What advice would you give to your teenage self?

So, I’m doing it!

The following is an excerpt from the original unedited gobbledygook from 2010

The Ever Present Ghetto parted more like electric doors in a supermarket than Cecil B. DeMille’s special effect to allow the tide of Hi; Hello; Salam; How Ya doin’; What’s up; What’s happenin’; Shalom, Mahal, Aloha, How are you today; Jean Dobre, G’Day; Yo and What Up Doe, to wash over and through me, and the narrow shallow wake of smiles that follow to just ripple outward and mix into the atmosphere. Everywhere I go I meet nice people. But the news rarely has headlines like “Thousands Gather to Celebrate Greeting Strangers Film at eleven.” 

I pretty much always have a song playing in my head. Maybe that’s why headphones always brake when I wear them for more than a few hours a month. My cousin says it’s because I am a witch or a warlock. Then again he knows that I can’t wear wrist watches for any extended length of time, because they start running backwards and stop working too. It’s cool because I almost always know the time. And he’s seen me do my thing behind a bar. My specialty is the “Third Eye Orgasm”. It’s a variation on Mexican Spiced Coco. 

As I walk I purposely notice the abandoned homes and vacant buildings, the streets like broken teeth in mouths of unloved feral dogs. I think if something alive comes out and makes a meal of someone, it’s only natural. Then I imagine this shit transformed into vibrant, stable, caring environments that ‘normal’ people would want to move to and live in, regardless to what they can afford. People want to live inside of my imagined nation. They just don’t want to pay the cost of making it real. Because the cost is they have to help build it. And that’s why it is not a reality for them. That, for them is for White and Asian and Arab men to manifest, Mexicans and South Americans to labor to make real and women like her to seduce or convince some dick with dollars to buy access into. So, my perpetual state of being is summed up in the immortal words of Cody Chestnutt. “Bitch I’m Broke”. 

People argue that they don’t need to know what they want unless and until it is presented to them prefabricated, preordained and prepackaged into several easy installments that someone else will pay for. What I want is an impossibility for them, because it is not something they can negotiate for the acquisition or control of, because it does not yet exist in their scope of conscious awareness, simply put, it ain’t part of their reality. And anyone with access to it is A) someone to be hated or B) someone to be envied or C) both but not Q) someone to be emulated. But those matriculated, titled, socially respected people always want to be our leaders. To them I say eat a pig’s dick. 

I project a happy place onto the matrix of our reality. That makes me the sworn enemy of anyone demanding that the present perpetual state of consensus is just the way it is, until they can afford to make the appropriate adjustments to make things to their liking. Which coincidentally will not and cannot occur until they witness or experience what they want and then they will without a doubt want some form of control over it.

To that set of people I always present the only option they can be offered to satisfy their desires. Okay, I’ve taken my toys and I’m already gone. It is yours to do with as you see fit. This is the economics of colonial power. After we make you addicts to what our power provides, we can take our toys and our knowledge somewhere else.  A portion of the resources that made the booms that come before the lulls and the inevitable crashes always remain, otherwise you can’t sell the mines and factories, plantations, mills and transportation hubs. At the core there is always the consumer that demands, “I am going to have access to at least this level of consumerism regardless to the spiritual, ecological, moral implications or consequences. It is the majority of us that dwell in that consumerist state of being, always hoping someone will come and change that state of being for the better for me and everybody. But me first.

It’s not an abstract concept for me, because I have no illusions in regards to what my wants, hopes, goals and needs are. My most selfish passionate desire is being made real as we speak. Still it will be a while before people will be able it include it in their efforts in conspicuous consumption. But there will be bootlegs. I promise. 

What you are about to witness is the process of bringing that reality into the popular awareness.

How many people does it take to change a social construct? Well if you just happen to be Black and male, one! I have never been anywhere in which I was the only Black person present in an affluent milieu for more than a few months. In most instances, not more than a few minutes. Which is mutually great, if I’m only visiting, but, if it is my intent to make myself a fixture in that community. I better be more Jackie Robinson than Jack Johnson.  If you are of another culture, class or ilk and you find me attractive, your fathers and your brothers better never hear you express that. Otherwise, you’ll find me no longer present or you no longer welcomed. The only exceptions to this law is when I present myself as the person with the power to dictate the livelihoods of the people of that community. Then, if the community is wise they choose the smartest counterpart to make my most intimate companion or if they’ve given up on you as any kind of beneficial contributor to the present social construct and label you as undesirable. So, you can be a spy or you can be a whore. Either way, if you like Black dick and anyone knows it you’re being branded.

Just the other day, I had a police escort almost my whole way through town. I would like to imagine that the police officers would have been so kind as to offer me a safe ride to my doorstep, but, presenting me with safe passage, cruising past and slowing down while I walked from Detroit through Hamtramck and back into Detroit, is a kindness for which I am very grateful. 

Thank you for your sacrifice. I love you. Please be safe.     Nice mantra huh? 

Random violence in Detroit is a rarity. Because Detroiters are opportunists, carrion animal like people. You have something someone wants, when they find you in a moment of weakness or you did something that offended someone. Resistance is demanding brutality. I’m not making any moral judgment of the perpetrator of these crimes or the victimized parties. I am saying that in Detroit, generally people don’t just go around busting heads and windscreens because they were bored and didn’t have anything better to occupy their time. That shit is for trust fund brats, slumming, attending university or walking out of a post season Tigers game. Now Detroit, is, was and is likely to remain a violent, myopic, self-serving and self-destructive city. Because we’ve all heard and occasionally agree with the people that say and adhere to the doctrine of “I don’t get paid to do that. So, I ain’t doing that.” It is a religious teaching that’s been pasted on through generations. We were taught to adhere to a standard of living that morally and spiritually strips us of our humanity, individuality and purpose inside of our own social construct. A social construct that is based in the worst and most effective form of slavery ever invented, because there is almost no way to combat it from the inside. Almost. The Imagined Nation is the story of how it is being done in this reality as we speak and consume and practice the masturbatory arts of self-expression.  

I pose a question: what do you desire that has not been offered. 

I’m willing to bet all you can offer me in response is a stack of vague platitudes and comparative rhetorical phrases like similes and metaphor. “I want equality!” To what? “I want to be treated with dignity and respect!” Compared to whom? And why do you want someone to give you these abstract things? And how do you achieve this goal without studying the lives of people that have attained your desired goal during the worst of our cultural history? Understand, that to actively pursue practical mastery of any craft in America is considered rebellious and quite possibly treasonous, but only in the confines of our most intimate social constructs.

Who cares I’m going to Bubba’s to play with old race cars.

Now my man William ‘Bubba’ Shadetree Senior, almost Everyone’s favorite person they knew’, was an automotive engineer, with the formal equivalent of a third grade education. He came from somewhere down south, where he fixed and built moonshine runners for a whole county of white folk and black folk alike. Now because he was black, he felt morally obligated to have two different price structures. But that’s beside the point. Because when Susan Mae Guyton became pregnant, and agreed to be his wife. She made it one hundred percent perfectly clear that her child was going to be born in Detroit City, where that child could get a good education and have a better chance of being somebody respected in society. (Fuck up #1) Bubba understood four things about this willful church going, upstanding, woman, the black part of town’s school teacher. 1) That woman loved to cook and did it good. 2) That girl could ball. 3) When it came to books and things, she was a whole lot smarter than him. 4) And they was paying a dollar and fifty cent an hour to build motor cars. Now Bubba Shadetree Junior, was a lot like his granddaddy. Not so good in the books, but that mother fucker could take five hundred dollars in twenty first century American money and he could build you a race ready machine in six days. But Shadetree’s filling station and auto repair was suffering in ways he could not understand. Bubba Jr. was working on his third divorce and fifteenth child, all from women that needed a little help with their cars ‘til pay day, when God was going to bless them all. 

‘Yo Niggah! When you gawn stop walkin’ every damned where and get you a car or a fuckin bus pass or somethin’.’’

 “I answered him when niggers make cars that don’t have motors that put shit in the air that kills people. When the number two cause of death for little Black boys after, “He slipped hit his head” Fifteen times on a cheap wine bottle. Now hand me that Pitman Arm Puller and shut the fuck up, ‘bout me not drivin’. ‘Cause I know more about cars than anybody up in here except maybe you. Maybe.” 

“Yeah, alright, fuckin’ hippie. Yo, Bubbz you need a metric socket for that one, it’s post Seventy Six.”

“Bet. Bubba, dig this, I got an idea for your shop. Three things that won’t cost you any upfront money and will bring in folks from all around. First, offer a full service pump that charges about two dollars extra for a full tank. Put one or two of these knuckleheads in the hood in uniforms and teach them how to check cars out. Fluids, air and sounds. Second, rent that space over there, where the red K car has been sittin’ for years. Yeah rent that space to somebody selling hotdogs or coffee and newspapers or something. Their shit has to be nice enough so that white folk and chicks will spend their money with them. So no ribs and dinner plates.” Aw fuck you Niggah, I don’t want nobody selling shit I ain’t trying to eat. See I’m sayin’ Niggah.” Everybody in the garage breaks out in laughter. ‘Alright bet. Third thing you need to do is…” “I need to tell you to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my shop, you one step at a time takin’ muthafuckah. It’s closin’ time and I’m goin’ to the Bouncy Castle. See I’m sayin’. Nah Dawg. For real what? You need to start building and repairing old school hot rods up in the shop. I don’t know why you do this shit in your granddaddies back yard and not there. That shit don’t make no sense to me. Ain’t a whole lot of white folks walking up into your private junk yard looking to get their Seventy Two Tri-power T/A Hemi Cuda restored.”  “Aw Dawg, why you gotta go there with it. Man fuck you. These little muthafuckahs don’t know nothin’ ‘bout no cars and shit.” All the people in the shop are mumblin’ Fuck dat I know some shit. Niggah I got skills.” “All they know is sounds and rims and the shit they see and hear on TV. Fuck that! I ain’t lettin’ dem hoes take this shit away from me. Fuck that shit Bubbz.” “Okay then, when your next Baby momma is one of them bullet hole havin’ crank smoking tricks from the Bouncy Castle that just happens to be short on the price of you fixin’ their shit, and you’re talkin’ ‘bout your tanks failed inspection, so you gotta dig them up and replace them or you gotta close shop, cause you don’t do enough daily business for the oil company to pay for your tanks. Don’t come at me with that, “Why you haffta burn bread in my spot,” BS.”  “Yo! I know what you talkin’ Bubbz. Let’s make it happen. Nah Niggah! Put dat wrench in the box Yo! We out!” 

That evening, Periwinkle took his time walking home from his job as a barista in the Bibliotech Café, greeting every flower and bird that passed. Stopped at the gas station to pick a pack of squares and some hand to mouth food. He was too tired to cook, probably, too tired to eat. He hoped that he was tired enough to sleep. 

Just Happy to be here  

8. What foods do you dislike? Over cooked canned veggies 

9. Favorite Place to Eat: Outside

10. Favorite dressing? Sunrise. 

11. Your favorite thing to wear? Socks

12. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Bunny Ranch 

13. Where would you want to retire? Family farm

14. Favorite time of day? Twilight 

Dominion of Vision: Change make you want to hustle.

Periwinkle had completely forgotten the reason he had not slept in his bed was lying in his bed. He dragged himself to the knockoff cowhide covered Barcelona bench, closed his eyes, but could not rest. He finally fell asleep while writing commentary on the Urban Crop Circle Project. He woke up to the ring of his phone. 7:20AM. Call from: Apple Seed and the sight of a woman in his bath tub, reflected in a mirror. G’mornin’ Mr. Bubbles, I hear you’ve got something for me.” Coffee Please! Can a brother get a cup of coffee in here? “Ah, Yeah. Sherm. I need you to…” “Let me put you on hold a second.”

“So Periwinkle, you gonna let me see the RFP.”

“No Elmira, not yet Beautiful. It’s just that’s not all I want, that’s just what I’m ready to tell you about it without some kind of written and signed agreement. It’s too sweet to keep quiet about. When you get back. I’ll share everything. Promise. I’m sure you can relate. I’m not trying to protect an idea from being stolen and made into something great. I’m worried about some lazy, stupid, greedy, myopic bitch borrowing a part of the idea and doing some dumb shit to fuck it all up for years. And it looks too easy not to try right now. So, you’ll say…” “Hey Mr. Bubbles I’m back. Yeah Dude! Four series.” “Yes I’ve got drafts for four series pilots. But that’s not what I’m asking you for help with. And I’m kind of distracted right now, I’m watching your mom get dressed.” Elmira throws a shoe at Periwinkle’s head and gets damned close. He swats it to the floor before it can do any damage. “Jake Look I want to help me get the funding to skin a few buildings with vinyl banners. I call it “The Urban Crop Circle Project”. It’s an interactive story with thousands of writers. Kind of like The Sims, just with real people. I just design the realm and some sample elements.” ‘So, what do you think I can do?” “Well everything I install in this realm will need a ‘real world’ write up: an architect, engineers, material and labor cost estimates, permits, blah, blah. The first things people want to know in a venture like this is, how much does it cost or how much does it pay. I want you to find all that out for me. Then I want you to build a database of brand sponsors, makers of the products and services that it will take to complete the project. Let me send you a partial list of properties and the rules. Sherman, No majors.” “Okay…then. Mr. Bubbles, to be a figment of someone’s over active imagine nation, you certainly intend to have a real impact on the city don’t you? I’ll go over your prospectus and give you a jingle around this time tomorrow.” “Don’t call before Noon! Yourmomzgottacuteass. Oh and Sherman, I have spotters installed in a few places, they’re looking for you to come in prepared. Do your homework.” – Call Ended 8:12 AM EST. “Elmira, Honey. I appreciate your hustle, drive and ambition, your sexy red hair, freckles and watching your cute little MILF ass get dressed in the morning. I really do,” Watching her in the mirror, “but if you have one more vampire capitalist barrister call me before I’ve had coffee and/or a blow job, you will no longer be permitted to sleep over. Even if he is your son.” Periwinkle tries to paint the lines to constellations by connecting the freckles in the mirror. The slender, fit fifty something woman, roughly rubbing her red hair dry stops in bathroom door to talk.  “Oh poor Periwinkle Bubbles, the sight of two hot naked women rolling around your house all weekend got you horny.” No. The sight of two sexy women that have been together so long makes me horny for someone like that. I’m tired of being the magic Negro fuck of the week.” “Sweetie, If you pull off half the shit you’ve put down on that rats nest of paper and ideas surrounding you, I’ll quit eating pussy and I’ll suck your cock three times a day five days a week for the next year. Quit flying and make you breakfast every morning.” Elmira’s girlfriend Vivian, walks in from the kitchen wrapped in a black and white sarong that clings to her wide hips and tucks neatly under her round butt cheeks as she walks past, carrying three cups of coffee. Her narrow eyes turn round on her moon face as she says, “Oh my, I am not a flight attendant.” Sloshing hot coffee on her hands and into her walking path. Setting the cups down next to Periwinkle who picks one up by the brim and sets to his other side. “Oh dear! Mira. First you throw things at the man, then you threaten to leave me for him. I don’t know about you,” Walking to kiss her life partner and sit a cup on a low sitting table next to the chair she dressing in, “But if you get us turned away from Peri’s bath, I’ll never speak to you again. We’re five minutes from City Airport. Great tunes and the food. There’s all the Pho and Kim Chi a girl could want. Plus I like Dick, I just hate men. Except Mister Bubbles. I could just eat you whole.” Dropping the sarong on the bamboo slat floor and slipping into the hot tubs jets. “I’d love to mix his nut in my morning coffee. Mommy may I?” Picking up his cup of coffee from the desk, “Hi Viv,” Waving over his shoulder, “Tell El, I said she doesn’t have to quit doin’ you. And I’m not allowing you to do me, so her permission is useless. Sex is easier to get and cheaper than Coney Dogs at 3 AM on any given Saturday. You mean too much to me to fuck up this good thing. It’s pretty much all Detroit Gurls have to offer. They don’t know their power yet. But tell your girlfriend I said she’s got a cute little booty, she kept flashing that thing at me in the mirror. And I didn’t have any cash to throw at her. That ain’t right. Viv, thanks for the coffee. It’s great. So, where are we flying off to now?” Sitting in a tall chair, Vivian slips on a pair of stockings. “Well Elmira and I are off to Seoul to babysit some suburban big wigs for a week in “Little D” with the guys from The Anchor Store. They’re trying to open one there. Elmira say “Oh and Winkie, you should see that big sexy bird. Gulfstream G550, Navy blue with cornflower accents and more bird’s eye maple that the Taiga. Damn it! I need to change my panties. Just thinking about it got me wet.” Periwinkle looks across the room to Elmira. “You can leave them on my desk. It can’t be hotter than the all-woman flight crew.” Elmira walks in to his view, straightening out the tie on her pilot’s uniform, captain’s bars on the lapels, kisses Periwinkle on the cheek and says “Oh, we have a new attendant on the crew, name of Veronica, she’s from Westland or something like that. Anyway when we get back. I’d like to introduce you two. I think you could be good for her. Je ne sais pas ou le temp s’est enfui. Il me plai d’etre avec tu.”. Vivian turns from checking her uniform and says “Where do I know that line from? We’ll be back in eight days, would you like us to bring you anything special?” Peri looks over his shoulder and says. “Funny How Time Flies. Yeah. Viv, would you play for me? Please it helps me sleep, bring back some good stories about the fun stuff you guys do.  And maybe some Civet Coffee. My friend Lara told me it’s great.” “Half an hour ‘til the car gets here. El, you mind? Go ahead. Vivian helps him up from his chair and guides him to his bed. Finds the cello and stool on the side leaning against the wall, sits, hikes up her skirt, picks up the bow and starts to play. Periwinkle curls up into a tight little ball and fades to sleep. Vivian leans down to kiss his forehead. Turns to Elmira and says. I gotta change my panties. Forgive me, I’ll never leave you, or touch him without your blessing. I know how much you love him, but I do want to fuck him.” “I know, Baby, but it would break his heart and maybe yours too.” “Elmira reaches down and strokes his bald head and says, “You poor little sweet lonely man. You Sir have my deepest respect and my pity.”

15. Where were you born? The Home Depot, Seven Mile and Meyers 

16. What is your favorite sport to watch? Wolf Tickets

17. Who do you think will not tag you back? Everyone

18. Person you expect to tag you back first? No one

19. Who are you most curious about their response? Not saying

20. Bird watcher? Butterflies and women’s shoes

21. Are you a morning person or a night person? Dusk ’til dawn

22. Do you have any pets? Your wife, daughter, mom or your sister count?