I love to write, and several of my friends do too. We've been doing it, putting pen to paper for as long as we can remember, and from what several of us been told we do have a talent for the written word. Whether that is true or not, in my case, as much as I'd like to say that I'm cocky enough to say so, honestly I'm not. Regardless, I had an idea of possibly starting an online literary magazine. I kinda thought that this blog would be a test run. So with out further due I'll begin with the first issue of "Dirty Filthy Snuff" with one of friend's my short stories, and see if I can build up from that.
Lou Ford
My Big Brother is Black
09/22/09
By Andrew Bruce
Word count: 1533
"What do we want?!" came a war cry filled with both pride and distain. It demanded a response; one of equal intensity and respect. It's sound demanded, no, commanded the same devotion. The same respect in the theology it professed, and it was obliged on that early fall day with it's crisp air, cloudless sky, and multicolored leaves which covered the trees. As some of those autumn shades fell on the green grass of that Pennsylvania farm outside of the small town of Allentown yes, the same one Billy Joel sang about).
"What do we want?!"
The crowd of drunken, fever pitched, and memorized youth screamed back as they held up their beer cans, "White Power!"
The ones not grasping onto the cheap beer that was being gulped down like water at a high school track meet, flung out their arms upward in a diagonally direction. The fingers out stretched, palms facing down, we paid homage to an idol. We paid homage to a god, and an emotion that was so overwhelming that it consumed our existence as children. It gnawed at our innocence; gnashing and thrashing at us like hyenas on a fresh kill until nothing but a skeleton of our personality was left. That nakedness was to be refurnished with a new, nefarious, close minded, and all around morbid belief in the world. The utter waste, and obsession that would strip us; me of a life. That it would destroy everything in it's path.
"How we going to get it?!" the older, bald skinhead on the bullhorn asked.
Looking around, I glared at all my "Brothers in Arms", at my "Sisters of Eve" in their joy at proclaiming their pride and fertility to their race.
I snared back the answer to that last question. "By killing some niggers!"
There that word was; that derogatory insult which had been the opening "statement" if you will as to what made black people such horrible, nasty creatures who deserved not enslavement, but a holocaust like death. A grand triumph of epic propositions.
"Killin' niggers!" screamed the drunken skinhead next to me, as he threw off his t-shirt exposing the thick black Iron Cross that was tattooed on his stomach. There was a swastika underneath the cross.
We all celebrated; moving, ramming, punching, and beating on each other in a brutal frenzy of both passion and rage. As the hard chaotic guitar riffs screeched out from the top of a make shift wooden stage, that had been built in front of a rough wooden fence. Around us watching the display of animalistic loyalty were the older, quieter, scholarly, and all around lethal leaders. They were the hosts to that gathering, the ones who were pulling the strings. They were the ones who delivered our jog to the public. We did. The idea was likened to the brown shirts of the early S.A. bringing our disenchantment and rage on hose who we were taught to blame. We had baseball bats in our hands, with the black rubber grips, rubbing tightly against our palms. We had ski masks hiding our faces in warmth of the wool. It was contradictory to the cold hearted viciousness we unleashed on Strangers, saints and sinners, that ended up targeted in our cross hairs. Niggers, spics, chinks, wap, kike, fagot, and Slav, "no difference, not white, not right".
Fast forward, a few years later. After numerous rallies, unnecessary violence, and a hatred I didn't even know why I had, and my progressively growing substance abuse problem, It was no surprise that where I need up. Sooner or later I saw the walls of an inadequate, rehabilitative, juvenile system. With its repeat offenders, and the must and scum stained white cinder block walls. Staff who would resemble a drill sergeant. The only thing I was destined to go, was up, or as we say upstate. That is where it took me.
I had become outwardly a full fledged supremist, with doubt that lurked beneath the surface. I had many fears of going upstate, where I was a non-white inmate and how tough of a time I would have. It turned out to be opposite of what I was used to. I was now the minority in what could be deemed a reverse racist society. The white inmates weren't as interested in comradely as they were in strength, with what little numbers we had. What these white inmates lacked was organization as gangs like the Aryan brotherhood, they more than made up for paranoia, vulgarity and propaganda. If you didn't subscribe to their brand of egomania, then you were considered worthless. they would either shun you or eat you alive. Either way it wasn't very nice. The fact was that the ones who seemed to more willingly accept your company were the non-whites. But, that was just Pennsylvania.
I had been given a job in the kitchen. A good, but dangerous occupation just for the simple truth that real knives were available. I had made a good nitch for myself in this maximum security prison. I got by keeping to myself, and functioning below the radar. However, there was a very real concern. I had swastikas tattooed all over, and exposing them could make me a target. But, luckily the ink on my body went unnoticed, so I thought. And if anyone seemed to let me know that it was Ed.
"Did ya just call me a nigger?!" Kim, an inmate working beside in the kitchen, accused.
I snapped back at the skinny, black inmate who seemed hell bent on "punking me" in front of our fellow peers.
"Fuck you!" I said, blowing off the man's antagonism.
Kim concluded, "After lunch me and you in the closet."
Panic ensued in my brain. Despite Kim's choice of discretion, we still existed in a walled in world where depending on what season it was determined how many were stabbed in a week. It had become a policy for guards not to intervene. They were out numbered. Their job was just clean up. So while it was true that if Kim really wanted blood shed he would have just done it; regardless, a if he did shiv me(stab me) the closet would just make it easier to hide my body. In blunter words "I was fucked".
"Yo Drew-you cool?" the stocky, 40 something black inmate Ed asked.
"Yeah."
I'm sure my face said other wise, and I'm sure that Ed could see it. The fact that he could said something about us. I had meet him when I was getting proccessed(evaluated for the prison that you will be sent to), and he had seemed to take a liking to me. However, like everyone loves to giggle about, it doesn't look to good for a big black inmate to take a liking to a thin white boy like me. But, before I could fully digest that thought I was pulled into the closet.
'Come on, lets go!" my enemy demanded. "Take the first swing."
I answered, my arms crossed in my white kitchen uniform, You got the problem-make the move."
Starring in some what disbelief, Kim laughed. "Oh shit" I thought. But then the door opened. Ed politely pulled my challenger aside, and within a few minutes it was squashed. As I went back to my housing block, Ed told me that if Kim gave me anymore problems to let him know. I crapped myself. The next several days I waited in anxious fear for the moment that I would have to fight for my life. That I was going to have fight for self preservation(not to be raped). But it never came. Instead he continued to act as a big brother in that walled in nether world of confined souls. and in the end that convicted drug dealer befriended a racist skinhead. I had a nigger friend, holy shit!
Years have past since the last I have engaged in the faith of hate, disgusted rage, and isolation. I have lived a life that could possibly be described as one of reconciliation. Not so much as actively protesting the prejuctice force on others, but more of an effort to accept those are me for what and who they are. The concept sounds corny, but it's the only I've found that has enabled me to have piece of mind. That, and the last thing that Ed said to me before I was released on parole. Giving me a hug, Ed smiled and extended his hand, saying, "Take care of yourself brother. Don't forget about me." I think often about that old man who had taken me under his wing because he was able to see past the persona of the distain, thereby likening me to being family. that requiem comes to me often, and honestly it helps me sleep at night. So, the moral of the story is that racism(hate) is a decimating, eroding force that would strip you of your very soul if you stayed in long enough. I did not want that emptiness connected that unending fear and rage. I had enough. Thank you Ed.
As part of this experiment, this literary magazine, I have decided to start a piece called "What Really Chaffs Nuts". It's an idea of where I can fuckin' bitch about shit that piss me off, and things that are a general annoyances. It's a way to put humor into the tragedies, so we can laugh instead of losing our minds.
Do you know what really chaffs my nuts?:
Have you ever met someone that was so prim and proper that you just wanted to knawl there their breast plate and feast on their. You know the kind of person I'm talking, they're the ones that have been so sheltered that your surprised that their retinas haven't been fried but damn daylight.
"I'm offended by your inappropriate vocabulary. A cock is a rooster. Isn't pussy short for a cat?"
No you fucking prudes. I should bent them over and prison but fuck rape them. Then skull fuck them so hard that when I cum they hear a sonic boom before their head explodes. Okay maybe I'm being harsh, but still the world isn't that innocent, and your not gonna be struck down by god for saying shit.
PISS OFF PRUDE!
