When it occurs to me what is going on, I get up. Bouba and Miz Suicide help me pull Miz Mystic back inside.
MIZ MYSTIC is sleeping now on the couch. A crescent moon like a hat beyond the cross. The Remington glows in the dark. Solemnly, Charles Mingus attacks “The Pithecanthropus Erectus” (1956). By the pizza box, in the middle of the room, one of Miz Mystic’s shoes. I can see the filigree of scrapes and scratches on the heel. Suddenly, I’m depressed. This room is the headquarters for every marginal character in town. The urban mafia of crazies instinctively turns to 3670 rue St-Denis, off the Carré St. Louis, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, America, Earth. My house. Will this honest, conscientious black cruise artist never find his paradise? I want Carole Laure! I demand Carole Laure! Bring me Carole Laure!
The Black Poet Dreams of Buggering an Old Stalinist on the Nevsky Prospect
IT’S HORRIBLY HOT. The Carré St. Louis is full of bare-chested drunkards. The sticky air stinks of beer. Upstairs in the room we’re roasting. It’s hell, I’m telling you. Reason enough to go downstairs. Only Beelzebub could fuck in this heat. His moaning bugs me. Fire must be shooting out of his mouth up there.
The Carré St. Louis is not your average place. That mossy ground. All the filthy brats you could ask for. A girl photographing Pauline Julien’s house.
A bum comes up for a hand-out.
“Got any spare change?”
“No.”
“That’s all right, I’ll tell you anyway.”
He takes a tiny scrap of paper out of his pocket.
“Look. What do you see?”
“A map of Africa cut out from Time magazine.”
He looks me in the eye.
“You’re right,” he says. “How did you know?”
“It says so under the map.”
“Oh, you’re an intellectual!”
“I know how to read. And how to use my fists too.”
He raises his left hand to show he doesn’t want trouble.
“All right, all right. Show me your country on the map.”
“Ivory Coast. Right there.”
I point to the first country I can make out.
“Ivory Coast! Is that where you’re from? I worked in the Ivory Coast. I know your president.”
All bums know all the African presidents. Why doesn’t he introduce me to the Canadian prime minister? I haven’t even been introduced to the local crime lord!
I SIT DOWN on a park bench with the book I started last night. Written by a certain Limonov. A Russian dissident. The “different dissident” approach. Instead of wasting his time playing the prophet of doom, Limonov gets off with the blacks in Harlem. His book is called The Russian Poet Prefers Big Blacks. It begs a rebuttaclass="underline" The Black Poet Dreams of Buggering an old Stalinist on the Nevsky Prospect. New Frontiers Publications.
The Iron Curtain seen as a giant chastity belt.
BOUBA CAME back from the SAVI, a kind of emergency center for migrants and immigrants. You practically have to provide a complete C.V. and a certificate of good conduct and safe morals before they’ll slip you twenty dollars. The working class has had its troubles since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Bouba sold himself today; tomorrow will be my turn. He came back and bought food at Pellatt’s. The usual fare: potatoes, rice and chicken (the neck only).
The Black Penis and the Demoralization of the Western World
PLACE DES ARTS subway. The 80 bus, north. Get off at Laurier and Park. Bar Isaza. Steep stairway. Smoky landscape. Waves of black gold moving across the dance floor. Starched dashikis. Negroes in rut. A few dozen white mice come to play in the lair of the Black Cat.
“There they are.”
“Where?”
“At the back, to the right.”
“Okay, Bouba. I’m going to have a piss first.”
Men’s john. Two jet-black Negroes.
NEGRO ONE: You have to be quick with these girls, brother, or they’ll slip through your fingers.
NEGRO TWO: That’s the way it is!
NEGRO ONE: They came here to see black. We’ve got to show them black.
NEGRO TWO: What’s this black business?
NEGRO ONE: Listen, brother, cut the innocence.
You’re here to fuck, right? You’re here to fuck a white woman, right? That’s how it works.
NEGRO TWO: But a woman can be.
NEGRO ONE: There’s no women here. There’s black and white — that’s all!
STREAMING BODIES. Eighteen-carat ebony. Ivory teeth. Reggae music. Combustion. Black fusion. A white/black couple practically copulating on the dance floor. Atomic shockwaves.
BOUBA INTRODUCES me.
“My brother. We live together.”
The girls smile.
“What do you do?” one of them asks me.
“I write. I’m a writer.”
“Really? What do you write?”
“Fantasies.”
“What kind?”
“Mine.”
“Are they good?”
“We’ll see.”
The girl gazes sadly at the dance floor, then asks me what I think about it.
“Nothing — except that black and white are accomplices.”
“Accomplices! Where’s the murder?”
“The murder of the white man. Sexually, the white man is dead. Completely demoralized. Look at them dancing. Do you know any white man who could keep up with that madness?”
Hard-core cruise. Savage thrust. A few white guys gesticulating in the corner. Everything else is a black tide, washing over the dance floor, filling the room. Here and there a woman is trapped like a seagull with its feet caught in heavy oil. Brazilian music: slow, insinuating, languorous. The air is sticky. Opaque sensuality.
“Want to dance?”
It’s like moving into Amazon humidity. Bodies running with sweat. You need a machete to cut through this jungle of arms, legs, sexes and mingling smells. Spicy sensuality. She presses against me. No talking. The samba flows into our bodies. Sweat pouring down. Everything flowing. Effortlessly. We’ve got all eternity.
We go back to the table.
“Your business about sexuality,” she declares, “is a load of crap.”
“If you say so.”
“You’re just reworking the Myth of the Black Stud. I don’t believe in it.”
“What do you believe in?”
“Black and white are the same to me.”
“We’re talking sexuality, not arithmetic.”
“Sure. But. ”
“Since you’ve challenged me, I’m going to tell you exactly what I think. Black and white are equal when it comes to death and sexuality. Eros and Thanatos. And I think that when you mix black man and white woman you get blood red. With his own woman the black man might not be worth the paper he’s printed on, but with a white woman, the chances of something happening are good. Why? Because sexuality is based on fantasy and the black man/white woman fantasy is one of the most explosive ones around.”
“Emotions are black — isn’t that myth a little worn out?”
“It might be. But you can’t have whites winning coming and going. They say they’re better than blacks in everything, then turn around and want to be our equals in one area: sexuality.”
“What about whites who don’t think they’re superior to blacks?”
“Those whites, obviously, don’t have sexual hang-ups.”