OCTOBER 9 GIG BLURB
“I am broke, sensitive and terribly complex” whisper-screamed Zeek the Handsome: fried hair, be-zoot-ed, macho-frail, blistering Billy Eckstein-icity glistening and fizzling, as the ever deepening pool of blood he lay in on the Kansas City jail-cell floor sang a ever-widening burgundy bass note which savored then swallowed him. Almost.
“My sisters will come and kill you motherfuckers, ALL.”
He’d been smoking since he was ten. He was from the street of no sidewalks. He was from the hollow where white encyclopedia salesmen would get beat up then invited for dinner.
He broke into a Kansas City library one night at age 12 to read by candle til morning then slept among the history section’s aisles. He wanted to be discovered by the librarians in the morning.
Upon discovering him, the white librarians, who were liberal for their time, who read Shelley and who wore sweaters in summer (when they weren’t conjuring book dust for future estate sales), inhaled his intelligence deeply and got high off it and danced down history’s aisles and when their dancing was done they made a room for Zeek in the basement and told him he could sack out with the books as long as they could inhale his mind in the morning.
Jail Master Harry patiently explained to Zeek the Handsome that a black one could not - not even a handsome black one - shoot a living being (even if he was a negro) from across the street square in the left ass cheek while having lain in wait for 5 hours in the bushes just because said ass-cheek made an ill remark about one’s hat.
“Besides Zeek, what’s a well-read negro like you doin’ fuckin’ with a weapon?”, pleaded Jail Master Harry, a void of beige-pink misunderstanding swelling slowly about him like an octet of aggressively blown plastic trombones. “One minute yer leadin’ discussions at the Strangely Integrated Book Club - well, we both know it ain’t really integrated - they just let you in because you smell so damn good - then next minute yer performin’ ghetto as all get out, shootin’ and carryin’ on like one of yer own who ain’t read Henry James nor Balzac.”
Zeek giggled at the sound of “Balzac” and Harry giggled at it too but even louder and then they both yelled with childish, possessed laughter. When they were done genuinely laughing they fake-laughed for a minute which eventually switched to a real moaning laughter, a series of long, pained soul wails, wherein each tried to drawn the other out with their depthless hegelian sonics. But they were evenly matched. Both collapsed and Harry lit Zeek’s cigarette.
The doctor entered the cell like a man who didn’t care whether a black man bled to death or not. Zeek began screaming like the known universe. It sounded like the pain of all things forcibly united. Zeek went unconscious. “He overacts when he reads, he overacts when he bleeds” said the doctor. “He will, sadly, live. He has to. My wife would quit the book club if he croaked.”
At 15, after being missing for 3 years, Zeek the Handsome returned to Rattlebone Hollow. His mother made him bathe in milk for 3 days. “I was wondering how long it would take you to get tired of being inhaled” said she.
The Negro Problem will be at Fort Greene Park Saturday October 9th 5pm