Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

The web was awash with h8trs whining that Beah “went Hollywood”—not only was he cheapening his own story, but the stories of all traumatized child soldiers & “lost boys.” Blahdee-blahdee-blah. The usual devils were busily obsessed with debunking the truthfulness of Ishmael’s journey (http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/ishmael-beahs-a-long-way-gone-is-a-long-way-from-the-truth-magazine-says-in-report-raising-serious-doubts-about-memoir/) — but what Rikki really liked was, Beah kept above the fray, rebutting, “sad to say, my story is all true.” In response to his lotusland-sellout critics (http://whatisthewhat.org.african-stories/lost-in-america/ishmael-beah-chronicles-his-role/), he said “sometimes painful truths must be ‘wrapped’ in comedy in order to open people’s eyes so they may learn & understand.”

Tom-Tom thought Rikki’s encounter with Beah, plus the fact he’d already read (listened to, actually) the memoir, was some kind of sign from God. (She was way off into omens & numerology.) But Tom-Tom also knew they were seriously running out of time. Any day now she could get a Google Alert that Antwone Fisher found his boy . She gave them a firm 48-hr deadline, periodically setting out bumps to help Rikki get the job done. Bumpin bumpin bumpin.

Tom-Tom said the most important thing was for Rikki to listen to Beah’s book on the iPod, like over and over, building a baseline of memory in his head of how the dude spoke, his rhythm & intonation, with particular emphasis on the content of stories & anecdotes, cause that was gonna be the source of his freestylin material. The rich, poetic details of Sierra Leone, its fauna&flora, Beah’s friends, family & aborted childhood… that’s where the gold was. She really wanted him to master the Beah voice, the glib, syrupy, transatlantic inflection that counterpoised so well with clipped, deadpan tales of random rape, torture & murder. Tom-Tom reminded Rikki that in the movie, Douglas and Fishburne put the (adopted!) boy through a similar crash course, accent & all.

Rikki didn’t go home for 2 straight days. (He slept with Reeyonna at night but during the day Tom-Tom banned Ree from the working area , banned everyone , cause the shit they were up to was too serious to be distracted by people walking in & generally getting in their business.) The dro was dank, the blow was crank & the shit was crackin. They read aloud scenes from the script, a couple times she even jacked him off for real. Rikki wanted to keep it going but she said nope, back to work, maybe they’d fuck when they finished. Tom-Tom was a good improvver, she used to have a boyfriend in 2nd City, & Rikki turned out to have some flamboyant freestyle flair. V. good at voices & impressions. Tom-Tom got way into it… she pushed & pushed, and at the end of their mini-marathon told Rikki he was effing awesome, which he was thrilled to hear, he felt good, & came to believe she was telling the truth, too. Tom-Tom encouraged him to get cocky ( just don’t let it show ), in this situation she said it was totally okay to get his cock on & be stuck-up/superconfident of his gifts. If he really wanted to get the part.

. .

Rikki was krunked up in the trees, tripping on how no one knew how much Antwone Fisher meant to him.

It seemed like every soul-killing family placement/residential group home Rikki ever was at* had a copy of Antwone Fisher— the movie Hollywood made about Fish (not Fishburne)’s life — tucked into their shitty collections of donated cassettes & DVDs. Which was ironic, because Fish’s spirit got nearly crushed by the foster mom they show in the film beatin on him & calling him a nigger 24/7 (a black bitch, too), & the foster sis (another black bitch) molesting him when she babysat. So Rikki grew up sort of watching a docudrama, kind of, not in detail but in feeling , the story of his own woebegone, borrowed life.

The internet said that the favorite all-time movie of dudes in the penitentiary was The Shawshank Redemption , which was about corrupt & homicidal jailers, but about escape & freedom too — well, that’s how it was with foster kids and the Antwone Fisher flick. Seeing it for the first time, only 7-years-old, Rikki — stomach-punched, face-slapped, nigger-called, dick-in-fostermouth’d Rikki — was old enough to acquire the perverse, eager hope that his life might be survivable. He had fantasies of joining the Marines just like Antwone did; of having a strong man there for him like Denzel was for Fish, in the movie; & of meeting a girl who loved him, just like the girl in the flick did. Of course, they left out a lot of shit from the book. (Rikki kept a worn burnished copy of the autobio Finding Fish in his drawer —Finding Fish was Antwone’s A Long Way Gone —in whatever drawer of whatever terrible transient home he found himself in any given year, kept it hidden beneath socks & underwear, like smuggled treasure.) They didn’t show how Antwone wrote a screenplay of his life then got a job as a guard at a Hollywood studio so he could learn about the Business; or how he struggled to get someone to film his script. That would be a whole other movie.

(Rikki wondered if they ever showed Shawshank or Ant. Fish. up in Pelican Bay, & what maybe his father thought of them.)

… during his deformative years, young Rikki watched the sado-surroundsound saga of Antwone Fisher as he caromed from one foster placement to another — the melodrama of abuse on ironic TV room tap for the very kids busy being Rx drugged, beaten & sexed by their keepers, old pros at the foster children reimbursement payment scale game, squeezing every $ they could from their hopeless, helpless, ratfucked human cargo. As he grew older, Rikki grew puzzled too. He was happy for Antwone but couldn’t understand why anyone would want to make a movie about such miseries, a movie that seemed to exist for the sole purpose of confirming he, Rikki, was a captive resident of fosterfucked Hell, & that what he watched on screen was a mirror/reminder (except with movie s!) of his fosterfuckery life… movies were supposed to entertain , he supposed someone thought they might be entertained by watching this boy-to-manchild Antwone trapped in a nightmare different but the same as his own! The motion picture bore the Good Bad Housekeeping Seal of Approval, no doubt. But why? Rikki was sure there was a reason, otherwise Antwone surely would not have allowed this thing to be shot. See, Antwone Fisher was released more than 10 years ago — so maybe there had been an end result he hadn’t heard, say, maybe the production brought Fish’s abusers to justice. He searched online… or maybe the movie struck fear in the s of the wicked, forcing them to be kinder, & seek forgiveness of those they murdered & destroyed, to amend their ways… but if that were true, what was the DVD doing in all those scarysick dens? (In one home, a retard night supervisor went suckin from dick to dick, while the lil homies watched Ant. Fish on the flatscreen.) Wouldn’t the fostercrooks be afraid that viewing such a film would foment rebellion amongst their charges? What else would be the point of such an adaption to film, if not to inform & overturn? And if Denzel & Antwone & everyone else confabulated it not for political reasons but first & foremost to entertain, with each further viewing Rikki felt there to be something cruel in it: the notion that this movie Antwone Fisher might entertain — might ease the interminable misery of his borrowed days by whispering, Watch & learn that you are not the only one bound by misery, misery is not a thing that can be confined to your stained, stinky couch & stained, stinky little life, no! Misery is all around you… misery, ordinary misery, as ordinary & crippling as nausea, ripples ever onward & outward