”I don’t think it’s water. I think it’s jam.”
Earlier today, I went down to the central post office in Accra to pick up my birthday package. The package wasn’t supposed to be for my birthday, but it took the post office two extra weeks to inform me of its presence and so it ended up being perfectly timed to be my birthday present. Perfect present. Perhaps perfection prepares persnickety padrones to prepare paraffin paradoxes parading as pious principles. Perhaps not.
Funny thing though, the customs man at the post office with the thin mustache and blue epauletted shirt told me “For this, you pay eighty-two thousand.”
Which elicited the response from me of “Hey! Eighty-two that’s a lot.”
“No, no that’s quite cheap.”
“Maybe for you with your job and your blue shirt. I’m a student.”
There was a pause while I groped about looking for eighty-two thousand cedis then he said, “Okay. You pay forty-six thousand.”
I love it here—everything’s negotiable. Negotiating non-negotiables necessarily negates negative ninnies niggling nay-saying about my natural needed nisus. To be twenty-three in Ghana . . . it’s a wanton wonder drug which whacks with a wallop. What a way to while away the weeks watching a wish list of West Africa’s wonders.
Twenty-three going on thirty-eight. Beginning going on The End. Choices to make going on decisions to remember. Theism going on atheism going on agnostic uncertainty going on deep faith redefined. Kegen going on Mr. Benson. Genius going on madness and tears going on laughter. It keeps going on and going on, and somewhere, while that great rolling wheel rolled, I managed to find the time to turn twenty-three.
Aging A-holes almost always ash-out ambiguously as allegorical alliterations are assessed as aseptic, asinine, and affected by asperity.
So, I’m older now and life is both speeding up and slowing down in many different ways. A lot has changed since I was a little one. I don’t eat candy anymore. I have to shave constantly. I’m in Africa. I’m going bald. And, maybe most significantly, I like onions now, especially those zesty red ones. Not that you care. Care. Can caring cockalorums catching clear couplets conceivably cloud clean conceits causing countless confused clandestine cabals to cogently curse contiguous charity?
Sorry, I’m in a big word mood, and only alliteration can cure me. It’s my right as the birthday boy, I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with it. Birthday boys brave barbarous opinions of offered oscillation when writing worldly wisdom for falsely fatuous flocks.
Birthday. Birthday. Birthday. I’m sure that tonight there will be a celebration of semi-strangers in my honor, and I’d bet my last cedi we’ll be getting drunk. Drink. Does drinking discourage desirable discourse, or does drinking demand dexterous decorous denuded diatribes? I’ll look into that question tonight when I’m looking at the ceiling through the bottom of my cup—if you know what I mean. Although, at this point I’d be surprised if you followed me at all.
Oh well. Kegen keeps kooky kobolds as knaves to kindle key killjoys. Kegen is twenty-three. Kegen is a single seedy somnambulant sentinel savoring his useless solitary Sabbat. Useless. Of no use. Least of all to himself. Can Kegen cavort craftily by creating clashes of chaotic clearness? or best he bestow benediction by bereaving a bellicose being beset by a belligerent bereftness of belief? Kegen is twenty-three, and so “Happy Birthday!” to me.
The other day, the blackest of black Fridays, I was at work when someone actually used the B-word to describe me. The B-word. I couldn’t believe it. Three days later, I’m still in a state of complete shock.
A woman at one of the tables I was serving described me to another employee as, you are never going to believe this, “the waiter with the bald spot.”
Bald spot? BALD SPOT? I don’t think so. A zone of thinness absolutely. An area of sparse hair growth definitely. But a spot of unbroken baldness? No. I’d even be okay with it if she had said, “the guy with the starting-to-bald spot.” But a bald spot? Not quite yet. Give me that at least. I mean, do you call a leper with three fingers the guy with no hand? No, you call him the guy with some hand left. A little civility, that’s all I’m asking for.
I’m not bald yet. I’m going bald. I am in the process of becoming bald. At least afford me that small shred of dignity while I can still cling to it. Let me enjoy to the fullest this period where I still possess the increasingly meager remains of my beautiful, beautiful hair.
(soft sobbing)
My current state of baldness has been long in the making. Actually, I’ve been waiting for this moment. It all started three years, 1,277,581 fallen hairs, and a large portion of my sex appeal ago.
As soon as I realized that I was going bald, I also realized that I was not going to be able to handle this on my own. I needed help. Well, what I really needed was hair that wasn’t going to fall out, but (clenched fist shaking at God) that ship had already sailed so I turned to the next best thing: a balding counselor.
Ironically, the balding counselor was not bald himself–as if anyone with thick full luxurious hair could ever understand the true extent of my pain. Even though he had hair and was thereby my natural enemy I sat down and listened. He told me that I would go through five stages of loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
I punched him in the face.
I figured I’d already been through the denial phase so I might as well get a jump on the anger phase. I obviously knew I was going bald, hell I was in a balding counselor’s office. And my anger only escalated when I received his bill. The guy charged me $275! Two hundred for the session and seventy-five for the punch–worth every penny as far as I’m concerned. I mean, what kind of guy with a full head of hair has the nerve to be a balding counselor? I’ll tell you what kind of guy–the kind of guy who deserves a nice hard punch in the face, and his tires slashed–which I did once I got the bill. It felt so good slashing his tires that I think a hair or two might have sprouted in the process.
Penniless and soon to be hairless, I often turned maniacal. In a fit of rage, one of many during the anger phase with much gnashing of teeth I clenched my fists and pulled my hair. Bad idea. The wispy strands came out by the roots and by the handful–I’d actually made myself balder. It was horrible, but it pushed me along into the next phase: bargaining.
Bargaining is the phase a lot of balding men get stuck in. These are the guys with see-through comb-overs, baseball caps, pony-tails, crappy beards, and spray-on hair. It’s sad, like a fat girl in a tank top–it’s adding insult to injury and it isn’t fooling anyone. Just because you wear a skinny girl’s outfit it doesn’t make anyone think you’re skinny. And bald guys just because you have a ponytail it doesn’t make anyone think you’re not bald–it just makes you a bald guy who has somehow, in spite of all the odds, managed to make his hair look worse.
Me, though, I took the man’s way out. I grew a beard–a crappy beard to be sure, but a beard nonetheless. I’m not entirely sure what my rational behind this maneuver was. Maybe, “as long as I have hair in the general vicinity of my scalp people won’t notice” or “I’m just going bald to make room for the sweet beard.” I’m not really sure. I am sure of one thing. It didn’t work. So, I did the only thing a man in my position can do. I called Bosley, the hair restoration specialists. They told me it would cost $6,000 for the first treatment, and it would probably take two treatments. So, what can a guy do you know? I took a step and made a choice to improve my life.
I hung the phone up and called Rogaine. They said it would only cost $60 a month, but the hair growth is limited and mainly at the crown (back of the head) and I would have to apply their topical cream twice a day every day. Every single day. No dice, Rogaine. You can keep your topical creams. I’m just too lazy. There are only three things I want to do every day for the rest of my life: eat, sleep, and defecate. That’s it. Sex used to be on that list, but I think it’s a good idea to lose my sex drive before I go completely bald. That way I won’t be getting laid, but at least it’ll be by choice. Besides, no amount of hair is worth worrying about rubbing goop on your head twice a day. The only thing worth that much work is penis enlargement and I don’t have the money for that either.
So, I had no choice. I grew another crappy beard. Not because I hoped it would make me look better, but because I was just too damned depressed to shave. I had entered the fourth stage: depression. I was way down in the dwindling hair dumps on Skin Head Street at the Receding Hairline Hotel. Yep, I had the balding blues and I had ‘em bad, baby, a real thinning hair hang-up, and I’d wake up every day and stand in front of the mirror. I’d just stand there looking at my hairline searching desperately for signs of new growth. Eventually, the inevitable hair would drift down to the sink counter like the first leaf of autumn signaling a barren winter of baldness to come. I’d watch the hair’s slow waft downward and begin to cry. Then I’d go get something to eat. Come back to the mirror. Stand. Look. Cry. Day in. Day out. Stand, look, cry, eat, stand, watch, cry, sleep. Sometimes, I would mix it up in hopes of getting out of my fallen follicle funk. Cry, stand, look, sleep, eat, cry, look, eat, stand. It didn’t matter. It was all equally depressing.
To give you an idea of what I was like during this period here’s a sample conversation between my roommate and myself.
Him: “Hey, you wanna go to the bars tonight?”
Me: “No, I’m busy.”
Him: “Busy doing what?”
Me: “Going bald! LEAVE ME ALONE! I just wanna die!”
Him: “Oooooookay, talk to ya later.”
As you can see I was pretty torn up about the whole thing. Then one day I was reading Cosmo–yes I read Cosmo, sue me–and I stumble across this article about what women like in a man. This is the reason I read Cosmo. It’s undercover work inside the intricacies of the female mind. Anyway, I’m reading this article and it’s got shit like, “What do Cosmo readers think is the sexiest part on a man?” Sixty percent say arms, twenty percent say eyes, and ten percent say smile. And I’m like, “Bull-shit. One hundred percent of Cosmo readers are thinking a fat wallet is the sexiest part on a man.” But I kept reading, and it’s a good thing I did because they had a little section that pertained directly to me. It turns out–and this is great news–that eighty percent of Cosmo readers don’t care if a man is bald, twenty percent think baldness is a total turn-on, and a hundred and twelve percent are passionately in love with me, and are dieing to rub the sensuous curves of my handsome scalp.
Well, as you can imagine I was ecstatic. I mean there I was flipping through Cosmo looking at the cute outfits…I mean, um, doing undercover surveillance work. It’s all very technical. I’d rather not get into it.
Anyway, there I was trying to read through my tears and I come across this bombshell–chicks actually dig bald guys. I know some of you readers out there are saying to yourselves “the hell they do” and my guess is that you either have hair, in which case I could care less what you think you bastard, or you are a chick, in which case please, please, please, dig bald guys.
I had reached the final stage: acceptance. “The hell with it,” I said. There are lots of cool bald white guys. There’s Bruce Willis and….well all I can really think of is Bruce Willis, but it’s a start! And I began looking around and a lot of guys are going bald or are bald already. Ever watch C-SPAN? Of course you don’t, but if you did you’d notice that pretty much every guy on the channel is bald, and they run the country.
So, being bald isn’t all that bad. Sure, I still wake up each morning and count the hairs on my pillow–it averages at around seven wispy strands, and I save them in a jar so I can one day show my children. Sure, I still notice when women’s eyes stray to my hairline when we’re talking, and it makes me want to slash their tires. Sure, every once in awhile I devote an entire day to standing in front of the mirror looking and sobbing–like you don’t. But, in spite of all that, I know there’s only one thing that really matters, and it’s that chicks dig bald guys. It’s true, ask any bald guy you know. Just don’t ask a woman. You run the risk that she’ll do something foolish like tell you the truth. As if anyone wants to hear about the truth nowadays. And don’t ask me because I’m not really going bald, I’m just making more room for my face.
Just kidding, of course I’m going bald, but you still won’t be able to ask me. I’m working three full-time jobs right now. Bosley promises me I’ll love my new hair, and with their structured payment plan I’ll be in complete ownership of it by 2023. Until then I’ve got this really nice beard that I think looks great, and I haven’t got a ponytail yet, but my rat-tail is coming in nicely–you can see it poking out the back when I wear one of my many stylish baseball caps.
The waves roll in from the sea like fingers caressing the tense shoulders of the rocky shore. The sound of the water is like the crash of too many emotions in my confused brain. Lamentably, a massive menacing mount monopolizes the scene that rises above me. El Mina Castle–bastion of Christian hypocrisy and disregard for humanity from 1482 to 1833.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll hold your hand” says Adgaakwa, the six year old daughter of Mercy Haizel, my program director.
“But I’m scared,” I say to her as she grabs my large pink hand with her small brown one.
“I’m holding your hand. How can you be afraid?” she asks rhetorically with a tone of finality. And that’s that–to her–and she skips off toward the ancient slave castle with me in tow. To me it’s not that easy. The castle looms over me like an accusing finger, and a certain unnameable weight settles awkwardly across my shoulders as I prepare for a tour through cruelties that are as much my past and legacy as imprisonment and suffering are the past and legacy of Charisse Haynes, the African-American girl who’s holding Adgaakwa’s other hand, and who is also no longer afraid.
The tour starts and we are led over the cobblestone court to the female slave dungeon. Here approximately 300 women were held in two small chambers. The women ate, slept, dreamed, wailed, waited, and wished all in an area the same size as a large living room. Peter, the tour guide, points to a window. “That’s where the governor would pick his woman from. Then they’d wash her from this well here,” he points at a hole in the ground, “and then she was sent up those stairs there to the governor’s quarters. If a woman refused the governor she was chained here, and sat here until she died from thirst and exposure.”
The tour continues and I move to ask Peter, our guide, a question. I get three words into my question, and suddenly, as if by some subtle magic, Peter and I are holding hands. He answers my question, we talk for a minute, and then he goes back to his tour guide routine. The kindness of this man! This guy doesn’t know me from Adam. I’m just another white face in the stream of white faces that pours into this place everyday, and he treats me like a brother. What an experience! I am on the ramparts of an ancient castle with the choppy green waters of the Bay of Benin rolling and roiling to my left and towering red hills topped with palms to my right, and a whole world between me and this Ghanaian, Peter, and yet we walk hand in hand like brothers treading over the history of this place with each step.
Now we’re at the church. Yep, ladies and gents all those murderous rapacious slavers believed in the Good Lord–just like you believe?–and read The Bible–just like you?–and knew in their hearts that because they listened to their priests–just like you listen?–and because God loved them–just as much as He loves you?–that they were going to heaven–the same heaven as you? I look around and it dawns on me that the hardwood flooring here in the House of the Lord is also the roof of the hell that was the women’s slave quarters. Imagine, supposed Christians–the most prevalent kind of Christian–hands clasped, heads bent in prayer for their salvation while the smell of feces and death and the sound of pained screams and mournful moans rose through the floorboards at their feet. They listened with rapture while their religious leaders preached that their genocide was the work of God. Call me crazy, but I doubt that they prayed hard enough.
The air in this place pulses with evil history, my heart pounds with the pain of remembrance, but, somehow, my soul throbs with joy at the experience. The tour continues, but I don’t. I’m too lost in thought, Africa, and the moment.
Along the coast of Ghana, as you approach the Togolese border, the land is encroached upon by water on both sides, the Atlantic on one and the Keta Lagoon on the other. Five friends and I are currently canoeing past the inlet where the salt water from the Gulf of Guinea flows into the lagoon. A thin sand bar lined with palm trees is all that separates us from the somewhat more boisterous waters of the Atlantic. We are on our way to the city of Keta or, maybe, to Tegbi. We’re not really sure where it is that we’re going. We just know that once we get there we’re heading to the beach to, depending on the hour, either soak up the sun, or the stars, or watch the one turn into the other.
Smoke from Patrick and Jake’s cigarettes forms a thin veil between me and the scenery. It makes me think of home, as I come from a long line of smokers, and for the first time in months I start to miss it, but a breeze coming in off the ocean clears away wisps of both nostalgia and smoke, and I begin to see clearly again. I see a woman, framed by the setting sun, not too far off on a sand dune. She is selling bananas with groundnuts, and next to her is a woman selling oranges, and next to her is a woman selling roasted corn. There are children everywhere. Three little ones play at being fishermen in the shallows of the lagoon. Six more trail along behind their older fathers and brothers, yelling, and moving with spastic jerks, while they tell little kid stories about little kid adventures. Many others sit, in various stages of repose, at the knees of their mothers and older sisters while they sell their oranges and their mangoes and their groundnuts. It is all perfectly alien, and, yet, it looks the way it should, and I feel at home among it.
Our boat pulls up to shore. I and my five friends disembark from the vessel and give the stolid old salt his fare. Before we walk thirty feet the whole little main street of the village we’ve ported at is in an uproar. “Obruni! Obruni!” they shout. After five somewhat tense minutes in which there was almost a fistfight over who would drive us to our hotel and after the tro-tro we got into had to be push started, we were, once again, on our way.
We tell the driver to stop. We’re not at the hotel yet, but we see a lighthouse some small distance off the road, and decide to try to get a bird’s eye view of the area. The lighthouse is a big metal structure with an insanely steep stairway. No one is around, but printed on a large sign at the bottom of the steps are the words “Danger Bee Infestation,” which are three words, that when grouped together, should be listened to.
Manuela, a beautiful Columbian born U of Penn student, thinks the sign is just hilarious, and she starts laughing. This gets everyone else going because she has an infectious laugh–one of those high breathless laughs like she just recovered from a slight choking incident involving some clumsiness with an M&M–and we all stand there laughing at nothing, really, with a swarm of bees somewhere above us, a sun the color of Ashante gold going down at our backs, an uneasy ocean to our right, and the stars and full moon readying themselves, offstage, for their nightly debut in the heavens above us.
(the story of a checkered past)
Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Take me for instance: I’m a decent looking young white male, I go to school, I have a job, I’ve never been arrested, and on top of it all I’m nice to strangers. All of this and more (much, much more I assure you–I’m great!) leads people to believe that I’m an upstanding citizen. Wrong. I’m a criminal. I am, honest to goodness. Always have been, perhaps always will be. It depends on what they make legal.
My love affair with crime began at an early age. I can remember being a chubby straw-haired anklebiter freshly freed from the rigors of afternoon kindergarten and let loose on the poor town of Windgate, Indiana. My brother/partner in crime and I would jump on the back of slow moving semi trucks, scale neighboring fences for some illicit trampoline use, try to sneak peaks at our babysitter when she was in the shower, and even steal penny tootsie rolls from the convenience store on the corner. Oh! the chocolately thrill of it! No candy since has tasted as sweet as those lifted tootsie rolls. I think. To be honest I can’t really remember. Unfortunately I can’t remember that much about the babysitter either, but, and this is god’s honest truth, as a kindergartner I talked my babysitter into showing me her boobs. I bugged her so much and kept at it for so long she finally agreed to show me just so I would leave her alone. That strategy is still working wonders for me to this very day.
I don’t mean to paint myself as some sort of common criminal though. I’m no klepto. I’ve moved beyond the baser criminalities. After the age of seven I just couldn’t bring myself to steal, heist, pinch, or cheat. They just didn’t do it for me. I needed something more exciting and less morally difficult. As the years went I sought bigger and bigger thrills. I would reach the pinnacle of my criminal career at an elementary school in Whiteland, Indiana, but the rocky roller coaster ride that is my career as a delinquent desperado contains more than a few hills, drops, and loops.
One of those loops is especially mentionable and occurred in the lovely desert mountain town of Tucson, Arizona. There I teamed up with my brother, my new step-sister, and my new step-brother (all three accomplished criminals in their own right) and together we brought down a mighty scourge of evildoing the likes of which Tucson will never see again. Well, maybe not as bad as all that, but let me tell you, we lightened the limb of many a neighbor’s fruit tree. Yes, I know I said that I had tired of stealing, but, like I was saying earlier, I’m a criminal. I lie all the time. It’s part of what makes me a good criminal.
We did more than just steal fruit. We were serious criminals. We toilet papered a number of houses and when we toilet papered we threw a few eggs along with the t.p. just to let people know we were serious. Once, on my own, I even made an ill fated attempt at a career as a graffiti artist.
In my neighborhood there was a lot of graffiti and being the curious sort I always wondered why it was that people spray-painted cusswords everywhere. Judging from the amount of “fucks” and “bitches” written far and wide for no apparent reason I figured that spray painting itself must be a very thrilling thing to do. I was fond of doing things that were thrilling so I decided to try my hand at a little graffiti. I chose a time early in the morning when I knew everyone would be asleep, 10:00. I crept stealthily out the front door of my family’s ranch style house. There really was no need to be stealthy. No one would have asked me where I was going even if they had seen me, more air conditioning for them, but as a young criminal I knew the one thing someone committing a crime didn’t want to do was get seen by another person.
I borrowed a can of red spray paint from the open air hillbilly clutter of our carport, sauntered down the alley next to our house, found a suitable wall, and began to spray. I had gotten the f-u-c done. I was a bit disappointed that I hadn’t felt anything especially exciting yet, but sure enough as soon as I got the k finished the thrill hit me.
“HEY YOU!” Some old lady yelled, “Yeah, you! I see you!”
I don’t know if I necessarily enjoyed the thrill I was feeling, but it was thrilling. High stepping, I ran back up the alley, threw the spray can down on the perpetual yard sale that was my carport, and ran inside the door. I shut the door quietly behind me, crept past the living room, and then to my room–safe and sound as the pound. I was sure I had given that old coot the slip, but not a moment later she came around the corner, went to my door, and rang the doorbell.
She was good.
By my reckoning one of the best. She had to be. She had tracked me down. Me! the most elusive and dangerous graffiti artist on the whole Southside. But she was out of luck. “Go ahead,” I thought, “you just go ahead and push that buzzer all day if you want,lady. I sure as hell ain’t gonna answer.” That old lady could have just died of heat under the cruel desert sun for all I cared. Unfortunately, my mother saw things differently and she ended up answering the door. In my room with my ear pressed to my door I could hear everything.
“Hello?” my mother said.
“Hi, do you have a little boy? There was a little boy spray painting cusswords in the alley. He ran this way.” She said.
That old lady just would not let things go. I couldn’t believe the fanatic single mindedness of this woman. “Get over it! I was just trying it out,” I shouted quietly to myself.
“Yes. Yes, I do, but my sons have been in the house all day.” I could tell from the tone in my mother’s voice that she was not taking this lady seriously. I was as good as off the hook. And that there is an excellent example of why a good thief is always stealthy. He never knows when it might save his ass.
“Well, the boy, he was wearing a green shirt are you sure?”
I looked down. Sure enough, I was wearing a green shirt. She had the eagle eye this woman. I quickly took it off and buried it in the bottom of my closet. I put on a fresh red shirt knowing at this point my alibi was as good as sealed. And it was. After Grandma Citizen’s-Arrest left I walked, no strutted around the house confidently in my red shirt for the rest of the day and was never convicted. I’m a smooth criminal. But to be totally honest, it was a bit unfortunate in terms of future relations with my grandmother and other aged women, as I developed a fear of old women that lingers to this day.
Eventually, the crime wave was ended when the Benson/Acton family packed up and moved back to good ol’ Indiana. Once here in the majestic Hoosier state I adopted my familiar good-little-boy guise and bided my time until the opportunity for the perfect crime presented itself.
Like a Jehovah’s Witness, opportunity came knocking on my door the summer of my sophomore year in high school. Unlike what happens when real Jehovah’s Witnesses stop by, I answered opportunity’s knock, and opportunity and I ended up having one hell of a time.
* * * * *
By this time in my life I had acquired a new partner in crime: Wilson Mack. We’d been operating together for a number of years by then, and had managed to break all kinds of laws together while still presenting straight-A, good guy facades. Unwitting parents and teachers loved us, begged their kids to be like us. Fools. We were living high on the hog as cat-burglars extraordinaire. We’d already broken into a one elementary school numerous times through an unlocked door in the enclosed courtyard (as if a little roof climbing ever slowed down cat burglars of our skill and expertise), and now our sights were set on the next target: Wilson’s old stomping ground of Park Pleasant Elementary.
In the spirit of total disclosure I should say that Wilson and I had never actually attempted to break into someplace before. The first elementary school, where interior doors are apparently left unlocked, had been a lucky coincidence. Clark was going to be a different matter entirely. There would be no unlocked doors. It was going to take some serious burgling.
Step 1: Reconnaissance
“Wilson, you see anything?”
“Naa, you’re good. No cars or anything. Go. Go.” I started climbing the school’s imposing thirty foot tall glass front.
We had already scouted out the perimeter of the building and hadn’t found so much as a cracked window much less a viable way into the building. We had even attempted to unscrew a ventilation grill with Wilson’s pocket knife but to no avail. That’s how I found myself playing the human fly at 2 o’clock in the morning. Using nothing but the glass in front of me, a nearby gutter, some prayer, and my own surprisingly useful toenails I made it to the roof. You’d be amazed how much toenails come in handy when you’re about to fall 30 feet to your certain death. I know I was.
“Hey, way to use those toenails buddy!” So was Wilson.
On the roof I found nothing overtly appealing. No open doors. No open windows. Nothin. I climbed down from the roof soaking Wilson with the bucket of cold sweat that poured out of me on the way down.
“Ahh, you got sweat all over me!”
“I’m sorry Mack but that’s not just sweat, buddy.” It was really scary
We weren’t going to be able to get inside the school that night, but I had a plan. We could bust up in there Bond style if we just had some tools.
Step 2: Supplies
I went to Lowes and bought a glass drill bit. My mom had actually given me the idea.
“Hey Mom, what’s the best way to drill through a window?”
“Drill through a window? What are you doing drilling through a window?”
“C’mon Mom, I just wanna know. Me and Wilson are having an argument.”
“You guys are so weird. You get a glass drill bit and….”
I had heard enough. “Ok Mom. Love you. Bye.” And I was on my way to Lowes.
Wilson acquired his dad’s battery operated drill, a length of rope, and a bent wire hanger. These were all the supplies we needed. Well, we also needed food rations. I got a hamburger and an Oreo Blizzard. Wilson got a chicken basket, but that’s not important. What is important is the Oreo Blizzard. It was delicious. Wait, no. It was that the chicken basket cost $5.75. Outrageous!
Step 3: Execute break-in. A.K.A. Operation: Razor’s Edge as it was known among our cadre of criminals. Ok, maybe it wasn’t a cadre. Maybe it was just me and Wilson. Whatever.
An obese pumpkin moon cast tremendous shadows transforming the playground and tether-ball court into daunting pools of gloom. Darting behind and concealed within the shadows, Wilson and I surreptitiously crept towards the school’s brightly lit glass front. From the cover of darkness I threw my shoes onto the roof (in case my toenails were needed again), raced towards the wall, and scaled the glass exterior. I managed to reach the top without a single divine intervention which was a vast improvement from the time before. I lowered the length of rope Wilson had acquired from his dad’s shop and Wilson, who had followed me out of the shadows, tied it around the drill. While I hauled up the drill with the glass bit firmly attached Wilson threw his shoes up next to me, readied his toenails, and climbed up.
Within moments Wilson was next to me and we both had our shoes on–ready as ever. The school was our oyster just waiting to be shucked, and to our right was the chink in its armored shell. Soft light from an exit sign leaked through the window of an art supply room. The window was secured with only a simple butterfly latch– the kind you move from left to right. Brandishing the power drill like it was 007’s own Walther PPK, I approached the window and set to work. I drilled a hole in the window directly behind the latch. The drilled hole was just large enough to allow Wilson to shove the straightened wire coat hanger through. With a deftness only artists possess, Wilson manipulated the latch all the way to the left thus unlocking the window. The few minutes it took Wilson to unlatch the window had been tense ones and his success resulted in the eruption of several hoots, approximately three hollers, and two well deserved pats on the back.
Wilson slowly raised the window. Both of us listened closely for burglar alarms. Sweet silence caressed our criminal eardrums. I threw my legs through the window, lowered myself down onto the table that sat beneath it, and jumped onto the dusty floor with all the grace of a seasoned second story man.
“Are you ok?” Wilson asked, his head peeking in the window. Apparently, he had never seen a seasoned second story man climb through a window.
“Ya, I’m great.” I replied.
“Ok. Watch my feet. I don’t wanna fall like that.”
Fall? I forgave him the insult. Wilson was fairly new to the criminal life style and obviously wasn’t aware of the fact that it is a common custom for a good second story man to fall off a table and directly onto his ass whenever he enters through a window. Scares off would be attackers. You can’t be too careful.
Wilson climbed in through the window and made it to the floor without. How childish, how amateur. I was glad I was the only proper crook there to see him, but I didn’t worry about it too much. We were in and I was gripped by the tingling feeling in my spine that manifests itself whenever I manage to be somewhere I’m not supposed to be.
There was a problem though. Unfortunately, we had overlooked our lack of a very important instrument, an instrument that is vital to the illegal nighttime searching of any public grade school. Light. How could we forget a flashlight? The whole goddamned school was pitch black. However, now illegally in the darkened school we found out that we did bring a nice sized supply of scared shitless. We used our supply carefully at first hoping to ration it out over the entire night, but soon strange noises were heard coming from the hallway. All hopes of conserving the scared shitless were forgotten and it was used with abandon. I was determined to continue with the plan though. I screwed up my courage, blamed Wilson for not bringing a flashlight, and insisted that he be the first to go out in the hallway since he forgot the flashlight.
“Wilson, how could you forget the flashlight? I swear you’re half retarded. Welp, you better go first.” I said with as much conviction as I could muster in an attempt to convince Wilson that it really was his responsibility to bring the flashlight.
“I wasn’t supposed to bring the flashlight, fag. You go first. I’m right behind you.”
It appeared that he wasn’t buying what I was selling. I was caught between a rock and scary place, and things were not looking good.
The room was eerily lit by the combined glows of orange moonlight and green exit sign. This did nothing to improve the situation. Framed by the door, the hallway was a yawning black hole to our left. Taking huge steps of three to four inches apiece I walked towards the door. Halfway there I noticed that there was something else far more important that warranted my attention. That something else was getting the hell out of there. Wilson, having already realized that there were much more important things to be doing, was already halfway out the window by the time I turned around. We made it out the window, across the roof, and down the front of the building in about the time it takes for two 16 year old boys to scramble out of a window, trip their way across the slipperiest roof ever constructed by man, and then half fall, half climb down a 30 foot glass wall–approximately two seconds. From there we scampered away into the darkness.
So that’s how that ended. Not as suave and cool as I originally made it out to be, but, as you know, appearances can be deceiving. If you were expecting something more then you weren’t paying attention. I told you. I’m a no good crook, ya sucker.
“Look,” says your guide through lips stained orange from the seed pod he’s been chewing on. Following the point of his charcoal colored finger you can see a male water buck, horns spiraling tightly to end in points three feet above his head. The buck freezes, for a moment, at the sight of your group, and then bolts off into the tall grass and thorny bushes that make up this portion of Mole National Park. No one had a chance to get a picture, but the moment was so magical that you feel sure you’ll be able to recreate it anytime you’d like just by closing your eyes.
You’re on your first African safari—to be technical your first safari period—and the guide, PK, has been winding his way through the brush led by a path only he can see for over an hour now. And what an hour it’s been.
The sun was still low when you and your friends had first set out on this hike through the wild kingdom. You had immediately crossed the paths of a small herd of antelope, though they scampered away almost as soon as you’d seen them. With luck and considerable skill, you’d managed to get several shots of their back ends as they ran away, and, as an added bonus, everyone else on the safari pissed—it turns out the antelope were running away because you’re the one person left in the world with a camera that takes film, and that camera makes a noise like a Black Cat every time you snap a picture. But two minutes later, their annoyance with you was forgotten when PK led you smack dab into the middle of a big group of Pumbas, or, as they are perhaps better know, warthogs. Everyone in the group managed to get within a foot of the bush pigs before they high-tailed it out of there. You have a dim memory of someone making a stupid joke about how they had some urgent business with a meerkat, a lion, and an Elton John musical number. Nobody laughed. Any idiot knows there are no lions in this part of Ghana.
A peculiar sucking sensation somewhere in the vicinity of your nether regions brings you back to the present. It’s your shoe. You stepped in a mud puddle. You bend down, on one leg, to try and pry your shoe from the dark mud when you notice something odd about where you stepped; it’s a little lower than the mud surrounding it. You suddenly realize you stepped right in the middle of an elephant track, and the thing is huge. The size of the footprint conjures an image of a humongous beast in your head.
You’re musings are interrupted by another “Look” coming from PK—you swear the man knows three words: look, stop, and quiet. And then it occurs to you that you’re in Africa, and those definitely could be the only three English words the man knows. And then it occurs to you that you should probably do what the man says and look before a once in a lifetime chance to see something incredible slips out of sight. But you soon see that what PK wants you to see is not, can not, and never will slip anywhere.
Two male elephants, heavily tusked, are fifteen yards away and walking towards you into an arm of a waterhole, a waterhole that is suddenly all that separates you from the mammalian dinosaurs of your recent daydream. Everyone, including you, whips out their cameras as one of the giant beasts plunges into the water upsetting two crocodiles posing as logs and sending an aerie of birds into the bright morning sky to search for calmer roosting grounds.
The other elephant, in what appears to be a pose for the cameras, crosses his back legs, and gives a triumphant bellow through his trunk. His triumph? To be alive, to be huge, and to be in the sight of cameras instead of guns. But his triumph is nothing compared to yours. You’re on a safari in West Africa.
The Burning Sensation of a Hawkish Administration
It’s become dire straits in this global economy of hate, and we cannot wait to see the whites of their eyes. It’s time we get wise and realize the lies.
People are being killed and we do it for oil.
Blood is being spilled and we do it for a Royal Family, an American Monarchy. Who, with the help of VP Cheney, spoils democracy in our country.
Where are you? I don’t believe you can’t see.
Get a clue, don’t get your news from your T.V.
They didn’t find one single WMD, and there were no Iraqi ties to the anarchy that is the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Who, by the way, is really hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but Bush Republicans don’t care if its fair, they’ll bomb over there until the whole place is just dust in the air.
Now, there’s guerrilla warfare that we brought down on ourselves, hot and heavy it’s an arabian hell, and the only way out is to delve down for the real reasons for the season of guns and bombs, guns and bombs. Listen, there went another one. There’s a clog in the pipe and sand in the gears. There’s a fog in the sky and hands over our ears. Bush played on our fears and began a second trail of tears that leads to the cradle of civilization and another sovereign nation that we attacked, jacked, threw out of whack under the pretense we’re gonna put it back on track.
Wow, what a myth.
It’s damned ridiculous.
It’s become a tragedy.
A Mid-Eastern rhapsody composed with the beats of bombs, the whistles from american missiles, gunshots that resound from roof-tops right when screams sound from another iraqi cop, who dies. And that’s the lullaby from the streets that lulls crying eyes to sleep in the deep heat of another arabian night.
We’re ready to bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran. And then what? Bomb, bomb, bomb, Pakistan? And then what? Bomb, bomb, bomb, every other land until it’s Christian? It’s no trouble we’ll turn the whole region to rubble and rocks if it raises Bush’s stocks to shock and awe proportions while they distract us with abortion and it’s lookin like extortion by the religious right in this, the deep heat of another arabian night.
But how is Bush calm despite North Korea’s cache of A-bombs. Could it be that they didn’t badmouth his daddy? Could it be that all they have are rice paddies, not oil reserves? No need to conserve when we’ve got a gas station over in the desert. It’s absurd. I can’t believe the nerve of the admin which is ruthless and truthless in their oppressiveness of ones who’ve got less. It’s a huge mess caused by the usual suspects, the 911 weepers, who’ve turned into grim reapers with their skulls glaring blue, red, and white in the light of a distant firefight that adds to the deep heat of another arabian night.
IMMIGRATION
Africa is a strange land to be a stranger in. I wandered in, got lost in wonder, and then it hit me. The place didn’t fit me, I was an eagle in a whole other zoo, it wasn’t like I was used to, it might as well have been Katmandu, but I dug deep to find a root in my self, used the straps of my boot to help, and I pulled myself up.
I helped myself up to a wealth of experience, evidence of a delirious luxuriance of untouched existence. I drank the morning dew of a brand new renewed refreshed test of the everyday, every path was a new way, everybody had something to say, there were no more old dues to pay, and the whole display was a ball of clay for me to take and shape it, invent my own name for it, find a truth that fit, take a discerning look at the overall tint, and open my arms in welcome of this, Africa, the blooming, buzzing, confusion of an actuality of a plurality of vitality, heretofore rendered inaccessible by my locality hidden behind the folly of Hollywood’s big screen American Dream in the quiet desperation of an American Reality.
I gazed at stout stone walls crowned by corrugated crenellations that defended the separation of two nations. My eye was caught by this paradox of the English fox who turned the African hound around and chased him down reopening the box in which was found a small foul town of Pandora’s play things. In echo of that Grecian puppet without strings to whom the gods willed a key on a key ring to a chest with no locks, no matter that the English fox slammed shut the box he regretted his ways as a result of what laid in that fabled coffer who’s top was popped to grab at the lot of token pittance he imagined set within it. No better than the original marionette without a leader–who had the same choice, a choice phony as theatre–the fox let loose a calamity which required no key and he locked up hope for eternity.
See the ease in which a switch is flipped, a state of mind can be tripped, and sent tumbling to its knees? Like when the crow got to keep his cheese, or a kingdom was given to Mephistopheles for crying out about his needs.
ORIENTATION
By God! I’m shocked to see that a Christian evil has entered like a needle and spread like an oak tree. A foreign Christian symbology now dominates the surrounding African topography, and somehow, suddenly I’m stuck in the religious muck.
I have no luck. I fear that I’ve steered into the River Jordan’s reeds, and I’m foundering in godly weeds with the first apple’s seeds sticking to me like burrs. They’re fetters on a dogmatic chain around my brain causing pain.
“Don’t think anything new! Just accept our View!”–This fundamentalist hullabaloo surrounds me. Their shadowy Christ is all around me. Religion abounds here feeding off people’s fear without giving two cares that it’s become tyrannical, Satanical, despicable, and hypocritical.
At least, to me, that’s how it seems. But here in Africa, they laugh a lot, they crack it up, let steam erupt, go make it up, and let their service be a place to be seen, to make a scene, to dance and sing, celebrate the King of Kings, and then, at the end, pay a little somethin’, something.
Religion. Decision. Original Sin.
Is God a clod, or a sticker of pins?
No, He’s neither of these things so why does the Bible paint Him so mean like He’s an omnipotent fiend, some friendless being with a lawyer’s ring to His speech? Like all He had to teach was the worship of rules and jewels, yules and spools of golden thread. A religion for the dead with all its rewards in heaven, raising a din about sin while leaving no Divine Leaven for honest men.
But for the African it’s a celebration, a recognition of the One. You worship to thank for the sun, the stars, the moon, the boon of every breath, the gifts of life and death we receive from our Maker. Now that idea is an earth shaker, but it’s still a deal breaker, to me, if I’m supposed to see the answers to why we be in a book and a morality that does not speak to me — A pox on this pall! A paradox will pierce it all!
Like the mountain of rocks alone in a sea of sand, the hawker of those in the bush for that in the hand, the unlikely socks to walk from a squadron’s last stand, and the lonely flute in the crowded band that turns the excited scene suddenly bland. By some power in the course of some hours, the rocks turn to sand themselves, he who crookedly hawks get six for twelve, the socks meet their end on dusty shelves, and the flute finds company to wake the locality to a tremendous Bacchanality that dismisses all technicalities of personality that deemed it dull.
EDUCATION
I’m starting to feel the supreme pull of this extreme bull being taken by the horns, thorns and all. It’s a coarse fall into an African unknown, a verifiable twilight zone, of foreign faces who see me as the emissary of other light skinned races. Asking if I’m Germanic, Hispanic, Arabic, or Asian–thinking that they’re all pasty Caucasians, alabaster aliens, from ivory nations, who are the incarnation of pecuniary salvation, with the title of foreigner.
Then I turn a figurative corner and it’s a transparently other charm I’m under. They rip my protestations asunder, excuse my every clumsy blunder, and demand that I understand they’re doing all they can for me, the guest. Feel free. Rest. Hospitality at its best, and I feel blessed by all the care arrested in their chests to be vested in my breast as if I were worthy of these festivities and this mystery of a proclivity towards generosity despite the view afforded by history.
The paradox of a pine box from which light poured forth, the fifty-eight forts on the coast which opened the sore, and the series of locks meant to hold down the floor aren’t enough to bury the box and still lighten the room, repair the injury of the opened wound, or fool us enough to forget the doom and gloom of what’s buried in the dungeon room.
There’s no wiping the slate clean when equality is only a dim dream in the minds of the unseen and the unknown whose homes are this poem:
No roof is there atop us, our floor is the ground,
But Jah is in us, of us, above us, and all around.
Things we have none, except for what we’ve found,
But Jah is in us, of us, above us, and all around.
A prayer that dares me to care and take a share in what we all must bare: A history bulletproof to broom’s sweeps meant to keep it under cover.
I can never forget their mother’s mother’s mother and her brother in chains, and the people today in pain from the ruin that’s been made of their economy. It’s a shame to see poverty when there’s luxury, happiness when there’s misery, gluttony sailing freely while the needy drown in a sea of prosperity.
I perceive past cannons bores roar while past horrors rain from castle battlements and my own skin’s tint. The cross is an ominious hint that presides over all of it–A perversion of the Lord’s Word used to people God’s Acre by priests who were fakers, men who were takers, and unsuspecting bakers who are guilty by omission of common sense. Where’s the gate to the fence of understanding surrounding it all? I can’t imagine the shawl of ornate cruelty that covered their eyes to hide from them their heinous lives and the paradox of proselytizing a paradise while creating a babtized state of strife.
FRUSTRATION
But troubled my conscience lies as it’s easy to despise the actions of mad men, in this current then, but, I wonder, when the past was now was their cruelty masochistic malignity or was the whole world peopled with inhumanity? Was common amity destroyed by a calamity, a ubiquitious insanity, caused by a conflux of all conviction and predilection towards one central addiction–that of wealth and power? What made it such an ominious hour when the Gospel, turned sour by a cowering Christian morality, came to this black principality? I can feel the weight of this history. It is too much. The answers can only be touched by a dive into paradoxical mystery.
It’s a sight to see, a single honeybee doing the work of infinity self-possessed and of certain zeal, a lonely beetle who breaks bread self-processed from potato peels, and a little wren who builds his den himself a lily in the field. Now imagine the disciple’s irascibility at this godless birdie’s inability to mutter the Christian peal, “Your fate is sealed! Your life is a wound that can’t be healed! Except in death.”
Take the span of a breath, you religious devotee, and see that it’s not to be without the bee to fertilize the fields of greenery, think about the mess we’d be in without beetles to rummage through our rubbish bins, and comprehend that they and the wise little wren know more than most women and men who watch from beginning to end and can’t realize existence is penned only in our present then, and it doesn’t stretch from future to past, first to last, and stern to mast with a roll-call for the steadfast cast to be screened somewhere in between the waking and the dream.
Realize, religionist, what you see is it. The whole damn universe is a meaningless perpetuity. It’s an accident of reality. Our happening is a coincidence of existence. There’s this and nothing more than this. No after bliss, no divine kiss, no granted wish from above. No godly plan for man and woman’s dominance. Nothing but this: The choices we’ve foisted as we’ve shouldered the considerable weight of this world.
Or is that scoffer’s psalm the wrong song to hum along with: A nihilist riff that is the resulting tiff of a vinegary whiff of the ecclesiastic drift towards self-serving interpretation? A response to the power of the status-quo? A row for rowings sake? What does it take to find an answer to these two cancers?
Is it time to embrace that powerful wraith, the ghost you can’t fake, the spirit of faith? What does it take?
Someone answer me!
REALIZATION
And I’m on my knees in the red dust knocked down by a head rush paired with a feeling of relative ease. A warm breeze of realization moves me to see that it’s nothing to sneeze at this fact that my new habitat resembles that of my favorite story book. Life becomes worth another look when suddenly Africa is my backyard. Doesn’t that sound backward? Bizarre to be looking from where I’m looking from. The wild kingdom beats its drums and I freeze numb–search no more–that’s just the score I was looking for. This is the song I heard all along, a steady bass that, in this case, quite fits my tastes. In front of my face it falls into place. Suddenly, the cuffs match the collars and the curtains match the drapes. My clay has been shaped into its final state; the substantial weight of adulation’s hock locked in a paradox.
One that can’t be caught by all the talk that should be taught; moderation in these things; clip inspiration’s wings; find out what it means to put limitations on the elevation of my sensation. Which is suicide, a game of hide and go seek that never peaks and by the end of the week the whole thing reeks.
That’s why I have to buff my self to a fine shine. Work on making my self a sign that says, “The world is mine. Not because of what I take from it, but because of what I make of it.” And thinking past the flux of daily clips that can’t brush the fingertips of the man that I am and what it is to be human; grab at the blessed majesty received when I take a stand, deal with the hemp scent of the noose in the hangman’s hand, and the fear that brings. This caged bird is singing, but the imprisoning is of my own building. The design utterly sublime and waiting for that time when a little rhyme can take me out of my worn rut–that deep cut I make with my everyday dance–the path of least resistance.
SALVATION
It comes down to this, following my personal fidelity or the common piety. Reigning in my concupiscence or refusing to assent. Remaining tense or taking my swing at it, letting ‘er rip, and pulling a rabbit right out of my habit because right now I can grab it and I can’t go back to it. It’s this one life I get. I can make it my own and get the most out of it, or read the pale rider’s writ, chomp the bit, take the hit of slings and arrows. If I’m so narrow I quit creating a faith of my own making then I’m not fit to have it as good as I have it: Pulled by this one gravity, all this air to breath, sights to see, and, though small among infinity, you, me, and beautiful trees. Now, generally, how often do you get that lucky? Honestly?
“Almost never,” replies the clever Doc who patches the Paradox Pox that came out the box from which all this sprang–to continue what I was earlier saying.
it’s a strange land to be a stranger in,
but, maybe, I don’t see the danger in
doing in Africa that which is African.