MEMOIR
THE PUBLIC SPECTACLE
A FICTIONAL REMEMBRANCE
By Robert Macbeth
NEUROSIS
A functional disorder of the central nervous system
marked by anxiety, phobias, obsessions, or compulsions.
Individual or group behavior that is characterized by rigid adherence to an idealized concept of the personal or social organism, especially when that concept is at variance with reality and results in interpersonal, cultural, or political conflict and the development of discomforting intra-organismal tensions.
CHRONIC
Marked by long duration, by frequent recurrence, and often by progressing seriousness.
AN INTRODUCTION
I have prefaced this writing with a formal definition of words that infer the inner tendencies of what is to follow. I do this so that readers who like myself prefer not to get involved in the confessions of confused Negroes can move on to some more pleasant literary entertainment. But for those who might be interested in the workings of a very creative, perhaps genius artist mind, these ramblings that the subject himself derisevly spoke of as “making a public spectacle of myself”, this memoir, should stimulate some insight into the “as yet un-known”.
First let me say that this is not the book that I have always hoped I would write. It is, I am compelled to admit, an attempt on my part to exploit and hopefully profit from the current national attention being given the artist B and his work in theatre in Harlem in the 1960s. It is a relatively accurate, though subjective account of a number of conversations that we had during the summer of 1988 in Miami. Although B, having second thoughts after reading the first draft, has refused to authorize this publication - forcing me to use the thinly disguised initial B to name him - I assure you that the reproductions contained in the pages that follow were made from considered remembrance, copious notes, and even tape recordings that were made at the subject’s insistence. Veracity was my password.
We were in a time of great confessions. Confessions of dishonesty, drug use and sexual philandering were being made publicly by government officials, show business personalities, athletes and even religious leaders. I’m not anybody’s psychiatrist, but it is my opinion that B was in a deep blue funk over the sad state of his affairs – broke and out of work – and he was caught up in the guilt feelings that all the public confessing was stimulating. In his mind, he too must have broken a code of conduct and was paying the penalties. I think that he felt there must have been some inherent flaw in the makeup of his character that he was compelled to expose. He had been trained as an actor and that is what actors do to characters, expose their flaws. He seemed to think that his flaws were at the root of his inability to achieve what critics - his family included - said was “a true success”. Although, when I asked what he considered true success would be, he couldn’t make it clear. Broadway, Hollywood, fame, fortune? In the middle of that conversation he broke into song. An old one, from the 1940s or 50s, the Oreoles or the Ravens, “What does it matter if you’re rich or you’re poor, fortune and fame they never endure, but love is the thing, love is still king.” B was, after all, a 20th century romantic and like most 20th century romantics he was guilt ridden, obsessed by the need to uncover and discover, to confront and confess all and whatever. As if there would be no future until the past had been scrutinized unabashedly and the tears of shame that would inevitably fall had dried on his face. It was to this end that he had forced himself on me. After all, a confesser must have his confessor, it can’t be done with mirrors. Although Michael Jackson sang, “I’m talkin’ to the man in the mirror”, and he seemed to be sincere and hopeful. I too have hopes.
THE WRITER CONFESSES
God knows, in his infinite insight and wisdom, that at the beginning I had no desire to be B’s ghost writer. To allow his recollections and observations and doubts and fears to become the subject of countless hours of my labor at this keyboard. I hadn’t attempted any real writing in over ten years and if I was going to put myself through that agony again, I wanted it to be about my thoughts and feelings, my story, not someone else’s. But, I was vulnerable. I was in Miami on a consulting contract, writing grant proposals for a community development group. My work was just about over and I was beginning to wonder where my next dollar was going to come from. In his effort to seduce me, B rapped enthusiastically on the commercial potential of our prospective collaboration. He had been the subject of numerous “what ever happened to?” articles in the ethnic press; he would be attending two national theatre festivals in the coming summer; and they say that he is scheduled to do a major role in an upcoming TV movie. He offered me fifty percent of all profits, an arrangement that I have documented in a letter of agreement that we both signed and in a tape recording of the conversation. He also spoke of film possibilities and we watched a video called “My Dinner with Andre”. It was two white theatre guys sitting and talking in a restaurant in New York, and B thought that it could be a model for the film presentation of his self-examination. I didn’t think much of the idea at first, but the lure of possible fame and fortune in filmdom, alongside people like Woody Allen and Spike Lee and Melvin Van Peebles caught me up and I gave in to the project.
As the reader will soon realize, I have taken the liberty to stage and dramatize the meetings I had with B, describing actions and emotions in a way that I felt would give the reader a kind of filmic vision of B’s otherwise static ramblings. I am, after all, doing this for the money and there is more money in film than in books. My main conceit is the addition of my own responses and observations, though as I said before, I don’t consider myself qualified to make any valid psychological judgments. But, I could not deny myself a presence in the intercourse. I too have the need to be heard.
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR
My association with B began with the sound of tropical door-chimes. He had heard on Miami’s grapevine that I was in town, searched out the address of the house I was renting and dropped by, unannounced. He said later that he was afraid to call, even though he had a number. Thought I might avoid him with a “sorry Man, I’m busy” response. Which may have been the case since we only had an aquaintence in New York, not a friendship, and back then I had never found B to be someone I would want to spend that much time with. He was opinionated and talked too much about things that he thought he knew everything about. The inside dope on him was that he was a talented but somehow unsuccessful director of plays who had pissed away some great opportunities, probably due to some kind of drug problem, though the wash on that had yet to be done. What was clear from the expression on his face when I opened the front door that day was that he was worried and pained and perhaps not in the best of health.
“Hey Mac. Long time no see, he, he, he.”
It took me a minute to recognize him. I had heard somewhere that he was in Miami, but he wasn’t someone I’d expected to see and the look on his face was so different from the arrogant presence I’d remembered from the 60s.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure man, sure. Come on.”
“I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”
Naw. No problem. I just wasn’t expecting company.”
“I know you writers need your privacy.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I knew, and I’m sure he knew I knew, that he had had very little regard for my literary efforts in the 60s when I was trying to be a “Black Revolutionary poet and playwright.” I had sent him some minor scribblings and tried to get an appointment to discuss the work with him, but to no avail. I guess he had no time for fledglings. He had Ed Bullins and Richard Wesley and J.E. Gaines and Martie Charles writing for his theater. And his “Black Theatre Magazine” published Baraka and Larry Neal and Sonia Sanchez and Charles Fuller and Marvin X, etc. etc. But at the time, I remember being very offended. Who the hell did he think he was to ignore me? I had come to New York from Cleveland with several successes at the Karamu House, one of the oldest Black theatres in the country. In my mind I deserved attention, consideration.
I led him into the house and through the sunken living-room toward the glass doors that opened onto the back patio. His eyes roved around and over my rented comforts with obvious envious pleasure.
“Wow, man. This is nice.”
“We’ll be cooler out here on the patio,” I said like the good host I always pretend to be. “There’s a bit of breeze coming in off the lake. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water or juice‘ll be fine as long as it’s cold.”
“There’s some 150 proof Jamacian rum here,”
“No thanks, Mac. Too strong for me.”
He leaned back in the lounge chair and sighed deeply.
“Hey, this is really nice. Lake, boat, it’s really beautiful. How much did you pay for it?”
“It’s a rental.”
“Oh yeah? How much?”
I treated that inquiry as if I hadn’t heard it and brought out two tall mango juice drinks. He went on talking.
“I gotta do somethin’ about where I’m livin’. I got the wife and two sons an’ we’re in a two bedroom one bath apartment in half ‘a house, upstairs. Much too small. Neighborhood’s not too cool either. They’d like it up here.”
So now I knew he wasn’t doing well financially. Instinctively I prepared myself. I don’t have money to give to guys I barely know. He turned the painful impoverished expression in his eyes toward me and I avoided it with a sip from my Mango glass and quickly got up.
“We need some napkins. These glasses are dripping.”
“Yeah, it’s nice and cold. This juice is good. What kind?”
By now I was in the kitchen. I could watch him through the kitchen window. He seemed to be struggling. If it was money he needed it was tearing him up to ask. I brought the napkins out and sat. He was standing at the patio edge, looking out at the lake. I broke the silence.
“How long have you been down here, B ?”
“Almost a year now.”
“Like it ?”
“I always liked the south better than New York. I was raised in Carolina. Charleston. Down here reminds me of home. It’s by the sea.”
“But there’s no place like the apple though. New York City. Broadway, Off- Broadway, Harlem, the Village, the clubs, jazz, the museums and art galleries. Not much of that down here, is there ?”
He didn’t answer. In the long silence that followed, I got a chance to study my unexpected visitor and “recherché le temps perdu”, as the French writer Marcel Proust put it. B seemed smaller and less powerful than he had seemed back when they called him the “enfant terrible” of the so-called “Black Theatre Movement” of the 1960s. He was very gray now. Bushy untrimmed hair and beard. Dressed in a poorly matched, sort of cheap, shirt, pants and shoes. One would have thought, given the artistic heights he had reached back then – a number of downtown theater awards and foundation support rumored to be well above a million dollars – one would have thought that he would be in L.A. by now, with a patio and a pool overlooking Hollywood. Or at least tenured in some prominent university where he would be “building new artists for the American future”. But, here he was, obviously not doing too well, in Miami, a town that many call “one of America’s great cultural deserts.”
“Did you come down here to do theater ?”
“I’m looking around. Having some conversations with a few people who want to do a few things. You know, cultural enrichment for the Black ghetto kind of things. Times are hard though. Not much money on that scene.”
“Still in the struggle, eh ?”
“Someone has to continue the effort to build viable cultural institutions in the Black community. They are the symbols of the people’s sense of self-worth and value. A reflection of their respect for their history and their efforts toward the future. Those of us who are gifted with the talent and ability are also vested with the responsibility.”
“We must march on till victory is won, huh?”
“Exactly.”
He pulled out a cigarette and continued to pontificate. It was a standard 1960s type “Black Liberation” speech. Bits and pieces I remembered from the writings of Kenneth Clark the social psychologist, Ebony Magazine historian Lerone Bennett, poet LeRoi Jones, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse, and other writings of that period. I had heard it all before. I had even used the same references to preface grant applications to the funding agencies and organizations that I still earn my living from. But it was procedural for me by now and I was surprised by the glint of excitement that it brought to his eyes. And, he was a good actor. His voice filled those literary expositions with a sense of urgency and meaning that took me back to the days of Malcolm and James Farmer, and Rap and Stokley, etc. For the moment, I allowed my disbelief to be suspended.
“The Black community needs and must have the opportunity to develop itself as a valid structure of support within the larger American society. Our youth must know……. Our children need to know that we ……..”
He trailed off, taking the last drag on his cigarette and butting it out roughly. His face once again seemed to take on the expression of inner turmoil that it had worn when he first came in. He breathed a pained sigh and without looking at me, he got up and paced the length of the patio and back. I felt compelled to say something revolutionarily appropriate.
“Sounds great, Brother. They need to hear that kind of truth down here. This place is twenty years behind the times as far as cultural development is concerned. Maybe you and I should get together and write some proposals, get some grant money. You could do some of those great things like you did up in Harlem.”
“It was bullshit, Mac. All bullshit. Pretentious posturing. Went out of style with afros and dashikis.”
With that, he pulled out the pack of Tareytons and lit up again. “I’d rather fight than switch.” I remembered that Tareyton slogan from the sixties. I had been a Marlboro man myself, but I checked out the Tareytons when a model friend of mine did the Ebony ad and got a box of freebies. They were strong. Even stronger than the Marlboros, which I quit altogether several years ago when my chest and throat started to get clogged and the phlegm I was coughing up got thick and sticky like jelly. B was smoking hard, inhaling deep. If his chest was feeling clogged, he didn’t seem to care. He exhaled and a cloud enveloped the table.
“Does my smoking bother you, man?”
It was as if he had read my mind. There must have been something in my body language that betrayed me. Nicotine addiction is deep and not easy to deal with. I had quit “cold turkey”, a phrase used by heroin junkies – the etymology of which I have never learned, but I knew the experience and the depth of the struggle. It is a struggle that never ends. I lied.
“No, man, I’m cool.”
I lied, perhaps not wanting to make him more uncomfortable than he seemed already. Or, it could have been because I was finding an old pleasure in the smell of the smoke. He got up and walked the length of the patio away from me and back again, dragging deeply on the smoke. He strolled slowly, trying to contain the obvious inner tension.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a joint, would you, Mac ?”
REEFER MADNESS and REVOLUTION
“You wouldn’t happen to have a joint?” The question caught me off guard. Back in the day, in New York, when “the brothers” got together for one purpose or other, music or art or revolution etc., somebody always had what the artists used to call “the sacramental herbs” to pass around. “Inspiration lubrication” they used to call it. I was on the scene back then, but I had made sure that no one could say that they had ever seen me “suck the plant”. People talk and it’s not good for ones reputation. When it was passed to me, I always said “no thanks” and avoided touching it. Guys would look at me funny, but everybody knew that I was from Cleveland and had a big time college degree so they expected me to be “different”. And I always wore shirt and tie and kept my hair cut short, (the corporate office presentation). I had come to New York to get ahead, and afros and dashikis and such were not acceptable professional wear at that time, in Esquire or even Ebony. Up in Harlem in the sixties they were making a statement of association with the African roots in their choice of personal decor. I more exemplified “the crisis of the Negro intellectual”. My African identity was more of an intellectual thing. Clothes didn’t make the man African from my point of view. After all, the “Fruit of Islam” dudes wore suits, dress shirts and even bow ties. And as far as “The Nation” was concerned they were the blackest of the Black. Right?
But this is about smoking dope. I digress.
B was asking me if I was foolish enough to be a stranger in Miami with marijuana in my possession. To have some rolled and ready for use by my visitors. I ignored him, picked up the empty glasses and headed for the kitchen. You see, the virginal pretense I maintained in public was the result of a bad experience I had with pot. It was in my first year at college. I went to a small white school in Ohio that was on a diversity trip and I got a scholarship. My room-mate was a “liberated” white boy from a wealthy prominent family who at the time was a closet hippie with drug connections. The first thing he did when we got to school was throw a party in our room and pull out a couple of Jamaican sized reefers. Big things, like cigars. I had heard about pot. My mother had warned me about things like that. But here I was, the only spook in the room full of white boys, Bob Marley blasting on the RCA box, everybody with a glass of good wine in their hand, and that tempting smell of what they said was Acapulco Gold in the air. I was in college to learn, so when it was passed to me, I took a drag and inhaled. I had sneaked my father’s cigarettes before, so I knew how to smoke. They said “hold your breath, hold it down!” It seems they knew by the way I held the spliff that I was inexperienced. So I held it down and then coughed violently and laughed. The spliff was passed around again and by the time it got back to me I was more “professional” in my style. And. I was able to take a deeper drag and hold it in longer. But then something happened that would affect my social behavior for the rest of my life. I began to giggle, uncontrollably, like a little girl whose tummy was being tickled. It wasn’t about anything, it was just laughter, but I couldn’t stop. I fell on the floor with my giggles and rolled around and then I became the joke. The white boys all stood around pointing at me and laughing hysterically as I rolled around on the floor like some holy-roller church-lady getting the spirit. They were still laughing at me when I pulled myself up and ran outside to get away. I must have run five miles before the fresh air cleared my head and I came down from “my first high”. I didn’t go back to my dorm room until morning. My room-mate was still asleep. Snoring. I packed my bags and headed back to Cleveland. There was no way I could complete a school year in company with a bunch of white boys who would be laughing at the fool I made of myself every time they saw me. I went back home and enrolled at Cleveland State, which had a “more Black” environment, which my father later said that he preferred, which was why he never questioned my giving up the Catholic school scholarship.
But, to be honest, the two weeks I spent on campus doing the freshman orientation/indoctrination thing were life-changing in many other ways. I admired the smooth Oxford University formality of blue blazer, grey slacks and loafers with argyle socks. And the way that boys with catholic school education carried themselves so organized and confident. It wasn’t something that came naturally, you had to practice, get coaching if you could. But I aspired in my secret inner heart, to achieve a personal presentation that could stand proudly among those young men of consequence. And that is my style to this day, both sartorially, behaviorally and educationally. A “revolutionary Black artist” once chided me with the comment, “You come off like a white boy, nigger, don’t you know that?” For some reason I didn’t use my planned and well-rehearsed retort; “appearances are deceiving my brother and deception is the American way. Even in Africa, if you don’t want the tiger to recognize that you’re not a tiger, you wear a tiger skin.” That was too esoteric. While most of the revolutionary black artist/activist crowd could name many of the writers and thinkers who were influential in the afro-centric cultural movement, few of them were actually well read on the subject. Influenced by the current power of the television commercial, slogans to sell the product were all that years of study and volumes of writing by superior intellects could contribute to “the black revolutionary movement”; slogans to sell the product. Negritude was the brand name of a striving “collection of cosmetic products” that would never challenge Revlon. “Yes, brother, I come off like a white boy on purpose. White boys have success and I want some.”
But here again, I digress.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a joint, would you?”
Was B asking a question or making a statement? The statement being that someone like me; who-so-ever he thought I was, or saw me as, whatever; someone like me, as “un-hip” as I must have seemed, I’m too blasé to even know the terminology, right? “A joint? What’s that?” I ended my stupid silence with, “Wait a minute man, I got something for you” and I headed for my stash.
Yes, I do smoke marijuana. Every morning since my Rastafarian doctor told me that he would prefer to prescribe cannabis for my minor high-blood pressure condition instead of the chemical medication that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals was pushing at the moment. But I would have to find my own supplier, and remember that it is an illegal substance. I could go to jail just for having it; possession was a criminal offence. But I worked it out and for the past few years I have enjoyed morning marijuana meditation religiously. It’s still a very private thing. I can’t trust how I might act in public. Even by myself I can feel irrational chuckles bubbling beneath the surface. I can hold liquor. Jamaican rum, Mexican tequila, 150 proof stuff. I drink it all with no after-effects. But reefer makes me silly. I have to wait a couple of hours after I smoke before I talk to anybody. I’m afraid I might lose control and tell somebody the truth. And, truth is dangerous in my profession. People don’t pay me to tell the truth. They pay me to tell them what they want to hear. They pay me to translate their misbegotten misunderstandings of concepts like “community” and “development” into a request for some public financing that is available. These people I’m writing for, they are initially sincere in their desire to “help those less advantaged than themselves”. But in situations like this one here in Miami, they quickly realize that, to be successful, there can be nobody who is less advantaged than themselves. The American way is “take care of number one first.” They see the Cubans coming in here and taking advantage of the lax government oversight on millions of dollars set aside for minorities and disadvantaged citizenry. And they see the Cubans maneuver and manipulate; in banking and real estate, and “get over” big time. So the board of directors votes themselves a salary, which takes up almost half of the government grant. And they’re planning to acquire a development property with what’s left. A property that is owned by a corporation that they hold all the shares in. A dangerous malfeasance. But I’m not involved in that. My piece comes off the top; fifteen per cent of the granted amount, which won’t exactly be chicken scratch if they get the full million six that they’re asking for. That’s why I’m still in town. That Eagle has not yet flown.
But we are supposed to be talking about B smoking dope and being a “revolutionary black artist”.
I called him that once in conversation, a “revolutionary black artist”, and he snapped back; “what do you mean by black, my brother? What description do you apply to that appellation when you throw it in my direction (he had a clever way with words). What do you mean by “revolutionary black artist”? In particular the black part.”
I didn’t have an answer right off. But I understood the complexity of the question. The subject of identity is very personal.
So I took my neatly rolled reefer and an ash tray out to the porch and led B through the screen door out onto the patio, (so the smell doesn’t get into the house). I have two meditation chairs, cushioned canvas lay-backs, under a red striped awning, with an outdoor table. It’s a nice place to sit. The pond with trees across the way. The perfect place for meditation. B lit up and took a deep drag. He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the breeze and said; “this is Jamaican, I can tell by the smell. That’s about all we get down here. Smells good though. Deep funk.” I had never paid that much attention to the difference in the odors of what I was smoking. It all kept my blood pressure down and provided some moments of humorous reflection. But I wasn’t a connoisseur. And besides that, I always burned exotic incense to disguise the smells. One can’t be too careful. Like they say in the NSA, “if the eyes and ears are everywhere, the nose can’t be far behind.” An expression of the marijuana paranoia that I am subject to.
B waxes on about the different brands of smoke that he had encountered in his travels; Acapulco Gold, Panama Red, African Ghanjah that got smuggled in African drums and sculptures back when those items of afro-centric arts and culture were being popularly traded on the international market without inspection. B said that he believed the different smokes had different effects on different conscious nesses. “It’s a matter of inter-acting neurons in an uncharted mental universe.” B was a big time Star Trek fan from way back at the beginning of that fabled space adventure. He said it was the closest that the TV/film medium had come to his favorite science fiction stories, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Which I acquired later in life and found to be a really demanding intellectual exercise. First of all, it was long. A Trilogy! I really didn’t have time for that. I thumbed through it, reading a few pages here and there to get the general idea, but I really couldn’t get involved. It’s hundreds of pages, millions of words, on the future cosmic universe and the ideological revolutions and wars of that time. The vocabulary was a multi-lingual, high science construction that would require constant interpretation. Not simple minded Star Wars prattle. That’s the thing with my generation, if it’s audio-visual we can give the time and attention to almost any bizarre nonsense, but the literary art demands more education and effort than it seems we have to give. For the most part, Asimov is just too heavy, know what I mean?
B, on the other hand, was undoubtedly the most “well read” Brother I have yet to have had the pleasure to get to know. He quotes Shakespeare, chapter and verse, and The Holy Bible, and Camus and Sartre and Franz Fanon, and Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams, and W.B. Yeats and Paul Lawrence Dunbar and on and on, he was a veritable Wikipedia on Youtube. He had spent the early years of his childhood (the 1940s) in the care of his father’s “old maid” sisters, who were school teachers that believed in literacy – the ability to read and the experience in reading – literacy was the skill central to the advancing of education at that time. The Aunties taught it to him early and gave him “children’s” books to practice on. He said he went from there to the shelves where his aunts kept the Book of the Month Club collection and several years of the National Geographic magazine. When B was growing up, there was no television, so that these literary forms – books and magazines - were what the aspiring 1940s teenager did for entertainment. And what teachers hoped would become habit. He had also worked several years in bookstores at different times in his life and had taken advantage of those opportunities to expose himself to everything that he had not yet been exposed to. He seemed to have spent many years of his life in the conscious pursuit of a higher education, a higher knowing and understanding. In B’s time, in the 1940s and 50s, the information was in books, and the search for what you wanted to know about was where you learned about everything, and B was, if nothing else, a searcher, a seeker.
So there we are under the awning on my meditation patio. The half smoked reefer in the ash tray still smoldering and B going on about intoxication. Here’s what he said, as best as I can remember it:
“I smoked my first joint after I came back from Korea. It was at the air base in Texas, El Paso. Easy International trafficking was happening through Juarez, so there was lots of herbs around. But I didn’t know anything about it then, I was drinking: scotch on the rocks in El Paso and 150 proof tequila in Juarez. And trying to play basketball on the base team. It was not a pleasant experience. I had chosen not to drink in Korea because I was in a war zone - a war zone - and I needed to be fully aware at all times. I would spend my fourteen months there, armed and on alert. Subject to the traumatic stress condition that constant armed anxiousness in a war zone produces. “But I was cool”, sang Oscar Brown Jr. I didn’t realize it then, but the drinking when I got back was an attempt at self-medication for PTSD that I didn’t realize I was suffering from. But the alcohol was just producing a physical sickness that only clouded the anxiety. Then one night, Pat Patterson who played drums in the jazz combo I was rehearsing with, lit up a fat one as we walked across the parade ground back to barracks. Being a committed Tareyton smoker, I joined him and - I say this with no shame or regret - I got hooked. Right then and there. It smoothed things out for me, opened things up. Earth and sky. Softly, gently. It relieved me of the terror, gave me peace, and I was grateful. I became a devotee. A pothead, if you like.”
So, in a real sense, B also was using marijuana medicinally. I wouldn’t have thought that. You know how people talk; “the nigger just likes to get high, that’s all. He should be ‘shamed of himself.” I had never before heard about B’s war experience. I remember guys I knew back home who had been to Viet Nam and who were never the same after that. The Eagles song, Hotel California had a lyric that seemed to describe their condition perfectly: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” And the Robert De Niro film, Deer Hunter, the Christopher Walken character has become so adapted to the terror that he stays in “Nam” after the war is over to play big money Russian roulette in the post-war Saigon gambling halls. He finally loses, putting the welcome bullet into his brain. The final act of ‘self-medication’, that I hear isn’t at all unusual in that population, among “veterans of war”. And our man B is among them, is one of them. You have to respect that. I do.
And so he continued:
“Traumatic stress and the disorders it produces. That is a good subject. The question for discussion would go like this; “what types of disorder is produced by the traumatic stressfulness of life as a so-called “nigger” in America.”
To be continued
