The Mark of Cain: Chapter 3

The Mark of Cain: Chapter 3
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“And the LORD said unto Cain,
Why art thou wroth? And why
Is thy countenance fallen?”
—Genesis 2:6-7

I murdered him every night—I couldn’t help it. I strangled him to death—and got every drop. If I hadn’t done it—somebody else would have. One of his girlfriends—or one of his boyfriends. They all wanted to make him bad—and so I did him instead.

I got him loaded—I got him high. I got him drunk—I got him after school. I was good at it—“Murder, My Sweet.” I got him on weekends—I got him to whimper real nice. I got him to faint—I loved the way he banged his head against the headboard.

Afterwards, I’d help him down the hallway—limping down to the bathroom. Busting his nut the way he did—it wasn’t easy for him. It took everything outta the poor kid—down to the last fuckin drop.

I’d steady him by the toilet—he was so weak in the knees. His obscene inch-long slit made him—piss in the bowl and piss on the floor. He couldn’t help it—he was so loaded and out of it. I helped him tho—holding it gently from behind.

I took it seriously—young male fratricide. He was 16 and I was 18—both of us were doomed East of Eden exile boyz. The Black Genesis I’m talking about—aint the Genesis you’ve read in the Bible. It’s a heartbreaking story—that renews itself with each plucked Forbidden Fruit.

Abel was an albino kid—everything about him was more whitey than me. Except for one thing—and that’s what I was obsessed with. Call me a Dinge Queen—I don’t care anymore.

I was just a white trash boy—I was evil Cain, my mother Eve’s first offspring after the Fall. The Devil made her do it—the Devil made me do it too. I was a dinge queen for my own kid brother—I was obsessed with his Family Tree.

Eve was our mother—but we had different fathers.
Adam was my father—but then there was this awful divorce. Then Eve shacked up with this handsome young alto sax player stud at a popular Chicago jazz nightclub. He fucked her good day in & day out—and my brother Abel was the result.

Eve ditched us fast—she had better things to do. She had other important things on her mind—like having fun and living it up. Her family was wealthy—her father a rich Lakeshore attorney and businessman.

So Abel and I ended up in Miami on Ocean Drive—
in a swanky apartment—on the top floor of The Carlyle. That’s how we grew up—a couple of stoned Art Deco bon vivant boyz down by the beach.

All of Abel’s brains—were down between his legs. What else could a guy do—with 10” in the refrigerator and a faggot older brother who desperately craved his gobs of chocolate ice cream?

We drove a slinky Cadillac convertible—a baby blue ’59 road hog. It had big chrome tits in front and a pair of garish shark fins in back. I kept him to myself all the time dontchaknow—I didn’t share him with anybody else. Can you blame me?

Sometimes I murdered him fast—sometimes I murdered him slow. Sometimes I strangled him to death gently—other times I used a big violent vibrating dildo. Sometimes I dragged it out for a long time—other times it was fast, down and dirty.

It wasn’t pretty or sophisticated—doing the down-low. Teenage dinge-homicide never is very chic or sophisticated. I sprained my neck I don’t know how many times—doing my daemonic kid brother down there in The Carlyle in Miami Beach.

When Abel got to be sixteen years old tho—well, he’d had enough of my whitey miscegenal incest urges. He got tired of me & bored with it all. That’s when he signed up and joined the Navy—just to get away from me.

The Mark of Cain: Chapter 4

The Mark of Cain: Chapter 4
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“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
—Cain (Genesis 4:9-14)

Cain and his descendents dominate the first story of life outside of Eden, but Cain’s younger brother Abel makes decisive homoerotic appearances at the beginning and end of the story.

This “first Genesis blowjob” story is a tale of incestuous brotherly love ending up as a tale of queer jealousy, gay homicide mixed up with the inexorable cycles of male vengeance that get showcased there & then in the beginning dayz of Human Sin and Earthy Degeneration.

This rather early noir Murder Story is even more shocking than Eve’s forbidden transgression with the Devil it seems. A blowjob is a blowjob—but not all blowjobs are equal. These Genesis Brotherly blowjobs reveal notable comic traits & sadly tragic ones as well, especially during the fertile imaginative dayz of the Medieval Period.

Eve is such a bitch—cut off from access to the Tree of Life and aware of her threatened death in the future, Eve participates boldly in the creation of live, thus fulfilling her role as “mother of all living things” and perhaps even claiming special, god-like powers as a co-creator with Yahweh.

It’s a rather extravagant claim—registering defiance in the face of death and reveling in her function as Diva-Dominatrix mother-creator. Eve therefore continues the active, assertive, self-initiating role that marked her in the earlier narrative, assuming now the powerful prerogative of Creator and Namer.

Eve triumphantly names Cain (qayin)—proclaiming “I have created [qaniti] a man [equally together] with the Lord.” Abel (hebel, “breath, vapor”) is born next.

But the Cain-Abel story is not just a murder story—it’s a Medieval Mystery story as well—with comic twists and not just tragic aspects. As Richard Quinones shows in “The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature” (Princeton)—the “Mactatio Abel” of the Townley cycle is a vibrant comedy with the upstart comic audacity of Cain dramatically showcased.

Young Abel doesn’t do to well in the Bible tho—his name doesn’t bode well for him, since “vapor” is by nature evanescent and short-lived (see “hebel” in Ecclesiastes). Abel seems like the innocent, seemingly vapid kid brother anybody could have in their family. Paradoxically Abel is favored by Yahweh for some reason—while the younger brother is being seemingly drained dry by his envious, queer older brother Cain.

Sibling rivalry, fraternal incest and murderous plots certainly get a great deal of attention during those early Post-Eden days of fratricide and intimate conjoined love affairs amidst Adam & Eve’s busy East of Eden progeny.

God’s seemingly arbitrary preference for Abel’s offering instead of Cain’s begins a chain of jealousy and resentment—with Cain obviously wanting Abel all to himself. Why share his lovely handsome kid brother—with some queen bee deity like Yahweh—especially one that kicked them all out of the Garden of Eden? God as petty impetuous Sugar Daddy?

That’s a pretty good explanation for such unmotivated divine favoritism if you ask me, my dears—despite various vacuous surmises from history, sociology, psychology and theology. God as Chicken Queen is nothing new—many other ancient religions preferred it that way. There’s nothing mysterious or uncanny about such motives from a queer deity—then or now.

Yahweh’s preference for Abel engenders conflict within Cain—he’s forced to give Abel up or let his ravenous desire for the kid take over his life. Is this a parody of erotic desire—replaying the guilt and conflicts of homosexual romance with another relationship? Cain masters the conflict—by denying both Yahweh and himself the erotic pleasures of young cute Abel. Bummer.

Thus in a rather sardonic novelistic stroke, the Biblical narrator moves the problem from the mastery of homoerotic desire between brothers—to the internal problem of mastering the murderous desire to destroy somebody we love but can’t have.

The cognitive dissonance in the repetition of the language of desire and its mastery seems somewhat tragically/comically homoerotic I suppose. Whose more dizzy—Miss Yahweh or Miss Cain or Miss Abel?

This fascinating Cain-Abel twist of ambiguous eroticism between primal brothers switching into the internal psyche where contending raging forces find deadly expression in the First Homicide is indeed worthy of a thrillingly indecent pulp fiction novel.

Possession and mastery of Abel by Cain is at stake—the drama of East of Eden life and death becomes centered on the continued comings & goings of queer desire between lovers and begetting the world’s first primal forbidden male-love gay affair.

The Mark of Cain: A Novel

Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans
By Roland Laird, Taneshia Nash Laird, Elihu Bey, Charles Johnson

The Mark of Cain: A Novel
__________________

“I think the novel
is on the way out.”
—Norman Mailer
The National Book
Award Ceremony

I think the novel—is the way “in” not the way out—Satyagrapha has a way with words—and words
have a way of marking those who are finding the way back in—the way back in from the cold

I had the Mark bad—
The Mark of Cain was my curse
I fell for Abel

It wasn’t a tattoo on my forehead—or the color of my skin—it was INVISIBLE to everybody else—yet everybody knew I’d been had bad—it wasn’t just a little swish or limp wrist—it wasn’t the lisp of a fairy tale fag—or craining my neck back to get a good look at some goodlooking guy—although that was the real giveaway I suppose—to be stoned & turned into a pillar of salt—looking back like Lot’s wife at the Apocalypse—transfixed by the Sodom and Gomorrah grace and stunning male beauty that has no name—but is cursed as the Pearl of Great Price—invisible to most down there deep in the Oyster of Time—but knowingly known to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear—the Mardi Gras Mark of Cain in the ancient Vieux Carré—the French Quarter finesse of a guy in drag—the Creole caress of time gone by—the Delta Muse of my Long Goodbye

My East of Eden—
Forbidden Knowledge comes thru
Eve into (gay) me

I fell in love with my young kid brother Abel—that’s the Sin that str8ts don’t want to talk about—how could they when it’s the ultimate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell thing?—and if it’s truly the Love that dares not Utter its own Name—then how can Judeo-Christian creeps call it what it really is?—my love for Abel wasn’t just your simple run-of-the-mill Jealousy trip that’s for sure—Abel was the beloved Favorite Son, the handsome Love Child of Adam and Eve—Abel was the joy of their Diaspora Existence—blessed with an Angelic Dispostion reminescent of The Garden of Eve—he wasn’t a better farmer or fisherman or tiller of the ratty soil than me—he just a cute law-abiding, respectful and dutiful bashful young Baptist Boy—innocent as Adam and Even before the infamous Fall from Grace—and I simply couldn’t stand it—the way he gazed at me so naively adolescent, so virgin-looking with that muscular Venus torso of his—my beautiful young kid brother’s heavenly physique and & well-endowed butchy sensuous male Angelic body…

My brother Abel—
He died every night in my
East of Eden arms

The Mark of Cain was the look on my face—when I saw how hard it was for Cain to cum—to shoot his brains out & lose it completely—my kid brother Cain was only sixteen—but he left the Mark of Cain on my twisted face every day & night I could get him—I became incestuously consumed with Brotherly Desire and the unutterably shameless Love that Moans & Groans its Name—I became addicted to the Bad Seed running thru Abel’s throbbing, writhing veins—and I turned green with Penis Envy for the way the Serpent lured and skulked down there between Abel’s thick legs—we were both Bad Seed Offspring of the Garden of Eden—from Adam’s loins we were spawned and thrown into this Evil World—haunted by Paradise Lost and hurting bad for our Return to Home—but Abel was more like his father Adam—kinda dumb and cute but empty-headed—while I was more like Eve my mother—things that were repellant, forbidden & taboo appealed to me—like Abel’s long lanky Adamic male beauty—and the way his slinky 10” Serpent went Spaz when the kid lost it

Doing the down-low—
But don’t let Toni Morrison
Know it, girl

From his lewd Sula loins and smirky serpentine Lips—Abel lost it bad, really bad—possessed by the Hoodoo Voodoo Loas of the Past—coiling and uncoiling with the Beauty of the Beast—all the way back to Gilgamish & all that Reptilian white-trash—the Krypton Dynasty and the Asteroid Belt—the Sumerian DNA Snakes and Babylonian Retro-Engineering—long before guttered translations of Garden of Eden pulp fiction novels—Modern day Anglosphere hetero-humanity queered by the homo-godz—Ziggurats and cigarettes of the Akkadian Alien Overlords—all the way down to the Baseball Stadium Preaching Billy Graham rednecks and No Tell Motel Jimmy Swaggart Baptist white-trash—wallowing in the sumps and mudholes of some backcountry hurting rigid New Testament parable—all the way down to Atlanta itself—with Reverend Eddie Long doing his down-low holy roller routine with all those handsome troubled Afro-American youth—buying them clothes, jewelry, cars & taking them on jet-trips around the world—to say nothing of the football and basketball coaches of Penn State and Syracuse—oh Lordy, Lordy—the Mark of Cain be busy dontchaknow—it’s after all the good stuff out there

Miss Faulkner wasn’t—
Hoity-toity about it
Go Down Moses Inc

The novel was “postage stamp” apocryphal for Faulkner—the man and the artist inexticably one in the written word—the decadent Deep South a living Yoknapathawpha County thing—philoprogentively morphed into a cotton-patch history all around him—doing it like Colonel Sutpen with his Mississippi Delta slaves—going back in genelogical time and doing it apocryphally with his own Family Tree—as well as with Lucius Quintus Carrouthers McCaslin and the Mississippi myth he lived out of Rowan Oaks—but there was also an economic slant to this cotton-patch history—and that was the way both the Colonial North and the Antebellum South used African-Americans to do all the work and build America into what it is today—using indentured labor up North since Colonial times—then sealing the doors of freedom and creating the slave narrative novel down South—making sure there was no escape by enslaving young African labor with miscegenal inbreeding like LQC McCaslin—mixing the races so tightly that indentured bondage was complete & enescapable—making the miscegenal Southern Family Tree—as sacred and sacrosanct as The Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden—with Freedom as the Forbidden Fruit & slave labor as the ongoing Fall from Eden down into the cotton & cane fields—the Delta Aristocracy rewriting the Slave Narrative just like the Colonial Businessmen and Masters up North—like the down & dirty in-breeding of LQC McCaslin—the Moses of Yoknapathawpa County Mississippi—begetting Tomey’s Turl (Beauchamp) by his half-brother Thucydus’ slave’s wife—the slave girl who’s his daughter—waiting for the son of Thucydus to come of age—down he line to Isaac cursed by the Ledgers with the Mark of Cain—as well as the whole goddamned “postage stamp” apocryphal family & fictional history—told by the Novelist of Rowan Oaks

TITAN

Titan
—for Dylan Thomas
and Samuel Delany
__________________

“the elegant, long sentence
is a thing of beauty. A self-
contained entity worthy of
study all by itself. Consider
this sentence by Dylan Thomas
from Quite Early One Morning”
—Charles Johnson, “Telling It
Long and Telling It Short,”
E-Channel Sept 3, 2011
http://ethelbert-miller.blogspot.com/2011/09/telling-it-long-and-telling-it-short.html
___________________________________

“I was born on Titan at the end of the Great War —
an ugly, lovely moon (or so it was and is to me), beneath the crawling, sprawling, splendid curving rings of Saturn where truant boys and greedy old men from nowhere, beachcombing the rubble for gold and diamonds, idled and cruised the time away, the dock-bound spaceships streaming away into the wonders of the Ort Cloud, the magic of Neptune, the centuries-old millennial Pluto dazzlingly dark with its spectral buzz and the whining static of barking outcast dogs; the man-made castles and forts and harbors little outposts in the opening-up solar system, and on certain frequencies listening to the sadly weird echoes of strangers from the long-dead civilization of Alpha Centauri hanging about on the fringes of the known universe, as though it were wicked and wrong to roll in and out like that, ghostly-white waves full of interplanetary sadness."

Incognegro Boyfriend

Incognegro Boyfriend
__________________

“A mixed person who has
a mixed parent and a white
parent therefore the person
is very light-skinned (even
white-looking). They are
secretly black, that is they
don't look black but they are.”
—The Urban Dictionary

Lamar and Meshawn were a pair of really cute brothers—even though they had different fathers. I’d bump into them on the 107 bus that used to go downtown—stopping at the welfare housing shacks on Othello Street in Seattle across from the Safeway.

They’d put in the light-rail system and tore down all the WWII housing that they used to stuff all the poor black folks in—gentrifying what was once a ghetto into a more upper class whitey layout of apartments and welfare homes.

Lamar was jet-black but Meshawn had a lighter complexion and could pass. Meshawn was a lighter shade of beige, tan, honey and fudge. He gloried in his coffee, pecan, almond, taupe, cinnamon, milk chocolate & mocha brown hues.

His brother Lamar would dish Meshawn on the bus, saying Meshawn was going downtown “incognegro.” Concealing his identity as an African-American and being sneaky about it. There were advantages for passing as white that Lamar couldn’t enjoy.

This supposed disguising of one’s Negritude amongst all the various & sundry whiteys like me on the bus going downtown—was a game Meshawn and Lamar played with each other & everybody else on the bus. It had a kinda gansta twist to it too—when it came to dealing drugs. People trusted white guyz dealing—a lot more than they did with blacks. Meshawn would be the front man.

I had the hots for both of them—whether vanilla or chocolate. They tolerated me & sometimes we got down. Not everybody wants to be recognized dontchaknow—I can dig that for sure. Passing as str8t with me—was like doing the incognegro thing with them. We were all trying to maintain a low profile for obvious reasons in Seattle then.

Yeah, I was there—but nobody saw me being a fag ‘cause I was incognegro. The same with Lamar and Meshawn. With Lamar it was like being so dark that he’d blend into the dark shadows and streets and alleys when they were dealing and having an advantage over the cops and prey.

Meshawn being albino was sure as shit right there standing out like a sore thumb in an dark alley—while Lamar being black could come out of nowhere incognegro if he had to. Nobody would touch Meshawn. If they did, death ensued shortly after.

Anyway Meshawn was so light skinned it was really crazy. If he permed his hair he’d surely be truly incognegro. In fact, he’d be like Ellison’s Invisible Man—nobody would even know he was even there. He’d just kinda blend into Whiteyville.

When I went to bed with Lamar and turned the lights off, he just seemed to like disappear, you know what I mean? “Holy crow, where did you go, Lamar?” Whenever the lights went out, Lamar would go incognegro. I had to feel my way—to feel him up.

But when I went to bed with Meshawn, it was completely different. I didn’t want to turn off the lights, I wanted to just look at him he was so beautiful. He could do the incognegro fine if he wanted to with the whiteys—and without even trying he could look more like a dirty whiteboy than me.

But Meshawn couldn’t do one thing—when it came to doing the incognegro. He couldn’t do it nude—not in the showers after gym or at the YMCA or making love with a white girl in bed with the lights on.

‘Cause even though Meshawn could pass as just another a white boy—there was a fly in the ointment. A big black thick horsefly buzzing around. Meshawn could do the incognegro okay—but he had this big black Mandingo dick that revealed the 12” gawdawful truth.

Meshawn’s dick was midnight black—blacker than even his brother Lamar’s ebony Congolese cock. It was like a big thick black veiny piece of Halloween uncut licorice candy—with a nice big bulging pink head when I slid back his pouty foreskin.

There was nothing incognegro about it—Meshawn’s slithery Zimbabwe thang. It was his Negro Family Tree—revealing his true African genealogy. In fact, it was just like that Harlem classic novel by Wallace Thurman—“The Blacker the Berry.”

Oh, Lordy, Lordy—it was so exquisitely true. It was like that old Negro folk saying—from outta the Deep South. “The darker the berry—the sweeter the juice!!!”

Mingo

Carl Van Vechten
Library of Congress

Mingo
__________________

“Away in the octopoid darkness”
—Charles Johnson,
“The Education of Mingo”
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

I met Mingo in Missouri—that’s where Moses Green took the kid after he offed Harriet Bridgewater.

“Suh?” the lanky African kid said. “Talky old hen daid now, boss.”

The same with Isaiah Jensen—a meat cleaver exactly splitting his ugly face down the middle.

They made it to Missouri—that’s where Moses kicked the bucket. And that’s how I ended up meeting Mingo the Man—Mingo my Boyfriend.

Mingo was a prince—the youngest son of the reigning king of the Allmuseri. He was a wild, marshy-looking sixteen year old—with shoulders as broad as a barn door.

Mingo had big thick hands that hug down from his wrists like Gold’s Gym barbells. He had high cheekbones and spoke with a deep voice like a hoodoo voodoo man. Even though he was just a boy.

He didn’t know what to do with Moses gone—so he did what most Allmuseri wizards would do. He laid a curse on me and made me fall in love with him.

My education by Mingo was short and quick. It involved the denouement of my dirty white boy existence—and the coherent, constant, simple union and the embracing of another life alien, voodooist, strange.

Slowly Mingo conjured me, then he taught me his language. It was telepathic and silent—I picked it up right away. I soaked it up like a sponge. His gestures and idiosyncrasies and long lanky body language.

Mingo had this “milky leg” that needed to be milked now & then. Even though Mingo was strong as an ox—he got weak in the knees like a baby when I milked the black bull. He had this reedy twang and grimace when we made love—he made me swallow it, his cumly African hetero-homunculus.

Before very long, I began turning into Mingo’s double—his distorted shadow, his spitting image. Mingo knew things—he was shrewd and gnomic when it came to turning me into a Zombie Boy. He made me swallow it when I should have breathed—and breathe when I should have swallowed it. It’s lucky I didn’t choke to death—all that exquisite Negritude Nectar.

Mingo was manly—a stream of sticky pearly fluid like the glutinous trail of a snail oozing outta him. I could see myself imprisoned in the retina of his eye—when I did him on my knees on the floor in the moonlight. He got weak in the knees when he lost it—splitting me in half with his Mandingo meat-cleaver.

Mingo shot me “daid” between the eyes—turned me into a holly-roller Abolitionist hot for his body.

“Oh Lordy, Lordy!” I said, doing a little dance, half rock & roll. I clapped my hands and slapped my ass and thighs. I went completely bananas over Mingo—I was totally in love with him.

“Listen up, white boy,” Mingo said. “I gave you my thought and tongue—and look what you’ve done with it! You’ve become a fuckin Dinge Queen!”

“Oh gawd, Mingo,” I said. “What are you gonna do?”

“What Mingo knows, you know now.” he said. “What Mingo sees or doesn’t see is what I taught yo to see or don’t see. Like Mingo now lives through you…”

I didn’t believe it at first. But I could latch onto the notion with no trouble at all, pouring sweat and remembering all the wetdreams and nocturnal emissions I had in bed with Mingo at night.

It was true—Mingo and I were wired together like two ventriloquist dummies—one black, one white. And somebody or something I didn’t know—was yanking my arms and legs with strings. I’d become Mingo and Mingo had become me!!!

I was hip to this crazy dream—doorwaying luxuriously through both Mingo and me. “Whose fault is it then?” Mingo said picking his nose and pointing down between my legs.

“Huh? Huh? Huh?”

I looked down between my legs—and there was Mingo’s big Mandingo dick. It throbbed and grew with monstrous all-male Allmuseri magic & wonder.

“You’re me now,” Mingo said. “And I’m you.”

It’s a God-awful secret—please don’t tell anybody.

But I can feel the deep, powerful stroke of Mingo’s dark meat between my legs—and I’ve ended up limping like a gimp with this cross-eyed grin on my face all the time…

Gay Slave Narrative

Hayward L. Oubre

Gay Slave Narrative
__________________

“It sometimes happens”
—Charles Johnson,
Oxherding Tale

It was a crazy queer slave narrative dream — I woke up with Milk and Moscone digging their fingers into the back of my straining shoulders — feeling the fingernails and pulse-throbs of them and all the other dead fags in America in my bloodstream — men murdered with guns — killed trashed tramped to death — starved stoned to death — thrown off cliffs drowned clubbed impaled — faggots burnt at the stake — gassed in concentration camps — flames faggots torture — I wasn’t just seeing this like a stupid daydream — I was waking up from living it and unliving it — then flashbacking it back to myself, talking to myself, writing it down — not wanting to do it — not wanting to play it again Sam like some crummy rerun of Casablanca — a part of me knowing it was just dream — a skanky slave narrative for fags, queens, hustlers, sugar daddies — another part of me knowing it was as real as “Mandingo” or “Blacula Screams” or “My Baby Is Black” or any of the other lurid ‘60s Blaxploitation movies — except it was my own fucking fagploitation flick this time with me caught up inside it — my own personal gay nightmare slave narrative — the one I always end up in never waking up from — young black male miscegenation with my own mulatto kid brother — my own gay palimpsest slave narrative — infatuated incestuously with my mother’s love child from her second marriage — mommy dearest living with a young handsome black Chicago nightclub saxophonist — his exquisite cumly offspring ending up being my sullen, moody half-brother — his albino skin & cocoa-crème dick — this Peculiar Institution known as Dinge Queen USA — this rather boring victim Narratology of mine with its whitey so-so DADT storyline, its dated DOMA denouement, its burlesque kitschy cabaret act of doom — no longer just Sontag’s Notes on Camp but rather a list of Gay Gulag Archipelago obituaries — the Gay Plague Palimpsest that wipes out a whole generation of gay writers, artists & poets — the slayer of Milk, Moscone & so many other SF activists — the slayer of white, black, chicano, indian, asian gay souls — the Purveyor of the Death Purse — the Lipstick of Death — the Eye-Shadow of Murder — the Mascara of Suicide — the Make-Up Mirror of Reagan — the Hearse that’s come to stay — my own Private Idaho of Paranoia