Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

Having annotated the sunset

I double-time to heaven,

talking whiskey and waltz with Monk.

MERVA KILGORE

Ms. Kilgore, a prolific writer from Philadelphia, published seventeen volumes of poetry, including her most highly regarded work,

Ancestral Hogwash: Songs and Slurs for My No-Account Daddy.

Ms. Kilgore was giving a poetry reading at an elementary school in the Philadelphia suburbs when the school’s white principal asked if she’d mind singing “one of those old Negro spirituals.” Hearing this, Ms. Kilgore recited the poem below, then, with her hand in the water pitcher, bit through the microphone cord, electrocuting herself. She was sixty-nine years old.

Imagine this poem

is cluttered with references to obscure

figures of Greek mythology,

antique birchwood bureaus,

and a quaint New England bed-and-breakfast;

then send it to The New Yorker

* * *

At night Yoshiko and I made soapsud sculptures in the heart-shaped Jacuzzi or wrote critiques of the free porno movies. Sometimes we’d have Psycho Loco drive us to cafés in the Venice and Wilshire districts for the multicultural poetry scene. Packed with mostly white poetry devotees fawning over poets of color, the readings were ribald contests where the audience judged the poetry for political correctness, the amount of white guilt evoked, and sexual bawdiness. All the poets received belittling introductions equating them to canonical bards: “Next up is UFO, the Unbelievable Funky One, or as we like to call him, the Flying Chaucer.”

One night a poet known as Kwasi Moto, the Hunch in the Back of Your Mind, read a poem entitled “Uncle Sam I Am.” The Dr. Seussesque ballad was an account of how the poet’s rough upbringing was responsible for transmogrifying him into a red, white, and blue animal that raped white women and hunted down “nigras and Messicans.”

Uncle Sam I am,

do you like black niggers and white chicks named Pam?

Yes, I could beat a nigger in the park,

and eat a pussy in the dark.

Would you stab a Mexican in a tree

and blame the ghetto on TV?

Psycho Loco looked on in amazement and loudly remarked, “I know they ain’t paying this motherfucker for this phony bullshit,” then unabashedly placed his silvery nine-millimeter on the table with a heavy thunk. The poet, visibly shaken, began to rush his lines and rattle his text.

Because of the Anglo-Saxon

I’ve no time for relaxin’

shooting jigaboos and honkies named Sue

for satisfaction.

Unable to take any more cutthroat drivel, Psycho Loco snatched his gun, walked up to the poet, and stuck the barrel into his ear canal. “You so bad, read, you buster-ass mark!”

In a sobbing fit, the poor bard continued.

Uncle Sam I am,

scared of no man,

white, black, Klan, or tan.

By the end of the poem, Kwasi Moto had shriveled to the floor, groveling and begging Psycho Loco not to shoot him. Freeing himself from the poet’s clutches with a jackbooted kick to the head, Psycho Loco leaned into the poet’s bloodied face. “You know what’s wrong with you? Your line breaks are all fucked up.” With a self-satisfied smirk, Psycho Loco returned to his seat and scanned the stunned crowd. “Well, who’s next? On with the goddamn show. Gunnar, you want a beer?”

“Yeah.”

“And somebody get my nigger another beer.”

Yoshiko laughed for two days straight, but mostly she and I stayed at home listening to the real L.A. street soldiers receive radio therapy.

Station KQBK Sidewalk Talk recognize caller … This is Wilfredo from Pacoima … I want to say … I want to say … I’ve killed, and been killed, entiendes? But leaving mis vatos, it’s hard, ese … Kamila Parks aka K-Down … I’m tired of these triflin’ niggers … These mens today don’t respect theyselves, much less anyone else … Hey, yo Lace Love the Mad Body Slammer on the check-in … I’m calling to defend myself against the false accusations and prefabrications of the previous caller … I respect all womens of the world … So I hit the ho once or twice, y’ know, no big deal … Waddup, I’m Flip-out the Filipino Str-8 Player Baller from Artesia … I wanna say more attention needs to be paid to Asian gangsterism … The missionary school system be fronting on a yellow brother … They ain’t out to teach nobody nothing … Thanks to our guests … Father Glenn Fernandez, Dr. Stacy Ortiz, and ex-banger now community activist Chino “Ojo Negro” Aquadilla, this your host, Ras Vroom Vroom Nkrumah, signing off, and remember, all peoples of color need to come together and en español “color no equal dolor” …

We chased sleep, our limbs interlocked under the Lysol-scented quilts, our fingertips playfully hiking up and down our bodies, trying to ignore the fold-out bed’s pointy prongs and rib cage — jarring metal bars by whispering potential names for the baby: Jessica, Aldo, Althea, Rosie, Hiroko, Marc, Doreen, Dallas, Octavia, Hiroshi, Joaquim, Corinthian, Marpessa, Sunday, Mamadou, Quo Vadis …

On a Tuesday night late in her last trimester Yoshiko had her first craving: animal crackers (only giraffes, bears, and tigers), a blueberry slushie, and salted soybeans. Not too bad. I threw on some clothes and went out into the neon-lit night. Wary of being out alone and on foot, I decided to take the back streets to the 7-Eleven, which was a good two miles away. I darted past the ice machine and eased onto Arroyo Drive, hoping Yoshiko wouldn’t mind if I substituted pumpkin seeds for the soybeans, which would be impossible to find in the middle of the ghetto at one-thirty in the morning.

Ten minutes into my mission I heard the sound of helicopter blades churning the hot air. Niggers must be fucking up, I thought, remembering the fun we used to have outwitting the police copters by crawling underneath parked cars until we reached safety. I turned onto Whitworth Avenue and suddenly found myself engulfed in a blinding waterfall of blue-white light. Instinctively, my hands shot above my head as I waited for the standard drill — “Face down on the ground, hands behind your head, ankles crossed. Move!” But no instructions were forthcoming. I waited a minute or two and looked for a police cruiser; nothing. No beat cops, only the helicopter hovering overhead and me standing in a fifty-foot circle of light, becoming more appreciative of the moon. What the fuck?

I slowly eased down the street, and the tractor beam kept me at its center. If I moved two feet to the left, the spotlight moved two feet to the left, as if I were wearing a luminous Victorian whalebone dress that hula-hooped around my hips. I entered the 7-Eleven bathed in the eerie extraterrestrial light, and the clerk backed off a bit. I further terrorized him with a robotic “Take me to your leader,” and he shot out the back door. Gathering what I came for, I poured myself a blueberry slushie, left a five-dollar bill on the counter, and walked back to the motel.

Yoshiko asked why her slushie was so warm and I told her about being followed by the police helicopter. She rolled her eyes. I motioned for her to follow me. Outside, we stood in the middle of Arroyo and waited in the dark. Nothing happened and Yoshiko grew impatient, sipping on her tepid slushie and whining, “What? What?”

“Wait a minute. You hear that?”

I cupped my ears and in the distance could hear the rotor blades. Then a loud click and we were standing in the world’s biggest spotlight.

“Cool.” Yoshiko smiled and handed me the lions and rhinos from the box of animal crackers. We sat at the bus stop, chewing off the ears of shortbread circus animals and enacting an urban version of Waiting for Godot.

“You’re sure you don’t mind the pumpkin seeds?”