“How can you agree with what this guy did?” asked Ian. “You northern black intellectuals are always backing lunatics, just like you backed Idi Amin and Mark Essex. It’s irresponsible if you ask me — you’re always complaining, always feeling sorry for yourself—”
“You don’t know the ropes, youngster.” Brashford rose and walked to the front of his bookshelf. “Any black man, I don’t care how much prominence he has, if he isn’t bitter by the age of forty has lived his life as a fool. We can’t get through the day without somebody inviting us outside. Going out on us. Gettin’ it from every direction. White people, black people, faggots, Jews, Third World women, you name it. Some take to alcohol, some commit suicide; that is, if diabetes and cancer don’t get them first. And homicide. All you hear on the media is stuff about white women getting assaulted. The movies are always about monsters from space, creatures from the deep, all with one thing on their mind: white women. Read all the Nazi books. All about saving white women. Well, according to statistics, being a white woman is the safest thing you can be. If you’re a white woman your chances of being murdered is one in three hundred sixty-nine. If you’re a white man, one in one thirty-one, if you’re a black woman, one in one hundred four, but if you’re a black man it’s one in twenty-one. Get that? One in twenty-one. In other words, being Mose is the riskies’ thing you can be. When you’re born a black man you’re taking your life into your hands. The brothers’ killing of one another has become so epidemic that the phenomenon was written up in Science magazine. Living like a black man is like doing hand-to-hand combat every day of your life.”
“But you’re not in combat. You have this terrific studio, and I hear that your home on Long Island is a regular villa. Yet you’re always going after somebody in print. Attacking people. Those nasty letters you write to The New York Pillar. I mean, put a piece of paper in your typewriter and all of a sudden it becomes a war zone.”
Brashford shook his head. “You guys don’t know how hard it was in the fifties. Nobody gave a damn about you unless you were writing some sensational, titillating play.” You should know, Ball thought.
“Sure, I lucked up and got a hit. But that doesn’t mean that I was supposed to relax after that. The play ran on Broadway and I invested the money. Everything that I have, I earned, but don’t think that I don’t know that to them I’m just another nigger. Listen, let me tell you a joke. A Jew, a Pole, and a black man arrive at the pearly gates and are told by Saint Peter that they can only enter the Kingdom if they spell a word. The Jew and the Pole are asked to spell God. They do so and are admitted. The black man is asked to spell chrysanthemum. It is always going to be twice as hard for us. In fact,” Brashford continued, “I’m thinking about going into business. I don’t want what happened to those Afro writers of the forties to happen to me. I’m going in the rent-a-male-chauvinist business.”
“What?”
“Rent a male chauvinist. This will solve the unemployment problems of black men. See, some of these black feminists and the white ones who are backing them like Becky French have made the afro man into an international scapegoat. Man, you even got German, East Indian, and Japanese women writing things against black men in America, as if the men in their countries spend all of their time doing the dishes and changing diapers.
“So what I will do is rent out these black men. You know all those female vice-presidents and college professors who’ve sold out to white men for the androgynous god Mammon? They’re not going to bite the hand that feeds them, so I will rent them black men they can cuss out and abuse. I would charge them a thousand dollars an hour. I would even have group rates. I would give discounts. I would send these black men all over the world, and let these liberated women in all of the countries kick these American black men in the ass for a fee. I would do quite a business, because everywhere these bitches’ books and plays have gone, a hysteria has been built up against black men.”
Ian Ball couldn’t help laughing. No matter what he and the fellas thought about Brashford, nobody denied that he was funny. He could have made millions as a stand-up comedian, people were always saying.
“Anyway, here’s your play.” He walked to a table he said he’d bought in Italy, picked up his script, and threw it at Ball. “It’s a good play except for that woman’s monologue. Shit, a white woman was married to Robert E. Lee. There are white women in the Klan, and the Nazi party. I guess next you’re going to write a play praising white women in the Nazi party, claiming that they, the niggers, and the Jews are in the same boat. That all of them are victims.”
“It’s being done. Becky French. She’s producing a play about Eva Braun. It’s about how Eva Braun was a victim.”
“What?” Even Brashford’s jaw dropped, he who let nothing excite him.
“Sure. In fact, she even tried to push me and Jim out of the Mountbatten so’s she could put the play about Eva Braun in there.”
“See. I told you these feminists, or whatever they’re calling themselves, had lost their minds. What’s the difference between them and the right wing? You see them down there on Times Square picketing against the pornographers. What’s wrong with those women showing some tits and ass? And then they beatin’ up on poor Mose ’cause he ain’t got no job no pride no power no nothin’, cannon fodder for their wars, scapegoat for their failures, a two-legged insurance policy and safety valve for America. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before they’d be romanticizing some Nazi. You see, it’s logic like Becky’s that makes me and some of the other guys say that the women can’t handle reason and ought to be put back in the kitchen.”
“How’s the new play coming?” It came out before he could catch himself. He merely wanted to change the subject, but knew that this would begin another misogynist tirade.
“Yeah. Well, you’re not the only one asking me that. Directors. Producers. All callin’ me for twenty-four years, ever since The Man… asking me where’s the new play. Well, I’ll tell you why I haven’t finished the play. It’s because the Jews have stolen all of the black material, so there’s nothing for me to write about. Every time you turn on the TV or go to the movies or read a new play or novel, there’s some Jewish writer, director, or producer who thinks that he knows more about niggers than they know about themselves, and who’s cashing in on the need of Americans to consume the black style without having anything to do with niggers. Ralph Ellison was right. We’re just a natural resource to them. Something that they can rip off. Their views of us haven’t changed since the days of slavery.”