“Columbia is auditing us,” she said. “They know you got arrested at our meeting, and they think you gave the BSU the money from the—”
Nique, in the middle of a new conversation but standing back-to-back with Macon and monitoring this one, turned his head and interjected. “Alleged money.”
“Alleged money,” repeated Amy. “From the alleged robberies. So now they’re looking into our financial records, which means they’re going to find out that we’re insolvent because nobody came to Karen’s stupid Come As Your Favorite Broadway Character dance last spring. We need money, Macon. And as I was telling your roommate”—she ushered him back into grace with a smile, and Andre bounded to her side and backed her with a steady head nod, feeling like a Pip—“it would really help us out if you’d be our Black History Month speaker. You’re a major draw.”
Macon’s grin felt huge even to him. “I’d love to,” he said.
“Wonderful.” She nodded to her umbrella bearers, and lifted a thumb-and-pinkie telephone to her ear. “I’ll give you a bell.”
The Tourettic, high-end jerking of synthesized horn stabs, whistles, and sirens cut short further political pleasantries, and three-hundred-plus heads whirled to see a neon-green-streaked van pull to the curb, quivering with earthquake bass.
“They’re here,” Nique enthused, turning to throw an arm around The Franchise. Macon scowled at him, refusing to shape the obvious question into words. “I been trying to tell you, dude. Rebel Yells is doing a segment on you. International exposure.” He smiled with self-satisfaction and presented a fist for Macon to boom. “Who’s your boy, Moves?”
“Are you kidding me? The MTV show that interviews pretty-boy actors about nuclear proliferation and then acts like mufuckers are radicals? That tails junkie rockers and pretends their tantrums are political?”
“They do some real shit, too. Your boy KRS been on there.”
“It was him, Reese Witherspoon, and Iman talking about organic farming, Nique.”
“Well, they’re here for the Macon Detornay Show today, so get ready to freak some shit. I’ll introduce you.”
The van door slid open and the music blared out in concentric circles, pushing back the crowd. A fortyish technician wearing a Pantera T-shirt poked his shaggy head out and took quick stock of the audience, then disappeared inside. The techno cut off, and the boho boom-bip of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album, awash in mellow horn loops, silky live bass lines, and abstract poetics, replaced it at a lower decibel. A good choice, Macon had to admit. It was a perennial progressive favorite, an album white college kids bumped in their dorm rooms, feeling hip, included, unthreatened, and hard-rocks acknowledged as a classic, a beat fiend’s uncut fix. Musical crossover without compromise, something neophytes and old-schoolers alike could dig. An album that, when it dropped in ’91, made even novice listeners self-righteous and indignant about the other directions the music was taking. My First Album and This Is What Hip Hop Should Be wrapped into one.
Eight young women, outfitted for spring break in Miami, bounced from a second vehicle. They surrounded the music van and squealed with wholesome sexy delight, shaking ass and tits to the music, whipping manes of hair back and forth over their shoulders and smiling invitations to the hoodied-down default-position-surly I don’t wanna see no dancin’ / I’m sick of that shit / Listen to the hit nine-decca stalwart b-folks, who looked at them and then each other and then patted their breast pockets on this-shit’s-too-bugged bluntquests.
So that’s where girls like that come from, thought Andre. Crates of beverages appeared along the dancing girl circle’s perimeter, and the crowd edged forward suspiciously to squint at the proffered refreshments. Andre craned his neck to read the flowing script air-brushed on the van’s side: When a Rebel Gets Thirsty, a Rebel Yells Fruitopia.
“A toast,” Nique said, returning from the front with three bottles of Revolutionary Raspberry Iced Tea and distributing them to his cohorts. “To The Franchise. The baddest whiteboy going. Personally, I still think you’re full of shit, but hell, go ’head and keep proving me wrong. Let’s take it to the stage.” He bent the bottle skyward and gulped the sugary contents until his Adam’s apple piston-pumped.
“I’ll drink to that,” said Andre quickly, hoping his roommate would let it go and knowing there was no way.
“Full of shit how?” Macon inquired.
“In all the usual fake-martyr, last-ferry-to-the-mainland ways. Don’t take it as a dis, though, dog. It’s more of a disclaimer.”
Macon pursed his lips so hard they whitened. “Fair enough.” For all his rhetoric, he tired easily of black people’s skepticism; by now, he expected to be off the hook. “Maybe I am. But here’s to showing and proving.” Andre exhaled relief.
Macon took a nip of iced tea and felt it dribble down his throat, dissolving patience. “All right,” he said, “let’s do this thing.”
“They’ve got some kind of soundstage by the vans, it looks like,” Andre observed, standing on tiptoe. A wolf pack of dudes had formed around the dancers, hands pocketed and backpack zipper-strings swaying.
“Fuck a soundstage,” said Macon. “This is my show, not theirs. People can turn around, shut up, and listen.”
Nique shrugged. “Keep it rugged, I guess.” He took a deep breath and cupped his hands into a makeshift bullhorn. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he bellowed, “children of all ages.” A few dudes half-turned to look at him, without unplanting their feet. “Turn off the fucking music!” Nique yelled, and moments later it faded out. The dancers retreated to their van, donned sweatshirts, and left the doors open to listen. The crowd reshuffled to face Nique, who dropped his hands and paced a little figure eight as he spoke, marking off some territory. Macon, sensing that he’d have to make an entrance of some kind, receded back into the fringes and stood with Andre, the umbrella low enough to shield his face. The rain had eased into a drizzle.
“I’m about to bring on Macon Detornay,” Nique hollered, drawing claps, whoo-hoos, and whistles from the crowd. He swung his arms, long-striding, bright-voiced. “And I know y’all want to see my man. Right?” The backpacked masses validated the assumption with more noise. A lifetime of viewership had versed them in the tropes of hype-man theatricality; like every audience everywhere, they knew what was expected of them.
“We got some ground rules for y’all first, though,” continued Nique, scanning the crowd on tiptoe when he hit the far curves of his eight. “Cuz this a poetry reading, yunno? It ain’t a press conference, a rally, or none of that shit. There’ll be a time for all those things, too, but we out here tonight to check out my man’s artistic side, and we out here on the street because this is all about the people, you know what I’m sayin’, coming together and grabbing ourselves some public space instead of paying to be up in some wack-ass club.” He paused, and the crowd took its cue and clapped.
“We glad to have the media here, but if y’all disrupt the proceedings, you’ll be asked to leave. It’s been a crazy week for Macon, so after he reads he’s gonna break out. You won’t have a chance to talk to him. We don’t mean to be rude, but shit is just a little hectic right now, as I’m sure you can imagine. We appreciate everybody coming out tonight, braving the elements and whatnot, and I hope y’all will stick around afterward and maybe some other poets or rappers or whatever from the audience can do a little something, too. Turn this into an open-mic type thing. Y’all feel me?”
The audience nodded, offered up low-toned a’ights. A vibrational low point, to be sure, thought Andre, but Nique knew rehyping them was as easy as “So y’all wanna hear Macon?”
“Yeah!”
“One more time: Are y’all ready for Macon Detornay?”
“Yeah!”
Macon stepped forward to center stage, into the warm spotlights of the TV trucks, and peeped the mass of clapping human beings gathered in the wetness to hear him. He stared into the crowd as if it were a jungle, and the moment accelerated straight toward him,
rushed at Macon like a tiger leaping from the dense lush greenery and pounced. It knocked him over: the dick-hardening realization that all this was real. People were listening. There were other kids like him out there—right here—skating along the edges of whiteness as disgusted as he was, looking for a leader, a mouthpiece, someone to tell them what to do and validate their angst before it turned sour or misfired or faded. There was enough energy compressed into the sidewalk of this city block alone to set shit thoroughly aflame.
For the first time, Macon thought about the legions of white people out there who, if they weren’t as committed as he was, were at least highly suggestible. Perhaps even open-minded enough to learn to be self-critical—and it would be cake to make people feel good about being self-critical, venturing far enough outside themselves to analyze and bat around the forces that made them think the way they did. Until they saw where it was going, anyway.
White liberals did it all the time for kicks: It was an out-of-body experience, an alibi. They reentered themselves warm with the pleasure of self-castigation and went back to whatever they were doing, probably ripping the skin off somebody’s baby daughter. But what if he pulled these kids in and then pulled the plug, caught them in a whirlpool? All that half-conscious, timid whitekid energy beaming down, all those scattershot rays in search of focus and Macon Everett Detornay, magnifying glass. Or Macon Everett Detornay, mirror, flashing that energy back toward the heavens, melting its source like plastic soldiers and remolding them somehow. Wiggers of the world, unite.
This was getting too goddamn abstract. Macon Everett Detornay, standing on a rainy Harlem block lost in thought with a court date looming and the unharnessed energy of all those white kids shining on nothing but him. He took a mental note: Don’t fuck up and become the toy soldier yourself.
“This joint is called ‘It’s Your World Tour,’ ” he said. “Because it’s kind of all over the place. I wrote it awhile back, when I was still living in Boston. It’s about, I dunno, a lot of important shit . . . why we’re all so fucked up, I guess. I don’t really know what else to say about it. Last time I read, like half the audience walked out on me, so I hope you guys are a little more receptive.” He got the laugh and began, hoping the crowd wouldn’t notice how much the pages were shaking in his hand.
peep the dj as counter-revolutionary
starting one by stopping one
backspinning beginnings
cutting space time continuums
cut & paste drum & bass peep the dj dropping one
falling to his knees
in the garden of delights
transplanting funk perennials
to bigger flowerpots
pre moistened
with the mississippi goddamn water wrung
from lunchcounter revolutionaries’
soaking clothes
pop’s vinyl crackles thru the den
phil ochs folksingin i ain’t marchin any more
that’s word
just sit right here and do my thing
destruction has two opposites preservation & creation
plus the ambiguity & dislocation
of the postmodern moment & my left shoulder
prevent me from holding signs aloft
voice too hoarse from rhyming into broken mics to sing along
we shall over sle-e-eep
make aura drive me to one of those
hundred deep encounter group weekend retreats
& wait outside engine running
white kids united against racism or
liberal activists for peace love unity & havin fun some shit
i come in kung fu paper doors down
with an urn of malcolm x’s ashes balanced on my head
& start schoolin the masses like a
sub with a one week
curriculum jump on his classes
y’all pretentious no experience
nonsense talkin guilty conscience
nonslickniks & hippychicks
can’t & won’t do shit
need to sit down & read this this & this
that was me
tell the white man in the mirror
the truth right to his face
then split
sometimes girls followed me outside
guess i was black enough for them revolution is a bitch
so amidst our talk of change i’d pitch
pennies at the tattered waxpaper cups
of those from whom i’d cribbed my strut
i sure do sympathize bruh man it must be tough
to shuck an honest buck
when yo performance space invaded
by the puma tracks
of doo doo wack
backpack rap cats
who just don’t give a fuck
makin clique tracks up 6th ave
with plastic fat beats bags
& killer crossover vocab
at least i pledged an oath
they pledgin hip hop like a frat
so now i trail behind
strapped with a notepad
pretendin to be
the caucazoid shaharazad ali
revising the white man’s guide
to understanding white rappers
& their sublimated racial pride
everytime a cracker
drops a twelve inch single
these jokers go into
great white hope
conniption fits yo this the new shit
jack they johnsons
until they bust all over
the heavyweight tradition
& wipe up the viscous liquid mess
with misappropriated quotes
yo rakim said
it ain’t where you’re from it’s where you’re at
race privilege where ya at?
is the caucus mountains in the hooooouuusse? ho-oooo!
mufuckers so self-righteous
they wanna talk about the racism
that makes black people
think whiteboys can’t rhyme
but the new shit
is the same ol shit
you shitheads
understanding culture from the essence of the root of the tree
and not just from the leaves falling to the ground
as drum one said
before he skipped the continent himself
i gotta be invisible for a minute
he told me on the phone
& by the same time next week
was gone
imagine that this is a cat who made
high profile invisibility an artform
cleaving thru parties on the diggy low
in camo suits and shades
pretendin not to know
that he’s a legend
with styles & names
trapped beneath the paintjobs
of a zillion trains
i tried to catch him in bologna
but all i saw was
two drum walls
each one bout ten feet wide
& ten feet tall
clearly visible
from the passing eurorail
that’s what i’m talkin bout
canvas the neighborhood
each one
a swooshing graceful
hydra snake of steaming color
interlocking triple jointed
& seeming to spin slower & faster
perpetual & self-sufficient
a maze of motion
the perfect power source professor
if only he would tell us how it works
pinks moving into blues & green
exotic shades of sunrise flesh & plasma
radiating in n out themselves a
miscegeny swirl of statement & magenta
bubbling & bulging
with the struggle of containing itself
along preposterous smooth curves &
ginsu racing edges
i wish i’d been with him when he
perfected graff
but i was tied up in
mrs joseph’s kindergarten art class
making those drawings
where you rub a craypa
vibrancy of color mishmash
over the whole page
& cover it with black
then paperclip scrape
a little bit back off & bam
you got an art project
thin raised welts of color all that’s left
enough to get
a kid like me
diznizzy with regret
depressed by those pathetic silhouettes
& wishin just once mrs joseph
would let me leave my shit
unbuffed uncuffed & scuffed
lucky for me i wrote with my left
& thus kept
a smudged n smeary copy
of all my work on hand
so maybe long before i boosted a spray can
or picked up a pen to chisel myself
into the piece of work i am
i was filling in the
overlapping panel of this
human venn diagram
connecting culture to belief & who we are to what we be
makes sense to me but see
you gotta understand
i come from a fam steeped
generations deep
in contradiction
not even my ancestors could enter a temple
without clenching their fists
against the bullshit that was religion
but everybody always felt culturally jewish
i couldn’t even say that much until
my homegirl
told me about golems
these mythic kabbalistic
jewish mystic
anti-pogrom
secret weapons
unbeatable warrior giants
inscribed with the hebrew word for truth
& made of clay
that come alive
entered by whatever
spirit you summon when you pray
& fuck up
all your enemies
like a supernatural bruce willis
when they’re finished
you erase the alef
turning truth to death
& they die
i was like damn
i never knew us jews
had some shit like that on our side
hell i’m down just show me where to sign
that’s the type of ally