As advertised, Hominy was indeed “in de back,” buck naked and hanging by his neck from a wooden beam. Two feet away from him sat a folding chair marked RESERVED, and on its seat a photocopy playbill for “Curtain Call,” a one-act of desperation. The noose was a bungee cord stretched to its bike rack limit, so much so that if he’d worn anything bigger than a size-eight shoe, his toes would’ve touched the ground. His face turning a deep shade of blue, I watched him twist in the draft. I had half a mind to let him die.
“Cut my penis off and stuff it into my mouth,” he rasped with what air was left in his lungs.
Apparently, asphyxiation makes your penis hard, and his brown member sprouted like a twig from a frizzy snowball of shock-white pubic hair. Like an antique whirligig, he kicked about frantically as much from his simultaneous attempt to burn himself in effigy as from the paucity of oxygen reaching his already-Alzheimered brain. Fuck the White Man’s Burden, Hominy Jenkins was my burden, and I knocked the can of kerosene and the lighter from his hand. Walked, not ran, back home to look for the gardening shears and some skin lotion. Taking my sweet time, because I knew that racist Negro Archetypes, like Bebe’s Kids, don’t die. They multiply. Because the kerosene splashed on my shirt smelled like Zima, but mostly because my father said he never panicked when someone from the neighborhood tried to hang themselves, because, “for the life of them, black people can’t tie knots for shit.”
I cut the self-lynching drama queen down. Lowered him gently to the rayon-carpeted floor and coddled his scraggly head. He filled my armpit with snot and tears as I rubbed cortisone into his rope-chafed neck and flipped through the playbill. On page two was a publicity shot of our boy chilling with the Marx Brothers on the set of the unreleased sequel to A Day at the Races, called A Day Among the Races. The Marx Brothers sit in backward-facing director’s chairs labeled GROUCHO, CHICO, HARPO, and ZEPPO. At the lineup’s far end is a high chair whose back reads DEPRESSO. In it, sitting cross-legged, is six-year-old Hominy, a thick white Groucho mustache painted on his upper lip. The photo is signed To Hominy Jenkins, the Shvartze Sheep of the Family. Best Wishes from the Marxes — Groucho, Karl, Skid, et al. Below this was Hominy’s bio. A sad listing of his meager screen credits that read like a suicide note:
Hominy Jenkins (Hominy Jenkins) — Hominy’s happy to make both his theatrical debut and his swan song at the Back Room Repertory Theater. In 1933 Hominy first put his wild, unkempt Afro to good use when he debuted as the wailing, abandoned Native Baby Boy in the original King Kong. He went on to survive that near Skull Island stomping and has since specialized in portraying black boys from the ages of eight to eighty, including most notably in Black Beauty—Stable Boy (uncredited), War of the Worlds—Paper Boy (uncredited), Captain Blood—Cabin Boy (uncredited), Charlie Chan Joins the Klan—Bus Boy (uncredited). Every film shot in Los Angeles between 1937 and 1964—Shoeshine Boy (uncredited). Other credits include various roles as Messenger Boy, Bell Boy, Bus Boy, Pin Boy, Pool Boy, House Boy, Box Boy, Copy Boy, Delivery Boy, Boy Toy (stag film), Errand Boy, and token Aerospace Engineer Boy in the Academy Award — winning film Apollo 13. He wishes to thank his many fans who have supported him throughout the years. What a long, strange trip it’s been.
If that naked old man crying in my lap had been born elsewhere, say Edinburgh, maybe he’d be knighted by now. “Arise, Sir Hominy of Dickens. Sir Jig of Boo. Sir Bo of Zo.” If he were Japanese and had managed to survive the war, the economic bubble and Shonen Knife, then it’s quite possible he’d be one of those octogenarian Kabuki actors who, when he enters during the second act of Kyô Ningyô, the play comes to a reverential halt as the announcer introduces him to great fanfare and a government stipend. “Playing the role of Courtesan Oguruma, the Kyoto Doll, is Japanese Living National Treasure Hominy ‘Kokojin’ Jenkins VIII.” But he had the misfortune of being born in Dickens, California, and in America Hominy is no source of pride: he’s a Living National Embarrassment. A mark of shame on the African-American legacy, something to be eradicated, stricken from the racial record, like the hambone, Amos ’n’ Andy, Dave Chappelle’s meltdown, and people who say “Valentime’s Day.”
I placed my mouth to the waxy folds of Hominy’s ear.
“Why, Hominy?”
I couldn’t tell if he’d understood me. There was only that minstrel smile, pearly white, wide and servile, beaming blankly back at me. It’s crazy how, in a way, child actors never seem to age. There’s always one feature that refuses to grow old and marks them forever young, if not forgotten. Think Gary Coleman’s cheeks, Shirley Temple’s pug nose, Eddie Munster’s widow’s peak, Brooke Shields’s flat-chestedness, and Hominy Jenkins’s effervescent smile.
“Why, massa? Because when Dickens disappeared, I disappeared. I don’t get fan mail anymore. I haven’t had a visitor in ten years, ’cause don’t nobody know where to find me. I just want to feel relevant. Is that too much for an old coon to ask, massa? To feel relevant?”
I shook my head no, but I had one more question.
“And why Wednesdays?”
“You don’t know? You don’t remember? It was the last talk your father gave at the Dum Dum Donuts meetin’. He said that the vast majority of slave revolts took place on Wednesdays because traditionally Thursday was whippin’ day. The New York Slave Revolt, the L.A. riots, the Amistad, all them shits,” Hominy said, grinning woodenly from ear to ear like a ventriloquist’s dummy. “Been this way ever since we first set foot in this country. Someone’s getting whipped or stopped and frisked, whether or not anyone done anything wrong. So why not make it worthwhile and act a fool Wednesday if you gonna get beat on Thursday, right, massa?”
“Hominy, you’re not a slave and I’m definitely not your master.”
“Massa,” he said, the smile evaporating from his face, and shaking his head in that pitiable way people who you think you’re better than do when they catch you thinking that you’re better than them, “sometimes we just have to accept who we are and act accordingly. I’m a slave. That’s who I am. It’s the role I was born to play. A slave who just also happens to be an actor. But being black ain’t method acting. Lee Strasberg could teach you how to be a tree, but he couldn’t teach you how to be a nigger. This is the ultimate nexus between craft and purpose, and we won’t be discussing this again. I’m your nigger for life, and that’s it.”