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Fxlblk

Joshua Copeland

    My last day as a freshmen at the public high school, Taylor Allderdice. Attention to all you senior niggers, it’s “Beat the Shit Out of White Boy” day. I took my finals in Geometry and Social Studies, and then...the school year was over. I thought I made a mistake walking out the exit everyone else was using. As I walked out the door I saw three darkies attack an effeminate cracker. The victim curled into a fetal position as they pounded him like a jackhammer. One of them utilized the victim’s head as you would a pogo stick, shooting for the maximum level of brain damage, like he wanted to give said cracker a fatal concussion: He hopped up and down on whitey’s head with both feet. When they left and the kid lifted his face from the grass and we saw all the blood, we went, “Oooh,” in unison. His whole face dripped with it, as if his skull was a balloon full of blood and someone popped it.
    I decided to try an exit at the back of the school. In my pocket I had one of those Super Dynamo Kryptonite locks from my locker. I exited the school with my hand around the ring of the lock, ready to swing, breathing in violent huffs, amping myself up.
    I walked into the light; okay, not many students took this exit, it was an empty parking lot, I was like, Okay, I am cool, all is well and good; And then out of nowhere a darky appeared and zeroed in on me. He was a big un, like six-four. He was high on pot, blood red veins wreathed the whites of his eyes. His grin screamed, No mercy! I told him I didn’t want any trouble—but I didn’t mean it. He took off his shirt, cracked his knuckles, came within distance, and I swung the lock at his nose, aiming for a grand slam...and clocked the shit out of him. You heard his nose CRACK! Like it echoed., like the baseball to the bat. He hit the ground, and began to choke on his own blood as it ran down his throat.
    For a moment he just lay there, retching and dazed, and then he tried to grab at something behind his back. A piece? All of a sudden three of his brothers trotted over to us and motherfucked me. One pulled out spiked brass knuckled and put them on. I reached into the back of my victim’s waist band and wa la, a revolver. 357 Snub Nose, I do believe. I looked down the barrel and saw the bullet was chambered, ready to go. I de-safetyed it and pointed it at his brothers. They immediately stopped and put their hands up, “Yo man! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Just let us get our brother and we’re gone!” I had fired a gun a few times in my life. Never at a human being.
    I emptied the revolver at them, they all made a break for it, and I missed them all save one, who I hit in the thigh. They all ran off and even the guy I nailed in the leg didn’t break stride.
    What does it feel like to shoot somebody? A few years ago, when I was more of a delinquent, I became friends, through many arrests, with Weiler, one of the cops at the Squirrel Hill substation. One night, as he sat at his desk doing my paperwork, he let me look at his files of arrests for that year. “Let’s see what this one says,” I asked. “It says you discharged your weapon and hit the perp in the leg. Cool.”
    He looked up from his desk. “Nope,” he said, “When you shoot someone, even if it’s just in the leg, it stays with you. For life.”
    So I felt my mood out. I smelled the sulfur of the gunpowder and the irony smell of the blood. I looked around. A dog barked in the distance. A motorcycle or loud car started up. A bird chirped. A cloud moved in front of the sun for a moment—a quiet never mind. A squirrel jumped from branch to branch in the tree above me.
    Clarence, school security, stepped outside, saw me, and quickly ducked back in. So the cops were coming. I heard the sirens. I could have left, but I stayed to lecture my wheezing victim that just because someone has more money than you, that gives you no reason to beat them down. A cop car screeched up to us. It was Little Lucy and Robocop. I lay down the revolver and got down on my stomach. Robocop shouted for me to back up in a crawl towards his voice
    This was not the first time some white student at Taylor Allderdice had caught Travis Bickle Mania. Rich Rosenthal took the public bus home, and the black students on the bus would harass him. So one day he brought in his backpack a loaded pistol. In Biology he opened his backpack up and showed me, as he quivered with rage. “I got a big surprise for those niggers on my way home.” So we heard what happened next. The bus driver happened to be black. So when Rich pulled his pistol on his tormentors, he screamed racial epithets, and he had them cornered, they were scared. But Rich had angered the bus driver and he stopped the bus and walked back to Rich and berated him. From then on, the principal had Clarence, who was black, ride the bus home with him every day.
    The law      could      not      touch      me. I was fifteen and my family had a lawyer who worked in the US Steel Building. The cops took me down to the Squirrel Hill substation. My dad called our lawyer, and I was home for a late dinner.
    I never heard about the brother I shot in the leg. I had to visit a parole officer downtown once a week for three months. There’s a code to racism, like, you feel out the other person, and see if they reciprocate. “So you downed a spook,” he said. And we both laughed.
    Taylor Allderdice High School expelled me. So my folks sent me to The Shadyside School, a high school that specialized in delinquents. It cost fifteen grand a year and only had room for fifty or so students. The neighborhood knew it was a gangster school, we knew there were around nine or ten kids there from Mafioso families. There were no lockers. Just one big home room, an auditorium with fifty desks. You lifted up the tops and kept your books and notebooks inside. These were our lockers. Each class comprised only six or seven students. They didn’t give you a lot of in-school work, add to that homework was a joke. And Daryl Worthee went there.
    He was notorious in Squirrel Hill for his shenanigans. He came from the Worthee and Smallis crime families, a low class corner of the higher-ranking Luchese family. Those kids from OC (Organized Crime) families were hellions. The kids were more psycho than their parents. Daryl liked to talk about torturing animals. I remember he told a story in Chemistry that he and a few kids were drinking up at Panther Hollow, standing on the bridge that spanned the lake. A mother duck and her line of ducklings passed under, and Daryl dropped a huge chunk of concrete on the last duck. It began to flap its wings around in circles and the other ducks attacked it until it was dead and floating. Daryl cackled as he told the story.
    The Beastie Boys were a fad around my time there at the school. You’d be sitting in class, waiting for it to begin, and you could hear Daryl coming from all the way down the hall. From his Walkman. That’s how loud his Walkman was. He and his Beastie Boys tape. You could hear the tinny music get louder and louder, and finally he swaggers into the room, Walkman blasting.
    I made friends there—a lot of them were wiggers—white niggers—white kids who camouflaged themselves in black culture and made it their own.
    Late on a Friday night I was at Panther Hollow drinking with Daryl, a few kids from The Shadyside School, and a few from Taylor Allderdice. Allison Raben, who was really hot, was there, she went to Allderdice. She was the only girl there and had chugged most of a bottle of Mad Dog. She slurred her words and stumbled around. Then she approached me and fell down onto her knees and begged, “Greg, please do not let me pass out, not with them here, hide me, carry me somewhere, if you can’t, than protect me, please!”
    I asked for a blowjob in return.
    She said she was too drunk. And I said, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I did not participate in what followed.
    Allison crawled around in the mud on all fours, slapping herself in the face, trying to stay up. The boys chugged their whiskey and just watched, waiting. “I have AIDS,” she blathered. Then she grunted into the mud, and went quiet.
    After a bit, Daryl said, “Is she passed out?” he nudged her with his foot. She moaned quietly. “That’s good enough.” They all studied her. “Well, what do you want to do to her,” Daryl asked. I have to write this delicately. They grabbed a beer bottle and used mud as a lubricant.
    The following Monday Daryl was a bit too loud in American History. Four of us sat in a corner, using euphemisms to talk about what they did to Allison. Then, out of the blue, Susan Morton—who had a shaved head and had applied to Smith—stood up from across the room and bellowed, “DARYL! THAT’S RAPE! YOU RAPED HER. THAT’S ILLEGAL! THAT’S RAPE!” She grabbed her camouflage-colored backpack, shoved her book in, and stormed out. Mr. Wehs, the teacher, had only heard Susan and hadn’t heard what we were laughing at. So he was angry at Susan for disturbing the class. Oh Well. Anyone could do without Susan, and her constant babble about Susan Sarandon and Catherine Denevue in The Hunger.
    Daryl and I had study hall together in the auditorium. Jerry came in from smoking and obsequiously handed Daryl a letter. “I found this taped outside on the door. It had your name on it. I thought you’d like to have it.”
    Daryl read it and gave to me. I read: “Daryl. What you did was rape. I don’t think you understand that. She was passed out, and was unable to say Yes or No. She would have said No. I think you are vile and when I graduate this spring I hope to never see your face again.”
    “I know how to handle this bitch,” he said. After school Daryl drove over to Pandolini’s, one of the many restaurants owned by his family. I tagged along. “I’m going to get some black bitches to beat her down.” I ordered a Jumbo shrimp Parmesan dinner up at the bar while Daryl talked with the black bartender. The belief that all Italian mafia are racist is total bullshit. The two races interact with each other and do business with each other; the Negro soldiers and front businesses work together, especially like the low level family Daryl came from. In the end I saw Daryl hand the bartender four hundred crisp dollar bills and they both slapped five in a pretty complicated fashion.
    When the waitress brought my bill she looked super tense. I asked to see the menu again.
    She asked why?
    “Because I said so. Bring it.” I began smacking the table, “Schnell! Schnell! Schnell!”
    She went behind the bar, got it, and brought it over to me. I found the meal I ordered. “Hey skank, you overcharged me five dollars.” I tossed the menu at Daryl, a few seats away. “Daryl, your waitress tried to rip me off.”
    He said, “Loraine, he’s with us. Don’t do that.”
    As we drove away Daryl said, “The show will be tomorrow. Be there. Right after school. One of the black girls, Deanna, has super long fingernails, just for times like this. She’s going to go for the face.”
    When I got home Allison called. I told her, “I’m sorry. But I’m not gonna rat on Daryl. Go to the police yourself.”
    “Greg, it’s useless if no one will testify. And my mom and dad don’t have the money and resources for a long, drawn out civil suit.” She broke down.
    “I had no part in it,” I said. She hung up on me.
    And then...the show. The next day, as school let out, the three black chicks—all of them tall and overweight—waited on the sidewalk with Daryl. Susan walked out and Daryl nodded at her. And the girls attacked. Deanna gored Susan with her fingernails, they threw her around, blood flew from Susan’s face like a centrifuge. Finally Susan curled up into a fetal position, her ass in the air, and the secretary ran out, yelling, “The cops have been called!” The three girls got in a beat up car and left. The license plate was duct taped over.
    The next day the cops showed up and made a report. We all said we had no idea who the black chicks were. So the police had nothing to work with. Besides, they had other problems. Thus I guffaw; that’s the beauty of living in a big city like Pittsburgh. The police ignored the smaller crimes.
    Susan’s face was all stitched together like Picasso painted it. I saw her the next day, stretched my arms, yawned, and said, “Ah, chaos, anarchy...” I then drew a red anarchy sign on my black backpack. Went well with my combat boots. Later she walked up to Daryl and threw her lawyer’s business card at him. He laughed. “You got no connection between you and me, scarface. Oh well. That’s life.” He walked away and she broke down. “We’ll see,” she said.
    The Shadyside School is basically a huge Victorian house turned into an institute of education. One day at lunch we were all outside, chatting, smoking, playing hacky sack, listening to rap. Brandon shouted NWA lyrics out of a megaphone, “My name is Ezy E I got bitches galore!” Daryl had a T-shirt on that read: “It wasn’t me.” The kids wandered out into the street, sitting down, having a good time. A beat up Pinto drove up the street—you could hear it before you saw it—and I guess the kids moved out of the way too slowly. The car had to stop, and some idiot with long red hair and pizza faced acne, late teens, stepped out of the passenger side and slurred in a heavy metal accent (I apologize for the dialogue in the story, and the profanity, and how overly emphatic it is. The words sound terrible on paper, but that’s the way these kids talked), “Hey motherfuckers, get out of the way. Bunch of spoiled shits. Is this all you motherfuckers do all day? Fucking move it! Get out of the way!” He stepped back in the car and they drove off. A couple of us, including Daryl and I, called him names as the car turned the corner. We went back to chatting.
    Sixty seconds later the Pinto screeched to a stop in front of the school. It had gone around the block. The Red Head stepped out, fisting nun chucks. “Come on,” he goaded us. “You’re real quiet now, motherfuckers. What you punks yelled, let’s hear it again!”
    Daryl pointed out, “But, but you have nun chucks.”
    “That’s right, brother, and I’m ready to knock your head open! Say one fucking word about me! I dare you!”
    All of us were quiet.
    “I thought so,” he said. He stepped into the car and it drove off.
    Right after the car turned the corner Bill Ellman, who was eating a pear, threw it down the street and it splashed all over the Pinto’s windshield. We knew he’d circle round the block again. So I went into my trunk and pulled out a bat with a nail on the tip—I got the idea from the movie Escape from New York. Edley Edwards, a black brother, grabbed a bat out of his trunk, Daryl grabbed a jumbo-sized knife out from under his driver’s seat. A few other kids grabbed bats and hammers from their trunks. We split up. Four of us stood on the sidewalk in front of the school, and four of us stood across the street from the school, waiting. We had his ass surrounded, ha...
    And what do you know, his proletarian ass came up and skidded to a stop. Pizza Face stepped out with his nun chucks. “Okay, who threw the fruit?!” We just stared at him as he took in the situation. He reddened in embarrassment. “Let’s see, Let’s see how you all go up against a double barrel.” He stepped into the car and it drove off.
    We waited out there for close to two hours. How should I say this...we weren’t out there waiting just to be tough, there wasn’t really any antagonism left. He had surrendered and took off. We were just curious. Would he really come back and shoot our school up? The secretary kept yelling at us to come in, but no one listened to her anyway. School let out and we all piled into our cars to hunt him down, though the chance of finding him was pretty much null.
    A couple weeks later, Edley Edwards, Bill Ellman and I were leaving the Walnut Pizzeria during lunch, and who do we see walking our way? The antagonistic Red Head. Edley pulled out a butterfly knife and flipped it open in a cloud of talcum powder (Helps it open faster) and the Red Head wigged out—that means he began to talk like a rapper to hide his fear (How degrading), “Yo man, I want you without the knife, nigga, without the knife.”
    So Edley threw the knife on the sidewalk and said, “Alright. Let’s go. You and me. Let’s go to jail together.”
    But the Red Head was Negrophobic. Edley was half his size, but the Red Head backed away. He said, with all the requisite arm and hand gesticulations “No muthafucka, it just ain’t worth it, nigga, it just ain’t worth it.” He walked away.
    At the end of the school day we all herded into our cars and drove off searching for him. Unbelievably, Daryl and Bill Ellman and Michael Graham found him over around Negley Hill.
    A few days later I was driving down Marby and I saw Old Red in a Gulifty’s busboy uniform on and two black eyes, walking down the sidewalk. I shouted, “we’re gonna kick your prole ass!” He broke off into a run in the opposite direction.
    Daryl’s childhood history was common knowledge. His mom was a stripper when she married his dad, and he became her sugar daddy, and they did all sorts of drugs. When his dad decided to divorce her, she slit her wrists in the bathtub, with Daryl watching. She begged him to come over to her so she could slit his wrists too. He watched her end. Most of the teachers at the school were sympathetic to him, but not the girls, not after what he did to Allison. He came back to visit the school after he graduated and he sat down in class next to Liza Madlack, and she got up and moved across the room.
    When I was a junior Daryl began to date a not-so-hot stripper who’s face look like it was reflected by a broken mirror. Daryl was going give her money to pay for a lipo and a tummytuck. She had an eight-month-old infant. She said the infant needed a tattoo. She wanted a rainbow on the baby’s left ankle. “You’re crazy,” I said. “The kid will claw his eyes out screaming.”
    “But it won’t hurt forever,” the stripper said.
    The four of us went to Theo’s Ink Shop. The artist saw us and winced, shaking his head. I do not know how much Daryl dished out to get him to ink the kid, but it must’ve been a lot. Daryl handed over the cash and the artist counted the money in thick, prim, neat, crisp hundred dollar bills, The artist would sometimes pull out a bill and crumple it and then lay it out again to make sure it wasn’t funny, i.e. wasn’t counterfeit.
    The stripper lifted the baby up onto a table and gave him a pacifier. “That’s not going to shut him up,” I said.
    “I’ve done some bad shit,” the artist said, “God, I’ve done some evil shit. I hope you forgive me this time.”
    He charged all his needles, and they steamed as he moved his tray over to the table. Six needles, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple were on the tray. “Hold on tight, little tyke,” the artist said. “Soon it’ll be over.” Daryl lit up a cigarette and held the baby down with his forefinger. The baby grabbed his finger. The artist stuck the red needle in the gun, screwed it in, and we heard the grind as he brought it over to the kid’s left ankle. Daryl kept smoking. The baby struggled and gurgled, but not forcefully; he didn’t know what he was in for.
    Then...the needle dug into his skin, his whole tiny body vibrated. He screamed from the throat, not just an “I want milk” bellow, but from deep, deep inside, and there was emotion to it, like a bubble-eyed outrage. He spat the pacifier out. Daryl still pushed him onto the table with his finger while breathing smoke out his nose. “Be cool, baby,” he said. “Be cool.”
    The artist had to keep wiping away blood. “Yep, he’s a bleeder,” he said. The screams turned guttural and then hoarse; his tiny mouth was stretched as wide as it would go.
    And it was over. The shouting continued in the car on the way home, until the kid passed out.
    That night, Daryl, the stripper, Edley Edwards, Bill Ellman, and Michael Graham, dropped acid. We put it into an eyedropper and squeezed it into our eyeballs. We were all super amped. Daryl put The Return of the Jedi on the VCR. During the chase scene through the woods it was wild, we all ducked and dodged as we sat there.
    Later we sat around with a water bong and I announced, “I have a new name. I don’t want to be called Greg anymore. Remember the Superfriends show on Saturday Morning? There was one villain named Fxlblk. The only way to vanquish him was to say his name backwards, and the whole show was about how the Superfriends tried to figure out his name backwards. You’d think it would be simple, just write the letters down and reverse them. But they needed a half hour long show, so they couldn’t do it that way. Anyhow, at the end of the show, The Flash came up with it, and they spoke the name backwards, and bye bye Fxlblk. But it didn’t seem right. I wrote out the name myself, and realized the show had gotten it wrong. How they made that mistake I don’t know. They didn’t get his name backwards. Anyway, I want all you guys, from now on, to call me Fxlblk. You guys got that?”
    “Okay,” Daryl said. “What’s the name again?”
    “Fxlblk”

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