KewalnamChrist
09-01-2015, 06:15 PM
ACT I
Track three
“COONSKIN, CIRCA ’1619”
Don't you have other things to do? Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Maybe you find some arbitrary connection to Yasiin, which propels you to keep reading. Or you feel that these pages will serve as some sort of escape from the mundane and the mania around you. I wish that were the case, sadly it is not. Rose, coral, and violet ignite in smoke across the wildfire sky, setting the clouds ablaze. Yasiin chased the New York streets, running on the heels of his Jag. The past few weeks seemed to meld together, everyday as repetitive as it’s predecessor. His life was becoming a twisted bureaucratic satire, noosed by cliche, precarious and prosaic. Liah had occupied days at a time with her wedding plans, varying from location scouting, calligraphy, to tasting the cake for the big day. The longer the monkey danced, the better his performance was. He didn’t understand the need for marriage. It was obsolete to him. Just another debt we owed our mothers, something to feel like we haven’t amounted to bums or the men they ****ed. He was neither, so marriage was pointless. Yasiin hardly drove into the city for work, but this morning he woke up dreading the idea of being pressed into the small slit of space between a white hog in a stripped suit sweating through polyester, and a skinny crow faced woman screeching about repentance. He followed the white grainy lines in the road, watching the world rotate on it’s *** through his rearview mirror. If you want a vision of what we’ve become, then imagine a boot stomping into the face of the human race forever. We are flat, boring, and lame, living in burden of our shear stupidity. We exist without culture, without love, without anger and sorrow, everyday getting meta and meta. Despite the insistence and persistence of our existence, we are only seconds, gone in an instant. Stuck in a loop-sequence reel, nothing we see or feel here is real, said some buddhist on fifth ave. Pulling off the interstate, Yasiin slowly rolled to a stop in front of a red light, watching the yellow cabs jitter from body to corner in search of passengers. Looking in his rearview mirror, he noticed three bodies in ragged formation, shuffle through the endless lines of cars behind him, all of them silent as the sky in black uniform and glossy black boots. Cars inched forward through the noise, slowly pushing their noses towards the cluttered streets. Yasiin stared out into the streets, frantically tracing every corner for the bodies in black uniform. As sweat bled from his brow, he shrunk himself in his seat, confident that if he sat still enough he would go completely unnoticed.
Raapp! Rapap! Rappap!
He watched as a ring of shiny badges, wrapped around his vehicle, boxing him in. Onlookers, judges, prosecutors, niggers, winos and crack-whores stopped in their walk, irresistibly drawn to the chaos en route. Kids were terrified. Some adults were too, though more of them were just plain curious about the pygmy in Ota Benga's iron cage. The sharp taps of gunmetal drummed against his window with more force as pigs with the heads of men brandished their belligerence, eager to unload their 22’s, Sig Sauers and Beretta’s before nine am coffee and pastries.
“Take your hands off the the wheel, and get the **** out of the car with your hands up!” An officer shouted, cocking the hammer of his Sig as he inched in closer. Yasiin gripped tightly onto the steering wheel, fearful of making any sudden movements. He knew if he got out of the car he would be dead before the door closed.
“Holy ****… Holy ****… what the **** is happening? What do I do? What… What do I do?” He thought to himself, struggling to breathe against the weight of his anxiety. He closed his eyes, slowly counting back from ten. Retracing every step he took in the past few days and the secrets he buried along the way. It was impossible for them to know anything, that would imply that cops are smart. They weren’t here to arrest Yasiin Baako the psychopath or to enforce some form of justice, he always obeyed the speed limit, always used turn signals, and never dared to cruise around with broken tail lights during owl hours. They were here to protect the public from the biddable black man, he was not a criminal, he was a target.
“GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP NOW”
“Why?”
“SIR WERE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU AGAIN, GET OUT OF THE CAR.”
“What crime have I committed?”
“I will ****ing light you up cocksucker. Get out of the car NOW.”
“NO.”
The officers moved in closer, aimed, loaded and ready.
“You have five seconds before I unload this clip into your head.”
“No.”
“Five, Four, Three…”
The static of sound waves comes through, and a muffled voice on the end says
“Dispatch come in
Dispatch come in”
The officers lowered their weapons as New York fell silent.
“Go for dispatch…”
“The suspect has been apprehended. All officers IN THE AREA are too report back to the station.”
Without a parting glance the officers took off in red and blue lights, leaving Yasiin in a pool of his sweat, numb and paralyzed. He tried to make sense of the injustice he had just faced, but knew he couldn’t rationalize the inequality. Christ, Plato, Foucault and Faulkner held on to the edge of their seats, anxious for Yasiin’s next move on the minstrel show. His silence fell into a recess of liberty, where the monopolies of freedom have long ago been relinquished, forgone and abandoned. For him racism was a foreign land, something he had watched on PBS once. He was never stopped and frisked on his way to work or had difficulty catching a cab in the city, or had to worry about old ladies guarding their purse’s as he walked behind them. Unlike Du Bois he had consciously declared America his home, and by extension himself as American and nothing else. Yet he had taken hits from both ‘Honest Abe’ and his aristocratic adversaries, leaving saline fingerprints on darkened cheekbones.
He wanted to rip their spines out their throats, to rebel against the generational divide that sucked the X from Malcolm’s name with a political vacuum, but he was a monster, he was not a man. A guttural scream tumbled from his lips, echoing throughout the city blocks. Yasiin reached into his glove compartment, took out two pastel pills and crushed them between his teeth. Where most consider their individual relationship to the universe or whatever God their forced to believe in, he contemplated his relationships to the other. Ralph Ellison’s hopeful insistence on the Negro’s centrality to American culture finds, at last, a certain tawdry confirmation, him.
He shut his eyes to the world, hoping they’d all drop dead.
Anger, despair and desolation mingled together in misery, as Yasiin surfed the shaft of the empty elevator. He twisted about the rising steel cage, shouting deliriously and cursing the very God that birthed him black. Yasiin had spent his entire life fitting in. He wore the proper clothes, had the proper job, and was engaged to the proper woman. He never rebelled against the assault on black poor, negro middle class elitism or unemployment. Or raised a fist for any fallen solider who shared the color of his skin, he broke all rules with discretion and anonymity, it was almost conferred upon him as a title. But like many callow coons Yasiin was duped and disillusioned into believing a man could exist as man in a*country that hung him from trees for sport and pleasure. He had been to every therapist middle-class-money could buy since he was ten, and had swallowed more than a whole cabinet worth of psycho-pharmaceuticals, from Thorazine, Nardil, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Valium, Librium, Xanax and Klonopin to temper his outbursts, but there respite never lasted. He always found himself back here, waring with his own Tyler Durden. Yasiin picked at his face in the reflection of the cold metallic doors, pulling at his cheek, bearing his teeth, and pressing his fingers roughly against the bones in his face. He wanted to tear every layer of skin off of his body, he was not equipped to make peace with mediocrity. Yasiin wanted to walk as bone, sinew, and blood, a man without a face, a man without a name. He began punching the steel walls, rattling the rage that was bubbling forth. The metallic doors opened, exposing his tantrum to the main floor of The New Yorker and it’s ginger faced secretary. Blowing past her tiny desk and shrill voice, Yasiin made his way towards Liah’s office. He barreled through her door, swiftly shutting it behind him, locking out the annoying ginger girl who fluttered behind him.
“Yasiin?!” Liah shouted, popping up from her desk.
“Hello? Liah? Is everything alright?” asked the high-pitched secretary as she wrestled with the doorknob. Walking to the door Liah unlocked it, opening it just enough to stick her head out,
“Yes, I’m fine Kara, everything’s okay, can you bring me two grande latte’s from the Starbucks on the corner. One with an extra shot, and the other with two pumps of french vanilla.*Oh, and ask Vanessa to cover the phone’s while you go, thank you.”
She pushed the door in and sharply turned to Yasiin,
“Why are you here?” Liah asked, walking back over to her desk. She felt infuriated by his incessant insolence, over the course of their relationship, Yasiin has invaded and warped every piece of her life and her job was the last thing she had left for herself.
“Why am I here? Why the **** am I here? Why haven’t you answered your Goddamn cell phone Liah? I called you like twenty times, you couldn’t find a second to answer for me? You’re too ****ing busy or something?” Yasiin shouted, slamming his fist into her desk.
“DO NOT break **** in my office, all you see right here, is mine, and I work damn hard for mine. I didn’t answer your call, cause I’m at work nigga, what? You couldn’t find one of your side *****es to answer your call? You had to barge up to my workplace with your bull****.”
“Do you even know why I called you? I had guns pointed at me Liah, ****ing guns. Right at me, and you weren't there. You weren’t there to do anything about it. It… it… was like a movie. There was drama, action, adventure, but I wasn’t in the directors chair, I was a ****ing disposable extra.”
“Can you please cut the movie **** and just talk straight please, ****, it’s so annoying. TALK TO ME” She pleaded, watching him struggle to keep himself together.
“I AM TALKING TO YOU LIAH, I HAD GUNS POINTED AT ME. ARE YOU NOT LISTENING?”
“So one of your girls finally fought back?” Liah asked sarcastically, tapping her heel against the edge of the desk. Her stare cold and devoid of intent.
“It was the cops Liah, ****ing pigs held me at gun point. They were going to kill me, I know it, I felt it, and I was unprepared. I didn’t watch 12 Years A Slave or Fruitvale Station, whenever someone tried to sell me on the idea that I should care, I always laughed it off. I resented this voyeurism of my blackness through the lens of slavery or overt racism. It was just another ****ing reminder of how I’m seen, a 134 min snuff film with a bigger budget.” Yasiin said, fighting back the bitter tears.
“I… I…I was ready Liah, I was ready for my life to end. One swift bullet above my ear and it would of over. I felt like all the oxygen had left the car, like there was no escape.” The despair Liah heard between the cracks in his voice were almost enough to make her feel some form of empathy for the monster that sat before her. But alas, she felt nothing. She stood beside him for years, beyond just this moment.
Their true American romance simply amounted to two people stepping into the role of lovers and acting through the pre-fabricated scenes as best they could. There was nothing genuine to their union. There was nothing real to it. The dating was about dating. The sex was about getting off. Maybe he loved her, maybe he didn’t, the truth was de minimis. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. Liah knew their relationship had ultimately been rooted in her own lurid, misguided fantasy. One she force-fed herself for years past and years to come. The flowers... the chocolates... the nostalgia of dating and anniversaries and whatnot, was obligated for the survival of the relationship. They didn’t suffer from suburbanite simplicities of money problems or infidelity and unease with the in-laws. They suffered from something much more sinister, cruel and wicked, the promise that he was anything more than what he presented, an image of an image. Still, she had a role to play like everyone else, so she memorized her lines, ready to read them with more vigor and avidity than before.
“What happened, Yasiin?” she asked softly, holding his hand in hers.
“Three cops approached me at gun point, ordering me out of my car… When I refused I-”
“Refused to get out? What do you mean refused to get out?” She said, her voice adopting his edge.
“I meant exactly what I said, I refused to get out. And I was told that I had five seconds or my body would be riddled with bullets.”
“I assuming that’s when you came to your senses and got out the car.” She said, her eyes flashing about restlessly.
“No, I didn’t come to my sense. I sat in my car, and again refused to get out of my car because I was well within my rights not to.”
“I knew you were arrogant, but I never thought you were stupid too. What the **** were you thinking?”
“Well within your rights, what ****ing right is that? The right to die in the street like an animal of your own willing cooperation.” She said, laughing as if she said something witty.
“I mean c’mon, what were you thinking?”
He paused for a moment,
“WHAT was I thinking? Are you serious Liah? I wasn’t even in the wrong here. I was thinking my life was going to end, that in a matter of a few seconds, everything that I am would be nothing more than a ****ing hashtag. Another moment of nostalgia for the oppression and unjust killing of black men at the hands of police officers. Another name to add to the list.” The words almost sounded like fiction coming from his mouth, he didn’t believe himself anymore than she did.
“So, what are you now? Some kind of martyr, you the revolutionary for the black cause? Please let me know, so I can start planning a funeral instead of a wedding. When did you give a **** about a black kid being shot? Or who did the shooting anyway?”
Track three
“COONSKIN, CIRCA ’1619”
Don't you have other things to do? Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Maybe you find some arbitrary connection to Yasiin, which propels you to keep reading. Or you feel that these pages will serve as some sort of escape from the mundane and the mania around you. I wish that were the case, sadly it is not. Rose, coral, and violet ignite in smoke across the wildfire sky, setting the clouds ablaze. Yasiin chased the New York streets, running on the heels of his Jag. The past few weeks seemed to meld together, everyday as repetitive as it’s predecessor. His life was becoming a twisted bureaucratic satire, noosed by cliche, precarious and prosaic. Liah had occupied days at a time with her wedding plans, varying from location scouting, calligraphy, to tasting the cake for the big day. The longer the monkey danced, the better his performance was. He didn’t understand the need for marriage. It was obsolete to him. Just another debt we owed our mothers, something to feel like we haven’t amounted to bums or the men they ****ed. He was neither, so marriage was pointless. Yasiin hardly drove into the city for work, but this morning he woke up dreading the idea of being pressed into the small slit of space between a white hog in a stripped suit sweating through polyester, and a skinny crow faced woman screeching about repentance. He followed the white grainy lines in the road, watching the world rotate on it’s *** through his rearview mirror. If you want a vision of what we’ve become, then imagine a boot stomping into the face of the human race forever. We are flat, boring, and lame, living in burden of our shear stupidity. We exist without culture, without love, without anger and sorrow, everyday getting meta and meta. Despite the insistence and persistence of our existence, we are only seconds, gone in an instant. Stuck in a loop-sequence reel, nothing we see or feel here is real, said some buddhist on fifth ave. Pulling off the interstate, Yasiin slowly rolled to a stop in front of a red light, watching the yellow cabs jitter from body to corner in search of passengers. Looking in his rearview mirror, he noticed three bodies in ragged formation, shuffle through the endless lines of cars behind him, all of them silent as the sky in black uniform and glossy black boots. Cars inched forward through the noise, slowly pushing their noses towards the cluttered streets. Yasiin stared out into the streets, frantically tracing every corner for the bodies in black uniform. As sweat bled from his brow, he shrunk himself in his seat, confident that if he sat still enough he would go completely unnoticed.
Raapp! Rapap! Rappap!
He watched as a ring of shiny badges, wrapped around his vehicle, boxing him in. Onlookers, judges, prosecutors, niggers, winos and crack-whores stopped in their walk, irresistibly drawn to the chaos en route. Kids were terrified. Some adults were too, though more of them were just plain curious about the pygmy in Ota Benga's iron cage. The sharp taps of gunmetal drummed against his window with more force as pigs with the heads of men brandished their belligerence, eager to unload their 22’s, Sig Sauers and Beretta’s before nine am coffee and pastries.
“Take your hands off the the wheel, and get the **** out of the car with your hands up!” An officer shouted, cocking the hammer of his Sig as he inched in closer. Yasiin gripped tightly onto the steering wheel, fearful of making any sudden movements. He knew if he got out of the car he would be dead before the door closed.
“Holy ****… Holy ****… what the **** is happening? What do I do? What… What do I do?” He thought to himself, struggling to breathe against the weight of his anxiety. He closed his eyes, slowly counting back from ten. Retracing every step he took in the past few days and the secrets he buried along the way. It was impossible for them to know anything, that would imply that cops are smart. They weren’t here to arrest Yasiin Baako the psychopath or to enforce some form of justice, he always obeyed the speed limit, always used turn signals, and never dared to cruise around with broken tail lights during owl hours. They were here to protect the public from the biddable black man, he was not a criminal, he was a target.
“GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP NOW”
“Why?”
“SIR WERE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU AGAIN, GET OUT OF THE CAR.”
“What crime have I committed?”
“I will ****ing light you up cocksucker. Get out of the car NOW.”
“NO.”
The officers moved in closer, aimed, loaded and ready.
“You have five seconds before I unload this clip into your head.”
“No.”
“Five, Four, Three…”
The static of sound waves comes through, and a muffled voice on the end says
“Dispatch come in
Dispatch come in”
The officers lowered their weapons as New York fell silent.
“Go for dispatch…”
“The suspect has been apprehended. All officers IN THE AREA are too report back to the station.”
Without a parting glance the officers took off in red and blue lights, leaving Yasiin in a pool of his sweat, numb and paralyzed. He tried to make sense of the injustice he had just faced, but knew he couldn’t rationalize the inequality. Christ, Plato, Foucault and Faulkner held on to the edge of their seats, anxious for Yasiin’s next move on the minstrel show. His silence fell into a recess of liberty, where the monopolies of freedom have long ago been relinquished, forgone and abandoned. For him racism was a foreign land, something he had watched on PBS once. He was never stopped and frisked on his way to work or had difficulty catching a cab in the city, or had to worry about old ladies guarding their purse’s as he walked behind them. Unlike Du Bois he had consciously declared America his home, and by extension himself as American and nothing else. Yet he had taken hits from both ‘Honest Abe’ and his aristocratic adversaries, leaving saline fingerprints on darkened cheekbones.
He wanted to rip their spines out their throats, to rebel against the generational divide that sucked the X from Malcolm’s name with a political vacuum, but he was a monster, he was not a man. A guttural scream tumbled from his lips, echoing throughout the city blocks. Yasiin reached into his glove compartment, took out two pastel pills and crushed them between his teeth. Where most consider their individual relationship to the universe or whatever God their forced to believe in, he contemplated his relationships to the other. Ralph Ellison’s hopeful insistence on the Negro’s centrality to American culture finds, at last, a certain tawdry confirmation, him.
He shut his eyes to the world, hoping they’d all drop dead.
Anger, despair and desolation mingled together in misery, as Yasiin surfed the shaft of the empty elevator. He twisted about the rising steel cage, shouting deliriously and cursing the very God that birthed him black. Yasiin had spent his entire life fitting in. He wore the proper clothes, had the proper job, and was engaged to the proper woman. He never rebelled against the assault on black poor, negro middle class elitism or unemployment. Or raised a fist for any fallen solider who shared the color of his skin, he broke all rules with discretion and anonymity, it was almost conferred upon him as a title. But like many callow coons Yasiin was duped and disillusioned into believing a man could exist as man in a*country that hung him from trees for sport and pleasure. He had been to every therapist middle-class-money could buy since he was ten, and had swallowed more than a whole cabinet worth of psycho-pharmaceuticals, from Thorazine, Nardil, Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Valium, Librium, Xanax and Klonopin to temper his outbursts, but there respite never lasted. He always found himself back here, waring with his own Tyler Durden. Yasiin picked at his face in the reflection of the cold metallic doors, pulling at his cheek, bearing his teeth, and pressing his fingers roughly against the bones in his face. He wanted to tear every layer of skin off of his body, he was not equipped to make peace with mediocrity. Yasiin wanted to walk as bone, sinew, and blood, a man without a face, a man without a name. He began punching the steel walls, rattling the rage that was bubbling forth. The metallic doors opened, exposing his tantrum to the main floor of The New Yorker and it’s ginger faced secretary. Blowing past her tiny desk and shrill voice, Yasiin made his way towards Liah’s office. He barreled through her door, swiftly shutting it behind him, locking out the annoying ginger girl who fluttered behind him.
“Yasiin?!” Liah shouted, popping up from her desk.
“Hello? Liah? Is everything alright?” asked the high-pitched secretary as she wrestled with the doorknob. Walking to the door Liah unlocked it, opening it just enough to stick her head out,
“Yes, I’m fine Kara, everything’s okay, can you bring me two grande latte’s from the Starbucks on the corner. One with an extra shot, and the other with two pumps of french vanilla.*Oh, and ask Vanessa to cover the phone’s while you go, thank you.”
She pushed the door in and sharply turned to Yasiin,
“Why are you here?” Liah asked, walking back over to her desk. She felt infuriated by his incessant insolence, over the course of their relationship, Yasiin has invaded and warped every piece of her life and her job was the last thing she had left for herself.
“Why am I here? Why the **** am I here? Why haven’t you answered your Goddamn cell phone Liah? I called you like twenty times, you couldn’t find a second to answer for me? You’re too ****ing busy or something?” Yasiin shouted, slamming his fist into her desk.
“DO NOT break **** in my office, all you see right here, is mine, and I work damn hard for mine. I didn’t answer your call, cause I’m at work nigga, what? You couldn’t find one of your side *****es to answer your call? You had to barge up to my workplace with your bull****.”
“Do you even know why I called you? I had guns pointed at me Liah, ****ing guns. Right at me, and you weren't there. You weren’t there to do anything about it. It… it… was like a movie. There was drama, action, adventure, but I wasn’t in the directors chair, I was a ****ing disposable extra.”
“Can you please cut the movie **** and just talk straight please, ****, it’s so annoying. TALK TO ME” She pleaded, watching him struggle to keep himself together.
“I AM TALKING TO YOU LIAH, I HAD GUNS POINTED AT ME. ARE YOU NOT LISTENING?”
“So one of your girls finally fought back?” Liah asked sarcastically, tapping her heel against the edge of the desk. Her stare cold and devoid of intent.
“It was the cops Liah, ****ing pigs held me at gun point. They were going to kill me, I know it, I felt it, and I was unprepared. I didn’t watch 12 Years A Slave or Fruitvale Station, whenever someone tried to sell me on the idea that I should care, I always laughed it off. I resented this voyeurism of my blackness through the lens of slavery or overt racism. It was just another ****ing reminder of how I’m seen, a 134 min snuff film with a bigger budget.” Yasiin said, fighting back the bitter tears.
“I… I…I was ready Liah, I was ready for my life to end. One swift bullet above my ear and it would of over. I felt like all the oxygen had left the car, like there was no escape.” The despair Liah heard between the cracks in his voice were almost enough to make her feel some form of empathy for the monster that sat before her. But alas, she felt nothing. She stood beside him for years, beyond just this moment.
Their true American romance simply amounted to two people stepping into the role of lovers and acting through the pre-fabricated scenes as best they could. There was nothing genuine to their union. There was nothing real to it. The dating was about dating. The sex was about getting off. Maybe he loved her, maybe he didn’t, the truth was de minimis. There was a house, and then no house. There were trees, but none remain. Liah knew their relationship had ultimately been rooted in her own lurid, misguided fantasy. One she force-fed herself for years past and years to come. The flowers... the chocolates... the nostalgia of dating and anniversaries and whatnot, was obligated for the survival of the relationship. They didn’t suffer from suburbanite simplicities of money problems or infidelity and unease with the in-laws. They suffered from something much more sinister, cruel and wicked, the promise that he was anything more than what he presented, an image of an image. Still, she had a role to play like everyone else, so she memorized her lines, ready to read them with more vigor and avidity than before.
“What happened, Yasiin?” she asked softly, holding his hand in hers.
“Three cops approached me at gun point, ordering me out of my car… When I refused I-”
“Refused to get out? What do you mean refused to get out?” She said, her voice adopting his edge.
“I meant exactly what I said, I refused to get out. And I was told that I had five seconds or my body would be riddled with bullets.”
“I assuming that’s when you came to your senses and got out the car.” She said, her eyes flashing about restlessly.
“No, I didn’t come to my sense. I sat in my car, and again refused to get out of my car because I was well within my rights not to.”
“I knew you were arrogant, but I never thought you were stupid too. What the **** were you thinking?”
“Well within your rights, what ****ing right is that? The right to die in the street like an animal of your own willing cooperation.” She said, laughing as if she said something witty.
“I mean c’mon, what were you thinking?”
He paused for a moment,
“WHAT was I thinking? Are you serious Liah? I wasn’t even in the wrong here. I was thinking my life was going to end, that in a matter of a few seconds, everything that I am would be nothing more than a ****ing hashtag. Another moment of nostalgia for the oppression and unjust killing of black men at the hands of police officers. Another name to add to the list.” The words almost sounded like fiction coming from his mouth, he didn’t believe himself anymore than she did.
“So, what are you now? Some kind of martyr, you the revolutionary for the black cause? Please let me know, so I can start planning a funeral instead of a wedding. When did you give a **** about a black kid being shot? Or who did the shooting anyway?”