What struck you the most about the two given short stories, and why? What specific passages or references helped you better comprehend the experience of being an ethnic queer? In two distinct paragraphs, analyze the short stories in great detail and with evidence. Brief narratives are: James Baldwin, “The outing”
E
ACH SUMMER the church gave an outing. It usually took
ACH SUMMER the church gave an outing. It usually took
place on the Fourth of July, that being the day when
most of the church-members were free from work; it began
quite early in the morning and lasted all day. The saints re
ferred to it as the whosoever will’ outing, by which they
meant that, though it was given by the Mount of Olives Pente
costal Assembly for the benefit of its members, all men were
free to join them, Gentile, Jew or Greek or sinner. The Jews
and the Greeks, to say nothing of the Gentiles—on whom, for
their livelihood, most of the saints depended—showed them
selves, year after year, indifferent to the invitation; but sinners
of the more expected hue were seldom lacking. This year they
were to take a boat trip up the Hudson as far as Bear Moun
tain where they would spend the day and return as the moon
rose over the wide river. Since on other outings they had
merely taken a subway ride as far as Pelham Bay or Van
Cortlandt Park, this year’s outing was more than ever a special
occasion and even the deacon’s two oldest boys, Johnnie and
Roy, and their friend, David Jackson, were reluctantly thrilled.
These three tended to consider themselves sophisticates, no
longer, like the old folks, at the mercy of the love or the wrath
of God.
The entire church was going and for weeks in advance
talked of nothing else. And for weeks in the future the outing
would provide interesting conversation. They did not consider
this frivolous. The outing, Father James declared from his pul
pit a week before the event, was for the purpose of giving the
children of God a day of relaxation; to breathe a purer air and
to worship God joyfully beneath the roof of heaven; and there
was nothing frivolous about that. And, rather to the alarm of
the captain, they planned to hold church services aboard the
ship. Last year Sister McCandless had held an impromptu
service in the unbelieving subway car she played the tambou
rine and sang and exhorted sinners and passed through the
29E
ACH SUMMER the church gave an outing. It usually took
place on the Fourth of July, that being the day when
most of the church-members were free from work; it began
quite early in the morning and lasted all day. The saints re
ferred to it as the whosoever will’ outing, by which they
meant that, though it was given by the Mount of Olives Pente
costal Assembly for the benefit of its members, all men were
free to join them, Gentile, Jew or Greek or sinner. The Jews
and the Greeks, to say nothing of the Gentiles—on whom, for
their livelihood, most of the saints depended—showed them
selves, year after year, indifferent to the invitation; but sinners
of the more expected hue were seldom lacking. This year they
were to take a boat trip up the Hudson as far as Bear Moun
tain where they would spend the day and return as the moon
rose over the wide river. Since on other outings they had
merely taken a subway ride as far as Pelham Bay or Van
Cortlandt Park, this year’s outing was more than ever a special
occasion and even the deacon’s two oldest boys, Johnnie and
Roy, and their friend, David Jackson, were reluctantly thrilled.
These three tended to consider themselves sophisticates, no
longer, like the old folks, at the mercy of the love or the wrath
of God.
The entire church was going and for weeks in advance
talked of nothing else. And for weeks in the future the outing
would provide interesting conversation. They did not consider
this frivolous. The outing, Father James declared from his pul
pit a week before the event, was for the purpose of giving the
children of God a day of relaxation; to breathe a purer air and
to worship God joyfully beneath the roof of heaven; and there
was nothing frivolous about that. And, rather to the alarm of
the captain, they planned to hold church services aboard the
ship. Last year Sister McCandless had held an impromptu
service in the unbelieving subway car she played the tambou
rine and sang and exhorted sinners and passed through the
29E
ACH SUMMER the church gave an outing. It usually took
place on the Fourth of July, that being the day when
most of the church-members were free from work; it began
quite early in the morning and lasted all day. The saints re
ferred to it as the whosoever will’ outing, by which they
meant that, though it was given by the Mount of Olives Pente
costal Assembly for the benefit of its members, all men were
free to join them, Gentile, Jew or Greek or sinner. The Jews
and the Greeks, to say nothing of the Gentiles—on whom, for
their livelihood, most of the saints depended—showed them
selves, year after year, indifferent to the invitation; but sinners
of the more expected hue were seldom lacking. This year they
were to take a boat trip up the Hudson as far as Bear Moun
tain where they would spend the day and return as the moon
rose over the wide river. Since on other outings they had
merely taken a subway ride as far as Pelham Bay or Van
Cortlandt Park, this year’s outing was more than ever a special
occasion and even the deacon’s two oldest boys, Johnnie and
Roy, and their friend, David Jackson, were reluctantly thrilled.
These three tended to consider themselves sophisticates, no
longer, like the old folks, at the mercy of the love or the wrath
of God.
The entire church was going and for weeks in advance
talked of nothing else. And for weeks in the future the outing
would provide interesting conversation. They did not consider
this frivolous. The outing, Father James declared from his pul
pit a week before the event, was for the purpose of giving the
children of God a day of relaxation; to breathe a purer air and
to worship God joyfully beneath the roof of heaven; and there
was nothing frivolous about that. And, rather to the alarm of
the captain, they planned to hold church services aboard the
ship. Last year Sister McCandless had held an impromptu
service in the unbelieving subway car she played the tambou
rine and sang and exhorted sinners and passed through the (pg29)
train distributing tracts. Not everyone had found this admir
able, to some it seemed that Sister McCandless was being a
little ostentatious. “I praise my Redeemer wherever I go,” she
retorted defiantly. “Holy Ghost don’t leave me when I leave
the church. I got a every day religion.”
Sylvia’s birthday was on the third, and David and Johnnie
and Roy had been saving money for her birthday present.
Between them they had five dollars but they could not decide
what to give her. Roy’s suggestion that they give her under
things was rudely shouted down: did he want Sylvia’s mother
to kill the girl? They were all frightened of the great, raw-
boned, outspoken Sister Daniels and for Sylvia’s sake went to
great pains to preserve what remained of her good humor.
Finally, and at the suggestion of David’s older sister, Lorraine,
they bought a small, gold-plated pin cut in the shape of a
butterfly. Roy thought that it was cheap and grumbled angrily
at their combined bad taste (“Wait till it starts turning her
clothes green!” he cried) but David did not think it was so
bad; Johnnie thought it pretty enough and he was sure that
Sylvia would like it anyway; (“When’s your birthday?” he
asked David). It was agreed that David should present it to
her on the day of the outing in the presence of them all.
(“Man, I’m the oldest cat here,” David said, “you know that
girl’s crazy about me”). This was the summer in which they all
abruptly began to grow older, their bodies becoming trouble
some and awkward and even dangerous and their voices not to
be trusted. David perpetually boasted of the increase of down
on his chin and professed to have hair on his chest—“and
somewhere else, too,” he added slyly, whereat they all laughed.
“You ain’t the only one,” Roy said. “No,” Johnnie said, “I’m
almost as old as you are.” “Almost ain’t got it,” David said.
“Now ain’t this a hell of a conversation for church boys?” Roy
wanted to know.
The morning of the outing they were all up early; their
father sang in the kitchen and their mother, herself betraying
an excitement nearly youthful, scrubbed and dressed the
younger children and laid the plates for breakfast. In the bed
room which they shared Roy looked wistfully out of the win
dow and turned to Johnnie.
‘Got a good mind to stay home,” he said. “Probably have
more fun.” He made a furious gesture toward the kitchen.
“Why doesn’t he stay home?”
Johnnie, who was looking forward to the day with David
and who had not the remotest desire to stay home for any
reason and who knew, moreover, that Gabriel was not going to
leave Roy alone in the city, not even if the heavens fell, said
lightly, squirming into clean underwear: “Oh, he’ll probably be
busy with the old folks. We can stay out of his way.”
Roy sighed and began to dress. “Be glad when I’m a man,”
he said.
Lorraine and David and Mrs. Jackson were already on the
boat when they arrived. They were among the last; most of the
church, Father James, Brother Elisha, Sister McCandless, Sis
ter Daniels and Sylvia were seated near the rail of the boat in a
little semi-circle, conversing in strident tones. Father James
and Sister McCandless were remarking the increase of laxity
among God’s people and debating whether or not the church
should run a series of revival meetings. Sylvia sat there, saying
nothing, smiling painfully now and then at young Brother
Elisha, who spoke loudly of the need for a revival and who
continually attempted to include Sylvia in the conversation.
Elsewhere on the boat similar conversations were going on.
The saints of God were together and very conscious this morn
ing of their being together and of their sainthood; and were
determined that the less enlightened world should know who
they were and remark upon it. To this end there were a great
many cries of “Praise the Lord!” in greeting and the formal
holy kiss. The children, bored with the familiar spectacle, hadtrain distributing tracts. Not everyone had found this admir
able, to some it seemed that Sister McCandless was being a
little ostentatious. “I praise my Redeemer wherever I go,” she
retorted defiantly. “Holy Ghost don’t leave me when I leave
the church. I got a every day religion.”
Sylvia’s birthday was on the third, and David and Johnnie
and Roy had been saving money for her birthday present.
Between them they had five dollars but they could not decide
what to give her. Roy’s suggestion that they give her under
things was rudely shouted down: did he want Sylvia’s mother
to kill the girl? They were all frightened of the great, raw-
boned, outspoken Sister Daniels and for Sylvia’s sake went to
great pains to preserve what remained of her good humor.
Finally, and at the suggestion of David’s older sister, Lorraine,
they bought a small, gold-plated pin cut in the shape of a
butterfly. Roy thought that it was cheap and grumbled angrily
at their combined bad taste (“Wait till it starts turning her
clothes green!” he cried) but David did not think it was so
bad; Johnnie thought it pretty enough and he was sure that
Sylvia would like it anyway; (“When’s your birthday?” he
asked David). It was agreed that David should present it to
her on the day of the outing in the presence of them all.
(“Man, I’m the oldest cat here,” David said, “you know that
girl’s crazy about me”). This was the summer in which they all
abruptly began to grow older, their bodies becoming trouble
some and awkward and even dangerous and their voices not to
be trusted. David perpetually boasted of the increase of down
on his chin and professed to have hair on his chest—“and
somewhere else, too,” he added slyly, whereat they all laughed.
“You ain’t the only one,” Roy said. “No,” Johnnie said, “I’m
almost as old as you are.” “Almost ain’t got it,” David said.
“Now ain’t this a hell of a conversation for church boys?” Roy
wanted to know.
The morning of the outing they were all up early; their
father sang in the kitchen and their mother, herself betraying
an excitement nearly youthful, scrubbed and dressed the
younger children and laid the plates for breakfast. In the bed
room which they shared Roy looked wistfully out of the win
dow and turned to Johnnie.
‘Got a good mind to stay home,” he said. “Probably have
more fun.” He made a furious gesture toward the kitchen.
“Why doesn’t he stay home?”
Johnnie, who was looking forward to the day with David
and who had not the remotest desire to stay home for any
reason and who knew, moreover, that Gabriel was not going to
leave Roy alone in the city, not even if the heavens fell, said
lightly, squirming into clean underwear: “Oh, he’ll probably be
busy with the old folks. We can stay out of his way.”
Roy sighed and began to dress. “Be glad when I’m a man,”
he said.
Lorraine and David and Mrs. Jackson were already on the
boat when they arrived. They were among the last; most of the
church, Father James, Brother Elisha, Sister McCandless, Sis
ter Daniels and Sylvia were seated near the rail of the boat in a
little semi-circle, conversing in strident tones. Father James
and Sister McCandless were remarking the increase of laxity
among God’s people and debating whether or not the church
should run a series of revival meetings. Sylvia sat there, saying
nothing, smiling painfully now and then at young Brother
Elisha, who spoke loudly of the need for a revival and who
continually attempted to include Sylvia in the conversation.
Elsewhere on the boat similar conversations were going on.
The saints of God were together and very conscious this morn
ing of their being together and of their sainthood; and were
determined that the less enlightened world should know who
they were and remark upon it. To this end there were a great
many cries of “Praise the Lord!” in greeting and the formal
holy kiss. The children, bored with the familiar spectacle, hadtrain distributing tracts. Not everyone had found this admir
able, to some it seemed that Sister McCandless was being a
little ostentatious. “I praise my Redeemer wherever I go,” she
retorted defiantly. “Holy Ghost don’t leave me when I leave
the church. I got a every day religion.”
Sylvia’s birthday was on the third, and David and Johnnie
and Roy had been saving money for her birthday present.
Between them they had five dollars but they could not decide
what to give her. Roy’s suggestion that they give her under
things was rudely shouted down: did he want Sylvia’s mother
to kill the girl? They were all frightened of the great, raw-
boned, outspoken Sister Daniels and for Sylvia’s sake went to
great pains to preserve what remained of her good humor.
Finally, and at the suggestion of David’s older sister, Lorraine,
they bought a small, gold-plated pin cut in the shape of a
butterfly. Roy thought that it was cheap and grumbled angrily
at their combined bad taste (“Wait till it starts turning her
clothes green!” he cried) but David did not think it was so
bad; Johnnie thought it pretty enough and he was sure that
Sylvia would like it anyway; (“When’s your birthday?” he
asked David). It was agreed that David should present it to
her on the day of the outing in the presence of them all.
(“Man, I’m the oldest cat here,” David said, “you know that
girl’s crazy about me”). This was the summer in which they all
abruptly began to grow older, their bodies becoming trouble
some and awkward and even dangerous and their voices not to
be trusted. David perpetually boasted of the increase of down
on his chin and professed to have hair on his chest—“and
somewhere else, too,” he added slyly, whereat they all laughed.
“You ain’t the only one,” Roy said. “No,” Johnnie said, “I’m
almost as old as you are.” “Almost ain’t got it,” David said.
“Now ain’t this a hell of a conversation for church boys?” Roy
wanted to know.
The morning of the outing they were all up early; their
father sang in the kitchen and their mother, herself betraying
an excitement nearly youthful, scrubbed and dressed the
younger children and laid the plates for breakfast. In the bed
room which they shared Roy looked wistfully out of the win
dow and turned to Johnnie.
‘Got a good mind to stay home,” he said. “Probably have
more fun.” He made a furious gesture toward the kitchen.
“Why doesn’t he stay home?”
Johnnie, who was looking forward to the day with David
and who had not the remotest desire to stay home for any
reason and who knew, moreover, that Gabriel was not going to
leave Roy alone in the city, not even if the heavens fell, said
lightly, squirming into clean underwear: “Oh, he’ll probably be
busy with the old folks. We can stay out of his way.”
Roy sighed and began to dress. “Be glad when I’m a man,”
he said.
Lorraine and David and Mrs. Jackson were already on the
boat when they arrived. They were among the last; most of the
church, Father James, Brother Elisha, Sister McCandless, Sis
ter Daniels and Sylvia were seated near the rail of the boat in a
little semi-circle, conversing in strident tones. Father James
and Sister McCandless were remarking the increase of laxity
among God’s people and debating whether or not the church
should run a series of revival meetings. Sylvia sat there, saying
nothing, smiling painfully now and then at young Brother
Elisha, who spoke loudly of the need for a revival and who
continually attempted to include Sylvia in the conversation.
Elsewhere on the boat similar conversations were going on.
The saints of God were together and very conscious this morn
ing of their being together and of their sainthood; and were
determined that the less enlightened world should know who
they were and remark upon it. To this end there were a great
many cries of “Praise the Lord!” in greeting and the formal
holy kiss. The children, bored with the familiar spectacle, had (Pg.30-31)
already drawn apart and amused themselves by loud cries and
games that were no less exhibitionistic than that being played
by their parents. Johnnie’s nine year old sister, Lois, since she
professed salvation, could not very well behave as the other
children did; yet no degree of salvation could have equipped
her to enter into the conversation of the grown-ups; and she
was very violently disliked among the adolescents and could
not join them either. She wandered about, therefore, unwill
ingly forlorn, contenting herself to some extent by a great
display of virtue in her encounters with the unsaved children
and smiling brightly at the grown-ups. She came to Brother
Elisha’s side. “Praise the Lord,” he cried, stroking her head and
continuing his conversation.
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson met Johnnie’s mother for the
first time as she breathlessly came on board, dressed in the airy
and unreal blue which Johnnie would forever associate with
his furthest memories of her. Johnnie’s baby brother, her
youngest, happiest child, clung round her neck; she made him
stand, staring in wonder at the strange, endless deck, while she
was introduced. His mother, on all social occasions, seemed
fearfully distracted, as though she awaited, at any moment,
some crushing and irrevocable disaster. This disaster might be
the sudden awareness of a run in her stocking or private
knowledge that the trump of judgment was due, within five
minutes, to sound: but, whatever it was, it lent her a certain
agitated charm and people, struggling to guess what it might
be that so claimed her inward attention, never failed, in the
process, to be won over. She talked with Lorraine and Mrs.
Jackson for a few moments, the child tugging at her skirts,
Johnnie watching her with a smile; and at last, the child be
coming always more restive, said that she must go—into what
merciless arena one dared not imagine—but hoped, with a
despairing smile which clearly indicated the improbability of
such happiness, that she would be able to see them later. They
watched her as she walked slowly to the other end of the boat,
sometimes pausing in conversation, always ( as though it were
a duty) smiling a little and now and then considering Lois
where she stood at Brother Elishas’ knee.
“She’s very friendly,” Mrs. Jackson said. “She looks like you,
Johnnie.”
David laughed. “Now why you want to say a thing like that,
Ma? That woman ain’t never done nothing to you.”
Johnnie grinned, embarrassed, and pretended to menace
David with his fists.
“Don’t you listen to that old, ugly boy,” Lorraine said. “He
just trying to make you feel bad. Your mother’s real good
looking. Tell her I said so.”
This embarrassed him even more, but he made a mock bow
and said, “Thank you, Sister.” And to David: “Maybe now
you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“Who’ll learn to keep whose mouth shut? What land of talk
is that?”
He turned and faced his father, who stood smiling on them
as from a height.
“Mrs. Jackson, this is my father,” said Roy quickly. “And this
is Miss Jackson. You know David.”
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson looked up at the deacon with
polite and identical smiles.
“How do you do?” Lorraine said. And from Mrs. Jackson:
“I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Praise the Lord,” their father said. He smiled. “Don’t you
let Johnnie talk fresh to you.”
“Oh, no, we were just kidding around,” David said. There
was a short, ugly silence. The deacon said: “It looks like a good
day for the outing, praise the Lord. You kids have a good time.
Is this your first time with us, Mrs. Jackson?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Jackson. “David came home and told me
about it and it’s been so long since I’ve been in the country I already drawn apart and amused themselves by loud cries and
games that were no less exhibitionistic than that being played
by their parents. Johnnie’s nine year old sister, Lois, since she
professed salvation, could not very well behave as the other
children did; yet no degree of salvation could have equipped
her to enter into the conversation of the grown-ups; and she
was very violently disliked among the adolescents and could
not join them either. She wandered about, therefore, unwill
ingly forlorn, contenting herself to some extent by a great
display of virtue in her encounters with the unsaved children
and smiling brightly at the grown-ups. She came to Brother
Elisha’s side. “Praise the Lord,” he cried, stroking her head and
continuing his conversation.
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson met Johnnie’s mother for the
first time as she breathlessly came on board, dressed in the airy
and unreal blue which Johnnie would forever associate with
his furthest memories of her. Johnnie’s baby brother, her
youngest, happiest child, clung round her neck; she made him
stand, staring in wonder at the strange, endless deck, while she
was introduced. His mother, on all social occasions, seemed
fearfully distracted, as though she awaited, at any moment,
some crushing and irrevocable disaster. This disaster might be
the sudden awareness of a run in her stocking or private
knowledge that the trump of judgment was due, within five
minutes, to sound: but, whatever it was, it lent her a certain
agitated charm and people, struggling to guess what it might
be that so claimed her inward attention, never failed, in the
process, to be won over. She talked with Lorraine and Mrs.
Jackson for a few moments, the child tugging at her skirts,
Johnnie watching her with a smile; and at last, the child be
coming always more restive, said that she must go—into what
merciless arena one dared not imagine—but hoped, with a
despairing smile which clearly indicated the improbability of
such happiness, that she would be able to see them later. They
watched her as she walked slowly to the other end of the boat,
sometimes pausing in conversation, always ( as though it were
a duty) smiling a little and now and then considering Lois
where she stood at Brother Elishas’ knee.
“She’s very friendly,” Mrs. Jackson said. “She looks like you,
Johnnie.”
David laughed. “Now why you want to say a thing like that,
Ma? That woman ain’t never done nothing to you.”
Johnnie grinned, embarrassed, and pretended to menace
David with his fists.
“Don’t you listen to that old, ugly boy,” Lorraine said. “He
just trying to make you feel bad. Your mother’s real good
looking. Tell her I said so.”
This embarrassed him even more, but he made a mock bow
and said, “Thank you, Sister.” And to David: “Maybe now
you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“Who’ll learn to keep whose mouth shut? What land of talk
is that?”
He turned and faced his father, who stood smiling on them
as from a height.
“Mrs. Jackson, this is my father,” said Roy quickly. “And this
is Miss Jackson. You know David.”
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson looked up at the deacon with
polite and identical smiles.
“How do you do?” Lorraine said. And from Mrs. Jackson:
“I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Praise the Lord,” their father said. He smiled. “Don’t you
let Johnnie talk fresh to you.”
“Oh, no, we were just kidding around,” David said. There
was a short, ugly silence. The deacon said: “It looks like a good
day for the outing, praise the Lord. You kids have a good time.
Is this your first time with us, Mrs. Jackson?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Jackson. “David came home and told me
about it and it’s been so long since I’ve been in the country I already drawn apart and amused themselves by loud cries and
games that were no less exhibitionistic than that being played
by their parents. Johnnie’s nine year old sister, Lois, since she
professed salvation, could not very well behave as the other
children did; yet no degree of salvation could have equipped
her to enter into the conversation of the grown-ups; and she
was very violently disliked among the adolescents and could
not join them either. She wandered about, therefore, unwill
ingly forlorn, contenting herself to some extent by a great
display of virtue in her encounters with the unsaved children
and smiling brightly at the grown-ups. She came to Brother
Elisha’s side. “Praise the Lord,” he cried, stroking her head and
continuing his conversation.
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson met Johnnie’s mother for the
first time as she breathlessly came on board, dressed in the airy
and unreal blue which Johnnie would forever associate with
his furthest memories of her. Johnnie’s baby brother, her
youngest, happiest child, clung round her neck; she made him
stand, staring in wonder at the strange, endless deck, while she
was introduced. His mother, on all social occasions, seemed
fearfully distracted, as though she awaited, at any moment,
some crushing and irrevocable disaster. This disaster might be
the sudden awareness of a run in her stocking or private
knowledge that the trump of judgment was due, within five
minutes, to sound: but, whatever it was, it lent her a certain
agitated charm and people, struggling to guess what it might
be that so claimed her inward attention, never failed, in the
process, to be won over. She talked with Lorraine and Mrs.
Jackson for a few moments, the child tugging at her skirts,
Johnnie watching her with a smile; and at last, the child be
coming always more restive, said that she must go—into what
merciless arena one dared not imagine—but hoped, with a
despairing smile which clearly indicated the improbability of
such happiness, that she would be able to see them later. They
watched her as she walked slowly to the other end of the boat,
sometimes pausing in conversation, always ( as though it were
a duty) smiling a little and now and then considering Lois
where she stood at Brother Elishas’ knee.
“She’s very friendly,” Mrs. Jackson said. “She looks like you,
Johnnie.”
David laughed. “Now why you want to say a thing like that,
Ma? That woman ain’t never done nothing to you.”
Johnnie grinned, embarrassed, and pretended to menace
David with his fists.
“Don’t you listen to that old, ugly boy,” Lorraine said. “He
just trying to make you feel bad. Your mother’s real good
looking. Tell her I said so.”
This embarrassed him even more, but he made a mock bow
and said, “Thank you, Sister.” And to David: “Maybe now
you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut.”
“Who’ll learn to keep whose mouth shut? What land of talk
is that?”
He turned and faced his father, who stood smiling on them
as from a height.
“Mrs. Jackson, this is my father,” said Roy quickly. “And this
is Miss Jackson. You know David.”
Lorraine and Mrs. Jackson looked up at the deacon with
polite and identical smiles.
“How do you do?” Lorraine said. And from Mrs. Jackson:
“I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“Praise the Lord,” their father said. He smiled. “Don’t you
let Johnnie talk fresh to you.”
“Oh, no, we were just kidding around,” David said. There
was a short, ugly silence. The deacon said: “It looks like a good
day for the outing, praise the Lord. You kids have a good time.
Is this your first time with us, Mrs. Jackson?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Jackson. “David came home and told me
about it and it’s been so long since I’ve been in the country I (Pg. 32-33)
just decided I’d take me a day off. And Lorraine’s not been
feeling too strong, I thought the fresh air would do her some
good.” She smiled a little painfully as she spoke. Lorraine
looked amused.
“Yes, it will, nothing like God’s fresh air to help the feeble.”
At this description of herself as feeble Lorraine looked ready to
fall into the Hudson and coughed nastily into her handker
chief. David, impelled by his own perverse demon, looked at
Johnnie quickly and murmured, “That’s the truth, deacon.”
The deacon looked at him and smiled and turned to Mrs.
Jackson. “We been hoping that your son might join our church
someday. Roy brings him out to service every Sunday. Do you
like the services, son?” This last was addressed in a hearty
voice to David; who, recovering from his amazement at hear
ing Roy mentioned as his especial pal (for he was Johnnie’s
friend, it was to be with Johnnie that he came to church!)
smiled and said, “Yes sir, I like them alright,” and looked at
Roy, who considered his father with an expression at once
contemptuous, ironic and resigned and at Johnnie, whose face
was a mask of rage. He looked sharply at the deacon again;
but he, with his arm around Roy, was still talking.
“This boy came to the Lord just about a month ago,” he said
proudly. “The Lord saved him just like that. Believe me, Sister
Jackson, ain’t no better fortress for nobody, young or old, than
the arms of Jesus. My son’ll tell you so, ain’t it, Roy?”
They considered Roy with a stiff, cordial curiosity. He mut
tered murderously, “Yes sir.”
“Johnnie tells me you’re a preacher,” Mrs. Jackson said at
last. “I’ll come out and hear you sometime with David.”
“Don’t come out to hear me,” he said. “You come out and
listen to the Word of God. We’re all just vessels in His hand.
Do you know the Lord, sister?”
“I try to do His will,” Mrs. Jackson said.
He smiled kindly. “We must all grow in grace.” He looked at
Lorraine. TH be expecting to see you too, young lady.”
35 The Outing
“Yes, we’ll be out,” Lorraine said. They shook hands. “It’s
very nice to have met you,” she said.
“Goodbye.” He looked at David. “Now you be good. I want
to see you saved soon.” He released Roy and started to walk
away. “You kids enjoy yourselves. Johnnie, don’t you get into
no mischief, you hear me?”
He affected not to have heard; he put his hands in his pants’
pockets and pulled out some change and pretended to count it.
His hand was clammy and it shook. When his father repeated
his admonition, part of the change spilled to the deck and he
bent to pick it up. He wanted at once to shout to his father the
most dreadful curses that he knew and he wanted to weep. He
was aware that they were all intrigued by the tableau pre
sented by his father and himself, that they were all vaguely
cognizant of an unnamed and deadly tension. From his knees
on the deck he called back (putting into his voice as much
asperity, as much fury and hatred as he dared ) :
“Don’t worry about me, Daddy. Roy’ll see to it that I be
have.”
There was a silence after he said this; and he rose to his feet
and saw that they were all watching him. David looked pitying
and shocked, Roy’s head was bowed and he looked apologetic.
His father called:
“Excuse yourself, Johnnie, and come here.”
“Excuse me,” he said, and walked over to his father. He
looked up into his father’s face with an anger which surprised
and even frightened him. But he did not drop his eyes, know
ing that his father saw there (and he wanted him to see it)
how much he hated him.
“What did you say?” his father asked.
“I said you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t think I’ll
get into any mischief.” And his voice surprised him, it was
more deliberately cold and angry than he had intended and
there was a sardonic stress on the word ‘mischief.’ He knewjust decided I’d take me a day off. And Lorraine’s not been
feeling too strong, I thought the fresh air would do her some
good.” She smiled a little painfully as she spoke. Lorraine
looked amused.
“Yes, it will, nothing like God’s fresh air to help the feeble.”
At this description of herself as feeble Lorraine looked ready to
fall into the Hudson and coughed nastily into her handker
chief. David, impelled by his own perverse demon, looked at
Johnnie quickly and murmured, “That’s the truth, deacon.”
The deacon looked at him and smiled and turned to Mrs.
Jackson. “We been hoping that your son might join our church
someday. Roy brings him out to service every Sunday. Do you
like the services, son?” This last was addressed in a hearty
voice to David; who, recovering from his amazement at hear
ing Roy mentioned as his especial pal (for he was Johnnie’s
friend, it was to be with Johnnie that he came to church!)
smiled and said, “Yes sir, I like them alright,” and looked at
Roy, who considered his father with an expression at once
contemptuous, ironic and resigned and at Johnnie, whose face
was a mask of rage. He looked sharply at the deacon again;
but he, with his arm around Roy, was still talking.
“This boy came to the Lord just about a month ago,” he said
proudly. “The Lord saved him just like that. Believe me, Sister
Jackson, ain’t no better fortress for nobody, young or old, than
the arms of Jesus. My son’ll tell you so, ain’t it, Roy?”
They considered Roy with a stiff, cordial curiosity. He mut
tered murderously, “Yes sir.”
“Johnnie tells me you’re a preacher,” Mrs. Jackson said at
last. “I’ll come out and hear you sometime with David.”
“Don’t come out to hear me,” he said. “You come out and
listen to the Word of God. We’re all just vessels in His hand.
Do you know the Lord, sister?”
“I try to do His will,” Mrs. Jackson said.
He smiled kindly. “We must all grow in grace.” He looked at
Lorraine. TH be expecting to see you too, young lady.”
35 The Outing
“Yes, we’ll be out,” Lorraine said. They shook hands. “It’s
very nice to have met you,” she said.
“Goodbye.” He looked at David. “Now you be good. I want
to see you saved soon.” He released Roy and started to walk
away. “You kids enjoy yourselves. Johnnie, don’t you get into
no mischief, you hear me?”
He affected not to have heard; he put his hands in his pants’
pockets and pulled out some change and pretended to count it.
His hand was clammy and it shook. When his father repeated
his admonition, part of the change spilled to the deck and he
bent to pick it up. He wanted at once to shout to his father the
most dreadful curses that he knew and he wanted to weep. He
was aware that they were all intrigued by the tableau pre
sented by his father and himself, that they were all vaguely
cognizant of an unnamed and deadly tension. From his knees
on the deck he called back (putting into his voice as much
asperity, as much fury and hatred as he dared ) :
“Don’t worry about me, Daddy. Roy’ll see to it that I be
have.”
There was a silence after he said this; and he rose to his feet
and saw that they were all watching him. David looked pitying
and shocked, Roy’s head was bowed and he looked apologetic.
His father called:
“Excuse yourself, Johnnie, and come here.”
“Excuse me,” he said, and walked over to his father. He
looked up into his father’s face with an anger which surprised
and even frightened him. But he did not drop his eyes, know
ing that his father saw there (and he wanted him to see it)
how much he hated him.
“What did you say?” his father asked.
“I said you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t think I’ll
get into any mischief.” And his voice surprised him, it was
more deliberately cold and angry than he had intended and
there was a sardonic stress on the word ‘mischief.’ He knewjust decided I’d take me a day off. And Lorraine’s not been
feeling too strong, I thought the fresh air would do her some
good.” She smiled a little painfully as she spoke. Lorraine
looked amused.
“Yes, it will, nothing like God’s fresh air to help the feeble.”
At this description of herself as feeble Lorraine looked ready to
fall into the Hudson and coughed nastily into her handker
chief. David, impelled by his own perverse demon, looked at
Johnnie quickly and murmured, “That’s the truth, deacon.”
The deacon looked at him and smiled and turned to Mrs.
Jackson. “We been hoping that your son might join our church
someday. Roy brings him out to service every Sunday. Do you
like the services, son?” This last was addressed in a hearty
voice to David; who, recovering from his amazement at hear
ing Roy mentioned as his especial pal (for he was Johnnie’s
friend, it was to be with Johnnie that he came to church!)
smiled and said, “Yes sir, I like them alright,” and looked at
Roy, who considered his father with an expression at once
contemptuous, ironic and resigned and at Johnnie, whose face
was a mask of rage. He looked sharply at the deacon again;
but he, with his arm around Roy, was still talking.
“This boy came to the Lord just about a month ago,” he said
proudly. “The Lord saved him just like that. Believe me, Sister
Jackson, ain’t no better fortress for nobody, young or old, than
the arms of Jesus. My son’ll tell you so, ain’t it, Roy?”
They considered Roy with a stiff, cordial curiosity. He mut
tered murderously, “Yes sir.”
“Johnnie tells me you’re a preacher,” Mrs. Jackson said at
last. “I’ll come out and hear you sometime with David.”
“Don’t come out to hear me,” he said. “You come out and
listen to the Word of God. We’re all just vessels in His hand.
Do you know the Lord, sister?”
“I try to do His will,” Mrs. Jackson said.
He smiled kindly. “We must all grow in grace.” He looked at
Lorraine. TH be expecting to see you too, young lady.”
35 The Outing
“Yes, we’ll be out,” Lorraine said. They shook hands. “It’s
very nice to have met you,” she said.
“Goodbye.” He looked at David. “Now you be good. I want
to see you saved soon.” He released Roy and started to walk
away. “You kids enjoy yourselves. Johnnie, don’t you get into
no mischief, you hear me?”
He affected not to have heard; he put his hands in his pants’
pockets and pulled out some change and pretended to count it.
His hand was clammy and it shook. When his father repeated
his admonition, part of the change spilled to the deck and he
bent to pick it up. He wanted at once to shout to his father the
most dreadful curses that he knew and he wanted to weep. He
was aware that they were all intrigued by the tableau pre
sented by his father and himself, that they were all vaguely
cognizant of an unnamed and deadly tension. From his knees
on the deck he called back (putting into his voice as much
asperity, as much fury and hatred as he dared ) :
“Don’t worry about me, Daddy. Roy’ll see to it that I be
have.”
There was a silence after he said this; and he rose to his feet
and saw that they were all watching him. David looked pitying
and shocked, Roy’s head was bowed and he looked apologetic.
His father called:
“Excuse yourself, Johnnie, and come here.”
“Excuse me,” he said, and walked over to his father. He
looked up into his father’s face with an anger which surprised
and even frightened him. But he did not drop his eyes, know
ing that his father saw there (and he wanted him to see it)
how much he hated him.
“What did you say?” his father asked.
“I said you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t think I’ll
get into any mischief.” And his voice surprised him, it was
more deliberately cold and angry than he had intended and
there was a sardonic stress on the word ‘mischief.’ He knew (Pg.34-35)
Second Short story is: Gloria Anzaldua, “Movements of Rebellion”
Anzaldúa
The Strength of My Rebellion
I have a vivid memory of an old photograph: I am six years old. I stand between my father and mother, head cocked to the right, the toes of my flat feet gripping the ground. I hold my mother’s hand. To this day I’m not sure where I found the strength to leave the source, the mother, disengage from my family, mi tierra [my land], mi gente [my people], and all that picture stood for. I had to leave home so I could find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on me. I was the first in six generations to leave the Valley, the only one in my family to ever leave
home. But I didn’t leave all the parts of me: I kept the ground of my own being. On it I walked away, taking with me the land, the Valley, Texas. Gané mi camino y me largué. Muy andariega mi hija [I took to the road and split. A true wanderer, my girl]. Because I left of my own accord me dicen, “¿Cómo te gusta la mala vida?”[they say to me, “How do you like the bad life?” (i.e. the life of suffering and being an outcast)]Anzaldúa
At a very early age I had a strong sense of who I was and what I was about and what was fair. I had a stubborn will. I tried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime, to live life on my own terms no matter how unsuitable to others they were. Terca. [Stubborn.] Even as a child I would not obey. I was “lazy.” Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting, writing. Every bit of self-faith I’d painstakingly gathered took a beating daily. Nothing in my culture approved of me. Había agarrado malos pasos [I had chosen a bad course of life.]. Something was “wrong” with me. Estabá más allá de la tradición [I went outside of tradition].
There is a rebel in me—the Shadow-Beast. It is a part of me that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereignty of my rulership. It is that part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet. Bolts.
Cultural Tyranny
Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power—men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, for being hociconas (big mouths), for being callajeras (going to visit and gossip with neighbors), for expecting their husbands to help with the rearing of children and the housework, for wanting to be something other than housewives?
The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of, and commitment to, the value system than men. The culture and the Church insist that women are subservient to males. If a woman rebels she is mujer mala [bad woman]. If a woman doesn’t renounce herself in favor of the male, she is selfish. If a woman remains a virgen [virgin – but with connotations of the Virgin Mary] until she marries, she is a good woman. For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons. A very few of us. As a working
class people our chief activity is to put food in our mouths, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs. Educating our children is out of reach for most of us. Educated or not, the onus is still on woman to be a wife/mother—only the nun can escape motherhood. Women are made to feel total failures if they don’t marry and have children….
Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us). Culture and religion seek to protect us from these two forces. The female, by virtue of creating entitites of flesh and blood in her stomach (she bleeds every month but does not die), by virtue of being in
tune with nature’s cycles, is feared. Because, according to Christianity and most other major religions, woman is carnal, animal, and closer to the undivine, she must be protected. Protected from herself. Woman is the stranger, the other. She is man’s recognized nightmarish pieces, his Shadow-Beast. The sight of her sends him into a frenzy of anger and fear.
La gorra, el rebozo, la mantilla [These are articles of clothing: hat, shoulder-scarf, head-scarf are symbols of my culture’s “protection” of women. Culture (read males) professes to protect women. Actually it keeps women in rigidly defined roles. It keeps the girlchild from other men—don’t poach on my preserves, only I can touch my child’s body. Our mothers taught us well, “Los hombres nomás quieren una cosa” [Men are only after one thing]; men aren’t to be trusted, they are selfish and are like children. Mothers made sure we didn’t walk into a room of brothers or fathers or uncles in nightgowns or shorts. We were never alone with men, not even those of our own family.
Through our mothers, the culture gave us mixed messages: No voy a dejar que ningún pelado desgraciado maltrate a mis hijos [I’m not going to allow any broke (or just “worthless”) bastard mistreat my kids]. And in the next breath it would say, La mujer tiene que hacer lo que le diga el hombre [Women have to do what men says]. Which was it to be—strong, or submissive, rebellious or conforming?
Tribal rights over those of the individual insured the survival of the tribe and were necessary then, and, as in the case of all indigenous peoples in the world who are still fighting off intentional, premeditated murder (genocide), they are still necessary. Much of what the culture condemns focuses on kinship relationships. The welfare of the family, the community, and the tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. The individual exists first as kin—as sister, as father, as padrino [godfather]—and last as self.
In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially in women; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is considered a virtue. In the past, acting humble with members outside the family ensured that you would make no one envidioso (envious); therefore he or she would not use witchcraft against you. If you get above yourself, you’re an envidiosa [a jealous girl]. If you don’t behave like everyone else, la gente [people] will say that you think you’re better than
others, que te crees grande [that you think you’re a big shot]. With ambition (condemned in the Mexican culture and valued in the Anglo) comes envy. Respeto [respect] carries with it a set of rules so that social categories and hierarchies will be kept in order: respect is reserved for la abuela, papá, el patrón, [the grandmother, father, the patron (head of the family)] those with power in the community. Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above the deviants.
The Chicano, mexicano, and some Indian cultures have no tolerance for deviance. Deviance is whatever is condemned by the community. Most societies try to get rid of their deviants. Most cultures have burned and beaten their homosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual common. The queer are the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear: being different, being other, and therefore lesser, therefore sub-human, in-human, non-human. very early age I had a strong sense of who I was and what I was about and what was fair. I had a stubborn will. I tried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime, to live life on my own terms no matter how unsuitable to others they were. Terca. [Stubborn.] Even as a child I would not obey. I was “lazy.” Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting, writing. Every bit of self-faith I’d painstakingly gathered took a beating daily. Nothing in my culture approved of me. Había agarrado malos pasos [I had chosen a bad course of life.]. Something was “wrong” with me. Estabá más allá de la tradición [I went outside of tradition].
There is a rebel in me—the Shadow-Beast. It is a part of me that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereignty of my rulership. It is that part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet. Bolts.
Cultural Tyranny
Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power—men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, for being hociconas (big mouths), for being callajeras (going to visit and gossip with neighbors), for expecting their husbands to help with the rearing of children and the housework, for wanting to be something other than housewives?
The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of, and commitment to, the value system than men. The culture and the Church insist that women are subservient to males. If a woman rebels she is mujer mala [bad woman]. If a woman doesn’t renounce herself in favor of the male, she is selfish. If a woman remains a virgen [virgin – but with connotations of the Virgin Mary] until she marries, she is a good woman. For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons. A very few of us. As a working
class people our chief activity is to put food in our mouths, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs. Educating our children is out of reach for most of us. Educated or not, the onus is still on woman to be a wife/mother—only the nun can escape motherhood. Women are made to feel total failures if they don’t marry and have children….
Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us). Culture and religion seek to protect us from these two forces. The female, by virtue of creating entitites of flesh and blood in her stomach (she bleeds every month but does not die), by virtue of being in
tune with nature’s cycles, is feared. Because, according to Christianity and most other major religions, woman is carnal, animal, and closer to the undivine, she must be protected. Protected from herself. Woman is the stranger, the other. She is man’s recognized nightmarish pieces, his Shadow-Beast. The sight of her sends him into a frenzy of anger and fear.
La gorra, el rebozo, la mantilla [These are articles of clothing: hat, shoulder-scarf, head-scarf are symbols of my culture’s “protection” of women. Culture (read males) professes to protect women. Actually it keeps women in rigidly defined roles. It keeps the girlchild from other men—don’t poach on my preserves, only I can touch my child’s body. Our mothers taught us well, “Los hombres nomás quieren una cosa” [Men are only after one thing]; men aren’t to be trusted, they are selfish and are like children. Mothers made sure we didn’t walk into a room of brothers or fathers or uncles in nightgowns or shorts. We were never alone with men, not even those of our own family.
Through our mothers, the culture gave us mixed messages: No voy a dejar que ningún pelado desgraciado maltrate a mis hijos [I’m not going to allow any broke (or just “worthless”) bastard mistreat my kids]. And in the next breath it would say, La mujer tiene que hacer lo que le diga el hombre [Women have to do what men says]. Which was it to be—strong, or submissive, rebellious or conforming?
Tribal rights over those of the individual insured the survival of the tribe and were necessary then, and, as in the case of all indigenous peoples in the world who are still fighting off intentional, premeditated murder (genocide), they are still necessary. Much of what the culture condemns focuses on kinship relationships. The welfare of the family, the community, and the tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. The individual exists first as kin—as sister, as father, as padrino [godfather]—and last as self.
In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially in women; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is considered a virtue. In the past, acting humble with members outside the family ensured that you would make no one envidioso (envious); therefore he or she would not use witchcraft against you. If you get above yourself, you’re an envidiosa [a jealous girl]. If you don’t behave like everyone else, la gente [people] will say that you think you’re better than
others, que te crees grande [that you think you’re a big shot]. With ambition (condemned in the Mexican culture and valued in the Anglo) comes envy. Respeto [respect] carries with it a set of rules so that social categories and hierarchies will be kept in order: respect is reserved for la abuela, papá, el patrón, [the grandmother, father, the patron (head of the family)] those with power in the community. Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above the deviants.
The Chicano, mexicano, and some Indian cultures have no tolerance for deviance. Deviance is whatever is condemned by the community. Most societies try to get rid of their deviants. Most cultures have burned and beaten their homosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual common. The queer are the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear: being different, being other, and therefore lesser, therefore sub-human, in-human, non-human. very early age I had a strong sense of who I was and what I was about and what was fair. I had a stubborn will. I tried constantly to mobilize my soul under my own regime, to live life on my own terms no matter how unsuitable to others they were. Terca. [Stubborn.] Even as a child I would not obey. I was “lazy.” Instead of ironing my younger brothers’ shirts or cleaning the cupboards, I would pass many hours studying, reading, painting, writing. Every bit of self-faith I’d painstakingly gathered took a beating daily. Nothing in my culture approved of me. Había agarrado malos pasos [I had chosen a bad course of life.]. Something was “wrong” with me. Estabá más allá de la tradición [I went outside of tradition].
There is a rebel in me—the Shadow-Beast. It is a part of me that refuses to take orders from outside authorities. It refuses to take orders from my conscious will, it threatens the sovereignty of my rulership. It is that part of me that hates constraints of any kind, even those self-imposed. At the least hint of limitations on my time or space by others, it kicks out with both feet. Bolts.
Cultural Tyranny
Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through the culture. Culture is made by those in power—men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them. How many times have I heard mothers and mothers-in-law tell their sons to beat their wives for not obeying them, for being hociconas (big mouths), for being callajeras (going to visit and gossip with neighbors), for expecting their husbands to help with the rearing of children and the housework, for wanting to be something other than housewives?
The culture expects women to show greater acceptance of, and commitment to, the value system than men. The culture and the Church insist that women are subservient to males. If a woman rebels she is mujer mala [bad woman]. If a woman doesn’t renounce herself in favor of the male, she is selfish. If a woman remains a virgen [virgin – but with connotations of the Virgin Mary] until she marries, she is a good woman. For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could turn: to the Church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother. Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and career and becoming self-autonomous persons. A very few of us. As a working
class people our chief activity is to put food in our mouths, a roof over our heads and clothes on our backs. Educating our children is out of reach for most of us. Educated or not, the onus is still on woman to be a wife/mother—only the nun can escape motherhood. Women are made to feel total failures if they don’t marry and have children….
Humans fear the supernatural, both the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien) and the divine (the superhuman, the god in us). Culture and religion seek to protect us from these two forces. The female, by virtue of creating entitites of flesh and blood in her stomach (she bleeds every month but does not die), by virtue of being in
tune with nature’s cycles, is feared. Because, according to Christianity and most other major religions, woman is carnal, animal, and closer to the undivine, she must be protected. Protected from herself. Woman is the stranger, the other. She is man’s recognized nightmarish pieces, his Shadow-Beast. The sight of her sends him into a frenzy of anger and fear.
La gorra, el rebozo, la mantilla [These are articles of clothing: hat, shoulder-scarf, head-scarf are symbols of my culture’s “protection” of women. Culture (read males) professes to protect women. Actually it keeps women in rigidly defined roles. It keeps the girlchild from other men—don’t poach on my preserves, only I can touch my child’s body. Our mothers taught us well, “Los hombres nomás quieren una cosa” [Men are only after one thing]; men aren’t to be trusted, they are selfish and are like children. Mothers made sure we didn’t walk into a room of brothers or fathers or uncles in nightgowns or shorts. We were never alone with men, not even those of our own family.
Through our mothers, the culture gave us mixed messages: No voy a dejar que ningún pelado desgraciado maltrate a mis hijos [I’m not going to allow any broke (or just “worthless”) bastard mistreat my kids]. And in the next breath it would say, La mujer tiene que hacer lo que le diga el hombre [Women have to do what men says]. Which was it to be—strong, or submissive, rebellious or conforming?
Tribal rights over those of the individual insured the survival of the tribe and were necessary then, and, as in the case of all indigenous peoples in the world who are still fighting off intentional, premeditated murder (genocide), they are still necessary. Much of what the culture condemns focuses on kinship relationships. The welfare of the family, the community, and the tribe is more important than the welfare of the individual. The individual exists first as kin—as sister, as father, as padrino [godfather]—and last as self.
In my culture, selfishness is condemned, especially in women; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is considered a virtue. In the past, acting humble with members outside the family ensured that you would make no one envidioso (envious); therefore he or she would not use witchcraft against you. If you get above yourself, you’re an envidiosa [a jealous girl]. If you don’t behave like everyone else, la gente [people] will say that you think you’re better than
others, que te crees grande [that you think you’re a big shot]. With ambition (condemned in the Mexican culture and valued in the Anglo) comes envy. Respeto [respect] carries with it a set of rules so that social categories and hierarchies will be kept in order: respect is reserved for la abuela, papá, el patrón, [the grandmother, father, the patron (head of the family)] those with power in the community. Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above the deviants.
The Chicano, mexicano, and some Indian cultures have no tolerance for deviance. Deviance is whatever is condemned by the community. Most societies try to get rid of their deviants. Most cultures have burned and beaten their homosexuals and others who deviate from the sexual common. The queer are the mirror reflecting the heterosexual tribe’s fear: being different, being other, and therefore lesser, therefore sub-human, in-human, non-human.
There was a muchacha [girl] who lived near my house. La gente del pueblo [people around town] talked about her being una de las otras, “of the Others.” They said that for six months she was a woman who had a vagina that bled once a month, and that for the other six months she was a man, had a penis and she peed standing up. They called her half and half, mita’ y mita’, neither one nor the other but a strange doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified, a work of nature inverted. But there is a magic aspect in abnormality and so-called deformity. Maimed, mad, and
sexually different people were believed to possess supernatural powers by primal cultures’ magico-religious thinking. For them, abnormality was the price a person had to pay for her or his inborn extraordinary gift. There is something compelling about being both male and female, about having an entry into both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric tenets, half and halfs are not suffering from a confusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender. What we are suffering from is
an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better. But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the embodiment of the hieros gamos together of opposite qualities within.
Fear of Going Home: Homophobia
For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality. Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent). It’s an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for loquería, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge—one of knowing (and of learning) the history of oppression of our raza [race]. It is a way of balancing, of mitigating duality.
In a New England college where I taught, the presence of a few lesbians threw the more conservative heterosexual students and faculty into a panic. The two lesbian students and we two lesbian instructors met with them to discuss their fears. One of the students said, “I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency.”
And I thought, how apt. Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza [race or, here, culture], for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the coming together of opposite qualities within.
According to Wikipedia, “Hieros gamos or Hierogamy refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows. Which leaves only one fear—that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out of its cage. Some of
us take another route. We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the undershadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us. Not many jump at the chance to confront the Shadow-Beast in the mirror without flinching at her lidless serpent eyes, her cold clammy moist hand dragging us underground, fangs barred and hissing. How does one put feathers on this particular serpent? But a few of us have been lucky—on the face of the Shadow-Beast we have seen not lust but tenderness; on its face we have uncovered the lie.There was a muchacha [girl] who lived near my house. La gente del pueblo [people around town] talked about her being una de las otras, “of the Others.” They said that for six months she was a woman who had a vagina that bled once a month, and that for the other six months she was a man, had a penis and she peed standing up. They called her half and half, mita’ y mita’, neither one nor the other but a strange doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified, a work of nature inverted. But there is a magic aspect in abnormality and so-called deformity. Maimed, mad, and
sexually different people were believed to possess supernatural powers by primal cultures’ magico-religious thinking. For them, abnormality was the price a person had to pay for her or his inborn extraordinary gift. There is something compelling about being both male and female, about having an entry into both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric tenets, half and halfs are not suffering from a confusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender. What we are suffering from is
an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better. But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the embodiment of the hieros gamos together of opposite qualities within.
Fear of Going Home: Homophobia
For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality. Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent). It’s an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for loquería, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge—one of knowing (and of learning) the history of oppression of our raza [race]. It is a way of balancing, of mitigating duality.
In a New England college where I taught, the presence of a few lesbians threw the more conservative heterosexual students and faculty into a panic. The two lesbian students and we two lesbian instructors met with them to discuss their fears. One of the students said, “I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency.”
And I thought, how apt. Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza [race or, here, culture], for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the coming together of opposite qualities within.
According to Wikipedia, “Hieros gamos or Hierogamy refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows. Which leaves only one fear—that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out of its cage. Some of
us take another route. We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the undershadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us. Not many jump at the chance to confront the Shadow-Beast in the mirror without flinching at her lidless serpent eyes, her cold clammy moist hand dragging us underground, fangs barred and hissing. How does one put feathers on this particular serpent? But a few of us have been lucky—on the face of the Shadow-Beast we have seen not lust but tenderness; on its face we have uncovered the lie.There was a muchacha [girl] who lived near my house. La gente del pueblo [people around town] talked about her being una de las otras, “of the Others.” They said that for six months she was a woman who had a vagina that bled once a month, and that for the other six months she was a man, had a penis and she peed standing up. They called her half and half, mita’ y mita’, neither one nor the other but a strange doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified, a work of nature inverted. But there is a magic aspect in abnormality and so-called deformity. Maimed, mad, and
sexually different people were believed to possess supernatural powers by primal cultures’ magico-religious thinking. For them, abnormality was the price a person had to pay for her or his inborn extraordinary gift. There is something compelling about being both male and female, about having an entry into both worlds. Contrary to some psychiatric tenets, half and halfs are not suffering from a confusion of sexual identity, or even from a confusion of gender. What we are suffering from is
an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better. But I, like other queer people, am two in one body, both male and female. I am the embodiment of the hieros gamos together of opposite qualities within.
Fear of Going Home: Homophobia
For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality. Being lesbian and raised Catholic, indoctrinated as straight, I made the choice to be queer (for some it is genetically inherent). It’s an interesting path, one that continually slips in and out of the white, the Catholic, the Mexican, the indigenous, the instincts. In and out of my head. It makes for loquería, the crazies. It is a path of knowledge—one of knowing (and of learning) the history of oppression of our raza [race]. It is a way of balancing, of mitigating duality.
In a New England college where I taught, the presence of a few lesbians threw the more conservative heterosexual students and faculty into a panic. The two lesbian students and we two lesbian instructors met with them to discuss their fears. One of the students said, “I thought homophobia meant fear of going home after a residency.”
And I thought, how apt. Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza [race or, here, culture], for being unacceptable, faulty, damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of the coming together of opposite qualities within.
According to Wikipedia, “Hieros gamos or Hierogamy refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us. To avoid rejection, some of us conform to the values of the culture, push the unacceptable parts into the shadows. Which leaves only one fear—that we will be found out and that the Shadow-Beast will break out of its cage. Some of
us take another route. We try to make ourselves conscious of the Shadow-Beast, stare at the sexual lust and lust for power and destruction we see on its face, discern among its features the undershadow that the reigning order of heterosexual males project on our Beast. Yet still others of us take it another step: we try to waken the Shadow-Beast inside us. Not many jump at the chance to confront the Shadow-Beast in the mirror without flinching at her lidless serpent eyes, her cold clammy moist hand dragging us underground, fangs barred and hissing. How does one put feathers on this particular serpent? But a few of us have been lucky—on the face of the Shadow-Beast we have seen not lust but tenderness; on its face we have uncovered the lie.
Then in the last two pages.
Which of the two poems you were given stuck out to you the most, and why? What specific passages or references helped you better comprehend the experience of being an ethnic queer? Provide a thorough and convincing analysis of the poetry.
First poem: Allen Ginsberg, “America”
America
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.America
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.America
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that jetplanes 1400 miles an hour and twentyfive-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underprivileged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they’re all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor the Silk-strikers’ Ewig-Weibliche made me cry I once saw the Yiddish orator Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America its them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Second poem: Malika Moustadraf, “Just Different”
Avenue Mohammed V is silent and desolate this late at night, empty apart from a few stray cats meowing like newborn babies; it’s a creepy sound. Then a she-dog ambles up, stops in front of me, and raises her tail at a black male dog limping past. A single bark of seduction from her and he’s mounting her. They’re cleaved to each other, clinging on, and she shuts her eyes in ecstasy, surrenders to his movements. A delicious tingle runs through me. How lucky they are! They do it in public. They’re shameless—as the saying goes, “Not only God sees them but his servants do too.” They don’t have to worry about a police patrol, or about what people will say.
Bushta shouts, “I’m gonna kick the fucking shit out of them!”
I take no notice of him. He flings a stone at the dogs, and when it hits them they both let out a shrill yelp that sounds like a human sob, and then separate. If I were them I’d attack him and bite his buttocks.
I’ve been pacing back and forth along the street for two hours now, and there hasn’t been a single customer. It’s a drought!Avenue Mohammed V is silent and desolate this late at night, empty apart from a few stray cats meowing like newborn babies; it’s a creepy sound. Then a she-dog ambles up, stops in front of me, and raises her tail at a black male dog limping past. A single bark of seduction from her and he’s mounting her. They’re cleaved to each other, clinging on, and she shuts her eyes in ecstasy, surrenders to his movements. A delicious tingle runs through me. How lucky they are! They do it in public. They’re shameless—as the saying goes, “Not only God sees them but his servants do too.” They don’t have to worry about a police patrol, or about what people will say.
Bushta shouts, “I’m gonna kick the fucking shit out of them!”
I take no notice of him. He flings a stone at the dogs, and when it hits them they both let out a shrill yelp that sounds like a human sob, and then separate. If I were them I’d attack him and bite his buttocks.
I’ve been pacing back and forth along the street for two hours now, and there hasn’t been a single customer. It’s a drought!Avenue Mohammed V is silent and desolate this late at night, empty apart from a few stray cats meowing like newborn babies; it’s a creepy sound. Then a she-dog ambles up, stops in front of me, and raises her tail at a black male dog limping past. A single bark of seduction from her and he’s mounting her. They’re cleaved to each other, clinging on, and she shuts her eyes in ecstasy, surrenders to his movements. A delicious tingle runs through me. How lucky they are! They do it in public. They’re shameless—as the saying goes, “Not only God sees them but his servants do too.” They don’t have to worry about a police patrol, or about what people will say.
Bushta shouts, “I’m gonna kick the fucking shit out of them!”
I take no notice of him. He flings a stone at the dogs, and when it hits them they both let out a shrill yelp that sounds like a human sob, and then separate. If I were them I’d attack him and bite his buttocks.
I’ve been pacing back and forth along the street for two hours now, and there hasn’t been a single customer. It’s a drought!
I touch the razor blade in my pocket, checking it’s still there. I always keep it on me in case someone suddenly does something dodgy—in case I get cornered. Bushta stands near Marché Central, leaning on a wall and singing his favorite song in a tuneless croak: “Red wine, red wine, ah, red wine! The sweetest way to get drunk!” His coarse voice rips through the still night. He’s waiting to take his cut. We sweat and stress and bear the repulsive customers, and he doesn’t have to lift a finger. Fuck him and his—
Naimah found a client earlier on, went off on the back of his motorbike. He seemed like a worker from one of the factories. She said, “I’m a fan of the working classes: they’re better than those inexperienced little pupils you’re obliged to teach the ABCs of love. I’m not some special learning car covered in L-plates for them to grind around in again and again.”
The heel on my shoe is hurting me. I can’t stand on it for very long at a time. I’d like to go home, drink a little beer and eat a plate of mussels with hot pepper. That’s the best prescription for warming a person up in this cold weather. But Bushta won’t leave me alone. Plus I’ve got so many expenses: food, clothes, transport, rent. Rent’s the main thing. I pay my share of the room I rent with Naimah and Scummy. I’m thinking about moving out and living alone—I can’t bear Scummy anymore. She only needs a couple drinks and she’s off, scandalizing us in the street, making a scene. She flips into this weird delirious state. She rants, she says all these totally irrational things, and she insults everyone and everything in foul language. Things get even more awful if she crosses paths with any other drunks.I touch the razor blade in my pocket, checking it’s still there. I always keep it on me in case someone suddenly does something dodgy—in case I get cornered. Bushta stands near Marché Central, leaning on a wall and singing his favorite song in a tuneless croak: “Red wine, red wine, ah, red wine! The sweetest way to get drunk!” His coarse voice rips through the still night. He’s waiting to take his cut. We sweat and stress and bear the repulsive customers, and he doesn’t have to lift a finger. Fuck him and his—
Naimah found a client earlier on, went off on the back of his motorbike. He seemed like a worker from one of the factories. She said, “I’m a fan of the working classes: they’re better than those inexperienced little pupils you’re obliged to teach the ABCs of love. I’m not some special learning car covered in L-plates for them to grind around in again and again.”
The heel on my shoe is hurting me. I can’t stand on it for very long at a time. I’d like to go home, drink a little beer and eat a plate of mussels with hot pepper. That’s the best prescription for warming a person up in this cold weather. But Bushta won’t leave me alone. Plus I’ve got so many expenses: food, clothes, transport, rent. Rent’s the main thing. I pay my share of the room I rent with Naimah and Scummy. I’m thinking about moving out and living alone—I can’t bear Scummy anymore. She only needs a couple drinks and she’s off, scandalizing us in the street, making a scene. She flips into this weird delirious state. She rants, she says all these totally irrational things, and she insults everyone and everything in foul language. Things get even more awful if she crosses paths with any other drunks.I touch the razor blade in my pocket, checking it’s still there. I always keep it on me in case someone suddenly does something dodgy—in case I get cornered. Bushta stands near Marché Central, leaning on a wall and singing his favorite song in a tuneless croak: “Red wine, red wine, ah, red wine! The sweetest way to get drunk!” His coarse voice rips through the still night. He’s waiting to take his cut. We sweat and stress and bear the repulsive customers, and he doesn’t have to lift a finger. Fuck him and his—
Naimah found a client earlier on, went off on the back of his motorbike. He seemed like a worker from one of the factories. She said, “I’m a fan of the working classes: they’re better than those inexperienced little pupils you’re obliged to teach the ABCs of love. I’m not some special learning car covered in L-plates for them to grind around in again and again.”
The heel on my shoe is hurting me. I can’t stand on it for very long at a time. I’d like to go home, drink a little beer and eat a plate of mussels with hot pepper. That’s the best prescription for warming a person up in this cold weather. But Bushta won’t leave me alone. Plus I’ve got so many expenses: food, clothes, transport, rent. Rent’s the main thing. I pay my share of the room I rent with Naimah and Scummy. I’m thinking about moving out and living alone—I can’t bear Scummy anymore. She only needs a couple drinks and she’s off, scandalizing us in the street, making a scene. She flips into this weird delirious state. She rants, she says all these totally irrational things, and she insults everyone and everything in foul language. Things get even more awful if she crosses paths with any other drunks.
The razor blade’s still in my hand: I’ve been practising using it ever since I got attacked by those bearded guys who said they wanted to clean up society. Since then I’ve hated anyone with a beard. They shaved my head. Bushta behaved atrociously—he ran away and left them to it. If the police patrol car hadn’t come by, something worse would have happened, for sure. It’s made me like the police, for the first time in my life; I’d always run from them, but that day I ran toward them, and I’m always pleased to see them nowadays. But the loss of my hair still pains me. My mother always used to love brushing it, and she’d deliberately let it grow long, right down past my shoulders. One time my father came back from one of his long trips. He’d go away for months on end, then come back with presents for us, and cheese, and tea—and lots of problems.
This particular time he turned up and caught my mum putting lipstick on my cheeks as rouge, my hair pinned up in a bun. He beat her that day till she soiled herself, and told her: “You’re going to ruin this boy—he’ll turn into a girl.”The razor blade’s still in my hand: I’ve been practising using it ever since I got attacked by those bearded guys who said they wanted to clean up society. Since then I’ve hated anyone with a beard. They shaved my head. Bushta behaved atrociously—he ran away and left them to it. If the police patrol car hadn’t come by, something worse would have happened, for sure. It’s made me like the police, for the first time in my life; I’d always run from them, but that day I ran toward them, and I’m always pleased to see them nowadays. But the loss of my hair still pains me. My mother always used to love brushing it, and she’d deliberately let it grow long, right down past my shoulders. One time my father came back from one of his long trips. He’d go away for months on end, then come back with presents for us, and cheese, and tea—and lots of problems.
This particular time he turned up and caught my mum putting lipstick on my cheeks as rouge, my hair pinned up in a bun. He beat her that day till she soiled herself, and told her: “You’re going to ruin this boy—he’ll turn into a girl.”The razor blade’s still in my hand: I’ve been practising using it ever since I got attacked by those bearded guys who said they wanted to clean up society. Since then I’ve hated anyone with a beard. They shaved my head. Bushta behaved atrociously—he ran away and left them to it. If the police patrol car hadn’t come by, something worse would have happened, for sure. It’s made me like the police, for the first time in my life; I’d always run from them, but that day I ran toward them, and I’m always pleased to see them nowadays. But the loss of my hair still pains me. My mother always used to love brushing it, and she’d deliberately let it grow long, right down past my shoulders. One time my father came back from one of his long trips. He’d go away for months on end, then come back with presents for us, and cheese, and tea—and lots of problems.
This particular time he turned up and caught my mum putting lipstick on my cheeks as rouge, my hair pinned up in a bun. He beat her that day till she soiled herself, and told her: “You’re going to ruin this boy—he’ll turn into a girl.”