My Government Means to Kill Me

by Rasheed Newson

My hetty inquisitors would grin at me and nod. One time, a station manager brought in a couple of other employees to sit in on the interview. I quickly realized that they considered me a flamboyant spectacle. My mannerisms were their amusement. I wish I’d had the courage to curse them out, but I did have enough self-respect to stop talking mid-sentence, stand up, and leave. I heard them laughing as I headed for the exit. I’d assumed that people whose work revolved around music would be more liberal minded.

Zee was shrewder than I’d realized at the time. She sent me for pickups and deliveries in Harlem, but never to Skadden or Cravath or other leading law firms in Midtown, or to Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers or their ilk on Wall Street. She handed me assignments that took me to Bedford-Stuyvesant. She drew me a map that led to Jamaica, Queens. Zee grinned when I returned from a ride. I thought she was happy to see that I was safe. Chances are she was just pleased that I’d completed my assignments. Within a month of hiring me, Zee brought on five more young Black men to join the fleet. I was the test case that proved to her that Black messengers could go into Black neighborhoods without getting jumped and robbed.

Whereas Bill was contemptable, Marvin was just pathetic. A closet case too bound and gagged by fear to do much of anything. He didn’t have the guts to make a move, but he was desperate for some kind of connection with me. He wanted me to like him. Doing me a favor might make me grateful. Why not play along and get a benefit for my troubles?

The theory goes that governmental agencies don’t accidently make accessing information or resources difficult. They do this shit on purpose. The forms are confusing, and the record keeping is ass-backward because it reflects a policy choice. A decision has been made to repel the average citizen from gaining certain knowledge or opportunities. When most people encounter the seemingly arbitrary and capricious workings of, for instance, the IRS or the DMV, they accept it because they’ve been trained to assume that the government is run by half-wits. They yell at the lowly staffer in front of them, then sulk away and comply with the absurd rules or give up. Yet what the vast majority of citizens see as mistakes are the result of calculated design. Some high-level political functionary stipulated that the form must be completed in triplicate. A few billionaire donors drafted the fine print that disqualifies the neediest from touching the bounty. These are very smart motherfuckers. To think otherwise plays into their hands.

My landlord’s identity was a secret because he belonged to a powerful constituency of wealthy building owners and real estate developers. None of them wanted tenants hounding them to provide safe living conditions. So they shielded their names by using shell companies like Russian nesting dolls.

Turned out, I had some talent for the task at hand. Apparently, I’d learned more than I’d thought from my mother and father, who earned their salaries by finding the right arguments and angles to persuade voters and politicians into supporting their candidates and causes. I remembered how Fiona liked to tee up the end of stump speeches that she wrote by posing a question that was sure to spark righteous indignation in the listeners. So near the conclusion of my hallway pitches, I’d ask, “Are we going to keep letting Trump screw us?” My mother would then have her candidate reiterate what he wanted from the listeners. “Then you’ve gotta join our rent strike,” I’d say, and that’s where my father’s influence came into play. Once I went silent, I kept my mouth shut. The person might waver and talk through their concerns aloud, but I didn’t interfere. I let them talk their way to yes, just as I had seen my father do during cocktail parties at our house.

That was the first hint of attraction I felt toward Harrison, but it lasted only a moment. To my eyes, he lacked edge, and I thrived off men who could be wild cards. What would be the fun in fooling around with a guy who woke up every morning three minutes before the alarm clock rang, who remembered to floss after every meal, who never failed to walk the dog and pay the electric bill, who drank enough water and ate enough fiber to stay regular, who said please and thank you, who behaved like the voice in his head was calm and rational?

Not me!

“Are you lost?” asked the squat man behind the counter. His British accent wasn’t nearly as posh as I expected, and his mouth twitched as his bravado wavered. Of course, I’d seen this paper-tiger posture in shop owners, clerks, and bartenders before. He was afraid a robbery would soon be in progress, and if he had a gun tucked under the counter, he wasn’t sure he had the nerve to use it.

The door closed behind him, and I can’t say I felt sorry for the old man, but I did see a vulnerability in him that I would have assumed couldn’t exist. Robber barons, political overlords, and other powerful devils can reign with impunity for decades, and the terror they inflict on those of us beneath them can feel eternal. Yet there is one stone that will slay them all: time. Devils grow old, and the world around them eventually exceeds their understanding and control. Never forget that. Never let them forget it.

He’s the one who realized Fred Trump planned to allow enough units to fall behind on rent to justify a mass eviction, opening the door to a renovation and a massive rent hike that only new, wealthy—and let’s face it—white tenants could afford.

Sure, Angie could be a gigantic pain in the ass, but there were plenty of men in the Gay Rights Movement who pounded tables, screamed in faces, and crushed the souls of their allies at planning meetings. Angie paid a harsher penalty because she was a woman, and not just a woman but a forty-eight-year-old butch lesbian who didn’t wear makeup and rarely styled her frizzy, graying brown hair. Not the ideal spokesperson for a movement controlled far too much by white male assimilation queers who wished to convince the public that homosexuals were a meek telegenic people desperate to live discreet little lives.

A childhood spent attending church services, and the first time I ever felt the Word touch me was during a sermon from Dorothy Cotton delivered in Larry Kramer’s bedroom. It was like I’d finally reached a long-sought destination and tasted the purest water. The answer to a gnawing, central question was made manifest. Why had I always felt persecuted by authority figures? Why did the promises of America the beautiful, America the land of liberty, and America the shining city upon a hill ring false to me? Why didn’t I trust cops? Why did I have no faith in the justice system? It was obvious now. Until Dorothy removed the scales from my eyes, I’d had one hundred ways of asking one thing: Why did I feel hunted in my homeland? Because my government means to kill me. Amen! Amen and glory hallelujah! At last, I could explain the force shaping my existence.

“Damn us all then, is it?” he yelled. “Jimmy, Martin, me, our entire generation isn’t up to snuff because we didn’t burn the country to the ground! No, sir, all we ever achieved was securing rights you take for granted!” The thunder in his voice left me speechless. Rustin took a long beat to consider his next words carefully. “It is difficult for the young to understand the strictures of the past. You want your elders to have fought every slight and grievous offense that came our way. But remember, at all times—even yours, even now—there are unjust laws and customs we abide. If you don’t believe me, tell people you’re gay and try to get a job as a schoolteacher. Take the man you love to city hall and try to marry him.

The drawbacks of an army without a hierarchy came into sharp focus. People couldn’t be ordered to do anything; they had to be persuaded.

It was heartbreaking to witness how grief, denial, and a blinding faith in the appeal of social status had warped my mother’s judgment. She somehow clung to the hope that I’d drop the topic at hand in exchange for a spot at a prestigious university, in addition to the other perks she and my father would undoubtedly lavish on me: a new wardrobe; a generous spending allowance; a coveted internship at one of the Smithsonian Museums. Poor Lady Fiona. She’d arrived in New York City too late. If only she’d knocked on my door with her temptations after my bike accident resulted in a broken collarbone and a fractured left arm, or after I’d gotten attacked at Mt. Morris, or even when Gregory and I first faced eviction from Fred Trump’s ghetto tower, I very well might have packed my bag and gone with her. But I was someone else now. I was a brazen, unapologetic, cutthroat New Yorker.