What the #@$%!

My six year old son Barful comes home with an animal in the hood that me and his mother were blown away from. That animal must have come from a different planet so we thought.

I’m shouting well above the threshold of hearing myself at 1000 Hz in which no father should talk to his biological son like that, while my better half repeatedly shouted calm down dude.

I say that thing ain’t staying in this house. We argued all night long until Sheba my wife, as always eventually won out.

Now I know you as a writer or reader, you’re probably wondering what kind of animal my son Barful brought home.

First of all and foremost let me explain to you that we dwell in Anniston, AL Oxanna. 

The day before my son brought that creature from the black lagoon home. A deputy reportedly shot and killed a woman in self-defense after authorities say she attempted to shoot him during a drug arrest. The deputy arrested Timothy Alan Wright Jr. of Oxanna  and Brittany Nicole Foder of Anniston for trafficking in methamphetamines and while it was alleged that they were certain persons forbidden to possess a pistol. Then while the deputy waited for the wrecker service to tow the suspects’ vehicle, Brittany Foder began asking for the deputy for help, because she said she was ODing. (ODing) in which is the practice of searching for a romantic or sexual partner on the Internet). Not really! She complained that she was dying. As the deputy opened the patrol vehicle to check on the arrestees, Foder high as a kite immediately exited the patrol vehicle pointing a pistol at the deputy’s head. “The deputy was able to deflect the weapon and fire his weapon striking Foder, killing her on the scene.” Poor people were outraged. The deputy was physically unharmed, but he is lucky to be alive as Foder had pulled the trigger to kill the deputy. However, the pistol did not have a round in the chamber, but the weapon’s magazine was loaded with live ammunition. 

After hearing that everyday event, my mind immediately took me to the time when them poor black people did during the Watts riots.

The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11th to the 16th, in 1965.

On August 11, 1965, Mark Frye was pulled over for reckless driving. After failing a field sobriety test, the officers in question attempted to arrest him. Mark resisted arrest, with the assistance from his 66 year old mother, Renna Frye and a physical confrontation ensued in which Mark was struck in the face with a big black steel baton. Meanwhile, a crowd of onlookers had gathered. Distorted rumors spread that the police had kicked a pregnant woman who was present at the scene. Six days of civil unrest followed, motivated in part by allegations of police abuse. Nearly 14,000 members of the California Army National Guard helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992. Well maybe I exaggerated a tad, because I still couldn’t fathom were in the hell my son got that organism from.

But if you live were we live its just life as we know it.

 I remember when Anna Michaels who lives in Anniston in an enchanted cottage where she grows the roses that served as inspiration for her debut novel, The Tender Mercy of Roses. Her gardens were also filled with cardinals, warblers and mockingbirds that swing on a suspended dragon outside her office ghetto window and entertain her while she wrote. Her love affair with words started when Anna was a child. She used to read books in a tree swinging on her daddy’s ghetto makeshift backyard and dreamed of being a writer. Also a pianist and sometimes-lyricist, Anna says she “hears the music of words.” She describes her writing process as “recording the melody and the magic of stories.” Anna had a long history of service to our community.

Someone strangled her with a pair of old wholly fish net stockings, that she wore on a daily basis. Rumor had it that it was Bruce Hightower who did it. So is life in the hood it was.

Early when Drake was still becoming proficient, at being out in everyday public settings, he was very happy with his clothes, his hair and his gestures. Taking hints from the internet. He felt his makeup was just okay and he was just getting started working on his femme voice. So one evening he decided to go see a movie dressing in femme. When Drake shim got to the theater box office, he said “Julia” his gay friend (for “Julia and Me”) in a convincing enough voice and gestured “one” with his finger. The white teenager ticketing person, gave him an odd look, turned around, opened the door and said something to a teenage black girl working there too, then the two of them dashed off into the lobby suddenly laughing. When they walked into the theater, the (teenager) ticket taker giggled. The (teenagers) clerks behind the concession counter were all staring at them. Miss Drake was pretty rattled by that. When he finally got seated and the movie started he was so relieved. But partway into the movie, a (teenage) usher came in with a flashlight and was pretending looking for something on the floor. When he spotted them, he left, but returned with others (teenagers) that stood along the wall alongside their row, peering in the dark at him. He tried to melt into the seat. Luckily, they left before the movie ended and when it did end, they walked out the door that led right outside, very relieved. He figured out it was most likely his makeup that gave him away, since the ticket taker only saw his upper body. So, he arranged for a makeup lesson at a transformation shop, where the owner knew how to deal with beard shadow, thick eyebrows, etc. Then he practiced for the next month putting his make up on as often as possible until it felt like a “routine”. He never had a similar bad experience since it was in his or her mind it was one of the best investments he ever made. Then subsequently developing his femme voice completed what he felt he needed to be confident in everyday settings. He was ganged raped and mercifully beat up by three teenagers from that movie theater, six inches from death.

That’s the kind of place where I live in Anniston, Alabama.

Well I think I gave you a small background as to what’s really going on where I live with my wayward son and flirtatious wife Sheba, especially when Barful brought home that binturong (Arctictis binturong), are a viverrid native of South and South Asia. Looking like something Dr. Seuss might have dreamed up, a binturong has a face like a cat and a body like a bear, with long and shaggy black hair, stiff white whiskers and a prehensile tail that’s as long as its body. Binturongs are also called bearcats, but that name is rather misleading since these animals are not related to bears or cats. Instead, they are related to civets and fossa’s but look more like gigantic dust mops and smell like a freshly made batch of popcorn! The hair coloration on binturongs can vary from black to brown with white, silver, or rust on the tips, which gives the binturong a grizzled appearance. Binturongs are classed as carnivores but eat mostly fruit. Their long ear tufts and reddish-brown eyes give them an endearing appearance but one that isn’t seen very often in the wild by humans in the hood.

The next day I demanded that my now ex-wife Sheba get that unusual  #$@ing! animal out of my house!