Last summer the gangbangers scored another hit by whacking Tyrone, a black
kid who lived in the Black Zone but who bussed to Jefferson, which means his high
school must have been like San Quentin High. Poor Tyrone was shot just for the fun of it. Dad was
reading the paper one day after work and asked if I knew this guy Tyrone
because he went to my school. And I said yeah, and he said he and a little girl
were shot dead at a bus stop. I said no way. He gave me the paper and
there it was. Jesus! I couldn’t believe it. And then Dad said there are places a
lot worse, like Compton where someone is shot every other day, but I’m thinking
Compton ain’t no worse for Tyrone. It’s an ugly world. There was photos of
Tyrone and his friends putting balloons, flowers, notes, and other pathetic stuff
at the bus stop. Man! I thought, Tyrone’s and the little girl's blood’s still there. You can wash
most of it away but not all of it. I took the paper to my room and laid on the
bed and thought about Tyrone. I kept looking at Tyrone and the bus stop. There
was also a picture of the little girl. Couldn’t believe it, shooting a fucking
little girl! That's totally evil. Then I felt this weird urge to go to that place where their blood
had mixed in with the concrete. I wasn’t sure why, just needed to go, pay my
respects I guess. So I decide I’d do a pilgrimage by making run on Manson to
see the shrine because I don’t dislike blacks any more
than I dislike other people, but shooting kids at a bus stop shows their thinking to be really messed up.
I figure if I take off in the
morning I’ll get back plenty of time before it starts to get dark because I sure
don’t want to be in no banger territory on a skateboard when the sun goes down unless
I want to be in the morning newspaper, but there wouldn’t be no shrine, though Spike
my white nemesis might drive by to piss on the spot where I died. Of course,
Tyrone was shot in broad daylight, which goes to show you in the hood crime
never takes a time-out, but what are you gonna to do? What I do is never skate
through those neighborhoods, but I’m hoping maybe that things might be cool for
kids at least a few days after one gets whacked, though not for adults, who’ll
still be getting killed at 7-Elevens or in the back of some car where they’re
doing a drug deal or in the parking lot of some strip joint (wish I was 21) or in and around any of those
sinister looking bars that got no windows just a door and a neon Budweiser sign out front. I always
wonder what goes on in those places, like. Picking up loose women (Mmmmm!), drinking,
playing pool like in The Hustler,
selling drugs, or planning a robbery or drive-by. Who knows? But no
smoking! Can you believe it? I can do the one thing those guys can’t.
Anyway as I was saying, I thought
I’d take my man Manson out on this pilgrimage, telling myself that the gangbangers
won’t beat me up in broad daylight but knowing that in the ghetto gangbangers
will pull up, jump out, fuck you over, and be gone in less than a minute. That’s
the beauty of the automobile. Myself, I will have to rely on the speed and the
intuition of Manson to guide me out of harm’s way. Of course, I know that’s
just bullshit. They probably wouldn’t even bother beating me up but just do a bang
bang good-bye drive-by so that some wannabe can get his gangsta stripes, and
though Manson is fast, he ain’t faster than a speeding bullet. But it’s like
going to church. You gotta believe in somethin, and Manson is my miracle. So I
head out, quickly leaving behind the white-trash ghetto where Dad and I live and enter No Man’s Land which
separates the Orientals from Hispanics, cross through the nether world of the
rainbow coalition—black, yellow, brown, and red (the only whites hanging out
are police and the red ain’t Indians but blood stains). There’s no white in
that rainbow because the coalition is a bunch warring tribes busy hating,
fighting, and killing one another, so long ago whiteys who could afford it retreated to the burbs, like
the old pioneers circling their wagons for the last stand because there ain’t nowhere
to escape to. White trash like Dad and me who can’t afford a fancy wagon in the
suburbs are left behind in the urban wilderness. Imagine pieces of white litter
floating around in a black hole.
Of course occasionally whitey’s
got no choice but to pass through the MCMZ (Multi-Cultural Militarized Zone)
and he ought to be okay as long as he don’t run out of gas or have a flat. If
his white ass does get noticed, it’ll most likely be kicked, robbed, or killed
or a combination of the three (add raped if he’s a she). The predators roaming
gangstaland are like the crows in Resident
Evil, who’ll leave you alone as long as they don’t notice you, but if they
do they’re all over you pecking out your eyes. That’s the way it’s always been
for black people who gotta drive through the South to get to civilization on
the other side. They’ll most likely be okay if they stay on the Interstate with
a full tank of gas and play the tourist just passing through because the
crackers will be so busy lynching one of the local niggers or burning a nigger
church (that’s how crackers talk about black people) that they won’t pay the
black tourists any mind. But they don’t dare leave the Interstate unless they
want to join the puppet show or be on the wrong end of a shot gun like in Easy Rider. And of course they’ll be praying that all the
cracker sheriffs will also be at the hanging. I mean those sheriffs gotta be
black people’s version of Nemesis. Life would have been a lot better for black
people if slavery happened some other place than the South, like
Rhode Island. That way when the slaves were freed then all the bad shit would
have been over and done with. But not in the South, and I’ll tell you why.
The South is a place that holds a
grudge. I learned that from reading The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you read that book you remember the forever feud
that took place between two cracker families. Southerners might as well be
Moslems they enjoy shooting each other so much. What I liked about Huckleberry Finn (and I almost didn’t read it because I’d seen the
movie and reading generally goes against my principles) was I wanted to be on a
raft going someplace even with a black guy as long as he was like Jim and not a
gangbanger who’d be shooting everybody on the shore as we floated down the
river. Of course, Avalon or July would be even better, but I’d still probably
need somebody like Jim or Dad because there’s bound to be trouble because there’s
always trouble. That’s what I think the story is saying. That America ain't a story with a happy ending. And to show you the
difference between adults and kids, there’s no way Huck would sell Jim just to
make some money, but that’s exactly what the white guy Crusoe does in the same
situation. His black friend is named Zury and as soon as he has a chance to sell
him he does. That's what the teacher called capitalism. That says to me everything you need to know about fucking adults. I didn’t read
that book only the SparkNotes and not
even all of them. I mean there’s a limit to what teachers can expect you to
read. I don’t think I’d live long enough to get through that book.
I digressed. My teachers were
always saying I couldn’t stick to a topic. But that’s normal when you think
life is messy like a RPG. That’s a game where the story looks more like a map
instead of a single highway that’s got some turn-offs all basically
dead-ends. Another thing that makes RPGs like life is that you got to make all
kinds of choices that determine how you get to where you want to go but also determine
what you’re going to be like when you get there, like you might be a hero or
a villain or somewhere in between. You actually might not like how you turn out
because sometimes when you think you’re making the right choice you’re not or
more likely you make a choice you don’t want to make but do it anyway to get
whatever it is you want. That’s why I don’t like RPGs. I play games to give my
brain a rest while killing bad guys like the ones who killed Tyrone and the little girl. My life is already too confusing. So it’s normal that
whatever I got to say about anything would be confusing too. That’s one of the
reasons I hated writing for teachers. The main one being it’s boring. I’d
rather be riding Manson or playing a (nonRPG) video game. But also they criticize
your writing to death. When I’d get an essay back, if you could call three
paragraphs an essay, it looks like it needs a blood transfusion. No doubt
about it my best essays are the ones I do at home so Dad has a chance to
look them over and fix them. That way I get at least a C or maybe a B- (unfortunately when it comes to writing Dad’s not an A student).
Getting back to the pilgrimage, I’m on the street trucking right through the badlands where the tribes exist in multicultural disharmony, which is apparent by the fact that the grafheads and bangers have bombed every fence and wall. Without the graffiti it still would be a really ugly place, the graffiti makes it a scary ugly place—Third-World scary. I dressed real grungy so most people see me as not belonging to anyone or anything, a piece of human waste, another human turd floating in a polluted river, which is fine with me. I got no allies, no nationality, no gang, no homeboys. No nothin. I’m rodent-boy scampering in the urban wasteland. Of course local boys will kill a rodent just for the fun. Like when they set that homeless man on fire just to watch him burn. Dad said it wasn’t like that when he was growing up. It’s nice to know that I’m living in America’s decline and fall. That’s what my teacher Mr. Wingnute said when he was talking about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, that there are lots of similarities, like fast food, TV and movies taking the place of bread and circus and football games being like the gladiators fighting it out in the Coliseum and people stuffing themselves until they vomit, shit like that. And all I have to do is look around the classroom and see that yeah the country is declining fast and has already hit bottom in my neighborhood.
I guess it could be worse, like a
survivor of the Holocaust could say “I’ve seen a lot worse,” but who would want
to go through that nightmare just so living in America don’t seem so bad? You’d
think that after the Jewish extermination the world would have grown up and
said Let’s all try to get along. Yeah right.
No way, and I’ll tell you why. There’s only one thing dumber than teenagers and
that’s adults because adults should know better but they don’t. I mean just
take a look at the world and ask yourself what do you see and who’s responsible?
Take those Holocaust survivors, you’d of thought they would of wanted to
teach the world something about getting along but what do they do? They turn
Palestine into a concentration camp for those poor Palestinians. And what do
the Palestinians do? They start shooting each other. Go figure. But it just
goes to show you that the only difference between the teenage world I live in
and the adult world everyone lives in is that the adults got the power to do
more harm. You’d probably say, “What about the good things like NASA and going
to the moon and such?” I’ll tell you a little secret. I don’t blame scientists
wanting to build a spaceship so they can escape all the bullshit that goes on
here, but if they go to some other planet like Altaira it wouldn’t be long
before Altaira becomes just like Earth, totally fucked up, and then the nerds
would want to build another spaceship to escape to another planet.
It’s like the Europeans who left
Europe and went to America to create a better society (their slaves doing all the heavy lifting) as soon as they killed off the Indians and buffalos. What do they have to show
for it? Places like Alta Vista and Compton. I know this is a real pessimistic
view of things but any talk about people gets pessimistic. If you want to keep
the conversation positive then you can’t talk about people because talking
about people is like talking about different types of diseases. Each group of
people, as far as I can tell, is a different type of disease. You got of course
the American disease, but you also got the Jewish disease, and lately the Arab
disease, and the Mexican disease and the Russian disease. The European diseases
have been dormant but the Holocaust survivors can tell you all about the last
outbreak. Man, I got stop talking about people because I’m putting a downer on
paying my respects to Tyrone and the little girl. I mean that’s why so many
people prefer pets or having a hobby like Dad did when he had a garage before the divorce where he’d
make stuff. Mom’s hobby was gardening, though I spoiled it because sometimes
she’d find a dead bird that I’d shot with a BB gun I got for Christmas, but that’s another story.
Anyway, just think about it a
second. Who would you prefer to have as a roommate, the president of the United
States or a cute pug with its curly tail, bulgy eyes and worried look? I mean
no one in their right mind would want to live with an American president even
for a couple of days. You’d go homicidal like that Moslem dude who went a gay bar with a machine gun. Dad said that the presidents insufferable because they're
politicians and all politicians are insufferable. I asked Dad what the word means because he
likes it when I ask those kinds of questions, and if he don’t know (or just
pretends he don’t) then he goes to his room and brings out a big
dictionary and says something like, “Let’s find out exactly what that word
means, Freddy,” and he’ll sit down at the kitchen table and I’ll go over acting
real interested because I know it pleases him because it’s like a father and
son teaching moment. “It says, difficult or impossible to endure; intolerable.
That’s politicians alright.” So there you have it, the president’s in the dictionary
and it’s the pug for certain as your roommate because pugs are loveable and
politicians are insufferable.
