A Tangled Web of People

I had walked the twenty-something blocks to my house. It had been the longest night of my life. My memories were foggy from that night. I just remember smoke and the brick streets being lined by a thick, red liquid. I clenched my side where the stray bullet was surely slowly taking my life. I looked down at my white shirt where the warm, dark red liquid was dispersing at the wound.

The throbbing pain that persisted was enough to knock me down on the ground. There I lay, all alone. My mind flashes back to all the men who had fallen similarly as I had. It had only taken them an extra ten minutes to finally be put out of their misery.

I had only known a handful of these guys’ names. These men had put their lives on the line for a man who didn’t even know their first name. It reminded me of a concept in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Socialism by Deleuze and Guattari: we were all intertwined by each other even if we didn’t really know each other. I laughed bitterly to myself.

It is funny though, how there can be so many people around you but yet, you feel lonely.

So here I was at the end of my life: alone.  

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGewQB3mDv4

Image:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4R7MxYjgIwC0kYD9u3zNANd6kTl3ggAgG5XK9o5I_LWg2TxF1wcwcdE9KXTKyaXtSmJN97bTFR3_6L1I-QXOa7KKwbCLgIUXovU1QjE3mn492fdSZiy0cLimAyaYX4N9E7QzH1PvS_ic/s1600/lonely.jpg

Master of the Universe

It finally reached 5 am. The bartenders were roughly escorting out the final drunken stragglers that refused to leave and go back to their normal lives. I patiently sat at the bar, my bar, that I had built from the ground up.

“Boss, we’re out of last shipment’s hooch,” one of my bartenders warned me.

I was a baron.  A master of the universe.  I snapped my fingers and industry would grind, and pour, and stamp. pour, and stamp.

     I put out the cigar I was smoking and headed behind the bar. I opened the floorboard cellar only to find that almost all the liquor was gone. Instead of panicking, I calmly told my subordinates that I would take care of it later and that they should go home.

I was making something.  It wasn't always an important something, sometimes just the piece of metal that holds something bigger in place.

            Without the hooch, I had no other source of income. The people I employed couldn’t take care of their families. The people I employed looked to me to make decisions. I frantically looked behind the bar for some sort of answer. I opened a small hidden compartment behind the bar. It only contained two things: Mumbo Jumbo, a book by Ishmael Reed and a gun. 

A Man Walks into a Bar...

A peculiar, older African American fellow walked through the doorframe of the speakeasy. His face was weathered and folded from age. He looked to be at least 75 years old. His crooked back limped forward as if he was carrying a huge boulder on his back. He slowly crawled his way to the vacant barstool next to mine. Once he was finally in his seat, he raised a frail finger to get the bartender’s attention. The bartender, of course, ignored him in favor of serving white customers, which wasn’t uncommon even in a progressive city like Chicago.

            I gently held my hand up getting the bartender’s attention. He headed over in my direction and asked what I wanted. Whiskey neat, I told him. Once the drink was placed in front of me, I looked around the room to see if anyone was watching. Once concluding that everyone was too drunk to notice anything, I slyly glided the gold, gleaming drink to my neighbor. His drooped eyelids lifted in shock and he turned his attention to me by giving me a small, “Thank you.”

            He took a delicate sip of his drink before setting it down on the mahogany bar. His deep, brown eyes looked into my sparkling, blue ones. He cleared his throat and gently asked, “I’m not used to the kindness of your folk. Have you ever been to the deep South?”

            I nodded my head, yes, yes I have. He told a dark story about growing up as a servant boy working in the house of a wealthy plantation owner. After the war, he lived in the sinister streets of New Orleans. He told me he relied on, for most of his life, the kindness of strangers (which didn’t happen often).

            Others whose ancestors weren't even considered people. They know the history. 

         His words took me by surprise. In my travels to the South, all I had known was Southern hospitality by those who had housed me. The rich history that seemed to echo in every stately building I had been in. I looked to this man to my left and realized he had known a very different South than I did.

Two sides to that coin, two sides to this city, & two sides to its story.

Photo Credits

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