Black Thing Five
"Hey, Boo! How did it go?" It was Robert. He was calling to see how things were going with Kevin.
"I have no idea. When I called him on Monday, he seemed glad to hear from me," I said.
"And?"
"Then he came by my office and dropped off a book he wants me to read. He gave it to the receptionist. I was in meetings and didn't see him."
Robert laughed. "Did you read the book?"
"I'm about halfway through. It's called 'Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?'"
"Interesting," said Robert. "I haven't read that one."
"Well it's by a woman who's a psychologist. She talks about the interpersonal stuff that goes on between white people and black people in everyday life."
"What do you think of it?"
"It's a good book. She talks alot about how racism feels from the receiving end, but she's not angry or judgmental about things. She also seems to have a very clear understanding of how weird this stuff is for white people, too."
"Sounds perceptive. Have you learned anything from it?"
"Well, it seems that we 'guilty whites' often think too much in terms of how we are perceived on racism rather than its actual effects and experience. We get hung up on feeling guilty and trying to prove to ourselves that we're 'good' non-racists as opposed to 'bad' racists, rather than simply acknowledging that we all have work to do and an obligation to do the work. It all kind of ties back to what you were saying about 'being racist' versus 'having racism.'
"I'm starting to get the idea that I need to focus on being 'real,' to borrow a term, rather than 'perfect' in some abstract politically correct sense."
"Excellent, Grasshopper. You have come far!" Robert lilted in a lame Kung-Fu accent. Smart ass!
"Well, what's next?"
"That's not for me to say. That's between you and your new little Zen master."
"Bastard!"
"That's 'Mr. Bastard' to you!" he laughed. "Keep me posted on this stuff. I'm on the edge of my seat."
"Okay. I gotta go."
"Buh-bye, Grasshopper!" he said, and we hung up.
Black Thing Six
That night, I had the freakiest dream I've ever had in my life.
I was lying face-down in a motel bed, buck naked, soaked in sweat. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that the room was bathed in a dim greenish light. My face was pressed against the mattress, which had a faint smell of urine.
I could hear voices saying something to each other, but I couldn't tell what they were saying. The voices were deep and rough, and somehow I knew they were talking about me, even though I couldn't make out the words.
I heard a clink of glass on the nightstand next to the bed, then the flick of a cigarette lighter. A whooshing sound like someone was exhaling, but the sound was exaggerated. It felt like wind was blowing over my body.
The voices kept talking in unintelligible phrases, but the sound began to rise in pitch, and an echo-like effect took over, as if the entire room was made of aluminum and the sounds were bouncing off the metal walls.
A large, rough hand claimed my bottom and squeezed one cheek roughly. It hurt.
Another hand began exploring my back. A third hand was exploring the crevice between my buttcheeks. The voices kept making incoherent sounds in their strange, tinny, echo.
This should have been hot, but in truth, I was terrified. A puddle of urine collected under me. I had wet the bed in fear.
The first hand slapped my ass hard, too hard, and then all the hands grabbed me and rolled me over onto my back. I looked at the ceiling and saw the mirror that somehow I had already known was there. I saw myself suspended in its reflection, my pale naked body drenched in cold sweat, my face a featureless blur. My reflection looked like a corpse to me.
Standing over the bed, two on each side, were four enormous thugs with chiseled bodies and blurred faces. Each one held a small glass pipe in one hand and a cigarette lighter in the other. Their eyes seemed to glow orange.
Their muscles were hard, prison hard, and they were covered in tattoos, but I couldn't tell what the tattoos depicted.
Each one seemed to have an enormous cock, but these too were blurred, and I couldn't make out the details.
They stopped speaking back and forth and began uttering syllables in unison. Then, as one, they lifted the glass pipes to their mouths and lit the cigarette lighters against the ends.
They exhaled at the same time, and a thick gray cloud, writhing like a snake, singing like a genie, enveloped the room.
A high-pitched wail issued from somewhere in the distance outside the motel room. Then a slow deep chugging sound came from just outside the motel window. It grew in strength and speed, crescendoing into a roar, echoing through my head and shaking the room itself.
I glanced over at the dresser. A row of knives lay neatly on the top of the dresser.
I turned back to the thugs. One of them had moved to the foot of the bed and was stroking his cock, which seemed to grow larger with every stroke. I couldn't see it clearly, but it seemed to have teeth. A thug on each side of the bed took hold of my legs and pulled up on them until I was positioned like a woman in gynocological stirrups. My mouth opened terror, but my dry throat made no sound.
The thug at the foot of the bed moved forward towards my splayed ass. The roar grew unbearably loud. A thick dark cloudlike form materialized in the air above me and began to slowly descend towards me. Death.
Then everything stopped.
"That's enough, boys. You must go now." The voice was clear and calm, confident and unafraid. It was Kevin speaking.
The roar receded abruptly, like a wave suddenly retreating from the shore. The light in the room changed from cold green to warm yellow. The knives on the dresser had disappeared.
The thugs seemed to deflate before my eyes, their heads now slightly bowed. Silently, they filed out of the motel room past Kevin, who was standing against the doorframe with his arms crossed and a bemused smile on his face. The echo was gone, and I suddenly felt safe.
"Say goodbye to the fantasy, Grasshopper," he said.
Then I woke up.
TO BE CONTINUED