I know I am not pronouncing it right. It was given by a group of my early forties year old Puerto Rican female friends, Yvette and Sonya. Don't ask me why, but I go to take notes. It's a crowd of working class slobs. The conversations revolve around kids, home, politics, the cops, food, and who is so drunk and stupid that they need to chill. It is not the cheese and cracker crowd, but Hell! It's better than watching Dolly Parton on Larry King. Where was I? When I returned home, I stood out in front of my house and pondered over the state of my neighborhood, my domain. As the only black mayor of this neighborhood, I clicked my tongue at the changing demographics of my neighborhood.
What had formally been a Portuguese, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, and black if you count the two black families and the folks that walk past from the project over the line drawn by the imagined railroad track. Across the street, there is a South American couple, ekkies we call them, just returned home in their usual drunken state. They are truly the hardest working, drinking, and fighting folks I have ever encountered. When they first arrived in Newark, the locals robbed them daily. They learned and now, they all carry knives and will jump you as viscously as a pack of wolves if you mess with them. Hell! They cut each other up nightly for sport. It is not a boost but a fact.
Anyway, the couple staggered into their doorway. They were cursing and only their ancestors spoke yelling in a language that I am sure long before the colonizers arrived.
They began hitting and spitting at each other, a mating ritual of some type I think. They finally made it up the steps and for a moment it was quiet. Until the Portuguese kids, that deal drugs on New York avenue, came running past me from 5-0, Who snuck up on them in a cab, which is the newest crime fighting weapon of the silly Newark police officers, who lock up any one under 25 for sport or promotion or crime statistics. The kids, who are all part of my constituency all say, "what's up big brother." It's my name around here. I hope it has nothing to do with my weight.
Before they turned the corner, The black crack head couple walked past me pushing their shopping cart and begging for stooges on their way. South Americans, in force, working class types staggered past me after leaving their club around the corner. They were singing mournful songs and looking lost, confused, and homesick. Three of them were riding a bike, yes; three of them crashed into the stack of garbage just outside the corner store. I am not sure they even knew they fell or that they were all riding on one bike.
Anyway, just then the Brazilian family from across the street, (above the ekkies), decided that it was still too hot inside, so they came outside in force to sit on the front steps and make their usual racket. Mother, grandmother, sons, uncles, kids, all of them. Clucking away in that Brazilian happy, sing song language that I have unwillingly accustomed too. I tell my Brazilian friends to their horror. Those Brazilian women can dance the samba and shake their asses. Whatever! But the men, they dance like they talk singsong, happy and excited. They dance like their language. They don't have enough attitudes and not enough bravado. They dance and talk as if no one is watching them. Some call it freedom; I call it bad. Where was I?
They waved at me to come over, but I declined. I wasn't in the mood for a language lesson on this night. I sit out with them a lot of nights and debate dancing, singing, and all of that. It gets really heated, fun, and racial in a way only people of color are racial with each other without being racist. If you know what I mean.
The party
I had just left a party at Flamingos bar club and hole in the wall. There is a Puerto Rican club across the line into the real Newark or the old walled city.
It was a party for Yvette's sister. The place was packed with Brazilians, Colombians, south Americans, and a large group of Puerto Ricans both young and old, blacks and even a Chinese guy. They had two male go-go dancers and three female dancers. I never understand the dancers. It never works. The drunken men, wind up taking off their clothes when the male dancers dance trying to get attention. Then the frustrated male go-go boys get scared or annoyed and stop. The women all surround the female dancers blocking out the drunken males until the female dancers get scared and quit. Then everyone sits around bitching about it. I don't get go-go dancers and haven't ever since I stopped drinking.
It is definitely a drunks paradise and today I am sober praise the lord. Where was I? I sat at a table with Sonya, who is my part time friend, lover, and confidant and her straight and boring boyfriend. All of the more 30 people in the crowd came and sat at the tables near us. We chatted away about just about everything. Changing times mostly, bad times, no jobs, no money, no jobs, and kids without jobs, kids in jail, kids just getting out of jail, the stupid war, no jobs, no money, the war. "Bomb everyone!" is a common refrain. Immigrants are patriotic not knowing any better. I always get indigestion as I wolf down the delicious foods from Ecuador, Brazil, and Puerto Rico. I have learned to shut out their political ignorance as I try to do to my kids when they ramble on. Anyway, the music began loudly and beautifully.
Sonya jumped up and grabbed me and we began to dance with the rest of the nut cases. Yes, I can dance. Fat folks always can. Although, I will pay for it later. Reggietone, which has slowly become my favorite music, was blasting in the air. The home boys, who were all Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, black, south American, and all were someone's son or nephew or brother were all in force. The girls fare better and there was quite a few chicken heads. Don't you hate that phrase? Ok! A better phrase guttersnipes. They were all there applying their trades. There is a new fashion trend hitting the ghetto. I call it gay chic. By the way, The homeboys are all mostly Latino. Black guys are still on the show me the money or show me the manhood type jailhouse tip.
Where was I? The Latinos have been kinking up their hair, wearing headbands and creating these large Afro puffs in a very girlie way. I thought about Rosalind Cash and Vonneta McGee; Something from Thomasina and bushrod, where I viewed these new get ups. Something out of a black/Puerto Rican exploitation flicks. Hell, Cleopatra Jones, maybe. Any way, Sonya stopped to yell at her son and ask him if he was now her daughter to his great embarrassment and our great delight. Anyway, these young guys are plucking their eyebrows, wearing large earrings, and shaving the hair on their faces in thin lines. Looking like a cross between an Errol Flynn dandy and a mutant refugee from wigstock. Their attire became the subject of discussion between us old folks, who were genuinely puzzled by it. I was jealous myself.
My son asked me the other day what had happened to my eyebrows, which used to be Frieda Kahlo thick in my youth. I must confess they simply fell out. Old age; isn't it a bitch? The general consensus was that they were all sick of rap music and low hanging pants and white tee shirts, so anything that leads away from it was great. All of the Latino parents told me that their kids are moving away from rap and embracing reggietone and other forms of Latino world music. As long as they drop the Bling Bling and defilement of women from their wardrobes.
I think the ghetto is turning inward on itself. Never before have so many kids been unemployed, so depressed, and so oppressed by the police. Since the country has turned to racial profiling Muslims, we tend to forget that people of color are still being harassed. I guess we are just so grateful that they don't send us to Cuba that state prison aren't a big deal anymore. Anyway, unemployment thanks to our great president, who thinks dropping bombs on cave dwellers, will fill our appetites instead of food. Maybe the kids have decided since the world isn't caring for them, they have to pamper themselves.
Maybe hip-hop in its final days has truly become a character of itself. Vanity and conceit will lead to introspection. Who knows? I can only hope.
Buddhism it is not, but it may or may not be a statement. Hell, bravo is doing that whole gay show on changing straight men. The Supreme Court just gave gay rights a nod. Maybe this fashion statement is just a precursor to changing attitudes. Yea right! Rap is almost dead isn't it? I mean, when I watched CNN and they did a story on Eminem crowning him and glowing. I knew he had lost his glow. When they spoke of his brilliance. I knew that he had worked the system and a new race card like magic.
When I heard newscasters begin talking About chilling out, bling, bling. When did these old white guys get hip? I knew that it was like the first time I had heard a white guy call another white guy brother. Move on, the jig be up. Mainstream death! Hell! I knew it was the day that rap music died. It killed itself with the help of a greedy music industry. Buffoons! Minstrels! And privilege. It began to play to the hearts of suburban youth, who buy the records instead of the often-violent home base of poverty and disenfranchisement. Appropriation is the great white hope. I am not sure what kind of genius Eminem is yet. Anyway, he gives suburban parents a break from the menacing faces of DMX, Redman, and Lil' Kim that were hanging on their kids' wall.
A white, female friend of mine told me of hanging the poster of Huey Newton in her bedroom, and her father ripped it down. Now Jay Z isn't Huey, but we all look alike anyway. A blond angel or devil, but Hell! He is still blond, and they do have more fun. Where was I? Oh yea, The Latino beauty supplies kids. Maybe they're just doing what the whole country is doing, which is surrounding itself in another false face. I mean, how many lies has the Bush administration been caught in this week, but the sad part is we knew it all the time. We were nullified by our not so secret desire for the world to pay for 9/11. America's hell is the establishment's greatest weapon is humbling; putting one in one's place. And that is what Bush is doing. That is being done every day in the inner city. There in the outer cities is the American way. Defining roles, picking heroes, leaders, and even music icons. So as the male youth of the inner city turn into Geisha girls and Banjee boys. The rest of us adults are painting our faces too with a thick layer of denial. We are lining our cruel lips with the suffering of other countries. We are wearing the earrings of a vanquished people's magic. Our own. We are kinking up our hair with the cries of a thousand colored folks in prisons and dancing in the street to my country 'tis of the sweet land f liberty. Yea, after the party, sitting out front, I went into my room.
I clicked on my computer and started again working on Kevin's war album using my karaoke machine. If I had a hammer I'd hammer in the morning. One less bell to answer and one less egg to fry. Knights in white satin. And for the chorus, I wailed out Neil Diamond's 'Coming to America."
Today, Today, Today. Ok! I just put on my pink slippers. I'll go back out front and ponder the new dress codes of the newest lost generation. I need some new earrings. Mine are getting tarnished.
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