BROWN SUGAR

BROWN SUGAR—

WPA THIRTIES MURALS

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Shuddering I gazed up at the mural. The Louisiana Delta sky was blue—the half-naked cane-workers were golden-brown. They were shirtless—I could smell their sweat, their sweet armpit odors, their sharp machetes slicing the cane. All of it captured up there on the wall by the WPA murals—there in the Allen Hall hallway as I stood there. Gazing up—weak knees bending, feeling my hardon taking over my every thought & feeling. Standing there by the windows—overlooking the lovely Quad, the calm Library, the quiet campus afternoon—the humid long lazy afternoon of my shameless, black noir shame. ____________________________________________

I thought about Tyrone back in my apartment—there in that shabby Tiger Town ghetto, favored by queens, drop-outs, stoners, dealers, the rejects of the prim & proper children of the Delta Bourbon bourgeoisie. I could still taste him—the awful, skanky, nauseating Negro wad that I craved—thick as snot, runny as a pair of flat wide quivering erect nostrils could be, tangy & repugnant young manhood—a trembling Tablespoon of it—letting it slowly ooze down my throat—even as I stood now in the moody, sullen hallway of the temple—the English Dept with its secret crypt of Southern Decadence that I’d discovered there… __________________________________________

The secret of the whole skanky Bon the Beautiful mystery—the miscegenational metamorphoses of Going Down On Moses—getting off Percival Brownlee—reliving the lie of Absalom, Absalom—cute Quentin Compson getting fucked by Shreve McCannon in the Harvard dorm—Henry Sutpen falling in love with his dinge half-brother—Charles Bon Sutpen—the true heir to Sutpen’s Hundred there in Mississippi—going down Dalton Ames on the bridge—getting what Caddy got—the young stud shooting his brains out—blowing the back of my head off—the spaz Benjy beating off by the golf range—the whole goddamn decadent genealogy running thru me—from Old Carothers McCaslin, his love for Thucydus, fucking his daughter, down thru the ledgers—down to the queer brothers Buck & Buddy—and into the guilty closet-case fear & regret of Ike McCaslin, tracking down & finding the kept boy Percival Brownlee in a New Orleans bordello… ____________________________________________

It was a cumly flashback— ____________________________________________

Earlier that morning, I interrupted myself—playing with an old wrinkled Africa map, letting my lowered eyes move past the potted palm to Tyrone’s muscular nude body on the bed. He’d smeared himself with K-Y—all over his hard bronze belly—smearing it with adolescent ache & Zambezi shameless desire… __________________________________________

Tyrone ran his fingers down his belly to his groin—his tiny triangle of pouty kinky pubes—his sullen face looking over at me, a look of disgust on his young distended face. How could I waste time perusing an old crummy outdated map of Africa—when young black Africa was right here in the throbbin now—just waiting for my dirtywhiteboy lips to do what they did so well—shame-faced & blushing with dinge-love—doing the down-low on the Congo… _____________________________________________

I put the map down—suddenly I was erect too. It always happened this way. My mind went fleeing elsewhere—I became possessed, possessed as surely as I was sucked into Hoodoo VooDoo Jungle Lust. The kind of primitive dinge Zombie dicklust—that the Deep South knew only too well—antebellum miscegenation—plantation inbred incest—the love that had no name. Only shame & drums pounding in my head—as Tyrone let me have it—arms behind his neck—his puce kimono flung open—his licorice monster of the black lagoon—the swollen uncut pink head—trick or treat halloween hoodoo—voodoo badboy taking me for a ride—a long ride down river road—down by the levee—old man river oozing thru my veins—dark mississippi river flowing by—getting off tyrone in my mother’s cadillac—all over my face & the windshield—all ten squirts of him… ___________________________________________

Tyrone smirking at me in the apartment—he knows me all too well—it was his thick Negro lips & his big wide flat nostrils—and all his manly Mandingo cum I craved—no matter how much I tried to fight it—I was already as jaded & tainted as I could possible get—worse than any dinge queen on campus—all the other gay denizens of fruity Tiger Town—they all knew my desperate dinge-penis predilection—consumed as I was by Tyrone’s overly-endowed veiny Negritude. _________________________________________

Tyrone was hot—all 12-inches of him—he was tall, long, handsome & lanky—like some cute handsome 18-year-old Darby Jones from Jacques Tourneau’s Haiti horror movie—“I Walked with a Zombie” (1943) to be precise—nude in the moonlight—standing erect in the cane field at night—guarding the crossroads to the Voodoo ceremony—me going down on him, the test of my faggy voodoo worship, sucking the stud off, taking my time at it, milking his cruel undead back-from-the-dead otherworldly Zombie dick, Darby’s thick wad oozing like saltwater taffy outta him—down to the last spaz black dick-wiggle & whimpering otherworldly squirt…

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Tyrone knew it—I knew it—my gay friends & fag hags knew it—his mother knew it—his younger brother knew it—the whole island of Haiti knew it—all that African jizzhood already flowing thru my veins & arteries knew it—everybody on campus knew it—including the closeted English Dept—the Delta dinge journalists—and even the ghost of Miss Faulkner—sitting up late at night there in Mississippi—at his desk sipping whiskey in his study there in his Rowan Oaks mansion—the vast African Id of Black Moses arching up outta Yoknapatawpha County—all the way across the Delta—over to the Mississippi levee—south of Baton Rouge—where I lived in the ancient Dark Oaks Plantation—with my young crew of naked black cane-cutters—working the field south of the Stadium along River Road—that’s where I found naked Tyrone—beating off one afternoon in the dense cane—too helpless to kill me with his razor-sharp machete—as I got my lips on gushing, rushing spluge shot—of his young manhood—giving him $100 to save my life—taking him home to my rundown plantation—lowering mosquito net down behind us—doing what Yolande didn’t wanna do—pulling that thick rope of dinge babypaste outta him all night long—tasting his young African male genealogy—all the way back from his arching groin—with my finger up his asshole—all the way back to Port-au-Prince—then back to Zimbabwe ancient goldmines & ruins—where the Tower of Babel had been traced by philologists—back to the beginnings of some weird Afro-Futurism science-fiction past—and letting it ooze thru me into the Now—holding Tyrone tight as he shot his brains out… _______________________________________________

I kept coming back to the map though—it was a star map now—pouring over it closely—I dunno why really—I’d never set foot on African soil—I’d only gazed thru dark sunglasses at the Kilimanjaro sky in the movies—Miss Hemingway dying on the veldt—as the buzzards circle overhead—then roosting in the trees waiting for the stupid white hunter to fuckin’ die—pushy, muy macho womanizer prick—trying always to prove his manhood—like all of Hemingway’s crummy butchy sickening mock-heroes—or maybe I was just being forced to say goodbye to all that bullshit—the same old hetero tension of whiteboy youth struggling for American manhood—and what if I weren’t a man?—there wasn’t a thing I could do about it—except do what I was doing already—falling in love with young Africa manhood instead—getting to know Tyrone’s sullen moody manhood my way—instead of the usual insanely grotesque Hemingway style—hunting it, killing it, hanging it, lynching it, stuffing it, putting the Head up on the wall…