Bootleg (10 page)

  I
can tell you this, the next black leader is not going to be an African native. This may be hard to believe, but I’ve discovered that Africans don’t respect black Americans. I was at a party and I met this African guy. I thought, “Cool. He’s black, I’m black. He’s from the mother country. There can be a real connection here.” He wouldn’t have any of that, though.

He said to me, “Why do you call yourself black? That means nothing. You are not black, you are a man, you are an American. You were born here, you are not African American. You are American, and that’s it, asshole.

“I am African. My name is Kwanza. I’m from the jungle, baby, and I killed a lion when I was eighteen years old, beating him to death with my dick. That’s a man! You are here in America kissing up to the white man. You are a slave. All you blacks here in America want to do is play basketball and sing the rap songs. You think that’s the only way out of the ghetto? Just get a job, sucka. Do something that is going to make a difference. Me, I’ve been in the country two years, I’m already the manager of a delicatessen.

“I don’t understand black faggots either. You kiss the white ass all day and then you go and suck his dick at night. What’s wrong with you? Where I come from we don’t have faggots, baby. We test every man. We take them out to the jungle and fuck them in the ass. If they like it, then we know and we kill them.”

  A
nd I’m not sure you can find the right kind of leadership in church either. Thanks to preachers, a lot of people have given up on religion completely. Today, going to church is like going to Vegas. You’ll leave thinking, “Man, I lost $75.00 up in this motherfucka.”

Preachers give religion a bad name. But that’s the people’s fault. All they want is to go to church, sing a song, give five dollars and clear their consciences. You can’t do that because that’s when the preachers start taking advantage. He’ll have you believing that the only way to righteousness is by paying for it. And there’s nobody better at convincing people of that than the Honorable Reverend Edward Cash. His sermon goes something like this:

“Good Evening. Welcome to the
Hour of Power.
This is TV prayer and my name is the Reverend Ed Cash—dollar bills, y’all. I’d like to begin this evening’s sermon with a few announcements.

“Last week someone put a food stamp in the basket. Now, I know I said give what you can. Yes, please give what you can. But y’all keep the food stamps. Go buy the baby some milk with that. ‘Cause, see the Lord can’t use no
coupons. No, sir. They don’t give out vouchers up in heaven. And we must keep in mind that this is the Lord’s account. That’s right, and the Lord got bills to pay, yes indeed. Ya wake up tomorrow there won’t be no sun in the sky. No, sir. The Electric Man came and turned that off. Then who looks bad? The Lord looks bad. ‘Cause He’s keeping you in darkness. Can’t get that light. Can I get an Amen? That’s right!

“Now, there seems to be jealousy and envy in the congregation. And it’s pointed at me. Sister Shepherd came up to me and said, ‘Reverend Cash, you can’t preach the Word because you drive a Rolls Royce.’ She’s looking in my backyard, ya see. She got her nose all up in my business. And I had to tell her, ‘The Lord don’t like ugly and you’re fat and ugly so I rebuke you! You don’t belong in church. You belong in Jenny Craig!’

“Yes, I drive a Rolls Royce. Yes, I do. But it’s not my car. It’s the Lord’s car. I’m just His chauffeur. The Lord’s in the backseat. I gotta take him around to where his spirit needs to be. Now, as I look out here at your faces, I see that some of you don’t believe that I have the spirit. No, sir. You are non-believers. So I must prove to you that I have the spirit every week. Now some of you say, ‘Well, how?’ By speaking in tongues. A-hem …

“Al a weta. Al a weta. Jhon today tela vo. So ma loma tina. So mo loma tina. Ding Dong Ding. Ding Dong Ding. Donde esta y stades Bien gracias y tu Como esta les bibliotecqua.

“… And I’m back. Sometimes the spirit just hits me and that’s to let you know I’m full of it.

“Can I get an Amen?”

  W
hen you’re black and successful there are two types of black businessmen you have to deal with. There is a regular black businessman, that can meet with you, iron out an agreement, and stick by it. Most likely after everything is said and done, everyone will make money and all is well. Then, there’s the nigga business. That’s where you try to do a favor for someone and they try to make an ass out of you, treating you like they’re doing
you
the favor. It goes something like this:

1
: I call you and leave your mother a message saying I need a driver, and I want to meet you at 4:00 to talk about the particulars. You don’t show up or call for a week because you had to get some pussy.

2
: I hire you as a chauffeur anyway because you say you’re my cousin. The first thing that comes out of your mouth is “Why didn’t I get the six hundred like Puffy Combs got?” And then in the same breath you ask me if can you borrow my car so you can go and get more pussy.

3
: Come Tuesday, you want me to pay you for the week and lie to unemployment and tell them you don’t really work for me, so that way you can collect two checks a week because I’m making money, and you feel you should make money, too, so that you can get even more pussy.

4
: Then I ask you to wash my car, and you get mad because you feel you shouldn’t have to wash no damn car, especially since I ain’t going to let you drive it so you can go get any parts of pussy.

5
: I ask you to take me to a club to hear some music, and you tell me the club I want to go to ain’t got no bitches in it. At least not the type you like. You want to take me someplace where we can get all the pussy.

No more nigga businessmen for me, thank you.

  L
ast time I was in New York I stayed at a really nice hotel. One night I got back in late, walked through the lobby, and got on the elevator. I pushed my floor and stepped back, and this nicely dressed white woman got on, too. She pressed a button, then looked back over her shoulder in my direction and her eyes went wide. Just as the doors were about to close, the woman jumped out of the elevator. This scared the shit out of me, ‘cause I thought there was an ax murderer in there or something. So I jumped off right behind her. But she thought I was stalking her, so she took off screaming through the lobby, which scared me even more, so I started running and screaming, too.

  S
ometimes I think about how bad black people got it, but there are people that have it worse then us. Like handicapped people. It gets quiet when you mention the word “handicapped” because it makes people think about that cousin they haven’t seen in years.

But forget about that for now. Handicapped people don’t have role models, though more than anyone else they really need them. I think they should have their own superhero, a paraplegic. That would be great. He could be called Handi-Man.

The show would open up with some funky music. Then the narrator would say, “Up in the sky it’s a bird, it’s a plane. It’s a wheelchair. No, it’s Handi-Man!”

Cut to the opening scene. A woman being confronted by a mean-looking thug.

Victim:
Handi-Man, Handi-Man, help!

Handi-Man, cruising in the sky in his custom-made Super Duper Wheelchair, hears her.

Handi-Man
: Uh-oh, it sounds like trouble.

Handi-Man flies down quickly and accidentally lands on top of some innocent bystanders who are just checking out the action.

Bystanders
: Hey, watch the fuck out!!

Handi-Man
: Excuse me. Hey, you, leave the lady alone.

The thug snickers and ignores Handi-Man, who staggers out of the wheelchair and cripple-walks closer.

Handi-Man
: I said let the girl go or ya gonna have to deal with me.

The thug pulls a gun and shoots at him. Handi-Man, unfazed, continues toward the thug, who suddenly looks very frightened.

Handi-Man
: You can’t harm me anymore. I got Palsy. Put the gun down. I said put it down.

Handi-Man grabs the bad guy with his crooked finger and flips him. The thug screams and crashes into some garbage cans, passing out.

Handi-Man
: That’s right. Never underestimate the powers of the handicapped!

The victim runs over to Handi-Man and hugs him.

Handi-Man
: Now, now, ma’am, everything’s just fine.

Woman
: Oh, Handi-Man, you’re my hero!

Handi-Man
: I guess I am. Would you help me back to my wheelchair? I can’t feel my legs.

As the woman walks him to the wheelchair, the crowd chants, “Handi-Man! Handi-Man! Handi-Man!”

The End

Handicapped people don’t need pity. They need heroes!

  I
don’t understand interracial couples. In Hollywood, it’s so common that brothers look right through black women. They’ll be at a club and lean over to a black woman to say, “Excuse me, sistah, could you tap that white girl for me?”

I appreciate beauty, I really do. It’s not that I can’t recognize a pretty white woman when I see one—I see them all the time. It’s just some brothas, though, have no discriminating taste. If they had a choice between a beautiful black woman and old white ho, they’d pick the whitey. They’ll show up with any kind of girl as long as she’s white. I’m talking about the white girls that white boys don’t even want. Then they roll up on me all happy, like they struck gold.

Brother
: Yo, Damon, what’s up? I want you to meet my little snowflake here. Damon, this is Betty Lou. Betty Lou, this is Damon.

Me
: Hi, Betty Lou, nice to meet you.

Betty Lou
: Chits nacha ta meetch yarghah, toow.

Me
: What’d she say?

Brother
: Yo, chill, Dee. I met her down at the Special Olympics. Isn’t she white? Yo, if you’re interested, she got a friend in a wheelchair.

  T
he beauty of a woman is that she can love you unconditionally. I think about all the great men throughout history who’ve done great things, they’ve all had great women with them. They had women kicking them in the ass saying, “You can do it, baby. Go ahead, give it your best shot.” A man needs that because then he knows he can fail, and always come back home. You think about Martin Luther King. If he didn’t have a strong, supportive wife, he would’ve never been able to accomplish what he did. If Coretta Scott King was a nagging wife things would’ve turned out completely different for Martin.

He’d be leaving the house one day and she’d stop him at the door, saying, “What, are you going out marching again? This is the third time this week! You got all them brothers under your control, you need to march them right over here and get them to help you fix the roof, change a light, anything—just do something constructive! But no, I married the
‘Marcher,’ Mr. ‘I-have-a dream.’ Why don’t you dream you had a job with some benefits so I can get the baby’s teeth fixed? I had a dream, too. I dreamed I got my set of dishes off of layaway. But you’re too busy going to the mountaintop. What, they wasn’t hiring up there, either?”

Or what if Ghandi’s wife was a nagger?

“Mahatma, get your narrow ass up off the ground! Eat some food. The neighbors are starting to talk. Come on, get up and take me out somewhere. Take me out dancing at the Flying Carpet Club. What do you mean you don’t have energy? Eat some damn food. Then you’ll have energy. You need protein. Look, I’m going down to McDonald’s and I’m gonna get me a McCurry goat sandwich. When I come back if you don’t eat, I want out of this relationship. All right fine. You don’t want to eat, I want out. Here … take your dot back. No, no, I don’t want the dot. You keep the dot. Give me the keys to the camel. I’m going downtown to find me a man who treats me as good as a cow!”

  I
f there’s one thing men think more about than they think about women, it’s their penises. It’s on our minds all of the time. Ladies, you have no idea how deep the obsession goes. A penis is so important that every man—whether he’ll admit it or not—at one point in his life has taken a ruler or some measuring tape and measured his penis to see how much he’s got. Some of us have even taken a protractor to measure the circumference.

What’s worse is most men cheat with the ruler. Men lie to themselves.

Man
: Hmmm … thirty-nine inches. That’s pretty big, right? I know the ruler says three-and-a-half inches, but I’ve got a lot of what they call “inner shaft.” My inner shaft starts up back here at the base of my neck.

And they’re never big enough. Every guy wants two more inches. You think John Holmes was happy? No, he used to sit around thinking, “If I had two more inches I could tuck it in my sock.” You ask a guy what the ideal size is and he’ll tell you he wants it big enough to make love to a woman from another room.

The reason why we want a big dick is, basically, we want to hurt you. The biggest compliment a woman can give a guy is to roll over in the bed, holding her stomach, saying, “Damn, I think you punctured my uterus.”

A man will be lying there all proud and pleased with himself, “Yeah, baby, I do that sometimes.”

Let’s face it, women are more mature than men. You don’t see women measuring their vaginas. Well, okay, maybe it doesn’t have as much to do with their maturity as a big vagina is just something a woman doesn’t want to have on her resume. It’s a turn-off to guys for two reasons: It makes them feel small, and it takes too much work to please. A guy’d be whacking it, saying, “Baby, you don’t feel this? How about this, are you feeling it? Nothing? Okay, let me put my leg in there. You still don’t feel that? All right, let me climb in. I’m in, I am now standing inside your vagina. I’m tap dancing, break dancing, doing jumping jacks. Don’t tell me you’re not feeling this, either!?”