Dwight and I have our barters. I wonder what form Dwight’s barters will take with Joan. Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good?
DOCUMENT INSERT: 11/5/68. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen.
South L.A.,
November 5, 1968
It was my second beating at the hands of my former-and future, once this operation has concluded-LAPD brethren. I fared better at my first one, for Mr. Holly’s script had prepared me. Mr. Holly failed to witness this second encounter, and my wounds will have healed by the next time we meet face-to-face. I may or may not tell him of the incident, critique my spontaneous performance and request that he not discipline the officers involved. I may or may not tell him that the incident resulted in my making some wonderful new friends.
My unlikely rescuer was Jomo Kenyatta Clarkson, Propaganda Minister for the preposterously named Mau-Mau Liberation Front, along with his friends Shondell and Bobby. Jomo is garrulous and recognizably psychopathic and continues to break the world’s land speed record for use of the word “motherfucker” in a single sentence. His arms bear self-inflicted machete scars as a tribute to the real Jomo Kenyatta’s slaughter of British settlers in Kenya, circa 1947. Jomo and friends took me to Morningside Hospital, where a friendly white doctor, who treated Jomo for his most recent gun-shot wound, treated my wounds and injected me with Demerol. The injection dulled my pain, lifted my spirits and allowed me to stop replaying the words “Scotty Bennett sends regards” in a near-continuous loop. I wanted to go home and rest then. Jomo wouldn’t hear of it. He decided we should go pub-crawling.
We visited a series of after-hours clubs. I met numerous black males in the all-black attire that Mr. Holly has urged me to purchase, found it fetching on them, but decided that it wasn’t really my style. I witnessed a live lesbian sex show at Rae’s Rugburn Room and was generally shown off by Jomo at Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, Mr. Mitch’s Another World and Nat’s Nest. I geared up and performed; Mr. Holly would have been proud of me. I repeatedly described my beating by the “LAPD pigs” and never had to mention my ex-pig status, because I am a local celebrity and my former occupation subtextually pre-exists in the ghetto spiritus mundi. I kept saying ridiculous things like “Tell it like it is” and “Right on, brother” and never once burst out laughing. The rest of the night, following day and night are blurry. Jomo took me by his place of employment, the Black Cat Cab Company, where I watched the very fat owner eat an entire gallon of ice cream. I started to fall asleep at one point. Jomo force-fed me several spoonfuls of cocaine, which got me talking. It felt like an out-of-body experience spawned by alcohol, drugs, sustained shock and many weeks of barely controlled stress, excitement and wonderment, all filtered through what Mr. Holly has described as my “innate actor’s instinct and flair.” I critiqued the institutional racism of the LAPD specifically and white racist America in general and was conscious that I was shucking Jomo and his friends as I did it, as I concurrently believed it and did not believe it, as yet another part of me was off at another level of bifurcation, directing the performance and goofing on the whole thing. I can’t recall exactly what I said, but I do know that I was speaking at the limits of my mental capacity and powers of articulation. In retrospect, it felt like demagoguery, social analysis and apostalic fervor all rolled into one. And the amazing thing to me-that Mr. Holly would not find amazing at all-is that I don’t know whether or not I believe a word of it.
Black Cat Cab was followed by a visit to Jomo’s “crib” on East 89th Street. Many people, all black, were there. I heard six dozen hate-the-fuckin’-LAPD-pigs stories, told that many myself, and met two men whose armed-robber brothers were shot and killed by “King Pig” Scotty Bennett. Jomo tried to pass a shapely toffee-colored girl with a tinted Afro off on me, but I excused myself with something about my “main bitch.” Jomo ensconced me in a room festooned with revolutionary wall posters and filled with stacks of fatuous polemics, and I fell asleep for a very long time.
My dreams were my standard ones and easily explained, given my life’s overweening fixation. There were the shapeless waves of green representing the emeralds and the odd spatial doublings and triplings of prone shapes, my persistently unconscious urge to discover what truly happed on 84th and Budlong that day. At one point, I thought I saw a white woman with dark, gray-streaked hair looking in on me, but she/it was just a wisp.
Two dozen people were sitting in Jomo’s living room when I stumbled out however many hours later. They gave me a standing ovation. It was a superlative reward for my performance.
I’ve moved to a dingy crib on the Watts border.
I’ve started spending time at Black Cat Cab.
My MMLF and/or BTA recruitment is imminent, but I am not rushing into anything.
I want this performance to last. It’s my circuit back to February 24, 1964. Every disenfranchised part of me knows this to be true.
49
(Las Vegas, 11/5/68)
Tricky Dick won. Close, but no squeaker. More than a rat’s-cunt-hair win.
Carlos threw a bash. His mock-Roman suite, mobsters and Mormons, election returns on TV. Call girls told I-blew-JFK stories. Farlan Brown said Dick was no headman. He was more like an S amp;M slave. He’d get stinko and bomb some Third World shit-hole. He’d fry some little kids and get all misty then. He’d bring in a sick chick with a whip to retool him.
Sober guests waved little flags. Drunk guests wore elephant hats. The Hughes hotels shot off fireworks: Viva Nixon! in red, white and blue.
Wayne circulated. Farlan Brown showed him Dracula’s thanks note. Drac praised Wayne’s hard work and chemical assistance. He mentioned the Hughes charter flights to the foreign casino sites-let’s get started soon.
More fireworks. The Landmark scrolled a neon Nixon face on their marquee. Farlan said, “The cocksucker still needs a shave.”
Sam G. said, “The casino sites. We’ve got to send Mesplede down soon.”
Santo T. said, “Nicaragua has this tendency to go Red.”
Carlos said, “Dick will put a pro-U.S. puppet in place. He knows you need a strongman to put the quietus on the Reds.”
Sam said, “The D.R.’s the ticket. They’ve had a stable government since the ‘65 war. The new jefe is a fag midget. All he wants is some U.S. gelt and a nice pair of elevator shoes.”
Santo said, “Sam’s got this Dominican girlfriend leading him around by the schvantz. She’s got him thinking Dominicans are white.”
Carlos said, “Celia’s a coal burner. She crosses over into Haiti and gets that black stick.”
Sam grabbed his crotch. “Italians are built bigger than the moolies.”
Carlos said, “Where’d you get that?”
Santo laughed. “Pope John the XXIII told him. They were hanging out at a cathouse with some nigger nuns.”
Carlos handed Wayne a doughnut box. “Thanks for everything, paisan. Hughes, Nixon, the whole deal.”
The ride back took forever. The hotels went Nixon-nuts and put dumb signs up. Traffic jams resulted. Tricky Dick was Mormoned-up and mobbed-up. He was good for biz. The Boys bought themselves four fat years.
The Stardust was Nixon-numb. Legislators told I-know-Dick stories and puked into slot-machine cups. Wayne took the stairs up. He heard the phone ringing in the hallway. 3:00 a.m. calls-oh, shit.