Washington, D.C., like most cities, is much prettier at night. But as I sit on the Supreme Court steps, making a pipe out of a soda can, staring at the White House lit up like a department store window, I’m trying to figure out what’s so different about our nation’s capital.
The draw from an aluminum Pepsi can isn’t the best, but it’ll do. I blow smoke into the air. There should be a Stage IV of black identity — Unmitigated Blackness. I’m not sure what Unmitigated Blackness is, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sell. On the surface Unmitigated Blackness is a seeming unwillingness to succeed. It’s Donald Goines, Chester Himes, Abbey Lincoln, Marcus Garvey, Alfre Woodard, and the serious black actor. It’s Tiparillos, chitterlings, and a night in jail. It’s the crossover dribble and wearing house shoes outside. It’s “whereas” and “things of that nature.” It’s our beautiful hands and our fucked-up feet. Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, black-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations. Unmitigated Blackness is essays passing for fiction. It’s the realization that there are no absolutes, except when there are. It’s the acceptance of contradiction not being a sin and a crime but a human frailty like split ends and libertarianism. Unmitigated Blackness is coming to the realization that as fucked up and meaningless as it all is, sometimes it’s the nihilism that makes life worth living.
Sitting here on the steps of the Supreme Court smoking weed, under the “Equal Justice Under Law” motto, staring into the stars, I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with Washington, D.C. It’s that all the buildings are more or less the same height and there’s absolutely no skyline, save for the Washington Monument touching the night sky like a giant middle finger to the world.
Twenty-five
The joke is that, depending on the Supreme Court’s decision, my Welcome Home party might also be my Going Away to Jail party, so the banner over the kitchen doorway says, CONSTITUTIONAL OR INSTITUTIONAL — TO BE DECIDED. Marpessa kept it small, limited to friends and the Lopezes from next door. Everyone is in my den, watching the lost Little Rascals films, huddled around Hominy, who’s the real man of the hour.
Foy was found innocent on attempted murder charges by reason of temporary insanity, but I did win my civil suit against him. It’s not like it wasn’t obvious, but like most of celebrity America, Foy Cheshire’s rumored wealth was just that — rumored. And after selling his car to pay his attorney’s fees, the only possessions he had of any real value were the only things I wanted — the Little Rascals movies. Stocked with watermelon, gin, and lemonade, and a 16 mm projector, we readied for an enjoyable evening of grainy black-and-white old-time “Yassuh, boss” racism unseen since the days of Birth of a Nation and whatever’s on ESPN right now. Two hours in and we wonder why Foy went through all the bother. Although Hominy’s enrapt with his onscreen image, the treasure trove consists mostly of unreleased MGM Our Gang footage. By the mid-forties the series had long been dead and bereft of ideas, but these shorts are especially bad. The late edition of the gang remains intact: Froggy, Mickey, Buckwheat, the little-known Janet, and, of course, Hominy in various minor roles. These postwar shorts are so serious. In “Hotsy Totsy Nazi” the gang tracks down a German war criminal masquerading as a pediatrician. Herr Doktor Jones’s racism gives him away, when a feverish Hominy arrives for his checkup and is greeted with a snide “I zee we didn’t get all of you during zee var. Take zee arsenic pills und vee zee vat vee can do about dat, ja?” In “Asocial Butterfly,” Hominy takes a rare star turn. Asleep in the woods for so long that a monarch butterfly has enough time to weave a cocoon in his wild-flung hair, he panics and doffs his straw hat to show his discovery to Miss Crabtree. She excitedly proclaims that he has “a chrysalis,” which the ever-inquisitive gang overhears as “syphilis,” and tries to get him quarantined at a “house of ill refute.” There are a couple of hidden gems, though. In an attempt to revive the stagnant franchise, the studio produced a few abridged reenactments of theater pieces played totally straight by the gang. It’s too bad the world has missed out on Buckwheat as Brutus Jones and Froggy as the shady Smithers in “The Emperor Jones.” Darla returns to the fold and gives a brilliant performance as the headstrong “Antigone.” Alfalfa is no less engaging as the beleaguered Leo in Clifford Odets’s “Paradise Lost.” But for the most part, there’s nothing in Foy’s archives to suggest why he would go to such lengths to keep these works from the public. The racism is rampant as usual, but no more virulent than a day trip to the Arizona state legislature.
“How much is left on the reel, Hominy?”
“About fifteen minutes, massa.”
The words “Nigger in a Woodpile — Take #1” flash across the screen over a cord of barnyard firewood. Two or three seconds go by. And — Bam! — a nappy little black head pops up sporting a wide razzamatazz grin. “It’s black folk!” he says before batting his big, adorable baby seal eyes.
“Hominy, is that you?”
“I wish it was, that boy’s a natural!”
Suddenly you can hear the director offscreen yelling, “We’ve got plenty of wood, but we need more nigger. C’mon, Foy, do it right this time. I know you’re only five, but niggerize the hell out of this one.” Take #2 is no less spectacular, but what follows is a low-budget one-reeler called “Oil Ty-Coons!” starring Buckwheat, Hominy, and a heretofore unknown member of the Little Rascals, a moppet credited as Li’l Foy Cheshire, alias Black Folk, an instant classic and, to my knowledge, the last entry in the Our Gang oeuvre.
“I remember this one! Oh my God! I remember this one!”
“Hominy, stop jumping around. You’re in the way.”
In “Oil Ty-Coons!” after a clandestine back-alley meeting with a lanky, chauffeur-driven, ten-gallon-hat cowboy, our boys are seen pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with cash down the crime-free streets of Greenville. The nigger rich trio, now dressed in top hat and tails at all times, treats an increasingly suspicious gang to an endless run of movies and sweets. They even go so far as to buy a destitute Mickey an expensive set of catcher’s gear he’s been admiring in the sporting-goods-store window. Dissatisfied with Buckwheat’s explanation for their newfound wealth—“I’z found a four-leaf clo’ber and done won the Irish Lottery”—the gang trots out a number of theories. The boys are running numbers. They’re betting on the horses. Hattie McDaniel has died and left them all her money. Eventually the gang threatens Buckwheat with expulsion if he doesn’t tell where the money is coming from. “We’z in oil!” Still harboring doubts and unable to find an oil derrick, the gang follows Hominy to a hidden warehouse, where they discover the nefarious darkies have all the kids in Niggertown hooked up to IVs and, for a nickel a pint, filling oil cans with crude drop by black drop. At the end, a diaper-clad Foy turns and mugs “Black folk!” into the camera before the scene mercifully fades out with the Our Gang theme music.