Lurkers Page 19

‘I’m not being emotional. Trust me: I get emotional about a white dude saying “nigger”, you’ll be the first to know.’

  ‘Okay: there you go. You’re allowed to say it.’

  ‘Sure. Look: for how many hundreds of years, that’s what we were—it’s all we were to you—okay, to be fair, not to you, but to people of your, you know, fishbelliness.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I think it’s perfectly fair that my people have captured and domesticated “nigger” for our own, personal, private use.’

  ‘Has it worked?’

  ‘Has what worked: capturing it?’

  ‘Yeah. Now that it’s yours, is it harmless?’

  ‘Uh...sorta. It’s harmless if I say it; it’s not so harmless if you say it. And that little punkassed bitch a few minutes ago’s got no business saying it.’

  ‘Two hours and thirty minutes!’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘So, due to a history of—and pardon me for refusing to dance around a couple of truly meaningless syllables—due to a history of “nigger” being used to categorise black people as some lesser form of animal, its use today must either be for that same purpose, by we white guys, or for the purpose of flaunting your domesticated appropriation in spite of the manner by which we white guys have no choice but to use it.’

  ‘Uh, ye...ah,’ Jackson said, ‘I could go with that explanation.’

  ‘Cool. Let’s talk about “cracker”.’

  ‘Oh, I getcha.’

  ‘And “honkey”,’ I added, ‘For that matter “limey” and “pom”.’

  ‘Yeah, I know; but it’s not...how hurt and offended are you really by “cracker” and “limey” though.’

  ‘By the words? Zilch. Words have only the meanings defined by a given group of people prior to their use; if we agree to define “nigger” and “cracker” and “limey” as unimportant species of arctic trees, then no one will ever be offended. I’m slightly offended—and only partly for myself—that I’m not allowed to use “nigger”, but you’re allowed to use “cracker”. Now—I know—now, the other half of that is really interesting. I have no doubt that I can say “cracker” all day long, just as you can say “nigger”, right? Okay. Yet, only one of us is allowed to say either or both, by modern societal convention. Now—and think about this purely logically before you respond, because I’m making a point, not insulting a percentage of this country: if there are two sorts of people, and a set of double standards, and the standard appointing the greater set of freedoms, or the lesser set of repressions, if given to the one group over the other—and here’s the important part—insofar as special treatment is as a matter of course given to that group too fragile to adhere to the rules thrust upon the other group, what would you derive from that.’

  ‘Two hours and twenty-nine minutes!’

  ‘Okay. Um...I’m not just disagreeing with anything,’ Jackson said, ‘because I’m honestly not sure I’m following you anymore.’

  ‘That might be best. Let’s back up a bit. Everyone hates the French; so let’s use them. The French are frogs; that’s a given. Now, supposing a huge number of frogs lived in the US—enough to make up about an eighth of the populace, say.’

  ‘I get that.’

  ‘Okay. Now, they take offence to being called frogs, which, in the US, is totally within their rights: here, you can take offence to three fifty-seven in the afternoon if it makes you happy.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So, we as a culture agree that nonfrogs are hereby prohibited by etiquette if not by law from calling frogs “frogs”.’

  ‘I could see that.’

  ‘But the frogs can call themselves “frogs”, because they’re capturing and domesticating the word.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘So, this word exists, and one smallish group is allowed to use it, intent not counting for much—they can use it to joke, or to insult each other within their little froggy group. You and I, however, are prohibited from using their word, although, for the sake of argument, they can call us crackers and niggers because, hey: they’re the French, and they’ve earned that slanted right.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you? If a frog can call you a nigger, and you can call yourself a nigger, and a frog can call himself a frog, and you’re not allowed to call him a frog, there’s a doublestandard created to account for, what, a weakness on the froggy end of the emotional spectrum?’

  ‘Okay: yeah. I do understand. I also understand that the French were never called frogs to strip them of their humanity and turn them into property. If that had happened, I’d be more forgiving of a double standard allowing them to use whatever words they liked, for me and for themselves, when I personally wasn’t allowed to use the same word to talk about them.’

  ‘Two hours and twenty-eight minutes!’

  ‘And that’s a valid consideration,’ I said, ‘But I, personally, have never called a black guy a nigger as a—well, really, I’ve never called a black guy a nigger at all; I use it passively and hypothetically; but, I’ve certainly never used it to discuss a brownish guy I happen to own. So, by that sort of logic, I’m immune to this unwritten law by virtue of having never been the guy whom the unwritten law was unwritten to penalise.’

  ‘I get that too. But, the simple fact is that, if you, being white, go around calling black guys niggers, it’s not like you’re gonna have paperwork affirming that you’re not the white guy the law was unwritten over.’

  ‘So, I could use the word, and be right about using the word, and be misunderstood by those of the correct colour to use both that word, and words meant to categorise me as a white guy.’

  ‘Two hours and twenty-seven minutes!’

  ‘I...guess so,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Let’s flip this a bit,’ I proposed, ‘What if you weren’t allowed to call me a cracker.’

  ‘I’m not gonna call you a cracker anyway.’

  ‘So you’d be willing to lose that freedom of speech.’

  ‘Oh boy. Well, in those terms exactly? I don’t know if it’s that simple.’

  ‘It might be: it’s that simple that I can’t say “nigger”, directly or hypothetically, lacking the ability to show that I wasn’t here three hundred years ago, owning brown people.’

  ‘It...kinda, yeah. But...well, you know what: it’s complicated.’

  ‘Doubtlessly.’

  ‘So, I’ll tell you what. It won’t solve the problem you’re really talking about, which I don’t particularly even disagree with; but, as far as I’m concerned, understanding who you are and where you’re from and that you aren’t an eighteenth century slavedriver: if you wanna use the word “nigger”, I won’t hold it against you. But you still have to understand that I’m not speaking for the brothers here; a lot of them won’t wait to hear your rational explanation and hypothetical situations: they’ll just fuck your shit up.’

  ‘Oh yeah: I know. It sucks, but: what can I do—I’m white; mine’s a colour not trusted with the responsibility of rational thought and judgment in using certain words properly.’

  ‘Okay: now you’re just fucking joking with me,’ Jackson said.

  ‘Of course. Again: I’ve got no compunctions. If I say something, and someone takes offence, and I even care enough to explain why I’d said it, he can hear me out or not; and, really, if he won’t hear me out over something I’d said, he’s gonna wanna beat me up because I’m wearing the wrong shirt or something anyway.’

  ‘Two hours and twenty-six minutes!’

  ‘There’s still more going on than all that,’ Jackson said, ‘But I think you understand that.’

  ‘So,’ Hutch called, entirely too confidently to stay alive much longer, ‘If I understand all that, do I get to say “nigger” too?’

  Jackson whipped a look of unleashed death at him. ‘Okay: Fatboy needs himself some quiet time now before he finds a tactical response boot in his ass.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  I went out front for a cigarette again. No
drunks whose utterly minimally recommended daily attention I’d attracted remained in the restaurant anymore, so the cops didn’t escort me out like the Secret Service watching for snipers. Which may have been just as well: to the extent that Jackson understood and even agreed with my whole negroclature rant, Davis—also black—never really gave me a response or even an indication; I’m not entirely sure we were okay.

  Something I wish I’d explained—and to explain it now, in narrative, seems oddly like proselytising—was my actual and simple point that, to whatever degree anyone today holds anyone else in contempt for any word, it’s ultimately an archaic sort of grudge. To stick with the French, based on their history of running away from any fight, if for the sake of argument calling them frogs was ever somehow relative to regarding them as subhuman property, then if they remained offended and outraged today by people using the damned word, the problem really would be on their end for trying to hold onto a past no one alive can really remember now, that few alive ever saw firsthand. If we can all agree that the French taking offence to frog centuries [or even just decades] after it was last used to denigrate their ‘race’ to the status of livestock or agricultural gear, since that would be a silly and selfserving attempt to revitalise a forgotten abomination while begging the question of intent in the twenty-first century which lacks the ownership and oppression of the French, then our next step is to replace ‘race’ as a word and conclude pretty much the same thing about black people who get uppity about a word no one under the age at present of fiftysomething can even conceive of holding any firsthand emotional power over a group of people, and which no one currently less than about 150 years old could ever relate directly to slavery as anything resembling an eyewitness.

  What I wish I’d explained was simply that, regardless any ingrained fear and loathing of what sounds to be little more than the bastardisation of the name of the country of Niger, it’s time to get over it and get back to hating the fucking French, who as recently as 1986 desperately deserved it, as I can tell you remembering firsthand the tugboatwar of Qadaffi v Countries with Real Navies. Quod Erat Death to Froggy.

  I hadn’t taken the laptop outside with me this time: I’d simply gone out to replenish my nicotine levels and remain sane. Ish.

  Also, I really wasn’t in a hurry to go back inside, sitting there, finishing my cigarette, sitting there, lighting another, sitting there, finishing that one, and finally going back in when my watch beeped at four. My watch being a couple of seconds behind the clock in my laptop, and therefore the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado, I missed George’s probable announcement that we had two hours and eight minutes to go, or to live, or to see how long we could go without killing him, or whatever he was counting down to; we really didn’t know what he thought he knew.

  Knowing now what he thought he knew, and for that matter whether he was right...well: all in good time; we’ve got a couple hours to talk about first.

  I was in the lobby when Davis and Jackson got up and headed quicklyish toward the door. Davis said nothing, never even slowing; we probably weren’t okay. Jackson stopped, letting Davis go on ahead out the door and around back to get the squadcar. ‘Got a call,’ he said, ‘Time to clock back in.’

  ‘Same here, I guess,’ I said.

  ‘Listen, um...well, I probably won’t be back in here again before tonight—Saturday tonight, but...nevermind; I gotta go; I’ll catch you next time.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  Then, he was out the door and meeting Davis pulling up in the roller, hurrying into the passenger seat without grabbing for his seatbelt. He waved quickly as the squadcar chirped to a start and picked up speed on the way to the street, lightbar cycling sirenlessly in the night.

  The next time I’d see cops, things would be less friendly than that had all been. But, ultimately, that was after sunrise, and therefore beyond the scope of this anecdote.

  I got back to my seat just in time for George’s announcement: ‘Two hours and seven minutes!’

  ‘That really is getting annoying,’ Leslie said.

  Next to her, on the inside, Chuck had fallen asleep. But Larry the Manager was busy minesweeping somewhere, and Jessica just didn’t care: she was still clearing tables dirtied and abandoned over an hour earlier, for $4.35 per hour before tips, of which there were now really none coming in at all.

  College was behind her; this was what she did now; and she knew it. Once Oligarch of the Universe, I intended to let her live too.

  George had begun muttering, outside his countdown, still making approximately no sense, but possibly slightly more anyway. ‘Boom,’ he said hopelessly, ‘Boom, boom, boom. The ducks exploded. Who hates ducks that much. So they eat bread; so what; does bread hate the ducks? Does bread hate toast—is it considered suicide? I dunno. Boom, boom, boom; watermelons too; boom, boom, boom. And then someone explain the gophers, if they were gophers; maybe they were groundhogs, y’know? Maybe they saw their shadows up there; so they went boom, boom, boom. Six more weeks of winter, so boom, boom, boom. Someone sure hates groundhogs. And carrots. What’s that about. Two hours and six minutes! I don’t get the antelopes at all. Do velociraptors like antelopes? I dunno. Someone doesn’t: boom, boom, boom; poor little deer, or whatever the hell those things are; could be Switzerland; hell: I dunno. Boom. Wonk. Millipedes the size of motorbikes. Wonk. Boom. Vroom.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, looking at Leslie, ‘Did you ever read that?’

  ‘Read what.’

  ‘The—in the book,’ I said, scrolling up to Taylor Cleveland hiding in her dressing room, ‘The...this: “And they were monsters: more legs than any animal should have, those grabby external teeth—mandibles—clicking and clacking and possibly sensing. Like millipedes the size of motorbikes, and yet far less charming”—did you read that.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘That’s in the book?’

  ‘It started with “Taylor Cleveland backed away from the door in thoughtless horror before thinking to step forward and twist the deadbolt into the frame”, remember?’

  ‘Oh yeah. No. I stopped reading because I thought you were gonna fix the deadbolt thing.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, looking at George, ‘So where’d “millipedes the size of motorbikes” come from.’

  ‘I guess from...I have no idea. Did you pick it up somewhere?’

  ‘Where,’ I said, ‘Has anyone in the history of the planet ever strung “millipedes the size of motorbikes” together before? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it in a book anywhere.’

  ‘Coincidence?’ she asked.

  ‘Regarding a specific concept as described by a precise sequence of words?’

  ‘I dunno,’ she said, simply adding, ‘George is weird.’

  ‘Two hours and five minutes!’

  ‘And,’ she said, ‘we might find out in two hours and five minutes.’

  I nodded slowly, watching George mumble, no longer certain that I wanted to be in the restaurant at dawn.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Huh,’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ Leslie questioned.

  ‘I just had a stupid idea,’ I told her, ‘which may beg more questions than it solves, which might work anyway.’

  ‘For the alienbook?’

  ‘One hour and fifty-one minutes!’

  ‘Yeah. Okay: stupidtime. We know from the metaphysicapricious that their mythical souls have to exist because energy can’t be created or destroyed—basic misunderstanding of thermodynamic theory, possibly complicated by special relativity: energy divided by lightspeed squared, and all that.’

  ‘So, this is physics,’ Leslie said, ‘Your explanation is going to involve physics no one normal, like me, knows a thing about.’

  ‘Kinda. Maybe not. They don’t understand it either; they use physics to suppose that, no one understanding physics, it’s probably therefore true.’

  ‘Not knowing something makes it true?’ she asked.

  ‘They try to play it all paratransitional. Is there milk
in your fridge? Maybe? Suppose so. Is it spoiled? Maybe. Suppose so. Can you be certain that it’s spoiled? No? Good. Therefore it’s an elephant. They’re idiots.’

  ‘People do that? That’s stupid.’

  ‘That’s not how metaphysics works,’ HippyGuy said.

  ‘See?’ I asked, ‘I don’t have to go talk to these people; they come to me; they can’t not jump in to suck at me.’

  ‘Metaphysics isn’t about milk,’ HippyGuy said, ‘It’s about finding the meaning of life.’

  ‘One hour and fifty minutes!’

  ‘Partly,’ I said, ‘The whole ontological bullshit thing based on the begged question of prepared algorithms. Life occurs; when that’s not enough to keep butthurt morons happy, they have to invent preordinate bogeymen to have thought up a meaning for life in advance, somewhere in a design phase for the universe, which never addresses the meaning of that bogeyman’s life, because they further makebelieve that its life, inasmuch as it’s even a lifeform, must be way cooler than theirs.’

  ‘Whatever,’ HippyGuy recited.

  ‘Which then leads minimally to spinozan determinism,’ I said, ‘nonsequitur though that may be, and beyond, until you’re into cosmogenic firstcause bullshit and ignoring einsteinbreaking issues like tachyons and...it’s irrelevant. Well: probably. Somewhere in there, there may be something relevant to what I’m thinking about now.’

  ‘So, physics again,’ Leslie said.

  ‘A little,’ I said, ‘Everything’s physical; that’s sorta my point. Even thought is physical, ultimately: a given thought, regardless how long and complex and recorded, is maybe half a second as a burst of energy, peeking and poking and playing random access across a physical brain—organic data storage. To the extent that the brain is something of a flashdrive, sectored nearly logically, thoughts act something like search queries. Hitting GoogleDotCom and searching for something is similar enough to trying to remember whether there’s milk in the fridge that we can relate them within the point.’

  Leslie nodded sceptically, not apparently getting the point. Which was fair: I wasn’t explaining it very well.