Brown Sugar

oh brown sugar

all these thoughts swirling how to write them how to tell them how to describe them put them down without sounding like an asshole without sounding like some artsy-fartsy faggot slumming down in the ghetto without without well without sounding like some white guy

i don't know if i can say it in one part in two parts but don't know if i can string it out in a coherent manner that is connected and i don't trust you to connect the dots i don't really trust you at all at all don't know don't know don't want to write something down only to have some trite comment about oh yeah oh yeah i feel that way too fuck you i'm not writing this for you i'm writing this for me you just happen to be in the fucking way you just happen to have jumped in between me and the bullet

fall down in the dust like the stuntman you are baby

e invited us over to come over across the bridge to oaktown to hear her boyfriend c sing with a band that he had pulled together cool little bar in the back of this barbecue joint

can you sit across the table from a black man and never not even once never consider the fact that he is a black man can you tell the truth

i'm laying it down right here i'm admitting it right here i guess i'll just lay it down right here i can't is that a bad thing i mean let's face it let's lay it down again i mean i mean

when does it go from i have black friends to i have friends who are black to i have friends there is something about the relationship between the white man and the black man i think about it a lot i think about it a lot it's deep it's complicated it's unexplainable and it's untouchable we're two people sitting at the table two people sitting in the same room two people listening to the same music but there is just something and we can't talk about it

e invited us over to come over across the bridge to oaktown to hear her boyfriend c sing with a band that he had pulled together cool little bar in the back of this barbecue joint

stella and i went to oaktown we went into the club c's band was about to start they were playing without him at first just some good solid jazz funk soulsound the kind of rhythm that screams out for kicking back smoking blunts and just moving with the bass from the inside

c stood up and e's brother sitting down in the same crowd with us he leans over to me and says wait until you hear him sing curtis sure enough c looks over points at e's brother says hey baby this is for you little child running wild he does a full curtis set he does pusherman he does freddy's dead this ain't like a cover tune this is c singing for e singing for e's brother this is c's interpretation his band's interpretation his voice is another instrument i don't know how else to say it he ain't singing for white people with money buying his records he's singing for the crowd

can you sit across the table from a black man and never not even once never consider the fact that he is a black man can you tell the truth

i push up to the bar i push up to the bar i'm a pale ghost of salt and pepper atop vanilla wafer okay okay i admit it i fess up i'm a little self-conscious i'm a little strange about it ordinarily i'm going to flash the bartender a large bill implying major tipping action is about to occur signaling my willingness to enter into some sort of inferred transaction if my drink is more forthcoming than bimbo left and bimbo right

i just stand there like a fucking idiot people pushing ahead of me people using my trick hey i'm not a fucking bimbo but i am i'm a fucking bimbo what the fuck i wait i eventually get my drink did it take any longer than any other place no not really but i think it does i'm all paranoid i'm all wierded out i want to be cool i want to be hip i want to be hep i want to be with it

i'm an asshole when the fuck did that happen

back at our table i'm having a great time i'm with people i know we're talking we're telling jokes they are getting a bit drunk stella has had a couple of lemon drops i'm thinking i'm getting lucky tonight baby she is just so naturally comfortable wherever she goes i'm comfortable tonight i feel good hell i'm so much more at home here than i am at the fucking synagogue believe you me

these people talk my talk

but they're still these people they are still a them what the fuck what the fuck got to let it go been years been years been lots and lots of years can't run away from the years and the years ain't far enough to matter won't matter until i'm dead and buried what color is my soul does heaven and hell have color or are we just like dogs after this seeing only in black and white that's the problem to begin with i guess

the fire is hot better wake up and piss on the fire before the world burns down

sing it c sing it for us all sing it c send me down the road to blissful oblivion fire up that blunt one more time let me close my eyes let me let me let me just close my eyes sing it for me c

melt these chains right off my leg

sing it for me and all that and all that

Scream

i scream out my window every night each and every night

it's a game it's an event it's a contest of wills it's a bake-off of a grand scale it's a mystery of mythical proportions the surreality of it all twists and turns me inside out and outside in i feel like one of those old jars of smuckers that had the peanut butter and jelly all swirled together

double you double you double you see en en dot com and there's a picture of four dead soldiers with a tagline that reads the bodies of four you ess marines were found in ramadi wherever the hell that is most likely in some fucking desert in some far away land anyway anyway right beneath this picture right beneath this tagline is an ad that reads refinance your mortgage today and right next to the bloody body is another ad that reads gateway free shipping and right above it is an ad that reads careerbuilder find your dream job today i wonder how many people typed in soldier

now now now don't get me wrong don't go painting me all flowery and peace love and tie-dye shit i'm just an old redneck that found his salvation on the cool end of a burning joint and in the slippery side of my sweet baby's cunt but hell but heck but shitfire what is it all coming to i can't make sense of it anymore i just can't get my arms around it i know i can't get my feeble brain around it

i still scream out my window every night

it hasn't touched me yet i don't know anyone who has traveled over to the middle east in uniform i don't know anyone who died in the world trade center i know people who know people i'm like two degrees away i'm like someone in line at the gossip counter i just don't know then of course i don't really travel in those circles never have hope that i never do never do never do please lord please spare me and mine

i know israeli soldiers i talk to them every day one time i asked one of the guys i work with what he does when he's called up and he instinctively asked me he said in a very pointed way he asked why do you want to know so so so does that count i don't think so not right now not today not no nyet nana ne rien pas de quoi holy holy holy

john lennon said you got to be free said i believe in love i believe in action when push comes to shove but now i feel so helpless i feel so useless i can vote for some democrat i can walk the streets in protest i can limit the driving of my car i can bend the ear of everyone i know until they label me a bigger asshole than they remember still still yeah

i still scream out my window every night

when i was but a wee laddie the vietnam war never really touched me my hometown was so small and so far removed that we didn't know we didn't know we didn't know the only thing i knew about the vietnam war i learned from watching john wayne in the green berets and the main thing i learned from that was peter-son being thrown up onto the wall of stakes with one coming right through his head the moral of that story of course was

goddamn godless gooks

what did i know what did i know not much until later until much later my mamma sat me down in nineteen and seventy-four and said you have to watch this on television this is an historic event you will know you will remember this moment the paris peace treaty was signed on television i watched it i remember it well my mamma was right i watched i learned

i learned that you don't need any fucking peace treaty if you just don't have any fucking war to necessitate said treaty jesus fucking christ

then we had no more real wars through the eighties only those little mini-wars that happened so quickly we didn't have time to fuck around i mean there was beirut there was grenada there was panama technically we didn't have a war in el salvador honduras nicaragua so why count them the brits those slimy limeys they did have that major scuffle to protect the god-fearing sheep of the falklands then yes then oh yes then there was desert fucking storm got to like those names got to like the panache of a name like that desert storm provides all sorts of heroic imagery sort of like an aa bee see tuesday night movie of the week dig

before during and just a bit after desert storm i lived i survived i managed to get by in washington dee cee i lived right there in the district in chevy chase dee cee my next door neighbor was this old republican who used to sit on his front porch and drink vodka martinis with his wife until she couldn't walk or talk straight he was in advertising his number-one client was the republican national committee the are en see he didn't like me or stella we were the same age as his own kid who was a fuck up and a drunk and had a little reputation with john law and here we are buying a house the same size as his he didn't like us

might have been because my hair was down around my shoulders or the old nineteen and sixty-five ford falcon futura convertible that i drove

might have been the wild clothes that stella wore or the red hot bee em double you that she drove

might have been the part about us sitting on our front porch and instead of dousing our fears with vodka we strengthened our paranoia with marijuana

might have been that i encouraged my oldest child who was three at the time to pee on the bushes instead of in his pants

who the fuck knows who the fuck knows he built a fence because fences make good neighbors i peed on the fence and then we moved back to san francisco because dee cee sucked big green donkey dicks in all that desert storm euphoria it just seemed that that everyone it just seemed that everyone just fucking hated each other in that town the blacks hated the whites who hated the latinos who hated the vietnamese who hated the blacks just a lovely circle jerk of mistrust and enmity

shit who the fuck knows who the fuck knows

i still scream out my window every night

i feel so helpless with my outrage i feel so helpless with my anger i feel so helpless i feel so blunted so blunted maybe why i so often feel the urge to smoke the blunt maybe that's their plan maybe that's their whole entire scheme maybe that's just the way they want us to go maybe maybe maybe maybe fuck fuck fuck okay okay i'm down with the plan i'm down with the plan

let's get blunted baby let's just blunt the whole thing out of our collective minds let's just ignore the see en en's and the fox news and even the fucking en pee are's i don't want to know i don't want to care i'm just going to ignore the whole fucking thing it does not exist for me there is no iraq there is no fucking war there is no military

if there is no oil i will walk

if there is no god i will create one

if there is no prayer i will write one

if there is no salvation i will provide one

if there is no sky i will paint one

and i will still scream out my window every night

and all that

Orlando Ballet

move 'em move 'em move 'em keep those wagons movin' load 'em up and move 'em out all aboard better hurry up 'bout to be bus-left let's get a move on baby pedal to the metal here we go here we go here we go

dig

goddam i hate trade shows but we gotta go we gotta go we gotta be there everyone converges everyone shows up been doing it for years this year we're in orlando

ah yeah ain't nothing like orlando in june jesus phreakin criminy christ it's hot it's humid i went for a run midmorning almost sweated myself insideout nothing like getting a good sweat going taking a shower toweling off then toweling off again then toweling off again then toweling off again 

i'm trying to decide which place attracts the ugliest tourists orlando or las vegas in vegas they may be uglier but i think that they are fatter in orlando they definitely wear pants in shades of green not found in nature

knock three times remember tony fucking orlando and dawn on the ceiling ah geeze ah shit but orlando cepeda was pretty cool he now has a barbecue hut in es bee see park home of the giants i guess there's also orlando bloom stella thinks he cute daughter thinks he cute i don't know any other orlandos except the one in florida and it just plain out sucks

trade shows suck too but we manage to find our fun got to find your fun where you can i mean i imagine 

load 'em up we gotta do the entertain thing we gotta take out the customer we got to keep them happy we got to make them think the next time they get our invoice that we ain't such bad guys after all even though we are maybe perhaps but but but we want their money and lots of it they want our product and they don't want to pay enough to get a cheap hooker down in the tenderloin ah the dynamics of capitalism hell we might even end up at the skin ballet

moving on moving on load up the party bus going to go from orlando to tampa what the fuck locked and loaded with enough booze to set the bus on fire there are eleven guys one woman she's tough she can handle it she's a cable babe she drives a truck eff one-fifty out in the socal desert they all start off with beers just beers it's a hot day it's a humid day the beers go down cool and fizzly

but groovedaddy he declares a vodka and redbull moment and starts pouring them around pouring them around cigarettes going conversations turning into remember whens going into can you believes into just plain old drunken lies fifteen minutes out of tampa out of ybor city

can't wait can't wait gots to drain the lizard baby kind of a common moment we yell at the bus driver he pulls over onto the side of the interstate eight of us pile out seven us of line up against the side of the bus and give a collective sigh as we send out solid steaming streams of piss one of us jumps over the drainage ditch and decides to pee by himself

i guess he didn't want to participate in the group pee some guys are shy like that i mean if i have a choice when i go to the john i usually don't walk up and stand next to some stranger unzip and let her fly with just anyone with just anyone so i know how he feels hey hey hey 

lawdy lawdy

pile into the restaurant food is everywhere cubano baby mojitos baby riajo baby plaintains yucca dirty rice sea bass pork roast filets filets filets fire it up fire it up fire it up flamenco dancers stomping across the floor baby baby come clap those castanets round and round cheers another bottle baby keep it flowing my man

groovedaddy gives a little speech stanky gives a little speech i give the mandatory i love the fact that you fat fucks are spending money with us we love your money yeah yeah we love you too baby where'd you get that shirt though geeze louise

groovedaddy tells me that the brand of his shirt is gee pee i ask him what gee pee stands for and he tells me that it stands for guaranteed pussy groovedaddy dawgdaddy 

back on the bus it's a party bus stocked bar stereo video leather seats ice chests built into the cabinets driver's up front he don't care 'bout nothing he's in his own little world talking on his cell phone fire it up fire it up cigars glowing in the dark seventies and eighties music blasting

the strong dude starts poking holes into the bottom of the beer cans shotgun time passing them around beer spurting everywhere groovedaddy pulling out the red bull the strong dude is a fucking john candy heart attack waiting to happen yo mister b toss me a cigarette yeah baby groovedaddy stands up on his seat and says

time for the ballet gentlemen

well well well we pull into the parking lot the sign says gentleman's club yeah yeah we ain't too gentlemanly ain't too gentlemanly at all don't care don't matter don't won't can't shan't shit fuck piss we pay the fee ask for bulk rate hey we brought a fucking bus through here you should give us the busload rate

we negotiate half price

they escort us to a table we're immediately swarmed might as well might as well have lain naked on a plastic float in the middle of a swamp in july swarmed us like mosquitos my main man mister b my main customer mister b yo baby i got two i got two two mints in one baby the song starts they take their clothes off wiggle around bets all around you think those are real

naw man you can tell by the way the nipple reacts you can tell by the way they sit you can tell by the way they move you can tell by the way they bounce oh man oh man what are you some sort of expert got your medical degree got your residency been practicing plastic surgery for a while just decided to take a hiatus and work in cable you are too drunk to even notice to pay attention too broke to pay attention to be having any conversation other than the one you're having all right all right

how does she do that how does she make them twirl first that way then this way counter clockwise super nova rotation baby must have something to do with the earth's gravitational pull and kinetic energy and talent lot's of talent twenties all around traditional insertion into the garter belt fashions change but the garter belt carries on party on garth

back out to the parking lot all sorts of piss streaming off in the back of the lot over near the bushes over near the bushes opportune moment to simply say hey bush i piss on thee

back on the bus we drop off the customers i pull out the bag roll up a phattie we kick back i fire it up pass it around pass it around pass it around ease out of the night we stumble out of the bus into our own hotel go out to the courtyard eff scott drops a bottle of hieneken on the patio everyone shh shh shh shh sprinkled with muffled laughter

love in our hearts amusement on our minds

we sit outside next to the pool at three in the morning passing around another phat one big and stanky long and stanky nothing more surreal than sitting in the courtyard of a disneyworld hotel communing with the goddess at three in the morning oddly placed statues of mickey and minnie and fucking goofy

i think that we should have all formed a circle around minnie and masturbated while singing it's a small world the perfect circle jerk but alas we didn't but for lack of a lass we might have no self-sugary in the courtyard that night goddamn goddamn

more stories more lies more tales more mumbling stanks is a happy drunk eff scott is a fucking republican who feels that reagan was a great man he thinks i am a tree-hugging liberal ain't it grand that in america we can sit down and bury our differences over alcohol and weed and business more stories more lies more tales

stumble back up to the hotel room slide onto the bed into the bed under the covers ah elimidate entertain me tonight entertain me tonight slide slide slide slide spurt spurt

and all that

Mister Reagan's Polka

you may think that i am only sitting before the tube hand down my pants scratching my pubes jangling my balls but you're wrong i'm figuring it all out every last little bit of it goddamn right

yah yah yah oh kay been this way for a while been sitting back been reading been talking thought maybe it would just work itself out thought maybe i could ignore it thought thinking thought jesus jesus but i just can't i just can't i just can't

always get what i want

where is the fucking collective memory where is the outrage where is the fucking shock and fucking awe mister reagan mister reagan mister reagan let me just say let me just say what they are not saying on the radio what they are not saying in the newspapers what they are not saying in all these televised tributes let me just say

fuck you mister president

where oh where oh where do we begin fuck your morning in america you monkey-humping two-bit borax-shilling actor you slapped your stupid grin on the screen while your cronies were in the back room in the back room cutting deals cutting deals yeah yeah yeah can't

always get what i want

but all i wanted all i needed was a little honesty hell here i was here i was just coming out of college hell just a senior just wanting to smoke a little dope and sniff a little pussy and believe in something jimmy carter he was president i lived in atlanta georgia i attended college it was the proper thing to do i was taught and by god i learned that yeah that nixon dude he fucked us over that ford dude a nice enough guy but he was nixon's lapdog and jimmy jimmy jimmy i'm just going to say it

i liked jimmy carter

and the see eye aa and old georgie bush fucked him over georgie met with the ayatollah's boys and said and said and said you hang on to those hostages for just a little while longer wink wink just a little while longer we'll make sure you get some of our special guns wink and a nod when our boy becomes president you know you know ol' jimmy he ain't going to give you no guns best wait for our boy our cowboy twenty years later we've named a fucking airport after the bantering old fool

now that my friends is high fucking treason

thousands died in central america the word homeless did not exist in the american vernacular until the eighties savings and loans were thought to be the ultra-safe place to put your money the word indictment was never used more nor has it been used more since in conjunction with a presidential administration my fucking grandkids and their grandkids and their grandkids will be paying for star wars just what the fuck is a winnable nuclear war or a recallable nuclear missile jesus fucking christ they let your trembling shaking fingers on the button trees don't you know cause pollution thank you james motherfucker watt ketchup ketchup ketchup where is my fucking ketchup plant in my garden a fucking vegetable my ass let's make a toast to marcos baby sing for me ferdinand sing for me maggie thatcher may have been the milk snatcher but ronnie cut back on food stamps and busted unions can't get a job without a lie detector test without a drug test without a fucking eye cue test well test this motherfucker constructive engagement yeah constructive engagement with south africa baby constructive engagement shit practiced our weapons on grenada saved those precious med students fuck ollie ollie ollie how about a little pinch between my cheek and gums just a little snort just a little lift what's a few guns between friends between enemies hell let's feed crack to the babies in the neighborhood crack baby guns baby i love a twelve year-old ho with a habit never heard the word drive-by until the eighties let's ignore aids it's a faggot disease anyway got a few extra dollars from cutting the school lunch program let's give it to jonas savimbi let's give it to manuel noriega let's give it to saddam hussein two hundred and thirty-nine troops dead in beirut and for what and for what and for what omar kaddafi we blow up your baby girl 

fuck you mister president fuck you and that fucking horse you rode in on

fuck you and your legacy fuck you and your astrological charts perhaps you should have followed some sage advice and reached out for a blow job you'd have felt better hell i know that i do i know that i do i know that i feel much better with a pair of those waxy saxy flaxy lips sliding down on my long inches checking the lipstick on the old dipstick

and all you got to say is that mistakes were made yeah well

fuck you mister president fuck you mister president fuck you mister president fuck you and your fucking airport and your fucking horse and your fucking faggot wannabe tee vee star kids and your fucking cronies that didn't go to jail that went on to halliburton and to bechtel and to the american enterprise institute and who now want to steal my baby boy and send him to some foreign country to have his legs blown off

no no no no no no

fuck you mister president kiss my lily white ass i'll see your worm-ridden carcass in hell yeah i do feel better now fuck you and all that and all that

Banister River

long long time ago another tale of my youth another tale another story yeah i think it's true at least it's what i think i recall lot of water under the bridge you know gray hairs and all that just gray at the temples but gray nonetheless my friend my friends old as dirt probably sat behind jesus in the second grade shit sportin' gray pubes baby long time time ago long long time ago

sometimes i just wake up and wonder sometimes i just wake up

there's this river in southside virginia the banister river it's in what's called the piedmont part of virgina ain't the mountains with the blue ridge and skyline drive and all that ain't the tidewater with the dismal swamp and the beaches and chincoteague and all that no the piedmont it's kind of tucked right in there in between yup lot's of farmland tobacco farms stock car tracks colonial homes and piss ant shacks halifax county i lived in halifax county for a while lived there in halifax virginia the county seat complete with the courthouse right out of eighteen fucking sixty-one and the mandatory statue of some confederate general lived there from the time i was seven years old until i was thirteen years old

the formative years

wonder bread baby if you will if you may there's this river it's called the banister river it runs through halifax county it runs round the north end of halifax the town when i was growing up it was a big river seemed like a big river slow moving river small dam down at the east end of halifax down near the bridge we'd canoe down there toward the dam there was drew there was richard we called him biggs because he wasn't that big there was keith there was craddock i probably hung with craddock more than anyone there was johnny we called him queerbird because he went away to boarding school  we really only saw him in the summer and during holidays johnny had a canoe i used to go canoeing with him all the time

queerbird taught me the see stroke taught me the jay stroke we teased him about boarding school circle jerks and the up down stroke

this town halifax old town been there forever used to be called houston way back when not like houston texas fucking redneck town of some asshole president but pronounced like houston street like house you know even though everyone in that little buttfuck town was fucking republican and redneck least ways the white folk were the black folk hell i don't know i was only seven to thirteen the formative years i didn't care about such shit i mean we were so isolated this town had only eight hundred people the big town nearby was south boston hell it was the big city five thousand people in that town

i remember in nineteen and seventy-two craddock's mom was some bigwig in town she had the richard nixon for president posters all over she she did not like george mcgovern i didn't even know who george mcgovern was i didn't know who the chicago seven was i didn't know about berkeley california i didn't know about madison wisconsin i didn't know much about much

yeah we had television but i didn't really get what was going on i was born in nineteen and fifty-nine i was ten years old living in a redneck valley with a goldwater republican as a father the word vietnam meant nothing to me the town was so small that i didn't even know anyone who went to vietnam i had a cousin way down in south georgia hell he was a second cousin he went to vietnam woodrow went to vietnam he got fucked up but i didn't really realize until later

i didn't really realize much until later i was a victim of a left-wing political drive-by shooting teacher from new york came screaming through my life shot me full of books and screeched off leaving me bleeding in the nixonian streets of redneck republica 

not a bad place unless you're a nigger or white trash and then it sucks it also sucks when you've had your heart ripped open by dalton trumbo and ken kesey fucking books are a very dangerous liaison inject sniff or smoke fucked me up good

in nineteen and seventy-two when i was thirteen years ago yeah i had a jimi hendrix record and a led zeppelin record and a steppenwolf record and a janis joplin record and a crosby stills nash and young record but i was more interested in hot rods and richard petty and motorcycles and those breasts that just seemed to be popping up all around me don't you know i jacked off to marcia brady and laurie partridge yeah yeah i also jacked off to kelly down the street i think i loved kelly she was cool

she had some smarts in that beautiful head of hers i hung out with some of the black kids from my school and they were into james brown they were black like that

in nineteen and seventy-two the summer of nineteen and seventy-two we were on the river a lot not me and the black kids but me and biggs and queerbird and drew and keith and craddock we rode our bikes down to the bridge down near the dam because down at that end of the river down at that end of town there were these cliffs they were pretty high off the water i guess they went up about a hundred feet or so we used to climb up those cliffs

we'd parked our bikes over on the bridge we'd make our way down to the river we'd swim up the river a ways we'd come out of the river and we'd climb up the cliffs we'd climb up the cliffs about thirty or forty feet about half way up to the top there was this outcropping of rock that went out over the river we'd climb up there

wide world of sports every saturday afternoon when there was no football on the tube there was wide world of sports there were the cliffs of alcapulco the cliff divers they'd dive off these hairy fucking cliffs they had to time it just right they'd go flying through the air swan dive me biggs craddock the gang we used to dig watching the cliffs of alcapulco on the wide world of sports we called ours

the cliffs of halipulco

we'd climb up these cliffs we'd hang out we'd smoke cigarettes this was just before we knew about kind green bud this was before we knew about mushrooms we'd climb up and smoke cigarettes and then one of us usually drew he was the evel knievel in the group another wide world of sports superstar other times we'd jump our bikes off the docks into the water build these elaborate ramps sent us sailing off the docks into the water drew was the daredevil he always did the crazy things first then we'd all do it

drew would get out on the outcropping and he'd spread his arms and we'd all make that wide world of sports music can't even remember it today someone would usually do the tagline the thrill of victory the agony of defeat drew would leap off and do the most amazing fucking swan dive into the banister river nobody else would dive like that the rest of us would just jump off all crazy and arms flailing and yelling and screaming and then we'd hit the water and go under go deep

we'd go deep

spin around in the muddy brown water bubbles bubble everywhere but not a one to breathe we'd surface only to have to look out for the next one of us coming sailing through the air landing near us we'd play chicken we'd do the old reliable eenie meenie minie mo thing figure out who'd go first

that poor fucker would jump off the cliff

then he'd have to tread water down at the bottom of the cliff and look up the next guy would jump off trying to get as close to him as he possibly could without jumping on him and if the guy in the water moved he was the fucking chicken didn't want to be chicken i'd rather have fat old jefferey oaks land on my sorry skinny ass than let anyone of them think i was chicken don't you know what i mean

we weren't mean enough to deliberately jump on someone but we weren't good enough to jump really close and not hit each other so yeah sometimes we'd miss and land on someone yeah it would fucking hurt can't remember breaking any bones i got a black eye once fucking davy scheffler jumped and the heel of his foot hit me in the eye yeah it fucking hurt

scrambled up the cliff hand over hand i guess now they'd make kids wear helmets and harnesses and have some adult there probably two or three adults and everyone would have to sign an insurance waiver and there'd be ropes and signs and directions and rules and they wouldn't let the kids smoke cigarettes up on the cliffs and it would just suck

scrambled up the cliff hand over hand once once once there was this time i went up first scrambled up the side of this cliff kind of a shale kind of a slate kind of a red clay feel to the whole thing it wasn't loose it was good sturdy rock mostly good hand holds i put my hand onto this one rock pulled myself up

face to face with a copperhead

my shorts were already wet from the river so i don't recall if i pissed them as well copperheads don't have that rattling thing going on letting you know shit's about to fly no copperheads they just up and fucking bite you leaving you there to wonder what the fuck just happened

this copperhead is digging the rays

sunning itself on the flat outcropping of rock i pull myself up my eyes are level with its eyes

it doesn't blink i blink i blink again hell i might have been crying for all i know that fucking snake just sitting there who knows what runs through a snake's mind at any given moment i know that my mind went totally fucking blank empty not a single solid thought completely on autopilot instinct kicking in fight or flee i do neither i just cling there the guys behind me yelling

hey c'mon mike get a move on i ain't talking

i'm thirteen years old i weigh about one hundred and twenty pounds my feet are calloused from going barefoot all summer i'm tanned like my cherokee great-grandmother my hair is a mop on my head i'm hanging on a cliff about thirty feet over the water staring into the eyes of a golden brown copperhead

my momma wasn't anywhere nearby

i looked death in the eyes and my momma wasn't anywhere nearby

rocks and water and heights and balls and snakes and canoes and cigarettes and all that

Back When

don't know what it is don't know how it is don't know don't know but you see you see it's sort of like this when i was growing up when i was just a kid growing up back in south georgia this was in the sixties mainly yeah early seventies up until i was about twelve fourteen years old it's very strange to say very strange looking back but but

we always had one

a maid but not really a maid i mean it wasn't like we had a live-in hazel although we kind of did since quite ironically that was my mom's name it wasn't like we had this maid with a starched apron on that cooked all the meals and cleaned the house and gave sage advice but my momma always had her girl that worked at the house yeah

she cleaned

yeah

sometimes she cooked

yeah

sometimes she took care of me and my brother it's not like my mom was the country club type not like she was in the fucking ladies auxiliary or the garden club or whatfuckingever sometimes my mom worked she worked as a nurse on and off but we usually had someone around i remember matty the most

big old african american woman although back then she wasn't african american she was colored or negro my momma would not allow the big en word to be spoken in or near our house my daddy respected that rule we all respected that rule the rest of my momma's family used the big en word they used it a lot my uncle ben even used the big en word with a possessive pronoun in front of it he used to say

thelma is my nigger

my uncle ben is one of those people that i had to love because he is my uncle and he loved me more than the land itself and my uncle ben he had a big heart he had one of the biggest hearts i ever knew he just didn't know any better hell that ain't right he knew better he just wasn't going to change his daddy had taught him and his daddy had learned from his granddaddy and my uncle ben just couldn't find any reason to change just the way it was just the way of the world as far as he was concerned the world wasn't fair for anyone just the way it fucking was

my uncle ben he's dead now he died a horrible death slow death bad arthritis painful arthritis bad heart cancer shit it all hit him it was very sad to see happened over like five years very hard to witness he was a big strong man worked with his hands his entire life always worked hard working man working man very sad to see a man like that wither away writhe away proud man

makes you wonder

but my momma never let him use the en word in her house couldn't much do anything about what he said in his own house but not in my momma's house she threw him out of the house once he was drunk been drinking with my daddy my uncle ben used the en word my daddy ducked out knew what was coming my momma threw uncle ben out of the house yes she did my momma was a little woman only five foot one little fucking firecracker my uncle ben was six foot two she threw him out then she cried my uncle ben called and apologized

family's that way sometimes

my uncle wallace used to have this woman ruthie work for her she used to take care of me when i was a baby she used to call me wallace that's my middle name i was named after my uncle wallace i remember when my uncle wallace was murdered i was a teenager we were all over at the house ruthie had still been working for my uncle wallace i sat next to her she stroked my hair and held me against her big old ample bosom and called me wallace

ruthie was the only one who ever called me wallace

i kind of liked it thelma used to take care of me when i was a kid she used to call me mister mike even when i was just five six seven years old she'd say what you want for breakfast mister mike i got some biscuits in the oven how you want your eggs baby thelma made the best biscuits in the whole world i used to put

cane syrup on my biscuits

i love cane syrup on my biscuits ain't nothing better on biscuits than cane syrup she'd fry me up some eggs fry me up some bacon she'd slice it herself cook me up some grits i'd mix it all up eggs and grits and bacon lot's of black pepper sop up the rest of it with biscuit but mainly i put cane syrup on my biscuits sometimes i'd put sausage on my biscuits

thelma'd make these things when we went hunting she'd wrap sausage meat around a boiled egg and deep fry it called it a scotch egg we'd take it with us deer hunting sit up on that deer stand at five in the morning freezing our balls off you'd eat this scotch egg and it'd warm you up they'd make us fart though scare away the deer

i'm surprised i'm not dead yet the shit they used to feed us

they didn't integrate my school until i was in the fifth grade it was a big fucking deal there were protests and all that but we still did it i didn't know what all the upset was about but things were different after it happened we lived in the middle of nowhere i took a bus to school i had been just walking to school a lot of my friends they didn't like the idea about integration i said what's the big deal my friends they'd get into fights i never got into fights i've always been pretty good at talking my way into and out of situations

by the time i was in junior high school they called themselves black they wanted us to call them black their community and my community were so intertwined so intermingled so mixed up yet so separate two worlds occupying the same space yeah in my town the communities were indeed separated by the proverbial tracks in my uncle ben's town it was the dirt road

i live in a big city now expensive city now the african american community is not a big community but they still live on the other side of the tracks on the other side of the dirt road my youngest male child he plays basketball he plays a pretty decent game of basketball he plays on this team year round team pretty damn good team aa aa you team he's one of the only white kids on the team yeah there's one other but he doesn't show up as much youngest male child plays with the brothers i sit in the bleachers with the parents mostly it's the moms showing up mostly it's a single mom yeah yeah

one of these moms gave me a hug after a game the other week she's a big ol' african american woman with ample bosom and i just sank into her i didn't want to let go she smelled like home she smelled like home i didn't want to let go lawdy i wanted to say take me home let me sit on your lap let me put my head on your shoulder let me go to sleep in your arms take me in take care of me

we were at a tournament a few weeks ago a big tournament up in sacramento youngest male child's team was playing a pretty hard game against this team from the san ramon valley suburban white community the crowd was all excited i yelled something one of the other parents this big redneck of very pale ancestry stood up and yelled at me to shut up or he was going to shut me up

before i could say anything three of these women from our team three of these big women from our team they stood up surrounding me they said you bring your scrawny ass over here and we'll put you down in the ground i felt all warm and secure i felt like just crawling up into their laps and cuddling burrowing into the breast of their protective love yeah

my posse

they looked after me they took care of me one time this guy who lived across the street from me tommy rudder he lived across the street from me he was two years older than me i didn't like tommy rudder he was a bully mainly i didn't like tommy rudder because he was stupid one time tommy rudder came over into our yard and he started to push me around and matty she came out with a belt swinging it at tommy rudder got one swing across the back of his legs as he tried to run away

my posse

our neighborhood in san francisco is pretty fucking white well mostly asian but pretty fucking white anyway one family is african american they live on the street behind us don't talk to them much nod sometimes hey how you doing kind of thing

i'm no community activist i'm no guy out there fighting the good fight hell everyone that i work with is either white or asian or indian not too many brothers or sisters working down in the valley in the video technology biz i'm a member of this swimming and rowing club hell they're all white the family is a member of the jewish community center not exactly a diverse group my kids went to jewish day school diversity came in the form of the russian families i don't volunteer down at the boys club where youngest male child plays bee-ball 

no i just hang with these folks during the basketball games we go out of town together sometimes we stay in hotels together sometimes we hang out at night together sometimes we have breakfast with these folks i just feel comfortable with them i talk their talk i understand their talk they just accept me as who i am

some strange cracker

i still see them as a them i guess that's the way i was brought up ain't it strange ain't it strange they still probably see me as part of a them as well i hope they think of me as one them that ain't so bad but i don't know i don't know it ain't right i'm hoping my youngest male child doesn't see them as a them i hope that his teammates don't see him as one of them

and i know i know i know my nostalgia is a nostalgia that is pretty fucked up i mean i mean thelma and ruthie and matty they are pure love in my heart but but fuck fuck fuck i'm sure if given the choice if they had been given the choice way back when they would have preferred to stay at home with their own children would have preferred to have not worked for some white family in south georgia

nostalgia is a fucking luxury yeah i know i know but that doesn't take away from my love my fondness my need my goddamn place in my mind that i got to get to sometimes it don't it don't

it just fucks with my head and all that

Sugar Don't Dance

sugar don't dance sugar don't boogie sugar sizzles sugar melts sugar browns into caramel sugar gets all wet and sticky sugar sugar grows in long long cane poles chop it chop it slice it splice it squeeze it press it until it drips drips drips wet and sticky brown and gooey

love gets sticky

sugar gets hot

sugar gets me going and going and going lawdy lawdy i got a sugar tooth i got a sugar tongue i got sugar fingers hell i got sugar toes and sugar elbows and a big old sugar nose

roses are red violets are blue baby for your sugar i'll be your jack russell terrier on the morning dew

roses are red violets are gold i want to lick my finger and twirl it around your sugar bowl

you know you know get it all crystally and sparkly and all that baby

and all that

Ultimate

ah sweet wind play with me

warm sand soft sand grey sand ocean beach one sixty-five spinning through the breeze spinning zee's bouncing bouncing across the zoom there's this groove there's this comfortable zone it's just so fucking zen hard white plastic disc fits so perfectly in the hand sits so happily waiting to jump waiting to jump

the movement oh it feels oh it feels oh it feels so natural it never leaves the lean the balance open up don't use your arm it's all in the wrist baby lean snap release yes it feels so good

backatcha spinning spinning clockwise i work best on a clock spin firm nails settles down spin spin around leg up disc under drop spin one-eighty spinning disc settles down inches from the ground pop pop spin around the back of the neck left to right drop to navel catch left pop smack more zee's mid-air catch left circle rim loop it up full guidus catch and down

up and backatcha release mighty zee's mighty spin your turn

tossing the disc with older child on the beach he's started an ultimate team at his local high school been playing through the year they want to get better play in a league here in ess eff older child came to the old man and said hey pop teach me a few throws my heart melted i don't get much from the seventeen year old male child but but but man oh man oh man when it comes when it comes

oh baby it feels so good

hey pop teach me a few throws you got to understand you got to know that the seventeen year old boy child has already outpaced his old man in many a thing in many a task in many a skill i mean he started beating me at chess on a regular basis when he was fourteen he has this uncanny ability to find the most amazing new music he can climb a hundred foot vertical wall he scored this amazing fucking score on his ess aa tee's far better than i ever did i mean i mean i mean i guess he's living proof that

marijuana did not fuck with my genes

too much but he's only seventeen though so far so good but but but he asked the old man to help him out with his throws and that does a heart good yes it does yes it does

there were years oh the years that ultimate was my life my chi i danced with the disc and the wind and the world was right i gave not a shit about anything else except maybe getting laid but stella had moved in by then and we lived only a couple of blocks from piedmont park so i could sneak home to get a little somethin'-somethin' when the urge hit me played all through college but didn't get serious fucking serious about until it senior year and then really serious about it the first few years after i graduated dug it dug it dug it traveled all over participated in a few freestyle competitions freestyle was the gunz freestyle was junk without the needle freestyle was pussy

freestyle was like the wind on acid

played serious ultimate until i was about twenty-eight then pick-up until i was about thirty-five now i've got it back in my blood i'm jonesing a game oldest male child talked to me about coaching his team if he gets it together i'm looking for a seniors game can you fucking believe it i'm looking for a fucking seniors anything i'm such a fucking stuck up asshole about it too i saw this one game in the park but they were so fucking lame they couldn't throw the goddamn disc they were just running around all fat and phat and happy but

they seemed to be having a good time

go figure but no i don't want to play with them oh no i'm being particular i need to look up some old ultimate buddies those that didn't fry their respective brains on too much acid maybe see if they are interested heh a fucking seniors game go fucking figure go fucking figure

it's just a fucking round flat piece of plastic and all that