Reckless Eyeballing Read Online Free PDF Page B

old African tales we came here with—the ones we knew before they took our brains to the cleaners—the god of drama demands that you tell the truth, and so lying is violating some sacred oath in a manner of speaking. So Chester and me, and some of the other guys, have stuck to our guns, but you guys and your generation, you’ve fallen victim to the moral laxity of the times. You ain’t trickin’ nobody. So since these broads have put a hurtin’ on those four one-acters you’ve written since Suzanna , you plan to get yourself off the sex list by writing this pussy play. You’re trying to get off the sex list. Admit it.”
    You should hear about how the fellas explain your success, old man, Ball started to say, but kept his peace. The reason that Chester Himes and Jake Brashford, and the others like them who risked their necks by trying to assert as large a range as their contemporaries, to break barriers, didn’t get as far as some of the others, is because they were abrasive, went around with a chip on their shoulders. They were confrontational. Confrontation was passé. This was the eighties.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Brashford continued. “It’s these white women who are carrying on the attack against black men today, because they struck a deal with white men who run the country. You give us women the jobs, the opportunities, and we’ll take the heat off of you and put it on Mose , is the deal they struck. They have maneuvered these white boys who run the country, but they have to keep the persecution thing up in order to win new followers, and so they jump on po’ Mose. They get Tremonisha and Johnnie Kranshaw to be their proxies in this attack. Sort of like the rich used to hire poor people to fight their wars. As for these Jewish women who are putting a hurtin’ on black dudes in print—they know they can’t change Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so they’re rehearsing on us, and backing these literary sleep-in maids who are coming down on the brothers in a foul and horrendous manner. Now I don’t approve of violence, but I can’t help secretly applauding what that crazy dude did to Tremonisha.” Ian looked at the wall above the Queen Anne sofa that Brashford sat on. There were framed portraits of Eugene O’Neill, and playbills from performances of O’Neill’s plays. Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst dressed as O’Neill characters. Stills of scenes from The Iceman Cometh .
    â€œHow can you agree with what this guy did?” asked Ian. “You northern black intellectuals are always backing lunatics, just like you backed Idi Amin and Mark Essex. It’s irresponsible if you ask me—you’re always complaining, always feeling sorry for yourself—”
    â€œYou don’t know the ropes, youngster.” Brashford rose and walked to the front of his bookshelf. “Any black man, I don’t care how much prominence he has, if he isn’t bitter by the age of forty has lived his life as a fool. We can’t get through the day without somebody inviting us outside. Going out on us. Gettin’ it from every direction. White people, black people, faggots, Jews, Third World women, you name it. Some take to alcohol, some commit suicide; that is, if diabetes and cancer don’t get them first. And homicide. All you hear on the media is stuff about white women getting assaulted. The movies are always about monsters from space, creatures from the deep, all with one thing on their mind: white women. Read all the Nazi books. All about saving white women. Well, according to statistics, being a white woman is the safest thing you can be. If you’re a white woman your chances of being murdered is one in three hundred sixty-nine. If you’re a white man, one in one thirty-one, if you’re a black woman, one in one hundred four, but if you’re a black man it’s one in twenty-one.