Kalifornia

Back in the late 70s, my dad took us to California with him on a typical cable t.v. business trip, probably so he could go to a convention or something dull like that. We stayed at a large, bland hotel in L.A., with absolutely nothing original or interesting about it at all, then to the San Diego Zoo (like any other white tourist), a stop at the Chinese Theater to see the handprints of dead "stars" from their era we didn't know (I got a green plastic Buddha bank there, because it was either that as a souvenir or the squashed penny thing) and then my dad wanted to see some western-flavored crap, like the stuffed Triggers he liked as a kid, because he always wanted to be a cowboy. 

We got free t-shirts (mine reads "mighty Mouse" in this photo) and might have had an achingly generic time, if we hadn't insisted on tacking on a visit to one very special editor of cool magazines for kids (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2011/10/monsters-inc.html), because we wrote ahead of time and had our parents arrange it for us. We were down like that: you gotta be savvy New York kids to have a good time, you know? And we were hungry, thirsty lil' devils at that. You can see I'm wearing my brother's hand-me-down jeans (I did not grow up with money) with a hastily-bought and standout gay-colored visor, because I couldn't fucking stand the unrelenting sun out there. I also made my mom buy me some crappy (and also very gay) kiddie shades at the zoo, because I was absolutely miserable: it was hot, crowded, boring, and always fucking sunny. Every day was exactly like the day before it: dry as a bone and dusty. We hated Southern California with a passion that has not dulled with time or age.

Which brings me back to the gripping cranky tone of this piece, because every fucking year we have to see on t.v. how your summer is "THE HOTTEST EVER!", with records temps (!!!), and raging wildfires!! But, guess what asshole? We fucking know you have fires every year because (and this is key) WE KNOW THAT YOU CHOOSE TO LIVE IN A DESERT. That's right, some asshole New Yorker has finally told you the truth, because it's been your truth since well, the last Ice Age: you live in a fucking desert. I promise not to remind you that water is wet, and that it snows here in wintertime, if you decide to finally shut the fuck up about your idiotic choices, and move the fuck on from the glaringly obvious fact that you have stupidly chosen to NOT live near freshwater that's easily replenishable, and/or build your stupid fucking McMansion on stilts smartly built on a precarious cliff-side that either burns in the summer or floods in the spring....each and every fucking year.

So, that would be a resounding "NO!" to the age-old question of "Do we feel bad?" as Northerners forced to watch dry grass burn on some fucking semi-arid hillside every year, at the exact same time. You have the option to move, like any sane human does, by following available and easily sustainable water sources, like humanity has done for millennia. We also don't feel bad that corrupt assholes with a douchey Euro sense of self-entitlement want to drain Lake Mead like it's their g-ddamn bathtub, because dicks like you in Vegas want hookers, blow, and air conditioning on near-constant demand in a nonstop underground twilight that's your fucking compulsive gambling dysfunction du jour. Get with the program, and fuck you. 

Targhetto

He was just casually shopping at Target without any pants on, like any teen!

Every summer the city pops off into violent squalls, punctuated by house-party gangland murders. It's so regular to us town-and-country New Yorkers, we plan for it and even text about it to each other, like how we know that the drunks living next door to us will creep out of their rank dank holes once the sun comes out in May, to get violently drunk and cause problems now that winter's over, causing them to carve out their boringly repetitive and totally dysfunctional turf wars on property that isn't theirs, just like the descriptive term "porch monkey" was actually meant for: nonexclusive of skin tone, and they are indeed a stereotypically lazy lot at that (and also white).

Clichés are very good and especially functional for all societies, while also ripe for game-playing idiots. In  Brooklyn, it means you can flip a perp into a martyr by trotting out some cleaned up high school grad photos over yo kid's most recent mug shot when the shit hits the fan and he's screwed up with the law, yet again: neck tats not included, which is exactly what happened in Flatbush last week.

For years I've known about the teen phenomenon called "wilding", which is cutesy slang for this century's "jumping in": a vicious, seemingly random beat-down that's very much planned. When I lived in the Slope, I'd walk down 5th Avenue to Atlantic Avenue because it has an awesome Target store, and I could flip through the designer racks without fear of molested goods, like the pawed over markdowns in the Spring Valley shops here, that are picked over a billion times by Hasidim women with a lot of children, covered in makeup, sweat marks, deodorant stains, and other stuff you don't want to know about.

And so, I shopped in relative comfort for the "phresh" duds I needed to play my "Slick, Big City, Cover Designer" role to perfection by looking the part. It was (and still is) part of my overall presentation, and in any really good business, presentation counts. After one such journey through the clothing stacks, I was back on the floor putting back some duds that didn't work for me. It's a habit I picked up during my tenure as a teenie retailer in the old Nanuet Mall, an 80s heaven of a shopping mall when doing such a thing counted as a recreational sport.

I saw the fitting room racks clogged with clothes left by lazier shoppers than I, so I figured I give the floor ladies a break and do my own put backs onto the racks. Within a minute of leaving the changing rooms for the floor, loosening up the rack, and talking to a floor clerk who asked if I needed help, a...something broke out. I write that because it happened so fast, I was totally scared and unprepared for it, which turns out to be the point: pure shock value.

"What was that?! What happened?" I quickly turned to the store clerk. She sighed and said to me: "Yeah, this happens every afternoon around this time. Every day, and it's always between 3 and 3:30 in the afternoon, when the high school gets out. They're called 'wildings'. The kids text each other at school all day long, so they can arrange to meet here and have fights with each other."

Jesus! That's so scary!! I said to her, while my heart still raced. It was so fucking violent, and I'm a fighter. I thought someone had been stabbed. She told me that was the point, and that as far as "wildings" go, the one we just witnessed was pretty mild, in terms of violence, because no one had been stabbed. "So they do that, too?!", I asked. It was surprising to me, because the Slope and the surrounding neighborhoods are really good, well-established, old neighborhoods, independent of racial background. I mean, the hoods have been the hoods for a really long time, and not within the past 100 years. Where exactly do they come from? Prospect Heights? Fort Greene? Boohoo!

Many an African-American kid from around the way has a dentist for a dad, and a mom who volunteer teaches modern dance in the afternoons at the local BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). The real "Fight da powa!" had passed for them a long time ago. But, I guess like a Bay Ridge kid's right of passage climbing the Verrazano on a dare, they needed to simulate danger and feats of strength as trials to their fragile identities, so they could brag to each about it later.

"Yeah", she sighed again, as she slowly reached for her walkie-talkie, when I asked if security knew. "Oh, yeah. They know," she clicked the call button, "so does the local precinct, because we call them almost every afternoon." She would know, because as I hurriedly shelved my rejected clothes and walked towards the elevators, she looked like she could be one of their own grandmothers: a decent, hard-working lady starting the second shift of her second day job.

Don't believe the hype, man. It ain't what it seems "in da 'hood" these days. Flatbush kids, I mean you, too. You can't get away with murder for kicks by blaming "the white man" anymore. We all have cameras in our cell phones, regardless of it's price point, and this savvy-with-retail working class mom knows the how much gear (yo shit) costs, or at least a roundabout guesstimate, anyway. Get real wit it, kid.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20150727/flatbush/video-police-punch-suspect-during-arrest-brooklyn-target

http://abc7ny.com/news/teen-arrested-in-mcdonalds-brawl-indicted-wednesday/554045/

Look at this purely ghetto-ass shit: the "moms" (or "grandmoms", who was probably made that at 40 fuckin' years old, or some twisted shit like that) jumps into the action with her nasty-ass attitude, while the baggy pants "security guard" loping around in the foreground (in reality, working his minimum wage after-school job while dreaming of his "big time" music career in the city as a "hiphop artist", most likely), looks on ineffectively, just like his punk ass has been doin' all along, totally hip to "da game". Tell me they don't fuckin' know about the trend that I've known about for at least 12+ years! That's some fake ass shit, right there. Home girl had the audacity to play victim with her boy's clean-cut yearbook pic on the evening news programs, which was a heck of a lot nicer than his fucked up (and much more recent) neck tattoo mug shots. But that's life in "da hood": a place where every day is some kind of bullshit con job. We on to you, hardcore, girl. Get it right! Jeeesus...what in the bitch is that....???! <shakes head in disbelief> "Oh, you triflin', petty-ass fool. Always lookin' for handouts. Fuck y'all man!" (That's what I said to the t.v. when I saw it play out on the local programs here in New York) "That's it! I've had it! Fuck y'all! I'm writing 'Targhetto' next week , bitches!!" <scowls mostly to self).

Indian Giver

Mi'kmaq warrior and dancer, Danny Boy Stephens, takes a moment to reflect on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada.

For years I lived in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the world; 
a very affluent section of Brooklyn called "Park Slope", famous for its' artsy writing crowd, media types, ubiquitous designers, and lesbians, which suited me just fine. Except for the occasional coffee-house misunderstanding (volunteer firefighter "dude" with a preference for Great Danes and Christmas lights, I know you knew I was straight, girl, but thanks for being a weirdo to me when I was sitting alone), I was pretty much left to my own devices, which also suited me fine. 

I didn't have a lot of time for bullshit anymore. I was a full-time Art Director in publishing, and after I quit smoking, a part-time martial artist in training, which meant I had weekday evenings after 9pm and Saturday mornings to sleep in, which was exactly what I did, and I did it every week for years. I'd also tack on church and Sunday school classes when I worked from home, but it was pretty much the same deal, because no one around me was suitable for my company.

Sometimes I dated men I knew I could trust from my past, from places like old jobs or school, but that eventually went away, too, because they weren't suitable for me either. Mostly, I worked and walked and kept healthy, which kept me going. When the boom was lowered on me financially, I did double-time creatively by cutting out everything but food as an expense, but just like my training provided, I set up a new routine in which I could flourish and work, albeit more sporadically and with much less frills for decorating. 

It's the same productivity I have in place today: free Internet access at the library, while trying to keep the freaks off of me. But in Brooklyn, it was harder. People are savvier, and they know how to work you over. 
I met a man there that I knew was troubled, but because I grew up with it, I managed to stay safe by my own wits. He knew that, too, along with many other facts that were mixed in with his psychosis.

What my Nuyorican friend from Brownsville did not know, and had never known, was an Acadian Métis warrior. He thought his "street smarts" about welfare scams and rent cheats were powerful weapons that he had in his arsenal, along with an almost total lack of a moral compass, really bad acting skills, and one very serious mental illness. Over time, I put him through all the paces, but to no avail, which certainly didn't surprise me one bit.

If my friend said he needed a clock, I gave him the old one I'd had for more than 15 years hanging in my kitchen, because I had another one in my living room. If he said he was "learning" design at a broke-ass school on Staten Island, I gave him my old small spare portfolio to use, with deadlines in place for him to keep to, and he did absolutely nothing with the gifts I gave him, just like any other asshole white boy I've ever tried to trade with.

When I asked him to show me his portfolio pieces one day, as I was checking out his tiny room in a typical Brooklyn tenement in the Spanish-flavored part of the Slope that turns into Sunset Park, he shamefacedly opened it to reveal that he turned into a place to keep his checkbook and receipts for storage. Oh. OK. You've done nothing. Give it back to me, asshat. NO! I mean hand it over to me now.

He sputtered in shock. But, but...he's a welfare-case. Pretty white ladies usually give him stuff for being sick and broke! Yeah, bitch, meet the real deal ethnic minority. He tried to quibble with me about my genetic past, saying I just wanted to paint myself "exotic", like the mass murder in our Nova Scotian past was something I chose to brandish about town, like he did with his check from the government for school. You know, because he needed a "hand up", not a hand out.

Same thing with my room clock: you don't help me move my stuff after I run out of money "homeboy", you give me back my clock (which I eventually ditched at a Park Slope storage place when I ran out of money for that, too). By this point, I had him trained: he just sighed, took down the clock from the painted-over graffiti ghetto wall, and handed it back to me.

You see, esse, in my world, if you don't have something of equal value to trade, we don't trade with you at all, so give it back. All of it. It's okay, though. I've got a special lil' internal clock running, just to keep track of all the borrowed time you're on. Take your time with it.

 

from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver