One Hundred Dollar Misunderstan - Gover, Robert, 1929

one hundred dollar

misunderstanding

4^

A NOVEL BY ROBERT GOVER

$3.95
one hundred dollar

misunderstanding
BY ROBERT GOVER
Imagine a college sophomore, not too
bright, a stuffed shirt, already the Bab-
bitt he will be twenty years later. And
picture a beautiful young colored pros-
titute, direct, human, a beguiling mix-
ture of experience and innocence. He

thinks she is spending the weekend with
him because he has impressed her with
his manhood and his pretense of a crim-
inal career. She thinks she is going to
get a hundred dollars, or even a steady
"investment."
What a misunderstanding!
"Cover's first stroke of inspiration,"
writes Gore Vidal in Esquire, "is that
neither boy nor girl can understand,
literally, a word the other says. She
speaks almost entirely in four-letter

words and Negro-jazz argot; he speaks
in ballooning Chamber of Commerce
sentences which tend to pop just as some
sort of meaning has begun to emerge
from all that breath. She is convinced
that he is profoundly stupid; he knows
that she is stupid because she is not
'educated'. . .
,"
The principals tell the story of their

hilarious misadventure in alternating
what happened
chapters, each relating
from opposite vantage points. It all
starts when James Cartwright Holland
("An assumed name, as I mentioned

earlier, though J. C. are, as a matter of
hard cold fact, my initials") slips out of
the frat house and, intrigued by what
he has heard from the other boys, goes
to a whorehouse. Upstairs with Kitten,
he manages to get invited to her apart-
(Continued on back flap)
Tôv ^ -^^ -^<^'^^
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one hundred dollar
misunderstanding
one
hundred
dollar
misunderstanding
A novel by Robert Gover
GROVE PRESS, INC. / NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT © ig6l BY ROBERT COVER
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-20506
Eighth Printing
Manufactured in the United States of America

Author's Note
The caricatures in this story never were and aren't.

If a reader happens to transmute them from typo-
alphabetic symbols to figments of his imagination,
they will continue to not exist, except as figments of
his imagination. This also applies to the events which
are this story —they didn't happen and don't. Any
reader who imagines them happening is asked to
please remember he is doing just that —imagining. In
other words, the following is a made-up, untrue story.
I mmediately, right off the bat, without further ado,
here and now, I wish to say that much of what hap-
pened to me that fateful week-end is completely
unprintable, since it happened with a lady (colored)
of ill repute. So all pornography-seekers are warned
to seek elsewhere. I wish to make that point quite
clear before proceeding further.
(Especially since Dad is chairman of our town's
obscenity board so is well acquainted with the general
subject and has impressed upon me the immense harm
obscenity might do this great nation.) (Not that I'm
a prude. Far from it ! But nor am I a conveyer of
illicit images and user of four-letter words and the
mails to defraud.)
I mean, I plan to keep the telling of these unlikely
events on as high a literary plain as I'm able, fully
aware of my own shortcomings as I attempt this.
After all, I'm a college sophomore, not a paid pro-

fessional writer. You may ask why I didn't tell my ex-
perience to a paid professional ghost writer and have
him write itfor me. Well, I have a very good reason
for that. I mean, for why I didn't do that. You see,
I wish to remain anonymous for reasons which may or
7
8 one hundred dollar
may not become clear to the reader, but are indeed

clear to me. Only my legal initials will be used, but
lots of others go by the same initials, so you'll never
track me down from them.
So, to begin at the beginning, as they say, let me
say that. . . .
Well, first on Friday, we got our midterm

of all,
grades and I found I was flunking three repeat three —

— subjects (biology, psychology, French) and so the
second half of that semester was going to be heck,
sheer heck.
Second, Barbara, who is my steady girl friend, tele-
phoned to tell me she received a telegram telling her

to come home immediately, that her grandmother had
died. Which proved coincidental.
You see, I also received a letter from my grand-
mother and found in it a check for $100 —a little
birthday present. A bit late, yes, but better late than

never, as they say.
Third, Dad called to say he was unable to bring me
the Chevy for the weekend as per our previous agree-
ment, that he had been urged by the hospital adminis-
tration to attend some convention or clinic or some-
thing in Cleveland or some god-forsaken place like
that, and Mom needed the stationwagon, having
planned for months to attend her annual bridge
tournament in Boston, and that left the Caddy, which
is only used for special occasions and which I couldn't
get home to get anyway.
No car, no girl, and that second half semester star-
ing me in the face I was in poor condition, I can
!
tell you. I mean, I was depressed —psychologically

depressed !
!
mhunderitanding 9
—
You see I've completely neglected to mention — ît
was the weekend of the big frat formal. It was the

weekend of all weekends. And this year, Christmas
The formal was scheduled to be held at the Sheldon
—
Country Club, no less the swankiest place in town.
Some of the brothers tried to cheer me up by say-
ing they could fix me up with a blind date, some
freshman, and I could travel with my roommate.
Hank, in his car, certainly. But ... I was feeling just
too too low. I mean ! A man can weather a little ill
fortune once in a while, but a triple whammy like
that was too psychologically depressing. I was in no

mood !
I it was that psychological depression

mean, that —
was the trouble. That's what led to all my difficulties.
That and all the stuff I'd been hearing.
The thing is, I didn't have to flunk those subjects.
I mean I'm not a stupe, by a long shot. As for the other
two strokes of misfortune Well, I was entirely a

. . .
victim of circumstances.
Anyway, about nine o'clock that evening I found
myself sitting there in that fraternity house com-
pletelyby myself. Everyone else was either at the big
dance or had gone home. There I was, in front of the
TV in the livingroom, all alone. And that started me
thinking, being alone.
Itwas probably Hank, who is always trying to fill
my head with lewd thoughts, beating and beating
his filthy obscenities into my mind. (I never asked to
have him for a roommate. I barely knew him before
I moved in. They just assigned me to a room and
there he was.) He's constanly running off with a
bunch of the brothers to some Negro house of ill repute,
—

saying — and I repeat this one bit of smut only to show
what sort of fellows I've been forced to live with
they're going to get their ashes hauled ! That's a way
of saying they're going to pay and then make love
(or, I should say, fornicate) with some Negro. They
think that little phrase they use is pretty funny. One
night they sat around for over an hour and talked
about nothing but. That phrase, I mean. One brother
(he's a jerk) said he thought it was a sort of poetry.

(Good grief!)
What I'm trying to say is I'm constantly subjected
to this kind of talk. It's constantly being beaten and
my ears. And Hank (who calls
beaten into me Soph
O'More, and thinks he's being funny because so he —
says —
sophomore once meant Wise Fool) (but he's
never proven that statement with hard cold facts)
—Hank is forever telling me I should go and have

my ashes hauled.
Well, after making a great and sustained eflfort to
respond as little as possible to that foul suggestion, I

gave up and told him why I thought I shouldn't.
There are two very good reasons, too. Why I
shouldn't, I mean. One, as I've already mentioned, is
that Dad is a member of our town's obscenity board.

Chairman, no less. And if word ever got back to him
that I'd done, or even contemplated doing such a
thing, well . . . I'm not sure exactly what would
happen, but I am sure it wouldn't be good.
The other reason is that —contrary what some to
of these brothers around here think — I'm no prude
and have myself a couple of very good unprofessional
ladies of ill repute (though that isn't really what
they're called, ha ha) back home.
! 1
misunderstanding 1
But when I finally did get around to telling Hank

about them, he countered by laughing and saying I'd
never be a man until —
Well, I won't say it the way
he did. What he meant was that I must miscegenate
before I can consider myself much of anything. Which
I know is entirely fantastic, a horrid idea and utterly
ridiculous, unfounded on hard cold fact, unsubstan-
tiated — an old wives' tale, for gosh sakes ! No, I don't
mean mean it's just another obscenity
wives exactly. I
like ashes hauled. And I, of course, realize this full
well. As for my masculinity, I pointed out to Hank
that my chest is very hairy and his hasn't a hair on
it —not one ! He tried to defend against this concrete
evidence by laughing his same old deluded laugh, and
also by sticking to his silly miscegenation as a criter-
ion.
So please. Dear Reader, get this picture : Here I
am sitting in front of this TV all alone in that empty

frat house, left without a date, without a car, flunk-
ing at midterms three subjects — biology, psychology,
—
French stranded miles from home in this god-for-
saken town with nothing but a little extra cash, feeling
extremely psychologically depressed. I mean, this
picture is important
That and what Hank is always saying. I mean, he
also talks as if the Negro is sexually superior to the
Whiteman, for gosh sakes Then, he tries to say that !
isn't what he means I mean, when I point this out

!
— ^when I tell him that, in effect, is what he is trying

to tell me —
he denies h. I keep trying to tell him how
cockeyed his idea is, but he keeps insisting superior
isn't what he means, and I keep trying to tell him
superior is exactly the false conception he has, and
:

he keeps trying to deny this, so I never do get my
point across.
And to top things off, Hank, for gosh sakes, has
amply demonstrated —though he won't admit this
either— the extreme psychotic degree of confusion to
which he and other brothers have gone by once say-
ing that we Hve—and now quote directly—in a
I state
of whoredom—unquote. This, was quick mention, I to
was an attempt to temper by rationalization the fact
that he enters frequently into the sort of commerce
transacted in non-white houses of ill repute.
But — like Max Shulman in those clever cigarette
advertisements — I digress.
About nine o'clock, I thought James Cartwright :
Holland, Holy Christmas (An assumed name, as I

!
mentioned earlier, though J. C. are, as a matter of

hard cold fact, my initials.) (Sometimes I take an
awful ribbing because of those two actual initials, as
any quick-witted reader might readily guess, but I

assure you they're actually legally mine.) I thought
Aren't things bad enough without sitting around
thinking about them?
Then all the stories I'd been subjected to about
this Negro house of ill repute (located in this red-
light district with other houses, some of which have
white girls, for crying out loud !) all these stories got
the best of me and I decided to take a look for my-
self.
. I mean, I certainly never intended to go fornicate

with some paid professional woman of either race, I
just meant to take a look for myself. I thought : When
I return, I'll have an even clearer idea of what I'm
talking about, so that next time I find myself
miMunderstandIng 13
in a discussion with Hank, I'll be even better pre-

pared.
(As it actually turned out, my knowledge certainly
was intensely deepened.)
So I checked my wallet ($135 in all) and took off
for a night on the town. What I had inmind was
going to this one bar the brothers are always going
to when they have nothing better to do, where they
have this jazz combo everyone says is very good, and
where they also have paid professional ladies of ill
repute floating about, sort of, because it's right smack
dab in the middle of this redlight district. So I did.
I went there. I took a taxi and went.
This place — it's called the Black-n-Tan —was, well,

I don't know how to describe it. I wish I was (were)
a writer so I could do it justice. (I mean a paid pro-
ha ha.) To begin with, it
fessional writer, of course,
was jam-packed. It took me half an hour to work my
way to the bar and then I got lucky and jumped onto
a stool the moment some fellow left it. There seemed
to be a lot of students in that place, but I didn't see
anyone I recognized, so after awhile I relaxed and in-
spected the place. I just sat and listened and looked
around.
I don't know much about jazz. I'll admit it I don't. —
All I could tell was that one minute it was very loud
and the next it wasn't. And it wasn't the sort of jazz
you hear played on the radio. Also, the musicians
(colored) seemed completely lost in what they were
playing, and I could see where they would be. I
couldn't tell where what ended and what began. The
only thing I could conclude was that this type of
jazz just wasn't normal.
!

But the people in that place ! Wow ! I'd never
seen such a motley collection of people. In one place
at one time, mean. There was black and white and
I
every shade in between. I even saw two Chinese
students and a Chinese girl. And Christmas At one !
end of the bar sat these two dolls and I mean dolls —
— who were non-white, but pretty nevertheless. One
had blonde hair, for gosh sakes No doubt she dyed!
it, of course. And there was this guy with these two
girls (you could tell he was with them by the way
he would lean over and talk to them) this big, very-

Negro guy dressed in an Ivy League suit and sitting
there looking around as if he were looking for some-
one, expecting to see someone he knew. As a matter
of fact, our eyes happened to meet once, while I was
giving those girls the once-over, and he stared me down.
Not only that, but the next time I looked up, there
he was staring at me again. Christmas ! He gave me
the creeps! I don't mean he gave me dirty looks; I
mean he kept looking as if we'd met some place and
he suddenly recognized me. Me, for gosh sakes
I was forced to conclude the two colored girls were
paid professionals and he was sort of their solicitor,
so to speak. (I'm aware that there's another word for

what he was, but I'm trying to keep this factual narra-
tive on a high plain.)
Though it's difficult, because the very next thing

I knew, I was being tapped on the shoulder and when
I turned around, here was some beady-eyed character
(colored) staring at me. He said (and you may not
believe this, but he actually said it) : 'Looking for a
date?'
'Certainly not!' I quickly responded. (To tell the
misunderstanding 15
truth, I wasn't sure, at that moment, what he meant

exactly, and was tempted to give him a taste of my
knuckles, just in case.)
Then he said, 'Got some fine girls, right around
the corner.'
Which clarified things. Somewhat.
But I said, 'No. No thank you.'
He said, 'Just looking around?'
And I said, 'Well .As a matter of fact, I am
. . yes.
just looking around.' Which, of course, was true.

'Okay,' he said, and moved on. He sort of shoved
his way through the crowd along behind the stools.
I watched him for a time, thinking Well, James :
Cartwright Holland, you've seen yourself a real one

for sure. It's official. (And I won't say what ! But I
became certain of my observations when he stopped

a few stools from mine and tapped another fellow
who looked like a university student.)
Well, that's the way it works. Enough said.
I went back to looking and listening, and hadn't

been doing this long before the beady-eyed character
returned. This time, all he did was tap and when I
swung around, stared at me with this comical grin
on his face. I thought Well, after all, no one here
:
knows me and I have yet to see the inside of a house

of ill repute. What the heck Question Who would ! :
be the wiser ? Answer Me : !
So I said, 'Where are your girls ?'

And he started mumbling directions, which I didn't
catch until I had him repeat them. I was to go out,
turn left, walk to the corner and turn right, and the
place was three doors down on the right.
The whole thing seemed just too fantastic. I mean,
! ! !

I know such on elsewhere. But America
things go
I'd always thought America was such a decent coun-
try. But then, even in the most decent country, the
danger of moral cancer, as Dad calls it, is ever present.

And don't get me wrong. I was not, for gosh sakes,
diseased I was curious. I mean, I owed this little
!
excursion to my education, so to speak.

So, feeling very much like Dad must feel when he
has to inspect things or places for indecency, I went.
I mean, I felt like a detective. That's how I felt. I
just adopted a very scientificly objective viewpoint
on the entire matter and went. And my feeling of
detecting increased handsomely when I discovered
I was hot on the heels of two other university students.
But wow What a neighborhood I mean, I found

! !
myself deep in the heart of a slum area with inade-

quate housing and all that. I mean, they show pic-
tures on TV of blighted areas and tell how they need
more money for slum clearance and urban renewal,
but gosh They can't give you the sounds and smells
!
on TV.
ril try. (After adding that I walked slowly ^past —
some pretty ugly-looking Negro men, just standing
—
around doing nothing ^walked slowly to let those
other two students get ahead of me.) Right off the bat,
as soon as I turned off the avenue onto the sidestreet
—Bamb
No lights
In fact, there was only one streetlight the whole
length of that block, for crying out loud ! It shone
down over a vacant lot right across the street from
where I stood (on the corner).
Well, I was about to go back and catch a taxi and
! !
misunderstanding 17
take off" when I saw a sudden

for the frat house again,
ray of and then those two college guys going in
light,
—
through a doorway from which came the light, of
course. Then I thought : Come come, JG, you're not
going to be frightened off by darkness, for gosh sakes !
Are you?
And had a heart attack
right about here, I almost
There, right in the middle of that vacant lot, was this
figure of a man. It would lean down and stand up
and walk a step or two, then lean down again. I
hadn't noticed him before, but there he was, all right.
A rag picker, or something like that. Certainly a per-
son of which to be leery. And, I can tell you, that,
in spite of my scientific viewpoint, I was just that
— leery.
So leery, in fact, that I began to worry about which

door was the correct one to the ill repute house. I
thought : Christmas, JC ! Suppose you knock on the

wrong door. Good gosh, in this neighborhood, no tell-
ing what might happen
But I recovered from the sight of that dark and
dismal figure of a bum picking about in that vacant
lot (the police should have been notified, I realize),
and went bravely forward. I thought JG my friend :
you'll see the inside of an ill repute house if it's the

last thing you ever do. And since you've come this
far, you might as well keep up your courage and
go on.
I did. Listening, all the time I was going bravely
onward, to the most eerie-sounding barking dogs I'd

ever heard. I mean, dogs barking here, there, every-
where. Not right where I was, exactly. But not so far
away either. I couldn't be sure exactly where, I mean.
8

And, also, as referred to above, there were smells.
Smells which you don't even get on TV public service
programs. And a good thing, too, because they weren't
very pleasant smells. It smelled dank, sort of. Like a
mixture of wet earth and rotting lumber. It made me
shudder, can tell you. The whole place
I — that entire
neighborhood made me shudder.
Still, I I marched. I said
continued forging ahead.
to myself. Hup
two three four. Hup two three four,
and marched So that I finally made it to the third
!
door from the corner, walked (marched) up the rot-

ting wooden steps, and Bamb — !
H
trick
I ere goes
by
me, I'm in the big
hisseff. College Joe. I
chair. In
kin tell
come this
them any-
where.
She-it ! This one walk like he ain got no toes. Jit-
tery ? Kee-ryess is he jittery.
Jackie an Carmie upstairs wiff two tricks jes come

in a minit fore this one. On'y hiyellas leff is Flow
an Francine, so I spect this mothah gonna go up wiff
Flow.
That godam Francine been botherin me agen, sittin
on the arm o' the big chair an messin roun.
Madam tell this jittery Whiteboy we is all the cats
they is jes now, an everybody waitin fer him t'pick
one o'us. But he jes standin there, lookin roun the
sittin room like he think more girls gonna come outta
the walls.
I say t'myseff, Girl you gotta git yer Friday night
cherry broke sometime, might jes's well try an hussle
this jittery Joe. So I smile.
He lookin roun dum, my smile catch his eye an he

smile back. Jes a lil ol bashful smile, like he fraid
it gonna break his face, he smile fer real.
19
!

I smile agen an try lookin Pickaninny pritty, an he
smile agen.
Madam him smilin, she
see jes touch him on the
back an send him on his way.
Nex, Gee-zu2 ! Francine stan up. She think alia
time this daddio been smilin at her. She think he's
fixin t'go up wiff her. Yeah ! He so gee-gee jittery
an all, she guess she gonna git his gun wiffout hardly
no work. She likes them jittery tricks cause they pop
fast, give her a chance t'jackoff an piss roun while
us other cats go on workin.

But I Stan up too. Yeah An he nod t'me. !
I say, Come on, pritty baby, we go upstairs.
He comin. He okay. Dress like he got loot. I say

t*mysefF, Girl maybe this trick like you enuff t'give
you a pers'nal tip. Yeah He dress like he got the
!
jack fer tippin.

I say, This way, prittyboy.
Fore I swing on up, I look back at Francine an she
lookin mean. Piss on Francine ! I say t'myseff , I say,
Keep a pucker' pussy, Francine, you'll get yer ass up-
stairs okay. Don' worry, Friday's big night, lotta biz^
ness fer everybody, Friday night.
She-it ! That Francine, she ack like she wanna go
wifF my trick jes cause he wanna go wifF me. How
come she alia time buggin me ?
Piss on Francine
I swing ass upstairs an my trick come on along
behind. Some College Joes grab ass when I swings it,
but this mothah, he too jittery for grabbin. Bout all
he kin do up them stairs.

t'git
I take him on in this room Francine alia time callin

her room. Yeah Godam that Francine Nobody give
! !
! !
misunderstanding 21
one fas' toot boutno room but her, an she gotta go

callin this one room her room, counta the bed don'
make's much noise.
I take me my jittery trick on the hell in that room

anyhow ! Yeah ! Way that Francine ack, she ain
gonna need her no room a-tall
Them quiet jittery ones, they's trouble sometime.

This mothah, I git him in that room, he jes stan
there lookin dum.
I say. Well Hello, Sweet Baby. Wha's on yer
mind?
He don' say nothin.
I say, Hey Lover, what' re we gonna do?
An he jes look dum.
I say, Yoo-hoo, pritty baby, you wanna lil french?
Haff an hafF? How bout jes a straight? I say. Twenty
berries an you alia roun the mothahfuggin worl'.
An then he look at me like he is gonna pee his
pants Right now Yeah I say, Mothahfuggin worl*,
! ! !
an he bout t' shout.

Madam alia time tellin us cats, Don' never say
mothahfug roun them real fay tricks, but Kee-ryees
Least that git him woke up some. Fore, he jes standin
there lookin alia roun, dreamin. Jes dum an

dreamy.
I say, Hey Baby, this a cathouse, you dig? This
an no place t'do yer daydreamin at. I say, Cathouse

fer funnin, Sweetheart. Yeah How bout we do us !
some funnin?
An he still jes look dum. Gee-zuz I don' know !
jes where the fug he think he is at. I can' be takin no
all night fer one fast fiver, so I start in playin roun
wiif his lil ol pecker. I'm playin, he's lookin roun real
!! !

gone, an we jes gittin along like seven crabs in one
big bumhole.
Nex, he look he bout t'come alive, an he go
like
t'say somethin, then he shut up agen.

Kee-ryess Maybe he walk in here by mistake. What
!
a muddlehead.
I start in all over agen. I say. Hey Baby, you feel
like havin some fun ?

He say, Yeah
I say t'myseflF, Well kiss my blackass ! This mothah
kin talk affer all
Then I gotta tell him how much is what. Fack, I
gotta tell him an tell him, an still he look dum. Yeah !
I talkin, he standin there wiff a HI ol harden, lookin

roun real dum. Gee-zuz How dum kin one Whiteboy
!
git?
I say, Kee-ryess Sugar ! I can' make it no plainer
Ain you got no jack?
He say, Huh?
I say, Ain you got no green ? No loot ?
He say. Huh?
I say, Ain you got no skins, no kale ? No bread ? No
bones, no berries, no boys ?
He say, Whaaa?
I say, Man yer in a cathouse. You come here, us
cats figure you wanna do some screwin. Fore you do
yer screwin, you gotta pay.
An kiss my HI ol blackass Pickaninny me, I say
that, this daddio pull out the biggest fuggin wad
o' green I ever in my everlovin born days ever-ever did
see in this mothahless cathouse ! Yeah ! Ooh-ooh-ooh
Skinny Minnie That bundle cork my ass Yeah It
! ! !
knock me clean off my feet He so fishfry flush he !

! !
misunderstanding 23
mothahhumpin hands roun

kin hardly git his that
wad This baby \oo-o-o-did Ooh-wee
! ! !
down. I say t'myseff, Girl you jes let

I sit ass right
this sweet Whiteboy make up his own muddlehead
what he wanna do. I say, Girl you jes be nice's ever you
been. He got him enuff t'git him all the pussy he kin
ever use
Maybe I oughtta tell him, Hold the phone, man,
I knock off work, we do the town ! Like, on that wad,
we kin dam well flyfug our way from here t'the moon
an back. Yeah
Sep, he jes standin there wiff his fay face all wrinkle
up like a gran-mothah twoit, and he jes a-fingerin
that everlovin stuff so nice, so nice ! Way he finger, I
know, I jes dee-diddly-dam well know him an it ain
strangers.
Ain no wonner he's dum. All that mazoola, he kin be
jes'sdum's dum kin be !
Nex, this whole fuggin worl' start goin backwar's.

Yeah This trick, he standin there messin roun wiff
!
his green, he say, What you wanna do ?

Yeah He say that He ask me what / wanna do.
! !
I bout pee ! Kee-ryess ! I dam well near tell him,

I dam near say. Sweet Lovin Baby Sugar Doll, what
I wanna do, I wanna fly ! I wanna blow this cat-
house an fly ! I wanna bring you home t' Momma. I
wanna hide you unner my bed !
But I don' say nothin. I git so diddly dizzy lookin

that wad in the eye, all I kin do is sit an look.
He say, What you think best? He say,Wha's that
you say bout roun the wor' ? He say, Wha's this roun
the worl', anyhow?
Meantime, I been gittin all fuss up over his wad,
! ! !

I sayin t'myseff, I sayin, Girl you got you some fast
considerin t'do. Yeah ! This College Joe, he is loaded
and he is jittery.
Jackie alia time sayin, Girl one o'these days yer

gonna bump int'some nice invessment.
Look like I bump! Now what the hell m'l gonna do ?
Jackie say, Treat invessment real real fine, an he
ask you yer phone, an then yer in bizness. Yeah !
On'y I know what he wanna do, I kin treat him

real fine, but he ain sayin. He askin me what / wanna
do. Kee-ryess An then he askin bout roun the worl'
!
an alia time so jimjam jittery he ain gonna make it

t'the corner
She-it!
Nex, I say. Baby you don' want you no roun the
worl'. Right now, jes yet. What you wanna do, you
wanna stay fer the whole mothah Eh, you wanna —
stay fer all night
He say, No. He say. He don' wanna do that. He
say, He don' like the looks o'this place.
What the fug the looks o'the place got t'do wifT
it? Ooh-wee I do me some more considerin.
!
Then I say. Tell you what. Sugar. How bout a HI

ol hafF an haff, jes fer now, like. See how you like
that. Huh?
He say, I say so, tha's okay by him.
Gee-zuz
I say. Okay man, / say so.
He say. Fine.
Bless my blackass Pickaninny me !
Nex, he say. How much ?

Ooh-ooh-ooh Skinny Minnie ! Might je's well git
me a lil ol English tip right now !
. !
misunderstanding 25
I say, Ten.
He say, Ten doUah ?
What the fug he think ? Ten peenuts ?
I say, Yeah man, ten dollah.
Counta my considerin tell me, invessment or no
invessment, this sweet baby got so much I might jes's
well git me three lil boys fer myseff
See, haff and haff really on'y cost seven, but crap
He ain gonna miss him no three outta that wad. No-
oh-oh ! He give me a five and five ones. I'm gonna git
me three. Yeah. Tha's English tip.
Sep, he go an give me a spot, I ain gonna git me no

three. I gottago an put three in the tipbox fer all them
other cats t'share my three, he give me a spot. I don'
mind sharin, but I kin always use me three o'my own.
Yeah!
So Kee-ryess ! He do. He give me a spot, an that
finish that.
I ask him, Ain you got no lil bills, man ?

He say, No. He say. Sorry.
So I don' git no English tip. I stick that ten tween
my an swing ass down the hall. I pav up seven
titties
an git back three and put them three in the tipbox,

an then I go fer the soap an water.
t first I thought my ears were deceiving me. Such
language ! From a girl ! I mean Even if she was
!
non-white, such profanity ! (I certainly won't repeat

what she said, You'll just have to take my word for
it that it was foul, dirty, and in exceptionally poor
taste.)
And that room ! I was flabbergasted ! (I mean, this
room this woman of ill repute took me to. A des-

cription of which will follow.)
Also, the downstairs ! (Of the ill repute house.)
(Which, I fear, I'm unable to describe without
jeopardizing the high literary plain I'm attempting
to maintain.)
And It was practically as wide as a
the stairway !
linen dispenser and every bit as steep as a ladder. (I'll

bet that house was a hundred years old if it was a
single day !) And this girl (yes, as you may have sur-
mised by now, I permitted myself to continue along
with this misadventure) (or investigation, as I prefer
to think of it.) (After all, I thought : JG, it's now or
never !) — this girl (I mean, this professional prostitute)
wasn't as bad looking as I'd expected. She was Negro,
26
misunderstanding 27
yes, and she had that tight kinky hair —
and well, she
wasn't at all white in any way. I mean, there was a
partly white one sitting on the arm of the chair in
which sat this one which I picked out, but I figured

as long as I was where was when I was, I might
I
as well pick a dark one. She wore a black blouse and

a tight red skirt and didn't look very old. Matter of
fact, she appeared approximately my age. (Nineteen.)
But Christmas Going up those narrow stairs, I almost

!
bumped into her rear end, it was so dark. I mean, it

wasn't so dark I couldn't see her rear end (which cer-
tainly did stick out far enough) (for such a little per-
son, I mean) (in that tight skirt and all) (presenting
me with two shiny spots, for gosh sakes !) but it was
about all I could do to keep from bumping into her.
It's a good thing we had only one flight up to climb.
The way she swayed her rear end, I might have ended
up hypnotized. (I mean, like you can become hypno-
tized watching a pendulum swinging back and forth.)
And the second floor was just one long hallway
with doors all along either side, and one bare light-
bulb hanging up for light. (Of course.) (But it didn't
throw much, is what I mean.) Then, right oflF the
bat, the next thing I knew, we were in this tiny little
room and she was talking.
Which is where the big trouble really began. I
mean, I couldn't understand a word she was saying.
At first. Gradually, as I got acclimatized to her dia-
lect, I began hearing the wildest, most unprintable
obscenities I think I've ever heard —

and I mean I've
been around. Around women who swore, even, but
not this way. Hence, Dear Reader, even though I
quite possibly might, at this juncture, give a snatch
— !

or so of dialogue, the language she employed was so
utterly indecent itwould have to be thoroughly cen-
sored before it would be legally permissible. And I
am strictly against censorship. Therefore, I refrain
from direct quotations. I mean, even a writer of filth
could never quote such a person verbatim and expect
to get it past even the lower courts. Her entire vocab-
ulary, such as it was, seemed composed of porno-
graphic slang and insincere endearments.
But, finally, I got so I could understand her enough
for us to conduct our business transaction, so to speak.
But that room threw me. I certainly wish I was a
paid professional writer so I could describe it to you.
I'll try.
There was a lightbulb. I mean, this one bare light-

bulb, and that's all. And there was a bed. Or, almost
a bed. Really, it was just an old bedframe with an old
mattress on it and an old bedspread over the mattress.
And when mean old And the walls
I say old, I !
good gosh, the walls The wallpaper looked like it

!
held up the entire building. And you couldn't be

certain how much longer the building was going to
hold up ! Because the wallpaper was just sort of . . .
disintegrating. It was crumbling and peeling off and

just coming off the walls right before your very eyes
Under the wallpaper there were strips of old broken
wood, only. Flimsy ? Wow Then, beyond those strips !
— upon which the wallpaper was supposed to hang

there was nothing but a surface, very substandard,
which I am forced to conclude was the inside of the
outside of that clapboard building — if you can call
it a building.
Anyway : this room. The excuse for a bed was
! !
misunderstanding 29
just inside the dcK>r to the right, between the door and
the right wall. The room was that small. The left wall
was that crumbling wallpaper and the right wall was
sort of a partition affair —
very temporary looking,
but like it might hold up longer than the other wall.
Because it was newer, I mean. The far wall (also dis-
integrating) had a round hole in it, which I was
forced to conclude was supposed to serve as a window.
And in the far right corner stood this dresser. Or,
what had been a dresser. It no longer had drawers,
just openings where drawers were supposed to be.
And on top of it, looking very very out of place, sat
this vase With flowers in it Imagine Flowers in
! ! !
that room
The floor was old wood and bare. Just as bare as
anything. Nothing could be bare-er than that wooden
floor.
And, believe it or not, that was all there was to this

tiny room. I know that sounds fantastic, but it's factu-
ally true. Just this bed, the skeleton of a dresser, and
that's all.
But the girl (did I neglect to describe her?) wasn't
bad. I mean, of course, bad looking. For a non-
white. I mean, she was, as they say, ha ha, stacked

Not at all what I'd expected. Though don't get me
wrong. I'm not prejudiced. Far from it.) She had a
very childish face. Also very dark. And eyes which
were large and watery looking, with drooping eyelids,
which never seemed to look directly at you. (Me.)
And her voice was tiny and high-pitched, like a
young girl's. Though, of course, I realize she had to
be at least my age — at least — in order to be there.
But she moved like she was 60. That was the thing.
— !

I —
mean, she moved slow and easy very slow. (Com-
ing up the stairs, she even swayed her rear end slow,
unlike most girls whom I know of, who are white,
of course, and wiggle —
if they do —
quickly and ner-
vous like. Squirrelly, if you get what I mean.)
But I don't, for gosh sakes, wish to dwell unduly
on physical detail. So I will skip recounting certain
actions she went through, as well as certain phrases
she used while going through these afore-mentioned
actions.
And, until we got around to sealing the transaction
(if you can call it that) she seemed utterly and com-
pletely detached. I mean! Talk about scientific de-

tachment! Scientists should be so detached! As a
matter of hard cold fact, it was her detachment which
aggravated me. I don't know what I had expected,
but I had not expected detachment, for gosh sakes
Just one word about her lingo. Or, as much of it
as I could catch. She muttered something about,
among other things, French. Which made me think of
my flunking grades —biology, psychology, French
and for I thought she wanted
one fraction of a second,
to discuss grades and other aspects of university life,
though I certainly had no idea how we might go about
such a discussion. She and I, I mean. However, this
proved an erroneous assumption on my part. (As I
learned later, French, in her dialect, meant something
entirely different and as unprintable as nine-tenths
of her jargon.)
She finally sort of fell back down on the bed and
sat there looking slightly shaken, though for the life
of me I was unable to learn what had troubled her.

I didn't wish to appear boorish (I try to treat all
1
misunderstanding 3
peoples as equals, regardless of race, color or creed)

so I asked, in an attempt to snap her out of her sudden
mysterious depression, how she would like to spend
our time together. (And I wish to make it quite clear
that — at this point, at least — I certainly had not re-
sorted to any rationalizing or anything like that. But,
after all, I had never found myself in an ill repute
house before, and was not, for gosh sakes, familiar
with their customs.) (I mean, by asking, I wished to
kill two birds with one stone. I wished to disrupt her
detachment, engage her interest in me as a person, so
to speak, — —
and also second to show her that I was
magnanimous enough to consider her feelings in the
matter, even if she was a paid professional of another
color.) And apparently I was successful in this double-
barreled endeavor, for she looked up after a moment

of depression with new interest. (No doubt such per-
sons have their own brand of troubles.) And we com-
pleted our business. I mean, it turned out that one
pays in advance, so I paid.
I must add here that I did feel a bit uneasy carry-
ing my money into that place at that time, because
of the sort of neighborhood I was in, and all that. I
mean, you never can tell. So many people lived in
that neck of the woods who don't seem to want to
go out in the world and get themselves a good job and
—
advance themselves and that sort of attitude is com-
munistic and breeds crime. But she paid absolutely
no attention to my money (which I carried bare in
my trouser pocket, having had the good sense to leave
my wallet back at the frat house in view of the type
of neighborhood I was entering.) (I mean, if some-
body was going to rob me, they certainly wouldn't
!

get my valuable papers.) So I concluded she was too
distracted by some sort of personal problem to be
concerned with my money. And as it turned out, this
was the first of a series of miscalculations on my part,

which later led to a larger misunderstanding.
But, like those clever cigarette advertisements again,
I digress.
Eventually, during our little preliminary conversa-
tion (or unconversation) she became more friendly and
began sounding not honestly insincere. I mean, she
seemed to drop her false sincerity when I demon-
strated that I wished to be anything but boorish, and
—
became, well her entire approach toward me
changed.
I thought After all, JG, you do have something
:
about you which attracts the ladies. And even if she

is a paid professional lady of ill repute, she, after all,
is human. Mom says it's that you're a natural born

salesman. Why fight it ?
Then, the next second, the very next thing I knew
—Bamb!
Gone. She was gone out the door, leaving me in that
dismal cell by myself. Didn't say a word about where
she was going or when she'd get back, simply went

Well, I don't mind admitting at this point that I
was just a little shaken. I didn't know whether to go
after her or wait patiently for whatever might happen
next. But I kept my head and waited. (Which, it
seeips, is accepted procedure.) And as it turned out,
what happened next was not on the menu.
! !! —
H ere goes me, I

cat been in. I say, Who?
come back. He tells me this other
He say, know who. He say, Firs' time in

He don'
any cathouse, how he sposed t'know who's who.
I dam near believe it's his firs' time in any cat-
house. I bout ready t'believe he fresh off some lost

boat someplace. I bout ready t'believe anythin this
mothah wanna tell me.

He tell me this other cat wearin a blue dress. He
say, Cocktail dress
Yeah He say that Hee hee
! ! !
On'y one Jane in this cathouse got her a blue dress

on, an tha's Francine. I tell him fergit it.
But I gotta laugh. Francine all cocktail set t'go
up wiff this big fat ol wad o'jack. She think he wanna
go wiff her. Alia time he pick my lil ol blackass Pick-
aninny me. Yeah ! He my trick. He gonna like me.
He gonna like me so much, he gonna ask me my
phone
Piss on Francine
Nex — I been so all fuss up bout that sweat wad
I ain even seen he still dress'. He standin there wiff
33
! ! ! !

all them clothes on. How come he don't take 'em off
so's when I git back we is all set ?
She-it ! This speed, he gonna be all night fer one lil
ol haff an haff.
Jackie alia time sayin, Invessment is give an git,
give an git.
But Madam You cats git an git.

alia time sayin.
Git yer ass upstairs and them tricks off an git yer git
ass back downstairs. Don' be no mothahless whole

night fer one dum five-bill College Joe. She say, They
ain got no loot worff worryin bout.
Yeah ! Madam say that
Kee-ryees ! I got news fer Madam.
Sep, fore she git her news, I gotta do right so's he
ask me my phone, so's I kin git me my invessment.
Oncet I git givin an gittin, an we goin along invess-
ment-fine, then I kin tell Madam. First, fore I kin do
nother blessed thing, I gotta College Joe undress' t'git.
I say. Sweet Baby, you ain undress'? How come?

He say, Huh?
Gee-zuz
I say t'myseff. Girl he can' unnerstan what yer
sayin, on'y one way t'do. Ack it out. So I do. I do
this right unner the light so's he kin look me over
real good. He look. He lookin real hard. Then I'm
standin there waitin, an he is still lookin. He look
dummer an dummer.
I say. Baby you wanna keep yer clothes on ?
He say, No! He say, Course he don' wanna keep

his clothe's on.
Ooh-wee
I say. Honey you don' wanna keep 'em on, thing
t'do is take 'em off
!
misunderstanding 35
He say, Yeah sure yeah An he start in. !
An he got a long way t'go. Kee-ryess !
But I say t'myseff, I say. Hoi' yer ass, Girl. This

mothah kin be jes's dum's he wanna be, he got him
that much mazoola.
He fold his clothes over the chair real careful. I
ack like I'm daydreamin, he do He so dum, he
that.
might git t'thinkin I wanna rob him. He ack a wee
bit mistrussful anyhow. He ack that way, I ack like I'm
the dummes' lil Pickaninny livin.
I gotta long wait till he finish undressin, he got so

much on.
I wash him real nice an soff, counta him bein so
awful tickledingus, and then I gits t'work. Time I
start in, I got me so many worryful considerins t'do,
I can' hardlypay no mind t'teckneek. Workin an

considerin, an wonnerin does this dum Whiteboy
know what t'do wiff that thing fer the other hafF
o'his hafT and hafF, I find I done me too dam much
considerin.
Nex, I ain been at him a minit, an pop, off he
go!
Kee-ryees
An then — I git up an go on over t'the basin this —
Whiteboy, he sit up like a mothahjumpin jack-in-
a-box an he start lookin at me like I done somethin
wrong.
Gee-zuz All that Jack an I can' make nothin go
!
right, he so fuggin dum. Come in here all loaded up

like that an I don' even git a chance t'show him how
good I kin do. Naecher done mess me up at the most
baddest time.
An he still lookin, Gee-zuz !
— !

Then he say, That all ?
Yeah He say that He
! ! say that like he think I
sposed t'do a lil dance fer him nex. Kee-ryees
I Yeah Baby, tha's all. Dam shame, too.

say,
He say. Yeah it's a shame. He say. One ain never
cnuflF fer him !
I feel like sayin, Baby way you go off, you musta
been savin that one fer a mothahlumpin lifetime.

On'y you ask me my phone, I fix you up fer the rest
you want. You ask me my phone,
o'yer lifetime, long's
you ain never gonna go so long wiffout pussy you gits
that trigger-happy agen.
But I don' say nothin and he don' ask me my
phone. Can' blame him. I don' even git me a chance
t'show my stuff. Poof ! Invessment gone.
I start in t'git dress' agen, feelin real blue, an he
jes still layin there lookin real surprise, like I ain
doin right.
I say, Come on. Baby, we gotta git outta here.
He say, Le's go nother one.
I say. Can'. Ain allowed, man. You gotta
An then I cork ass an start in considerin all over
agen. Hell ! He done pay ten fer hafF and haff an
don* even git him one haff. But Kee-ryees ! We been
up here so gonna
mothahfuggin long now. Madam
send for the firetruck, we don' git ass back down-
stairs. I say t'myseff, Gee-zuz Girl You jes can' go !
breakin rules fer no trick too dum t'ask you yer phone
an git him a lil o'yer ass on the side.
But I can' help tryin one more fishline. I say, Baby
ain you got you no sweet lil chick fer that pritty
cock?
An she-it! Seem like I jes can* say the right thing
! !
misunderstanding 37
roun this dum mothah. He wrinkle up an he start in
tryin t'tell me he got him plenty.
I bout t'give him up fer lost. I say t'myseff, This

daddio so dum, he gonna end up comin backwar's.
Yeah, he gonna end up backfirin. He soun like he is
backfirin right now.
Then he quit jawin that crap an he say. Come on,
le's go jes one more real quick.
Real quick, he say, Hee hee ! His lil ol genrill still
up an lookin peppy. Madam say, trick wanna go

agen, he pay up from down-
right now, else he start in
stairs all over agen. But this poor mothah done pay
fer haff and hafF and don' even git haff, and I is out
one big fat invessment chance. Gee-zuz ! This ain
right
So I say, Now?
He say. Yeah now. Real quick, real quick.
Las' trick say that make me break the rule too, an
he pay agen an then he turn out so fuggin slow on
the secen', he dam near wear my ass clean out. Course,
that weren't the same. That one, he don' give me no
insprashun. This one, he the biggest invessment chance
I ever seen in this cathouse. He dum, yeah But ! crap,
he can' help that !
I him go
say t'myseff, I say, Ain no good leavin
downstairs an pick him out some new cat an give her
her chance t'make invessment when I got him up here
wiff me right now.
Piss Madam an her git and git
on
I Baby you promise t'be real quick an don*
say,
never tell nobody I do it ?
He say. Yeah yeah yeah !
I say. Sure you kin go agen so quick ?

! — !

He say, Sure sure sure !
I tease a HI more. I say, An you ain gonna tell
nobody ?
He say, No no no, he ain gonna tell.
I say, But Sugar, I better not. I say, We been up

here too long already. I say, Go on, git ! Go git you
nother girl.
He look real sad, I say that. He look like he gonna

go an find him nother girl. Fer real
Gee-zuz! Ain no thin gonna go right fer me t'night?
I say — real fast — I say, Whoa Baby ! I laugh. I
say, I'm on'y teasin.

An my clothes agen an on that bed so fast
I outta
he don' know which end is up. I say, Shove over,
Lover. I say, Honeydripper, make room fer this
Honeydripper
He do.
Nex, he no sooner in the saddle an we is jes bout
ready t' raise hell when
Gee-zuz Kee-ryees ! The godam Francine pop in.
Yeah Loud's a
! fart in a empty tincan.
She say, Kitten yer in my room.
I say, Francine godam yer crazy ass, git outta here !
I kin see my trick gittin all jittery all over agen.

Francine, she say, Don' you know by this time,
this my room?
I kin feel his ol soljer jes a-wiltin an wiltin.
I say. Come on Baby, don' pay no nevermind t'her.
But he jes too fuss up. Counta Francine bein there.

I say, Francine up yers wiff a lawnmower, you git
yer greezy hair the hell outta here.
An she say. Girl who you think yer talkin to?
An I say. You you cottinpickin crab nabber.
! !
misunderstanding 39
An she say, Don you talk t'me like that, you HI

bitch, or I'll ruin you.
An I say, Francine can' you see I'm busy jes now?
Now how come you don' git ?
An she say. No. She say I gotta git, go find nother
room.
I say, Francine yer flippin yer lid ! You git right now
or I'm gonna call fer Madam.
She say, like hell I'm gonna call fer Madam. She
tell me she is gonna call fer Madam, I don' git. She

say, I goin right downstairs right now an tell Madam
yer in my room an yer takin all fuggin night for one
lousy trick.
So I say. Okay Francine, go on, tell Madam.
She ain gonna tell Madam nothin. She do. Madam
kick her ass right out ! Francine, she don' belong in
no cathouse nohow. She don' git along wiflF nobody,
hardly. She ack like hers don' stink. It do.
Time she git her crazy ass the hell outta there, my
poor lil ol Joe College done wilt like somebody bust
his balloon, an I gotta start in all the everlovin over
agen. Kee-ryess
I ain never been nobody fer fightin, but Gee-zuz
I fraid I was bigger, I'd lose my blackass Pickaninny
head fer considerin an jes take an kick livin hell outta
that Francine.
I gotta work real fast now. We was late fore she
come in an we ain getting no sooner.
I start in playin nice's I kin unner the circumstances
but I gotta start in from scratch. Kee-ryees ! I'm
talkin pritty's ever I kin, an playin nice's I know how,
an he comin along okay.
An nex, Gee-zuz I git ! me more trouble !
! — !

This muddlehead pull up an look down on me real
sad — real real sad —an he start in talkin sad too.
Steada hoppin back in the saddle on goin, he is
gonna try some make believe sweet talkin. He start in
ackin like he's playin him some movie scene. dum

Yeah ! He talk sad an then he look at me like I'm
sposed t'talk sad back.
Ooh-wee He lose me ! !
I don' know what t'do. I considerin that jack he

got an I considerin how long we been up here an I
hearin more tricks jes a-streamin in that mothahless

front door downstairs, an I jes know Madam gonna
wonner what the hell happen t'me.
I say, Sweetheart Lover, we ain got time fer that
now ! I say. Youme you gonna be quick. Here you
tol'
go pissin roun you think I got all fuggin night

like
I say, Cjcc-zuz Baby, Madam gonna think yer eatin

my ass, steada
Now godam, come on, Baby. Giddy up !
I say all that nice's I kin at that time, an I make

him He do that, I hope t'toot an back he git
smile.
the idea t'ask me my phone, but he don' git that idea
a-tall No !
Nex thing I know —^jes bout the time we startin t'go

good an I gits movin okay an I goin fine's I ever do
go, and I snappin the whip an punchin the apple, an
I wonnerin is my invessment ever gonna come thru
—
an ask me my phone an I rollin ass eas' an rollin
ass wes', an breakin my poor ol Pickaninny back fer
this dum mothah —
nex thing I know, he git him one
more dee-diddly-dum idea, an fore I know what he is
tryin t'do, he got my ass hung up clear off that
bed!
! !
misunderstanding 41
Yeah!
I say, Hoi' Baby What the fug you doin ?
it, !
She-it I open my big mouff and that son-a-bitch

!
jes stop, plop, an lay deadweight. Seem every cottin-

pickin thing I do jes backfire. I git me no thin but
trouble trouble trouble.
He say, He don' know wha's the matter. He say,
Seem like I is doin all the work !
Yeah He say / is doin the work

! !
I bout flip my lid right here. I say, Gee-zuz, Sweetie

An I try best I kin t'talk nice. I say. Course / is doin
the work. What the hell you think ? I say, / is the cat,
you is the trick ! Unnerstan ? I say. Now come on.
Lover, giddy up oncet agen an le's git the hell outta
here. I keep tryin t'tell you, we ain got no time right
now — fer talkin.
I say —an alia time tryin t'soun nice — I say. Giddy
the sweet everlovin horsey ass up oncet agen,
please
Well she-it ! He start in goin, yeah ! Sep, this time
he got him nother fancy fug idea, an he start in wham
jammin me like he's choppin rock. Yeah ! He jes a-
gruntin an rammin away like he's mad at the whole

mothahhumpin worl'.
Course, I know better'n t'open my big moufF this
time. I keep tryin t'do my stuff best I kin unner the
new circumstances, but it ain easy.
Meantime, I'm thinkin we jes gotta make it this
time an he can' git him nohow no more new dum
ideas —
an he git him nother one. Yeah He do ! !
Gee-zuz I don' know how one dum Whiteboy kin

!
behave so mean This time, he curl my blackass right

!
up double an he piledrive like he is tryin t'stan me

! ! !

on my poor ol Pickaninny head an bump me straight
down t'hell
Yeah He do ! that ! I don' know what he is tryin
t'prove, but I ain bout t'ask no more queshuns.
On'y thing I try, I try a HI reverse English. I say,
Tha's-a-way, Baby ! Hit it, Sweetheart ! Go go go

He go ! An he git him his dee-diddly-godam ten
dollah gun. At las'
I up outta that bed and doosh on the run an dress

— right now ! I even fergit all bout that invessment
idea, I so scared my ass gonna be mud, time I git back
downstairs.
Hey Lover, how come you wanna
I say, ack like
that ? You think pussy made o'steel ?

I laugh when I say that. It ain easy, but I do.
He laugh too, dum she-it.
Good thing I laugh.

Even though I am trying to keep this on a high
literary plain, I feel it is obligatory at this point that
I go into the matter of my past experience with
women. For reasons which will become clear to the
intelligent reader, I'm sure.
As I formerly mentioned, there are these two un-
professional ladies of ill repute I happen to know at
home. One is Marge and the other is Susie. Despite
their already ruined reputations, I refuse to mention
their last names. I'm not a cad, for gosh sakes ! On the
other hand, I'm not a prude either. What I mean
to say is, I'm just a normal nineteen-year-old fellow,
with normal appetites and all that, and these girls
(at home) are always calling me up anyway. Don't

get me wrong —
I certainly don't go with either one
of them. As previously mentioned, Barbara is my girl,

and she's a very high-minded girl too. I wouldn't
touch Barbara. I'm not that type. As a matter of
fact, we may marry some day. But marriage, for me,
and also for Barbara, is in the future, so as I've already

mentioned, there are these two girls at home, whom
43
—

I occasionally date. I mean, go out with. I can't really
consider them dates, for gosh sakes !
What I'm driving at is this : Both of them consider

me the best lover in town. I don't mean to brag, but
they do. They're constanly telling me they do, and
they*ve been telling me this for some time now. And
I'm fully aware that the reason they feel this way
even though they run with any number of other fel-
lows, being the sort they are — is that I'm far from
unendowed physically. Also, I know how to handle
myself in the backseat of our family Chevy. Though,
again must emphasize, I'm not trying to brag. I'm
I
only stating thefacts, the hard cold facts. And as for
my being loose enough to run with these two, I must

mention that I do not wish to enter wedlock, especi-
ally with such a fine girl as Barbara, completely naive
about such important matters as the techniques of
love-making.
Enough said. About that aspect, I mean. I do not
wish to dwell on such matters incessantly. I point
the above out only to emphasize the sort of fellow
I am.
And as a preliminary to a comment on my ill re-
pute experience. Which is, namely : Much to my
surprise, I found that in certain respects Hank was
almost right. I mean, he doesn't really know it. He's
half right without knowing it. He's right in that col-

ored girls That is, this colored girl
are not the same.
I found myself with was not the same as either Marge
or Susie. In several regards.
Not that I'm ready to concede to Hank's idea that
Negro girls are somehow, in some mysterious way,
superior (and I insist that, despite his denials, sup>er-
!
misunderstanding AS
ior what he means) to white girls. No, he's wrong

is
about that, and I was forced to conclude I was even

more right than I had realized.
—
But different that's my point. For instance (and
this will be difficult to tell without becoming obscene)
this colored professional prostitute had the same in-
clination that Margie has, except she went about it

. .Well, she went about it more so than Margie ever
.
did. I mean, she just acted as if it was quite natural,

as I suppose, in view of her status, it was. Though I
found her manner of approach more than slightly
disquieting. I mean, it was so professional, so un-
dramatic and lacking in the necessary preliminaries.
It was startling, almost sickening, for gosh sakes
I suppose, however, that never having been to a
house of ill repute, I had acquired certain miscon-
ceptions about how such —
women behaved based on
my normal experiences. Experiences unpaid
natural,
for, is what
mean. I
In fact, I was so surprised by her manner of

approach (and also by a couple of unlikely intrus-
ions by some other paid professional colored girl,
who kept opening our door and sticking her head in-
side, first while mine was gone, and then later) that
I reached my first (if you'll pardon the expression)

climax a bit too hastily. (I should also add that the
surroundings I found myself in had something to do
with the above.)
I then learned that it's one climax per customer,
for gosh sakes ! One and you're out. Well, again I
don't mean to brag, but when
I go out with Margie
or Susie, one isfrom enough. For me, at any rate.

far
So, when I learned I was considered finished by this
colored girl after that one, I objected. She then told
me that this was the rule and that I had to go.
—
But unsatisfied with my unsatisfactory experience,
and convinced that I had much to learn about this
phase of life (paid prostitution) before I could con-
sider myself really truly a man of the world, I turned
on the old sales charm and convinced that professional
she should break her rules, just this once. Which she
did, making it more evident that she found me to her
liking.
And, at this point, I might add that, having the sort

of analytical mind I have, I'm prone to vary my in-
tellectual approach from and at times

time to time,
I think in representations. In fact, I began thinking
in representations when this girl first approached in

the hitherto described manner. I thought Poor thing : !
OfTspring of Southern slavery. And here she is (to my

representation thinking) a slave once more. (I mean
when she was going about it in the perverted way.)
Here I am, the white master, just laying back while
she works with no compensation —^much like some
nasty white slaveholder might have sat on his ver-
anda, sipping mint julips, while a gang of slaves
picked his cotton.
Then, that thinking was interrupted, and later, after
I'd persuaded her to break that house rule, I returned

to thinking in representations, and I thought : From
slave toemployee Now, at last, emancipation And
! !
she now works under me as part of an actively en-

—
gaged company team employer and employee. Com-
pensation at last ! But is her compensation adequate ?
(And it is about right here that we were interrupted
by this other prostitute, who stuck her head in through
misunderstanding 47
the door —a
most perturbing habit she had. There
seemed to be absolutely no privacy in that place.
And she and my girl got into an argument about
whose room it was we were in, and both of them
shouted the most vile profanities at each other, until
the other one left, and I went back to thinking) :
Is she adequately compensated? After all, she likes

me, and after all, I'm here to find out, to learn about
a phase of life I've never come into contact with.
Why don't you, thought I, JG my friend, be a good
employer and up her wages? (Representatively think-
ing, you understand.) Why don't you One, show —
her you are far from a prejudiced white person, and
Two, that you know how to handle yourself in bed
with a woman, no matter what the color of her skin.
What I mean is, even though she was (to my repre-
sentative thinking) at that time my employee, she was
doing all the work. I thought : Good gracious, JG,
this will never do. You, after all, are the one who
should carry the old football, so to speak. You are
the male component.
So I did. I mean, I went about showing her that I
could, after all, handle myself with a woman, I
thought : It's about time she found out that even

though employee (representatively thinking)
she's the
I'll let her know I'm every bit as good at this sort
of business as she is, and by letting her know, I'll in-

crease her wages and decrease her working effort,
causing a marked rise in plant efficiency.
I mean, ha ha, just a manner of thinking — in repre-
sentations.
But, lo and behold, I had apparently broken some
other house rule, for I had not expected
learned she
!

me to take the initiative in our — well, you know what
I mean.
But, having broken one house rule to reach this
stage, I decided to ignore that second house rule as
well, and to proceed as per my original representation
thinking, which I did, I let her have it. I mean, I
—
showed manly initiative the way I do especially with
Susie —and showed that ill repute colored girl a thing
or two. I mean, I let her know she had a man with
her. I left her with no doubts about that
Then . . .
But I've neglected to mention an important aspect.

Another house rule, apparently, for she seemed in a
terrific hurry to get back downstairs. I mean, it seems
she was supposed to spend only so much time with each

customer and then rush him out, and that she was
already running overtime with me. (Ha ha.) So she
rushed about and hopped back into her blouse and
skirt (all she wore, for gosh sakes !) and was hurrying
out the door, when I conceived an idea I felt at the
time was a brilliant one, but which later turned out
to be the beginning of my misadventure proper, which,
though it enriched me in experience, led to some
rather startling digressions.
My thinking at this point was extremely involved,
subtle, and also rapid. First, I was laughing to my-
self at how startled Hank would be if he ever found
out how I had impressed a paid professional colored
prostitute, right in her own house of ill repute, for
gosh sakes ! Second, I was thinking that if I could
persuade her to this point, with further objective
planning and action, I might continue the trend and
further my extra-curricular education somewhat. I
— —
misunderstanding 49
might learn even more about paid professional colored

ladiesby persuading her to meet me at some other
time and some other place.
I was laying there wondering just how I could
go about thiswhen my idea struck. And I mean

struck ! It came like a bolt from the devine blue
the way Prof. McGillicuty says highly intellectual
poetical ideas come.
My idea was, namely, this : That, in view of
First, how unintelligent and uneducated she was, and
Second, how profoundly impressed she was with yours
truly, (ha ha) and Third, of how easily I had charmed
her several moments ago, I decided
To her I was a burglar and wanted by the
tell
police and desperate for a place to hide until the

heat was off.
Fantastic, I know. But that was my idea. And, lo
and behold, it worked. Honest I told her that I!
had been burglarizing homes in the Mount Wood-

stock District, and that by tracing my fingerprints the
police had found me out.
This had a remarkable effect on her. She not only
believed me but apparently decided I was her kind
— her own underworld kind. I mean, to her mind,
now that she found I was an actual criminal, for
gosh sakes, she considered me a sort of friend. Well,
more than just a friend, as it turned out. She went
to some lengths to make sure we would meet some
place else, and meet soon, and also that I would have
a place to hide out. She did, in fact, (and I know this
will sound just too too fantastic, but it's hard cold
fact nevertheless) give me the key to her apartment.
! !
I tell him so long, an I'm on my blackass way flyin
out the door, an he grab my arm !
Yeah ! I dam near leave that mothahless arm be-

hind fore I stop. Then I draw me one bigass breath
and I bout t'let that dum daddio know jes wha's on
my mind, as he up an say, Hoi' it, hoi' it jes a secen*.
An then he babble him off some dum bullshe-it bout
bein a burgler, fer Kee-ryees sake !
First, I say. Okay yer a burgler, I'm a bumblebee,

but I ain got nothin fer you t'take jes now, mister
burgler. I ain even got me no more fuggin time. No
time a-tall
But he still hangin on my arm an talkin an sayin

he need him someplace t'hide. Yeah ! He say that
Gee-zuz ! I gonna need me
bout t'tell him / is
someplace t'hide, he don' let go my arm. But I do

me some o'the fastes considerin I ever in my whole
poor ol Pickaninny life ever done, an I say, Man
you wanna hide?
An he say, Yeah ! Tha's what he wanna do.
Considerin an considerin, I don' know why he jes
don' ask me my phone, but he ain done that, an he ain

50
!
misunderstanding 51
bout to. On'y thing I know is he ain got him no faith.

No faith a-tall ! All that mothahless jack an no faith.
But ooh-wee ! I gotta do somethin. Madam gonna

kick my blackass over the moon, I don' git back
downstairs right now
I say t'mysefT, I say, He wanna place t'hide, an he
got what it take. Dum up a way a-goin bout linin
weekend, but had me no weekend trick an
I ain never
he got enuflf so's he kin be jes's dum's he wanna be.
Yeah He got him at least one hunner, look like, an
!
him an it ain strangers, and he ain got no faith. Long

on loot, short on faith !
I say t'myseff, Girl fer that kinda jack you kin
godam well believe anythin this dum Whiteboy wanna

tell you.
I say. Okay Burgler, down is up. Le's go t'the moon.
You wanna place t'hide, you got it.
An I tell him where I live.
Kee-ryess ! I say t'myseff, Girl you in such a big-

ass hurry over Madamgit an git, you dam near run
right past one Big Money Honey. Gee-zuz Yer four- !
teen already, you gotta slow down an start in givin

some.
He say he don' know where is that place I live. I
tell him the number an say. Take a cab, man, take a
cab. I see you in the mornin. Yeah I see you all !
weekend. I say, I go back downstairs, an then I'm

gonna mess roun some till you finish dressin an come
on down, then I'm gonna come up t'you an I'm gonna
have my partmin key in my hand. I do this, you mess
roun an you jes perten like you is nuts, an that ain
gonna be too hard You come up t'me from behind,
!
see, an start in nuzzlin me. You jes lean over an put

!

yer arms roun me an then I kin slip you my key.
Unnerstan ? Okay ? You dig ?
He look a lil dum, but he say, Okay.
I take off, leave him t'git back in all them clothes.
Ooh-wee This ! kin

better'n waitin fer him t'call. I
work this big Friday night now an go on home in the

mornin an this Big Money Honey invessment gonna
be there.
Invessment? She-it! I ain got me no invessment, I
got me a whole crazy-ass bank ! Yeah ! No tellin
where I go from here, everythin go right.
I git downstairs, the sittin room jes fulla tricks but

I can' go up now. No !
I scoot like somebody lit my tail, on back

right
t'the dressin room, an make s'if I is gonna powder up
some more. Madam see me go but she too busy t'do
anythin right now. Tricks jes a-streamin in.
I git my key outta my purse an start peekin out

thru the curtin, waitin fer my Big Money Honey. He
bout take all night.
But he make it. I see him standin there, lookin dum,
an I scoot back out t'the sittin room an he do like I
tol' him. He ack dum an start sayin he wanna go
back upstairs wiff me an while we is funnin like that,
I slip him my key.

I say, Nex time. Lover.
He say. Okay, nex time.
An he take off out the door.
Phew Invessment! ain easy t'git.
Burgler ? -Kee-ryess
Trouble ! Gee-zuz ! Course he got trouble. Wiff
that wad, course he got nothin but trouble.
I on my swingin ass way back upstairs wiff an-
!
mitunderstanding 53
other College Joe, I say t'myseff, Burgler you jes go

on home t'my place an hide yerseff cozy. Don' you
go nowhere else, man. I git home, we gonna talk some
real sweet weekend bizness t'begin wiff, then we gonna
settle down t'invessment. An who know what that
gonna lead to
Kee-ryess How come one cat git her ass so lucky
!
so fast? Way he finger that wad, I know, I jes dee-

diddly-dam well know this invessment gonna be long
an happy.
utside the ill repute house again, this time with
her key in my pocket, I paused a moment for some
hard, bold, analytical thinking. I thought : Good
JC Have you by any chance, somewhere be-
grief, !
tween nine o'clock and now, become guilty of ration-

alization ?
But the answer, of course, was an emphatic No.

After all, I honestly owed this little escapade to my
education. mean, a formal education is one thing,
I
but there are, after all, a few things one doesn't learn
inside a classroom. And closely and objectively in-
specting the environment and activity of one colored
lady of ill repute (both professional) was something
which would certainly stand me in good stead later on
in life. Besides, I'm inclined to think that Dad must
have had some similar experience when he was young,
or else how could he be so sophisticated and well
equipped for his outside job on the town obscenity
board ? (Outside office and hospital, that is.)
Added to that — the fact that she believed my fan-
tastic burglar story and had slipped me the key to
her apartment and wanted me to hide out there (no
54
misunderstanding 55
doubt in an illicit living arrangement with her) and

that such circumstances do not present themselves
often (ha ha), I felt practically obliged to follow
through.
And find out what Which, up to the pres-
I could.
ent time, had About
been plenty. such paid profes-
sional ladies, I mean, and specifically in exactly which
ways and by which methods they are different, and
morally cancerous.
The big immediate danger being, of course, ven-
ereal disease. But even Dad has told me that pro-
fessional prostitutes are very careful about disease,
and Hank has constantly beaten on my ears about
how the colored girls who work in houses of ill re-
pute inspect each customer and wash his certain
unprintable parts, and also see a doctor regularly. (I
doubt Hank's word about them seeing a doctor regu-

larly, for gosh sakes. I can't imagine a waiting room
full of such ladies. But she did inspect me.) (Care-

fully.) So I decided to remain undaunted and carry
on. After all, it isn't every day, as I've pointed out,
that a student gets an opportunity outside the class-
room to learn firsthand the really substandard side of
life. (Though I'm fully aware, that in my case at
least, it was less an opportunity than the result of my
own quick thinking and natural endowments which
had led me to my present pass.)
So, it was Hup two three four. Hup two three four,
back up that dark street, meeting this virtual mob
of fellows climbing out of cars and walking, probably
students, going in the opposite direction, until I re-
emerged on the avenue. There to pause for one short
moment —
again teetering on the brink of indecision.
! —

I thought Should you, James Cartwright Holland,
:
really actually go there? Or would it be better to

toss this educational opportunity to the winds and
return to the frat house ?
Then a taxi came towards me and I hailed it, and
I thought No, you have nothing to do absolutely
: —
—
nothing until Monday morning. Why miss a socio-
logical opportunity which may leave you wiser in
every way? And, after all, you are a normal male
human being with normal appetites, and it will be a
long time before you go home again and can see
Margie or Susie.
Also, I thought of my flunking grades —biology,
psychology, French —
and how angry Dad was going
to be when he found out about them, and what a
rough second half semester I was up against.
Good grief ! I had really never stopped to con-
sider the seriousness of the matter —flunking out, I
mean. I thought Imagine you, JG, flunked out
:
disowned by friends and family, a bum, an actual

—
bum an outcast, even, sneaking about in neighbor-
hoods such as this one, picking food from garbage
cans, ending by dying tragically in a gutter some
place. Holy Christmas
One big wild unlikely weekend (of field study, so to
speak) (or, if you please, cultural exchange) with a
paid professional lady (colored), then it's back to the
books, this time in earnest.
Well, anyway, the taxi stopped and I bounced in
and gave him the address she had given me. Off we
went. And I'll certainly admit it I was glad to be —
back inside a taxi and on my way out of that neigh-
borhood. As we went past the Black-n-Tan, those
! —
misunderstanding 57
Negro fellows were still standing there, doing nothing.

Except that seemed a couple of them were staring,
it
me. That bunch of loafers made me

for gosh sakes, at
shudder. I don't mean that I'm prejudiced, but I
don't understand how they can just stand and stand
and do absolutely nothing for minute after minute,
hour after hour. I suppose, though, that it's racial.
I mean, what other explanation could there be? And
just the other day, one frat brother was talking about
his army experience and he claims many Negroes
make very poor soldiers —made a poor record in the
Great War, don't follow orders well at all — so I
suppose you just can't get away from it, it's racial.
Them standing there doing nothing, I mean.

But I had happier thoughts to think, for the taxi
was going in the general direction of the university
— back to the only part of this god-forsaken town I
know anything about. Not that I'm completely famil-
iar with that section, but at least it's civilized. It may
not be friendly, like my own hometown, but it's civil-
ized. I'll say that for it. So the closer we got to it,
the better I felt about the entire proposition. Until

Bamb!
We drove right smack dab into began to it ! Then I
get a little worried. I She can't

thought : Impossible !
live here, can she? In a dormitory, or something?

(Ha ha.) Christmas
But as it turned out, worry in the
I didn't have a
world. On that score. We drove right on through
the university section of the city and kept right on
going into a part of town I'd never even seen before.
Then we made some fancy turns and zigzaggings
—
which completely lost me up one street, left for half
!

a block, right for two blocks, left again, and so forth,
until —Bamb again !
Here we are at some huge apartment house with a

canopy, for gosh sakes, out over the sidewalk Christ- !
mas Holy Christmas I mean, it wasn't a new apart-

! !
ment house, and it certainly wasn't as swank

exactly,
as, say, a Park Avenue address or anything like that,
but it was a far cry from what I had expected.

(Though I can't really say what I had expected, for
I had no specific expectation.) The point is, I didn't
expect this !
Well, I paid the driver, tipping him judiciously,

just in case, and strolled on in, as if I knew what I
was doing. (Ha ha.) Fortunately, there wasn't a soul
in sight. What was in sight was this lobby aflfair with
overstuffed chairs and that stuff here and there, a
huge long wooden table and about the biggest wall
mirror I've ever seen anywhere. And that carpet
Wow! I thought: Christmas, JC ! Before you get to
the elevator, you're liable to drown for gosh sakes
But I made it.
Needless to say, perhaps. The point is that . . .
Well, might as well admit it. What I mean to say is,

I
right here, due to a slight oversight, I panicked. I

pushed the button for the elevator and panicked. I
thought What the heck apartment am I supposed
:
to be going to anyway? You see, I didn't even know

her name, let alone the number of her apartment.
What to do, what to do,
I up the janitor and describing
thought- of hunting
her to him hope that he could direct me, but
in the
— I It wasn't like I was on my way to see an
mean !
old friend who had recently moved. She was non-

—
misunderstanding 59
white, so certainly the janitor would also be non-
white. And she was an ill repute at that. In view of
these matters, and even though the place was sort of
fancy, I mean far from decrepit, who knows what I'd
encounter in the form of a janitor?
(Right about here, I should add that that place
knocked me out I mean, I somehow had gotten the
!
idea that prostitution and slums went hand in hand,

so prostitutes lived, like a hand in a glove, in slums.
Well, I was learning.)
—
But meanwhile what the heck to do. The eleva-
tor arrived and I stood there looking at it for awhile,
then turned away. I thought : Good gracious, JG,
should you go all the way back to that ill repute house
and ask her her name and apartment number? But,
good grief, the taxi had cost me two dollars and
fifty cents, countinc' the tip. Five bucks that would
be. No, seven-fifty, by the time I got back. I mean,

it's only money, but !
Of course all this trouble was due to my slight over-
sight. I hadn't looked at the key she'd given me.. Once

I did, my worries were over, so to speak. It said,
'Apt. 404.'
what little oversights can lead to.
Silly,
I went to the fourth floor, got off and found

So up
Room 404. I mean. Apt. 404. And, yes, the key un-
locked the door. I found the light switch and
Bamb!
What a place she had Wow I mean Ghristmas
! ! ! !
You went in and right off the bat, there, just in-
side the door was this huge mat, like a Japanese mat.
To the left of that was this little foyer affair with
shoes on the floor and coats hanging up. I got the
!

point. I took off my shoes and left them in that little
foyer. Ihave a quick mind for such things.
have to be pretty stupid to wear
Besides, you'd
shoes past that mat because that rug wow Such a — !
rug Permit me one gross understatement

! It was :
white. I mean, WHITE. Pure white Hollywood !
white Matter of fact, the whole entire place seemed

!
like something out of Hollywood. The big white rug,

wall to wall, and feeling sort of made of feathers, and
then these walls —sky blue, with paintings, for gosh
sakes, like from Mexico, hanging on them. And, on
the far wall, this great tremendous curtain hanging
from ceiling to floor and wall to wall. (It covered
a big picture window, I was soon to learn.) Then, for
furniture, there were these low cofFeetables. I mean,
low And big. Sort of a dark purple color. Some-
!
thing like that. And then, this couch. As big as a bed,

it looked. Matter of fact, it looked more like a bed
than a couch, except that it had a backrest and arms

and separate cushions and all.
But that wasn't all. The entire place was fantastic
(Oh I realize it was gaudy, but I mean, it wasn't what
I had expected. It was also swanky, even if it was
gaudy.) The white rug went right on into this bed-

room and in there, there was another one of those
bed-couch affairs, but this one had a pink counter-
pane and pillows, and so I was forced to conclude it
was, in fact, a bed, no stuff. It had to be a bed, you
see, because there were only three rooms and a bath-
room, and 'the third room was a kitchen. (Also fan-

tastic !)
Well, I ran around for awhile, inspecting, looking

everything over well, trying to convince myself I had
! !
misunderstanding 61
the key to such an apartment, given to me by the girl

(even if she was colored) who lived here. It hardly
seemed possible. In fact, in strict matter of hard cold
fact, itseemed unbelievable But, I managed to get
!
acclimatized finally, and settled in the bedroom be-

cause she had this tremendous hi fi in there. I felt
in the mood, about that time, for some nice smooth
semi-classics, but I soon discovered she (but after all,
she can't help being unintelligent and uneducated,

and so lacking in good taste) had nothing but jazz
records. But wow Did she have plenty of those
!
Stacks and stacks of nothing but jazz on labels I'd

never even heard of, for gosh sakes, by artists I'd
never even heard of. But, I discovered how the hi fi
worked and put on a stack. Then I took off my suit
and shirt and hung them neatly in her closet (equally
fantastic !) and flopped down on her bed.
I thought JG my friend, pinch yourself. You
:
may be dreaming
!
M I
ornin, I git
the door unlatch.
home, he's there. Yeah ! He leave
Big Money Honey sleepin in my bed.

Sometime, mornin, I watch tee vee. I watch the
man put the numbers on the map. Sep this mornin,
the man ain on, cause it's Saterday.
She-it
Right now, what I shoulda done, I shoulda got me
my weekend hunner. I shoulda wake him up an got
my loot. Madam say. Git the cash first.
Yeah I shoulda, but I di'n'. Jackie
! say, invess-
ment is give an git, give an git.
Trouble know what-the-fug fer sure.
is, I still don'
Maybe he gonna be invessment, maybe he jes gonna
be a weekend. Maybe he gonna take off an I ain
gonna see him no more. I bout tween a she-it and a
sweat an a give an a git.
But I say t'myseff, Girl one thing sure. Him an

that wad ain strangers, so ain no use you gittin too
greedy too- quick. Jes relax an maybe you end up
hittin the jackpot. Yeah ! I say t'myseflP, Girl maybe
you got you a whole fuggin Rockafellah ! She-it, you
don' know. Play it cool an find out.
62
!
misunderstanding 63
Sep, on'y one trouble. This poor ol cat is draggin

ass. Yeah ! Friday big night.
Lazy pussy ain gonna do nobody no good, I know.
But a sore pussy ain gonna do nobody no good neither.
I put my poor ol blackass in that bed, hard t'tell wha's
gonna happen, him sleepin like he is. On'y he give

me a chance t'sleep an git some naecher back, we kin
have us some nice fun. Later.
Nex, I find it ain gonna be easy. Jackie say, Invess-
ment real simple, nothin to it.
Gonna haff t'straighten Jackie out some.
I haff way int'bed, my Big Money Honey pop up
like the whole worl' comin t'the end. Yeah He sit !
up right now! He say, like, he say, Wha, Who, Hee,

Ho!
He jittery agen.
I say. Sweet Baby it's on'y me.

An then, trouble trouble trouble.
First, he take off his unnerwear. Yeah ! He been
sleepin in his unnerwear. Gee-zuz !
Then he give me this crap-happy smile, an then he

start in grabbin my ass like he wanna have me fer
breakfes'.
I say. Whoa Baby I say. Sweet Lover, hoi' the
!
phone ! Man ain you got no considerashun ? I

I say,
been workin my poor ol ass all night long Kee-ryess ! !
Pussy ain made o'steel. an later on we

Hoi' off a lil,
kin have us a real nice time. I say, Cool it. Lover,

put that mean nasty tiger back in his cage an let me
git some sleep. Okay ?
But he ain buyin none o'that. No-oh-oh This good I
mornin daddio wanna do nothin but go Yeah !
I keep on tryin t'be real nice an talk sofF. I say,

!

Lay back down, Wildman. Lay back down an I fix
you up good.
But he so fuggin square his head got corners. He
don' hear nothin I say. He frisky's a tomcat wiffout
ears an twicet's nasty.

Gee-zuz ! I too tired t'fight, too tired t'fug, an he
ain fer talkin. Trouble trouble trouble !
I can' help it, I lose my cottinpickin head. I quit

talkin soff an You crap-happy fay mothahfuggin
I say,
son-a-bitch ! Fer Kee-ryees sake man Git off me an !
go Can' you see I ain got no naecher leff?

t' sleep.
He But then he go t'layin there lookin

quit, okay.
real hurt. He wrinkle up an jes look hurt.
She-it! I can' git no sleep, him lookin like that.
Sides I ain got no right t' treat no trick like that.
I say. Okay Lover, you win. One more ain gonna
kill me. I spose.
An I give this one las' Friday job all the snap I
got leff. I like t'break my poor ol blackass, but I do.
Know what he do? That dum she-it stop right in

the middle an he cuss me out ! Yeah !He start in
givin me hell fer goin good, an he tell me t'do like I
feel like doin.
Gee-zuz ! He plain nuts
I say — nice's I kin — I say, Okay Lover, I feel like
sleepin.
So I lay like dead, and he go t'jammin an rammin.
Then he roll off an go t'sleep, an I dam well do
the same. I sleep like I ain livin.
Nex, all this stompin an bangin an bumpin up-
wake us boff up, an right now my Whiteboy pop

stairs
up like a mothahjumpin jack-in-a-box an hop outta

bed. Yeah He pop an hop an go runnin roun like
!
misunderstanding 65
he bout t'fly. Firs' thing I know, he climb int'his
pants hke he wanna take off fer the moon.

I say t'myseff, Whooops This ain gonna do no !
good.
First he wanna wham bam my poor old worn out
me t'death, then he wanna run off an leave me wiffout
even payin. Yeah ! He wanna take that wad an go !
I bout t'lose my Pickaninny head agen an scratch

his eyes out, but I don'. I see he is mostly jittery, tha's
He scared o'that bumpin upstairs.

all.
On'y one thing t'do. I haul ass outta bed an baby

him up some more. I gotta tell him ain nothin but
noise upstairs, nothin t'git jittery bout.
He say, Wha's all that noise come from ?
I say. She-it, I don' know. Ain nothin but noise is
all.
He say. He think this a nice place an noise, like,
ain right here.

I tell him. Sure this a nice place, but noise is noise
anyplace.
See, Francine, she live straight up. I don' tell this
mothah that, but I say t'myseff, That Francine's at it

agen. She got that girlfrien' wiff her an they is puttin
on a show.
Like, Francine, she got this one White girlfrien*
come in an raise hell. They puts on shows fer tricks
sometime, an sometime they puts on shows fer nobody.
They puttin on a show fer nobody is causin all that
bumpin. But I don' tell my invessment that. I don' tell
him nothin I don' gotta tell him.

Pritty soon he see I ain scared, he feel better. He
take off his pants an hang 'em up agen. He do this,
I try t'see, is his wad still in 'em, but I can' tell fer
! !

sure, and I don' wanna ack greedy an reach in his
pocket right in front o'him.
I say, Piss on that noise. Lover. Le's sleep.
But he say he don' wanna sleep no more.

I tell him I do. ••
He say, Okay, sleep.

I do. I so dam tired, I jes go right back t'sleep an
don' even give a toot bout him prowlin roun my
partmin.
Nex time I wake up, he got them pants on agen.
He jes standin in the doorway, lookin at me, wearin
them pants. I don' know why he figure he gotta put
on clothes, but sure's hell he's wearin them pants.
On'y one good thing bout that. I kin see the lump
his wad's makin in his pants. Yeah I kin see that !
pritty lil ol lump jes plain's day. I say t'myseff. Well

at least he ain tryin t'pull no cheat.
Then I say. Hey Lover, how come you dress?
He say, I ain dress !
Gee-zuz ! I don' know what he calls it.
I say, You is too dress !
He say. He ain. He say. All I got on's my pants.

Kee-ryess
I say, Sweet Baby, whatta you call pants? You
don' need no pants here. I say, Sweetheart, take 'em
off an leave me hang 'em up real nice agen.
He say, Wha, Who, Hee, Ho He say, He ! ain
got him no unnerwear on, or nothin !
I say. She-it So what ? !
He say—rlike, he make dum noises —an he say,

He git chilly, he run roun wiffout nothin on.
Gee-zuz
I say, Oh no, Sugar. Jes open the curtin on the
!
misunderstanding 67
winda an we git us some sunshine, keep us warm,

an then we kin do us a hi Adam an Eve.
He say, Who, Wha, Ho, Hee Agen he say hke !
that. An he stan there lookin dum fer a minit. But

he do, he open the curtin. Then he come back an take
his wad-happy pants off an hang 'em up real nice.
Ooh-wee That wad make me feel good He hangf
! !
in, I wanna hop outta bed an help. Sep, I don' wanna
look greedy an ack nasty, so I stay put.

He done hangin, I git up. We jes fuss roun, him
playin my records an me goin an gittin me a bath.
I'm in the tub, he wanna know does I want him
t'wash my back.
Hee hee
I say. Sure Honey, sure !
He do. Yeah ! He wash real nice. Feel good. He

done, I lay back down in the tub an start in talkin
t'myseff bout all that jack. I snooze some, doin that.
Then he come back an wake me up an ask don' I
never eat.
I say, Hell yeah, I eat.

He say, Grissmiss ! When ?
He alia time sayin crissmiss.
I say, now I'm gonna cut yer cute cock off
Right
an man. Whatta you thinka that ?
fry him,
He laugh. He doin okay. Bout now, it seem pritty
nice havin a rich White loverboy roun here. Long's
he kin pay.
He wanna know, I gonna make us breakfes ?
Gee-zuz He coulda make us breakfes while
! he was
fartin roun here. But I don' say that. I say, Ain you
gonna make us breakfes ?
He look dum agen. I git outta the tub and dry off
! ! .

an start makin breakfes. I fry eight eggs, an he say he
thinks tha's too many. He make a noise Uke a chicken.
But he eat bout six o'them eggs.
Then he wanna know how old I am. him six-
I tell
teen. Couple-a years don' hurt nothin. Nobody take

me fer fourteen anyhow, less I tell 'em. An Madam
say, Tell 'em eighteen. Too much law trouble, bein
fourteen. But Gee-zuz ! Time I git t'be eighteen, I
wanna retire, have me some fun fer myseff

He say. He is nineteen !
I say,So what
He say. So nothin. Ab'slootly nothin !
Then he wanna know my name, so I tell him

Kitten.
I say, Wha's yer name?
He say,Jimmy.
Yeah ! Jimmy Hee hee Jimmy the Burgler
! ! !
Nex, I git him t'do the dishes. He don' wanna, but

I sweet talk him an play him int'doin them anyhow.
An that gives me my chance. I go back, sneak a look
in his pants. Yeah ! I Over one hunner.
count fast !
Okay, I feel better an better, now I know he kin pay

real easy fer the whole weekend, I ain tol' him t'pay
yet, but I wanna know he kin, anyhow. Sides, maybe
he turn out t'be invessment fer sure an I don' gotta
ask him t'pay fer no lousy weekend. He be my in-
vessment, he kin jes pay what he want when he wanna.
I git all fuss up, thinkin all that loot an how him
an it such real good frien's. I say t'mysefF, Girl, time
t'do you some givin you kin do you some gittin
so's
later. Tha's how invessment work, ain it? Okay, start

givin
I git t'feelin. so good, I say t'myseff, Girl you need
! !
misunderstanding 69
a HI rest anyhow, why don' you call Madam an
knock oflF fer the weekend,now you sure he kin pay.
Yeah ! Give my Big Money Honey a fine time steada
lookin down all them Saterday night one-eyes.
I say. Honey how bout I knock off fer the week-
end?
He say, Huh?
Ooh-wee Skinny Minnie ! Whatta moon-goin
muddlefug
He say. Off work ?
Yeah Sugar, off work.
I say.
He say. Yeah yeah yeah !
So I call Madam on the phone. I say, Madam I'm

sick.
She say, She-it

I say, I be in Monday night, gotta take off t'night
an Sunday.
She say, Girl you lie ! She git mad an say it gonna
be a big Saterday night, she needs me. She say. She
kin tell I way I say it.
ain sick
Piss on Madam. Me an my Big Money Honey gonna
start us up one fine invessment. We gonna be frien's.
I tell Madam I'm sick an tha's that ! I say it so's
she kin tell I needs a rest.
She say, Okay but she don' like it none a-tall.
Then I feel good. I feel better an better. I lay

down on my nice rug wiff couple-a pillas unner my
head an watch my Big Money Honey doin dishes.
I watch the cheeks o'his ass movin. He got a pritty ass.
He finish, he load up the recordplayer agen, an
then he lay down too. We jes a-layin in the sunshine
on my nice rug feelin good, lissenin t'the music.
Sep, I kin tell he ain lissenin to it. He lissenin at
!

it. I spect he jes don' dig color' music. He's too fay
White.
But he doin okay, anyhow.
Everythin fine now, an I kin even feel mysefF gittin
back a lil naecher. Yeah ! He lookin pritty good bout
now.
I say t'myseff, I say, Girl you ain turn' on fer over
a whole week. Work work work an gittin no good fun
fer yerseflf, is what you been doin. Girl. No wonner
you ain got much pep.
Big Money Honey t'do him
I say t'mysefF, I kin git
some jam bammin at the right time, I kin turn on
o'his
hotass good. Yeah An we got us all weekend t'play
!
nice an fetch us some high flyin too.

Hot dam
I say, Hey Adam, you gotta lil ol apple you wanna
give Eve?
But he jes look dum agen. Kee-ryess !
Insprashun ! Yeah, he need him some insprashun.

Put us boff in a cross-country mood.
So I git up an git my pitchers. Make me feel good,
thinkin how he gonna feel when he see my pitchers.
Ooh-wee them pitchers too. I got 'em took by
! I like
pay me fifty. He takes 'em someplace,

this fotograffer,
sells 'em. But he give me some first, an I like t'look
at 'em oncet in awhile. I was younger when they

was took, got me more titty now. But I ain
gotta wear no bra like Francine gotta. Course, Fran-
cine, she ain nothing but a sassy-ass has-been. She
dam near thirty.
I puts the girl-girl ones on the bottom an the ones

wiflf the Whiteman on top, an I come back. He sittin
a-gin the divan smokin an dreamin an lissenin t'the

! !
misunderstanding 71
music. He lookin prittier an prittier. Lil ol Johnny-

cock jes a-hangin loose an layin on the rug. Ain
gonna lay Hke that fer long. Hee hee !
I say, Hey Baby, look here !
He do.
Oncet I show these pitchers t'Bennie an he like
t'turn me inside out

Big Money Honey lookin, up come that cute lil ol
thing, jes nice's kin be. Then he look at me an ack

bashful, like. Then he do him some more pitcher
lookin.
I say. Hey Jimmy the Burgler, you figure on jimmy-
in somethin wiff that ?
An I say, Hey Sweet Sugar Loverboy Honey, what
you got in mind t'do wiff that cute lil thing?
An Kee-ryess ! Fore I know it, I stuck my foot in
it. Yeah ! I hurt his feelings, jes talkin an funnin like
that, I hurt his fuggin don' mean to, but I
feelins. I
do. Fer a minit, I don' know what in the wide-ass

worl' I do t'hurt him, but I sure know I do. He lookin
hurter an hurter, an then he lookin mean !
Gee-zuz ! I say. Baby wha's-a matter ?

An bout the time I say that, I know wha's-a matter.
But fore I kin fix it up, he's off an runnin dum agen.
He say — real loud an mad, like —he say, Lil ! He
say, what the hell you mean, lil
He say it, LIT till. Is how he
like, say it. He start
in shoutin bout how it ain LIT till.
Trouble trouble trouble. This fuggin invessment
ain nothin but trouble. Alia time misunnerstan. Gee-
zuz ! I shoulda knowed I can' joke wiff this dum
bastid. Madam alia time sayin, All fay tricks the same
that way. Never say lil. Always say, Oooh what a big
big one you got. An then say, Wow An ! carry on.
That make 'em feel good.
I shoulda knowed, but right now it seem t'me my
Big Money Honey got him such a nice —such a big
nice one, I jes plain fergit. i
Anyhow, I jes lissen t'his shoutin fer a time, then

I shout back. I say, Shut up ! Yeah ! I say, Jimmy
you dum doe-doe, jes hoi' yer yip-yappin mothah-
jumpin jaw a minit, will ya?
He do.
I say, Baby what the hell you think I am? Pussy
from nose t'toes? An I say. Baby what I was tryin
t'say, I was tryin t'say you got a pritty one. It ain fer
Kee-ryess sake LIT til, it's jes right. Okay? So what
the hell you want, a phonepole ?
Then he smile an git t'feelin better.
I man We got all weekend
say, Gee-zuz, ! !
An he jes look dum.

I say t'mysefF, This dum mothah ack like
he wanna
do know how. Kee-ryess Kin
nice but he jes don' !
he be that dum? Don' he know better'n t'ack tough

and hurry-up when it's time fer playin slow an pritty ?
Maybe he think he starin in movies, playin Jack the
Ripper or somethin. I say t'myseff, Girl one thing
sure, he ain gonna turn you on playin he's the dog
an yer the bone.
Then I git me an idea. I ack nice an play slow an
pritty, show him, ack it out fer him, maybe he quit
playin Jack the Ripper. Maybe.
I try. I play roun the worl' on him real soff an slow
an nice, like I think he's made o'cottin candy.

Then he ack like he wanna play back, an I guess
maybe he got the idea now, so I let him go at it.
!
misunderstanding 73
But Gee-zuz! Wrong agen! He jes a-huffin an
puffin an grabbin an scratchin an toothin like he
think we still in the cathouse an short on time.
This ain no good, so I call him off. I say, Whoa
I say, Hoi' up right here. Jack Rare back, man this !
ballgame's all over.

He say, Wha, Who, Hee, Ho! He look real up
in the air.
I say, Gee-zuz, man ! Ain I got you slow' down
yet?
An he say, Huh ?
She-it.
I say t'myseff. Girl it gittin plainer an plainer this
mothah jes can' play nice an slow. Kee-ryess! How

come I got my ass stuck wiff such a dum invessment ?
Jackie alia time sayin how nice she and her White-
loverman git along, an I gotta go an git me this dum
she-it, can' play nice. He ain never never gonna turn
me on playin that dimi way. I don' know how one
Whiteboy kin be so dum's t'wanna play turnabout,
then go an ack mean, but this daddio jes that dum.
I git t'considerin how he can' even
agen. I consider
lissen t'music. He play like he lissens. He go t'play,
he know what t'do, he don' know how t'do. Music

he lissen at it steada to it.
She-it ! He jes too mothahfuggin fay. He too White,

boff inside an out.
Sep, plain t'see he wanna play. An I dam well
want me some funnin too.
I try agen. I try teechin him, talkin t'him jes like
he was a HI chile. Yeah ! I gotta Un-learn him, an
then I gotta Re-learn him.
I say, Baby you wanna turn me on ?
! !

He say, Yeah yeah yeah; Tha's what he gonna do.
I say, Gonna do Oh no, Baby, no you ain gonna.
!
Not the way you been doin.

He say, Huh?
I say, Man Hke this grunt thumpin stuff go fine at
the right time, but this ain it. You dig?
He say. Huh ?
I say, Like right now is time fer slow an easy. You
dig?
An he still jes on'y say nothin but Huh !
Ooh-wee
I say. Like man, we got us all weekend, see.
An he say. Yeah yeah yeah.

I say. Okay. We got time t'fetch us some good fun
by playin slow an nice. An I say. But we ain gonna
make it, you keep up yer fuggin huffin an puffin an
mothahrammin railroadin.
An he jes say Huh agen.
But I keep on. Sweetheart you gotta learn
I say.
t'play pritty, you wanna fetch us boff a good time.

I say, like, good time gotta be foun first. Like we
gotta coax him out. Good time is bashful, like. You dig?
You ain never gonna fetch him out by bein hurry-up
an hurtful, an huffin and puffin an toothin an scratch-
in like you been doin. Yeah ! Good time so bashful,
he gonna hide on you, you do Yeah You like that. !
wanna make him come out an chase us, you gotta

ack pritty. You ack nice an play soff an slow an pritty,
then yer gonna fetch him out an he gonna find us.
Yeah He finds us, an then he takes over, see ? Oncet
!
he out an foun us, then he chase an then he catch

us,
us, an then he takes over. An man, we is flyin
then,
An when we gits t'flyin, then you kin go t'huffin an
!
misunderstanding 75
puffin an wham bam jam fuggin all you wanna. Yeah !
But first, we gotta coax. Dig ?

An Gee-zuz ! He still jes look dum's ever.
Oh my poor ol blackass Pickaninny me, how come
I pick me such a dum invessment firs' time out? I
say t'myseff, Girl ain no use. This dum she-it don'
wanna turn you on, he turn you off wanna !
Nex, I jes a-sittin an feelin bad, he come over an
start in. On'y this time, I kin tell he's tryin t'do like
I tol* him. So I keep on tellin. I talk pritty, I say. Go

easy, Lover. Play pritty an nice an talk t'that lil ol
titty real sofF. Yeah !
He do. An he git t'doin much better. Pritty soon,

he's doin real fine.
Fack, he git t'doin me good's ever I been done. He
goin norff an soufT, an eas' an wes', and he goin this
way real sweet. He treatin me like fine an dandy, an
I git t'feelin like chocklit candy ! Hot dam ! My
teechin pay oflF real fine !
Nex, why sweet singin Kee-ryess almighty, I shift
gears ! Yeah ! My bumblebee goes an gits him a lil
french honey an I toot my whistle Yeah He ! ! got me

lit up an flipfloppin, like he's the cat an I'm the trick.
An Ooh-wee Skinny Minnie ! Pritty soon, I'm movin
on magic
I let I dee-diddly-dam well on my flip-
him know
pin-ass way, and when he hop in that ol saddle, he
got my naecher up so skyhigh, all I kin do is hang on
an go. Yeah! Bout now, all the slam bam jam fuggin
this daddio kin ever do jes fine by me. Cause we is
flyin Yeah Ol man good time done caught us an he

! !
is rollin us yonder ! An here we go, jes a-wingdingin

somethin awful, jes a-drivin home like we boflF gonna
!

flip, and right now he is so everlovin sweet an fine,
I dam near fergit he got jack !
Nex, homerun ! Yeah ! Boff us pop Hke the forff

of July ! I like t'come clean outta my black hide an
he done hufT an puflf his way t'hell an back ! Ain never
been two bellybuttons no tighter !
Lil while later, he start in movin ass agen, like he

wanna go git us one more, I say t'mysefT, Girl time
t'puton the brakes. This sweet bumblebee got him
jes all the honey he kin git fer now, don' want
bout
him wearin hiseff alia way out. We got us all week-
end. Yeah
Sides, Madam alia time sayin, Don' never wear 'em
clean out all at oncet. Springtime don' come at no
sixty mile an hour !
So I call him off. I don' specially wanna, but I do.

I gits t'thinkin bout all that jack, an bout what
Madam say, an, like, nother thing Madam say, she
say, Wornout pecker ain no good fer payin up!
V^hristmas ! You'd think an intelligent, red-blooded,
white, church-going non-communist like I, with my
genius for great salesmanship, would avoid ending up
in the nude. After having cleverly connived his way
into the afore-mentioned unbelievable position, that
is, mean, the colored prostitute (paid) and her swank
I
apartment (fantastic). But, as it turned out, that's

what happened. Nude, I mean. I ended up in the
nude.
And that isn't all that happened. Christmas ! Would
that I could decendy tell all ! (Ha ha.) But I can't.
Not in detail, for gosh sakes ! I mean, I'll sort of

rough it out, like in a novel of high literary merit.
And since I'm a fellow who puts plenty of stock in
hard cold fact, I'll begin at the logical beginning. The
beginning of the episode following those I've already
covered.
Well, I flopped down on her bed to listen to her
collection of strange unheard of jazz records, and
did this in my and tee shirt. Secondly, I fell
shorts
asleep. (I hadn't realized how dogtired I was until
then.) I woke up sometime during the wee hours of
77
morning (the music having gone oflf auto-
that fateful
matically) and crawled under the covers, and vâs
sacked out dead to the world, when Bamb — !
You know how it is when you wake up suddenly

in some strange bed. You forget where you are and
start looking around for the old familiar objects.
Well, I woke up and expected to see my room in the
frat house. But instead I see this stark naked girl
(colored) climbing into bed beside me. So it took me
a second to acclimatize myself and realize just what
the heck was going on.
Then I remembered the night before and all, and
how she had believed my wild lie about being a bur-
glar and wanted by the police andand so had
society,
given me her key and realized that here I was be- —
ing kept (I mean pretending to be kept) by a paid
professional colored prostitute. Well, obviously, what
I should have done at this juncture was taken up on
my investigation where I had left off, carrying it

—
further on into the realms of functional anthro-
pology, even, but since I hadn't had my eight winks
yet, and since her bed was so darn comfortable, and
. (well, everything else included) I didn't do that,
. .
right off.
In order to maintain my high literary plain, I won't
of course, go into detail about what I did do. Right
mean, when she climbed into bed beside
off the bat, I
me. (Except to mention that I figured I had sort of a
score to settle with that paid professional, now that
she was home, and not working and all, and with me,
whom she considered a fellow underworld character.)
(And to add that I let her know she had a man with
her, a real manly man.)
!
misunderstanding 79
Following which we retired to slumber.

(I might also —though don't wish
add I to dwell
unduly on this matter— that she tried to act reluc-
tant when she first came home. Imagine ! A profes-

sional, for gosh sakes, acting reluctant!) (But that
only added spice, of course.) (Once she stopped using
her foul language, that is.)
Well, I was feeling knocked out and sleeping pretty

hard and too deep in the sack to give a hoot where
I was —for the moment —
when, along about mid-
—
morning Bamb
All of a sudden this gosh awful pounding woke me.
I mean It sounded like the whole entire upstairs was
!
going to cave in on us any second I don't know !
what the heck it was all about, but itcame from the
apartment directly over hers — like somebody up there
didn't like us and was pounding through with a sledge
hammer. Or something.
Well, before I knew exactly what I was doing, I had
leaped out of bed and was scrambling into my clothes.
After all, I wasn't the right color for that apartment
house, so I wasn't about to register a complaint with
the management. I thought Sister, I'll see you later.
:
I'll get your phone number on my way out of here
and call you up sometime when the heat's off. Right

now, this is no place for a burglar like me. I mean,
at that moment all sorts of ideas were in my head. I
even had visions of a police raid on that apartment
house, for gosh sakes, and her telling the police I was
a burglar and hiding out, and the police believing her.
(I mean, stranger things have happened.)
But at this point, she started acting like some gun

moll (very tan) in some gangster's life who didn't
want her man to leave. She jumped out of bed and
started trying to pull the clothes off me as fast as I
pulled them on. And all the time jabbering away in
her dialect so fast that, with all that noise from up-
stairs, I word she was saying.
couldn't understand a
All I knew was that she thought the noise
for sure
was nothing to worry about, that it was sort of a
regular occurrence, and that it would stop after a
while.
Which, incidentally, it did. But before it did, I gave
up the fight and decided to stay. If all that thump-
ing and crashing didn't bother her (and to prove it
didn't she went right back to sleep) I figured it
shouldn't bother me. So I didn't let it.
But had thoroughly wakened me. I can say that

it
for it. I gave sleeping one more try but found myself
all slept out, so I got up and just browsed around.
I hunted for a morning paper, but didn't find one.
Then I switched on her TV and watched one of those

classic old westerns, and when it was over and still
she continued to sleep, I took a shower. (Also a fan-

tastic thing, that shower. Sunken tub, huge pink
turkish towels longer than she was tall, for gosh
sakes ! Mirrors all over the place, the works.) (I should
add, I also thought taking a shower would wake her,
but no such luck. When I stepped back into the bed-
room she was sleeping like a log.)
So I considered raiding her kitchen for something
to eat. However, I refrained from this being sus- —
picious that such an act might break some tribal taboo,
or something, and also confident that she'd come to
sooner or later and would be hungry herself, etc.
But there was nothing to do to pass the time. I
!
misunderstanding 8 i
mean, there was nothing on TV worth watching

after that western, and her Hvingroom was absolutely
bare of things to read. Not a magazine or newspaper
in the place. Not one So, finally, around noon, I
!
woke her up. I didn't know her name at that point,

so I just kept calling, 'Hey, come on. Hey, get up.
Hey you, it's noon, time to get up.' But she didn't
budge until I yanked her big toe.
Finally, she sat up, rubbed her eyes, smiled and
looked at yours truly. Then —Bamb !
Right oflf the bat, she got all excited about me wear-
ing my trousers. Well, I didn't know what to do. I
was flabbergasted My ! trousers, for crying out loud,
was all that I had on !
I thought : This woman is unbelievable ! In fact,
she's downright Bohemian ! Possibly even Beatnik

Even when I had on was my trousers,
told her all I
she insisted I take them oflf and parade around, for
crying out loud, in the complete and utter nude
Well, I'm far from being a prude. (Of course, ha
ha, or how could I find myself in such a situation.)
But on the other hand, I'm no nudist colony faddist
either. I mean, I'm normal I'm just a regular guy !
and not used to parading around strange apartments

without a stitch on. In broad daylight, yet ! Still, in
keeping with my original detecting and consequently
functional anthropologist motif, I figured, what the
heck, when in Rome . . .
So I took my trousers off and hung them back up

in her bedroom closet, and that made her feel better.
And there I was, parading around that strange non-
white apartment in the utter and absolute nude, with-
out a stitch on.
! !

Which seemed pretty silly at first, but gradually I
acclimatized myself to the idea and anyway she did

the same —walked around as if it were the most
just
natural thing in the world to go about as bare as the
day you were born, for gosh sakes !
And everything went along pretty good for a time.

She took a bath and then made breakfast (another
fantastic thing —eight eggs, for crying out loud
Eight Four apiece. With bacon and sausage, the
!
works.) Christmas I was darn near starving to death

!
by the time we got around to eating that breakfast,

but I didn't expect to make an all-day feast on no-
thing but breakfast
After breakfast, she started in clowning around and
jabbering in her uneducated lingo about me doing
the dishes, I tried to tell her that I don't do dishes,
but she kept clowning and the next thing I knew
she had tied a little apron around my waist and shoved
me in front of the sink.
Well, it's strange : That apron came as such a
relief to my nudity that I didn't fight it, I just started
in doing dishes (not exactly a habit with me, doing
dishes) and she skipped off to the livingroom, etc.
Then, a little later, she wanted to know if I'd like
her not to go to her ill repute house that night. I said
I thought that would be okay, so she called the syndi-
cate. (I know from reading reliable reports that these
ill repute houses are controlled by a gigantic crime
syndicate, so I surmised was the syndicate she called.
it
Maybe And she told them she was

the Mafia, even.)
sick. (They too, have their employer-employee rules,
regulations and relations, no doubt.)

Well, for awhile I didn't know what the heck she
misunderstanding 83
had in mind, but I soon found out. I caught sight of

her (out of the corner of my eye while I did dishes)
laying on her rug, watching me, laughing to herself,
sort of, obviously feeling seedy. And this did not make
yours truly feel easy, for by this time I was in a more
scholarly frame of mind and wished to pursue my
functional anthropologist leanings rather than . . .
Well, you know. So I pretended to ignore her.

But she wasn't buying that. She jumped up, tore
into her bedroom and returned with a stack of eight-
by-ten photographs of herself, for gosh sakes, in all
sorts of lewd poses.
Well, believe me, those pictures were sickening. I
mean I won't, for gosh sakes, go into detail. That
!
would be extremely unprintable as well as immoral

and illegal.
All I could think of, as I thumbed through them
(still going along with my when-in-Rome approach)
— all I could think of was the time Dad published in
our hometown newspaper his sheer genius of an
appeal to fathers of teenage daughters. (The wire
services weren't on the ball, as usual, so they didn't
pick it up for worldwide distribution.) But in it. Dad
warned all fathers to be on guard against (and he
coined the following phrase) insipient moral decay
provoked by trash which still passes for respected
periodic organs. Then, in the body of his thesis, he
proved it. Dad, needless to say, is a brilliant writer.
Simply fabulous. Probably the jerks who work for the
wire services were too stupid to know what he was
talking about, being too stupid to read brilliant writ-
ing. Dad always says that they (journalists) constantly
reveal their stupidity, not only in their own writings,
but also in what they choose to write about. Most of
the time, mean. Of course, there are good and bad
I
in every profession, and some who turn bad can be

straightened out, sometimes. Like our editor, Mort
Copton. Mort once printed the picture of some Holly-
wood movie star (scantily clad) right on Page One.
That was when he first came to our town. He knows
better now. Dad and the board got him on the carpet
and kept him there for over an hour about that lewd
picture, and he's behaved himself ever since.
—yet
But again like a clever cigarette advertise-
ment — I digress.
It became quite clear to me, as I gave the matter
some more hard, bold, analytical thought, that I was

going to find myself out —O-U-T out ! If I didn't
comply with my keeper's brazenly revealed wishes.
(I say revealed because she just lay there watching
me.) (I mean, watching and smiling. The whole time
I thumbed through those sickening photos.) (And it
was obvious what was on her mind.) (And also that

I had to, as they say, take care of her or I'd be O-U-T.)
So I did.
After a delay, during which (and I refuse, as usual,
to go into the lurid details) she attempted to belittle
my manhood, for one thing. To egg me on, I suspect.
That seemed to be the only reason for some of the
smirking things she said. (I mean I'm rather well
endowed, physically as well as intellectually, and she
tried to poke fun at me, sort of. Belittle me, like. Try-
ing to make me assert myself is the only reason I could
find for her doing such a thing, because as it turned
out, she didn't mean it.)
What followed is, of course, unmentionable, though

misunderstanding 85
I might sum it up in general terms, in keeping with

the standards I've established, and say simply that I
did indeed make her say Uncle. I mean, I left no

doubts in her mind as to my chesty manhood and
virility.
Enough said.
Except that I should also add, parenthetically, (I
wênt back to thinking in representations, as I previ-

ously pointed out that I sometimes do. I thought : I
will be a representation of the entire white race and

show this little colored girl, paid and professional
though she is, that this business Hank keeps handing
me about non-whites being sexually superior is . . .
Bird Feed !)
I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm not, for gosh sakes,

prejudiced ! On the other hand, I'm no idiotic Negro-
phile like Hank and some of those jerks. Besides, she
was only sixteen years old. Or, so she told me, and
I'm sure she couldn't have been much older than I,
so if she jipped by a couple of years, what difference.
The point is, she was young. So I figured now was the
time to strike — to impress her, to let her know just
how a real he-man goes about things, because the
way she acted, she'd known nothing but (to use a
word Hemingway has used) pansies. Which left me
with one huge lurking fear : That might have suc-
I
ceeded too well. After all, not every guy can make a
paid professional lady of ill repute say Uncle.
(Though I will, before closing this chapter, say
I did make a few concessions and go to some un-
planned tactics in order to achieve this feat.)
!
H
Jimmyboy
I ere goes me, I doosh out. Nex thing
lookin at tee vee. Yeah, he sittin on the
I find,
floor lookin an lissenin.
I say, Jimmy I Gee-zuz, ! say. What the hell you

gonna do now? You gonna jes sit an look at that
mothahflippin glassface?
He say. Yeah.
I say, Ain nothin on tee vee. I say, Ain never no-
thin on tee vee sep the man puttin numbers on the
map, an he ain on jes now. Turn that glassface bastid
off You hear ?
!
He say. News comin on. He say, News an then this
here other show comin on. He say, He wanna see this

other show.
I say. Piss ! I say. Sweet Jimmy Baby don't watch
that crap. It make you nuts It make you nutty's if

!
you was livin down souff.

But he ain lissenin t'me. He lookin at ol glassface.
She-it
Tee vee say. News.
I can* see nothinnew bout the news. They show
Merican flag an Navy boats an airplanes an bombs
blowin up, an all like that.
86
! !!
misunderstanding 87
Ain nothin new bout that

Then this tee vee Whiteman come on an he start
talkin. Gee-zuz he talkin !
He some Whitechick come on an she

stop talkin,
singin. She singin bout beer. She jes wrinkle up her
face an singin Hke she got her some longgone boy-
frien' made o'beer an her HI ol pussy jes a-creamin
fer her beer boyfrien'. Then this other tee vee White-
man come on an he say, Syen-tifick ree-serch perfeck
this beer this here Whitechick creamin her pussy bout.
What the hell this syen-tifick ree-serch big-word

noise he talkin ? Ooh-wee !
Firs' tee vee man come back an he start in talkin
agen, an this time he talkin like he all fuss up. Yeah

He talkin up an he down, he talkin eas' and he
talkin
talkin wes'. One time, he soun hurt. Nex, he soun
happy. He go, like, Wee diddledee dee dee Then he !
go. Mumble mumble mumble !
She-it.
He talkin, pitchers come on, show some Niggerman
gittin shoved roun by some Whitemen.
Ain nothin new bout that neither.
Nex come on pitchers show some poor Whitetrash
man, tee vee man say they is gonna kill him. He say
this poor ol Whitetrash done been foun sane Like, he !
ain no flip, he's okay in the head so they is gonna kill

him in the lectrick chair !
Yeah He say that Right out loud he say that

! !
Kee-ryess They alia time killin somebody, them

!
Whitefolks on tee vee. They shootin an fightin an

playin lawman, an they killin an killin.
Make me sick No dam wonner I gotta show my
!
Jimmyboy pitchers an give him teechin fore he kin

! ! !

play pritty, he so fulla fightin an killin. Like in the
cathouse, he mix up mothah-
fightin wiff funnin. This
less tee vee Gee-zuz Sometime I is gonna go on that
! !
tee vee an show them dum Whitefolks. I is gonna put

on a cathouse show, same time they is puttin on them
dum kilHn shows. Yeah Hee hee ! !
Nother Whiteman come on, he

tee vee say, Adver-
tizin is how come Mericans Uvin a good life!
Yeah No crap He
! ! say that
He say, Advertizin, an he say, Good Merican life!
He say that, I know them Whitefolks all so fug-

gin bigword nutty they is like one big fruitcake
Then this firs' tee vee man come back, an he say,
Ike flew off somewhere, an then more pitchers come
on, show a lotta hiyella folks yellin They Likes Ike !
Yeah! Gee-zuz! How come them dum mothahs

yellin like that ? Why she-it, they don' even know Ike !
Firs' time they ever even seen Ike! Can' even talk
Inglish, yellin They likes Ike !
Phew
Nex, they showin some rockit an tee vee man talk-
inup a mothahfuggin storm Alia roun this rockit, !
Whitemen is jes a runnin an runnin, an they is more

standin an sittin in rooms, an pushin this an pushin
that, an everythin so spooky, an everybody so all fuss
up. Then comes some weird noises jes like in a spook

movie, all kinda weird noises like hootin an buzzin an
boomin an hissin an Gee-zuz ! Alia time tee vee man
keep talkin like he bout t'flip. He jes git t'talkin so
fast, I can' find out what the fug everybody so flip-
floppin crazy over.
Nex, this rockit, he go zoom ! Real big, he go, like,
ZOOM I An he hiss an he puff an he start goin up.

!
misunderstanding 89
Yeah Like he start slow, and then Gee-zuz He go
! !
like somebody stick a firecracker up his asshole. Great
big mothahless rockit go up, an up, an up, an Kee-

ryess !
Then them spook noises stop an they all stop

all
runnin an talkin, an everybody jes lissen t'his hissin.

Then they gits all fuss up agen, on'y this time, they
starts pattin each other on they backs, an yellin an
wavin arms, an like that.

She-it! Them Whitefolks so dum! So screwed up
Skinny Minnie dum dum dum They git more happy !
bout some dum rockit rackit than they does bout

anythin else. They make my poor ol blackass Pick-
aninny me jes ache They likes Ike, and they likes
!
rockits. They shoots rockits up, an they shoots each

others dead.
News done, I is tellin Jimmy how dum them White-
folks is, an he is tellin me. Shut up !
Yeah ! He say he wanna see this other show. He

tell me shut up an then he go git him a chair an he
set in a chair steada on the nice soff floor wifF some
pillas. Gee-zuz ! But he look so godam funny sittin
there, I can' help laughin.

I laugh, he say Shhh !
She-it
Nex, this whole big buncha tee vee Whitemen come
on. Sep, these ones, they got them one Niggerman
wifT them. They say, He is from Africa. Yeah He's !
from Africa is what they say.

He smile like a cottinpicker, seem t'me. Yeah, he
smile cottinpickin kissass. Anyhow, he's all dress up
o'fay.
They all sittin roun some ol table an lookin an talk-
! —
!

in like somebody dyin. They
roun talkin
jes a-sittin
sad. They talkin bout Russians an like that.

an rockits
One Whiteman, he say them Russians gonna blow
everybody up wifif they rockits an bombs like they
got.
How come they wanna do that ? I can' unnerstan that
crazy-ass crap. Sep down souff. Some souff White-
folks wanna kill every nigger livin, seem like, but that
ain the same. Them souff Whitefolks, they is way
gone They is so far nuts, they ain never comin back,
!
Ain the same's them Russianfolks, seem t'me. I don'

know nothin bout them, sep they got them mothahless
rockits an now these White mothahs say they wanna
blow everybody up.
Tha's what they say But alia time they sayin this,
!
they is talkin bout blowin them Russianfolks up

Phew!
I dream I'm workin an in come a whole
Oncet,
buncha Russian tricks. I go on upstairs wiff one an he
pull down his pants an he ain got no cock a-tall No !
Stead, what he got, he got him a rockit. Yeah He !
got him a rockitcock steada mancock I say, Gee-zuz !
Russianman, how m'l gonna do my stuff wiff a rockit-

cock? But he jes a-talkin like a tee vee Whiteman an
I can' unnerstan a word he is sayin. I say t'myseff
I dreamin this —
I say, Russianman, what the hell m'l
gonna do wiff a rockitcock ?

I bout t'tell Jimmy my dream, but I kin see he ain
fer lissenin t'me. His ol eyeballs jes like they froze
on that mothahfuggin glassface bastid. Them sad ol
tee vee men, they still talkin Russians an rockits an all
kinda big-word noise like that. This one trick, he keep
sayin, Na'shall defense, na'shall defense. He wearin
!! ! 1
misunderstanding 9
him a soljer suit. He all fuss up. He talk like he from

down souff . He talk like a Koo Klux Klan man, an like
he ain got him no mancock neither. Yeah, he talk
like he got him a knifecock. Some o'them souff White-
folks, all they wanna do is talk nasty an ack mean.

Specially t'Niggers. This mothah, he sure wanna ack
mean, but I ain sure who he wanna ack mean to !
She-it ! Me, I jes a simple-ass HI ol Pickaninny cat,
I can' unnerstan why them Whitefolks git all fuss up

an ack so mean an make everythin so all mix up wiff
nucler bombs an shootin an all that crap. Jimmy,
he bein White, maybe he unnerstan what they is
doin. He ack like he do.
I I say. Girl now you got you a sweet
say t'myseff,
Whiteboy loverman, maybe he kin teach you bout
what all them tee vee mothahs tryin t'do, an how come
the Russianfolks an them Whitefolks wanna blow each
others up.
I say, Jimmy ?
He say, Shhh
I say. Hey Jimmy ! I say, What' re them crazy fay
son-a-bitches up to, anyhow ?
He say, Shhh
Yeah ! All he gonna say, Shhh, shhh, shhh !
She-it ! What I say, I say, she-it
I'm gonna throw that mothahfuggin tee vee out.

I can' unnerstan it and it can' unnerstan me. An all
Jimmy gonna do is say Shhh-shhh ! Yeah Nex chance
!
I git, I'm gonna kick livin hell outta that tee vee an
throw his dum ass right out. Soon's Jimmy done
lookin his glassface in the eye, out he goes The tee
!
vee.
On'y reason I come by his ol noisy glassface is cause-
!

a Dolly. She the cat live in this partmin fore me. She
an Madam buy here now, tee vee
all this stuff tha's
an all. Then she up an move on outta here. Yeah

She git herseff a Big Big Money Honey from Miami
an go off wiff him. Lucky Dolly. She hiyella. She leave
my blackass Pickaninny me a nice place, sep fer that
tee vee.
On'y thing I kin ever watch is when this Whiteman
in the mornin put the numbers on the map. Yeah !
Everythin else a buncha crap. This man, he writin

an he sayin, real real nice an smooth, he sayin, Dallas
. Forty, thirty-two. An he sayin, Denver
. . Forty, . . .
thirty-on^! Like, thirty-ONE, is how he says it. Sep,

he say it real real soff, like, Da-ay-al-as, an like,
Den-n-n-n-ver. Way he say it, soun so pritty. An when

he says a number, tha's the very fuggin number he
writes. Yeah ! No perten, no crap ! He writes jes what
he is sayin.
But he's the on'y one that glassface ever come on
wiff that do things nice an smooth an pritty an right.
Course, they got some comics on tee vee advertizin,
an they make me laugh a lil, but I don' like the way
they is alia time tryin fer my pocketbook. So I kin
dam well do wiffout the comics. Worff it t'git that
other noise the fug outta here.
Yeah ! Nex time Jimmy gonna toss
ain lookin, I is
that mothahless glassface clean outta here. Yeah I !
ain gonna let it drive me jittery like it drive some

folks. Black and White. I is gonna git me a stick an
beat the cra2y-ass na'shall defense outta it, an I is
gonna do this in seff defense !
'
Yeah!
Sep, meantime, Jimmy still lookin like his eyeballs
! ! ! !!
misunderstanding 93
froze. An thismothah is sayin he other tee vee

hopes everybody in'ested in what he is sayin. Gee-
zuz He say it like if you ain in'ested, you ain worfiF
!
she-it, way he say it. Then he goes off wiff more o'his
big-word noise agen, an Jimmy he gittin all fuss up

at this tee vee man talkin. I kin tell, way he lean
over.
I say — real loud — I say, Jimmy yer nuts ! Yeah
You let that dee-fuggin-dum noise git you, yer nuts
He look mad an wave his hand fer me t'shut up.
Kee-ryess
Then, bout this time, I git saved by naecher. Yeah,
I feel me a big wind comin on. I say t'myseff, Girl
here goes yer chance Yeah ! !
I git up an go right up t'that glassface bastid an I
swing ass roun sos's I'm spades ace t'his glassface an I
fart ! Yeah ! Man I let go real long an loud !
But Gee-zuz ! Soon's I fart, tee vee start more o'his

hissin an hottin an boomin, an Kee-ryess ! I like t'pop
clean outta my black hide ! I turn roun an here goes
this other f uggin rockit, up up up.
An right now, Jimmy, he stan up too, an he start in
rantin an ravin.
I'm fartin, tee vee's hissin, Jimmy's rantin and
ravin
Ooh-wee ! I can' tell which he is most mad at, me
or the tee vee, so I let go one more. Jes because
Then Jimmy git his jaws a-puffin an a-goin some-
thin awful ! He wavin
his hands an he walkin back
an forff,an he lookin like he is gonna crap Yeah !
He look like he is gonna crap right now. On my nice

rug!
He tellin me I don' know wha's goin on in the worl'.
!

I say, Piss on the worl'. I know wha's goin on right
here.
He wanna know, Don' I even care bout Wes'
Berlin?
I tell him he kin shove Wes' BerHn up his ass an
go t'the moon fer all I care.
He say, Ain I Merican? He say, Is I Kalmnist?
Or is I Apeezer ?
He talkin like that, freedom an Meri-
an he talkin
can way an he talkin all that semi-demi big-word
noise we jes been hearin on tee vee. Gee-zuz He !
wrinkle up his face an jes talk an tedk like them

mothahless tee vee table men.
I say, Merican? Kalmnist? Apeezer? I say, Jimmy
is you blind ? Can' you see I is jes a lil ol blackass Picka-

ninny cat?
He say. My color got nothin t'do wiff it. Ab-slootly
nothin
Yeah ! He say that. Kee-ryess ! He so fur out dum !
I say, Jimmy you kiss my blackass, you don' like
the way I do roun here. This my place. Madam pays

the rent here so's I kin live here steada wifF them
older cats. This ain yer place. It's mine, man You !
don' like it, you kin jes drop gelt an git. Go on, feed
this kitty an shoo !An you kin take ol glassface wifF
you. Boff o'you dum daddios kin jes git the hell
outta here.
Nex, he wrinkle up sorta dum
an he quit talkin so
godam loud. But he an blowin and I
still jes a-puffin
can' unnerstan what he bout t'toot out now, sep I
know he ain been lissenin t'my talkin cause he is
talkin way far off from jack. He is talkin so far from
payin up, he is makin me jittery. He ain talkin payin,
! !
misunderstanding 95
an he ain talkin goin, an he ain talkin comin back.

I say t'mysefF, Girl you is jes plain losin yer in-
vessment This madass Big Money Honey ain talkin

!
like no invessment no more. He's talkin like some

tee vee terrible. He Merican this an Merican that, an
he Kalmnist this an Kalmnist that, but he way far off
from jack
I say, Jimmy shut the fug up. I say, Jimmy fore
you go, I wanna hunner. Yeah, Jackie say weekend
isone hunner, an if the trick don' stay all weekend,

tough shitski, it still cost him one hunner.
He say, Whaaa?
I say, Hunner, tha's whaaa ! One big ol green-ass
hunner
He say, Grissmiss crissmiss crissmiss ! He say, He
can' unnerstan what I'm talkin bout.
I say. Like hell you can' unnerstan ! You godam
well can so unnerstan. I'm talkin jack, man ! I'm
talkin bout yer jack ! I'm talkin that great big wing-
dingin wad you Man you got
got in yer pants. I say,
some weekend pussy, now I want me my bread. I
want my jack jack jack !
Nex, I gotta do some fancy dancin fore I git me

my hunner.
—
N low I'm no stupe.

those three subjects
I mean, even
— biology,
if I
psychology, French
am flunking
heck ! I could have passed those midterms if I'd mem-

orized properly, —
and no question about it I'll make —
it up during the second half semester. Because when
I feel like it, I can get plenty intellectual. Not that
I'm an out and out egghead, understand, but I do

like a good intellectual TV show once in awhile. I
mean, I have a distinct bent in that direction. You

know, like the CBS specials and the Huntley-Brinkley
sort of thing. So, after she'd said Uncle for me, I tuned
in on this highbrow show. Very important. About
national defense.
It had been mentioned in class and I'd seen it
advertised in the paper. (Though, to be perfectly

honest, I thought the ad called it a foreign affairs
program instead of a national defense one.) (But
what's the difference.) The point is, I knew it was
important for college guys like I, who will be leaders
of the entire Free world one of these days.
Also, I know old Prof. Wilbur would be asking
questions about it Monday morning because he's all
96
misunderstanding 97
gung-ho about current events and I'm passing political
science and want to keep passing. And, having obhged
my colored 'keeper' (ha ha), I figured she'd leave me
alone for awhile. But, of course, you never can tell
when girls like her will get another case of . . . I'll
call it excitement, and want to drag a guy back down

on the floor again. So, also, I figured I'd better take
this rest up, if you get what I mean.
opportunity to
By was beginning to get afraid she was
this time, I
falling in love with me, and that would be bad. I

mean After all, I had showed her a trick or two,
!
so to speak, even if she was a professional with my —

representative thinking proving very very satisfying.
(Although, however, a week or so later, I remem-
bered my original slave-to-employee representative
thinking, like I was thinking while in the ill repute
house. I cringe to think what certain unorthodox ele-
ments of my conduct during the latest indecent time
in her apartment would add to that. I mean, like,
slavery, emancipation, and ? ? ? )

(However, we
won't go into that.)
But—to get back to this highbrow —

show (which
incidentally, led to an unexpected event) I was sitting
in one of her very modern chairs, just sitting there

(nude), watching TV. First the news and then this
highbrow show. Now, in order for you to fully appre-
ciate what happened later, I must tell you about this
program. Detail it as a unit, so to speak.

Primarily, was a bi-partisan discussion of the
it
world arena and our relative strength, with yard-

sticks for measuring same. That is, our deterent capa-
bilities and military posture, including secret short-
term and secret longterm plans past the drawing-

!

board stage, already operational, almost, and also
what the communists have. I mean, it was a pene-
trating search to define clearly Russian aggression
in all its broader aspects, with due regard for com-
munism's more subtle and insidious cancerous threats
to the West, including comparative propaganda ad-
—
vantages in the space race touching, as it went, on
such staggering problems as the status of West Ber-
lin and economic breakthroughs to underdeveloped
peoples in the Poverty Belt, including the crying need
for taxpayers to tighten their belts and get behind
Freedom's Fiscal Policy, and above all the threat to
our nation's security posed by various total disarm-
ament plans, and the possibilities for further negotia-
tions along this line.

Well, right off the bat, this one commentator starts
in talking like America is done for, for gosh sakes
(It's one of those unrehearsed shows, which are the
best kind, since nothing is planned.) And this guy
is going on about anti-missile-missiles and anti-anti-
missile-missiles, and becoming quite intellectual and
scientific.(Which I like. I mean, when they get real
highbrow. A guy gets tired of nothing but westerns
and detective stories.) But what I don't like is some
joker talking as if the Russians could blow us off the
map I don't know just who this one commentator
!
thought he was, but it's a good thing there were those

—
other guys congressmen and military persons, mostly
with one rep from an underdeveloped and newly
emerging African nation which has recently achieved
Freedom and is now cementing its achievement. Well,
these guys let the jerk prattle on about how he thought
the Russians were advanced, for gosh sakes, in missiles.
—
mhunderstanding 99
(I mean, the way he talked, you'd get the impression
that even SAG was no match for Russian rocketry, for
crying out loud !)
Then this one general comes on strong. mean,

I
he lets this jerk have it. The general asks, 'How do you
know how many missiles the Russians have, or how
good their missiles are ?'
Ha!
That showed that dirty parlor pink. He was pretty
quiet after that. Which gave the military persons and
congressmen a chance to get down to brass tacks.
They proved with hard cold facts that America has
an adequate military posture, counting SAG, and is
all set to blast those dirty communists if they so much

as look cockeyed. (They didn't say it in those words,
understand, but they made themselves plain. I got
the message okay, and was proud to be an American.)
And, as for the other urgent issues pressing this
country, the military persons pointed to the crux of
the problem —which
remembered and mentioned
I
in Pol. Sc. class Monday —

which is money The gov- !
ernment simply needs more tax money to maintain

our military posture and facilitate longrange plans
already past the drawing-board stage and operational
almost, but not yet on the assembly line, and it's the
lack of money which is the holdup.
(It's hard to imagine what these new secret weapons
are, but it's fun to try.)
But before we got to the end of the program

which was to be a debate between this dirty pink jerk
who thought we should scrap the H bomb, for crying
out loud, and an Air Force person who was going
to attempt to tell this appeaser the obvious A-B-G's of
— — ! ! ! !

why we don't —my colored girl started behaving like a
wild woman. mean, she had been nervous and fidg-
I
etty all along, but I figured that was because she was
just spoiled and wanted me to pay constant attention
to her. Of course, I excused her behavior then,
because . . . Well, after all, she was unintelligent and
uneducated, but
All of a sudden she walks up to the TV screen,
turns an about-face, bends over with her rear facing
the set and
Passed air
Can you imagine such a thing
She did this just as they were presenting the count-
down for the launching of an Atlas, and when they
launched it, she jumped like they had launched her !
Which served her right. I mean, I didn't mind her

clowning around so much, as long as she didn't get
between the set and me, or get disgusting and start
passing air —but when she did that, I gave her heck
After all, what kind of an American would not only
ignore these gravely important matters, but act like
she did to boot? I mean, even if she was an under-
world character. After all
Well, I told her, I told her that as a Freedom-

loving citizen of this great nation, she had no right,
no right whatsoever, absolutely no right in the world
to behave in such a way toward people who are work-
ing night and day to save the world for the Ameri-
can Way and keep her safe from communistic dic-
tatorship. (Though, later, I got to thinking again, and
I thought Maybe, JC, you shouldn't have scolded
:
her quite so much, because she was unintelligent and

uneducated and also underworld, so how could she
!
misunderstanding 101
know about the horrors of Marxism. After all, it's up

to persons like you, JG, college guys who will carry
these burdensome problems, to look out for people

like her, who have low mentality and corrupt morals.)
(I mean, tolerance That's what's needed !)
!
But at the time, I did give her What-For. I told

her she'd best watch the way she acted about things
like this nation's security, and I tried to explain how
important such matters are, but she just stood there,

half-clowning, half-sarcastic, and kept between me
and the TV, all the time jabbering this awful pro-
fanity of hers and making it absolutely clear that she
didn't care at all —
for West Berlin, even !
Some people They're hopeless, some people are.

!
I thought : Sister, if you're going to behave like this,
I'll leave. I'll just relinquish my scientific and func-

tional anthropological approach and leave. And I
told her I would.

Well She thereupon flew into this terrible rage,
!
jumping up and down, shouting, 'Jack !' and I don't

know what all. She used so much profanity, it was
difficult to catch whatever it was she was trying to tell
me. But one thing loomed as evident she was be- :
coming unreasonable. Even threatening.

—
So I right then and there decided I'd better —
scram. (She had mentioned something about my get-
ting out during that obscene tirade she went through;
I caught that much.) So I went for the bedroom to
get my clothes.
And then it started ! Christmas ! Then it really actu-
ally started
Dear Reader, get this picture : One minute, she's
a quiet little dark brown buffoon (nude), running
around, acting nervous, but not serious. Sort of comic,

if you get what mean. And then, the very next in-
I
stant, she's rushing around like she lost her mind,

and when I went toward the bedroom, she flew over
like she'd been shot from a cannon She buzzed right !
on ahead of me and stationed herself in the bedroom

doorway, and stood there blocking my path, snarling
and sneering and pointing her fingernails at me. Like
an insane animal, I swear !
Well, she sneered and snarled and let loose with

this long jabber of profanity for awhile, and I stood
frozen in my tracks. I just let her jabber on. I didn't

move a muscle. I was too surprised.
Then, just as quickly, she sort of wound down. I
mean, it was as if she'd run out of breath. She gave

a sort of half-sob, took a deep breath, sighed and then
—Bamb ! She just slumped down to the floor and let
go this big long moan.

Well, I certainly took advantage of that oppor-
tunity, I can tell you. Yes sir, I missed not one second.
I rushed on and leaped over her and into the bed-
room I went. I grabbed my shorts and tee shirt and
socks, and started putting them on as fast as I
could.
But I wasn't fast enough.
All the time I'm trying to get into my clothes, I can
hear her yelling, in some other part of the apartment.
I can't catch it all, but I can hear her yell, 'Jack,
Jack, Jack!' (And at this juncture, I thought Jack
was probably some gangster or thug who lived next
door to her and would come barging in any second
now, beat me up and take my money, maybe.) (Which
surmise proved erroneous.)
!
misunderstanding 1 03
Because the next thing I knew, in she rushed Hke

a half-back on a touchdown run, carrying this huge
kitchen knife.
Well, by this time she was completely out of her
stupid mind. mean, she was acting like an insane
I
female Errol Flynn (colored) in one of those old fash-

ioned movies where they have swords and go at each
other like mad. I mean, there I was in the process
of pulling on my shorts (she was that quick) and there
she was, in dueling position, waving that kitchen
knife at my private parts. I thought : Christmas, JG !
The next thing you know you'll be castrated

But I had little time for the thinking process. I
mean we went round and round that room, she

chasing me, of course, with that knife and me trying
to get into my shorts and keep away from her at the
same time, and not being exactly entirely successful
in either endeavor.
And —what do you know The very next instant,
!
she wasn't chasing me any more. She had hauled

my trousers out of her closet and was off like a shot
for the livingroom again.
So, by this time, of course, it dawned on me : She
wants my money ! That's it ! That's what all this is
about. Money ! All along, what she's been going wild

about is money.
And that, as you can undoubtedly well imagine,
Dear Reader, came as quite a severe shock. I mean,
after all, how the heck should I have known? She
had acted as if money were the furthest thing from her
stupid mind. She never even so much as mentioned
the A-B-C of M-O-N-E-Y, money! Not since I'd
given her that $10 back at the ill repute house, I
! !

mean. Besides, she'd gone so far as to give me the key
to her apartment
I was forced to conclude that she was so immoral
she didn't care if I was a fellow underworld character
and in trouble with the police. If I had one red cent,
she was going to steal it
Anyway, now that she had it, she had stopped

zooming around like she was about to chop me up
or climb walls, or something. I peeked into the living-
room and there she was, sitting in the middle of the
floor (sort of squatting on her haunches) holding
the knife in one hand and my trousers in the other,
looking like a cowering animal. She just sat there for
a time, staring at yours truly and mumbling some
more of her profane jabberings and waving that
knife back and forth, and shaking my trousers occas-
sionally.
I thought : Well, James Gartwright Holland, no
use endangering your very life by resisting a crazed
stickup artist. Let her take the money. I mean, it's
plain to see she is armed and dangerous. Not to men-

tion unstable.
So I finished dressing, then came out to the living-
room, and there she sat, still, but now she had my
money in a pile by her side —a pile upon which rested
her weapon.
I approached with caution. Both of us were silent.
It was a tense moment. (I mean, I couldn't leave
without my trousers.) (If she took it into her head to
add one more crime to her growing list and destroy my
trousers, I'd be in a difficult position indeed !)
But she didn't. She stared at me sullenly for a

moment, then tossed my trousers at me. And, as I
climbed into them, she lowered her eyes in guilty

shame. (Or, so seemed at the time, though I was
it
later to learn she was incapable of any such noble

emotion.)
And me ? I thought : JC my boy, this is no place
for a whiteman. And forthwith —stopping only long
enough to grab my shoes in the foyer —was on my
way out, when —Bamb !
! — !
N
Yeah!
EX, Gee-zu2 ! Here goes Jimmy out the door.
I say t'myseff, I say, Whoa ! This ain gonna do no

good. No good a-tall. There goes my invessment an
all my cottinpickin considerin.
I hide my jack unner the divan fast's I kin, an I up
an on my runnin way. Time he git t'the door, I git
t'him, an then
Kee-ryess ! He opens the door an guess who's there.
Francine
Yeah! I bout squat. Right now!
She say, Ooh ! She say, Hee !
I say, Kee-ryess
She say. She hear this terrible rackit downstairs,
she come runnin t'see wha's-a trouble.
Trouble? Ain no trouble till you come, Fran-
I say.
cine. I say, So how bout you jes go right back, huh?

But she push right on in. Jes take my Jimmy the
cheatin burgler by the arm an wiggleworm along.
Then she takes off her shoes an sets 'em down like
she gonna stay a week.
She say. Kitten I don' know you got this boy down
here. Who's he?
106
!
None o'yer dam bizness, Francine.

I say,
She say, Aaah Kitten, that ain no way t'talk. She

say, Seem like I seen this boy someplace. She say,
Hee hee
Then she see my blade. Yeah !
See, I gotta fetch me this blade counta Jimmy bein

so rump-thumpin knuckleheaded dum. He fixin t'run
off without payin up, is how come. Yeah I git me !
this blade an swing roun some t'help make him unner-
stan. Tha's when I gotta do me all that ooh-wee

godam fancy dancin. T'make him unnerstan.
Francine, she see this blade, she say, Hey Kitten,
wha's this fer?
An I jes shut ass right up tight.
An
Francine, she jes keep a-comin an a-hangin on
Jimmy. She don' know which end up, but she tryin
awful hard t'find out.
Jimmy, he don' know which end up neither. He

ack like he wanna go an he wanna stay, like he don'
know what the hell he wanna He lookin
do. at me
an lookin at Francine, an lookin at me agen.
I figure no use makin Francine all fuss up. I say
t'mysefF, Keep cool. Kitten, an that ass-sniffin son-
a-bitch take off pritty soon. Francine.
But she gotta bad ol look in her eye, like she is
fixin t'have Kitten fer dinner. An bout right now, /
dam well don' know which fuggin end is up neither.
Too!
She say. Hey Kitten, I gotta idea.
I say. Take yer idea an shove it, Francine.
She say. Ah Kitten. She say. Now be nice. Kitten.
She say. Maybe this nice Whiteboy wanna see him a
show. Huh?
!

I say, No Francine, he don' wanna no show.
see
But she keep comin affer me anyhow. Yeah She !
letgo Jimmy an she affer my ass.

I say, Git away, you crabass I ! tol' you, he don*
wanna see him no show. You jes git outta here an
leave us be.
But she keeps houndin me. I'm movin roun the
room tryin t'git away an she's movin roun affer me.
I move slow, she move slow. I move fast, she move
fast.
She-it
This fuggin Francine, she been sniffin roun me
since Madam find me by the police house when I was
jes a HI tiny Pickaninny. An now she ack like she
gonna git me. Kee-ryess !
She jes way she wanna do. Same time it

crazy the
make me wanna laugh. Jimmy standin there watchin
us, make me wanna laugh too. He standin there wiff
his jaw hangin down an his eyeballs poppin out. I

can' help it, I git t'laughin.
Nex, down. Yeah Movin roun like that an

I fall !
—
laughin I miss a step an plop Down I go, wiff that !
godam Francine down right on top, an alia time I'm

laughin up a bellyache.
I'm laughin till I see that godam Francine is eye
level wiff my hunner. Yeah She look right, she
!
gonna see my hunner unner the divan. She see my

loot, I'm really in trouble.
Right now, I wiggle out an git away an git up an
run. Yeah ! I run right fer the phone.
An I say, Francine I tol' you t'git. Now git!
But she still jes keep a-comin. She lookin at me

an she lookin at Jimmy an she smilin real kissass.
! . ! —
mhunderstanding 1 09
She say, I got some gen'lemen frien's upstairs, an

they is lovers. How bout if
Ooh-ooh-ooh Skinny Minnie.
She goes on, sayin why don' me an Jimmy come on
upstairs wiff her an see her crazy-ass frien's, an Hke
that. Alia time she is talkin she is tryin t'git at my
bizness.
An Jimmy, he git his face all wrinkle up, she talkin
an messin like that.
Kee-ryess
I say, Francine you ain rollin outta here time I
count t'three, I'm gonna phone.

An I lay my hand on that phone an I start in
countin.
One . . . two . .
An she say. No no no Kitten.

An I say. Yeah I say. You ! ain on yer way right
now, I'm gonna phone fer Jackie !
She go. Yeah ! I say, real loud an mean, I say,

Phone fer Jackie, and she outta my partmin that
fast.
Ooh-wee ! Gee-zu2
Sep, my troubles ain over yet. No-oh-oh ! Jimmy
still lookin nothin but all fuggin up in the air. He
walkin back an forfF, an he wrinkle up one minit,
an he snort the next. He look at me an he start in

rattlin off, an then he go back t'walkin an lookin
agen.
I say,Jimmy Baby don' pay no mind t'Francine.
But he jes do him some more o'his dum rantin an
ravin an big- word noise.
So I shut up. I say t'mysefF, Girl at least he ain
gone. Tha's the big thing, he ain gone. Francine done
!
1 10 one hundred dollar

save yer invessment, yer very first invessment. Stumble-
ass is how, but she done it anyhow. An now she is
gone an he is here, so back t'work.
I say —sweet's I kin — I say, Jimmy Honey take a

seat an cool it. I say, How you like it I go an put on
some nice swingin music, real sad an pritty.
But he jes say, like. Mumble mumble mumble. Like a
godam tee vee man, but he sit down, talkin like that.
So I put on some nice soff tinklin swingin stuff.
I say t'myseff, Girl you got yer one hunner fer
the weekend now, you can' let him go out that door
mad. He do that, he ain never comin back, an you ain
got you no cottinpickin chance fer yer first invess-
ment nohow
kgain I wish I were a paid professional writer so
I could describe it to you. What happened when I
went to leave, I mean. Because the whole thing was

like a stag party and I don't know how I could tell it
without impairing the high standards of this account.

I mean, I don't know how I could get around the
indelicacy of it and still indicate how comical it was.
Now don't get me wrong. I was sickened. In fact,

I was horrified ! And I wouldn't have laughed at all
if it hadn't seemed so much like a dream —the sort
of nightmare one might have after having eaten ice-
cream just before bedtime.
But how can I present a true and accurate factual
picture? (Truth is stranger than fiction !) (I mean, you
can't imagine !)
What I'm driving at is . . . Well, let me tell just

enough, as Prof. McGillicuty says. (About literature,
that is. Great literature, I mean. He says the author
must tell as much as he can, as concisely as he can,
in a few well-chosen words, and above all, without
becoming indecent and using four-letter words.) (He
says literature has its laws and principles too, of
course, which makes science not the only thing !)
Ill
!

(And the big literary law is to avoid obscenities.) So
let me try, in a few well-chosen words, to tell what
happened.
Which, believe me, such an endeavor is, in this
case, very much uneasy. What I mean is, right off
the bat, I don't know for certain if Kitten ran after
me before I opened the door, or at that very instant,
or maybe it was a moment later. The point is She :
ran. She zoomed up behind me all of a sudden, coo-

ing like a little pigeon again.
She could coo like a pigeon one
(Unbelieveable !
moment and scream like a banshee the next, and go

right back to coo-ing again, as if such quick changes
were the most natural thing in the world !)
Anyhow, when I opened the door, who should I
find myself face to face with ?
That other paid professional prostitute —the same
one who kept running in and out of our room in the
ill repute house
Holy Christmas I mean Here's the picture. Dear
! !
Reader I'm standing there, dressed, with my shoes

:
in my hand, and behind me is Kitten, nude, tugging

at my coattail, and in front of me is this Francey
(though I'm certainly well aware of the fact that
that was probably not her real legal name but an as-
sumed name for professional purposes) and she is
dressed up fit to kill in this gaudy evening gown that
is tight and has a very low neckline and is this pukey-
looking green color, which in itself is enough to make

a normal person's stomach turn.
mean, she just stood
So, of course, I couldn't go, I
there blocking the doorway, and I couldn't walk
through her, for gosh sakes !
! 3
!
Then, immediately, the two of them began jabber-

ing in their dialect and I didn't catch all they said.
Francey spoke gently to Kitten, but Kitten literally
scolded Francey and wanted her to leave. Which
Francey didn't do. Instead, she took my arm and
moved on into the apartment and spotted the knife
Kitten had almost castrated me with.
And the next thing I knew, it started Wow I
! !
mean Francey (dressed) chased Kitten (undressed)

all over the place until they both landed in a heap
with Francey sort of climbing all over Kitten, like . . .
Well, like I don't know what. I mean the whole thing

seemed like a wild post-icecream dream, as men-
tioned above, or (I might as well say it) like a stag
party movie. This Francey was literally making im-
moral passes at Kitten, and that, of course, was sick-
ening. But what was comical was the way Kitten
reacted. She kept trying to escape — dashing all over
the floor, trying to get away from Francey, who came
right after her, so that it became plain to any discern-
ing eye that Francey was perverted, for crying out
loud I mean, she was sick sick sick
! !
Well, I froze in my tracks. I didn't know whether

to throw up or laugh. I mean, our frat has this stag
movie (which I, of course, have nothing to do with,
no authority over at all) (so couldn't have it tossed
out or burned, even if I wanted to) (which I do, of
course) —and, anyway, this movie is the closest thing
I've ever witnessed to what occurred at that time.
Then, to make things even more sickening, this
Francey mentioned something about there being
some homosexuals, even, upstairs in her apartment
What a madhouse
Fortunately, Kitten was able to escape by this time,

and, giving her customary banshee yell, and shouting
something about Jack again (but this time using the
diminutive of Jack, namely, Jacky), and Francey took
to her heels and ran out.
Then —the very next instant—Kitten was her soft
coo-ing pigeon-like self again. Well, that was too

much. I mean, I felt it was high time I tried to pound
some morality into that girl, even if she was what she
was. Not that what almost happened was her fault,
because it wasn't. But she came out of it acting as
—
calm and cool as you please just like such mad in-
sanity were an everyday occurrence. Which maybe
it was, and that's worse. I mean, the girl had no
shame No shame whatsoever So I made an attempt

! !
to enlighten her — to tell her about the awful danger,

healthwise, both physically and mentally, which such
behavior invariably leads to. What I mean is, I tried
to explain the difference between normal marital

sexual relations and abnormal perverted illegal immor-
ality.
and uneducated
But, she was just too unintelligent
to grasp anything. She kept quiet and listened, all
right, but I might have saved my breath, because
when I'd finished this explanation (which I strenu-
ously endeavored to make understandable to her

level of mentality) she smiled her simple-minded smile,
guided me and then trotted off to her bed-
to a chair
room to play fi. I mean, I didn't expect her
her hi
to immediately run off for some certified medical
advice, or something, but neither did I expect her to in-
dicate beyond a shadow of doubt that my efforts to en-
lighten her had been entirely and completely in vain.
Anyway, I sat. Matter of fact, I was too tired to

do much of anything else. One minute she's got this
knife and is chasing me around, trying to castrate me,
and the next she's coo-ing Hke a love-sick pigeon, and
in between she's clowning with a mental case. All of
which is very tiring. I didn't know quite what to do,
but since she insisted I stay, and also (above all) since
she had stolen my money, I decided to hang around
awhile longer, just to see what might develop.
Well, what developed was another wild row. I
mean, no sooner had I seated myself comfortably and
made myself at home when —Bamb !
Here's the picture : When she takes off for the bed-
room, I switch on her TV—mainly because I was
getting sick and tired of that stuflf she called music.
About the time she comes out of the bedroom and is
on her way to the kitchen (to make us sandwiches,
as it turned out) the TV warms up and comes on with
this innocent and highly-rated western. Matt Mellon^
as a matter of hard cold fact.
Then, like a bomb, she swung around and came

hightailing it back with her fists clenched and this
angry snarl on her and stood there a moment,

lips,
snarling at the TV image of Matt, played by . . .
What's-his-name, the actor who's been married to the

same wife for 15 years.
Then, Christmas Fantastic ! as it may sound, she
attacked ! I mean literally attacked ! The TV, that is.
She rushed it — let out with her banshee yell and

leaped at it, and grabbed it —wrapped her arms
around it and (Unbelieveable !) lifted it off the floor
— clear off the floor !
I thought for sure she was having a fit of some sort

! )!

and was about to run for my life. (Not that I'm
a coward, but like they say, when a person's out of his,
or her, mind, he or she has abnormal strength and,
above all, is unpredictable. And in view of how
unpredictable she'd been all along, and also when you
realize it was a 21 -inch set she was lifting off the floor,
I was not for trusting to the shifting winds of fortune.

However, right about here I realized what she was
trying to do, and so didn't run. She was (and I kid
thee not !) trying to throw her TV out the window
The most comic part of this entire incident was She :
couldn't get the set to fit through the window. No

matter how she pushed and shoved and twisted, it
just wouldn't go. You see, the window, which was
this huge picture window which didn't open, had
two smaller windows on each side of it which did

open, and she had one of the side windows open and
was trying to get it through and toss it, for crying
out loud, out into mid air !
Imagine
Please, Dear Reader, get the picture We're four :
stories up and there she is trying to heave that TV

out ! Think of the mess it would have made when it
hit the sidewalk below. Christmas !
Which, fortunately for all and any concerned, it
didn't —but only because she couldn't get it out the

window. But, still jabbering her profanities, she laid
it on the floor face down, stood on the back of it,
grabbed the wire in both hands and gave one great

and horrendous tug. I mean, she pulled She gave !
this fierce grunt and heaved like a weightlifter in a
championship match. (For colored girls.) So naturally

the wire came out of the set. What else ?
And when was caught off balance and

it did, she
almost landed on her head before she regained her
balance again, still clutching that wire. Then she
flopped back onto her couch and sat there, smiling
this supercilious grin —just sat there like that.
Well ! I mean ! If only I were a paid professional
writer and could describe how really insanely comic
she looked standing (nude) on the back of that set,
heaving with all her might and mane at that silly wire.
I mean, if only I could do this scene justice. But
that task, I fear, is beyond me.

Anyway, things sort of settled back down to a dull
roar after that. She took ofT for the kitchen again
and I was left with nothing but her idiotic music.
It was at this point that I reconnoitered. That is, I
reached in my pocket and found she had left me some
money : $10.45, for crying out loud !
I then made some quick calculations and realized I
—
must have spent on taxis, in that Black-n-Tan place,
and at the ill repute house about $16. Which, if —
deductive logic served me well, meant she had stolen
about $100.
Well, a couple of things were involved here. For
one thing, there was the principle of it —her stealing
that money, even though she had been clearly in-
formed that I was a fellow underworld character,
proving again the old axiom There's No Justice :
Among Thieves Another thing Barbara and I had

! :
a date for Tuesday to go to the Playhouse and see a

Shakespearean production which, counting dinner and
drinks before, and a snack and more drinks later,
would surely cost me at least $25, and maybe more.
(You see, Barbara's father taught her to drink as —
!
part of her preparation for college —

and that's fine
for her honor, of course. I mean, she sure can hold
her liquor. On the other hand, her father did such
a good job, she can toss down highballs with the
and that
best of them, gets expensive.) (Don't get me
wrong. I'm happy to see her enjoying herself and
don't begrudge the money it costs, and it's certainly
heartening to find a girl who can drink large quan-
tities without endangering her high morals.) However,

the point I wish to stress is : $10.45 was not, for cry-
ing out loud, enough for a night at the Playhouse ! Not
to mention such additional weekly details as cigar-
ettes and coffee and lunches at the cafeteria until my
next check arrived on Friday.
Obviously, further calculations were in order. I
mean, what could Kitten have done with my money?
Without a stitch on yet one minute she's sitting there
!
in the middle of the floor holding it, and the next

minute it's gone. Disappeared !
Well, my choice was clearcut. I mean, it was either

leave now and let her steal my money which would —
result in hardships Tuesday evening (to say the least)
—or stay and, if possible, get it back.
Yes, was a challange, and I couldn't resist it.
it
Ha ha, thought I. This, James Gartwright Holland,

is right up your alley. This will be fun.
Of course, right off the bat I realized I had to re-

linquish my scientific viewpoint towards this little
experience and adopt a more pragmatic approach. But

I didn't waste time with regrets about this. No
Anxious to explore diplomatic channels first, I re-
sorted immediately to thewhen-in-Rome frame of

mind and got undressed again. That was the first
!
step. I wasn't sure where I was going from there, but

that was the very obvious first step.
And it wasn't long before my diplomatic approach
paid off admirably. She, for gosh sakes, supplied yours
truly with the very capital and position of strength
my bargaining posture required.
Christmas ! Like a bolt from the devine blue
And, being quick-witted about such matters, I did
indeed grab that capital position by its figurative
wheel, so to speak, and steer fortune fore to aft,
thus gaining the advantage —a slick maneuver which

I will endeavor to recount in its proper place.
!
K
bastid
ee-ryess! Firs' time
Jimmy
my back
the mothahless burgler at that glass-
is turn', that Fay
face son-a-bitch tee vee all over agen !
I swing ass back on in the livin room, big ol glass-
face makin a mos' terrible noise. He showin this
Whiteman shootin straight out ! Yeah ! He got him

two cowboy guns an he is jes a-shootin right square
in the face o' anybody dum enufT t'be lookin some
dum glassface in the eye.
Yeah He do ! this !
An alia time he doin this shootin, this loud mothah-

less spook music go, like, Raie Raie Raie Raie ! Like
t'rupture my ear
Tween this boom boom Whiteman an this
shootin,
raie raie noise music, that tee vee look like gonna it
blow up an kill everybody ! Yeah ! Boom boom Raie !
raie ! Boom boom ! Raie raie !
Gee-eee-eee-zuz ! I can' take it ! I jes can' take it
much longer. I try. Fer a minit.

On'y thing I kin tell is, this fuggin shootin White-
man, he is good lookin an he is mean lookin, so's
everybody sposed t'know he perten t'be some six-
120
! ! —
legged horse's ass of a cowboy lawman. He so crab-

ass horsey mean lookin, he can' be nothin but a godam
lawman
Yeah!
I say t'myseff, I say, Girl it gonna be you, or it
gonna be that mothahless madass boom boomin crap,

one or the other.
Make me so jimjam jittery, I near nutty already.
Fack, I jes ain even got no room lefF in me fer Picka-
ninny considerin. No room a-tall No ! !
I grab that dum glassface. I grab that son-a-bitch

an I up an I carry him t'the winda, an I
pick his ass
set him noise down, an I open the winda, and I pick
his ass up agen, and I is gonna throw him right the
hell outta my winda Yeah He is gonna hit an go
! !
boom oncet, an then he is gonna shut the fug up oncet

an fer all
Yeah!
Sep, on'y one thing wrong. He don' fit. I try, but
nothin do gonna make his noisey fat ass fit thru
I
that HI winda. I do this an I do that. I up him down
an back-ass him forwar', an still he don' fit.

An alia time I is doin this, that spiteful Whiteman
pertenin t'be some cowboy lawman, an that raie raie
still goin on, right in my face !
So I set his ass back down on the floor face down,

an I grab him by his line. Yeah !
Gee-zuz Ain nothin else I kin do t'kill that

! bastid,
sep grab him by his lectrick line and pull it pop !
Right outta his ass !
Ooh-wee Skinny Minnie ! That do it. Yeah, he is
dead now. Yeah, an he ain gonna make no more

fuggin rockit rackit now. No-oh-oh !
I do this, Jimmy jes sittin an lookin at me like I is
nuts. Humph ! Kee-ryess ! I kill that tee vee fer him

too ! That glassface son-a-bitch, wiff all his shootin
and fightin an killin, like t'drive him nuts Like t'drive !
him nuts long ago, I spect.

I don' never like t'hurt nothin or nobody. No, not
never But that everlastin boom boomin raie raie

!
crap, I gotta kill that son-a-bitch, I ain got no choice !
I don' kill him, he sure gonna same's kill me ! An

even he don' never me, he sure gonna make
git t'killin
my Whiteboy invessment nutter' n he already is.

So, tee vee is dead. Jimmy find he ain got no more
pocketpickin perten crap t'look at, he git up an take
ofiF his dum clothes an he git cozy on my nice big rug,
an he lissen at my recordplayer.
Tha's better. Everythin better now. Wiff him cozy
an all paid up, an me wiflf my hunner, an Francine
the hell outta here, an that everlastin boom boomin
raie raie done, at last everythin better.
Nice cool smooth sweet jazz tinklin, me makin us
sammages, steppin roun some, everythin better.
Phew!
Godam, I got news for Jackie! Invessment easy?
Ooh-wee Considerin all the dancin an blade fetchin
!
I gotta do jes t'git my own weekend hunner, and

then that tee vee killin I gotta do t'keep my marbles,
an all that sadass big-word noise I gotta lissen to, I
bout ready maybe I oughtta wait'll I is fifteen

t'figure
fore makin invessment.
Sep, maybe it gonna go okay now. Maybe he gonna
ack nice an git the right idea, an maybe we is gonna
git along jes fine. I hope he don' git him no more
dum ideas. I sure hope he don' cause he kin be okay.

!
When he wanna. Yeah ! Oncet he been teeched, he

do sweet an good playin turnabout, oncet he been
teeched. He make me one fine invessment, he wanna.
Why Kee-ryess! All that fightin an teechin an
killin done wifF now, maybe I find out I ain got me
no lil ol pissy ant invessment. Maybe I find out I
got me a whole flipfloppin fed'el budgit. Yeah ! Hee

hee
Pritty cottinpickin way he kin play
nifty, too,
bumblebee when he wanna an git him a lil color'

honey. He's okay. When he wanna be.
I make us sammages, nex he wanna eat his on the
livin room rug, an I gotta tell him bout my rug bein
too nice fer eatin on.

We done eatin, I tell Jimmy I gotta red-up. He
lissen t'the recordplayer an jes layin roun lookin
pritty an cute and behavin hissefT okay.
Reddin up give me a chance t'do me some con-
siderin. I git out the lectrick sweeper an all an git
t'work, an that give me a chance t'consider how I
tol' Madam I is sick, an then that crazy-ass Francine,
she pop in an find me wiflF my Jimmyboy burgler.

That Francine, she gittin nuttier an nuttier. Maybe
cause she gittin so ol. She thirty, gotta wear a bra an
all, no tellin what she might do nex.
Course, she ain gonna tell Madam bout me an

Jimmy. No. Cause Madam alia time givin her hell
bout runnin roun wifF them crazy White girlfrien's.
Madam git mad cause Francine come t'work all worn-

out an hopped up.
So Francine ain gonna tell Madam nothin. What
she gonna do, she gonna blab her big mouflf t'the
other cats. She got her a big moufif an she gotta talk.
!

She gonna tell them other cats I got me a White
boyfrien', is how come I ain workin. Yeah, tha's what
Francine gonna do.
She-it ! Francine do that, them other cats git all
fuss up counta I meet Jimmy in the cathouse. They

gonna wanna git them some o'my loot, gonna tell me
I is too young t'be on my own.
Nex, Madam gonna hear bout it, an she gonna

wanna move me back in her partmin in the cathouse.
Specially she find out I gotta do that blade fetchin
jes t'git me my weekend hunner. Yeah !
Ooh-wee Sure got me some plain

! an fancy con-
siderin t'do.
I'm goin along, cleanin an considerin an makin the
bed, I say t'mysefF, I say. Girl maybe you go on in
an work t' night, leave Jimmy here an come on home

t'morra an jes take Sunday off.
But she-it I can' stan t'think o'all them mothahless
!
Joe College one-eyes I'm gonna haff t'work on, I go

t'work.
Most o'the time, I don' mind goin t'work. Fack, I
kinda look forwar' t'workin, most o'the time. But
Gee-zuz Most o'the time, I don' make me no swingin
!
turnabout weekend hunner, an turnon doin it.

Sides, he is all paid up fer a whole weekend now.
Yeah I got me some plain an fancy considerin t'do.
!
I say t'myseff, Jimmy stay here all night an behave

hisseflF okay, fine. Sep, he ain gonna wanna do that
No, he gonna wanna go. He ain the sittin roun
is
kind. Specially wiff no tee vee so's he kin watch them

shootin shows.
Considerin an considerin, an cleanin an cleanin, I
gits an idea. I say t'myseff, Girl thing you gotta do is,

!
you gotta give yer trick somethin t'do, meantime you

go on int'work. I say, Now what the hell kin I give
him t'do?
An I say, I kin give him Madam car t'drive
then
Yeah!
He gonna like that He kin drive roun some, then
!
he come back an I kin finish givin him his hunner

weekend t'morra.
See, Madam, she got this great big ol blackass car,
she keep roun my partmin house, an she give me the
key cause I can' drive yet an I ain got no permit any-
how. She keep it here cause she don' wanna keep it
in Niggertown. An when she wannt git us cats some
place fer some outside party, like roun leckshun time,
she call up an tell me t'give the key t' Jackie an Jackie
drive us.
Jackie done been t'high school, an even some t' col-
lege, an she kin drive real good. Yeah, real real good.
Sep when she shootup wiflF H or git too high on weed,
an then Madam fraid Jackie drive that mothahless
car int'some pole or somethin.
Course, Jackie, she ain no junkie. She mostly on'y
smoke pot, but oncet in awhile she like t'shootup jes
fer a lil change. She do her a lotta fatass book readin
too, oncet in awhile.
Anyhow, Jackie is already got her a Ford car an
she don' wanna drive Madam car nohow. Tha's what
she say, but Madam, she don' wanna take no chances,
cause Madam got, Jackie run him int'some
last car
truck. Tha's when Madam give me the key t'keep.
So I got Madam car key. Yeah !
I finish reddin up, I say. Hey Jimmy Honey, you

like t'drive?
! !

He say, Huh?
I say, Kee-ryess ! I ask you, you like t' drive.
He say.Car?
I say, Yeah man, car.
He You mean, Automobeeel ?
say,
I say. You think I mean Tee-eee Vee-eee ?
He look real funny. He say, You gotta car?

I say, I got Madam car. I tell him bout it.
He say, Wow
Yeah ! He say that ! He look real funny, scratch his
head, start mumblin crissmiss crissmiss crissmiss.
I say. Baby I gotta go t'work t'night counta Fran-
cine seen us.
He wrinkle up his face an jes look dum.
I try him wha's gonna happen, I don' go
t'tell
t'work t'night, but he so rump-thumpin knuckle-

headed dum I can' git thru.
He say, Where's the car?

I say, Hoi' yer ass ! I say, I give you the key, you
promise t'come back here when yer done drivin? You
sleep here agen. Lover, an we have some more fun
t'morra.
I dam near gotta ack it out t'make him unnerstan.
Then he say, Yeah yeah yeah ! An he look real
happy.
I say, You promise ?
He say. Yeah yeah yeah ! He say, Crissmiss criss-
miss crissmiss
I say, Okay. Go easy, man.
He git up aa start lookin out the wdnda. He say,
Where's the car.
I say, Right down there. I show him where it's
restin.
! ! !
He say, Grissmiss. He say, Kryessler Peereal

He git all fuss up now, bout drivin Madam car.
He lookin at me an lookin out the winda an lookin
at me agen. He laughin.
I'm glad I done my considerin. I say, I likes t*see
you happy, Loverboy. I wanna see you a hunner
dollah happy. I wanna see you a hunner hunner doUah
happy happy
Nex, he start in buggin me. Seem like he so godam
happy, he wanna play him nother movie scene.
Phew ! I ain in no mood fer that perten crap jes
now, so I shilly shally.
I shilly shally off an go back t'cleanin agen, jes

t'git away, but he follow me roun.
Ain right, me hangin him up like that, but I do
anyhow. Jes because
Way I git him off my ass is, I send him back t'that
mothahless car.
I say, Jimmy you wanna go fer a ride ?
He say, Ride?
Yeah ! We gotta go all over it agen counta he so
Gee-zuz dum.
But I him t'unnerstan, an he is all
git set t'go
ridin. He say. Yeah yeah yeah, an like that.
She-it He so muddlefuggin
! fuss up, I fraid he
gonna run out bareass an jump in Madam car right
now.
I say, Jimmy first we gotta git dress'.
He say. Yeah, course we do.
We do.
Time we do, it gittin dark out. Good thing. Don'
look right, Whiteboy an Pickaninny girl runnin roun
the street. Fack, some folks livin this partmin house,
!

they alia time callin the law cause so many Whitefolks
goin in an outta here. They don' like Whitefolks no-
how.
Some Nigger's dam near's nasty's some Whitefolks
they don' like. Sometime I think on'y thing color' bout
them is they skins, cause they hearts is spiteful White-
folks hearts. Piss on them Niggers !
We bout ready t'go out the door, Jimmy git jittery
agen. He say maybe we oughtta seprate, meet at the

car.
I spect we oughtta. Don' look right, Whiteboy an

Pickaninny girl walkin outta some partmin house side
by side.
Yeah ! Sides, nother thing ! Can' let none o'them

other cats see us gettin in Madam car t'gether, even
they do see me walkin out. But Kee-ryess They better !
not see me neither, or my ass' 11 be mud !
I say, Okay. I say. You go on down an walk t'the
corner.
He say. What corner ?
Fer oncet he ask a smart queshun. I say. Billboard
Corner.
Then he right back an givin me huh huh huh agen.
I say, Gee-zuz Jimmy ! Don' start that godam
queshun crap all over agen, please !
An he look hurt. He say. He don' know what

corner is the Billboard Corner.
I take him t'thewinda an show him.
He jes git done lookin outta that winda. Billboard
Corner right there
I say, Jimmy wonner you still livin, you so dam
much dum dum dum !
He give me his wrinkle look agen.

! .
Ooh-wee I spect I hurt his feelins agen, but Kee-

!
ryees Good thing he got all that jack an he is White

! !
He Nigger an broke, he most likely spend his whole

livelong life in jail, he so dee-diddlv-dum-diddly-
dum !
He being dum, he go on out the door an down

finish
an him walkin along down the street t'the Bill-
I see
board Corner. I watch, see he do okay. No tellin what

he might do, he such a muddlehead.
I go on down then, an git in Madam car. Jackie
kin drive him real fine, but I can'. He so big, I kin
hardly see out. I do what Jackie do, an Madam
jes
car start okay. I driv him oncet jes a lil ways so I

know how he do when I push the peddle. I off the
brake an make the lil line go on D, and I push the
peddle real real soff
He go Yeah He like t'go

! ! t'the moon !
Butpush the brake peddle an he stop, an I git

I
him goin right agen, an I push the other peddle, an

he go, an then I push the brake peddle an he stop.
Ooh-wee Skinny Minnie Ain easy drivin Madam !
car, specially when you don' know how But I make it !
t'the corner okay, an Jimmy is there. I can' git him

hind that wheel fast enuff. He there, he know what
t'do.
Nex, he push that peddle so hard, my head like
t'come off
I say, Gee-zuz Jimmy Take ! it easy !
But he don'. He go t'drivin Madam car like it ain

never been driv He comin at this here stoplight like
!
he is gonna go on red. That ain right counta them

other cars is goin cross-wise, counta they is on green.
I bout she-it right now !
! ! !

But he stop
Yeah On'y trouble
! is, he stop so fuggin fast, I
don' stop ! I sHde off the seat an land on the floor

I'm sittin there, Jimmy laughin, I say t'myseff. Girl
maybe best you stay on the floor so's you can' see what
the hell you gonna hit.
But I git back up, jes when Jimmy push that go
peddle agen, so's I fly on back a-gin the seat.
I say, Kee-ryess Jimmy. Where the fug you goin?

He laugh and he say, He don' know where he is
goin, he's jes a-goin.

I say t'myseff, I say. Yeah man You makin more !
sense than you know you is !
I say, Jimmy I gotta go t'Madam an work t' night.

We can' go too far.
He say. He git me t'Madam okay. He say. Then

he go take him a ride.
I say. Okay. I say. Then you go on back an sleep
in my bed.
He say, Sure ! Like, way he say it, he say, Sh-ur-ur-
ur!
I don' like the way he say it. He so fuss up bout
drivin Madam car, I beginnin t'git a lil worried. I
beginnin t' think maybe he gonna take off fer the

moon in Madam car. But she-it I spect he drive
!
roun some, he git tired an come on back. Yeah He !
drive roun awhile, make him tired o'drivin.

I say, Jimmy I go t'Madam, you go take you a
nice long drive. You take you a nice hiway drive.
Okay?
He smile nice an laugh, an he start sayin, Yeah
yeah yeah
He be okay. Long's he don' go nowhere he gotta
1
think, he be okay. He git int' trouble somehow and he

start ackin dum agen, then / got trouble !
I say t'myseff, Girl come t' think of it, you is takin

you one big fatass chance, lettin this dum Whiteboy
drive Madam car.
On'y thing is, I'm beginnin t'like this mothah, now
I got his jack. Sides, he ain got him his weekend hun-
ner worff yet, so how kin I jes kickhim out? I wanna
make it so's he gittin his hunner worff o'me, we is
boff enjoyin it an gittin along invessment-fine, like
Jackie an her invessment do. An if he gonna be my

invessment, I gotta treat him good. You jes can'
go makin invessment an then kick his ass out. You
gotta give some an git some. I give him better time
than he spect t'git now, he gonna wanna come roun
agen soon wifF more loot, which I is gonna git by
givin him nother fine time.
Yeah!
Nex, we drivin along okay, fast an jittery but okay
anyhow, I say t'myseff. Girl pritty soon be time fer
you t'go t'work, an Saterday night you ain gonna git
much chance t'eat.

I say, Jimmy buy me somethin t'eat.
He wrinkle up Where ?
a HI, then he say,
That ain such a dum queshun, considerin we ain
the same color.
I say, I know where. Ham House.
He say. Where ?
I say. Hell man, ain you never heard o' Ham
House? It's in Niggertown, on the radio alia time. I
say. You know where is Niggertown ?
He say. He think he do.
I say, It's where all the down-n-out Niggerfolks lives.
! !!
He Where the cathouse is ?

say,
I Yeah man, tha's Niggertown. Tha's where
say,
Ham House is.
He say. Oh. Then he say, Wha, Who, Hee, Ho
He say, No we can' go there He say, What'f some- !
body see us in Madam car?

Yeah!
I say, Yer right man. Maybe somebody tell Madam
we got her car out. How come you git so bright so
quick ?
He say, I got time, he kin drive us out the hiway
an we kin git somethin t'eat out there.
I say, Okay, jes's long's I git t'Madam by ten or
leven.
So we go. An I ain jes's a-foolin we go We go !
like she-it thru a tin horn. Jimmy swing that black-

ass car ont'the hiway, and he push that cottinpickin
peddle down, an ooh-wee ! We go so fast I begin t'feel
like I been smokin cigarets. Yeah ! I git dizzy lookin

at them lights jes a-whizzin by us, an us jes a-goin
like the whole worl' ain here no more, an we is jes
a-floatin off t'landsome place.
Gee-zuz
I say, Jimmy you slow down or I'm gonna take
this car right back !
But he jes laugh an keep passin everythin in sight.

I spect he know I ain gonna take the car back cause
he seen I can' hardly drive a-tall. Course, he don'

gotta be so bright t'see that, way I drive this car
t'the corner.
So I say. Lover please slow down. I say, Police
gonna git us, you don' slow down. Police git us, they
gonna toss yer ass in jail an throw away the key
! ! !
Counta you bein a burgler, I say.

Good thing he still playin perten he's a burgler.
No tellin what mightta happen.
He slow down. Bout this time, we done gone by so
many eatin joints, we dam near upstate.
She-it He jes a-sittin there drivin an smilin at his
!
own drivin. He dam near's happy's if he foun him a

bran new boom boomin tee vee. Kee-ryess ! Jackie
never drive like that. How come he can' drive cool
like Jackie ? Jackie drive us fast on the hiway but she
don' take off fer the moon like he do. An she don' sit
there wifF no hotass grin on her face neither. Jimmy

drive like this car gonna show a tee vee lawman an
start goin raie raie, boom boom. Kee-ryess !
I say, Jimmy you make this godam thing stop fore
we git alia way upstate. Huh?

He say. He gonna stop nex place.
Nex place ! Which nex place ? Places jes a-whizzin
by.
I say, Jimmy stop this dee-diddly-godam car ! Stop
him right now
He laugh. Gittin unner my skin, way he laugh.
But he stop. Yeah I bout crap, but he do.
!
Then, nex dum thing he do, he git out an walk

Yeah He git out an take off walkin back along the
!
hiway
He take a couple-a steps, I out an the hell aflfer him.
I say, Jimmy where the hell you goin ?
He say, T'git somethin t'eat. He say, Don' you
wanna eat?
I say. Yeah I wanna eat, but
An he say, He gonna go an bring us back some-
thin t'eat.
!
I say, Gee-zuz man ! We come alia way out here

an you gonna walk ?
He say, Yeah he gonna walk. He say, We can' boff
go in, so he is goin. He knows this real good place
iil way back, an he goin there. ^
I say. But man, you gonna leave me here, all alone ?
He say. Sure he gonna leave me. He say, He comin

right back. He say. He is goin t'this White place, I
can' come.
An he takes off.
Me, I is there all all alone ! Yeah ! He leave my

poor Nigger Pickaninny me all alone on that madass
hiway in this great big blackass Madam car I can'
even drive ! I don' know if I gonna she-it or cry
But I git back in that car an lock all the doors an all,
and I sit there. I jes on'y do nothin but sit ass right
down the hell there, lookin up ahead at this bigass
billboard night sign jes a-blink talkin real weird, wiff
all them cars a-whizzin by me on the hiway, gpin t'the
moon. Yeah Them cars jes a-goin like they is goin
!
t'the moon Jes like on them tee vee shows I seen

!
when I was a wee tiny Pickaninny, back fore I quit

lookin that glassface in the eye, them shows where
police is chasin robbers on the hiway, jes a-chasin
an chasin. I spect any minit some car gonna pull up
an stop an some mean lookin Whiteman gonna git
out wifF a gun an shoot my poor ol blackass Picka-
ninny me right in the face like he is some mean tee
veelawman I is so flipfloppin scared, I feel like I'm
!
gonna pee down my leg. All them cars goin by like

that, an me all all alone, an everybody jes goin like they
is mad at everybody else, an all them muddle heads
jes fulla that tee vee raie raie boom boom noise, an
!
that up-ahead night sign jes a-blink talkin away, I

jes sure somethin tee vee terrible gonna happen fore
Jimmy gits back.

An Gee-zuz ! He gone so lo-o-o-o-ng Time ! he git
back, I near outta my black hide,

I say, Jimmy you fay burgler bastid, how come you
leave me out here so dam long?
He say, He don'. He say, He on'y gone five minits.
She-it ! But I so godam hard-titty scared, I'm glad

t'see the dum mothah anyhow. Fack, I so glad t'see
him, I move on over real close an cozy up side him.
Kee-ryess, my ol teeth jes a-chatterin som»ethin
terrible
I say, Jimmy don' you never never run off like that
an leave my poor ol Pickaninny me the hell out here
on no Whiteman hiway.
He laugh ! Yeah ! He don' laugh like he laugh
before. He some drunk in the cathouse. He
laugh like
laugh, Heah heah heah !
Ooh-wee I so fuggin mad Bout this time, I so

! !
mad I kin scratch his eyes out. On'y thing stop me, I
can' drive. I kin drive, that dum heah-heah ain got
no eyes.
Good thing I can' drive. Way I is, all I kin do is cry.
He go t'give me a hamberger, an all I kin do is sit
there lookin that Whiteplace hamberger wiff them
madass mothahless muddlehead moon-goin White-
folks cars tearin along wiff all them tee vee boom
bommin Whitefolks drivin 'em, an that up-ahead
blink-talkin, an all I kin do is cry I cry so hard, I !
can' hear nothin, an I can' even see that hamberger.

I cry so hard, my poor ol Pickaninny heart feel like
it gonna choke me.
! !
Jimmy, he ack all worried, he see me cryin like that.

I cryin an cryin ! Nex, I hear him tryin t'talk sweet
talk, fer Kee-ryess sake ! Yeah ! He try, but he can'.
He ain no better at talkin sweet than he was at playin
nice. He can' play nice an he can' talk sweet
Fack, come t' think of it, that dum bastid can' even
pay ! I even gotta fetch me a blade fore he pay
I cry an cry, thinkin that, an then I say t'myseff.
Girl you done it now. You done it fer sure. Here you
is wifT some tee vee Whiteboy, can' pay, can' play, can'
even talk sweet when he wanna ! I say t'myseff. Girl
you fug up somethin terrible ! You shoulda throwed
his dum ass out soon's you got his hunner. You done
that, you don' find yerseff like this.
Then I say. She-it ! I say, Jimmy quit tryin t'talk
like you don' know how t'talk. I say, Yer so cram fulla
raie raie boom boom shootin an fightin an killin an

big-word noise, you jes can' do nothin else !
He shut up. I don' think he really know what I'm

talkin bout, but he shut the hell up, an he eat his
hamberger.
My mouff too fulla cry t'eat jes yet. But I stop
cryin an git back t'better considerin.
Nex, Jimmy take off drivin agen, but now he is
drivin better. He goin wifT everybody else, so it don'

seem so weird. It like when Jackie drivin us some-
place. On'y thing missin's music. I turn on the radio,
but we so way far out, I can' git no Niggertown
station, so I turn back off.
it
An I git that hamberger in my belly. I don' much

feel like it, but I do.
Jimmy, he's lookin sad. He lookin all wrinkle up
agen.
!
I say t'myseff, Girl maybe he do feel bad bout

Icavin you, you cryin like you done. Maybe he jes
can' help hissefF, he can' talk sweet. I say t'myseff,

Maybe he ain never had nobody talkin sweet t'him,
is how come he can' talk sweet hissefF. Maybe all he
know is that glassface son-a-bitch wifT all that perten

crap, an all them soljers an rockits an bombs an junk.
An that mothahless news which ain nothin but big-
word noise, wiff them tee vee men talkin up an down
like they is preachin, an them dum lookin Whitechicks
singin bout beer like they's all hot up fer beer boy-
frien's.
Aflfer all that, he ack like he wanna talk sweet. She-

it ! How he ever gonna learn t'talk sweet wiff all that
crap jes a-boomin in his ear an lookin him eye-t'eye?
Seem like he already drown hisseff in that great big
noisey pile o'crap.
Sides, maybe he got him some fay girlfrien', don'
know how t'play nice. Maybe he don' even git him
no pussy neither, a-tall Maybe he gotta come t'the !
cathouse t'git him some pussy, counta havin him such

a tee vee terrible girlfrien'.
Could Way he ack, could dam well be.

be.
Madam say, A man don' git him no pussy fer a
long time, he is gonna ack bad an mean. He is gonna
git mad at the whole worl'. He is gonna git so he
can' ack no way sep nasty.
Yeah ! Madam say that
Maybe poor Jimmy come int'the cathouse las'
ol
night, he like that. Maybe tha's his trouble. I gotta
teech him how t'go slow an pritty when he wanna play
turnabout. Yeah !
But that ain right, cause I ain never been teeched

neither, an I ain never been that dum. I jes pick up
doin an lissenin t'the other cats talkin, like anybody
else.
Kee-ryess ! How kin he be's tee vee dum's he is?

Course, he dum, ain his fault, I spose. Maybe he
jes born dum. Maybe he jes born Whitefolks dum,
so's he kin lissen t'that big-word tee vee preachin, an
so's he kin dig that shootin an fightin an ack mean
an maybe even kill somebody human, but not so's he
kin do nothin much else, like talk sweet an play nice
an consider wiffout gittin all muddlefug up.
Yeah I consider an consider, an I say t'mysefF,
!
Girl ain his fault, he jes don' know no better.

This here a funny ol worl' wifif all kinda folks. Some
smart, some dum, some White, some Black, some
rich, some poor, an plenty in between.
Alia time I is considerin this, an considerin what a
sorry ol White worl' I'm livin in, we gittin closer an
closer t'Niggertown. Nex, I look up an we dam near
t'Madam.
I say, Hey Jimmy, stop an let me out. I kin walk
from here.
He say, Okay.
He stop.
Then he say. Kitten . , . An he soun real sad. He
say. Kitten I'm sorry bout leavin you. I di'n know it
was gonna upset you like that.
I say, Fergit it, Jimmy.

I say t'myseff, Kee-ryessNo wonner you don' !
know, Whiteboy. So much you don' know, it ain even

funny. So godam everlastin much you don' know, it
make we wanna start in cryin all over agen !
But he keeps on talkin, like. He say. Kitten . . .

!
An he look real real sad. He say, I don' know, an he

say, like, Wha, Who, Hee, Ho, like that agen, an
then he jes peter out an stop talkin an we jes is on'y
doin nothin but sittin.
I say. Well man, I gotta go.

He say, Yeah. It dam near leven.
I say, Kee-ryess
An I quick jump out an run.
: —
I really honestly think that little colored prostitute

should be psychoanalyzed at the first opportunity. I
mean, of course, ha ha, I realize that's absurd

psychoanalyzing a person like Kitten. What I'm trying
to point out is that by this time I was forced (after
the next equally fantastic event occurred) to come to
a rather drastic conclusion. To wit
She was deeply disturbed. I mean, deep deep down
in her subconscious mind, such as it was, she was,
well, she was —
I'll say it —
she was psycho !
I mean it She, for gosh sakes, was a case for a

!
mental institution Not only was she practically un-

!
patriotic and entirely immoral —

not to mention the
—
language she used (I mean, I can't possibly repeat
in words, either out loud or in print, the utter and
complete profanity she poured forth upon certain
emotional occasions) (occasions which became increas-
ingly more numerous as our little misadventure pro-
gressed)— not only that, but she was also unbalanced.
This, too, became increasingly clearer to me as my
investigation progressed.
(Progressed? That's not exactly the word for it.
It digressed ! Yes, that's more accurately what it did.)
140
1
But her language —which, as I mentioned, I can't
possibly repeat —became almost intolerable. I was

shocked back at the house of ill repute when I first
heard her speak, but that was nothing compared to

what came later For instance (and I don't wish to
!
dwell on the subject, of course, I only want to present

enough for the sake of verisimilitude) — for instance,
when she was wrestling with her TV set, trying to
throw it out the window, for gosh sakes — an incident
I believe I've adequately outlined —she kept shouting
(and I herewith paraphrase, of course) such things as :
'Mother fornicator!' and 'Mother fornicate this,' and

'Mother fornicate that,' and also used other unmen-
tionable phrases and words.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that she
was uneducated and all that, and I'm far from pre-
judiced, as I'm sure you have certainly surmised by
now. Dear Reader. (How could I possibly find myself
in such a predicament if I were the least bit preju-
diced?) But that language she used, that constant
barrage of obscenities, was too much. Almost. I mean,
she wasn't what you could call underprivileged, living
in that swank apartment. And swiping my $100
to boot ! With her annual income, even after federal
taxes (if she paid them), she must certainly know
that civilized people just don't constantly keep utter-
ing profanities. On certain occasions, I couldn't even
separate the conversation from the profanity. She just
jabbered both out at once, kind of ran them together.
Intertwined them, so to speak.
But, back to the most fantastic incident of all —the
tactical mistake she made, giving me my capital and
grand opportunity.
Unbelievable as it may seem, she had a Chrysler
Imperial mean, she didn't own it, apparently. In

! I
fact, she couldn't even drive it. It belonged to some
—
underworld character that much I was able to
—
deduce whom she referred to as the Madman, or
some such nickname.
Well, it was shortly after she'd made sandwiches
(fantastic, of course —about three inches thick, with
vast assortments of lunchmeats, lettuce, tomatoes,
onions, pickles, mustard, hard-boiled eggs, the works).
We'd eaten,and she hadn't insulted my masculinity this
time by insisting I do the dishes. (As a matter of strict
fact, there weren't any dishes to do.) She sort of de-

serted me for a time, just took out a vacuum cleaner
and went to work housecleaning. And this to music !
I mean, we had the hi fi going, playing those absurd

records of hers, and she went through the motions of
housecleaning to the rhythm of whatever happened to
be playing. Silly, I realize, but that's what she did.
Meanwhile, I sat and pondered my problem How :
to reclaim my stolen $100.

Then, like a highly intellectual poetic inspiration
from the devine blue, it came. She wanted repeat —
—
wanted yours truly to drive this gangster's Imperial,
just take it out for a spin, I suppose, and blow the
gunk out of its huge engine.
Well, this idea appealed to me immediately, and
on several levels of consciousness. First, my uncle
Ben has an Imperial —
(Ben's a higher-up in busi-
ness but has always been jealous of Dad, because
Dad's a professional person with high ideals and
all, and so makes so much more money than Ben, so
Ben tries to put on the dog, so to speak, by buying

! — !
showy things; ergo his Imperial) —which I love to

drive. I mean, our Caddy (which we use only to drive
to the theatre and restaurants and church, places
like that) handles well. Very well. But that Imperial
— wow You're maybe out on the turnpike, just cruis-

!
ing along about 85 miles an hour, and here comes

some joker in a Jag or something foreign like that
just wheels up along side of you and is about to shame
you. Ha You ! just goose that old Imp's accelerator
and . . . No more Jag ! Yes sir, it's bye-byes. You can
dust just about anything moving with that Imperial. I
mean it
That's point number one.

Point number two is where the poetic inspiration
comes in. No sooner had she mentioned her desire
(that I take the Madman's car, as she called it, out
for a spin) than I was thunderstruck by this brilliant
idea.
Namely, that now I had her ! Yes, but absolutely
Once I got in the cockpit of that beautiful machine,
the shoe would be on the other foot, so to speak.
Again I wish were a paid professional writer, this
I
time so I could describe to you in instantaneous and

beautific, the sheer thrilling wonder of it when my
brain connected with that idea. I mean, no sooner had
she mentioned that she wanted me to drive that car
than I was, like, inspired !
A moment had been wondering, trying to

before I
put myself in her place so I could imagine where she

might hide that $100 she had stolen, and now every-
thing fell into place, but beautifully.
Well, beauty marred by but one problem : It was
quite clear by now that this professional prostitute
of another color had fallen in love with yours truly.
And had done this, no doubt, on the assumption that I
was a burgler, a fellow member of the underworld
community.
Well, I had been afraid that would happen. I mean,
I'm not the sort to go tampering with any girl's basic
emotions, even if she is a lady of ill repute and of
another color. I like to be decent about such matters
at all times. But, on the other hand, this was a special
case, sort of. After all, $100 hung in the balance, sus-
pended, and now that I had my capital, the matter
boiled down to one thing Supply and demand
: !
Besides, even if she was in love with me, she was

what she was, and the sort she was fall in and out
of love at the drop of a hat. (As a matter of hard
cold fact, it had also become clear to me by this time
that she had an unhealthy and crude concept of the
sacred procreative act. I mean, it was like she had
never seen one single solitary documentary movie on
the subject. She was simply full of the sort of attitudes
toward the subject our better periodic organs, like
LOOK, constantly label sex fictions, for gosh sakes !)
I mean, she was incapable of profound feelings. She

was quite obviously a shallow woman who lived a
tremendously fast life, and being a professional lady,
what harm could I do her ?
All's fair in love and war, as they say. So now, it was
off to the races; the die had been cast, you might say.
Anyway, we went riding. I wasn't certain what my
next step would be. I mean, I had my longrange tacti-
cal plan of procedure and kept it flexible so I could
alter my course quickly. I knew one thing for sure :
her motive. And that, after all, is important. Her

motive, quite simply, was that she wanted me to come

back and sleep in her apartment, wanted me to be
there when she came home in the morning.
You see, (I've completely neglected to disclose an
important turn of events —a change of plans) she had
called the syndicate earlier, as I mentioned, and re-
ported off duty. Then, in the middle of everything, she
switched, and announced she intended to work that
night. (Work being, possibly, an inaccurate word for
it, ha ha.)
Anyway, riding : Right off the bat she said she was
hungry. How she could possibly be hungry after that
huge sandwich on top of that gigantic breakfast at
noon was beyond me. I mean, she was just a little
person, no more than five feet two or three inches tall.
But I could force a hamberger, if need be, so I had
no objections.
Hence, we went in search of food. Which isn't such
a simple matter when you're with a woman of another
color. I mean, they have their places and we have ours.
Though, don't get me wrong here I'm all for the
:
Supreme Court decision and integration of the schools

and all; I'm not a Segregationist by any means. But,
like I said, they have their places and we have ours.
To eat at, I mean.

But she suggested we go back to the rundown
neighborhood in which was located the ill repute
house. She mentioned some dive named the Ham
House.
Obviously that was out. Good grief ! I could just
see myself walking into an all-colored place in the
middle of that Negro substandard district with her,
and with all those evil-looking Negroes just standing
there doing nothing, staring at us. The very thought
of it gave me the chills. Why, we'd be lucky to escape
with our lives !
So, at my suggestion, we drove out Route 707.

Of course, all this came after she almost wrecked
the Imperial. I mean, since we certainly couldn't be
seen together, went out and waited on the corner

I
and she followed, got in the car and drove it to the

corner.
But I shouldn't say drove. I broke into a cold sweat
when I saw it : That Im-
great, shining, beautiful
perial with her at the wheel. Right off the bat she darn
near rammed it into the side of her apartment build-
ing, then she cut back and came about an inch from
sideswiping parked cars along the other side of the
street —
all the time just creeping, but in fits and jerks,
zigzagging back and forth, and all in all making a

complete and utter mockery of the safe-driver laws.
But, miraculously, she did reach the corner without
crashing into something and I climbed into the old
cockpit and we were okay.
That is, the car and I were. She wasn't really at
ease in an automobile, being barely civilized, and slid
right off the seat at the first stoplight we came to.
And, just like a woman, she nagged, I, however,

didn't let her nagging bother me; just revved up all
eight and cruised. I wanted to see how she would

handle and when we hit the highway, I did. She
passed everything on the road, clipping along at 70
with ease and still with plenty of pedal left. (High-
way 707 is usually a bit crowded during the day and
evening, so I waited until later when I had more
road to myself to really test drive her.)
! . !
Besides, Kitten's deep subconscious disturbance

came to the surface during that drive, and I couldn't
help being concerned. After all, I didn't want to end
up in some gangster's car with a complete psychotic
on my hands.
of another color
So we stopped up the road a bit from the MW
Drivein and I got out to walk back and buy us a
couple of burgers.
Then —Bamb
That's when I became completely convinced that
she had a deep mental disturbance.
Right wanted to come with me. To
off the bat she
the Drivein, mean. She wanted to just get out and
I
walk back along the highway with me, walk right

in and we'd be there together, and order up, just like
nothing
I finally convinced her that this would be impos-
sible and left her in the car, thinking she was back
to normal.
But . .
I was only gone a few minutes. When I returned,

she was sitting there in the far corner, cowering like a
wild animal. She was scared silly ! I got in and the
next thing I knew, she was crawling all over me. She
just shot across the seat and wrapped her arms around
me and sat there shivering, giving off with more of
her profanity and unbelieveable mutilations of the
English language.
I thought : Gracious, JG, how did you ever manage
this ? How did you ever manage to get yourself in this
gangster's classy car, out here on Route 707, with this
paid professional colored girl of ill repute having
a nervous breakdown ?
!

Well, all I can say is, it's a good thing I kept my
longrange tactical plan of procedure flexible. I mean,
I was quick to comprehend that she didn't suspect I
was still in business, just took it for granted that now
that she had my money, I would submit to do her
bidding, and not even entertain thoughts of getting
my money back.
And that gave me direction !
But first, I had to calm her down, for gosh sakes

I had to snap her out of it before it reached any
advanced stage of psychosis. So I did. I talked her

out of her maladjustment and by the time we arrived
in the slum district, in which her ill repute house was
located, she was normal. Well, almost normal. She
had simmered down to a pout. Which was an im-
provement over the uncooperative attitude she dis-
played at first.
So her out not far from the ill repute house

I let
and she walked the remaining distance. I felt sorry

for her, in a way. Even if she was a thief, I felt sorry
for her because she was obviously so psychologically
disturbed. I left her wondering how a person could
get along in life, being that deeply disturbed. I was
even tempted to send to the National Advertising
Council for that pamphlet about dealing with one's
emotions in the modern world, in the. hope that such
enlightenment would benefit her.
But that was out. Besides being psycho, she was un-
intelligent and illiterate, and probably
practically,
wouldn't understand it anyhow. Which was unfor-
tunate, of course.
But I had more important concerns. I still had the
key to her apartment in my pocket, and the tough-
—
mindedness to know that my money was one of two

places : On her person or in her apartment.
I had a hunch it was the latter.
However, before going back to her place, I test

drove that mighty Imperial. By this time, it was past
11 o'clock at night, so Route 707 was relatively clear
of local traffic. I buzzed out there in about half an
hour and away I went.
Man Did that baby move I mean I came out of
! ! !
this merge at about 60 —

a graceful 60 then floored —
it, and —wham !
Is there any sensation in the world which surpasses
the one when you have a great and powerful car

where you and it become married in one glorious
blaze of blinding speed? Christmas! If there is, I'd
like to know about it. I mean, what a piece of machin-
ery that beautiful Imperial was I could hardly be-

!
lieve my eyes. That speedometer needle just sort of

leaned over all the way and landed on 120, and still
it felt like she had more in reserve.
And, to this day I believe I got more out of her.

But how much more I'll never know for sure, because
the needle stuck. It just landed on 120 and, for gosh
sakes, stayed !
Even when I slowed down. Which I did a few

minutes later, because even though we have a state
senator living next door to us (at home), I certainly
didn't want to get stopped by the police and involved
in politics and have my present circumstances publi-
cized to the family. I mean, I'd have one heck of a
time explaining to Dad what I was doing out on
Route 707 in some gangster's Imperial, for crying out
loud!
So, after my little spin down the highway, I drove
back and went to her apartment to give it a thorough
and scientific search. I thought : After all, JC, you
can save that poor little colored psychotic further
psychological disturbance your hunch is correct and
if
you are able to unearth your money in her place and

do this without invoking the law of supply and de-
mand per your ultimate tactical plan.
I ime I git t'Madam, I'm feelin so blue, I jes ache.
I say t'myseff, Girl you gotta fergit all bout that fer
now, but I can' hardly make myseff fergit cause I so
cram fulla spiteful Whitefolks crap an I got me so
many worries, I is sick. I so achin, I feel like my whole
inside-an-out-Pickaninny me jes one great big sore.
First, I gotta go tell Madam I ain sick. I tell her I

got better I call her. Alia time I'm tellin her
aflfer
this, I feel sicker an sicker.

Then I go on back t'the dressin room, other cats
all there. An nex, I git t'wonnerin, did them cats see
Madam car was gone when they took off fer work?
Ooh-wee ! I wonner that, I git so scared my belly
hurt.
Jackie, she come on over t'me an don' say nothin,
jes look. Jackie an Madam on'y folks I got leff. They
boff alia time lookin out fer my blackass. Madam, she
real bright, alia time readin them fatass books. Jackie,
she bright too. She mostly either readin or weedin,
don' shootup much. She readin, I kin tell counta she
look haff mean an hafF funny. She weedin, she look
happy an gone. She shootup, she look plain gone. I
kin see she been readin.
151
! !
She say, So yer makin yer first invessment, eh.

I say, How the hell you know ?
She She was gonna come on in my partmin
say.
t'day but she hear some Whiteman inside, so she go
away. She say, Sides, Francine been blabbin bout my
trick. Francine been sayin he look like he is loaded.
I say, Yeah he loaded, but he nutty too. I tell her

I can' unnerstan him an he can' unnerstan me, an he
dam near walk out wiffout payin up. I say, But I
finally git me my one hunner fer the weekend.

She say, Shhh ! She say, Hush up, don' let them
other cats hear that. She say, I do right t'git my
hunner but now I gotta hush up.
She say. How come I'm here in the cathouse t' night,
I got me a weekend t'tend to?
I say, It too fuggin mix up, how come. I can' tell
her all at oncet how come. I say. He gonna be my

place t'morra, and we gonna finish the weekend
t'morra. I say. Mainly I is here counta I'm scared
o'them other cats.
An I jes bout ready t'tell Jackie bout Jimmy bein
in Madam car, but I say t'mysefF, Later I kin tell her
that. It too muddlefuggin way up t'talk bout right
now.
Nex, that godam Francine start in on me. Yeah
She holler out. Hey Kitten, how you doin wiff yer
Whiteboy loverman?
That Francine, she gotta big mouflF
Jackie say, Francine you shut up You jes mind !
yer own dam bizness, leave everybody else alone.
Jackie an Francine start in bitchin.

Madam come in
Nex, an everybody hush up.
Madarn say. We got tricks.
!!
We all go on out t'the sittin room, an Kee-ryess

We got this whole army o'fay College Joes, is what
we got. So many, ain no room fer sittin. Everybody
goin upstairs at oncet.
Upstairs, I talk real nice t'my fay trick,same time
I so cram fuUa spiteful Whiteman
bellyachin sick an
tee vee noise an jittery from fightin all day long wifT
Jimmy, I bout ready t'bite him steada tend t'bizness. He
been drinkin an he look real sad an all wrinkle up.
Firs' thing I know, he look at me like I is outta some
book he can' unnerstan, an he is sayin, You pritty
girl. Wha's yer name ?
He say that like he can' believe what he sayin.

I say, Man you look agen. I say, Man I ain pritty.
I'm black !
I say that, he jes look real dum. Real real dum.

Fer awhile, we git us nothin but College Joes an
every last one o'them mothahs recall t'me that tee
vee boom boomin an big-word noise. On'y thing I kin

do t'ease my achin is start callin they cocks rockits. I
tell 'em. Come on Baby, le's launch that rockit

They laugh at that, dum she-its.
I One-a these days all you dum

say t'myseff, I say,
moon-goin bastids gonna wake up an find you got
nothin but rockitcocks. Yeah an all yer Whitechicks !
gonna have steel pussy too, an you ain gonna have no

more chillin. Yeah Us Pickaninnies, don' give one
!
fast crap fer godam moon-goin rockit rackit,

all yer
we's gonna be the on'y ones leff. Ain gonna be nothin
but color' chillin an blackass Pickaninnies, an like that.
Yeah I say that t'myseff.
!
Time we git that mothahless fay army the hell outta

that cathouse, I'm feelin so down an out sorry fer
!

myseff I can' hardly keep from cryin. We git a time
when no bizness comin in, so I go on in the dressin
room an jes sit a spell. Sit an feel bad.
Seem like everybody else have a good time that
Saterday night. Even Francine havin fun, cause some
Whiteboy slip her a pint fer a tip an she is alia time
sippin on the sly, so she don' give a toot fer nothin. An
Madam, she don' care neither, cause she is feelin
good, counta Detecktiv come in.
Yeah!
See, Detecktiv, he was workin fer the vice squad,
long time ago. Tha's how come him an Madam such

good frien's. Course, Detecktiv ain no detecktiv fer
the law no more. Jackie, she say he is real detecktiv

now. He ain workin fer the law counta he git his ass
fire' by the mayor. Yeah He broke an down an out
!
an all now, an Madam on'y one keepin him goin.

Sometime, him an Madam go on upstairs an he stay
all night, an boff o'them git t'readin them fatass books.
Out loud, sometime. One time, other cats say, he

come an stay all winter.
This time, Detecktiv come in, him an Madam
git t'talkin an an cuttin up an all. They's
talkin,
talkin, couple-a other cats dancin t'the recordplayer,
Francine slippin her sippin, everybody havin fun sep
me.
I'm jes on'y sittin off in the dressin room by myseff,
wonnerin is I ever gonna feel like me agen, an Kee-
ryess
Nex, I hear this big noise, an I say t'myseff, Gee-
zuz ! Here come nother godam fay army. I bout ready

t'run out the back door an jump off the Niggertown
bridge. Yeah ! I so blue an all mix up from bein wiff
! !
that dum day long,

gee-the-fuggin-Jimmy-burgler all
then comin t'work an findin nothin but them ever-

lastin tee vee College Joes, I bout done.
Then I hear this big ol loud yell somebody give,
soun like Hay-ae-ae-ae Kitten ! Where's my pritty
pritty pritty Kitty
Harry Yeah Hairy Harry
! ! !
Him an this whole buncha railroad tricks.

Nex, that ol cathouse come alive Good thing, ! else
I don' know how I ever make it thru that Saterday

night.
I gotta tell bout Harry. He jes bout my most favor-
ite trick. Fack, I spect he is !
He work fer the railroad, live in some other town.

Him an them other railroadmen come here oncet
every so offen, an oncet they inside that door, ooh-
wee
Firs' time they come, I on'y been workin a week.
Fore that. Madam say I is too young. This one, his
name Harry, he jes funny's he kin be. He got more
mothahhumpin hair on him than I ever did see. He
give me the spooks at first, I see all that godam hair
all over him, but he like me an wanna go upstairs
wiff me an I find he treat me okay. Any time he come
afFer that, he go up wiff me.
Las' time him an them other railroadmen come,
Harry drunk's hell. He carry on wiff Madam, say he
wanna line all us cats up a-gin the wall an work his
way right down the line. Way he say it make every-
body laugh. He don' on'y say it, he ack it out too.
Yeah ! We all laughin, he Madam — like, he ackin
tell
like he ain never seen me— he say, How much fer

Smilin Susie?
—
An Madam say, She ain fer sale.

An Harry perten like he considerin fer a secon',
then he up an run over an grab my ass an scoot up-
stairs carryin me an yellin he gonna kidnap me. Every-
body laugh, way he do it. That time, he pay thirty

bum-bums an stay the rest o'the night wiff me.
We talkin that night, I find out he been t' college
too but he don' want no Joe College Whitefolks job,
so he jes workin fer the railroad. He kin talk real nice
an play nice too. He talk big word sometime, but he
don' talk no tee vee big-word noise. I talk t'him, he
unnerstan what I is sayin.
I tellhim bout when I is jes a lil ol Pickaninny
orfan an some goofy Whiteman spit on me an go
t'kick my ass over the roof. Yeah Some ol Whiteman !
do that No reason, sep my color. An he'd-a kill' me

!
right now, sep afFer he spit, I run zoom He kick !
an miss an fall down. An then he git up an start

chasin my poor ol blackass Pickaninny me down that
street an he bout t'catch me an kill me, then some
other Whiteman come along an hit him, an I jes on'y
keep on runnin fer my poor ol mothahless life.
I tell Harry that, he git tears in his eyes. Yeah !
He jes a-layin there, tears slidin down his cheeks

int'his ears,
I tell him, Kee-ryess Harry ! Ain no use you cryin.

But I never knowed no other Whiteman, sep Harry,
kin unnerstan what bein Black is. I spect Harry White
ow^side, he got him a nice sofT warm color' heart in-
side. I spect tha's how come he kin unnerstan.
AfTer I tell him bout m'ysefT when I jes a wee lil
thing, his ol hair don' bother me no more, an I start
callin him Hairy Harry. An nex time he screw me, I

! !
turn on. I turn on wiff Harry most alia time now,

we such good frien's.
This Saterday night, I hear him yellin fer pritty
Kitty, I come a-runnin outta that dressin room. I
ain never been so glad t'see no Whiteman in all my

born blackass days.
On'y trouble, bout the time I fly outta that dressin
room, in come this new fay army !
Gee-zuz ! Kee-ryess ! I near cryin all over agen

This the saddes' lookin buncha tee vee fays I ever
seen ! They so godam sad lookin I know fer sure
they got themseflfs rockitcocks or cowboy guncocks

or knifecocks, or somethin ! I jes know !
Madam hush up them railroads so's they don' chase

off them sad-ass College Joes.
Me, I sit ass down in that big chair an jes look
mean's I Most o'them College Joes wanna
kin look.
go up wiff Jackie or Carmie or Ellie, an sometime
wiff Francine, but I is fraid one o'them gonna pick
me t'night. An I'm feelin so fuggin Whitefolks spite-
ful, I'm worried some tee vee terrible pick me. I'm
gonna lose my Pickaninny sense an scratch his eyes
outta his tee vee head steada behavin right.

Bout now. Hairy Harry, an them other railroads,
they is jes on'y sittin roun an them College Joes linin
up fer Jackie an them other hiyellas. Then Harry he
Stan up an he say real loud —
he say, Piss on them —
hiyellas ! I want me some HI ol gal straight outta the
Africa Jungle ! Hey Madam, you got you some Africa
Jungle gal ?
Yeah He say that
! ! Real funny, way he say it.
Madam, she look like she gonna she-it

I up an I say, jes's loud's I kin, I say, Man you
!

wants me ! I'm so way out Africa Jungle it ain funny !
Madam, she look like she gonna crap all over agen.
Them railroads git t'laughin agen an cuttin up, an
them College Joes starts lookin roun sad, but I ain
there t'see how sad they ends up lookin, cause me an
Harry, we gone upstairs !
Good thing he come that Saterday night, cause by

the time he git here, I is so sick a-talkin worry an
spite t'myseff bout that crabass White worl', I is
feelin so blackass an sorry fer mysefF, I dee-diddly-dam

well know I is from the Africa Jungle. The White-
folks Africa Jungle !
Yeah
Harry, he stay all night. I tell him bout my invess-
ment an how it ain easy makin invessment, an he tell
me watch my ass, messin roun wifF invessment.
t'
He say, Don' soun right, Jimmy tryin t'walk out

wiffout payin up. He tell me t'git Jackie t'help me do
my considerin. He say. Later on, when I is fifteen, I
kin do all my own considerin. Right now I oughtta
git Jackie t'help.
Then I tell him bout Jimmy bein in Madam car.
An Harry, he blow up He go, Wha, Who, Ho, an he
!
say, Yike ! He keep sayin like that, an then he tell
me I better not tell nobody bout Jimmy bein in

Madam car, not even Jackie.
He say. What kinda car ?
I say, Kryessler Peereal.
An he say, Yike ! He haff laugh an he wrinkle up
an he look like he considerin real hard. He say, Griss !
He call Jimmy all kinda names an he go on talkin

t'hisseflf.
I say, Harry I don' mean t'git you all fuss up too.

!
I say, Kee-ryess ! Ain it bad enufT I is in a mess-up

wifFout you gittin mess up too ?
He laugh. He huff an puff an say he sure hope
everythin turn out okay. He say he help me if he
could, but he sposed t'leave town in the mornin an
there ain nothin he kin think t'do anyhow. He say,
Maybe everythin turn out okay.
He git real worried. He ack so worried, I know
I done somethin awful dum, givin Jimmy Madam
car t'drive.
Nex, Harry say ain nothin t'do now, so we might
jes's well git a HI sleep an hope fer the best, so we
do. I'm so draggin ass bone tired bout that time, I
like t' sleep so deep I die.
Jackiewake me in the mornin.

She laughin when I wake up. She laughin an sayin,
Hey Sweetie, you got yerseff a lil green tail
An Harry done laid a ten spot

I find right down
tween the cheeks o'my but.
:
M
It
y back was to the wall.
was time for a showdown
My hand had been forced.
!
Let me begin at the beginning.

Like it says in the Bible, or some place like that
Fight Fire With Fire ! I mean, that, for gosh sakes,
is axiomatic. It's business. Good grief, it's not only
business, salesmanship on both local and interna-
it's
and foreign policy too.

tional levels,
(To draw an apt analogy, where would this great
nation of ours be if everyone were as complacent as
some of the jerks I have for frat brothers? I mean,
if we didn't deal out tit for tat to those dirty Rus-
sians ? Answer : We'd be living under the dirty heel
of communistic dictatorship ! Well,I was in a similar
position. Either I give up and let her take my money

and keep it, or I show my colors.) (I mean, even
though I feared the consequences to the thin thread —
from which hung her last ounce of sanity I had —
reached a point where I was forced to invoke the law
of supply and demand.
I thought JC, my friend, you no longer have a
:
choice. You must offer to supply her with her gangster's

Imperial, thus fulfilling her demand, and in return,
160
demand she supply you with the money she's stolen

from you, thus fulfilling your demand.
Yes, it was that simple.
(Oh I'm quite aware that some jerks and parlor
pinks would call this blackmail. But I'm also confi-
dent that any intelligent tax-paying, church-going
non-communist can appreciate my situation, and
readily agree that I was more than justified in think-
ing of it (the Madman's car) (an apt appelation, ha ha)
as a last recourse to retaliatory capability, humanely
applied as persuasion rather than force per se.
(I might add, to carry the above stated analogy one

step further : Where would the US be without SAG,
for instance? Obviously we would disintegrate into a
patsey of the communist party which any world power
could push around at will.) (I mean, like the Roman
Empire, we would decline and fall. We would lose
our starch, so to speak.) (Well, look at the English,
for crying out loud !)
(Not only that, but think of
all those brilliant scientists out of work, standing in
unemployment benefits.)
line for
However, once again like a clever cigarette adver-
tisement, I digress.
Back to the matter of moment : It wasn't there.
I looked high and low. I searched every drawer
and every possible hiding place in every closet she
had. I emptied out the bathroom cabinet and rum-
maged through her kitchen cupboards, I pulled clothes
from drawers and shook them. I took the bed-clothes
off her bed and her mattress out of its mattress cover.
I unscrewed the exhaust fan in her kitchen and probed
its outer shaft, and did the Scime to another in the
bathroom.
Nothing.
I took into consideration the dim possibility that
she might possess a more subtle mind than her illit-
eracy indicated, and tried to imagine where / might

hide money I had stolen from a fellow underworld
character. Were I in her shoes, I mean. Forthwith, I
took every cup and every saucer and every plate out
of her cupboards again, but this time looked between
each and every one. (And she had enough of them,
too.) I lifted the top off the watercloset, or whatever
it's called, in her bathroom, and I took the glass globe

off every overhead light, I fingered every inch of
all her window curtains and felt down the cracks
beneath the cushions of her couch.
Nothing.
Then I put everything back in its place, so she
wouldn't know I'd been there. I wanted to keep the
element of surprise on my side. And then — still un-
—
daunted I drove back to the frat house, got the
pipewrench from the basement, drove back and got
to work on the traps under both the sinks, and also
the b.'ithtub.(Which may sound like a simple task
to the rank amateur, but it was well past 5 a.m. before
I had the pipes back together and her floors back
down and the whole general mess mopped up.)
Still nothing.
had reached that point. There was no going
So, I
back. My
back was to the wall, my bridges burned.
It was time for a showdown, for the invoking of the
law of supply and demand, for the exercise of the

planned and well programmed hard sell.
Ah yes, it was well that I had kept my tactical
plan of overall procedure flexible. By this, I was at
least able to exhaust all avenues before resorting to

a method which, however realistic and logical to the
legitimate community, might not be fully apprecia-
ted by her. Nor understood, even. I mean, I was afraid
she might misconstrue, lacking as she did a formal
education.
However, this was no time to become mushy-minded
about her reaction, whatever might turn out to be.
it
It was onward —
forward, upward, ever onward for
yours truly, JG, in his quest for those one hundred
stolen dollars.
M |ean Jackie drivin home in her Ford car, she
askin me alia bout Jimmy.
I tell her bout him tryin t'walk out wiffout payin
up an how I gotta run, git me a blade fore he pay

up-
I don' tell her bout tryin t'keep him from gittin
t'the bedroom fer his clothes, counta I'd-a had t'tell
her bout me when I thunk how spiteful some

Whitemen kin be t'some color girl on'y tryin t'keep
her ass bove groun. I thunk that, I got t'cryin an
moanin, like, an I even fell down. Alia time I was
wonnerin maybe he jes don' know no better. Maybe
he so dum he jes don' know, but she-it Nex thing, !
he up an run over me an start in gittin dress t'leave.

So I had-a fetch me a blade an scoot roun an grab
his pants an pay mysefF.
I don't tell Jackie I had-a git me a blade.
She say, Kitten where the hell you meet this White-
boy?
I say, In the cathouse. An I tell her bout that. I tell
her he tryin t'tell me he's a Whiteass burgler an police

lookin fer him. I tell her I don' go that crap, but I
164
!
guess he jes tryin t'set up a weekend, counta he tell
me he need some place t'hide.
I know better'n t'tell Jackie I give that dum White-

boy my key. I tell her that, she gonna pee her pants.
Fer real
I say, Jackie he seem like he ain so bad sometime
I say, He wanna be nice. He jes don' know how, is all.
She say, That remain t'be seen !
I say, Jackie he dum. Ooh-wee He ! so fuggin dum !
She look at me an she say — like this —she say, HE

dum ! Criss ! She say, Kitten ain Madam never tol'
you, jack first, fug secen' ?
I say. Yeah Madam say that, an I oughtta knowed

better, but this here was invessment. I say, I was
gonna give an git, steada git an then give.
Jackie say. Kitten you gotta learn never truss no-
body. Specially them College Joes, an extra specially
them what ack like that mothah.
I consider what Jackie say, an I consider Jimmy
drivin Madam car, an Kee-ryess ! I is fraid t'go on
considerin.
I say, Jackie don' seem right, this never truss no-
body. I say, Gee-zuz, / truss you.
She say. You gotta know who you kin truss how
much.
I say, But Jackie you the one tell me bout invess-
ment bein give an git, give an git.
She say, She shoulda tol' me I gotta know I is gonna
git fore I start givin.
Then she start in talkin bout Madam, sayin Madam

put me t'work too dam soon. She say. Madam oughtta
teech you somethin first.
I say, Madam try teechin me readin.

! !

Yeah ! Madam do that ! I jes a wee tiny HI ol Picka-
ninny, I is livin wiff me a big black nice ol color' man
and he is treatin me fine. Then he git hisseff 'rested
an go t'jail an I is leff all alone. Then Madam find
me. Yeah She find me wannerin roun near the police
!
house cryin fer my man they took away. Madam

come walkin outta police house an see me an pick my
ass up an take me home t'the cathouse. Madam name
me Kitten an I live wiflf her till I move on in my
partmin.
Meantime, Madam say she gonna teech me readin
an writtin and like that, an I git all fuss up an hot
t'git at it. She tell me, I kin read, I kin find out bout
all kinda things, like Africa an Whitefolks an Abra-
ham Liggin. But I gits so muddle headed up high

an hot t'do readin, I start in when she ain lookin an
git me so godam mess' up I git cross cause I can'
make out wha's in them fatass books. Nex, she catch
me doin this, she gits me a wee tiny HI ol book an I
git teeched a HI readin in it. But that godam HI book,

oncet I git so's I kin read it, it don' say nothin a-tall,
Sep Jack done this an Jill done that, an Gee-zuz I !
jes don' give one fast fart fer what they done, they do
such dum stuflP
Nex, I go on back t'tryin t'read Madam big fatass

books, an I is askin her wha's this word an wha's that
word, an she is tellin me, like, one word, it mean
nother word. Yeah ! One word mean nother. Ooh-
wee
An then I come t'this one big word, mean fug.
Yeah ! I come t'this word an I kin tell it gonna mean
somethin like fug, but I figure it gotta mean not jes
the same.
!
But Madam, she say, Tha's what it mean. She say,

This word, you say Cop You Late, an it mean fug.
I ain never gonna fergit that mothahless word long's
my blackass ahve ! Cop You Late ! Kee-ryess ! I git
me so godam fuss up bout that daddio, I bout flip.
I say, Madam don' it mean somethin else sides

jes plain fug?
She say, No.
I say, Madam it mean fug, how come it don' jes
say fug?
She say. Fug is bad word.
Yeah ! She say that ! Kee-ryess ! Alia time roun
that mothahless cathouse everybody sayin fug fug fug,
an then Madam go an tell me this fug word is bad.
Ooh-wee
I say, Madam how come it bad ?
She White an Black. She say, like, Cop
say, It like
You Late is like White, an fug is like Black. She say.
Cop You Late is like it got loot, an fug is down an
out broke.
I say. Madam how come it git t'be down an out
broke ?
She say. It don' git t'be, it already be !
I go on askin how comes, then Madam git all fuss
up an start in cussin my poor lil ol Pickaninny me.

She say, I ain got no mind fer readin. She say, I is
dum fer readin. She say, Don' mean I'm plain dum,
jes dum fer readin.
Recall t'me now that mothahless Jimmy. He dum
fer considerin, I'm dum fer readin. He kin readthem
bigass books, I spose, but he jes can' do him no good
considerin.
Madam alia time tell me I got me a pritty good
! !
head fer considerin, but I ain never gonna git me no
ejukashun counta I is alia time askin such dum ques-

shuns. Madam quit teechin.
I go on askin her dum queshuns so's when Dolly
move on up, Madam so worn out lissenin t'me, she

move me the hell outta that cathouse an int'the part-
min. Yeah !
Good head fer considerin Gee-zuz ! !
Madam find out I lefF Jimmyboy drive her big

blackass Kryessler Peereal las' night, I ain gonna have
no head a-tall
Jackie drivin, she talkin bout never truss nobody,

she say, He gonna be in yer partmin?
I say. Yeah.
She say, What you do wiff yer hunner ?
unner the divan.
I say. Stick it
An she say, Criss She say. That daddio

! in yer
partmin an that hunner unner yer divan.

I say. Yeah.
An I feel sick.
Jackie shake her head an smile. She say. Oh well,
can' win 'em all.
Then she look at me agen an say. Kitten that hun-

ner there when you git home, you gonna be one lucky
lil ol blackass.
I say. Yeah.
An I feel sicker.
I tell her nothin bout Francine bustin in.

don'
Every thin so way far up already, how m'l ever gonna
tell her bout Francine ?
She say. Kitten you gotta learn She say, Criss !
An she jes shakin her head an drivin along, an I gits

t'feelin so jittery sick I can' hardly sit still.
! — !
We git home, she ask I want her t'come on in my

partmin ?
I say, No. I say, First I take a look. Anythin go
wrong, I phone fer you.
So we say so long, an I go on in my partmin.
Firs' thing I find, that Jimmy ain there. No
I bout t'sit right down in the middle o'the livin
room an cry my poor ol all-cried-out seff dry. I say

t'myseff. Girl you sure got yer dum blackass hung up
on the KKK cross now !
Then I recall that hunner an I scoot over an, yeah !
It still there unner my divan.

Phew!
I say t'myseff. Girl this hunner been safe here all
night, might jes's well leave him be. I can' think-a no
place no safFer right now.
Nex, I look out the winda, an ooh-wee Skinny
Minnie ! Gee-zuz ! My wors' nightmare's comin true !
Madam car ain there No No-oh-oh ! ! !
Course maybe he park him some place else.

I say,
But hell, I don' hoi' much hope. On'y one thing

t'do. I gotta take off an hunt roun fer Madam car.
I bout t'take off right outta that winda steada ridin

the elevator.
back int'my shoes an coat an got my black hand
I
on that doornob, an
Dingaling Phone ring. !
I scoot int'the bedroom an I grab that ringin
mothah an I say — like my ass's on fire — I say

HELLO
It's him. It that cottinpickin mothahjumpin fight
fay burgler bastid. He say, This . . . is . . . Jim.
I say, This is she-it ! Where the hell you at ?
! —
He say, Never mind where he's at. He say, he got

the Kryessler Peereal an he gonna turn it over t'me
when he git his one hunner back.
I say, Whaaa?
That fart face done flipflop his Whiteass hd fer
sure ! Gee-zuz ! He gonna play poHce now. He ain

happy jes playin burgler, now he gonna start playin
police
I say, Lover ! I say this nice's I kin.
I say t'mysefT, Girl you gotta go slow an easy an find

out jes what this crazy-ass moon-goin Whiteboy is
up to.
I say, Lover where you at now ? On'y I say this

sweet an soff this time.
An he say, Frae House.

Frae House ! I don' know what kinda place is this,
but I say — like I know which end is up — I say, Yeah

where's that, Baby?
He Never mind where's that.
say.
I say, Lover how come you at this here Frae House,
hov/ come you ain here wiff me in my place?
He say. He tol' me how come. He got Kryessler
Peereal, I got his one hunner. He say. He took Kryes-
sler Peereal counta I took his hunner.
Took ! Yeah ! He say that ! He say. Took his one
hunner.
I bout squat. But I hang on. I say. Baby how come
you wanna be so mean t'one poor lil ol color' girl treat
you so good ?
Nex, he try t'rupture my ear. He say — real loud
he say, POOR He ! say that sogodam loud, phone

bout pop outta my hand. Then he start tellin me I
ain poor, he is poor, an we is gonna make us a deal.
! 1!!
This mothahless worl' gittin nuttier an nuttier.
He say, How kin you say yer poor, you got part-
min you got, an my one hunner sides that
like
I say, But Baby course I got yer one hunner. What
the hell you think ? You got some o'me an I got some
o'you. How come yer so dee-diddly-godam high bout
that?
He say, I need that one hunner.
He need it. Kee-ryess !
I bout ready t'start in yellin an never stop, but I
hang on some more. I do me some considerin, best I
kin unner the circumstances.

I say. Baby you want that hunner ?
He say. Yeah tha's jes what he want.
I say, Okay. I say. You bring Madam car back an
park him right where I unpark him from, an then you
come on up t'my place an we do us some talkin.
He say. No talkin ! He say. Deal is, he brings the
car, he gits his hunner.
I know what this Whiteboy gonna say nex, he
don'
so far gone t'the moon he ain never gonna come back
maybe, so all I kin do fer now is say. Okay Baby, you
git the car back here an you gits yer one hunner.
Then he cool down some an he say. Kitten I thought
when I come up t'yer place it weren' gonna be fer
money.
Gee-zuz Yeah He say that
! !
Right now, I godam near fall thru the fuggin floor
I is all set t'let that dum mothah have wha's on my
mind, but I hang on oncet agen.

I consider askin him how he think I is sposed
t'keep my blackass outta jail, it don' cost him, Sep,

he so dum, I fraid I lose him, I say that. Bout the
time open my big mouff, he gonna git him one

I
more, one more dee-diddly-dum-diddly-dum idea, an

he gonna flip so far out, I ain never gonna find
him.
I say, real soff, I say. You think that. Sugar?
He say, Yeah he think that. An then he wanna
know, Don' I believe bout him bein a burgler?
An I say, real soff, I say. No Lover, I don' believe
that. I on'y jes think you say that counta you wanna
come up my place.
He say, Crissmiss crissmiss crissmiss !
I say, Sweetheart we jes on'y had us a HI ol mis-

unnerstanin.
He say. Yeah we sure done that !
I say. Yeah a whole wingdingin one hunner dollah

misunnerstanin.
He say. Yeah ! One hunner dollah worff. He say.
Here I think alia time you like me, Kitten, an tha's
how come you give me yer key.
I say. But Baby I do like you. Yeah ! I say, 1 was
all set t'do give an git wiff you, Honey, till you turn
me roun somethin awful !
He say, Whaaa? Wha's an git? this give
I say, You was gonna be

Tha's invessment. Sugar.
my invessment. I was gonna give you fun, jes all the
nice funnin you kin handle anytime you feel
like it, an you was gonna make my givin worff my
time.
He say like — he don' dig nothin —he say, But you
give me yer key !
I say. Course Iyou my key.

give How the hell you
spose t'git in, you ain got no key ?
He sayi Invessment.
— ! ! !
I say, Yeah Sugar, tha's it.
An he laugh.He say, Crissmiss An he say, Alia !
time you want my money All you want is money !
I say, Kee-ryess Jimmy, course I want money. You

think I want crabs ?
An we bout t'start all over bout that all hung
then
up hunner, cause he wanna know, Then how come I
take his money?
Take Ooh-wee
!
I say, soff an nice, I say, But Baby, invessment spose
t'come on slow an easy. First you come, I ain sure

you is gonna be my invessment, so I gotta figure you
fer a weekend trick till we gits goin invessment-fine,
an then I gives, an you gives, an like that. Then I
say. But Baby le's not talk bout that now. I say,
Honeydripper you come on back t'Kitten an we sit
us down an
An he say, I git my hunner back.
I say. Oh yeah ! Yeah yeah yeah ! You git yer,
yer hunner back. Oh yeah ! I say. First you gotta come

up here so's I kin give it to you.
Then he say. Okay he's on his way.
An we hang up.
Ooh-ooh-ooh-wee
I git right back on that phone an I call up Jackie.
I say Jackie that mothahless burgler turn int'police-
man. He jes call up an he leave me so far out in
mothahmoon land, I jes can' even see straight.
She say, Where's he at?
I say. He say he is at some Frae House some place
wiff Madam car.
She say, Whaaa? Madam car?
An I jes don' say nothin.
An then she say, I'll be right over.
An we hang up.
Then, nex minit, here goes Jackie scootin in. I tell
her he's comin back wiff Madam car, but he wanna
git his hunner or he is gonna keep that big ol Kryess-
ler Peereal.
She say, Criss ! Extorshun !
I say. Yeah, jes like the law.
Madam alia time sayin how them bulls extorshun

her. An here I gotta go an git me a godam all-alone
extorshun all my very own.
But Jackie, she git t'considerin. She walkin back
an forff on my rug, considerin. Tha's okay, sep she
got her shoes on.
I say, Jackie fore you do you more considerin, how
bout takin them shoes off.
She say, Sorry. An she take 'em off. Then she go

back t' walkin an considerin agen.
I say. Maybe we gotta call in Bennie.
She say. No we ain gotta call in Bennie. No. She
say, Anybody find out he swipe that Kryessler Peer-
eal, yer ass's gonna be out ! She say. How come you
don' hide that car key better ?
I say, I give him that car key, Jackie.
An I hoi' my breath.
Jackie, she bout squat ! I knowed she gonna do
jes that, I tell her how he git that car key. She grab
her head wiff her hands an she go, like, Auh-ahugh !
Real loud ! She look like she gonna flip. She shake
real hard an plop down on my divan.
Then she take a big breath, an look better. An I
take me nother big breath too.

She say, Wha's this mothah's name ?
! ! !
I say, Jimmy.
She say, Criss
She alia time sayin criss.
She say, Jimmy WHAT.
I say, Jes Jimmy is all I know.
An she look sick.
Then she say, You know where this house at? This
place he is ?
I say, No. He jes say Frae House, an I don' know

what the fug is that.
She say, Fr-tit House.
I say. Oh. Fr-tit.
She say, No. Fr-a^-tit House.

I say. Okay, Fr-a^-tit House.
She say. Phew
Then she go back t'her considerin agen.
She We kin do this two ways. We kin bush-
say.
wack this bull or we kin behave perfeshinal. She say.
We bushwack him, he maybe stir the fuz.
Kee-ryess
I say. How this mothah gonna raise fuz? I say.
Way he do that.
doin, he can'
She say. That Whiteboy kin call police any time
he dam well wanna. She say. He kin tell 'em you take
his money an we git our ass in jail.
I say, Gee-zuz How come he kin do that ?

!
She say, The law.

I say, Ooh-wee Seem like I ain never gonna dig
!
how this law thing work.

Jackie, she jes look sorta nasty.
Then I say. No wonner he like t' watch tee vee.
All them boom boomin six-legged horse's asses cow-
boy lawmen.
An she laugh. She say, Anyhow perfeshinal way is
better.
I say, How that way go ?
She say, He come up, we gonna be here, we give
him his hunner, then we gits it back.
I say, Gee-zuz ! I say, I already git me that godam
hunner. Now I gotta start in all over an git it back
all the hell over agen ? •
She say. Yeah ! Tha's jes what I gotta do. Sep,

this time, boff of us cats gonna haul his ashes, an
we is gonna haul 'em so far off he ain never gonna
find 'em agen.
Soun good. I know what the hell she talkin
don'
bout, but soun good, way she talk it.
She say. Fore we do anythin, we gotta git that car
key.
I say, Yeah ! We gotta do that.
She snap her fingers an she say, I
say, like, she
gotta plan. An, right now, she up an off back t'her
partmin.
Nex, she right back an carryin this here HI box.
Then she say, Now Kitten, start tellin me everythin
you know bout this Jimmy burgler, like wha's he like
and wha's he don' like.
!
^Vest assured I came prepared for trickery. (Though

not for the filthy, low, vile form of trickery I was met
by.) I brought my trusty .32 Colt Special; it fits nicely

into the inside pocket of my suitjacket. I figured if
things got rough, I'd just draw and point it and that
would be enough. I mean, I certainly didn't want to
shoot anyone. Good grief Think of the scandal
!
Which (scandal) I was able to avoid. That, at least.

As it turned out, I merely drew.
But I'm ahead of myself. Prior to this arrival, I had
contacted my quarry by telephone and after the —
—
expected resistance clinched the deal. Which was a
relief to my sleepless and jangled nerves. Nevertheless,
for gosh sakes, I was about to take no chances. I was

not going to underestimate her, is what I mean.
Hence, the gun. And caution with a capital C.
So when I reached her apartment door, I hesitated.
I took a deep breath, hitched up my belt, sucked in
my stomach, threw out my chest, held back my
shoulders and pinched my buttocks, assuming a mili-
tary posture of preparedness. And, by gosh, I was
prepared too. For darn near anything. (Anything but
177
!
the underhanded, subversive sort of criminality I en-

countered.)
I rang her doorbell and the response was surprising.
Two female voices, animated and in unison, sang
out, 'Come in.' Very musical and gay, but two !
And, upon opening the door, I found, there in the

middle of thefloor, two colored girls (nude) (both of
them) (without a stitch on) (reminding me for all the
world of two real live characters straight out of a
Mickey Spillane mystery) (except for their color, of
course). I mean, there was Kitten, a pure chocolate
color, and this other doll, a milk-chocolate color. And
I mean she was a doll. (She later went through a
couple of very subtle and enticing movements, which
I don't think I'll be able to describe, in keeping with
my high literary plain.)
Except to say. Wow !
Anyway, I was all business, of course. And prac-

tically knew that the two of them being there (nude)
was no accident. I mean, I smelled trouble; I sus-

pected tricks. And I was, as previously mentioned
above, prepared
(Their nudity, I might add, certainly didn't excite
or distract me. I thought JG my friend, this is no
:
time for romance.) (Or for functional anthropology

either, for that matter.)
I thought : On guard, JG ! Lo, the sirens doth
scheme. (And I was absolutely right, too.) (Oh how
right I was !)
Quietly, but with the strength of resolve, I said,

'Kitten, I've come for my money. Here's the car key;
where' s my money?'
And waited, expecting the worst. I mean, for a
! !
moment, she didn't make a move. Neither of them

did. They just sat there, smiHng, looking me over,
smiHng.
Then —and this is the surprise which, upon review
threw me —Kitten reached her hand behind herself
and pulled out my money !
Just like that ! Just reached behind, and there it
was
Well, she held it up
me, but I was plenty leery. I
to
wasn't about to go near those two and let them grab
me, or something. I said, 'Toss it out in front of you.'
She did.
Then I mean, the ease with
took out the gun. I
which she gave up the money was too much. After

all the wild banshee yells and jumping about she'd
done to steal it, (not to mention that knife dance she

did), I never expected her to simply hand it to me
with a smile on her face, for gosh sakes !
But she did. She obeyed. And I, with the gun on

them, watching them both closely, inched forward
stealthily and grabbed my money.
Then the other one spoke. She said, 'Hey Honey,
mind closing the door? It causes a draft, you know.
And besides, somebody might peek.'
I was flabbergasted I mean, not only that she had
!
spoken in such a casual manner, but that she had

such good diction. I mean good for a Negro prosti-
tute. I suspected she, unlike Kitten, was not com-
pletely illiterate.
But I was not about to let my curiosity run away
with me. No
I said, 'I'll close the door, all right. I'll close it on
my way out of here.' And with these words of final-
—
ity went backing towards the door the gun still —

trained on them, of course.
Then, like she was rolling out of bed on a lazy
Sunday morning, this other one (whose name, as it
turned out, was Jackie) (though, of course, like the
others, she certainly must have assumed that name;
it wasn't really legally hers, no doubt) —
she just sort
of uncoiled slowly and rose. I mean she stood up,
right in the face of my Roscoe And, as she did so,
!
she said. 'Hey Handsome, you forgot something.'

Singsongy, like, if you get what I mean, ha ha.
Well, despite her friendly tone, I was alert. I cocked
the hammer of that .32 quietly and just as nonchal-
ant as you please. And I said, 'What have I forgot-
ten?'
And she, in a very sexy whisper, for crying out loud,
said, 'The car key.'
Which, as a matter of hard cold fact, was the
exact case.
But, I mean, the way she went about informing
me of my oversight that was the thing. I mean, she
was so casual and acted so, well, sensuous, if you
please.
After all, a bargain's a bargain, and if one party to
a bargain forgets, momentarily, to uphold his end,
the other party has every right to be other than sen-
suous, for gosh sakes ! Doesn't he ?
But she wasn't concerned. Or so it seemed. It
seemed like she didn't really give a darn about any
key, like she was just as happy as I was that I had
gotten my money back, and was more or less only
stopping me for the key in order to show off her shape.
(Which I won't go into.)
1
Anyway, I said I was sorry, it was only an over-

sight, I didn't mean to walk oflf with the car key,
that I'm not a thief, for gosh sakes, and that I had it
right here in my pocket all along. Which was factual,

actually.
So, still holding them at bay with the gun, I fished
out the car key and tossed it on the floor in front of
Jackie, who didn't even look at it, for gosh sakes. No,
she just came toward me, like I was Mike Hammer,
or something. But I'm not Mike Hammer, and so
(I'll admit became a bit rattled. I said, 'Halt!
it) I
!'
Stop right where you are Don't take another step
!
And she did. She halted. Then, in this sickly sweet

voice, she said, 'But Jimmy!' (Kitten, no doubt, had
told her my name.) (That is, the name I gave Kitten
—not legally mine, as referred to earlier.) 'Jimmy,'
she said, 'you've got your money, and we've got our
key. Now what's the trouble?'
'No trouble, no trouble,' I hastily assured her.
'Then simmer down. Baby,' said she.
But, mean, the whole thing was getting too too
I
much like some wild murder mystery.

I was on the verge of executing an abrupt about-
face and taking off out the door and down the hall
at a gallop when, just as cool as you please, defying
the murderous weapon I held in my hand, she saun-
tered up to me with this concerned expression on her
face and motioned with her forefinger that she wanted
to whisper in my ear.
I froze ! (I mean I wasn't really frightened. I was
becoming less rattled, even, as a matter of hard cold
fact. What could she do? The game was over now; I
had my money, they had their key to the Madman's

car.) I thought Obviously, JC my

: friend, she is un-
armed. What harm can it do ?
So I bent down to listen.
And, as I did so. Kitten got up and took off at a
slow walk for the kitchen, glancing back at me over
her shoulder, smiling that stupid smile of hers.
Well, Jackie whispered, The way Kitten talks, I'm
missing something.'
I chuckled.
She continued. 'I'd like to find out.'
(Well, anyway, that's the gist of what she said.)
I tried to pretend I didn't quite get what she was
driving at, but she just smiled and winked, and then
pulled my head down so she could whisper again.
'Apartment 622,' said she.
I laughed and said, 'Oh no. No more, thank you.'
And she said, *Shhh Not so loud.' And glanced

!
toward the kitchen. Then she whispered, 'Take your

money home now, and come back later. Tonight.
And, for goodness sakes, don't bring any money up to
my place. might be tempted.'
I
Then she shrugged her shoulders, expressively, sort

of. I mean she hunched —
still acting real coy and all
smiles, of course.
Well, the whole bit impressed yours truly as un-
believeable. I mean, she just didn't seem sincere. She
seemed like Kitten when I first encountered her at the
ill repute house —
and full of false endear-
insincere
ments. But, must admit, I was somewhat fascinated
I
with the idea she had (indirectly and discreetly, ha

ha) proposed.
I told her I'd think about itand turned to go, but
she held me by the arm — the gun arm. I mean, she
held me gently; she didn't grab or act like she was

trying to disarm me. So I didn't fight it.
She said, and this time out loud, 'Say, Jimmy, my

name's Jackie, And now that the incident of the one
hundred dollars is closed, why don't you stay and have
coffee with us?'
Before I could answer, she called to Kitten : 'Is that
okay with you, Sweetie?'
And Kitten poked her head out of the kitchen and
said, yes, it was okay with her, that she'd fix three
cups.
Then Jackie sort of guided me to the couch, all the
time talking —very casually —about how there's no-
thing like a good cup of coffee to make a person feel
better, especially in the morning. And I agreed. (How
could I ever have suspected the depths to which these

women would stoop?) I wasn't dropping my guard,
but I put the gun in my pocket and went along with
her. I thought : What the heck, James Cartwright
Holland, obviously you have the upper hand now.
(This, as it turned out, wasn't entirely accurate.)
These girls are only being friendly now. (The sneaks !)
There's no reason why you can't pause for a moment;

as long as they're being such good sports.
Which, as it turned out, they weren't. No, not at
all!
So, right off the bat, the next thing I know, there
I am sitting on the couch sipping coffee with these
two ladies of ill repute. The coffee table was between
us. That, thought old JG, is as it should be. I was on
the couch and they were on the floor, on the other side
of the coffee table. We were having a friendly little

discussion, Jackie and I, —
about first, Kitten's blatant
!

destruction of the TV set, which even now lay right
where she'd left it, and second, about the space race.
I was feeling a little sorry for Kitten; I mean, Jackie
and I were doing all the talking and Kitten was left
completely out of our conversation, especially when
we got deep into the space race. Poor Kitten, thought
I — just sitting there, staring into her cup.
But this Jackie, she was pretty impressive ! (I mean,
as I thought at the time, having since revised my
thinking radically.)
Now, please, Dear Reader, get this picture Me :
(dressed and packing my trusty .32) (wearing the same

suit I had been wearing, off and on, since the night
before) (but with a change of underwear and with a
clean white shirt and also with my valuable papers
and wallet in my pocket) and these two women (col-
ored and undressed) on the far side of the coffee
table. Talk —
interesting and verging on the intellec-
tual side between Jackie and I, with Kitten silent and
a bit sad. (Understandably, I thought.)
Apparently!
TTien — Holy Christmas !
That quick It happened that quick I mean one

! !
minute I was okay, the next I wasn't even there !
And this time when I say Bamb, I mean B-A-M-B,

Bamb!
Lights out
The next thing I became aware of was motion. Yes,
motion. My motion. I was being half-dragged, half-
walked down this hallway (gradually discovering, as I
went, that was the apartment house hallway) by

it
some guy (whom, I also gradually discovered, was the

same beady-eyed character who had directed me to
!
the ill repute house in the first place) and then we got
on the elevator and I went back to sleep. I mean I sort
of dozed ofT in the elevator, only to be jolted awake

again and find this character guiding me across that
big rug through the lobby and to the front door.
Upon taking some deep breaths of fresh air, my
brain recovered to function well enough for me to
realize they had slipped me something in that coffee.
That much I realized at that moment.
The next thing I knew, however, there was this
crowd of colored people standing in sort of a semi-
circle, looking at me and laughing. I mean, in my
drugged state, about all I could see were these Negroid

faces and teeth, and all I could hear was laughter.
I was too far gone even to be concerned about what
they were laughing at.

Which, I soon discovered, was my attire. Because
—
the next instant or so it seemed —
I was alone in the
back of this taxi. I was, to be exact, prone on the

backseat. I managed to pull myself up and look
around and discover that I was in a taxi.
And also to see how I was dressed. (Or not dressed.)
That is No underwear No socks No shirt and tie
: ! ! !
Just my shoes (untied) and my suit (turned inside out.)

I mean, there I was, the victim of two ill repute
women who had stooped to using drugs in the lowest

possible sort of doublecross, then to add insult to in-
jury, had stripped me of my clothes all but the suit, —
turned inside out
Well, I slumped. I mean, I couldn't help slumping
—being drugged and practically undressed, and find-
ing sleep, or a half-sickening state of unconscious-
ness, irresistible. I slumped and slept and woke up in
front of the frat house, with the cab driver hovering

over me, demanding, of all things, money !
Money, for gosh sakes !
Well, I tried to search my pockets but, being

turned inside out and in my present sleep-bound state,
was unable to ascertain much of anything from that
search, except that they had also stolen my .32. So
I told the driver he'd have to wait a while so I could
go into the frat house and get some money.
Fortunately, however, he elected to help me into
the house instead of waiting. Fortunately, because I
don't think I could have made it alone. Well, he

helped me up to the second floor and into my room, col-
lecting this howling mob of brothers as we went.
They of course, thought it was funny and wanted to
know what happened.
I, of course, didn't see much humor in the situa-
tion — especially at that time —and was in no mood
for conversation.
I slept. When I got to my room, I just flopped on
my bed and slept.
And when I came to, found myself still dressed in

my suit turned inside out, with Hank leaning over
me with this leer of his, telling me I owed him money
for my taxi fare.
I ignored him. I also ignored all the brothers who
came what happened. Though,
flooding in, asking
as I was able to see how without
recuperated, I —
knowing the sordid, criminal details a person might —
be amused by the way I looked. (They found especi-
ally funny the fact that my university identification
card had been pinned to the back of my inside-out
coat, and just beneath the card, on a separate and
large piece of paper, in pencil, someone had written,

Please Deliver.)
The brothers have since asked many questions and
also tried to speculate for themselves on the general
question : How did J. C. Holland get himself into
such a mess, and what, exactly, was the nature of the
mess he got himself into?
I have turned a deaf ear to such questions and
ignored such of their speculations which various jerks
have voiced. They have continued to speculate and I
have continued to remain silent on the subject.
For one thing, I'm not sure I could answer to their
satisfaction. For another, I'm hard at work boning
up on biology, psychology, French. (And glad to re-
port that I'm improving, too. Yes, my grades defin-
show a marked improvement this half semester.)
itely
(Imean, if that fantastic and financially tragic week-

end did nothing else for me which it did it did — —
teach me a valuable lesson wit
: tonow : I realize
what my scholastic trouble was— did not follow
I in-
structions. I mean, not as well as I should have. That's
the secret, and by discovering it I have at last finally
made the complete adjustment to higher education. I
now pay strict attention and follow instructions to the
letter, and am getting along very well.) (I don't mean
to boast, but I am.)

And . . . Well, that's about all there is to tell.
Though, just to round it out, I might add I had a

terrible time of it, trying to cover up my financial
embarrassment during that period of complete and
utter destitution until my next check arrived. During
which Barbara felt somehow compelled to increase
the injury and embarrassment by paying both our
ways to the Playhouse so we wouldn't have to cancel
our date. (Not only that, but she, too, has heard
about my inside-out attire when I returned that Sun-
day, and has, in her own curious way, tried to find out
what happened.) (By curious way, I mean she has
—
been strangely attentive recently a development in
our relationship which is causing me concern.)
Also, I've thought of going back to Kitten's place
for another attempt to reclaim my stolen money, but
the awful financial (as well as personal) embarrass-
ment that weekend recalls gives rise to thoughtful
hesitation.
J ackie's invessment, he's a teecher at the college.
He come t'see Jackie, she bring him down my place,
an we tell him how we do Jimmy.
He laugh, say it serve Jimmy right.
I don' like the way we gotta do Jimmy. I don'
laugh.
Way we do, we git couple-a Jackie's pills an put
'em in coffee an git Jimmy t' drink the coffee. Then
he jes pop off t'sleep. We takes his money, an this
piece he come packin, an I git my partmin key, an
then we put him in his clothes ass backwar's, an pin
a label on him, an then we gits Bennie t'carry him
down an put him in a cab.
Jackie say. We fix him so he don' wanna pull that
trick agen.
An I spect we do.
I say, Jackie I don' like bein so mean, even t'some
dum Jimmy the burgler.
She say. Kitten we gotta be mean, we ain got no
choice.
Jackie's invessment, he say. Yeah tha's how the
wori' is, you gotta be mean, else you gonna git peed
on.
189
!

Still, don' seem right. Like, Jackie an her invess-
ment, they give an git real fine. He bring her all kinda
presents, an he alia time hide money roun her part-
min. They laugh an dance an play turnabout.
She-it! Make me feel real sad. On'y Jimmy was
better at considerin an not so godam mean, me an
him coulda had us a nice time. I can' help wonnerin,
maybe I done somethin wrong. Maybe I coulda fix
it up so's we unnerstan each others better an don'
git all hung up on that mothahhumpin hunner.

Anyhow, Jackie's loverman, he been tellin me bout
this here college way far away, they teech readin.
Yeah! He say, They kin teech readin by showin
movies, like.
Ooh-wee
I say, Spose some blackass Pickaninny cat like me
wanna learn readin?
He say, You kin go t'this college.
An then he wanna know, What is I considerin doin,
oncet I kin read real good ?
I tell him. I say—right in front o'Jackie — I say,
I wanna find out how come nobody kin truss nobody

in this mothahflippin muddlefuggin worl', how come
everybody gotta ack mean. I wanna know how come
my blackass can' ack nice an give an git, give an
git, like him an Jackie do. How come I alia time
gotta git an git, like a mothahless burgler.
Nex, him an Jackie, they boff start in jawin at
oncet. Then Jackie cork ass an let her Whiteboy lover-
man talk, an he say, Tha's a good queshun, Kitten.
He say. All kinda folks been tryin t'find out a how
come fer that queshun fer hunners an hunners
o'years.
! 1
Jackie say, Kitten we been all over that an I tol' you

you gotta know yer gonna git fore you start givin.
But that don' seem right neither. How is I gonna
find out I is gonna git, I don' do no givin first?
What a muddlefuggin mix up! Gee-zuz!
Jackie's invessment, he think so too. He say he
wanna see me readin so's I kin hunt me up some
ansers.
An that soun pritty good, sep nex, I go an ask him
which books got the ansers, an he say well they ain
none got no final ansers.
Then how the hell m'l spose t'find ansers them
books don' got.
He gone, Jackie say, Soon's they close the cat-
house fer local leckshuns, her an Madam gonna send
me way far away t'this mothahless readin college,
an I is gonna come back jes a-readin my blackass
t'the moon an back!
I say, No-oh-oh! No fuggin readin college fer me!
I say, I can' find me no ansers in them big fatass
books, I don' care t'do no readin. Sides, I git t'readin,
I fraid I is gonna flip my lid. Yeah! I say, Jackie
steada readin, what I wanna learn, I wanna learn
pills! some dum Jimmy-style Whiteboy
Like, you git
an you can' unnerstan him an he can' unnerstan you,
pills is how you do him. Yeah Pills best !
Jackie say. She kin teech me pills okay, an I kin

learn readin too.
I say, No readin fer me. No! I say, I ain goin all
by mysefF t'no way far away college, cause them

Jimmy-style Whiteboys'd scare my blackass blue !
She consider what I tell her, an she an Madam

talk, an then Jackie tell me she gonna make me a bar-
192 i one hundred dollar
gain. She say, We go t'gether. Yeah! She say, She
wanna do her some more learnin too, so me an her
kin go t'gether.
I been considerin her bargain. I been considerin
maybe I take me a blade, I kin git back okay. Fack,

maybe what I oughtta do, I oughtta take me my great
big cottinpickin Pickaninny grin an a whole lotta
pills. Steada some ol blade.
Yeah! Wiff pills, I don' need no blade.

I take me my grin an my pills case some mothah-
less Whiteboy College Joe try him some fancy gittin
an gittin on my poor ol blackass Pickaninny me,

maybe I kin go an git back, an then do me some ooh-
wee big fatass book readin, an maybe find out jes
what the tee vee terrible trouble wiff them mothah-
jumpin boom boomin Whitefolks, they can' give an
git, an gotta ack mean alia time.
Anyhow, I spect me an Jackie is gonna go. My

one hunner an that other loot I got from Jimmy, she
put that wiff Bennie in my bank count. She say tha's
fer me t'go readin college on.
So come local leckshun time an the cathouse shut
down fer awhile, I spect we is gonna go. Meantime,
Jackie is teechin me pills.
(Continued from front flap)
ment for the weekend, and events take
their wild and unpredictable course.
is one of the hap-
Kitten, for her part,
piest creations of recent fiction. Busi-
nesswoman and child, whore and
moralist, she is, although illiterate and
"uneducated," one of the most telling
critics of the American social scene,

and everything cold, crabbed, inhuman,
and hysterical in it, to appear in many
years. Tuning in on her interior mono-
logue in this book is a privilege and a
delight.
Hailed in England and France for its
"sincerity," "power of expression," and

"wildly funny," "outrageously bawdy"
episodes. One Hundred Dollar Mis-
understanding has already been greeted
here by pre-publication comments (see
back of book jacket) heralding the dis-
covery of a great new talent in American
writing.
Robert Gover, born in 1929 in

Philadelphia, the son of a Kentucky hill-
billy, has worked as a newspaper re-
porter, life swimming instructor,

guard,
laborer, salesman, etc. About himself
he says: "I'm concerned with learning
to cultivate inspiration, and with ad-
dressing and pleasing readers who want
to own what's inside their own skins.
Getting figments of my imagination

down on paper in words so they can be
translated from words to the imagina-
tion of readers strikes me as a most
fascinating way to pass the time between
womb and tomb, and by tombtime I
hope to have written well."
Cover photo by Allan Arbus

-VrV '
9 Posed by a professional model
"This book should
create a sensation...."*
*HENRY MILLER:
"What recommending it to
a find! I've been
everyone. That language he puts in the mouth
of that fourteen-year-old prostitute is out of this
world. She really says things, tells us something
— 'we dumb whitefolks,' I mean. This book
should create a sensation."
GORE VIDAL:
"There is always a division between what a
society does and what it says it does, and what
it feels about what it says and does. But nowhere
is this conflict more vividly revealed than in the
American middle class's attitude toward sex,

that continuing pleasure and sometime duty we
have, with the genius of true pioneers, managed
to tie in knots. Robert Gover unties no knots
but he shows them plain and I hope this book
will be read by every adolescent in the country,
which is most of the population."
GROVE PRESS, INC.
64 University Place, New York 3, N. Y.

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one hundred dollar

A NOVEL BY ROBERT GOVER

one hundred dollar

ture of experience and innocence. He

speaks almost entirely in four-letter

The principals tell the story of their

("An assumed name, as I mentioned

GROVE PRESS, INC. / NEW YORK

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-20506

Manufactured in the United States of America

The caricatures in this story never were and aren't.

After all, I'm a college sophomore, not a paid pro-

may not become clear to the reader, but are indeed

Well, first on Friday, we got our midterm

grades and I found I was flunking three repeat three —

phoned to tell me she received a telegram telling her

birthday present. A bit late, yes, but better late than

tell you. I mean, I was depressed —psychologically

was the weekend of the big frat formal. It was the

that was too psychologically depressing. I was in no

I it was that psychological depression

two strokes of misfortune Well, I was entirely a

1 one hundred dollar

(he's a jerk) said he thought it was a sort of poetry.

—Hank is forever telling me I should go and have

respond as little as possible to that foul suggestion, I

shouldn't, I mean. One, as I've already mentioned, is

that Dad is a member of our town's obscenity board.

But when I finally did get around to telling Hank

am sitting in front of this TV all alone in that empty

isn't what he means I mean, when I point this out

— ^when I tell him that, in effect, is what he is trying

12 one hundred dollar

About nine o'clock, I thought James Cartwright :

Holland, Holy Christmas (An assumed name, as I

mentioned earlier, though J. C. are, as a matter of

any quick-witted reader might readily guess, but I

. I mean, I certainly never intended to go fornicate

in a discussion with Hank, I'll be even better pre-

I went there. I took a taxi and went.

This place — it's called the Black-n-Tan —was, well,

14 one hundred dollar

every shade in between. I even saw two Chinese

students and a Chinese girl. And Christmas At one !

girls (you could tell he was with them by the way

he would lean over and talk to them) this big, very-

paid professionals and he was sort of their solicitor,

so to speak. (I'm aware that there's another word for

Though it's difficult, because the very next thing

truth, I wasn't sure, at that moment, what he meant

just looking around.' Which, of course, was true.

Cartwright Holland, you've seen yourself a real one

became certain of my observations when he stopped

I went back to looking and listening, and hadn't

knows me and I have yet to see the inside of a house

be the wiser ? Answer Me : !

So I said, 'Where are your girls ?'