Once, long ago, there was a comedy website that only wanted three simple things: to make people laugh, to teach them a few things, and to make enough money to skywrite a new penis every day of the week. It succeeded in two of those goals, before getting piledriven into the dirt by corporate scavengers. Some of its archives have been deleted, some of them have been corrupted, and some just suck. You decide which one this is. ItâsâŚ
Note from Brockway: Most people got this just fine, but I did take some heat for it. For the record: the lesson here is not that gentle bigotry is okay. Gentle bigotry is like Bud Light Seltzer – just as bad as the real thing, but marketed toward pussies. The point is that even âpositiveâ racism sucks. In general, keep one thing in mind while reading any story in which âBrockwayâ is a character: IâM THE BAD GUY. DONâT AGREE WITH ME.
Also check out this killer short play some kids made out of this article.
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“I’m pretty sure Mexicans enjoy things more than me,” I grumbled, picking at a cowlick of fine white thread jutting from the seam of a black leather sofa.
“Why do you think that?” The therapist replied.
“Anything I’m doing — I don’t know, it just seems like thereâs a Mexican out there enjoying it way more than me. Like, say I go have a beer: Iâm okay. Iâm vaguely happy. I turn my head, and three stools down there’s a Mexican guy, just loving the shit out of his beer. He looks like a beer commercial. I swear to God he exhales frost after every sip. And the worst part — do you want to hear the worst part?”
“Go ahead,” he frowned at me as I continued plucking at his precious string.
“It’s not even a better beer than mine. It’s a goddamn Coors or something.”
“Maybe you’d like Coors better.”
“Maybe I’d- no! Fuck Coors. That’s just an example. I could be stuck in line at the grocery store behind a lady trying to use expired coupons. I’m standing there nurturing an ulcer, thinking, ‘Theyâre expired! Expired! You can’t haggle the unceasing forward movement of time! Pay the 15 cents extra! I’ll kill you! I’ll wipe your seed from the Earth!’ Then I look back, and three spots behind me, there’s an old Mexican woman just smiling away. She’s not even doing anything. She’s just looking at the mints, smiling. What the fuck is that? Those are funny mints? Fuck you! This bullshit is burning irretrievable minutes of your life, same as mine, and you don’t even have as much time left. Why aren’t you here, unhappy with me?”
“So you have problems with Mexicans?”
“No, that’s not it. Go out on a sunny day and walk around for a bit. I promise you, you’ll find a group of Mexicans all just standing outside, talking to each other, laughing. They look like how I picture nostalgia. I go do the exact same thing and itâs nothing. Itâs garbage. The whole time Iâm thinking âthis sucks, Iâd rather be rereading Achewood or some shit.ââ
“It sounds like you need to reevalua-“
“Black people are better at conversation.”
“What?” The doctor blinked up from his pad.
“Black people never have to worry about making conversation! They just open their mouths and start going, and it’s great. It’s friendly, it’s easy, it’s totally relatable. And I don’t mean just to each other — to everybody! I talk to any given black person and it’s always the best goddamn conversation I’ve had in months. It’s fantastic. Everybody loves talking to black people. But I open my mouth at a stranger and it’s like I’m vomiting awkwardness into their ears. Just an endless stream of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs,’ and then I start saying shit like ‘ostensibly.’ Or-“
“I think the theme here is a lack of confi-“
“OR,” I barreled through his interruption, “or worse! People say, ‘Howdy’ on the street, and I shakily whisper, ‘Good, and you?’ And that’s if anything comes out at all. Sometimes it’s like they’ve snuck up on my throat and all I can do is squeak.”
“We all have our-“
“I squeak. At strangers. On the street.”
“Casual interac-“
“Like an incel chipmunk. SQUEAK,” I squeaked, “SQUEAAAK.”
“Casual in-“
“SQUEEAAAAK.”
We glared at each other in silence. He took a deep breath, scribbled in the corner of his pad to get his pen going again, and exhaled.
âI think-â he started.
“I’m just saying: Never been squeaked at by a black man.â
He frowned at his notepad. I finally got a good, solid grip on that stray thread and started to work it back and forth. The rattling pen fell quiet, and the therapist harrumphed at me.
“Sorry,” I said, making a big show of releasing his stupid thread. Which I didnât even want anymore.
“Yes, well, you clearly have some racial issues to work through. Now, most patients that enroll in my program-“
“Enroll? Is that what you call it? The only ‘enrolling’ I did was the cops ‘enrolling’ my ass through that doorway.”
“I was just trying to be polite, but if you insist: Most offenders placed in my program have some hostility to work through, but yours seems to be rooted almost entirely in jealousy. You’re laboring under the impression that other groups — essentially all the other groups — have it easier than you: A white, straight, middle-class American male.”
“That’s not fair,” I said, and surreptitiously raised my knee to block his view so I could really go to town on that thread. “I totally get that I have it easy, and a lot of other people have it way harder. I watched Fresh Prince; I know all about racism. I’m just saying that some groups do some things better than others, and pretty much all of them do everything better than me.”
“And you don’t see how that statement might be insulting or unreasonable to some people?”
“I totally do not. Is it racist to say that Chinese people are more resilient?”
“Yes, absolutely, that is basically the definition of racism.”
“You put me in a Chinese guy’s shoes — basically any Chinese guy’s shoes — and no way could I handle that. I’d be dead in a week. You know there’s a Chinese guy downtown that pulls tourists around in a little wheeled cart?”
“Rickshaw?”
“I don’t know his name dude; he’s the guy that pulls the fucking cart.”
The doctor inhaled through his nose for a very long time.
“I get winded walking up hills,” I continued, really getting my sweet unravel on. “If I had to strap a cart full of fat Germans to my ass just to earn some sandwich money, I’d probably lay down somewhere quiet and try not to starve to death in anybody’s way. Not Rick, though. Rick fucking endures.”
“While it’s clear you have just a … an ocean of issues to work through, let’s talk about what brought you here, to my office today.”
“A squad car?â
“The incident,” his scribbles were coming more often now. His pen was running low. “You know which one I mean.”
“The Native American guy,” I admitted.
âYes, the one you assaulted and forcibly stripped on 4th street this morning.”
The man’s tone had shifted from casual to factual.
“Yeah,” I said, “… yeah.”
“Why did you do that?” The doctor leaned back and fumbled for something on the desk behind him. He came back with a new pen, the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Extenuating circumstances,” I answered.
I had this thread thing down, now: Smooth, slow, even strokes were the key. You had to keep a constant light tension going, so as not to break the fragile strands. It was unraveling into little loops that settled in the space between couch and cushion. My secret treasure horde.
“Go on,” he prompted, uncapping his new pen and settling in.
“I was walking down 4th, just doing how I do — kicking at people’s heels then gesturing to the guy next to me when they turn around — when I bumped into this huge crowd on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of angry elbowing, I noticed they were all looking the same direction: Up. Then I saw it: Some girl was out on the roof of this ratty little hotel. Out on the ledge. Something in her body language — I don’t know what it was — but I just knew she was going to jump soon. And there was nobody there yet. No cops, no paramedics, no firemen, nothing. Just the crowd of us, all the way down on the street. People were trying to yell things up to her, but she was too far away. She couldn’t hear. I knew, I just knew that she would do it before anybody got up there to stop her.”
“And … how, exactly, did this lead to your fourth-degree sexual assault on Mr. Kohana?”
“Well it seems stupid now, but I guess I just panicked. We’re all standing around, knowing that there was nothing anybody could do: She couldn’t hear us, we couldn’t get to her, she was going to jump and she was going to die. That was it. Then I looked over and saw a Native American guy. I thought I saw a chance — no matter how remote — and I took it.”
“The police report here says that you ‘leapt upon Mr. Kohana’s back, pulling at his shirt and screaming ‘transform, you heartless bastard, take eagle form and fly to her! There’s no time!'”
The doctor looked up at me.
“Are you going to make me say it?” I whined.
He stared. I pulled thread.
“I secretly believe some Native Americans can shape shift,” I admitted, ashamed.
“Why on Earth would you believe something so preposterous?” He started to note something on his little pad, but almost immediately moved the pen back up to the corner and began scribbling again. He groaned.
“Well, why is it so ubiquitous, if there’s not some truth to it?! Every comic book, every sci-fi novel, every horror movie, every anything with a Native American guy in it has him transforming into some kind of animal at some point!”
“Those are just stories,” the doctor answered tersely, tossing his pen in the wastebasket and reaching for another.
“Right, but what’s the common theme for say, Puerto Ricans in pop culture? That they’re passionate? You know what, in my limited experience, I have found them to be kind of passionate. The French? Sophisticated. Sure, there are some hooligans and idiots, but generally speaking, theyâre a pretty cultured people. White American guys? Ignorant. Well would you look at that? Here I am, a white American guy, thinking Native Americans can turn into wolves if they just want it badly enough. Sounds pretty ignorant to me.”
“Well, it’s hard to argue that,” he admitted, clicking the new pen and touching it to paper.
My busy fingers. Idly twisting thread. Around and around. Steady, even pressure.
“So when it came right down to the wire, when the stress kicked in, when it was really life or death on the line, yes: I figured there was like a 30 percent chance that man could turn into a bird. Is that really so stupid?”
The room was quiet, save for the thirsty rasp of an empty nib tearing through paper. Windows broke behind the doctorâs eyes.
“YES!” The doctor screamed, his cashed pen bouncing off my skull. He stood and yanked at his tie. His face went flush. “IT IS STUPID! IT IS THE STUPIDEST THING! IT IS STUPID AND RACIST AND HARMFUL AND THEN STUPID THREE MORE TIMES AGAIN!â
A soft pop. I had broken the thread loose from its last mooring, and a long flap of black leather plopped over onto my belly, revealing the wispy cotton padding of the couch beneath.
“RRRRRRAAAAAAAGH!!!” A scream tore out of him, ripping him open from crotch to throat. His skin burst like an overcooked sausage and sloughed off into a pile of rubbery meat. In the therapistâs place, there was now a slavering black bear. It dug its claws into the pulpy bamboo floorboards, muscles visibly pulsing beneath layers of fat and fur, and exploded through the closed door. It loped down the corridor beyond, a tide of panicked screams receding with it.
The stunned receptionist stared in at me from the waiting room.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “Rosenberg’s a Native American name?”
…
This article was brought to you by our fine patron and Hot Dog Supreme: Adrienne Hisbrook, who has gotten away with every human crime, and six dog ones.
