Midnight Page 5

  Sex. He had gotten bored with it at twenty and scared. Sex.…

  I’ve watched bitches fuck pit bulls for the pipe, seen niggers suck clappy dicks for the pipe. Had the claps four times in one year. The last venereal episode had shaken him up somewhat because the lab report said herpes.

  “Herpes? That’s warts ’n shit, ain’t it?

  The lab report was in error. He didn’t have herpes, only a relatively simple case of gonorrhoea.

  “Thank you, Jesus, hallelujah!”

  Sex. It had gotten to the point where he did it whenever he had to and didn’t feel compelled to do it then; it was purely a matter of hormones kicking up that he couldn’t control.

  Morning came and looked like the English evening. Damn, I wouldn’t want to live in this motherfucker a day longer than I had to, no matter how many times they said “sah.”

  On the plane again, to Kano, Nigeria (for a half-hour stopover). The faces were ninety percent black, no German women with children, some swarthy types, Lebanese and Syrian or something. Bop stared at the propaganda movie for Ghana, a village scene with a man whirling around on stilts, a quartet of bra-less women doing a hip-swiveling dance. He perked up.

  Kano, Nigeria. He stood in the doorway of the plane, watching the darkest men he had ever seen do ground duty chores.

  The heat that blasted through the open door seemed alive, leaden with moisture. Africa.

  He felt the urge to race down the steep steps, to put both feet on African soil for the first time, but couldn’t bring himself to do something so square. Nawww, I’ll wait till we get to Ghana.

  “Now look, Bop, what you got to understand about gettin’ off into Africa is this: this is where a whole bunch of shit first happened.”

  “Awww c’mon, Chester, don’t be so ‘generic,’ as you like to call it.”

  “That’s a good point, youngblood; do let me be more specific. Let’s start with the aroma of Africa; Africa is where funk came from and if you don’t believe it, listen to some of the ol’ Horace Silver albums, or some of that Cannonball-Yusef Lateef shit.”

  Horace Silver? Cannonball? Yusef Lateef? Chester was always dropping names. Who in the fuck was Horace Silver? Who was Cannonball? Yusef who?

  “There’s this smell you get when you get out of the airport. Nawww, it’s not a smell, man, it’s funk. It’s a primitive odor, something that’s been buildin’ up for centuries and is finally let loose. It almost knocked the shit outta me when I first smelled it. Ain’t no tellin’ what it’s gon’ do to you.”

  “We shall be landing at Kotoka airport in approximately fifteen minutes; it will be approximately twelve P.M. local time when we land, if you care to adjust your timepieces.”

  The English were so fuckin’ cool. “Adjust your timepieces.” Wowww.…

  The dark, dark man across the aisle, who hadn’t spoken to him before, leaned over and pointed out of the window.

  “Down there is Accra.”

  Bop stared down on what seemed to be a random collection of lights.

  It sho’ in the fuck ain’t EL-A, I can see that from here.

  He pulled the last two bottles of cognac out of his jack et and gulped them as the plane descended, trying to remember every word Chester Simmons had said.…

  “They wash their right hands and eat only with the right hand. If you’re left-handed, you got a bunch of shit to explain.”

  “Don’t fuck without using a rubber.”

  “You gon’ get sick every once ’n a while, but don’t panic.”

  “Don’t stare at shit you don’t understand.”

  “Be cool. Bop; Africans is cool, that’s where we got it from.”

  “You will not be seein’ white folks from the usual perspective. Over there, they are definitely the minority, but you’re going to see some shit that will turn your stomach.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like watchin’ black people in their own independent country kiss European asses like they were candy canes. Remember what I told you; there’s a heap of colonial residue out there. Some of them funky chumps really loved the European beast so much that they became imitations. You’ll see it, believe me.”

  The plane taxied in; it was time to experience Ghana, West Africa, to check out what Chester Simmons had been rapping about.

  A dozen adjectives flashed through Bop’s olfactory senses as he struggled through the humidity into the airport terminal; toe jam, ten yards to git back, unwashed pussy, shit, an alley on the near westside before Maxwell and Halsted street was re-urbanized, BoBo Colic’s breath, funky.

  “We never really smell ourselves the way them African cats do, Bop. Some of ’em ain’t never deodorized themselves. You know how we are when we get the least bit funky; we race for the deodorant stick. A lot of them dudes over there don’t even think like that.”

  Yeahhh, I hear you, Chester, funky. After the first few minutes in the bus-sized terminal, the stench modified into a more exotic funk.

  The chaos seemed unnecessary, people calling out to each other in languages he couldn’t understand. That took him out for a minute, to realize that he was looking and listening to black people and that he couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

  One line led to another line, a man in a kiosk asking for papers, spending valuable time scribbling on each sheet of paper. Why in the fuck don’t they get a computer? Everything seemed to be taking forever.

  This sho’ in the fuck ain’t LAX.…

  Bop began to look around for the easy way out.… Chester had given him a lowdown on the corruption quotient. “Everybody is bribable, but don’t be too obvious, you dig?”

  The big guy talking to three people at once seemed to be the likely choice; Bop wedged past people with his three heavy pieces of luggage, stood to the left of the man for a moment, measuring him. Yeahhh, he’s the one.

  He touched the uniformed sleeve with a twenty-dollar bill in his palm. “Uhh, ’scuse me, officer, I need some help.”

  The officer made a quick, shrewd study of Bop and the concealed twenty-dollar bill. This was no English bobby performing a public service. “Ye-ase?”

  Their eyes locked, meeting of the minds went up.

  “My name is Clyde Johnson, I’s a friend of Chester Simmons, and I want you to help me through all this bullshit.”

  The man took the twenty like a pickpocket and beckoned for Bop to follow him. He followed him to a money exchange station.

  Uhuuuuu huh.…

  The man returned with six thousand cedis in hand. “This is today’s exchange rate. I will have to take care of the customs inspector for you and pay the taxi driver.” Bop learned two days later that the officer had actually gotten ten thousand cedis, gave him four, the porter five hundred, the taxi driver one thousand, and kept the rest. It seemed only right.

  “If you have to come back to the airport, ask for Oxform Amevovo, OK?”

  Bop hopped into the taxi. I like Ghana.

  The taxi driver made him smile, going around in a circle that he recognized after the second time around. The ol’ taxi driver scam. “I cannot seem to find the place you are looking for.”

  At least he didn’t say “sah.”

  “It’s 308 Troas, man, in Osu. Are we in Osu?”

  “Ahhh yes, my brudda, we are in Osu, but I cannot seem to locate this place.”

  Bop enjoyed the taxi scam bullshit; it gave him the chance to familiarize himself with a neighborhood situation that he never had imagined. People sat around small oil lamps selling things.

  “What’re those people doin’, man?”

  “Oh, they are selling kenkey, cigarettes, different things.”

  Ten minutes later, complete with a map to the Vernon place, they were still blazing around in the dark. A dozen people had been consulted, a number of “avenues” driven over. Bop compared the streets that they ricocheted off of to the very worst that Mayor Daley had ever left the west-side with, potholes plus.

  “Uhhh, lookahere,
my brotherrrr, you don’t seem to be knowin’ the fuck where you goin’. What’s happenin’?”

  “Ohhh, there is no problem; we are near, I feel that.”

  Bop settled back, feeling cool. It was a good introduction to Accra. Everything had been set up. He was going to have the use of a two-bedroom house in an area called Osu, courtesy of an African-American couple named Vernon, Fred and Helene.

  “The thing you have to remember, Bop, is this: the minute you become an international African you’ll find shit opening up in front of you that you’ve never even thought about.”

  “Like what, Chester?”

  “Like people, youngblood, like people. When’re you pullin’ free?”

  “I’m goin’ next month.”

  “When’re you gonna go to Africa?”

  “I’m goin’ in May, yeahhh, I’m goin’ in May.”

  “OK, here is these two people I know. I’m gon’ give you their address ’n shit. You can hook up. If they ain’t in the groove, you can go hotel, no biggie, huh?”

  “No, ain’t no biggie.”

  Fred and Helene Vernon, African Americans, international black folks.

  “OK, lemme run it down to you: Helene, ’bout fifty-five, sixty, done wrote a book about menopause. Been everywhere, including what used to be Yugoslavia, and been married to Fred since Heck was a pup.”

  “I probably would’ve tripped to Africa, sooner or later; Ghana was Fred’s idea. In 1972 I was working for a huge corporation, I had corporation values, etc., but I wasn’t blind. I could see what was happenin’ way ahead of most folks. I had access to information that explained how the corporation I was working for, as well as all the rest of them, from all I know, had worked out their strategy and plans up to the next century.… and so far as I could tell, Helene Martin was not going to be a part of the setup.

  “My foresight suggested that I look around for more ‘constructive’ things to do, and then I met Fred.

  “As they say, the rest is history. We had us a quickie marriage and started a trip through Central and South America in a miracle VW bus we called ‘The Space Bug’ and wound up in Ghana.

  “Prior to that I had taken independent swings through eastern Europe, made a couple of trip to the islands, that sort of thing. Fred made the idea of living in Africa a reality for me. We’re both creative people; he likes beer, and I’ve been known to have a taste of gin in my pineapple juice, after my morning yoga exercises. You know what I mean?

  “I think we strike a nice balance, Fred and myself.”

  “I don’t know why exactly, but I’ve always wanted to be in an environment where black people were in control. You understand what I mean? It wasn’t so much a matter of leaving America to come to a ‘perfect’ place or anything like that. You get me? Huh?

  “I just happen to feel that the African American, just from the nature of our experience in America, is a natural for being an international black man. You understand me? Being an international black man offers a lot of options; Africa was just one of ’em. We’ve been damned near everywhere between us, haven’t we, sweetheart?

  “Ghana opened up like a flower for me way back in 1957, during Nkrumah’s time. It seemed like the natural place for me to be at the time.

  “I left for a bit and came back with Helene, and we’ve been here ever since. It’s a beautiful place for an artist, the stimulation of being on a land mass this huge, with all the varieties of people, cultures, and stuff, is worth everything.

  “I think the only thing that gets to me from time to time is the local beer. I’ve been known to get outrageously high on this stuff and cuss people out. You understand what I mean? Let’s face it; everybody has to blow off a little steam from time to time.

  “Bop? How did I see Bop? In 1992 he was one of a steady trickle of young black people who wanted to see where they came from. He came at just the right time. We had exchanged letters, by way of Chester Simmons, a slickass motherfucker who I knew from 1959 or ’60. Yeahhh, he came at the right time; Helene and I were making a two-week trip to Kumasi.

  “I had been invited to photograph a Festival of Drums, and Helene was going to interview a female warrior chief. What that meant, for a twenty-one-year-old ex-gangbanger from EL-A, is that he would have a nice two-bedroom pad to himself for two weeks. I told him about the lady down the street who specialized in sheet washing.”

  4

  I freaked out for the first two days after they left. The house suddenly seemed huge, and it seemed that I would be worn out trying to keep shit clean and whatnot.

  The other thing that freaked him out was being in Africa. He sprawled on top of the sheets, too hot to be covered up, saying over and over to himself, “I’m in Africa, I’m in Africa, I’m in Africa.” Subliminal flashes of ancient jungle dreams caused him to wake up sweating. Lions on the prowl, wild dances around a big fire, people dressed in outrageous colors, greasy folks. That’s what the magazines had shown.

  He smiled and slipped out of bed to get a glass of juice. They had left him stocked to the gills.

  “Bop, there’s enough fruit, vegetables and whatnot to last you for a month. If you feel the urge for something else, you can get if from one of these women walkin’ up ’n down the streets. And if you need any help about anything you can’t figure out, go next door to Madam Stella; she’ll help you. We’ll see you in two weeks.”

  He poured himself a glass of ginger drink. They had all kinds of drinks in Africa. Quiet, except for the far-off sound of somebody laughing. The Osu district, Accra, Ghana.

  After a few days of wandering around he felt confident going from place to place. He had even discovered the neighborhood joint—the Dew Drop Inn.

  The people were just like the people in the Dew Drop Inn on the westside in Chicago, exactly the same except that they spoke Ga. And they seemed to be hip, in a 1970s kind of way. Days after the Vernons had left, he was feeling in tune with the neighborhood. Walk six blocks down that street to get to the high-school jogging track, walk a few blocks that way to the main street, a few blocks the other way to get to the ocean.

  He wasn’t having any problems getting from place to place, physically; it was the emotional thing that played on him. Passing through the streets made him feel alien, strange; these were people like himself (he saw a lot who were shades darker than himself), brothers and sisters. But they were different. Accra was the capital, people had money, stuff to sell, everybody was selling something to somebody else. Or buying. But they lived in shacks and had drainage ditches running alongside the sidewalks.

  No, they weren’t sidewalks. Streets were heavily rutted country roads in the middle of the city, and the “sidewalks” were those escape trails on either side.

  One beep meant that a car was easing you behind; two beeps meant that you had been run over. He felt like someone coming from a place that would’ve fixed all the crumble and decay he saw.

  The superior-than-thou attitudes were resolved by reflections of the pictures of the Bronx, Detroit after Halloween Night, Watts, westside Chicago. What the fuck am I looking down my nose at this shit for? At least they got their own country. And they were friendly.

  If he relaxed his homeboy face for a split second, someone would pop in on him with a smile.

  “I’ll tell you the lawd’s truth, Bop, I have to believe that the Ghanaian is the friendliest motherfucker on the planet. You’ll run into a prunehead every now ’n then, but basically they’re just naturally cordial.”

  The people bustled but there was no sense of hurry; shit stank, fish smelled, a kind of corny barbecue was always in the air.

  Fish, beans, rice, bank, fufu.

  He listened in vain for the boombox, some funky chump with so many decibels behind him it wasn’t even funny. No drug scene. The realization that he hadn’t seen a rock-head in three days jolted him.

  Wowwww! These people ain’t into crack.

  After four days, everybody on the street knew him and he knew everybody. On t
he fifth day he met Elena Boateng.

  Who told him about the German films at the Goethe Institut? Maybe the Vernons had left him with the word. “They show German films on Thursday night. Some of them are pretty good. You oughta make it.”

  Outdoor seating, the film shown on a large screen hung between two palm trees. He took a seat. The whatever it was, was going to be shown at seven P.M.

  He only had to glance around twice to see that this was a place where couples hooked up. He was surprised to see white couples. Damn, I had forgotten about white people. In the darkness he studied the black profiles, silhouettes, the pink faces glowing in the dark.

  He smiled in the direction of the perfume three seats to his left. The perfume provoked that kind of response. The woman smiled back; he could see the white flash of her teeth in the dark. He turned slowly to face the screen, keeping a careful expression on his face.

  He felt suddenly shy. African women were so fine. He had spent half a day staring over the wall at the women who passed the house. He had always liked dark women most, and these dark women appealed to him with every gesture. They scratched their asses, dug into their crotches whenever the necessity was felt for, walked as thought their asses felt good to them.

  He didn’t feel comfortable with women who acted the way loose women acted in the states, but these weren’t “loose”; he could sense that.

  In Osu, they sat with their legs sprawled open, nursing babies, selling stuff. They walked around with bras on, without bras. He had seen four or five sets of perfect titties already.

  Tightening it up with an African woman would mean that you had to know something about Africa. He didn’t feel he knew anything about Africa and the thought intimidated him.

  He could see her smile at him during the course of the movie. He really couldn’t figure out what she found funny. The things they were doing in the movie didn’t make sense to him and the subtitles confused him.

  She almost gushed when it was over and the lights came on. “Well, what do you think?”