Last summer the gangbangers scored another hit by whacking Tyrone, a black kid who lived in the Black Zone but who bussed to Jefferson, which means his high school must have been like San Quentin High. Poor Tyrone was shot just for the fun of it. Dad was reading the paper one day after work and asked if I knew this guy Tyrone because he went to my school. And I said yeah, and he said he and a little girl were shot dead at a bus stop. I said no way. He gave me the paper and there it was. Jesus! I couldn’t believe it. And then Dad said there are places a lot worse, like Compton where someone is shot every other day, but I’m thinking Compton ain’t no worse for Tyrone. It’s an ugly world. There was photos of Tyrone and his friends putting balloons, flowers, notes, and other pathetic stuff at the bus stop. Man! I thought, Tyrone’s and the little girl's blood’s still there. You can wash most of it away but not all of it. I took the paper to my room and laid on the bed and thought about Tyrone. I kept looking at Tyrone and the bus stop. There was also a picture of the little girl. Couldn’t believe it, shooting a fucking little girl! That's totally evil. Then I felt this weird urge to go to that place where their blood had mixed in with the concrete. I wasn’t sure why, just needed to go, pay my respects I guess. So I decide I’d do a pilgrimage by making run on Manson to see the shrine because I don’t dislike blacks any more than I dislike other people, but shooting kids at a bus stop shows their thinking to be really messed up.
I figure if I take off in the morning I’ll get back plenty of time before it starts to get dark because I sure don’t want to be in no banger territory on a skateboard when the sun goes down unless I want to be in the morning newspaper, but there wouldn’t be no shrine, though Spike my white nemesis might drive by to piss on the spot where I died. Of course, Tyrone was shot in broad daylight, which goes to show you in the hood crime never takes a time-out, but what are you gonna to do? What I do is never skate through those neighborhoods, but I’m hoping maybe that things might be cool for kids at least a few days after one gets whacked, though not for adults, who’ll still be getting killed at 7-Elevens or in the back of some car where they’re doing a drug deal or in the parking lot of some strip joint (wish I was 21) or in and around any of those sinister looking bars that got no windows just a door and a neon Budweiser sign out front. I always wonder what goes on in those places, like. Picking up loose women (Mmmmm!), drinking, playing pool like in The Hustler, selling drugs, or planning a robbery or drive-by. Who knows? But no smoking! Can you believe it? I can do the one thing those guys can’t.
Anyway as I was saying, I thought I’d take my man Manson out on this pilgrimage, telling myself that the gangbangers won’t beat me up in broad daylight but knowing that in the ghetto gangbangers will pull up, jump out, fuck you over, and be gone in less than a minute. That’s the beauty of the automobile. Myself, I will have to rely on the speed and the intuition of Manson to guide me out of harm’s way. Of course, I know that’s just bullshit. They probably wouldn’t even bother beating me up but just do a bang bang good-bye drive-by so that some wannabe can get his gangsta stripes, and though Manson is fast, he ain’t faster than a speeding bullet. But it’s like going to church. You gotta believe in somethin, and Manson is my miracle. So I head out, quickly leaving behind the white-trash ghetto where Dad and I live and enter No Man’s Land which separates the Orientals from Hispanics, cross through the nether world of the rainbow coalition—black, yellow, brown, and red (the only whites hanging out are police and the red ain’t Indians but blood stains). There’s no white in that rainbow because the coalition is a bunch warring tribes busy hating, fighting, and killing one another, so long ago whiteys who could afford it retreated to the burbs, like the old pioneers circling their wagons for the last stand because there ain’t nowhere to escape to. White trash like Dad and me who can’t afford a fancy wagon in the suburbs are left behind in the urban wilderness. Imagine pieces of white litter floating around in a black hole.
Of course occasionally whitey’s got no choice but to pass through the MCMZ (Multi-Cultural Militarized Zone) and he ought to be okay as long as he don’t run out of gas or have a flat. If his white ass does get noticed, it’ll most likely be kicked, robbed, or killed or a combination of the three (add raped if he’s a she). The predators roaming gangstaland are like the crows in Resident Evil, who’ll leave you alone as long as they don’t notice you, but if they do they’re all over you pecking out your eyes. That’s the way it’s always been for black people who gotta drive through the South to get to civilization on the other side. They’ll most likely be okay if they stay on the Interstate with a full tank of gas and play the tourist just passing through because the crackers will be so busy lynching one of the local niggers or burning a nigger church (that’s how crackers talk about black people) that they won’t pay the black tourists any mind. But they don’t dare leave the Interstate unless they want to join the puppet show or be on the wrong end of a shot gun like in Easy Rider. And of course they’ll be praying that all the cracker sheriffs will also be at the hanging. I mean those sheriffs gotta be black people’s version of Nemesis. Life would have been a lot better for black people if slavery happened some other place than the South, like Rhode Island. That way when the slaves were freed then all the bad shit would have been over and done with. But not in the South, and I’ll tell you why.
The South is a place that holds a grudge. I learned that from reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you read that book you remember the forever feud that took place between two cracker families. Southerners might as well be Moslems they enjoy shooting each other so much. What I liked about Huckleberry Finn (and I almost didn’t read it because I’d seen the movie and reading generally goes against my principles) was I wanted to be on a raft going someplace even with a black guy as long as he was like Jim and not a gangbanger who’d be shooting everybody on the shore as we floated down the river. Of course, Avalon or July would be even better, but I’d still probably need somebody like Jim or Dad because there’s bound to be trouble because there’s always trouble. That’s what I think the story is saying. That America ain't a story with a happy ending. And to show you the difference between adults and kids, there’s no way Huck would sell Jim just to make some money, but that’s exactly what the white guy Crusoe does in the same situation. His black friend is named Zury and as soon as he has a chance to sell him he does. That's what the teacher called capitalism. That says to me everything you need to know about fucking adults. I didn’t read that book only the SparkNotes and not even all of them. I mean there’s a limit to what teachers can expect you to read. I don’t think I’d live long enough to get through that book.
I digressed. My teachers were always saying I couldn’t stick to a topic. But that’s normal when you think life is messy like a RPG. That’s a game where the story looks more like a map instead of a single highway that’s got some turn-offs all basically dead-ends. Another thing that makes RPGs like life is that you got to make all kinds of choices that determine how you get to where you want to go but also determine what you’re going to be like when you get there, like you might be a hero or a villain or somewhere in between. You actually might not like how you turn out because sometimes when you think you’re making the right choice you’re not or more likely you make a choice you don’t want to make but do it anyway to get whatever it is you want. That’s why I don’t like RPGs. I play games to give my brain a rest while killing bad guys like the ones who killed Tyrone and the little girl. My life is already too confusing. So it’s normal that whatever I got to say about anything would be confusing too. That’s one of the reasons I hated writing for teachers. The main one being it’s boring. I’d rather be riding Manson or playing a (nonRPG) video game. But also they criticize your writing to death. When I’d get an essay back, if you could call three paragraphs an essay, it looks like it needs a blood transfusion. No doubt about it my best essays are the ones I do at home so Dad has a chance to look them over and fix them. That way I get at least a C or maybe a B- (unfortunately when it comes to writing Dad’s not an A student).
Getting back to the pilgrimage, I’m on the street trucking right through the badlands where the tribes exist in multicultural disharmony, which is apparent by the fact that the grafheads and bangers have bombed every fence and wall. Without the graffiti it still would be a really ugly place, the graffiti makes it a scary ugly place—Third-World scary. I dressed real grungy so most people see me as not belonging to anyone or anything, a piece of human waste, another human turd floating in a polluted river, which is fine with me. I got no allies, no nationality, no gang, no homeboys. No nothin. I’m rodent-boy scampering in the urban wasteland. Of course local boys will kill a rodent just for the fun. Like when they set that homeless man on fire just to watch him burn. Dad said it wasn’t like that when he was growing up. It’s nice to know that I’m living in America’s decline and fall. That’s what my teacher Mr. Wingnute said when he was talking about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, that there are lots of similarities, like fast food, TV and movies taking the place of bread and circus and football games being like the gladiators fighting it out in the Coliseum and people stuffing themselves until they vomit, shit like that. And all I have to do is look around the classroom and see that yeah the country is declining fast and has already hit bottom in my neighborhood.
I guess it could be worse, like a survivor of the Holocaust could say “I’ve seen a lot worse,” but who would want to go through that nightmare just so living in America don’t seem so bad? You’d think that after the Jewish extermination the world would have grown up and said Let’s all try to get along. Yeah right. No way, and I’ll tell you why. There’s only one thing dumber than teenagers and that’s adults because adults should know better but they don’t. I mean just take a look at the world and ask yourself what do you see and who’s responsible? Take those Holocaust survivors, you’d of thought they would of wanted to teach the world something about getting along but what do they do? They turn Palestine into a concentration camp for those poor Palestinians. And what do the Palestinians do? They start shooting each other. Go figure. But it just goes to show you that the only difference between the teenage world I live in and the adult world everyone lives in is that the adults got the power to do more harm. You’d probably say, “What about the good things like NASA and going to the moon and such?” I’ll tell you a little secret. I don’t blame scientists wanting to build a spaceship so they can escape all the bullshit that goes on here, but if they go to some other planet like Altaira it wouldn’t be long before Altaira becomes just like Earth, totally fucked up, and then the nerds would want to build another spaceship to escape to another planet.
It’s like the Europeans who left Europe and went to America to create a better society (their slaves doing all the heavy lifting) as soon as they killed off the Indians and buffalos. What do they have to show for it? Places like Alta Vista and Compton. I know this is a real pessimistic view of things but any talk about people gets pessimistic. If you want to keep the conversation positive then you can’t talk about people because talking about people is like talking about different types of diseases. Each group of people, as far as I can tell, is a different type of disease. You got of course the American disease, but you also got the Jewish disease, and lately the Arab disease, and the Mexican disease and the Russian disease. The European diseases have been dormant but the Holocaust survivors can tell you all about the last outbreak. Man, I got stop talking about people because I’m putting a downer on paying my respects to Tyrone and the little girl. I mean that’s why so many people prefer pets or having a hobby like Dad did when he had a garage before the divorce where he’d make stuff. Mom’s hobby was gardening, though I spoiled it because sometimes she’d find a dead bird that I’d shot with a BB gun I got for Christmas, but that’s another story.
Anyway, just think about it a second. Who would you prefer to have as a roommate, the president of the United States or a cute pug with its curly tail, bulgy eyes and worried look? I mean no one in their right mind would want to live with an American president even for a couple of days. You’d go homicidal like that Moslem dude who went a gay bar with a machine gun. Dad said that the presidents insufferable because they're politicians and all politicians are insufferable. I asked Dad what the word means because he likes it when I ask those kinds of questions, and if he don’t know (or just pretends he don’t) then he goes to his room and brings out a big dictionary and says something like, “Let’s find out exactly what that word means, Freddy,” and he’ll sit down at the kitchen table and I’ll go over acting real interested because I know it pleases him because it’s like a father and son teaching moment. “It says, difficult or impossible to endure; intolerable. That’s politicians alright.” So there you have it, the president’s in the dictionary and it’s the pug for certain as your roommate because pugs are loveable and politicians are insufferable.
