yustyoking

Hoopla Hoops 

or

Dreamin’ the Dream

by Blackie Diamond

            As a black man, I look at myself in the mirror most mornings and ask, “Who dat good-lookin’ son of a bitch?” At 6’ 6” tall, I know that I am truly blessed. When I was younger and first introduced to Anthropology (“I’d like to get her phone number!”), I realized that, “Hey, I have what it takes to become a leader of men. A tribal leader. I am very tall.” I have let nothing dissuade me from that course.

         At the same time, my voyage of self-discovery takes place through the lens of racial inequality.

         It is true that as a child of Denver, Colorado, I went to Fernwillow Mountain High School, a private school, on a full minority scholarship. That’s one of those scholarships that not only pays for tuition, books and school uniforms for weekdays and holidays, it also covers sports clothes, pocket money, gas money, the car and driver. Despite my protestations, Fernwillow insisted on providing me with a white chauffeur, just another example of racial injustice, my brothers and sisters!

            I have swallowed the bitter juice of inequality and spit out the seeds! (It might have been watermelon.) Take, for example, basketball. Shooting hoops. As I told my buddy Payback when I bumped into him in New York City in 2001, “Coach Malarkey was a Good Old Southern Boy racist pig. True, if I ever sank a jump shot, the team declared a national holiday, but Malarkey still should have put me in the starting line-up.”

            Payback, who was cadging alms from passers-by (“panhandling” our parents called it) on West 42^nd Street, pointed out that the coach came from Boston, but otherwise he agreed with my assessment. Payback also hit me up for a tenner. “I ain’t had no coffee, I ain’t had nothin’ t’ eat, I ain’t been to mah apartment all mornin’,” he explained. “A brother gotta eat, y’know!”

            Good old Payback!

            I know where he coming from! As a member of a disadvantaged minority, I too have suffered! At Harvard, surrounded by preppies like myself— except that they was white— as the first black editor of The Harvard Lampoon, I experienced the sting of racial profiling! Not a full-fledged burn, mind you, more like the acrid caress of jellyfish tentacles. (Summering in Hawaii, my family and I are familiar with such things.) You pour on the ammonia and the bath salts, but it still hurt!

            That’s why I became a revolutionary Marxist and male stripper in Los Angeles, California. With my antecedents, what else could I possibly do?

            Long live Angela Davis!

            Who say I ain’t black enough? I got street cred! I can sing Smokey Robinson. I do a mean rendition of Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay”!

             Long live the proletariat!

            Within the confines of the Constitution, of course. This is a country of law, after all. As a law student, you learn that the law is infinitely flexible. Like Silly Putty, it is whatever you say it is, as you shape it into a variety of permutations.

            When I tired of stripping, I became a community organizer in New York City for the Amway Corporation.

            In an effort to find my identity as a black man, I follow in the steps of Dr. King, frequenting a spa and clothes shopping exclusively at Nordstroms. I find they have high quality merch.

                                Recipe for Disaster

120 tears of a clown                         four fresh eggs                                 

14 oz. flour                                         2 oz. milk

10 oz. pot                                           one large bag potato chips

4 oz. water                                         one uptown friend

             Beat eggs and uptown friend until he reminds you that the two of you chased the ladies at Maxwell’s Plum. Add milk, water, clown tears. Sift in flour. Whip to batter. Fry pancakes.

            Smoke pot. Get “the munchies.” Eat pancakes and potato chips. Get in fight with uptown friend. Wake up that evening with splitting headache. Curse exploitative criminal businessmen polluting environment. Hate NYC. Send friend packing. Call ex-girlfriend. Get chewed out over phone. Go chase the ladies at downtown club. Get STD.

                               How To Become A Community Organizer

            Talk your way into a good gig ringing doorbells and glad-handing people for your candidate or organization. Express sympathy for the plight of others. Be very tall and sincere. Focus totally on self, but ask one serious question of each person you address. Stand endlessly, a concerned expression on your face, listening to their horse-twaddle. Write book portraying yourself as the victim of racism. Make friends with Oprah or at least join her book club. Run for Congress. Promise change. Become president.

            Playtime!

            Live the American dream.

                                                        * 

            When I saw that the founders of Amway was making all the cash moneys, I decided to get a gig like that for “Elvis.” Me! So I ran for Congress.

            The rest be history!

                                                       *

                                                                –  from the upcoming novel