Soul on Rice...

Quite often people leave a legacy that reads like a byline; “Chad Bilyeu was a cosmopolitan epicure best known for his revolutionary contributions to education and his well-documented affairs with Scarlett Johannson and America Ferrera.” Such is life. I’m gearing up for Los Angeles, so I have to be in the byline frame of thought. In this age of extreme information dissemination often people don’t want to read a book or a magazine article or a Wikipedia entry; a sentence will do. Usually this sentence never does justice though. We are all complex characters; I like to think of individuals as their own entity. Everyone is amazing. Trust me. You can always learn something from any person; it’s just that most people don’t care to sit through the whole biopic. Some people get shafted and history ends up fucking them over. Booker T. Washington is viewed by many to have been an Uncle Tom. I think this to be an uneducated, unfair assessment of the man and his lifework. But, alas, Booker ain’t the man of the day. I prefer to revisit the life of a very extraordinary individual. He is well-known, but has left a very ambiguous legacy. His Wikipedia byline reads: “Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an author and a prominent American civil rights leader who began as a dominant member of the Black Panther Party.” Yeah, I guess that’s true, but people are missing out on a lot if that’s all they know about the man. Maybe I can help to clarify his legacy…

Born in Arkansas and ending up in Los Angeles as a teenager, Cleaver was well acquainted with the law. He got caught, like most teenagers do, with some weed, and spent years of his youth in juvenile hall. By the time he got incarcerated as an adult, first for possession of weed and then for assault with intent to murder, he was no stranger to imprisonment. While in prison Cleaver became involved with the Nation of Islam and found that writing served as his method of maintaining dignity and sanity. He is best known for his first book, Soul on Ice, which served as a compilation of his prison writings. The book was critically acclaimed across racial divisions and Cleaver soon found himself quite the celebrity. He was paroled in 1966 and became editor of Ramparts Magazine, the same institution that noticed his writing while he was in jail and got him his book deal. A self-admitted rapist, Cleaver admits at a certain point of his life he felt that the rape of white women was “an insurrectionary act” He also admits that he practiced rape by raping Black women in the Black community. Cleaver puts all of his shortcomings, faults and societal disadvantages on paper for the world to see. “I’m perfectly aware that I’m in prison, that I’m a Negro, that I’ve been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation. I never know what significance I’m supposed to attach to these factors.” By the book’s end stands a man that has transcended his past crimes and prejudice; a paradigm of self-medication without any self-prescribed reefer or doctor-prescribed Ritalin. So it seems… After his release, he joined the Ramparts staff and shortly thereafter met Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers. Cleaver was attracted to the militant nature of the group. He met the Black Panthers in 1966 when they were commissioned to provide protection for Betty Shabazz at a second anniversary memorial for the assassination of Malcolm X. Cleaver described the event as such in an essay entitled “The Courage to Kill: Meeting the Panthers."

Suddenly the room fell silent. The crackling undercurrent that for weeks had made it impossible to get one’s point across when one had the floor was gone; there was only the sound of the lock clicking as the front door opened, and then the soft shuffle of feet moving quietly toward the circle… I spun round in my seat and saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: four black men wearing black berets, powder blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, shiny black shoes-and each with a gun! In front was Huey P. Newton with a riot pump shot gun in his right hand, barrel pointed down to the floor. Beside him was Bobby Seale, the handle of a .45 caliber automatic showing from its holster on his right hip, just below the hem of his jacket. A few steps behind Seale was Bobby Hutton, the barrel of his shotgun at his feet. Next to him was Sherwin Forte, an M1 carbine with a banana clip cradles in his arms.

After their public split, Huey P. Newton said that Cleaver was “obsessed with the gun” and “looking for a father figure.” Possibly. The Black Panther Party made the gun look sexy. For a convict looking for a father-figure, a model to base his Black manhood upon, the Panthers were like some kick-ass angels of death. America had never been presented with a revolutionary force before or since as galvanizing. Mao said that power comes from the barrel of a gun, but Newton and the Panthers took this to mean that the gun was the equalizer against the oppressor. It granted them tantamount footing with which they could begin their revolutionary agenda. Like all Blacks before him, Cleaver was only privy to the non-violent methods that characterized most civil rights protests before 1966. Cleaver can be blamed as the impetus for the fixation concerning violence that many Black Panthers developed.

Shortly thereafter, Huey gets charged with a bullshit murder rap by the fascist pigs of Oakland. During his time in prison awaiting trial, Cleaver becomes the figurehead of the Black Panther Party. Cleaver was a master wordsmith and firebrand. He shocked his audience with fiery, precise rhetoric that galvanized the American masses. His words moved people young and old, black and white alike that had grew tired of America and their racist, sexist bullshit. He was the creator of the phrase, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” The iconic picture of Newton in the bamboo wicker chair holding the spear in one hand and the rifle in the other was Cleaver’s idea. That image is indelibly imprinted in the minds of the people as THE picture of Huey P. Newton, and arguably it was this picture that created a legend larger than Huey himself. He spoke of the Minister of Defense in language of apotheosis. “Yes, Huey is our Jesus, but want him down from the cross.” He considered him to be “the dynamo, the source, the prime mover.” His respect for Huey was genuine and honest. These two had a public disagreement that resulted in the fragmentation of an organization that America desperately needed. As is often the case between Black American intellectuals, there exists a irreconcilable rift between conflicting philosophies that is never mollified through compromise, but rather aggravated by hubris and the unwillingness of leaders to communicate. Basically, the same situation that exists in the dichotomous American government.

These insidious crackers that ran the FBI came up with this group in 1956 called the Counter Intelligence Program, or Cointelpro for short. Their mission was to disrupt and destroy any groups that threatened the white-anglo power structure of America. Any groups with ideologies dissident to that of those sexist, racist cocksuckers became a target. Groups they profiled and infiltarted included the Communist Party of the United States of America, the Socialist Workers Party, the Nation of Islam, Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American Indian Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Weather Underground, and for reasons of affirmative action, the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. One of Cointelpro’s prime objectives was to stop the rise of a “Black messiah” who could unify Black Americans under one common cause. J. Edgar Hoover had a hard-on when it came to the destruction of Newton and the Panthers. In September of 1968, when Black Power became known to the general public after Tommie Smith and John Carlos threw up the fist after respectively winning first and third places in the 200 meter race in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Hoover called the Black Panther Party "The greatest threat to the internal security of the country." After 1969, the Party became the primary focus of Cointelpro’s operations. Cointelpro used various methods of subterfuge to disrupt the Black Panther Party from within. Spies were embedded into the group, they did their best to keep prominent members tied up in legal battles, so that they became trapped within in legal limbo; misinformation in the form of cartoons that promoted the fallacious belief that the Black Panther Party was racist and planned to kill whites were circulated in white and Black communities as if they were official Party information. Cointelpro would even duplicate the handwriting of certain members and send letters to other branches which created internal turmoil within the Party. In certain cases they committed straight-up murder, as was the case with the assassination of the 21-year old civil rights dynamo, Fred Hampton, Sr., who they killed in his own home after he and others in the house, including his pregnant wife, who took one in the leg, were drugged by a muthafucking race traitor of a snitch, William O’Neal. Their methods proved to be quite successful.

After Huey P. Newton was released from jail pending a retrial, Cleaver had already left the country. Two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 6, 1968, the Oakland Police engaged in a melee with some Black Panthers. The end result was that Li’l Bobby Hutton was unjustifiably assassinated and Eldridge Cleaver was shot through the leg and apprehended even though he exited a house butt-naked so that the police would know he was unarmed. Cleaver was later charged with three accounts of attempted murder of a police officer and three counts of assault on a police officer. Strange, as the only folks murdered and wounded were Black Panthers. After he got out about two months later on bail, he was ordered to return to prison for violating his parole. Cleaver said “the hell with that shit” and fled the country. This event happened right after Cleaver’s unsuccessful 1968 Presidential campaign in which he ran as a candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party.

His exile sent him first to Cuba. Unlike Newton who later fled to Cuba in 1977, Cleaver did not enjoy his time there. Cleaver claims he experienced the same institutional racism that was present in America in Cuba, and that the country did everything possible to hide the history of Antonio Maceo Grajales, a Black Cuban who was the true father of the Cuban Revolution. From there he went to Algeria where he met up with his fine-ass wife, Kathleen Cleaver, who was pregnant at the time with their first child. It was while in Algeria that Huey and Eldridge had their feud. Cleaver organized a faction of the Black Panther Party in Algeria but maintained communications with the Party leadership based in America. Cleaver actually hosted Dr. Timothy Leary and his wife in Algeria after he had been sprung out of jail in America by the Weathermen. Cleaver admitted to doing LSD with the good doctor, but later thought Dr. Leary to be a nut for promoting this drug to the youth and the revolutionary masses as “conscious expanding.” Cleaver’s stance was that to run a successful revolution, it is somewhat important that the revolutionaries not be tripping balls off LSD. “[Y]our god is dead because his mind has been blown by acid,” is what Cleaver told Leary. Leary told Cleaver he was “a paranoid nigger.” Cleaver then placed Leary under “revolutionary arrest” and all of the white liberals got mad because Cleaver wanted them to stay off of acid. When Cleaver’s troop in Algeria got busted up, Dr. Leary was transported back to America and he and Cleaver eventually ended up in the same federal prison in San Diego. Most of Cleaver’s former revolutionary comrades and friends wrote him off in the late 1970s. He and Dr. Leary remained friends.

In 1971 the FBI got really busy with their misinformation campaign against the Panthers. Cleaver was getting phony letters from his “comrades” claiming Newton was disgusted with him. Newton was getting phony letters from anonymous folks that claimed Cleaver was planning on assassinating him. Their alliance fell apart live on television. February 28, 1971, AM San Francisco had Newton on. Cleaver phoned in from Algeria and began firing off about inside Party business on air. Cleaver dismissed Newton from the Panthers, and then Newton dismissed Cleaver from the Panthers. The Black Panthers split into two factions, a left and right wing. The right wing, which consisted of Newton’s supporters, were focused upon the survival programs and empowering impoverished communities. The left wing, Cleaver’s faction, included the notoriously violent New York 21 faction of the Black Panthers and others like them that believed that the emphasis upon the survival programs was just mere pussy footing around the true issue which was the inevitable armed revolution that was about to pop off. The two factions never reconciled. David Hilliard, in a letter to the Black Panther’s European office, called Cleaver a “murderer” and “a punk without genitals.” Elaine Brown, the last leader of the Black Panther Party, said Cleaver was a “power crazy nigger.” Many Panthers also questioned Cleaver’s sexuality. Newton made the point that Cleaver was looking for a father figure (which he had seemed to have in Newton) and erroneously thought the Black Panthers to be “the Revolution and the Party” as opposed to being “a political vehicle through which the people could express their revolutionary desires.” Some thought Cleaver mistook fame as support from the people. The feud drew parallels to other great Black leaders that could not amicably work out their differences. Folks like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, the Black Panthers themselves and Ron Karenga’s militant group US, and 50 Cent and the Game.

The fragmentation of the American Black Panther Party marked the end of the international branches of the Party. Cleaver resigned from the Algerian branch and after his Black Liberation Party and Right On! Magazine ventures both failed, he illegally moved to France alone where he later met up with his wife Kathleen and their two children in January of 1972. France proved to be the location of Cleaver’s incredible transformation. He was fairly broke during his time there as most of the proceeds he had gained from Soul on Ice and from a proposed book were mostly depleted and the stipends he received from China ceased. As aforementioned, Cleaver saw racism in the Communist Cuba, and this began his reevaluation of his opinions concerning political philosophy. In Algeria, he was called a “kulasha” (slave) by the Arabs and also was told that Black Americans were considered arrogant due to “the way [they] move and carry their bodies.” He recounted an event in a French television station in which he was watching the defeated American troops pull out of Vietnam. He was sitting in between the editor of Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and a reporter from France’s Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper. The two were laughing at the scene on the television and described the “U.S. Marines as nothing more than Boy Scouts who couldn’t win a fight against an old ladies club.” Cleaver quickly retorted to the French pussy-ass muthafucker, “You know what man, there was a day when you were mighty glad to see the U.S. military liberate you from him.” Cleaver then nodded towards the Mein Kampf fucking German bastard and got up and went home. He was becoming increasingly homesick and felt like a fugitive. He wanted to return to America, but his return meant facing numerous charges. The ultimate injury came when his children begged him not to speak English because it “hurt their ears.” Then his son began to play soccer. Cleaver started to think suicidal thoughts and decided to act on them.

At his residence in Paris, Cleaver eats dinner with his family for what he thinks will be the last time. He didn’t reveal his intended suicide to them. He then left for his private apartment in Cannes. There he sat on the balcony, pistol in hand, contemplating his death. For whatever reason, his attention was drawn to the nearly full moon. As he continued to stare at the moon, it began to flicker and transmogrify. He saw the image of his own face in the moon. This image changed into Fidel Castro. That image transformed into Mao Tse-tung. Mao became Marx. Then the image disappeared. After that he saw the face of Jesus Christ in the moon. It was the one face that did not disappear. Cleaver began to shake uncontrollably. He put the pistol down, fell to his knees and began to cry. The Lord’s Prayer, the 23^rd Psalm, which he hadn’t thought of in decades, came into his mind. He remembered that Kathleen had brought a Bible that his mother had given them before they went into exile. From his bookshelf he located the Bible, but rummaging frantically through the pages, he couldn’t locate the 23^rd Psalm. He describes himself as “overwhelmed with a spirit of peace and total exhaustion.” He then put the Bible on a table and the gun next to it and went to sleep. When he woke the next day, he felt recharged and brand new. He claimed, “I had received a spiritual message that I must surrender to the authorities, go into that prison cell, and I would come out the other side. There was no fear. I just knew I would come out the other side.” He headed back to Paris to tell Kathleen the whole incident and began to make plans about how to return to America.

Nikki Giovanni wrote in a magazine called Encore, “The news from Paris, France, that Black fire-eating, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-middle-class militant Eldridge Cleaver is considering a return to the United States is not surprising. That he left in the first place and the circumstances of his leaving are perhaps the real news story.” Many others insinuated that Cleaver had somehow been shitting through the same straw as the capitalist powers he once vowed to destroy. In May of 1973 Huey P. Newton was interviewed by Playboy Magazine. Much of the interview dealt with the recent split with Cleaver and Newton’s feelings regarding his former comrade. He described Cleaver as “a very disturbed and unhappy person” and blamed him for ‘the filthy-speech movement” which resulted in most of the Black Panther Party, during Huey’s imprisonment, “[going] into [places such as the Black church] to give political-education classes for the general community and [using] “motherfucker” every other word.” He also challenged Cleaver’s sexuality, commenting on the fact that rapists that he was privy to in prisons usually became homosexuals within the penitentiary. He believed that Cleaver had issues with his masculinity and that thought of the gun as a metaphorical cock. “When he came out of prison he became so attached to the Panthers and the idea of the gun. I think the gun was a substitute for his penis; he called it his "rod." Or his johnson. Newton also went on to describe an alleged encounter between Cleaver and James Baldwin, whose writings Cleaver had lambasted in his essay “Notes on a Native Son”…

Well, there was something that happened on the occasion when he and I met Baldwin. We met Baldwin shortly after he returned from Turkey, I guess in 1966 or the early part of '67. Eldridge had been invited to a party to meet him, and he asked me to go along. So we went over to San Francisco in his Volkswagen van and we got there first. Soon after, Baldwin arrived. Baldwin is a very small man in stature; I guess about five-one. Eldridge is about six-four, you know; at the time, he weighed about 250 pounds. Anyway, Baldwin just walked over to him and embraced him around the waist. And Eldridge leaned down from his full height and engaged Baldwin in a long, passionate French kiss. They kissed each other on the mouth for a long time. When we left, Eldridge kept saying, "Don't tell anyone." I said all right. And I kept my word -- until now.

Because Eldridge Cleaver never disputed these claims, they did much to effeminate his image. Most Americans who had been privy to his exploits in America considered him to be a pale comparison of his former self as well as a possible traitor and government informant. Cleaver held firmly to his original position that the political climate of America had changed with the resignation of Nixon and the end of the Vietnam War and he now felt that he could finally get a fair trial. His critics contended there was little change in America concerning police brutality or racism and that this was a mask for more clandestine affiliations with American authorities. In a 1975 interview with Henry Louis Gates, Cleaver, still in exile in Paris, stated that he considered the Third World revolutions as “a skin game.” He also acknowledged his concern with class struggle. “Ultimately,” Cleaver claims, “all struggle is Class struggle; but you cannot overlook national questions.” He thought that Black Americans needed to eliminate all classes within the race and this would create unity amongst Black Americans. He also acknowledged that Marx was a racist, therefore Black Americans should not blindly except his philosophies as intrinsic to their struggle. As noted by Kathleen Rout in her biopic of Cleaver, “what was gone was the rhetoric, the anger, and the sense that he part of a worldwide, historic uprising of the “colored” masses.”

In September 1975, about a month before his return to the United States, Cleaver tells a reporter about how he had been studying Eastern erotic literature as of late. He stated in the interview, “My whole motivation is because… I’ve always been keen about sex. I like it. So you know the whole thing about the Kama Sutra. There’s something to learn there, right?” He now considered himself a student of these fucking philosophies and with this studying came his soi-disant title of “tantric guru.” Cleaver said the title was “a label I bestowed upon myself, because I know who I am. I’ve mastered it. That’s why I made these pants.” The Black Panther Party was always fashionable in the mostly black uniform highlighted by the powder blue shirt, but never would the average American had predicted that a former revolutionary would enter the world of fashion. Like everything else he seemed to do in his life, Cleaver’s pants had a philosophy. Cleaver sought to liberate men from the oppressiveness of the white man’s pants. He became “interested in the crime of rape and why people rape.” He claimed that his pants would abolish the crime of indecent exposure. Cleaver planned to create “decent exposure” with his new pants. One interviewer noted that the pants “flaunt[ed] the male sex organ so brazenly that no photo can be printed in a family magazine.” He stated that his inspiration for the pants “goes back to the problems of human sexuality and of… what I call the right to fuck[.]”

Armed with his pants, new philosophies and Jesus, Cleaver contacted the U.S. embassy in Paris. Within three weeks he had the necessary papers to enter the United States, where he was to be arrested immediately upon arrival. November 15, 1975, the two Cleaver children were flown to Pasadena to stay with Granny. Kathleen stayed behind to finish packing up the stuff in Paris. Eldridge himself arrived in New York at 5pm to no supporters, detractors, friends or family, just one Black and one white FBI agent who placed him under arrest. On November 19, 1975, the same day Cleaver was transported to San Diego, Chino State Penitentiary to be exact, the New York Times ran an article written by Cleaver entitled, “Why I Left the U.S. and Why I Am Returning.” In it, Cleaver states…

With all of its faults, the American political system is the freest and most democratic in the world. The system needs to be improved, with democracy spread to all areas of life, particularly the economic. All of these changes must be conducted through our established institutions, and people with grievances must find political methods for obtaining redress.

New Year’s Eve of 1975 Cleaver attempted to contact the Black Panther Party via collect call from Chino State. A Black Panther answers the phone. When asked if they would except a collect call from Eldridge Cleaver, the guy first laughed, said “Wait a minute,” and took about ten minutes to take the call off hold and say, “We will not accept the call.” The Black Panther Party’s lawyer Gerry would not represent him due to “other commitments.” The Black Panther newspaper called for justice for Cleaver and a fair trial in which they predicted the people he once attempted to represent would turn on him. The Black Panthers also blamed Cleaver for the deaths of Li’l Bobby Hutton and Sam Napier, the former of which had been murdered by men loyal to Cleaver under pretenses of snitching, but it was believed that his execution had not been mandated by Cleaver. Cleaver had no friends from the movement left just as he had no friends from his years before the movement began. He had become forgotten during his years in exile, and upon his return he was considered non-threatening.

In Chino State existed a prison ministry group called "The God Squad." During their prayer meetings other prisoners would throw bars of soap and flick water from brushes dipped in commodes at the Christians. Because he didn’t want to appear soft amongst the other prisoners, Cleaver initially refused to join the prayer services even though he desired to. After a few months he eventually joined them in fellowship. The word spread rapidly that Eldridge Cleaver had found Christ. An article was written in the Los Angeles Times that mocked Cleaver’s conversion. Cleaver contacted the press shortly thereafter and gave interviews concerning the validity of his Christianity. While he got streams of hate mail from former comrades and supporters, he began to get an abundance of letters from Christians, mostly white Americans, who empathized with his plight and truly believed that he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Cleaver still had a one million dollar bail to deal with, and until he could ascertain such an amount, it seemed likely that he would remain in prison until his retrial. A wealthy and extremely pious Philadelphian named Arthur DeMoss, president of National Liberty Corporation, read the article concerning Cleaver in the Los Angeles Times and decided to offer his assistance. DeMoss considered himself a former sinner, a number runner-turned-insurance mogul, who was able to give his life to Christ, so he sought out individuals such as Cleaver to help them during their transition to Christianity. In June 1976, DeMoss was able to visit Cleaver in Chino. Reportedly, the two talked for a couple of hours discussing things Christians talk about; mainly their former, more secular lives and Jesus. DeMoss went to his fellow white Christians with praise for Cleaver, and the white Christians showed their support in the form of contributions for Cleaver’s bail. On Friday the 13^th, August 1976, Eldridge Cleaver was released in time for the weekend. He got a telly and spent the weekend with Kathleen booed up in San Francisco. That following Monday, he and Kathleen flew to Los Angeles so that Cleaver could see his mother for the first time in eight years.

That Wednesday, Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver were in San Diego where the Reverend Billy Graham was preaching at one of his crusades. Cleaver was able to meet with Graham personally. Cleaver had admitted to hating Graham at a point of his life, but now was actually anticipating the meeting. Without Kathleen present the two men prayed and talked for over an hour discussing things Christians talk about; mainly their former, more secular lives and Jesus. The one statement made by Graham that resonated the most with Cleaver was “Eldridge… one thing you must never forget-never embarrass the Lord.” Cleaver ended up on Meet the Press Sunday, August the 29^th. The questions included whether Cleaver had made a deal with authorities or not, to which he maintained that he had not. Cleaver noted “deep transformations in [his] own personal life” and that his opine had changed concerning how change should be administered within the country. Cleaver also assured the public that his conversion to Christianity was not a hoax nor a ruse to influence his trial. In reference to the Black Panther Party, Cleaver stated, “I think that we were a little naïve in our approach… that we were excessive in our language… that we scared a lot of people, not so much by our practices, our activities, but by the way that we described certain situations, and if I had to do it all over, with hindsight, I would do it differently.” This appearance was followed by a week of rest and relaxation at DeMoss’ Philadelphia home.

Cleaver announces to the public on September 14, 1976 that he is going on the lecture circuit as an evangelist. He had just signed with a national speakers’ bureau as well as ascertaining another book deal, this time the book dealing with spiritual and philosophical transformation. He was paired on a tour with Charles Colson, former special council to President Nixon. Colson was well-known as "Richard Nixon's hard man, the 'evil genius' of an evil administration.” He was responsible for leaking information from Daniel Elsberg’s psychiatric files to the press and was subsequently indicted in March of 1974 for conspiring to cover up the Watergate robbery. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was given a one to three year sentence, a $5000 fine and was disbarred. He did seven months at the Maxwell Correctional Facility, and was released early because of pertinent issues within his family. Upon his release he began Prison Fellowship, a penitentiary-based Christian organization that has of recent years worked closely with the George W. Bush presidential administration. Because of his celebrity status, Cleaver could consistently get booked on television or for whatever crusade was in session. However, many thought that his proselytizing did not have the emotional passion that Cleaver was characteristically known for. White Christians were frequently disappointed with Cleaver’s sermons. At the time, the Cleavers’ had more than $200,000 in outstanding bills. At all of his speaking engagements, Cleaver passed around the collection plate. During a sermon/barbecue in Orange County, it is rumored that Cleaver received $16,500 in donations. Cleaver had a set speech as an evangelist. He would speak of his disillusionment with communism and then his conversion to American patriotism and Christianity. His support of the right-wing became more vocalized as well as he would tout the politics of Henry Kissinger, criticize the NAACP, stir Soviet paranoia, and belittle the women’s liberation movement. He and Kathleen were officially baptized Sunday, the 10^th of October, 1976 in a hotel swimming pool in Burbank, California. Art DeMoss was present and smiling. Cleaver preached with white evangelicals until the spring of 1977 when he, Kathleen and DeMoss decided to start the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, which was to be based out of Stanford, California. Cleaver’s plan was to become the Black version of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. In May of 1979, Cleaver, with DeMoss’ funds, purchased 80 acres in Nevada which he planned to construct a “multimillion dollar facility” that would be the headquarters of his crusade. Shortly before this in 1978, Cleaver released Soul on Fire, an obvious attempt to capitalize on his former success. Because of certain omissions and inconsistencies within the book, it got panned and sold very poorly.

While attempting to solidify his new position as an evangelist, Cleaver simultaneously continued to expand upon his “sexual guru” role. The September 21, 1978 issue of Jet Magazine featured a second article on Cleaver and a picture of him modeling the infamous pants outside of his Los Angeles boutique that manufactured them. Jet succinctly described the “Cleavers” as having “two types of eye-catching pouches: one is oval shaped like a football player’s jockey cup and the other features a tubular shaped extension for the man’s penis and an adjoining smaller pouch for his testicles.” Their first article ran two years earlier had Cleaver describing what he thought to be the “fig leaf mentality.” The attempt to cover the penis was an attempt to destroy the “content of erotic art forms” because the sexual urges that looking at the penis produced actually resulted in a decrease in efficiency when dealing with capitalism. “Cock out” creates too much of a distraction for the average peasant to handle. For the perpetuation of the market system it was necessary to cover up the cock. In the second interview of 1978 Cleaver expands his philosophy concerning the “Cleavers.” Cleaver claimed that he was “very sexually warped” earlier in his life, but admitted that he had “studied as much about human sexuality as professional sexual therapists,” so he was able to overcome his deviant, sexual nature. He intended on forming a “finishing school for boys” so that they could learn proper manners and “how to go about getting themselves girls without having to resort to rape.” Also in his master plan was “a 24-hour rape hotline for men who have either committed rape or are on the verge of rape.” Even from a sciential standpoint the Cleavers were revolutionary. Cleaver claimed that “heat had a decomposing effect on the sperm and traditional pants press the penis under the belly. My pants take it back out.” Whereas western pants “castrated” the man, “Cleavers” “honored” the penis; this being contrary to traditional fashion honoring only “the intellect-the head and face.” Cleaver invested $42,000 of his own money to form Eldridge Cleaver Ltd. In addition to the boutique, he also owned a retail location in West Hollywood where the pants were sold for $20 to $30 a piece. Eldridge Cleaver humbly admitted that the “Cleavers” were “one of the best ideas I’ve ever had.”

In November of 1979 Cleaver pleaded guilty to three assault charges. The remaining attempted-murder charges were dropped. He was ultimately ordered to do 1200 hours of community service and probation. In 1980 Cleaver became affiliated with Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and began to speak at functions supporting their ministry. While working with Unification Church, Cleaver began to organize former Muslims and transmogrified his Christianity into what he referred to as “Christlam.” He effectively ceased the operations of the Eldridge Cleaver Crusades, thus ending his relationship with DeMoss. In September 1980 he was quoted saying that the “dwelling place of God” was not in Mecca, but rather “in the male sperm.” He then created “the Guardians of the Sperm,” which served as a “social auxiliary” to his newly formed church in Oakland. He believed that the enemies of the sperm, “ignorant scientists and lesbian propagandists,” were constantly at work. To thwart these powers, Cleaver began to teach “Urban Geography” to the young men of his church. “Urban Geography” meant the following to Cleaver: “You see a good-looking woman on the street corner. Immediately you want to screw her. But you let her get away because you don’t know how to follow her. We teach pursuit.” In response to charges that he physically abused Kathleen, Cleaver retorts, “I don’t mind being known as a wife-beater. There are all kinds of institutions to serve these so-called battered wives. What nobody’s saying is that most of the time the bitch needed her ass kicked.”

In the summer of 1980, Cleaver wrote Dr. Huey P. Newton a letter in an attempt to fire up the revolution once again. He told Newton that “one of the best things that could happen in America is if you and I would bury our old hatchets, which in fact have been buried by time and events, and help constitute a force in America dedicated to serving our needs at this juncture.” He rallied against his former enemy, Ronald Reagan, and his run for the presidency. “Ronald Reagan is running for President… Gas, Food, Water and Time are running out.” He also stated that Blacks in the 80s were lacking any appropriate leadership. He thought that “everyone imprisoned under Richard Nixon” should be exonerated of their crimes. He appealed to Huey by admitting that “There is yet one more skeleton in the American closet: THE BLACK MAN. It’s time for us to come out. We need dramatic examples of conciliation and reconciliation amongst Black men. Out common denominator is out ethnic gender. Our standard is one drop of Black blood and a set of balls to be eligible for membership.” Dr. Newton never issued a response. By September of the same year, Cleaver was endorsing Ronald Reagan for president; the same man who was quoted as saying in 1968, "If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats."

Figuring that she had been wasting her life, Kathleen and the Cleaver children moved to New Haven, Connecticut where she had just received a full scholarship to Yale University. Cleaver was left alone inside of California. He began to work as a tree manicurist for a Mormon fellow and lived in a rooming house with about nine others that did the same job. He continued writing and lecturing and began to make original flowerpots for sale. He finished his community service in June of 1982 and shortly thereafter joined the Mormon Church. Due to his dissatisfaction with President Carter, Cleaver continued along the path of his conservative politics. It was very strange that he was now supporting the same California senator that voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and refused to engage in a debate with him while the two were foes in 1968. In 1982, Cleaver gave up on his revolutionary pants and Christlam to become a staunch advocate of right-wing politics. At a speech at Yale in February of 1982 that was organized with the assistance of his separated wife, who was now an assistant professor, Cleaver tells the mostly Black audience, “Ronald Reagan has said that no longer will the Federal Government house, clothe, and feed Black people. I am glad about that because it will force Blacks to unify and lobby for their needs. Reagan had delivered to Black people a “Biblical message,” “Lazarus, go for yourself.”

Cleaver ran for House representative in February of 1984 against Representative Ron Dellums, former political ally of the Black Panther Party. He lambasted Dellums’ friend Jesse Jackson, claiming he was not the humanitarian he claimed to be, but rather a shifty politician playing the “race card” in an effort to further his own political career. Cleaver charged Dellums as “a pliable tool in the hands of the Marxist-Leninist puppet masters of Berkeley[.]” Cleaver was easily defeated by Dellums. He again tried to run for office in 1986 against Democrat Alan Cranston. Cleaver was now pro-death penalty, anti-abortion, anti-immigration and anti-welfare, stances of which did nothing towards his winning the Senate seat in Southern California. He declared Reagan as his hero. When asked if he had any other heroes, Cleaver mentions, “the Pope and John Wayne.” After he lost the election, Cleaver shifted his focus to other “really important issues, like the plight of retarded children.” After 1986 Cleaver became mostly forgotten by the general American public and when he was remembered, he was considered a charlatan. Bobby Seale says of Cleaver, “Eldridge Cleaver? I refuse even to talk to him… He’s not a true representative of the Black Panther Party. Eldridge was always trying to start a shoot-out while I was trying to organize breakfasts for children.” A greeting card was made with a picture of the Cleavers on it, Ward, Beaver and Eldridge and a note inside that read, “Happy Birthday from Ward, June and the boys.” He stayed in Berkeley, making pots and continuing to campaign for conservative issues. In the fall of 1987 he was arrested for possession of cocaine. He was again arrested in February 1988 for burglary in which he claims he was “moving furniture for homeless people.” He received three years probation for the offense. Eldridge Cleaver continued upon a vagrant life, accumulating bills and making ends barely meet from various speaking engagements. He remained vigilant towards the plight of the poor and equality for all people. He quit drugs after his last run-in for cocaine possession in 1994, in which he was almost fatally wounded. He became an advocate of a female president and environmental concerns. Eldridge Cleaver died result of a heart attack on May 1, 1998. He was 62.

Misled militant or malicious miasma? No one had been able to predict his true intentions or what he would say next, all that could be expected was that he was certain to entertain and shock the masses. Was he really serious? Did he truly become a Christian to reduce his sentence? Why in the fuck did he make those pants? We’ll never know. All we have are the facts juxtaposed next to Cleaver’s claims, and even these two factors are not enough evidence when trying to crack the case that is Eldridge Cleaver. I have heard many people my age refer to Cleaver as a sell-out. Maybe so. I'm not here to judge. I consider Eldridge to have been a human being like all of us; rife with convictions and contradictions that never seem to amalgamate perfectly. He just seemed to be more honest concerning his life-altering changes than most people. I will say that it is quite an easy feat for those of the Hip-Hop generation, a generation that has become an unmobilized mass of uneducated, hedonistic demagogues, to judge a civil rights leader that did more for the advancement of Black people in this country than an entire movement has done. Maybe Eldridge had a point. Could it be that he was correct in altering his views away from Black Nationalism towards a greater understanding and respect of all humans? American racism is a disease. We, as Black Americans, did not create this hatred, but we can fall victim to the same ignorance and pseudoscience that white Americans were infected with. I truly believe that hate breeds nothing but hate, but at the same time I know that white Americans are generally ignorant and unsympathetic towards the plights of impoverished American people. It is far easier to deal with injustices in Africa than it is to deal with the racial crisis that had never been properly addressed in this country. As we can all see from nooses popping up all over the nation, that it will be dealt with soon. We'll part our respective ways with Eldridge's thoughts on DuBois and Washington...

Eldridge, how is it different to be black today in 1997 than it was when you were in that basement in Oakland 30 years ago? We have the largest black middle class that we've ever had in history. 45% of all black children live at or beneath the poverty line. It's like we have the best of times and the worst of times. What's that all about?

CLEAVER: That's because our black middle class has followed an assimilationist ethic. They have become white and they've adopted all the worst features of America in terms of not caring about the other people. Like the white ruling class never cared about poor white people, let alone about black people and other minorities and these blacks who are following W.E.B. Du Bois' formula of educating that 10% who will then come back and lift up the rest of the people -- the argument that was had between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington was over how we're going to manage this thing.

Booker T. said we've got to teach these people how to work, then they'll get jobs, then they'll be able to afford education and then they can do that. And Du Bois said no, we've got to concentrate on the intellectual development of the people and get 10% of our people educated and then they can help the other people, but if you just learn a trade and you don't know what's going on, that ain't going nowhere.

I say both of them were right. We need both of what they promised and we've got both of what they promised. But they didn't have a unifying vision and consequently we've got an enlarged black bourgeoisie but they have departed from the basis of the black bourgeoisie according to E. Franklin Frazer. This was the professional classes and that was their economic base but the progress that has taken place has given a new economic base to the black bourgeoisie, to the expanded black -- now their economic base is political as well as up front economic and they still have a professional class but it is been expanded because you have a lot of black people with a whole lot of money coming from these other pursuits.

Add to that, the million-dollar salaries to football players, basketball players and baseball players, not that they're doing anything constructive with all of that money, but they have it. But they didn't bring it back to pull the other people up and so it's like the devil take the hindmost. That is what we're dealing with so that the black bourgeoisie is as corrupt and immoral as the white bourgeoisie and that is the problem.

Godspeed...

One day in 1995, I can’t remember the exact date, I was chilling in my dorm room at Cleveland State University with my roommate and homie, B-Roc. I think I had just gotten some pussy the night before and had just stolen whatever was the new music of the week from the Camelot Music in Tower City and I was really feeling good about myself and about life in general. I look over our Holiday-Inn sized dorm room (because Viking Hall at one point was a Holiday Inn) to B-Roc and tell him, “Man, I don’t think I’m ever going to leave college.” He looks at me like the fucking idiot that I sound like and says, “How you gone do that?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just major in everything.” Careful what you wish for. Fast forward circa twelve years later. I’m still doing my undergraduate thing.

This is a little more convoluted than most would think, so it takes a bit of explaining on my part. I initially went to college in 1993. Cleveland State was the only school that I applied to, and I ended up getting in with little problem even though I graduated with a 1.9996 grade-point average. My pops agreed to pay my tuition as long as I didn’t fuck up, at which point he would not pay for anymore of my schooling. Pops got to save a little cash in one year’s time as I managed to get kicked out after my first three quarters. I then spent the next ten months high as a Pro-Ked dangling from a utility line; simply put, I wasn’t coming down whatsoever. During this fuck-off period I attended Cuyahoga Community College, (aka Tri-C, Tri-High, Tri-Harder, 13th Grade, you get the drift…) but only for the loan money. I used to roll L’s in the back of this English class I was taking. There was some dude that always asked for me to blaze with him, to which I always said “naw, man.” In retrospect, I wish I had of put one up with him. My humble apologies to that dude for being a prick in those days. I returned to Cleveland State University in 1995 on a mission to make it happen. From then on I was on some dean’s list shit, straight killing the grades. By this time though, I was sick of Cleveland and was plotting my departure. What I did was apply for the National Student Exchange Program and ended up getting to go to Howard University for one year. What an honor. The same university that nurtured the unrefined intellects of Thurgood Marshall, Ed Bradley and Zora Neale Hurston would now shape the young Chaddie B. into a proactive member of society. Sike. I got 3 credits the whole year, and the only reason I passed that one class was because the lady I loved at the time was in it. After the conclusion of the school year I was to return to Cleveland but I said, “Fuck that.” I chose to live out of a van with my lady at the time until we were able to get an apartment after three months of living homeless fabulous. I ended up getting a gig at George Mason University at the library, and later in the Audio/Video department. What I learned was that if you work at a university, tuition is free. Word. So I commenced to taking classes part-time while working full-time. My lady at the time left me, so I fell into a self-prescribed one-year drunken stupor. Three classes from graduating I got a job at Georgetown University, so I ended up transferring to the better school and getting bumped back to 75 credits on top of that. So, 39 credit hours later, here I am with two more classes to take until the end of my 13-year undergraduate degree. What is funny to me is that with the exception of my first year, this thing was done on my jacks. (for the gringos… Jack Jones=on my own over in London town) Everyone assumes that I’m some spoiled fucker that doesn’t work. Nah. Just a dude that saw no point in rushing through the college experience. I was already making a salary and accumulating work experience, why change it? Anyhow, in the manner that I did college I became a well-traveled dude visiting a few different countries along the way. I wouldn’t change a fucking iota of the story. This history really isn’t necessary for my subsequent story, but at least now people can place my progress and know exactly why it has taken me so long to finish college.

This story pertains to my time at George Mason University; more precisely, the story deals with the manner in which I left that university. Like I said, when I first got hired there I worked in the Johnson Center Library. It was the media library, so if one wanted to watch a flick that was required for class they’d come here. Specifically I was in charge of periodicals but I worked at the circulation desk quite often. The work was easy enough, it consisted of putting newspapers on dowel rods and a magnetic strip in the magazines to thwart folks from stealing People and Essence. I was quite the fan of Mason. Very cosmopolitan sort of place. It was here that I met my first Persian and Chinese homies. People were fairly down-to-earth and for the most part, cool as cool can be in the small-talk arena that is the student center of any particular college. I always do my job’s required duties well, but I have a problem with being late. This has been the case since I was a young buck, and it has seemed to have become routine in my old age. Such is life. No one else to blame, fuck it, blame it on my mother. I was in danger of losing my job at the library, and it would have been quite the hurdle to leap since I was in no state to be losing my only source of income. My immediate supervisor Cynthia, who was extremely cool, didn’t really give two shits, but the lesbian that was the head of the Johnson Center Library wanted my head, take your pick which one, on a platter. So what I did was apply for another job on the campus, the aforementioned Audio/Video managerial position, and due to my past computer and studio expertise I was able to create a misleading enough ruse and the fucking fools hired me.

Often times people ask me what I do. I instinctively say, “I’m a manager at A/V.” Most people don’t get this, so they leave me in the very peculiar position of having to explain a job that is not easy to define. The position exists due to the lack of common sense, per capita, on the college campus. What does the A/V department truly do? Utilizing my Ockham’s Razor, I will succinctly say that A/V installs equipment, monitors said equipment and troubleshoots said equipment wherever and whenever it is needed within the collegiate learning environment. Now, wanna know what we really do? Turn shit on, turn shit off, and lock shit up. Occasionally we sit, chill, surf the Internet and wait for five minutes to the class change. We wrap up a shitload of cords too. It’s quite the paradigm. These folks, intelligencia that they are, for whatever reason are able to write verbose dissertations and books on topics that only about 18 people are either interested in or actually bright enough to comprehend, but they cannot, for the lives of themselves, figure out how to turn on an LCD projector. This is where I come in. I’m probably somewhere in the Johnson Center trying to get with some young tender, when I get a call through the walkie-talkie, or the short leash, that I faithfully wear on my belt while on GMU’s dime. “Chad. Are you on line?” “Yeah. This is Chad. Go ahead.” “There's a professor in the Science & Tech building 1, room 309, who can’t get the projector on.” “Alright. I’m en route.” At this point I finish up my conversation and walk over to the Science & Technology Building 1, room 309, whilst bird-watching and admiring the flowers along the way. I get to the classroom, poke my head in and say, “Did you request any assistance?” “Yes. Thanks for coming so quickly. I can’t seem to get the projector on.” At this point, I, amidst an ongoing class, walk to the teaching podium, assess the situation and within 30 seconds, the time it takes to press the “projector on” button and wait for the LCD projector to warm up, there is a digital image that mirrors the computer’s monitor projected on a screen hanging from the wall. The professor, slightly relieved, slightly embarrassed, asks, “What did you do?” I try to look as humble and non-accusatory as possible and say, “I pushed the “projector on” button.” I used to think this work was the most inane, useless thing that I could possibly be doing with my life, but one day I realized that I am dead like Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction, the Wolf. It is up to me, oh ye of expedient pragmatic thought, to create harmony where these professors and students know only chaos. I have read there are various forms of intellect. Whereas they are cognitive masters in their fields, I am more so a calm, methodological young brother that can assess a scene within nanoseconds and have results a few seconds after that. They pay me to save the asses of those that nut up in the clutch. I’m like Jordan, I just apply the acumen towards technology and not something that betters society as a whole, like basketball. Not a bad life. Thank God I grew up with video games.

However, things are never what they appear cracked up to be, and I quickly realized that I had made a huge mistake in coming to work in A/V. This was mainly due to the presence of my punk-ass supervisor, a dude named Todd. Todd was exactly what an A/V technician should look like. Quite the dork. You could smell him coming from miles off like the rain. He was about 5’6” and extremely pale and pasty with an eighthead and a receding hairline. He looked like the Leader from the Hulk, only of Irish descent. Dude was just plain unattractive. His clothes were all from circa 1988-1991 and if not for him, I would have forgotten what Bugle Boys looked like. His walk looked as if had to shit immediately and his voice was like Miss Piggy’s eunuch brother. Not that the physical form is of that much importance, but dude was a fucking ass so noticing his faults was real easy to do and I never really felt bad about cracking on him. He was constantly up the ass of the director of our department, an older lesbian lady that really seemed to be mad that she was a lesbian. Todd was known amongst the staff as the middle manager that sat on his ass all day and played Everquest while we did all the work. Not that this was a bad thing. If I had to go do some extra troubleshooting just so his dork-ass would stay in his cubbyhole worried about the spell-casting ability of his 78th level cleric, that was fine by me. The dork even had a headpiece like a broke-ass Bobby Brown so that he could talk to the other ogres, wizards, warriors, druids and gnomes in real-fucking-time. And to top it all off… his wife was ugly too. Now I don’t want folks to think that I get a kick out of calling folks ugly. I ain’t all that, not by a long shot, and truly personality will make you ignore the repulsion of a ugly muthafucka’s face, but when the muthafucka is ugly and an asshole, it’s almost too easy. His wife was so ugly that I almost gagged on my own bile imagining what their offspring would look like. Unfortunately I worked there long enough to have seen their son, and just like mother, just like father, the kid was ugly as fuck. The kid actually looked Piglet from Winnie the Pooh with a bad case of eczema on his face. I can remember the day he brought in his son, and all I could think is “Damn little man. Your dad loves Dungeons and Dragons more than you.” Once his wife and son left, he went right back into his office and fired up the head set and took a long pull of some role-playing rock and got a semi-stiffie at the exact moment he touched his mouse.

Needless to say, me and Todd did not get along whatsoever. He was a kiss-ass and a rule-follower and I was an asshole and a rule-breaker and the two are straight Jew and Palestinian. We had this very small office that everyone would sort of just sit in and do absolutely nothing but surf the net and watch bit torrents and shit like that. I wasn’t with it. The co-workers were cool though. One guy, Andy was a former Asian gangster, but he got booed up with a lovely lady so she made him cut all of that To Be Number One shit out. His fiancé’s brother, Tommy Ta, wannabe Asian gangster, worked there too. Tommy was funny as hell and we both shared a love for rice rockets. The homie Mike was the best. He sort of looked like Frankenstein, but could do anything that needed to be done with a computer. He had a ridiculous commute to Mason, something like an hour and a half. Consider the fact that he was coming from deep Virginia and not the DC side of things and you can see why I’d never envy him for that. The only other black guy in the office was a former soccer and lacrosse player named Tomi, so maybe he wasn’t really the only other black guy that worked there, but he was a cool guy nonetheless. The guy I remember the most was a Chinese fellow with glasses named Hai. Hai was a total dork but wore it well. I remember he used to like this one Chinese thanger, so we’d always try and coerce him to go and kick some game, but he’d always be like, “No way dude. She’s way outta my league.” Hai was great. We gave him the nickname “How Hai” and it had nothing to do with the collie herb, seen? Still, hanging around the office got very droll. I figured that since I had the walkie-talkie, if I was needed, they could simply just call me on it. I also figured that since me and the pale rider Todd ain’t get along too well, it would be in the interest of the department for me to not have my big-ass in the office all day. So I’d head over to the Johnson Center where I would read magazines at the bookstore, pontificate about life with my homie and head of Mason security, Big Mike, and get free lunch and occasionally flirt with the donkey-assed manager of the food court, Kendre. This lasted for quite sometime with no problems, but while I was chilling on GMU’s dime Todd and the other bosses in the A/V department had another plan for me. I come in one day ten minutes late and I get told by Todd that they are going to move me into the recently vacated position of assistant A/V manager. Fine. Whatever that means. What was meant was this: our department was divided into two factions, the computer side where I had been working for over a year, which of course, dealt with all things PC, and the A/V side that dealt with the loan of everything else. Shit like televisions, slide projectors, boomboxes, those sort of things. What they did was move me to a four-day, Monday through Thursday schedule, which was lovely, but I was forced to be in the other office, and this severely limited my freedom to roam the campus and try and get laid on GMU’s dime. What was good was that I no longer had to deal with pasty-ass Todd. In addition, the dude that was in charge of this new office I was moving to was a former colleague of mine from over at the Johnson Center library. I can’t use his name since it’s too idiosyncratic, so we’ll just call him “John”. John seemed to be a nice enough fellow when I was working at the library. He was in charge of putting media items on course reserve. John was a big music head and got me hip to a lot of stuff ranging from Deep Purple to Charles Mingus. I thought that we’d get along just fine since he seemed cool enough from the last job.

John was quite the character. When he worked at the Johnson Center Library his hair was in the form of very, very fine fucking mullet that went all the way down to the crack of his ass. His fiancé also worked in the library with him. I always thought she was the more gregarious of the two as John was alright, but something, exactly what I couldn’t tell you, wasn’t quite right about the dude. At some point after he got the new job as the Audio/Visual manager, his fiancé left him and he cut his mullet off. John was one of those guys that probably wouldn’t be fat if weren’t for his gut. His gut was the proverbial hanging-past my-cock sort of stomach that surpasses cute and cuddly and enters the realm of “where’s your dick at?” He may have actually looked more normal with the mullet. The way this office operated was as such. I would get there shortly after noon everyday. John was supposed to have been there since 8am, even though I was later informed by the students that worked with him in the morning that he was consistently dilatory himself. John and I would be in this rather small 25’x 20’ room with a student workforce of two or three people. There were four dudes I can distinctly remember. The first student was Monte. Monte was your average “dood” dude. He always seemed to be in a good mood and wore surf wear even though he didn’t surf or ever even lived near a beach. Everyone was “dood” to him. Monte was a genuinely good guy who despite the fact that he seemed gay, actually wasn’t. His roommate also worked at A/V, a fellow named Eddie. Eddie was half-caucazoid and half-Korean and was the naturally quiet type. You know, those sort of folks that don’t really get a kick out of hearing themselves speak. He was a bright dude though and when he spoke he was either fairly poignant or funny, both of which made the workday go a helluva lot faster. Eddie had the loudest guffaw of a laugh which annoyed the classes neighboring our office, and great taste in indie rock. The youngest dude in the office was a fellow named Bryan, or B.Mass as he preferred to be called. B.Mass was the resident computer expert. If you work in A/V it isn’t really necessary to know how to build computers, deal with routers or any sort of codes like HTML, JAVA, or a C++. If you can depress a power button and wind up a cord, for the most part, you’ll be cool. B.Mass could do all of that real computer shit. He was an expert downloader back in 2000, so we would get all of the hot new shit from him. Everyday he’d come in like, “I got the new Redman.” Very good folks, I can never remember him being in a pissy mood whatsoever. Finally we have Ali. Ali was straight from Turkey, Muslim as fuck, and probably one of the best people I have ever met in life. Though he was Muslim as fuck, he would drink a few brewskis every now and then. Ali was totally selfless and would always offer to share whatever food he had with us. Probably due to his being a student he ate a lot of hot dogs, a food that I try my best not to consume too often. Ali would be like, “Hey guys? I got hot dogs.” We’d be like, “No thanks, Ali. We’re cool.” Ali would look at us like he was offering up filet mignon and would be like, “C’mon guys. Who wants mayo, who wants mustard?” I guess I didn’t respect the swaying power of those packets of condiments. So, from 12pm to 5pm the cast of characters in this tiny office that was littered with televisions, overhead and slide projectors, VCRs and DVD players, all on portable carts, would be John, myself and up to three of the aforementioned crew. It was one of the most extreme cases of overstaffing that I have ever witnessed. Sometimes there weren’t enough chairs for the staff that was present. John would usually stay stationary for upwards of three hours at a time. I didn’t even have my own computer in the office, so I usually read and wrote a lot of rhymes, as at that point in time I truly thought I was gonna be a rapper, or MC, for all you Hip-Hop purists out there.

The dayshift proved to be very weird. John was a very perverted fucker that was the most inappropriate supervisor that I have ever had the displeasure of working for. He’d often get on this sexually explicit joke-tip, and most of those jokes were based in the realm of homosexuality, which has been deemed against God’s law by the Christians who have been to Heaven and back. The brunt of these jokes was always Monte, maybe because he acted gay on occasion. John would look at Monte and be like, “I’ll fuck you hard in the ass and you’ll love it.” Monte was a real good sport about the shit though, as he could have filed a sexual harassment case and fucked up John’s whole life and would have had us to back him up. One day after sitting in an uncomfortable chair for about an hour and doing my best to drown out John’s ramblings, I hear him say, “When I’m naked I look like a cherub.” I screw up my face and tell him that no one is trying to hear that bullshit and that it’s completely inappropriate for the workplace. Disgusted, I got up and left. The shit was so unnerving hearing such ill-mannered filth, and I’m probably the farthest thing from a wowser that most will ever meet. This unease ended daily at 5pm. I would always take lunch at about 4, and if God was on my side on that particular day, John would be gone when I came back. After 5pm, everything was good. We’d hook up the Playstation, throw in a movie, or sometimes rotate the office sentry so that we could all have a good time wandering around. There was a pretty little lady named Alicia that would come by and grace us with her presence. Now Alicia was all of that. Smart, funny, played basketball (not for the school, for fun) and dressed extremely nice. I had a feeling she was fascinated with a yungplure, but I never won that race. One time me and her were to go to New York for the weekend. It would have been Alicia’s first time in the Big Apple. She backed out at the last minute cause I hadn’t reserved a hotel room. I tried to let her know that it wouldn’t be a thing to get one, but mislead by the reputation of America’s most bubbling city, she got scared and thought that we were gonna be sleeping out of a car. She disappeared suddenly, and I haven’t seen the girl in years. I wonder what in the shit she’s doing? Anyhow, the hours from 5pm to 10pm were when I was in charge. I’d move over to John’s desk and fire up his computer and the whole gang would have a great time. We saw a lot of great films as Netflix had just started up, and had a lot of great philosophical debates with the aforementioned cast. Oh yeah, we played a lot of cards too. Spades, Tonk, Gin Rummy and on occasion shot some dice.

Like with all jobs, most days seem the same. Same colleagues, same customers, same problems, same 10-hour shift. I would kind of zone out in the day until 5pm, when I became the “Nighttime A/V Manager” and from there on, the remaining five hours always went far better. One day, John reveals to me his Excel chart that documented when I was late. “On April 23rd you were 6 minutes late. On May 4th you took an 4 extra minutes for your lunch break." I could see that he had been recruited by Todd and the dike bitch to finish this clandestine mission of ousting me from my job. I had been warned a week earlier to stop hanging in the Johnson Center and arriving late, so I had shipped up my act and was being on my best behavior. One day I get back from lunch and John is on his way out. We give a routine “Have a good evening” like Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf would and I head inside and take my place at John’s desk. Today I was working with Monte and Eddie, and the two of them were quiet reading, so I decided to futz around pon John’s computer. I tried to insert my Zip disc and discovered that the drive was full. This was something never happened before. John never left anything behind ever. Truth be told, I’m a nosy muthafucka. If you leave out your paystub, I’m gonna look at it and know how many days of leave you've got left. That’s just how I am. I probably won’t do anything with the data gathered, but shit, if you wanna leave it out, I’ma check it out. So being the inquiring mind that I am, I’m trying to know what the fuck is on this disc. The office is unusually quiet as I am perusing via Windows Explorer the contents of this pervert’s disc. At first I only found the regular shit one would expect on somebody’s disc. Keep in mind that this is 2002, so there were only a few mp3s and some essays on various musical artists that John had written. I read one on Fela Kuti that was actually very good and should've been published. Being a prying bastard was getting a little boring as it seemed that there wasn’t anything of real interest on the disc. I clicked open a few random folders. I was doing it in a half-witted state of mind, so I wouldn’t have remembered the directory path I took to get where I got. All of the sudden there was a lone unnamed folder that was buried within the folder that his writings were contained in, I clicked on it. Another folder with no name, clicked on that. Another folder. No name. I gave it a click and all of the sudden I get a gang of thumbnail pictures, about 50 pictures. Upon closer examination, I saw what the pictures actually were, some white man with a humongous beer belly wearing women’s lingerie in assorted poses. All of the pictures were taken from the neck down. I put two and two together and thought to myself, “Holy shit.” I guess I was so taken back by what I had just seen that I didn’t realize I had verbalized what I was thinking. Monte, always inquisitive, asks, “’Holy shit’ what dude?” I’m like “Nothing.” Eddie pulls his nose out of his book and is like, “No way man. You can’t just say ‘holy shit’ and not share it with the team.” The two start to come over. I realize that there’s nothing that can be done, so I just let them come over and be as sadomasochistic with their eyes as I was. Eddie sees the pictures first and reacts immediately. “Oh fuck. Tell me that’s not John. Oh my God.” Monte finally realizes what is going on and says, “No way dude. No way.” Both are in disbelief and are asking me shit like, “That’s a joke, right? You put those on there right?” “Hell naw I ain’t put that shit on there! That’s John, man.” Eddie looks like he just ate a beet, shakes his head and is like, “Fucking sick dude. That is so fucking sick. He’s squeezing his man tits together. Arrrrrgggh!!!!” Monte looks disturbed because I think that he just realized that John’s jokes were grounded in reality and not mere good old American frat-boy homophobia. “So John’s a closet fag, huh?” Eddie says, and Monte asks me if he could get at the computer. I get up and he starts to opening up the histories of the various Internet browsers and the caches of Limewire and Bearshare. Monte discovers that for the past 3 weeks, at least, John had been frequenting any and every gay chat site he could find. Monte even found some sites where he had created a profile. Dude was on the prowl looking for illicit gay lovers on George Mason's computer on George Mason’s dime. Eddie, with a fist on his chin says to me, “Chad. Is John still riding your ass about being late? No pun intended.” I’m like, “Yeah, he is.” Eddie strikes back quickly, “Why don’t you copy those pictures and blackmail him?” I sat and thought for a minute cause that shit sounded like an excellent idea. But then I considered a hypothetical situation; what if someone became so nosy that they wanted to look on my Zip disc? What would they find? A gang of pictures of some white man with a humongous beer belly wearing women’s lingerie in assorted poses. Fuck that. How in the hell would I have explained that? “Nah man, I ain’t gay. Those are some pictures of my boss that I was going to use to blackmail him with.” Nah. No men in Fredericks of Hollywood gear on my disc. Fuck that. I tell Monte and Eddie this logic and they see my point in full. What we did was merely leave the disc alone and vowed not to tell Ali or B.Mass about this sick-ass shit.

The next day I was an hour late. I didn’t plan on it, but that’s what happened. I used to hang around Mason fairly late on occasion, the night before I got pretty drunk, then had to drive back to my crib in Landover, Maryland, a 45-minute trip. No excuse, a muthafucka is just late. I figured this would be the beginning of the end so I walked into the office with a very obdurate attitude. If these fucks were trying to fire me, then let’s get it on, muthafucka. At the front desk was Eddie, who immediately flashes all of his teeth and says nothing. Ali was at work too, but he hadn’t had lunch yet as I smelled no microwaved hot dogs smothered in mayo and mustard. John is sitting at his desk and before I can say anything or put my bag down, he asks to speak with me outside. We go outside and he lights up a cigarette. “Chad.” He says, “I hate to have to do this, but I can’t stand for you to be late anymore. It’s affecting the department.” At this point I lost it. I initially thought of the fact that he comes in an hour late everyday, but has the luxury of having no one monitoring his arrival save for the subordinate students. Then I remembered… this is the same guy that’s probably got a thong and a push-up bra on up under his faded jeans and moo-moo. The same dude that’s on Yahoo looking for someone to pitch or catch, as I wasn’t sure which way he liked it. “I have no choice but to write you up for this.” This statement brought me back to reality with vengeance in my mind, body and soul. “Actually, John, you ain’t writing me up for shit.” He looks like a slavemaster that heard “My name is Kunta Kinte” and says, “Excuse me? Who are you talking to?” Without an iota of grin on my face I say to John, “Did you find your Zip disc this morning?” He starts to look a little uneasy and confused and says, “Yeah, why?” “Why? Because I found it last night.” Now he’s petrified. He knows I know. “And what I found on it is of a particular nature both against the Bible and the Employee Handbook of George Mason University.” John looks blank and with the acting acumen of a gay porn star he tells me “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” This was getting tiresome, so it was time to bring in the closer. “Listen man. You know God-damned well what I’m talking about and you should also know by now that I got a copy of the muthafuckas. So go on ahead and write me up and see what transpires. I’d hate to have to go to your boss with this PowerPoint presentation that I’ve got.” After that, he said nothing, just stood there and got red as Chief Wahoo and stormed off into the direction of the Johnson Center. I watched him go and went back into the office. I come in and Eddie, still smiling big, asks “So, is everything cool?” I smile back as big as him and let him know, “Yeah Eddie. Everything is fucking bliss.” We start laughing so loud that the professor from the classroom next door comes over and asks very politely that we keep it down. Yes sir. So, so sorry. Ali yells out to us, “Guys. Seriously. I’ve got way too many hot dogs. Who wants one?” Still smiling I say, “Ali, I’ll take one of those hot dogs. You got mustard?” Ali nods his head and is like, “I got mayo too.”

From that moment on, John never spoke to me unless I spoke to him. Most of the homoerotic jokes ceased, and whenever they would come up, Monte would quell John with a stern nature that he hadn’t ever used before. I was living the life. Two hour lunches, a half an hour late here, forty minutes late there. Whatever. I had tricked the man into thinking that I had a digital copy of his amateur porn shots, so he was under my control. I still thought that my best move would be to get another job. There was no way that I could have kept the pseudo-blackmail up forever. I started to play the field and got a position as an A/V manager at Georgetown University. I was to start in three weeks. They asked me if I had quit at Mason as of yet, no, but don’t worry. I will. One day amongst a full house in the A/V office I ask John for two weeks off. I blame the need for leave on a family emergency, and he grants it. Of course he grants it. If he didn’t I would have marched to the office of the dike bitch that hates me and I would have plopped down a Zip disc on her desk that would have spelled doom for John. Or so he thought. I believe this was on a Wednesday, so Thursday was my last day for the workweek. That Thursday evening I pack everything that I had in the office into my Cleveland State University duffel bag and tape a letter to John’s monitor. I can’t remember precisely what the letter said, but it was the stock two-week notice that you’ve gotta give your job when you bone out. “Thanks for the opportunity.” “My time here was rewarding,” and other bullshit like, “I have learned so much and truly grown as a human being since I’ve been in this position.” Alladat malarkey. What I do remember was that the complimentary closing of the letter was “Godspeed.” On my way out, the fellow that I knew at the information desk in the Johnson Center, Todd Diamond (not my former supervisor, this guy was cool-they merely shared names), with whom I would frequently philosophize with, sees me with this big bag and is like, “What’d you do? Quit?” “Yeah. I just did.” That following Monday I was in Cleveland enjoying a two-week vacation on my former employer’s dime, telling my mother what I just told y’all…

Godspeed,

Black Bacchus…

You Gotta Look Fly When You Kick It...

Admittedly, I have a problem of sorts. I am a fan of what we refer to in Cleveland as tennis shoes, or here on the East Coast as sneakers, or in Londontown as trainers. No matter the moniker, you can't get in the club with them. So what? Fuck a club. I'm far more of a dive bar type of guy anyhow. Sneakers to me are the epicenter of the outfit. In the event that I'm giving two shits about my appearance, the assemble and all accompanying accoutrement coincide with the shoes. That's just how I do and have always done. 1976-the red saddle shoes match the scarf tied around the neck of the baby in the sailor suit to a tee. 1982-the grey KangaROOS Tai Chi Joggers match the grey fisherman hat almost flawlessly, but I still had to take my shoe off to get my lunch money. 1985-red and black Air Jordans, red and black Air Jordan suit. As if it were planned. 1990-the grey, black, white and red Nike Air Wildwood ACGs looked good with the Girbauds. 1999-burgundy Vasque Sundowners that look kin to the double-breasted, mahogany leather pea coat. 2007-maroon Jordan 5s, maroon Polo hoodie with the diagonally-striped maroon, navy blue and cream Polo scarf serving as garnish. Perpetually primped and preened. Do you know what it is I mean? See, we Black men have been color-coordinating way before the gay dudes punked the frat boys and yuppies inadvertently creating "metrosexuality." This was merely the way of the wardrobe. Dipped in glaze like a Krispy Kreme, y'nahaameen? Nonetheless, the sneakers are something of an addiction. I watched Just For Kick