The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

Donuts patrons decried low-interest checking and the nerve of the goddamn cable company to charge late fees for not promptly paying ahead of time in July for services not rendered until August. One woman, her jowls filled to near bursting with macaroons, asked my father, “How much the Chinos make?” “Well, Asian men earn more than any other demographic.” “Even the faggots?” shouted the assistant manager. “You sure Asians make more than the faggots? ’Cause I hear faggots be making cash hand over fist.”

Hominy and I found ourselves stuck on the 110 freeway, impatiently weaving from lane to lane. We were making good progress until we hit the stretch between the 405 and 105 interchanges and traffic began to slow.

At 4,084 square miles, much of Los Angeles County, like the ocean floor, remains in large part unexplored.

Most times when someone presents before the Dum Dums you’re required to use EmpowerPoint, a slide presentation “African-American software” package developed by Foy Cheshire.

As a historical erasure it was quite an effective tactic, because no one knows anything definitive about Hitler other than he was the quintessential asshole, humorless, and a frustrated artist, though you could say that about almost anyone.

The attendant slammed a knight onto a square. “You ain’t fooling nobody with that Sicilian gambit chicanery. Your diagonals is vulnerable as shit.”

I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.

“Come on, he cares about black people like a seven-footer cares about basketball. He has to care because what else would he be good at.”

Foy gave me the same sorrowful look the missionaries must’ve given the jungle heathen. A look that said, It doesn’t matter if you’re too stupid to understand God’s love. He loves you regardless, just hand over the women, the distance runners, and the natural resources.

Since the riots, Dickens, a once-united neighborhood, had balkanized into countless smaller hoods, and now, like Yugoslavia in reverse, King Cuz and Panache, the erstwhile Tito and Slobodan Milošević of the city, were celebrating the reunification by tromping across the makeshift stage in their Oakley sunglasses, their Doris Day perm curls bouncing off their broad shoulders as they rapped fiendishly to the beat.

Like Nazis at a Ku Klux Klan rally, they were comfortable ideologically, but not in terms of corporate culture.

There’s nothing funny about nervous laughter. The forced way it slogs through a room with the stop-and-start undulations of bad jazz brunch jazz. The black folks and the round table of Latinas out for a night on the town knew when to stop laughing. The couple didn’t. The rest of us silently sipped our canned beer and sodas, determined to stay out of the fray. They were laughing solo because this had to be part of the show, right?