Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

Zane is from New York City, Manhattan. Or as he says, “Maa-hat-ehn.” It’s hard to talk to Zane because his speech consists entirely of rhetorical filler. He responds to everything with “Word up, know what I’m sayin’, on the strength,” like he’s having the deepest conversations in the history of speech.

Don’t worry about me, Ma, I’m fine. I’ve been deloused and the condescending white people are feeding me. Word up, on the strength.

Love, your son,

Gunnar

* * *

Dear Christina and Nicole,

I’m sorry to hear you all and Ma aren’t getting along because of the pregnancy thing, but I can’t believe you’d rather live with Dad than stay at the hippo house. You know my motto: fuck that nigger. If you have boys, make sure you don’t leave them alone with him. The photos of your bloated bellies are hilarious. When I told you to talk to Coach Shimimoto if you needed anything, I didn’t know he’d use your stomachs for artistic canvases. The tattoos make you look like African yakuza, and the swelling gives them a kind of 3-D effect. Christina, View #36 of the Hollywood Sign from Pete’s Bar at Sunset is cool. I like how Coach used your bellybutton as the focal point, turning it into an ashtray and going from there. Nicole, Beer Bottle and Butterfly is absolutely amazing. Its bold yet welcoming color scheme captures the transformation of inorganic societal byproduct into a state of synthetic beatitude barely distinguishable from the natural order. Did that make sense? No? Good, I’ll be an art critic when I grow up. I told you Shimimoto was a good guy. Did he give you the bullshit rap that his style is derivative of the ancient ukiyo-e school as practiced by Hokusai and Ando Hiroshige? Don’t believe it — same madness he said in art class. His stuff is a straight rip-off of the Aztec/Diego Rivera/lowrider murals on the freeway underpasses. Shimimoto been in the ’hood too long and don’t want to admit it. Wouldn’t it be funny if the ink seeped through your pores and the babies came out green and peach? Anyway, judging from his letter, it sounds like he’s enjoying the Lamaze classes. See you when I get back.

Take care and

puuussshhhh!

Gunnar

* * *

Scobe,

What’s happenin’, nukka? Coolin’? Niggers out here have heard of you. You’re an underground legend. They be asking me is it true you never miss and why don’t you shoot more. The coaches are asking about you too. How tall are you? What’s your quickness-to-speed ratio? Shit like that. As you can see, they really want to get to know you as a person. Anyway, expect to get much attention next year. I may not be around to watch, though; tomorrow I go into battle. I have to play camper number one, Leon “Housequake” Tremundo. The boy is fucking gigantic. He’s 6' 6" and about 245 lbs. from Washington DC. We play dominoes at night and this fool can hold nine bones in one hand so you know, cuz, is like big as fuck. He can dunk from anywhere on the court. He got names for every one, too: the Girls at St. Ignatius Swoon Boom, the Buff Rough Motherfucker Stuff, the Anti-Gravity Levitation Mid-Air Hesitation Crazy Elevation Stupid Escalation Geronimo Look Out Below Cold Crush Two-Hand Flush. I heard during practice the kids on his team have to wear padded helmets ’cause Leon Tremundo killed one of his teammates who was stupid enough to take a charging foul against him. The guy doesn’t move that fast, just keeps moving. It’s like he plays in slow motion, just flows up and down the court like lava. You can’t stop him, he kind of just overwhelms you and you get swamped trying to guard him. If I survive, I’ll let you know. His girlfriend is Missy Gibson, the actress from that sitcom Talented Tenth. You know, the show where a bunch of seddity motherfuckers be saving the community by rewarding exemplary African-American citizenship with a piece of fried chicken. “By deciding to wait until marriage to have sex, Leroy and Martha are celebrating traditional African values. Here go a thigh, a wing, and a biscuit.” Notice they don’t never say nothing like “Lucinda decided to have a clitoridectomy. Wow, that’s African, have some chicken gizzards, mmmmm.” Anyway, back to this behemoth, Leon Tremundo. Every time he dunks on a nigger, he runs into the stands to kiss Missy Gibson. Then she looks at whoever it was he served and blows that nigger a kiss. Sounds like true love.

Remember the pamphlet the camp sent me with pictures of Jacuzzis, the horseback riding, and shit? Well, it’s all true. The place is sweet as hell. Me and this white boy from Topeka are the only ones who ride the horses. I eat lunch real fast, then run to the stables. My favorite horse is Chuckles. He’s really gentle. You hop on his back and he takes off down the trail at a leisurely pace. I don’t have to steer or nothing, just prod him to go faster every now and then. The horse knows each trail like ten-year-olds know the alphabet; they’ve repeated it a million times but haven’t tired of the sounds and twists and turns. I imagine Chuckles’s whinnies and snorts are equine for “H, I, J, K, Elemenopee, Q, R, S, T.” I sympathize with these animals ’cause this place makes me feel like a racehorse. Every morning I get up at six o’clock to get weighed, fed, and put through my paces.

The only good thing about the place is it’s fun to see the whities having to earn they propers for a change. We be disrespecting these peckerwoods something terrible. We have one play called “Milkshake,” which is whoever has a white kid guarding ’em takes that clown to hole.

I’m rooming with these two fools, Touch from Miami and Z-Groove from Brooklyn. They’re cool, but all they do is talk about basketball, 24–7. We come back to the crib after eight hours of playing and analyzing basketball and the first thing they do is stick a highlight reel of their hero, Cleotis Jacobin, into the VCR. (We have a big-screen television set in our room.) Cleotis Jacobin plays for Crawdad A & M, a small Division XI school in southern Alabama. The man can literally fly. He shoots a three-point lay-up where he comes flying down the court and takes off from behind the arc and swoops to the basket like he’s riding a magic carpet or something. Whenever he jumps, you can hear the crowd in the background chanting “One Mississippi! Two Mississippi!” until he lands. On one move he goes baseline against Tallahassee School of Cosmetology, jumps in the air, stops, hovers, then spins right, sails for a bit, then changes direction and starts floating left. I swear to God, Allah, Jehovah, Buddha, James Brown, nigger’s in the air so long the crowd gets to three Mississippi. It was Ham Hock Night, so when he finally touched down the fans threw fatty pieces of pork and bottles of hot sauce onto the floor in appreciation. The reason Cleotis is playing in obscurity is because he cannot shoot. He has absolutely no touch. Jacobin goes to the glass like Peter Pan but finishes like a Kennedy. It’s like he’s playing basketball with a shot put. In one game he launched a jumper that hit the rim so hard the net fell to the floor. In another he shot the ball and it sailed through the backboard like a rock through glass.

So between Touch and Z-Groove and the adventures of Cleotis Jacobin, I’m going stir-crazy in this hole. I even brought up sex just to talk about something other than basketball. You know I rarely talk about sex. So I say, in my best macho baritone, “Hey, Missy Gibson got it going on justa bit, don’t she?” But wouldn’t you know it, these guys use basketball as a metaphor for everything. Touch is like, “Yeah, she cute, but she don’t make my starting five.” Starting five? “I got Lena ‘Methuselah’ Horne at the point guard, seventy years old, running the show like a vet. Fredi Washington at the two spot, dead but still full of shake ’n’ bake. My big fella in the middle is Iman: statuesque, smooth, good hands. Dorothy Dandridge at a small forward, and Lark McCarthy, the nightly news anchor, at the power spot. Halle Berry is my sixth man off the bench, instant offense.” Z-Groove has all dark-skinned lineup: Denzel Washington and Lightning Hopkins at the guards, the forwards Richard Roundtree and Michael Jordan; his center was Woody Strode.