Fancy Dancer

Sherman Alexie is a lionized Indian writer and filmmaker; I doubt you've heard of him. 

And, for sure, nobody on X has heard of him.

Family, friends, and publishers convinced him to open an X account, and he only got 4o followers because Tweeps are into horror, romance, and spy novels. 

He's a card-carrying Academy and Institute of Letters member whose pin is in the desk drawer under a pile of papers.

In his book Superman and Me, he talks about learning to read when he was 3, reading a comic book, and associating the panels with the written narrative.  

One day, he picks up a book and looks closely at the words. It's hard, but he sees the words on the pages as though they were cattle corralled into paragraphs. Sherman says it like this,

I didn't have the vocabulary to say, paragraph, but I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words. The words inside a paragraph worked together for a common purpose. They had some specific reason for being inside the same fence.  

At the age of 3, the prodigy sees the world in paragraphs. In his own words saying, 

This knowledge delighted me. I began to think of everything in terms of paragraphs. Our reservation was a small paragraph within the United States. My family's house was a paragraph, distinct from the other paragraphs of the LeBrets to the north, the Fords to our south, and the Tribal School to the west. Inside our house, each family member existed as a separate paragraph but still had genetics and common experiences to link us. Now, using this logic, I can see my changed family as an essay of seven paragraphs: mother, father, older brother, deceased sister, my younger twin sisters, and adopted little brother. 

By the age of 5, Sherman’s in kindergarten reading The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck, laughingly, as his neighbors are reading Dick, Spot, and Jane.

Sherman, the wunderkind, was seen as an oddball on the reservation; Indian kids weren't supposed to be geniuses. 

In 1985 Alexie applied and was accepted to Jesuit Gonzaga University in Spokane, receiving an academic scholarship, the only Indian kid to make it to college from his reservation.   

His work focused on the troubles of Indians, life on the reservation, alcoholism, poverty, and despair, but he didn't cry about it, he wrote comically.

Sherman played guard on the Jesuit school's basketball team till his Senior year. 

One day, he calls the reservation to talk to his mom, who's in the bathroom, asking her,

is papa there? 

Henry, you know your father died 7 years ago. 

Alexie says, 

My mother laughs at the angels who wait for us to pause during the most ordinary of days and sing our praise to forgetfulness before they slap our souls with their cold wings; the angels burden and unbalance us, and da ride us piggyback. 

Alexie is also a filmmaker. He's produced and written screenplays for several low-budget films, including Fancy Dancing, Winter in the Blood, and Smoke Signals. 

All in all Sherman Alexie is 1 of my favorite writers.

The Door to Door Portrait Artist

Henry chills at home while Lu Lu's shopping at Safeway sitting at home listening to a never-ending Mahler Symphony, flashing back to the hurricane, the turbulent seconds it took to move on, and the days of rain it left behind.

Time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me; a lyric from Time is On My Side, penned by Jerry Ragovoy, on loan to the Rolling Stones for an unknown sum.

The summer is over, the harvest is in, and we are not saved; Jeremiah 8:20

Jeremiah's Old Testament proverb vetted the coming famine when the wheat, fig, grape, and olive harvest was shredded to nothing by a swarm of locusts in 600 BC.

The dewy-eyed novitiate asks the Clown Monk;

your highship, I have nothing to do,

 

butterfly, talk about sex, do drugs, watch La Liga and Bonanza on TV, avoid telling the truth.

1984, a year when computers are as slow as molasses, and cell phones are bulky and rare. Stable operating systems are few, and the World Wide Web is a year old, the year cocaine is more popular than computers. Henry asks his wife, 

have you read the articles on computers in Science Magazine or The Xylophone Quarterly?

I'm a mermaid, not a geek.

They fuck in the hot tub and smoke a 3 pronged joint, and when they're baked, Lulu confesses to Henry what really went down in Cuba with Fidel Castro saying

I fucked Fidel, he was going to send me to jail. We'd party at his Havana house, he had the best of the best, ganja as well as cocaine. Did you know Fidel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were best friends in the day? Year after year. Marquez would bring his beautiful wife, Mercedes, to Castro's house, where they'd talk about Latin music and literature. Both were the best at what they did. One night I said to Fidel,

mi amor, your passion for the Russian rockets and AK 47s is secondary to your passion for sex, Castro says, 

in my position, wearing one's heart on his sleeve is impossible. When I listen to cold and rigid Russian concertos, I remember the El Movimiento 26 de Julio and the revolutionaries who fought and bled by my side. 

Henry wonders, 

do you still love Fidel? 

He's arrogant, a wild lover hung like a burro. He’d rub cocaína on his pollo to stay hard. He had so many women, 1000s; I'm hot let's jump in the cold tub.

As they're eating chicken salad sandwiches the doorbell rings; Henry opens the front door and a Black man holding a white cane says, 

my name's Andy Higgins, I’m a blind man, a door-to-door portrait artist, 

 

please come in,  

Henry leads Andy around the bungalow, walking him to the kitchen table, where asking him,

how bout a drink or some pot? 

Thank you, yes, Seagrams & 7, and roll a fat joint. 

Lu Lu cranks up the air conditioner, it's clear Andy is hot.

Then she spins an LP on the record player; the George Shearing Trio tickles the keys playin, Unreachable Heights. Andy asks, 

George Shearing?  He's blind, ain't he? Does he play without looking at the keys? I have no musical talent, I became a photographer to prove that a blind man can do anything if he puts his mind to it. Let's go to work, Henry grab my Polaroid and the tripod. Set the kit up facing the sofa; think like you're doing a portrait.

Henry secures the camera to the tripod, looks through the lens, frames the shot, goes back to the sofa, sitting next to Lu Lu. 

The couple didn't dress fancy, he was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and she was nude.  

Andy stands, walks to his camera, knocks it down, then catches it in 1 hand, Henry asks, 

How’d you catch the falling tripod?

Everything's feel for a blind man. OK, here we go, I’m going to say, get ready, count to five, and shoot, now let's smile!

Henry and Lu Lu don't pose, they ignore Andy, making out, playing scissors, rock, and paper, even wrestling on the sofa, Andy says, 

I can smell your body, she answers curtly, 

keep your nose to the grind pal.

In minutes Andy says,  

I think we have enough shots, for an extra 5 bucks, I’ll immortalize your portraits in a plastic-bound photo book.

Henry goes to the kitchen, mixing drinks, martinis this time, bringing them to the living room on a tray. 

On the sofa, the couple pages through the Polaroid portraits, laughing insanely.

They love the photos, the work is realistic, raw, 

well— you all know how much Polaroid film costs, how about 200 bucks for the works?

Henry stands, reaches into his pocket, walks to Andy, handing him 2 hundred-dollar bills, the blind man asks, 

Can you call me a cab? 

Henry laughs saying, 

Trust in the Lord, Ray Charles, 

I'll be trustin in the Lord alright, Henry, gotta go, my cab is here.

Lu Lu leads him out of the bungalow to the sidewalk; he faces her asking, 

what ya think? She answers, 

Andy Higgins, without a doubt, the GOAT of blind photographers.

Tulip

 

In 1979 I was 22 and living in Harlem the only pale-face rabbit workin at Amy Ruth’s Soul Food joint. 

My co-workers referred to me as, da little honky. The word nigga was persistently bandied around the kitchen, by everyone ceptin me.

My wages were less than minimum wage, $3.75 and hour.

I worked At Amy Ruth's Lounge & Barbecue from 9 AM till 5, 6 days a week. 

The staff would eat at a long metal table in the kitchen, fried chicken, greens, cornbread washed down with RC Cola, and hot coffee.

After work, I'd hit Harlem bars; Da Rooster, Jumbo's, Big Time, and others. I was starstruck on Black birds, ladies's confident and brave in the line of fire. 

At Jumbos I'd drink beer Old English 800 with shots of Jack Daniels.

I feel a body brushing against mine. 

I turn me head, it's a little black girl; she looks at me and says, 

I'm Tulip baby, 

hi Tulip I'm Henry, how bout supper baby on me?

They move to a booth it's cool and wet there.

They laugh, drink 7 & 7s, Henry orders ribs, greens, red beans and cornbread, da bread sucks up the booze. 

They eat and drink till midnight then Tulip says, 

You sweet Henry, let's go to your place,

I feel like I've won the lottery.

I lived in the Harlem Flop House, a 1 room place  lined with termite infested wood, you could hear the termites chewing.

We take a bus to Central Harlem passing the Apollo Theater, Moshe's Deli, and Sam Gluck's Shoes,

Tulip says excitedly, 

I love Moshe's Deli, blintzes, and matzah ball soup, and I say, 

you a Black Jew baby.

At Moshes we order a Rueben sandwich, cream sodas, fries, and strawberry cheese blintzes for desert.

I pay, we take a bus to The Harlem Flop house, walking up a few stories. 

Inside we sit on the sofa, the room smells like nicotine, the flower wallpaper in yellow.

We drink sparkling wine, stripping, laying on fold down bed, slowly touching then fucking like crazy. 

Finished and feeling relieved, we take a bus to the Bronx Art Museum. 

There are works by black artist like Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, and Alma Thomas in the for story painted cement building.

We eat some ganja brownies, the paintins come alive, vibrate, we can feel it in our soul.

After a week of shaking up and The Harlem Flophouse, Tulip says, 

Henry there’s a better life for you and me out west. 

We pack light and take a bus to Vegas, never lookin back.