Words by Seizures R. Fake
I like to do my thinking at fast-food joints along 14th Street. There’s something about people waiting in line in the middle of total chaos that appeals to my well-honed false sense of entitlement. I like pushing through the crowds and being handed bootleg CDs that I have no intention of buying. I get a mental erection when confronted with the sheer number of people crushed together along the sidewalks outside my air-conditioned calorie palace, each nimbly skirting a horrendous end if they step into a bus lane while dodging all the vendors and spenders.
Some people get pissed off when they wait in line, but I don’t. I enjoy the tedium, reading the menu over and over again so that, when I get to the counter, I know I will get exactly what I came for. It’s going to be hot, delicious, and satisfying—exactly what I want. How many situations do you walk into during the course of your lifetime with such certainty? Not many.
I’m always overly polite to the woman behind the counter. Not to be shitty, mind you, but to give her at least one hungry asshole who doesn’t treat her like a chambermaid during her 10-hour shift. I remember the half-hour lunch breaks, and—Chris Rock is right—they’re the fucking worst. But, more importantly, this is the person who is going to give me what I have been craving.
After finishing off a Wendy’s classic “Colon-Pulverizer” deluxe combo, I find that I slip into a deep state of quiet contemplation, overcome with self-loathing as 18 pounds of ground beef slowly drag down toward my shattered intestinal track. Buddhist monks will never have it this good. After a public nap and a tearful trip to the toilet, I turn my attention to my fellow patrons.
Sometimes, my eye is drawn to a tall white guy wearing a Brooks Brothers suit, laughing at Jessica Simpson’s plea to bring smiles to children born with harelips. Or to a little boy making up a new game involving chairs while his tired, beat-down mother feeds his cooing sister.
When this gets dull, I step outside and, instantly, my attention is drawn to the tables featuring new black authors. While searching the stacks for the second coming of Langston Hughes, I sometimes find a literary gem—the greatest of my finds being Homo Thug: II, by Asante Kahari.
Finding it was like walking into a second home. A flood of images cascaded through my head: men being held down against their will in the half-lit hallways of Marcey. Knife-packing hooker trannies in the Meatpacking District beating down Japanese bikers behind Hogs and Heifers. Secret handshakes and codes whispered on the way to the men’s room of Filene’s Basement during its Spring Sale.
These are things I know nothing about. This book could have everything I ever wanted in a cross-town bus read. I could have it out at parties and tell the curious that I’m designing a summer reading curriculum for children from grades three through 12. It could be planted in the bathrooms of both friends and family. Every person could get a copy from me on their birthday.
And the questions: Is one born a homo thug, or is one MADE a homo thug? Do you have to get “jumped” in? Is the act of anal coitus always violent, or is there room for discussion? How would a sexual politics professor explain the phenomenon to a crowd of eager feminist studies LUGs wasting their parents’ money at Vassar?
But all jokes aside, and I’m being totally serious here, where can I find a pair of homo thugs?
As couples go, I imagine it must be a complicated relationship; all kinds of arguments and disagreements must come up over their twin priorities of gay sex and crime. It’s probably pretty confusing at times. Fights over whether they should go out and rob a Chinese guy walking home with his weekly pay or stay home to blow each other while watching Netflix? Whose turn it is to walk the dog before feeding him gasoline and tossing him into an illegal death match up in the Bronx? If I were a homo thug, I’d own a pitbull/shih-tzu mix and name him “Nigga, Please.”
Imagine if one of them was fucking a chick on the low and then got her pregnant. His homeboy catches him knocking it out proper all over his 1,000-thread-count sheets from Kohl’s. Instead of fagging out and crying over a bottle of Shiraz, he’d probably be really diabolical about that shit. He’d set that closet-case hetero up by sticking a ball of heroin in his overnight bag before he catches a flight from JFK for courtside seats to a Clippers game. Then he’d run around telling everybody in the neighborhood that the chick he was fucking was handing out HIV like candy to all the boys who like girls. That would be fucked up.
I’m glad I’m not a homo thug. Not only does it seem dangerous, but it also comes off as a total fucking headache to the uninitiated.
Suffice it to say I didn’t buy the book. As a rule of thumb, I find that sequels always suck and, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell what it was about from the back cover. Amazon hates it. The stream of bad reviews must feel like a hot, sticky arc of homeless-guy piss landing directly on your head from two floors up.
Chin up, Asante. I know what you were trying to say.