Tales of the Out & the Gone (20 page)

Why you think I’m telling
you
?

Hey, man. Where you going? You ain’t told me nothing yet about the stuff.

I’m sorry, brother. You took up too much of my time. I gotta get to my man, Grachan, before he go to the dentist!

1999

A MONK STORY

I was at Monk’s funeral with Amina. But then a few months later, I run into him in Newark!

I stopped dead in my tracks. I could feel the October wind filling my mouth.

“Monk” slowed to look at me. He started smiling, sort of, when I froze.

“You think I’m …” was his 1st words.

“Uh, yeh. Wow …” was what I managed. I knew it couldn’t be him. But believe my eyes, it was him!

“Monk” allowed that deep throat laugh, which convinced me more it was him.

“But you was at that guy’s funeral. I heard your mouth back there criticizing the Jazz Preacher.”

“Naw. But man, whoever you are, you look—”

“Yeh, I know. Hey, what can I do? But this is me anyway, not that dead guy.”

The man could be Monk, really. There was nothing I could pin that wasn’t. The face, the size, the walk, the blue nearly wrinkled vine, the stingy brim sky pressing his ears.

“Monk” had a ring he twisted on his finger to check. It made him do a sudden slick-step. A preface to his eyes resettling into my face like the brush of notes vibrating my skin.

“What’s yr name, brother?” I was recovered from the shock. I knew it wasn’t Monk, but this dude was an incredible replica.

“Monk!” He had a ragged line to his mouth, trying not to laugh. But Monk always looked like that.

“Monk?” Laughing, laughing like we do. It was funny alright, but the man wasn’t smiling anymore. Oh, maybe he was. But his mouth was stretching into scatting “Jackieing,” that hip number. Listening took me away from the mystery, but I’d by then agreed in my answer. A Monk digger who looked like the High Priest.

For a couple minutes, the two of us, at the corner of Branford Place and Halsey Street, stood there dipping and learning some of Monk’s steps. It was a groove because the dude scatted like a horn.

No, he was scatting like a box! A piano! No, I mean in my ear, head, I heard a piano. I heard Monk out of this dude’s mouth!

“But what’s yr name, man? Is it really Monk?”

“What you mean?” He shot that stare reserved for Squares.

“Alright, yr name is Monk. But you ain’t saying—” It sounded stupider to me than it does now.

“Hey, man. I ain’t never been dead! I wasn’t in that jive box they had in the church. Plus, Monk lived in the city. I’m from home.”

“From home? The South?”

“Yeh.” He lit up around the eyes, but his mouth broke into a narrow rest. “The South Ward.”

“You from Newark?”

“I ain’t from Newark, I’m
in
there! You see me. It ain’t a
from
.”

I was laughing, but my afternoon was bent in a hip way. The top of my head was warm, like when you want to tell somebody right away. “You been in Newark? How old are you?”

“Hey, man, I don’t tell my age.”

“No?”

“No. You should stop telling yours too. People start to believe you believe in time!”

Now the laughing was filling up my whole head. There was a kind of delight in it. Not the “mystery,” because I thought I’d already floated into that rationality. But the feeling there were millions of hip people on the planet. That we public hipsters were only the tip of that top. The number was out there and rising. The I’s of the Eyes who knows and hears. Who dig the sounds. Who can understand this Dis and the Cover. Who love the classics, the masters, the ultimate live beauty of “the music.”

“Wow, this is really deep. I mean, you are Monk. I mean, really … I mean, not just the way you look and sound, but—”

“Yeh, I told you my name. And you trying to hook me up with the dead brother. You can see I ain’t dead.”

“Yeh, yeh.” More laughter. “I know.” Like that, you might say anything. So I say, “You don’t …”

“Go on.”

“You don’t play piano, do you?”

“What you mean, do I? If I was gonna be named Monk, wouldn’t I play the piano?”

“Well, you could be a wide receiver for the Jets.”

Like he hadn’t replied, he said, “That’s another Art!”

Man, that was funny. “He ain’t your first cousin, that Art?”

“I don’t know if he 1st. But he close. Only a couple more catches.”

More fun, football getting in like that.

“But—” I started.

“No, let’s get it straight. You don’t believe in no ghosts and shit, do you?”

“Naw, man.”

“Then the only answer is I’m another Thelonious.”

“Is that yr 1st name?” Please! This dude was taking me over Niagara without a barrel.

“Yeh, Thelonious Sphere Monk.”

“Hey, brother.” I was trying to make conversation really. But I guess that cold analytical tip must’ve poked out. The dude half-laughed and half-humphed to get me to check myself. “OK.” I apologized for being lame. “It’s just the whole thing is out—really out.”

Suddenly, the man turned to look at the traffic. A black Rolls was easing toward the curb. An old white woman in a maroon turban was sticking her head out the window, as if looking for someone. “Monk” stepped back into a storefront entrance and gestured at me to follow. It was amazing. I caught a look at the woman, who was scanning the street impatiently. No, no. It hit me. That woman looks like …

“It’s the Baroness.” “Monk” was half-whispering and half-snorting.

“The Baroness?” It was not possible. But it was her. Rica. The wealthy groupie in whose apartment Bird died and where the other(?) Monk occasionally hung out. The woman in fact was, despite the hype, not a favorite of a lot of people who saw her as an Anne Rice character created specially to suck jazz masters’ blood.

“You mean you know the Baroness too?”

“Aw, man. Why don’t you stop that double-doubting denial and dig reality? I’m not dead, Rica’s not dead.”

He was doing one of his steps to some scat in his head. “I’m ducking her!” Monk was back in the doorway grooving now.

“When that other dude died and they treated Nellie like that, reading Rica’s shit in the church—that shit drugged me. That’s why I’m ducking her. And will be.” He stared at me like conversation.

2000

RETROSPECTION

Erwin bounced flatly in the gutter, not himself flat, sitting upright, but the way his bottom “splatted” w/o resonating up life, was, like flat.

What? That is the word that lays ready to up. What? As if he you didn’t, &c.

This time it was the electricity. The whole house now turned into a shifting shadow.

In the ersatz modernism, most things, even ourselves, are tied to electricity. So w/o it everything decamps & sits, flat, like a tire or a debunked idea.

Of which he was his own, as we suppose “others” (his idea) must be. So we say, sometimes, if we are social naturally & thoughtful, however.

Flat. Like they say, “Kicked to the curb.” But now, even worse, to roll, or been thrust off & flattened. Not flat across the street, arms akimbo, like the imaginary dead.

“On yr ass,” the Blood wd say. Or, “On yr ass.” OK.

I guess we all know that, or that is the disposition.

Why? How? And them. My man Morris wd say, “And then, so what?” A challenge.

The question remains. Remains, like stays, longer a verb. Hold to that. (Can
that
be a verb?
That
? That it sticks—what about
Thating
?) Yeh, he was down there Thating.

Why is a long, wrinkled & circular Thating—to get to that—yeh, “Get to That!” Monk had another flatting for Thating.

So How always the trail. Without yr self out front, like if you got reversed, the self after the “I,” then that’s a woe—a woeing. (Read here,
Trial
.)

Since Woe, if it is not tossed out like a leaflet, is simply where.

The gutter or rolled off the curb Dig Dog, is to only that
is-ing
is stopped.

A dog off the sidewalk is that it where the dog be. Curb. Stop. If it was deeper you’d just slide around w/o necessarily that finger on the string that nots. Knots.

Bird sd, “You’ve hurt my friend, you cur!” & what did the Nabs “think”?

“What is that African-American gentleman referring to?”

That’s why Bird cd be inside his stomach, like on the earth, itself cooking. And cooked, sadly.

He never got busted, you dig, of all of his “worthy constituents,” except for that guile, of which the leaders’ guidon speaks (given open dimension to guide).

But his life took no fifth, except the notes, & his curb was early extinction from the death ray of Jimmy Dorsey on television. (They say
The
Ed Sullivan Show
massacred many unsuspecting artists, whose hearts were swallowed by cathode poisoning, made lethal with electronic corn!)

I was a He then, when looking at you flat—like the end of a page. The over the edge & following a shape.

How is you? meant silence, intent on misty mind condiment & edgeless afternoon in skull notation.

So woe is the number cd not tell you the dagger of they ugly was to waste them now.

My where from life wear as if this low that was my ware. Ob cos. Distress is a number.

Bipolar pain. Cold Bread. How the substance of the inside feeds. Go out, oh blowing Sun. Find the each of all the unending circle of is.

And him, still flat, trying to remember the touching interior of why he before was other than this Thating flat. A search. A quest lit with reality—terrible name, this place. Sound thrown as chance, head beat ing of under standing. Get up then. Blow that note. Be its endless substance. An us.

Listening to what is an image you won’t look at, doing this inside. OK, glance & the thin wire of revulsion familiar, common as laughter, runs through yr attention.

Jesus, for instance, we’d say. The Negro babbling or cobabbling w/the host.

2000

THE PIG DETECTOR

“Hey, you know that dude I told you about?”

“The dude with the Rhythm Travel machine?”

“Yeh, yeh. Well, he invented a police exposure light ray, or something. You shine it on a person, and if they the police, the machine lights up and plays the first chords of ‘I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You.’”

“Yeh?” was me responding.

“Yeh.” Then we went out to a meeting so he could prove it.

“Yeh, no kidding, man.” What weird otherness this brother comes up with. Can you remember the parade of Outechnology my man came up with? And let me tell you, all that dooba-dooba is somewhere out here operating.

“So what you gonna do with it? I wish you’d tell me what you did with the other whatnot.”

“Hey, I’m thinking. But I sure ain’t giving away what don’t need to be gove away.”

“Then why you tell me? Why you bring me here and almost lay this shit out?”

“You the Under-On community-relations mouth.
La Boca
Grande Negra.
”

“You speak Spanish?”

“I could.”

“You wanna give it to some black organizations?”

“Probably to a few. Those that’ll keep it under. You know, there’s an Over and an Under.”

“Legal and illegal.”

“Yeabo! And you got to keep the connections quiet, the Who-Do, even if you running the existence. Because I take that as propaganda that let people know there’s an Ultra Blue technology out here getting ready to Bop.”

This dude laugh like Billy Eckstine’s Big Band. “Yeh, Under- On. But—” Was he pausing or did he leave the room?

“But what?”

“Well, I’m always into another wrinkle of the out, the further out, and the gone.”

“Dig that, the gone.” That “gone” sound like James Brown screaming!

“I’m getting ready to add a mental disorientator or a body disorientator.” He sound like Stevie now. “Put some doo-doo in the game.”

That last riff had a tune to it too. Can’t remember it. Maybe like “Pastime Paradise.”

“What you mean?”

“The mental D.O. makes them start dropping dimes on each other. Get the real uglies busted. Taping each other, killer cops getting flicks, phone conversations. Suddenly confessing and throwing the evidence on the table in the middle of trials. Divulging police murders, beatings, scams, and shams.” Now he was laughing like Marvin on “Mickey’s Monkey.”

“Yeh, yeh.” You know me, I was dancing to the conversation. “What the other thing gonna do? The body-jammy?”

“Well …” he got a kind of sheepish look, maybe like the dude on
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
“First …” This was drawn out like a game-show host.
Furrrst!
Like that. “First, I was just gonna deconstruct they bodies and send them to expensive restaurants, but my conscience got in it.”

“Oh yeah, what it tell you?” He was handing me my coat.

“Well, it ain’t told me nothing yet. I just got a head-ring. The channel ain’t come all the way in yet.”

He was laughing when I split. Bending over his heebiejeebie with a cold blue passion.
Expensive restaurants
, what that mean? We got to go down the street to Dick & Judy’s every day?

December 2000

POST- AND PRE-MORTEM DIALOGUE

Suppose, I said to someone who I am close to, that the Saudis were the handled in this 9/11 business.

Oh?

And suppose, since most of the so-called terrorists were alleged to be Saudis—except for the ones who were never there, given the Identity Theft, like the dudes in Pakistan and Saudi who never left.

Yeh.

And suppose, as a quid pro from the Yanks moving out of Saudi, since it was getting a bit too hot, with the real Muslims chafing at Israel and the penetration of the Infidel all up in Saudi. The Seven Sisters. The deep crème-filled corruption of the Saudi Royal House.

Uh-huh. Like the stories about them 400 princes and no princesses and how they still dig boy, not scag either.

I’m gonna laugh before I tell you.

Tell me about the thirty-percent ownership of New York— at least the Plaza Hotel. The dude offered how many Negroes to 666, Giuliani, who refused on top cause under was sweeter?