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Clifford Lewis5.18.97
This is the first one, second one actually, but due to various catastrophic crashes no one seems to have the first one, except me, as hard copy, and anyway its full of small errors, but for me does have one crucial line which I would appreciate being taken somewhat seriously---"As it would be far too tedious to change all the names of people I will be mentioning I must insist that you read all further missives as fiction. None of these people exist and none of this is happening." ) Clifford Lewis, a twenty-year-old young man raised by Mama D goes by the name Kojak and while shirtless sports the pucker
of bullet wounds across his stomach and back, wounds inflicted during his fifteenth year. More of a ladies man than a street hustling drug dealer, Kojak follows the flow of current events and avoids conflict to the best of his ability. Sometimes seen on the block holding his newborn son, Kojak will smoke that blunt, and rap a few modern lyrics, but mostly stays on the border of any serious business dealings in the area. The mother of the baby boy Clifford, aka., Peanut, is in jail on a charge unrelated to shooting through the front door of Kojak's ex-girlfriend across the street here about six months ago. For a man of his age in this environment, Kojak has been plenty respectful of the two white people at 2646. On one occasion at the Magnolia convenience store across the street Mandy found herself laughing at the sexual advances one young gangster was making towards a young girl, and while the young man was inclined towards getting in Mandy's face over this small humiliation, Kojak, with some theatrics, dissuaded the other young man from pursuing his actions. So Mandy likes him and perhaps Kojak appreciates (and is yearnful of, himself) the time Mandy spends with his younger blood relations on the street. Just a week ago Mandy had put out on the front porch some coloring books and crayons for the younger children to play with and when she came out a bit later she found Kojak proudly displaying his colored picture and asking Mandy her opinion of its worth compared to his sister, LuLu's. LuLu is a fourteen-year-old honor student.
Going Home
Even though I ( in yet another of my freakish screaming fits) kicked Shelton out of the house for the night, I saved him the obituary; its sitting over there on the bed.
"When they come out, usually a few days after?" Shelton had asked.
"Yeah," I had said.
"I went to school (Phillis Wheatley Elementary) with both them boys, Mr. Jim."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, the one that got killed, his name was..."
Charles DaVince "Hubba Bubba" Mabon died Sunday of a gunshot wound in the 1700 block of Lafitte Street. He was 14.
"And that other boy got shot, I knew him too."
(The boys were in a group of four youths walking home shortly before 1 a.m. in the 1700 block of Lafitte Street (near Roman) when the gunman approached. After robbing the juveniles, the robber shot two of them, in their heads, without provocation, police said.)
In other local news ( 12-year-old Troy "MIcey" Harvey, who was living in an abandoned Algiers apartment building with his 13-year-old brother, was shot in the neck by police Thursday after he allegedly leaped out of the closet he was hiding in and lunged for the officer's gun). Both of the Harvey boys have arrest records, a dead father, and a mother addicted to crack. And without TV in their abandoned apartment, and probable sub-standard reading abilities, surely neither of them were fully aware of the tribulations of Elian Gonzalez.
DONL 6
Its not like you have to love all black people because they are black. It's not like you have to extend special treatment to a black person who is behaving in a way that irks you. Irks you. In fact you may fantasize about an imminent demise of such a person, regardless of shade. I do.
The SuperBowl was a good one this year. McNair's final efforts were inspiration personified. That they were efforts which amounted to a loss matters little. That they occurred only minutes after I had in genuine anger called a man a punk ass bitch, and suggested he suck my dick matters maybe only to me.
Phillis invited me across the street to her SuperBowl Party. It would be the first gathering of certain family members since the death of Mama D, and Phillis's subseqent draconian methodology executing the lack of a will. Evelyn was there. And Nettie, and BaBa, and Yacqui showed up. Glynn and KaKa and Shelton were there. And others, but probably not enough were there to appreciate the spread that Phillis had layed out. There is never a shortage of food or drink at the gatherings of Phillis. Also at the gathering was Joe Nixon, oldest living son of Mama D. Cro-Magnum in both appearance and style, Joe and I have been at odds since the beginning, but after Mama D's death he upped the stakes by spreading rumors that there was something perverse about the relationship between Mandy and Shelton. The rumor was ignored by everyone, but the motive behind it was not ignored by me. He had officially waged war.
I had a couple of years before narrowly missed pulverizing the fingers on his left hand while he sat on the porch making what I deemed inappropriate comments. I had given a verbal warning followed almost immediately with an overhand hammer-in-hand direct miss-by-an-inch of his splayed fingers. He seemed to understand at that moment that I would play only so much.
But like I said, the SuperBowl party was a first reuniting of members of the D clan who perhaps had been on opposite sides of several issues. Basically it was Phillis and Joe on one side, everybody else on the other. So it could have been a good opportunity to resolve some bad feelings. But Joe, who is not liked by many people often finds antagonism his only mode of meaningful communication. Otherwise, given our druthers, most of us would just ignore him.
Evelyn would have liked to ignore him, sleeping off as she was, the contraindicated results of medications mixed with alcohol, but Joe felt a need to get under her skin, felt the need to see his sister explode. He had previously been trying to fuck with me but I was feeling pretty good, it was halftime, and there did not appear to be all that much on TV I was missing by the verbal sparring he was forcing on me. He was trying to make a point he has tried to make before--that Mandy and I aren't through with each other and therefore he is a direct challenge to me because it upsets me when he (crudely) hits on her. He was this time trying his case before Judge Yacqui, who at the time was only a few days out of jail. For my closing arguments I said,
"Joe, I've told you this before, if you weren't as ugly and stupid as you are, and Mandy had even a little bit of interest in you, and you acted with some class while hitting on her, even in front of me, it would be ok. But Mandy is a friend, and if I ever hear you come on to her again in that low class disrespectful way of yours, I will rip off your fuckin' head and shit down your neck." I knew I was being immature, but I could not help it.
Yacqui scored in favor of me.
Joe went off to fuck with the sleeping Eveyln, and eventually succeeded in pissing her off.
The third quarter began and I got a fresh budweiser and shot of whiskey.
At some point Joe came back, armed with the innuendo of fact--Mandy and Jim don't sleep together, what must that mean? That's when I stood up in front of Joe's seated self, worked my zipper up and down in front of his face, called him a punk ass bitch, and suggested he suck my dick. Phillis was standing right next to me when I did this. I had lost it. I knew it, she knew it, and the evening was ending as so many of these gatherings ended, with someone making a complete ass of themselves. I never dreamed I would get to be the one, but life is full of surprises, yeah?
Joe and I went outside shortly after my insult and acted like there was going to be a fight. No one else came outside though which is a fair reflection of the type of fight card Joe and I amount to. Phillis did eventually come out and "break us up," and I came back inside apologizing profusely to whoever would listen. Joe was sent away. I apologized some more and said I should go. Yacqui and Nettie said don't be silly, have another drink, finish watching the game. So I did. Great game.
DONL 5
I was taking a little nap early Friday evening when I was awakened by the shadow and heat of Erica Lewis, who was in the flesh standing alongside my bed. "Hi Erica," I said, bonking her cool forehead with the open palm of my all purpose "be-healed" healing power.
Six-year-old Erica was living across the street prior to the death last September of Mama D. She was then shipped off, along with her fifteen-year-old Uncle Shelton, to South Central LA for awhile to live with her Aunt Stephanie. And then Erica and Shelton were brought back, Shelton to live with Mandy and (for the short term) I, and Erica was captured by the stable but slightly scary, Aunt Gwynn. And then I didn't see her for a long while, during which period her birth mom, Tesa, came back from her visit in California (following the arrest of her and Shelton's father, who was hiding in the Compton area to avoid a New Orleans arrest warrant). Tesa is very likeable and intelligent, but perhaps the definition of unstable. Still, she recaptured Erica, and now they live on Claiborne with Ba(y) Ba(y) and Glynn's (out of jail) mom, Nettie, and (out of jail) Aunt Yacqui, who used to spend nights smoking crack in the 55 Chevy pickup parked in front of this house four years ago.
With Erica it was love at first sight but somewhere in the middle of that last paragraph's reality there came an emotion that won't situate itself on the charts. It is a mixture of admiration, fear for her future, and a resigned but respectful hatred of those who would besmirch her race, her culture, her being.
Timmy has begun trimming the next house we will do at English Turn and since he is by himself he will come to the job we are all on and eat lunch with us. He starts with,
" When times got hard last year I had to do a little job in New Orleans, installing some cabinets, over on Roman, I don't know which projects I was near..."
"The Lafitte," I said. "That's where Mama D came from." And did not add that frequent guests in this house, Jacque Lewis, and sisters Antoinette, Tiesha, and Roshona Lewis still live in the Lafitte.
"Yeah, I think it was those. Anyway, the fuckin' niggers, I mean none of them have jobs, so they sleep late, you wouldn't see them in the morning, but the afternoon and those porch monkeys would be out in numbers. Even in the morning when I couldn't see them I would only unload the tools I could carry, then lock the truck, carry them up, come back, unlock the truck, get some more tools, lock the truck, and so on."
Apparently, Timmy feels the need to distance himself from the accusation made by his mother earlier in the week, that he and his wife arguing and fighting like they do, "are no better than niggers." And I think he's doing a really super job.
DONL 4
My "preferred electrician," Carl, came to the job at English Turn yesterday. We're still working on the outside of the house which sits across the bay (that's Bonita Bay, man-made pond), from the home of Slim and Baby Williams of (rap label) Cash Money Productions. At the end of last year one of the brothers bought the other a $335,000 Bentley Azure for his birthday, and at the party they proceeded to dance on the hood, and likewise at last month's birthday party for the brother who didn't get the Bentley, `the latest Ferrari was presented as a gift (with a measly $150,000 price tag), and the dancing brother did his signature soft shoe on the hood.
Anyway, Carl, like many of my well-meaning co-workers, wishes I didn't live with the coloreds like I do and yesterday expressed the sentiment thusly: "why don't you move out of that colored neighborhood and come live among the decent people of Harrahan." Carl lives in Harrahan, a New Orleans suburb that is not only white, but has quietly (David Duke never lived there) been able to sustain itself as a Louisiana "Pleasantville" type of community since the beginning of time. Only none of the frames ever go technicolor.
Carl's boss Steve, younger by twenty-five years, and although apparently not all that fond of the darker race either, at least has some higher education which allows me the freedom of bombast, and the dropping of the occasional malapropism.
"Did you here that, Steve? What was that he just did? Wasn't that one of those oxymoronical paradoxes, 'the decent people of Harrahan,' my ass. You people are going to burn in your self-created hell for your hateful ways."
Carl said, "Good, 'long as there ain't no niggers."
"So Carl, will you come wire my house for me?"
"I'm not going to have the time."
"Next."
And that's how I go about the hiring process to get the highest quality sub-contractors to help me with the renovation of my new blighted ghetto property.
DONL 3
When I pulled up in front of Dumaine after ripping out the old galvanized plumbing pipes under and inside the Rocheblave house, I saw Van across the street washing Royalston's (Mama D's former companion) truck. I was negotiating my truck around the sink hole by the curb and Van was motioning me to park across the street behind Royalston's truck so he could wash mine afterwards. He does me for five bucks which is half the going rate. I'm not really looking for a wash so I just wave at him and exit the vehicle.
He pauses from his work to cross over and talk to me--touch bases as it were--about the Rocheblave job, what did I do today, and will I be needing his help tomorrow. I tell him I'm just piddling around over there, and that I'm hoping to run into Carl--my preferred electrician--on the job in the next few days so I can convince him to wire the house, but before that get me hooked up with temporary electricity so I can get some power tools running, rip out and replace a couple of floors, replace a rafter and a joist or two, do a little bracing here and there, replace the roof, and get whatever I need to get done before begging my preferred plumber to find the time to do my plumbing rough in for one bath, a kitchen, a washer/dryer hookup, and a gas water heater. Van's cool with that but he's really bored over here on Dumaine and needs something constructive to do so please let him know when I need some more help. I told him I would, and gave him an ice cold Budweiser from my cooler, and then I see--and he sees me--(from) across the street, coming from The Magnolia, HP.
"Oh Lord, and he saw me give you that beer."
Van looked over, chuckled, and said, "Don't let him fool you today, Slim, he got that money."
"Okay Van." Van crossed back to finish washing Royalston's truck as HP stumbled up to the curb and greeted me,
"Hey buddy."
"Hello HP."
"Have a beer for me, buddy?"
"No, not for you."
"Why you do me like that, Jim?"
"I need twenty-five dollars, I know you have it, I want it, I want it now."
HP reached into his pocket and brought out a quarter and showed it to me on the platter of his cracked black palm. White whiskers sprouted haphazardly on his chin and cheeks. He was wearing wrap around sun glasses, and a mis-matching blue work uniform from a career gone by, or the thrift store."This is all I have. Let me get that beer."
He was not offering me the quarter.
I took from my cooler another ice cold Budweiser, and gave it to HP.
"I seen you working on that house over by the Schwegmann's" (Schwegmann's was a local grocery chain that went bankrupt. The new store owners operate under the name of Robert's Market Fare, or something, but no one in the neighborhood will ever call it that).
"So you saw me working over there, HP, and you just kept on moving, huh?"
"You over there in that colored neighborhood, buddy."
"Coloreds, where coloreds?"
"Let me get a dollar big spender, so's I can get a cigar 'cross the street."
"I'm your sugar daddy now?"
"All right, you crazy white boy."
Ah, the race card, we have always left that one out of the deck for these games.
"Oh so now it's about skin color, yeah HP?"
"Don't make me get the rope, little buddy."
"Why are you always talking about getting that rope, HP? You gonna hang me?"
"Hog tie you, hog tie you to that fence."
"Then what?"
"You don't wanna know. Crazy white boy." And then it's as if he had never realized how liberating it felt to call a crazy white boy a "crazy white boy" because he says it a couple of more times, but loud enough for most of the block to hear. Van is washing and laughing now, and I'm acting hurt, and getting ready to pretend hurtful.
"So that's what its all about then, huh HP? Always about the color, you old crusty colored coot, you. You, you negro."
"Okay that's it, I'm getting the rope."
"Good."
"Let me get another beer, Jim. This one's almost empty."
I look down into the top of his beer and there is barely a sip gone.
"That one's still full. Why is it you're not happy until you tap the white boy. You're not my friend, you just see me as someone to take advantage of. And I gotta tell you, that really hurts me."
"That's not true, buddy. Let me get a dollar."
Crossing Roads
BB (I call him double B and he calls me double J) once told me it would be ok
if I used the word "nigger" conversationally. I don't know if that was an
official ruling handed down by higher ups in the hood or if he was just
saying it would be ok with him. I told him even with official permission
there were too many reasons why I probably wouldn't be comfortable with the
term and so "thank you my nigger, but I believe I will be niggardly with my
use of the word 'nigger.'"
Still, there a bunch of niggers hangin' on my porch today, not a one of 'em
can say they never been to jail: drug dealers, murderers, armed robbers among
the bunch, and what with the infusion of white people in the area for
Jazzfest, dealing is up and the whole scene has become too ordinary, boring
even, so I feel the need to challenge myself to new heights of scary which
has me in the car heading off to Veterans Blvd. in Metairie.
If you think crossing Delancey is a challenge just try Veterans someday; its
the area's widest corridor of retail hell. Need something? Shoes, cars,
clothes, computers, tires, oil change, books, a cappuccino or latte', a
smoothie, vitamins, bicycles, lawn or garden equipment, sporting goods, or
any damn household product you could possibly name, can be found somewhere
along the several mile stretch of Veterans Blvd. In triplicate. Hey, are
you hungry? Same story. All the food that's fit to eat and some that ain't
but still sells because its cheap. Which brings me to this:
I am a warrior for new experience. Or more truthfully--I am a coward who
likes to challenge himself. Or, I'm just too easily bored and will
cautiously try anything to beat the affliction.
And it's too late to turn back without making a scene. I am part of a queue,
singular only in number. Like everyone else here at the Pancho's all you can
eat buffet I came to get more than my money's worth, which, if we may all be
clued in to the obvious, is next to impossible. One can only eat so much
cornmeal.
So why all the hype, where's the danger? I can only give you the coordinates
and suggest you look and see for yourself. The Pancho's on Veterans Blvd. in
Metairie, Louisiana is as good an excuse for using drugs as I can find. In
fact, the mundane surreality of this place demands that one be drugged so
that there be an excuse for all the damning imagery of humanity that presents
itself at your every glance. A good writer would give the details, but alas,
I am a hack, and a coward, and cannot deliver those goods. I'll go back
though because its a well run outfit, no question about that, and I like how
the food is the same as it was twenty-five years ago when I frequented the
Pancho's in Dallas. And also, because these middle class white trash
warriors who scare me plenty represent a part of who I am, a bigger part than
I would like to admit, and it is always a mistake to turn away from these
truths when you find them.
Now, getting back to this "nigger" thing.
Besides being a coward, I'm not very bright, and therefore found myself back
at that pitiful little strip of beach in Waveland, Mississippi. Shelton,
Glynn, Fermin, and Lance have been yearning for the water now that the
weather is threatening to be permanently hot and I just refuse to listen to
the nagging inside me which says--"do not continue these trips to the beach
in Waveland, Mississippi where, in three years time, you have never seen
another black person, but have in fact had your charges singled out with the
salutation--"hey you niggers."
Today, crossing the road to the beach, three of the four boys walked in front
of the wrong car (they truly should have been paying better attention to the
traffic) and earned this--"you little niggers better watch where you go." I
was still waiting to cross with Lance and I just stood there until I realized
a truck was stopped and waiting for us to proceed. The first three boys were
walking backwards to the beach, facing me, there expressions were all the
same question mark. When we met I had for them no good news, no consolation.
"We're a good distance from Dumaine fellas, and ya'll need to respect all
the possibilities along this stretch of road."
I sat on the beach and watched them travel through the shallow water until
they were just little black specks a quarter of a mile away,
indistinguishable from each other, and from the two white boys they had met
on the way out.
A family to my right was set up on that line where beach meets water. The
chubby teenage daughter was taunting her step daddy, Art, whom she called
"Fart," by pointing first to one bikini cup, and then the other, saying, "I
don't guess you'll be having anymore cigarettes, and I don't guess you'll be
needin' your beeper neither, and no fair touchin'." Art was sitting in the
water drinking bottled beer and smoking a cigarette. Art's over weight wife
was much younger than he and had two rather large tattoos, one on each
shoulder blade. Of the three remaining children, two were young girls who
were not yet showing any signs that generations of inbreeding was a problem
to overcome. The youngest boy was a poster child for "don't talk baby talk
to your children or they'll grow up talking like adults who talk like babies."
Fermin, no doubt tired of the verbal abuse from his cousins, came closer to
shore and tried to interest me in water sport. But I'm not interested in the
salt water or all that sand truth be told, and am just trying to be a good
sport until its time to go home, which will be soon. Fermin wanders out
fifty yards or so. Art is yucking it up to his kids, "hey, look at that one,
stayed out in the sun a little too long, turned him black."
I am just trying to be a good sport until its time to go home, which will be
soon.
DONL 2
Last year I wrote to some of you about an event at the Superdome known as the
SuperFair, which is a big carnival with rides inside the Dome. It is another
predominantly black attended event at the Superdome which some of my
co-workers think would be a great event to bomb, kill the coloreds.
What I wrote about last year was a drive-by shooting outside the Dome one of
the nights after the fair. Whoever did that shooting is still at large, but
the shooting that was done in retaliation has eight or nine people facing
charges. Four are facing first degree murder charges which carries a
possible death penalty.
The idea that night after the first shooting was to go into enemy
territory--presumably the neighborhood of the first shooter--and then "kill
anyone we see." That "anyone" turned out to be a kid named Tim, and he was
called Big Tim because he was big for his age, that age being
twelve-years-old. But he looked older to the multiple car loads of searching
18-20 year olds, and the fact that he was limping from a sprained ankle did
not enter into the equation for these teenagers with a vendetta. Up
Cambronne in Pigeontown Big Tim walked until he saw a group of boys with
obvious ill intent exit a vehicle, and then he started running, as best he
could. The boys ran after him, shooting as they went. Two car loads of
boys trailed after in the street. The boys in this trailing group copped
pleas, turned states evidence and will average five year sentences. The boys
chasing Tim eventually caught him because one of the bullets entered his
spine and caused him to fall down. And this is how it goes here: after Tim
fell down from an obvious bullet wound, these boys did not freak out and jump
in their cars to flee. These four boys stood over Tim's large dying
twelve-year-old body and fired more bullets into the flesh of his torso, and
into his head.
I don't know anything about this kid, Tim. Maybe he wasn't an innocent, but
twelve-year-old's should not end this way.
I have driven around this small town extensively during my searches for
property and I know the streets and neighborhoods pretty well. When a murder
happens here I can often picture almost exactly where it happened, and these
memories have become a plotted map inside my head. And there are days when
the math comes to bear down on me and everywhere I go I see bloodstains on
the sidewalks. My first two years here the city recorded a total of almost
eight hundred murders. For a per capita comparison to a city the size of NY
I multiply by twenty and get sixteen thousand.
And I have to some degree integrated myself into this predominately black New
Orleans community and I know many of the children and I know some of the
murderers, and as frustrating as it can get here with people constantly
dropping trash in the streets, and disrespecting each other, and cussing, and
killing, I still cannot arrive at a place where I can understand this all
encompassing hatred that is felt by so many of the area whites, or the
blinding fear and intolerance which rules so many of the little minds 'round
here.
I have become kind of numb to "n" word, and try not to let offenders get
under my skin. But the cumulative effect still wears me down in the end and
there are times when my white friends say "nigger" and I just smile the smile
of system shut down, tap my foot as eulogy to the boy(s) with no father(s),
the boy no one hugged, who received no compliments ever, and never a special
treatment, but did one day gain a notoriety, bleeding out, on a street corner.
DONL 1
I bought my school bus yellow 85 Dodge pickup with Cadillac spoke hubcaps and
a homemade plywoood bedcover from a trim carpenter named Timmy. Timmy is
having marital problems which somehow have become so out of hand that his
whole family has come to witness numerous fights between Timmy and wife, and
some of these fights have occurred in front of their two children. Timmy's
mom found this last bit so upsetting that she mailed him a letter which very
uncharacteristically had her espousing the rather base opinion that by
fighting like they do at so many family gatherings, and in front of their
children, "they are no better than niggers."
As insults go among the average white Louisianan, this was a doozy. For it
to come from a mother to a son is almost unthinkable. Timmy once said to me
that the annual college football game between Grambling and Southern would be
a good time to put a bomb in the Superdome because "you could kill so many
fuckin' niggers." That pretty much expresses a prevailing sentiment among
white people in Louisiana. No, not all white people feel that way here, but
more than you would like to believe. Many, many more than you would like to
believe. Or so I presume (what you would like to believe).
I used to explain to my likeable yet so completely casual rascist white
co-workers that white and black people in Louisiana to the casual observer
that I am, have more in common culturally than any white/black population I
have ever been around. "You eat the same foods, you are influenced by each
other's music, and the way whites around here talk sounds more black than
white much of time," I would antagonize. "You say 'ax' for 'ask', you say
'zink' for 'sink', you say 'I'm going to make groceries,' whereas the rest of
the white world is saying 'I'm going grocery shopping.'"
That the two races have been "mixing" around here for three hundred years is
a most beautifully obvious thing and yet vehemently denied on individual
basis's.
And coming home from an average summer work day to be met by a front porch
full of neighborhood youth, some gangsters, and maybe a parent or two, all
black skinned, playing dominoes, or card games like pity pat, or tonk, and
the only thing more frustrating than hearing them refer to each other as
"nigger" is the absolutely ridiculous refrain of "don't say that, Mr. Jim (or
Miss Amanda) don't like you using that word up here." I suspect I hear the
word "nigger" coming from black mouths more than white. I don't know what
that means, but I've heard it used as an excuse many times: "Shit, they call
themselves that, why can't we?"
At some point I just stopped answering, out loud.