Paincourt Antique

Title: What the White Man Don't Know Will Hurt Him

Initially this was going to be a studious endeavor and I was going to back it up with all sorts of neat little facts and sources. Then however, it dawned on me that no one else here does that so, I will just go on a tangent. The way I figure it is that hell, I was born in fucking Missouri. I live in fucking Missouri so I have had enough experience with bigotry and rednecks to last a thousand lifetimes.

"You Stupid Fucking Rednecks!"

I will start with 1976 because that is the first year that I can truly say that I remember. Our nation was celebrating its bicentennial anniversary. That summer, my parents being good Americans felt that on the fourth of July we should go to our states capitol to watch the fireworks, which we did. Upon arriving there we moved out unto the capitol lawn to get a good view of the fireworks.

My father however soon began to get irritated by a group of hippies smoking pot near us. My father went over to them (my father was a huge man, about 6'5 and around 300 pounds) and decided to let them know that he wasn't about to let this criminal behavior go on. After having a few words with them, they put out their joints and slowly walked away but not without a small protest. One of them yelled out, "You stupid fucking rednecks!" I at the tender age of seven felt that I was included in that protest. Yes I was labeled through association. I didn't really care, I was seven and I knew somewhere inside of me that I was safe from those ugly hippies as long as my dad was around. As I mentioned, he was a huge motherfucker. A year or two before my family had moved from the city (Cool Valley which is in north St. Louis and is now a place where most white people wouldn't stop to get gas) to the country, well at least it was country back then. I remember asking my dad why we were moving. He said, "Too many niggers are moving in, our property isn't worth a shit." My mother confronted him, "Dad you know I don't like you saying that around the children." And that was that, aside from the occasional "N" joke I never heard my father really say
bad things about black people.

"Bye Bye Miss American Pie"

My best friends in that year were my cousins Kevin and Keith, Kevin was my age and Keith a year younger. They were my mom's brother's children; he was a Vietnam vet. Back then, before he found Jesus, he was a pretty wild guy- somewhere between Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper, in other words he was fucking nuts. However he was a good uncle/father and took us boys fishing and the like every chance he got. I remember one hot summer day he took us
fishing and on the radio was playing, "took my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry, and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing; this will be the day that I die..." We absolutely loved the song and begged my uncle to take us to a levy, which by the way there are no shortage of in Missouri. He did and we went to work with our poles. Fishing close to us was a little black boy and his father. I went up to them and asked them if they wanted to see my new lures that my dad had got me. The father of this kid said, "Now why don't you just fish with a cracker, white boy?" and laughed. I didn't get it. I asked my uncle, " why did they tell me to fish with a cracker?" My uncle said, "because he 's probably a crazy old nigger." And once again that was that.

BB gun fights

When we moved into our new house which was about 40 miles out of St. Louis I soon learned that my new friends were a little different than my old friends. The first kid I met was Mike, for some reason he talked with a funny accent and liked to hurt animals. The first day I met him he wanted to climb a tree. Sure! What self-respecting little boy doesn't like to climb trees? We got up there and Mike found a bird nest. There were baby birds in it, he pulled them out and pulled off their heads and threw them to the ground. "Stupid fucking birds!" he exclaimed with pride. I began crying and tried to get down from the tree, but I was too slow and he pushed me out. I fell and it hurt bad. He then said, "If you tell I will kill you!" I took his word on that and didn't tell.

The next day he had a BB gun and asked me if I wanted to play. Sure! I mean, a fucking BB gun that was the shit. As we were walking in this wheat field, I asked him if we were going to play army. He responded, "yeah, when I grow up I am going to be in the army and have a real gun and kill niggers." I really didn't know how to respond to that; I said, " my mom says that is a bad word, you shouldn't say that word." He said, "you’re a big pussy, just like your mom. Are we going to play army or what? I get to go first." Mike then proceeded to chase me and shoot me in the legs and ass. Needless to say, I never got my turn. Just a large amount of welts on my legs and ass. I didn't tell but I decided that I probably shouldn't hang out with Mike anymore, and I didn't.

Jungle Fever

As the years went by I pretty much ignored all of my neighbors and put most of my energy into baseball and reading. Slowly, my neighborhood began to change and subdivisions were growing like weeds everywhere. New people always coming, constantly and for me it was like God had saved me from a life of living with morons and rednecks, gas huffing, tobacco chewing, fist fighting, brain dead rednecks.

I was enjoying my young life, although the bad element was still in my neighborhood, I could ignore them. I wasn't forced to associate with them anymore because of loneliness. Soon High School came and went. In my junior and senior years, I had somehow aggravated the natural balance of things by my ever-growing love of abnormal art and music. Threats were made, but never fulfilled. However that was all to change.

Earlier in my junior year my cousin had married a black man, came as a surprise, a shotgun wedding if you will. She was with child and it would be pretty damn hard to confuse who the father was. Her husband was and is a damn good guy. The day we met, we hit it off pretty good and I took a summer job with him painting houses, which invariably ended up in beer drinking sessions. We had a damn good time.

My parents had an in ground swimming pool which they pretty much opened up to the whole neighborhood and of course invited my cousin and her husband to come over whenever they wanted. Yeah sure there was a little tension, both of my parents were from the country and to be blatantly honest, my cousins marriage didn't sit to well with my grandfather and he refused to stop using the "N" word whenever my cousin was around, but once their children were born he began to mellow out about it a little.

Needless to say the prying eyes of my wicked little redneck neighbors soon had seen black people at my residence and began to make rude comments about it at school. One day, drunk (back then it was easy to get drunk at school-we even had a smoking lounge) I had finally had enough and a fight broke out, which beget more fights and I ended up having to fight about four guys at different times which all related to this issue in some form or another. It wasn't the reason for every fight but it was the root cause. In high school you have to be tough.

That is one of the many reasons that helped in my decision to leave this fucked up place and see what the rest of the world had to offer. I joined the Navy. A big fucking mistake. The navy is similar to high school, you have to be tough. I was sick of being tough. Sure I lived with a large number of black guys and had shit going on there too. But this is beginning to get winded so I am going to fast forward to the end.

By 1996, I was back in Missouri, divorced and bitter, I felt as if my life had taught me nothing. This bitterness was making me as bad of a man as any of those fucking hoosiers I ever had to deal with back in the day. Every day was a clouded miserable existence. I roamed from bar to bar, drinking heavily. I could not stop myself; I was on some appalling roller coaster ride. One day happy as a lark, the next miserable and suicidal, being loud and obnoxious in some dive, or maybe a pleasant establishment. It didn't matter, as long as I was drunk. I was also looking for someone to love me even if I was a fucking miserable idiot. Sometimes I found a girl for the night, sometimes for a week. But for the purpose of this story I am going to tell you about Judy.

Obviously, Judy was black. I met her in a bar on the loop in the Central West End. A very pretty girl, real long legs, big pretty brown eyes. She was funny as hell, had me laughing the whole time. We talked, we connected. We hung out for about two weeks. I wanted to be around her, I began to feel as if I was beginning to love her..sure it was just only two weeks but I had never met anyone like her. I began to really look forward to our dates. Then
I blew it.

One day she asked me if I would pick her up at her parents house. I said, "Well, I'm not sure if I'm ready to meet your parents yet, I mean its only been two weeks." I thought that I meant that. Judy was immediately irate, "What you really mean to say is that you are afraid to meet my niggers in my crib. I guess you can take the white country boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the white boy!" she went on for about five minutes and then hung up the phone. I tried to call back and explain that I didn't mean it that way, but she pretty much saw through me. I was a shallow bigoted man and if I did really like her, I wouldn't have given a fuck about meeting her parents, I would've enjoyed it. Of course there were other issues: I didn't really want to commit to a relationship, was considering other options, etc., etc.

I had weird instant dramas going on in my head the second she said that. I imagined her older brother kicking my ass after she brought a white boy home. I imagined us getting married and my family scoffing behind my back as we stood at the altar but applauding and smiling as we turned around as man and wife. I saw our children getting insulted for being mixed. I envisioned many horrors and realized that I was a bigot by proxy, by all the ridiculous sentiments of everyone around me and my own.

This woman had made me happy in a seemingly unbearable period of my life, which I constantly let her know, and yet I was afraid to meet her parents. I was lonely, I was ridiculous. At the time, she was probably one of the best women I had ever had in my life, and I blew it. I was a fool. What I did not know about myself, really hurt.

Addendum 2010: An failed attempt and white guilt. Some of this story is true and I suppose it goes to show how jaded I have become in 10 years. PC culture has become the norm now and I would never write something like this now.