take away the sting.

Cruising down Central Avenue in the old business district, we were plainly behind enemy lines. The rusty alarm boxes over the barred doors to the pawnshops and soul-food kitchens all read, “Sears, Roebuck and Co. Alarm System” in lightning-bolt quotation marks. Mountains of Sears all-weather radial tires snow-capped with white Sears Kenmore appliances in disrepair filled the vacant lots. Feeling a little homesick and hoping to motivate the troops, Psycho Loco stood up and yelled, “Sears sucks. Montgomery Ward’s rules.” Following his lead, shouts rang from every car in the convoy. “Ward’s! Ward’s!” The outburst triggered a small avalanche of Sears Diehard batteries, which rumbled down a vulcanized slope, crushing a toaster oven, to the joy of the transvestite soldiers.

After we had driven for about fifteen minutes, No M.O. slowly removed his hand from the seat, green ooze momentarily clinging to Pookie’s vinyl upholstery, and pointed to a metal archway. “There go Bilkenson Gardens,” he said. We drove up to the main entrance. Psycho Loco pursed his lips and winked at the security guard. The guard smiled, removed a rubber from his wallet, opened the wrought-iron electric gate, then turned his attention back to a small black-and-white Sears television.

Bilkenson Gardens was a slight misnomer. There were no bee-pollinated flowering fields or lush meadows populated by butterflies and snapdragons. Just stagnant and algae-laden ponds formed by the runoff of leaky fire hydrants and clogged sewers, serving as landing pads for mosquitoes and flies.

“Let’s be on da lookout for dese friggin’ calzones,” warned Joe Shenanigans. “I don’t know about youse guys, but I wanna whack dese fucking strombolis.”

The caravan broke up into search-and-destroy teams. Our platoon drove west, easing past rows of rundown bungalows till we saw five guys dressed in white Lacoste shirts and white golf hats standing on the porch of a small brick cabana. They looked like golf pros sipping lemonade at the nineteenth hole, leisurely rehashing the last round of play. As we got closer, Psycho Loco straightened his tits and whispered their names — “Casper, L’il Spooky, C-Thru, Opaque Nate, and the Invisible Nigger,” all of whom were staring lustily at the “females” in the car. With a flirtatious squint in his eyes, Joe Shenanigans lasciviously ran his tongue over his top lip, sending the Ghost Town gangsters into a frenzy. The courtship ritual began with the sugary sweet words of budding love.

“Set that shit out, baby!”

“Goddamn, girl, your breastesses is big. A sandwich is a sandwich, but your titties is a meal.”

“Hey, ho, com’ere and let me put a little something on your chin.”

Pookie played coy and piloted the car around the block, the hardons of every Ghostbuster following us like dowsing rods.

“Damn, Joe, if you was a girl you’d be a fucking slut. You was looking at them niggers like you wanted some dick bad.”

“Aw, nigger, fuck you, I bet we pull that skirt off your ass, your panties be wet as a motherfucker, stank bitch.”

Psycho Loco put a cassette into the deck, barraging Bilkenson Gardens with a screeching aria. Mood music, he called it. The boys quieted themselves and made ready. I expected guns, but Psycho Loco and Joe Shenanigans removed fancy crossbows and arrows from under the seat. No M.O. was filling balloons with liquid drain opener.

“What about the guns?” I pleaded. “You do know that the Second Amendment gives you the right to form a militia and bear arms? By the fear invested in me, I hereby proclaim the Gun Totin’ Hooligans a militia. So bear some goddamn arms.”

Psycho Loco turned around in his seat, shook his head disapprovingly in my direction, and told me that whenever the Gun Totin’ Hooligans acted vengefully, they stuck to the old ways, and tradition meant no guns unless absolutely necessary. The car wheeled around the last corner and I cowered in my seat as No M.O. knotted the end of his last liquid drain opener balloon and Psycho Loco and Joe Shenanigans wet their arrowheads with aerosol deodorant.

A fool from Ghost Town called out from the street, struggling to be heard over the wailing French contralto, “I knew you fine bitches would be back. Why don’t you all come inside, drink a little Riunite on ice, and get busy?” The car braked to a slow glide; Psycho Loco and Joe lit a lighter, and the tips of their arrows flamed like giant aluminum matches. The boy in the white hat cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey what’s up with that music?” With a war whoop, Psycho Loco, No M.O., and Joe stood up, and a salvo of flaming arrows and balloons zipped through the air. The stunned homeboys from Ghost Town dove for cover, their hats flying off their cornrowed heads and parachuting down to earth as the arrows bounced harmlessly off the brick bungalow onto the concrete, where the fires petered out like dud Fourth of July fireworks. One projectile found a home in the rear tire of a Buick Supersport, causing the car to howl and list to one side. They wouldn’t be chasing us.

No M.O. had the best aim; one of his balloons exploded on one boy’s chest. Succumbing to the fumes, the kid dropped to the sidewalk, gurgling and clawing at his burning eyes. A hyped-up No M.O. hopped out of the car and yelled in the wounded boy’s face, “Induce vomiting, motherfucker,” and hustled back to the car.

Eventually Ghost Town rallied and rushed the car as we pulled away. The fastest boy pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of nowhere like an outlaw magician, and a knot of buckshot danced on the car’s rear end like water droplets on hot oil. The opera singer sang on, her voice blowing past my ears as Pookie sped out the main entrance and toward the freeway.

“Psycho Loco, what are we listening to?”

“Delibes’ Lakmé. It’s from act two — the lovers declare their undying devotion, then they die.”

I noticed none of the boys bothered to remove their wigs or makeup. I placed one hand over my heart and raised the other high in the air and celebrated life by hitting the high notes with the rest of the fellows. Somehow I knew the words.

IT WAS MANDATORY for every male student at Phillis Wheatley High to attend the monthly “Young Black and Latino Men: Endangered Species” assembly. Principal Henrietta Newcombe opened the meetings by reminding us that despite the portrayal of inner-city youth in the media (she didn’t mention the name of the assembly), we weren’t animals. These hour-long deprogramming sessions were supposed to liberate us from a cult of self-destructiveness and brainwash us into joining the sect of benevolent middle-class American normalcy. Once, before we listened to the motivational speeches, Principal Newcombe conducted an extemporaneous Gallup poll in hopes of uniting us against something other than ourselves.