Try To Make It Real a short story by Clayton Hardiman The way he felt went past most of what he had heard. It was beyond that initial lightheadedness children feel against park benches with open wine bottles in their laps. It even went past that almost casual religion sophisticates play with at social gatherings or those nappy headed paragons of guilt sleeping it off on the cinders down behind the tracks. It made almost no sense. There was nothing to compare it with. It was actual numbness. It could have been a lie. He told himself that, staring at himself in the mirror sucking his lip. Holding himself between his legs as if he had really just finished pissing. As if he had really missed a little and dampened the floor. It could have been one of those lies. He should have been cold. There should have been pain somehwere. He didn't even wrinkle his nose at the very real smell of human shit. He didn't even care that the floor was rugged cement. His face was that calm. He knew he wasn't going to stay here until a cop came in and found him drunk and weeping against one of the commodes. It could have been a myth. It was a weight much too heavy to play with. He pushed out of the latrine and made his way back past the crowded bar to his own empty booth. He pushed back into it, out of everybody's sight, wanting to believe he could people in that context. Two Greek mechanics Slapped it hard against the table and the sound bury himself in the leather cushion. He knew he nonchalantly moving their stools and predictably was louder than he had wanted. He watched '-he was being childish but he finally realized that near the end of the bar closest to the door. The people at the bar turn around and stare, shyly childish was exactly what he wanted to be. He old wasted niggers, some scattered carelessly amused smiles plaguing their drunken faces. had to make himself remember that what he was along the bar and others clumped together in Some nodded at him possibly out of feeling now wasn't childishness. It was numbness various booths, all of them managing somehow embarrassment. Out of forgiveness to him for and, remembering that, he didn't want to think. to chew their whiskey. High class whores, hair shattering the concentration they had cultivated He did anyway. About what he would be years pulled into tight buns and cheeks scrubbed, wives and directed toward their drinks. When he later. About old frozen bodies he had seen from of tired helpless businessmen engrossed in their glanced up again he saw a young woman out of time to time crumpled on someone's front steps. hackneyed ulcers. The proprietors hustling some other time or bed staring at him from He hated thinking these sick thoughts. He behind the bar and scowling specifically his way, under her mass of red unnatural hair. Sad lewd could sense it already. The whole bar smelled of needing Ills booth or wanting his money or grin barely touched him. He was half-afraid she what he was thinking. Of age and dead life. He watching him smile lewdly at his fingers. would beckon to him and wreck his mood. surveyed the bar, thinking that no one in the And he himself was, after all, a human being. It "Just sit there," he said but not very loud. building could have been very close to death. was enough that he could look at and recognize "Just spread your thighs over the hardness of They were all his contemporaries even if only in people without being recognized himself. He that stool. Find your face in that glass. Don't try the sense of having been born, by chance, at the knew that he was unimpressive, that to anyone to involve yourself with me." same time but he was as foreign to them as he looking he was lost in his huge ugly grey suit. He was smiling and she had been watching his was invisible. Some of them belonged in That he was small and bug eyed and seemed to face. She laughed, knowing he must have said churches, furtively sleeping on their knees behind have lost control of himself, slobbering elegantly something amusing and empty. He saw that she numbered pews and it was only thru their own down the front of his shirt. That he was very wanted to close the space between them. confusion or maybe an excess of communion evidently drunk and the transparency itself was No, I'm not horny or even desperate. I'm just wine that they were sitting in this bar now. ridiculous. He knew someone must have thought sitting. And some of them had to be the dark half he was a cop in horribly plain clothes. Hell, it She pointed in his general direction. His hand shadows he saw passing on the street in early wasn't actually him sitting there almost curled floated instinctively between his legs until he morning when he stood at his open door driven with anguish in a corner of the booth. He was realized she referred to the envelope. His eyes up out of sleep by his own hazy thoughts. It sure no one would have recognized him. were on her, then on the envelope and he ripped infuriated him, thinking about these people and He glanced up and saw the proprietor with it open. A welcome back card. "Glad to see you their ignorant attempts to save their own lives. what must have been the bill in his hand coming back" and her name scribbled over the last lines Some recited prayers. Some committed crimes. toward him, dressed in a suspiciously clean apron of print inside. None of them could have known he was there. and long baggy pants, still scowling, a clear And he sat there puzzled at whatever it was He flopped back against the cushions and intimidation, but he was hoping the proprietor had just died in him on that fifteen cent card glowered at whatever was directly in front of would see how stupid and useless an act it was. until he looked up at that really vulgar smile she him. He suppposed it was meant to frighten him into had on her face. It must have been her drunken And he knew all of them thought of themselves paying and quickly moving his melancholy ass evaluation of what she thought she saw when she as god in one capacity or another. Poets and somewhere else but in a happier mood it looked at him. And looking at her, he finally criminals, Christians and winos, they were all wouldn't even have made him want to smile. The placed her and and came from some time that going to get roaring drunk beyond the point of proprietor silently placed the bill on the table was already dead in his life. And understood vomit and make new rules for the destruction of and stalked off, the bill turning out to be no bill what that smile meant. the world. They would all be shaken by whatever but an envelope with his name written across the He said something just loud enough for her to it is enrages people and would react with screams front. hear, just unreasonable enough to understand. It in various language. His face was in one hand staring senselessly at was too heavy to play with, but he wasn't sure He sensed that later he would have to laugh at the table and everything on it as if it would be, in that he wouldn't remember this later and try, at this. At these people giggling effeminately at the end, somebody's messed over life. If the least, to laugh about it. He opened his lighter and each other. Although as people they were never night were left for him to interpret, he had been set the envelope on fire. Holding it above the completely useless. That is, each one of them dragged in from the street for the more table and making her see it. Fanning the smoke could have claimed something. To have nonsensical reasons that lonely people use their toward the bar. succeeded somewhere, to have been something. empty lives thinking of. No one wanted to feed People turned back around without their smiles To have lived. To have made it, perhaps, with a him or save his soul. He concentrated his stare on this time, some of them still clutching their preacher's daughter in the grass behind a statue the envelope, wanting to believe that he didn't drinks and looking very ready to dash out if the on one of the traffic islands downtown. All of have the slightest desire to know what this was place was really on fire and the proprietor was them must have had some standard worth, some about. Who had sent it. The simple why. He took awav the hand holding his face. (continued on the back) redeeming factor. They were, after all, unique The of Inma Editor's note: This critique of inmate pretty girls by untrained artists, religious art exhibit folk-art or romantic landscapes. now on display in The Kellogg Center was done by William S. Gamble, What you do find is much more associate professor of art. Gamble has sophisticated. Take the two pieces that served since 1962 as consultant to the art relate to landscape. John Woods' "Song of Earth" is a paean of color and movement, program for inmates at The State Prison of Southern like Mahler's symphony. Aaron Gilleylen's Mich^an in Jackson. Although some of the art works that "Reaching for the Sun," actually a group Gamble mentions are not shown here, his of foursmall pieces, also uses a somewhat observations capture the style similar approach. and temper of the artist. Johnnie Jackson's small oil called "City Scape" is so rich in glowing night BY WILLIAM S. GAMBLE lights and a dramatic fountain of fire that Associate Professor of Art it is primarily a tension of mood rather than a depiction of city. Does it Imagine yourself, if you can, as having symbolize the welling-up of the Detroit been convicted of a crime. You are riots? The fire fountain certainly can be incarcerated in seen as an awesome and fearful thing a state prison and enrolled in an art program that is witliin the in the m idst of the city. Edward prison's school. Now, what would you McLaughlin's "Peace & Black paint? Chances are, these circumstances Realization" more specifically details the would involve you in a conscious or turmoil cf blacks in the city. unconscious attempt to express youself Vernon Maxey's "Untitled" silkscreen and to find yourself - to establish your print has the structured beat of color and of God from the Sea identity as an individual of worth and form that also is based on his involvement dignity. with jazz. His "Sacrifice to Ogun (God of fluid society. You have a past to live down, expiate Iron)" uses the window contained within If you were in these circumstances, (even to the point of desperation). squares to present an African theme. what would you paint? That is the Depending on your personal or Jackson also uses African subjects for two question to ask yourself when looking at of his paintings, "Walking and Weaving" psychological disposition and the progress IA9: Inmates' Art Ninth Annual of your rehabilitation, you think of and "The Spirit Looks at the Creation of Exhibition, now hanging in the south God from the Sea." This latter painting yourself as having been unlucky or guilty. corridor of Kellogg Center. These works, You see a lot of your fellow inmates, the has most unusual imagery that is by inmates at the State Prison of prison guards, staff, but far too little of myth-oriented. Southern Michigan in Jackson, will remain your family or friends. Jackson's water color, "The Book of until June 18. This could be your first real attempt to Life and Knowledge" uses a striking The quest for identity is certainly express the strong complex of emotions near-symmetrical design, an "X" that visible. It is seriously intense, subjectively that have been seething inside you, for divides the picture: above, the book involved, varied, and to a large extent you find that in art these things find toward which a hand points and a head concerned with black themes. With this expression more easily and fully than in looks; below, a crouching figure blows a perspective, it is surprising to observe any other way. Though prison has conch horn; left, a suckling child; right, what has been painted and how it has been heightened your bitterness, the artwork Wilt Chamberlain looks toward the center which reflects your rancor is more readily painted. where Little of this art is escapist. You will a figure is inferred by placing a red accepted than if you had put your feelings eye on a pair of legs, and a cross on top not find the common prison-art themes: into words. the eye. All the figures are slate black. If you happened to be black, your search for identity would be involved with the social - educational - economic problems of your minority group, compounded problems which exist in a Kipendo Cheusi Book of Life and Knowledge Carl Smith Another striking black piece is CarJ Smith's relief-sculpture "Reflection." Constructed of painted wood with some collage, it is unusually well-crafted. On a black, grey and white background one City Scape sees the back of inmate 96953 in a central cage. To the right a black-hooded figure, death or time, climbs the steps of years; to the left a brown Eve holds an apple. Above this are other symbols ranging from jazz on the left to a view through a recognize for the first time that the know now because of what I might find out For window at the right. The only other piece Afro-American who is so often second in this story is me, our story, not his story. I think directly concerned with prison life is freedom was also second in slavery. Malcolm X, King, and the two Black Panthers In 1617 the white man created a system of who gave their lives for us, Mark Clark and Fred Gilleylen's "Roach Walk," which pictures white slavery that lasted over two hundred years, Hampton. For I know who I am. a cell. as they sold their own like cattle. The white — Sonto Monqund The broader conflicts of society are slaves who were property of a master were featured in two other works. branded like other livestock. 1692-1700, the McLaughlin's "War" is a collage that black bondsman become numerous on the mingles starving Biafrans with victims of plantation. 1668, the blackman was bred with war in Indochina. Lafarrel Furlough's the white woman to get big and stronger slaves, "Rebirth of the Azul Eagle" shows two mostly Irish girls were used. This started in eagles fighting. The one in chains is Jamaica in 1668. It was not rare for the colonial shackled to columns symbolizing the savants who near the end of the period were sometimes driven from place to place to be sold "Establishment." One chain is broken. to the best advantages This is the American eagle in double . . . image. The "hawk" eagle and "dove" The text on the right reads: eagle, two parts of the same thing, battle each other - most unusual imagery. Masters given to flogging often did not care The enigma of personal identity seems whether their victims were black or white. Cheap to be behind Gregory Harvey's "Inner labor to tend tobacco's immediate requirement of the struggling American colonies in the 17th Man," a water color featuring a seated and 18th centuries and the system of procuring figure holding a large eye. Several other works vary the enigma theme. Larry Sim's and employing such labor was perfected with the white man indentures before it was imposed on "The Puzzled Image" uses puzzle-like the black man. This is a letter of the past, who to pieces fitted loosely together to configure say what I am but us. Whatever it takes to get my a large figure against a black background. freedom, then I do it. I once thought that the Rebirth of the Azul William Cocker's "Kipendo Cheusi" uses Eagle Furlough whites hated me because of my blackness, but I black line to inseperably entwine two figures in a double-image. Finally, two pieces have written messages. Gilleylen's "Black Anthem" reads as follows: Lift every voice till earth and heaven ring - ring with the harmonies of liberty. Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod — felt in the days when hope unborn had died. Yet with steady beat have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come a way that with tears has been watered we have come, treading our path through he blood of the slaughtered. Avery Evans' "History" shows the head of Sonto Monqund against an open book with chained hands below. On the left page is "His-story" and on the right "Our-story." The text of these two pages Sacrifice to Ogun - God of Iron is given in this order: When we look with unclouded vision on the bloody shadows of the American past, we will ' nigger, this old broken wino. finch raced snuIT - ■ nosed wreck. Why for Christ's sake? You bitch, you whore" — he remembered years before telling her she smiled like a whore. She had fallen across the bed and cried. It had shocked him. It seemed too long ago to have anything to do with this. Now she just smiled crookedly. "You know better than that. You know." It took a meaningful tone. As meaningful as hurt. As injury. As her face, darker than he remembered and slick with sweat. It was drama, she was making it happen. He wasn't going to be able to stop it. He knew it. It was in their breathing, their smells. "Does he know something nobody else does? What does he do to you?" This had to be meaningful too. "Did he pay you?" "No," she said. She was standing in front of him. "I paid him. He's better than you ever were." fe#v ii£ jfe"" V" ■ !■ He hit her with the flat of his hand. She took step backward. The figure rustled a little. His hand throbbed on the bed may have a $'// „- /!£> For an instant he saw powerfully. ?Vf^ Vv/ wl^- •/&' §£ nothing. He was leaning against the wall without knowing how he got '4H there. She was laughing at him outright. He saw it, he couldn't see how he had ever missed it. She knew he was feeling pain. There was no way she couldn't know it. I paid him. He's better than you. Ever. "You can say that? Knowing who I am, you can stand there and say that? Your face soft and your smile crooked and gas rumbling thru your belly and you can say? This nigger is old, baby, he's not long in this world. How much strength can he have? He ain't for you, baby he's dead already." "Don't do that. That kind of talk won't It won't change help. anything. Do you know how much like a simple bitch you sound? I thought leave the door open on a cold-assed you knew something." (continued from the front) night like this. He smiled, he hoped, "I do know sentimentally because something. You drag in some old he knew cold-assed was the way she would have derelict, the smell of piss all over him. I know screaming something about dammit are you trying described this particular night. He had something. How much can he to set me on fire and shithead put that thought it mean to anybody? thing out would be funny and it was. He was You tell me, how much is he worth?" He saw her and the young woman's smile was almost clear consciously trying to think shake her head. Slick enough to reveal some of the fear she must ha»e as he thought she would. disgust. Everything he was been It was in his mind that this was the one place in doing, everything he said would turn to screams. feeling. the world he could claim to have known. He He was going to hurt her, if he Until finally he stood could, without and moved past all of wasn't going to wait. He stumbled down those turning hysterical but in the end it wouldn't them and into the restroom. Just when it would broken steps and shouldered his matter. "IH tell you. He ain't worth shit. What have reached his way inside fingers he shoved the fire without knocking. Whatever was does that make you?" awkwardly thru the seat of the commode into going on, he She went to the stove and threw the mess she wanted to see it. the water. The smoke hit him full in the face and She glanced up at him out of the dark little had been cooking into the trash can. She he straightened, put the wiping his hands across the seat corner where she stood pot into a badly stained sink and turned to face of his pants. His against her electric stove. thoughts were turned toward "Hey baby" she said calmly and caught a drop of him. Her hand was above her eyes. Shielding them the shithead the raging redfaced proprietor had something rolling down the side of the pot with possibly or stroking away the ache she felt. Her called him. He moved first toward the door but her finger. She hadn't belly bulged thru her clothes with hurts and realized that the proprietor could changed, he was sure, her sounds. Her dress was probably break eyes coquettishly large and obscene and her clinging in the places a his face, since he had never won a whore's dress will cling. Her whole face fight in his life finger in her mouth. She said don't when he puckered and avoided that certain beating whenever he closed the door behind himself. and he thought she would cry but she started could. He looked around, his "Trying to air eye catching the this miserable place out." laughing almost too softly. No, I paid him. He's mirror. He crossed to it and slammed his whole better. He ignored that and asked whose smell she was arm into it, twice, cracking it beneath his fist and trying to get rid of. She looked directly into his "You beggar, you freak, what a piss poor trick elbow. eyes but he wouldn't look away. It wasn't until you try to play on people. Damn what it makes He didn't know whether he was bleeding or not her eyes darted off into another me," she said and her laughs got louder. "What when he came back out. He part of the room consciously avoided that he followed them and saw what she must does it make you, stud?" looking at his arm but there must have been have wanted him to see all the time. A I paid him. I paid. I paid. something. People followed him with their eyes. dirty aged Her voice was wild and nigger sitting up and tangled naked in the sheets rasping. It horrified Someone, drunker than he was, stretched out an of her bed, looking for all the world like a faded him. He wet his lips and started arm and almost touched him. protesting. She Mohandas Gandhi. was laughing too loud, she wouldn't listen. He He sat down quietly in his booth to finish his screamed at her to shut up. He screamed his He said shit as viciously as he could. It was like drink. The proprietor watched him whole image at her and warily and that. That pain. An instant of wet heat that had everything he had may have vaguely gestured for him to leave but its own dubious strength in its odor. He touched thought before at the bar. Age and death and god he didn't see it and wouldn't pretend he had. He in all capacities, only words now instead his injured hand with the other. It was so sick. of took the glass into his hand and held it between ideas. Words that screamed at He was plagued with the simplest needs. It had to everything. Liar. both hands like a child, thinking that most of Whore. What about me? I be logical. There was pain, there had to be paid. I paid. I paid. what was happening to him could have been a lie. blood. His hand came away red and he had that Screaming beyond any sense. He had been right, it didn't matter. sensation of having something torn out of his Only she was still laughing and One hundred forty odd lbs. he he hit her with all his estimated, of flesh. might. His hand throbbed. flesh and blood (but not bones Bones are hard He hit her again. And . "Who is he?" he said finally. His voice sounded again. He was paying. and cutting. They have no place in this "Okay that's enough," the old man said to him strange. Thru the course of things he realized he profession. They are useless in comfort. They had expected that hoarseness from the bed. have nothing to do with love, vicarious or wronged lovers He turned around always develop when they find out they've been clutching his hand against his otherwise. Ask any osteologist). She had stomach. He eyed the skinny bearded little always wronged. He was sensitive now. It was as if none nigger carried the weight well. He would know who was out of the sheets and of the tilings in the bar had happened. He tugging a pair of immediately when he saw her if she had changed smelled the misery she had referred to, felt the filthy jeans up over his ankles. He made his voice at all. disparaging and said, "You pain in his hand. Heard his own dull voice saying, want some too?" The wind rose crazily, (nature His hand was worse he wasn't going to be evidently) in "Who is he? Where did he come from?" now, that purposeful mood that wipes out lives able to do anything. He stared at thin naked by "Come on now," she said tenderly and put steel thousands and spoils picnics. His hand and backed away from the bed. A short sob stung down the pot. Moved across the room easily and burst sharply. The pain was more than he would have put her hand to his face. Actual flesh there. out that didn't even sound like his. Then he ever anticipated. He wondered at what he had Actual pressure. "You don't know him. He realized he didn't have to cry. He said okay and undertaken in the bar. He knew he was weak. It backed to the door, then turned and dashed doesn't know you, does he?" she called out wasn't even in character. He shook his hand thru suddenly up the steps, leaving the old man on the bed and to the old nigger and without the air and decided he wasn't going to think waiting for an the girl huddled silent on the answer turned back around. "Come on, what floor. about it. It was all he could do not to run into difference could it make?" He couldn't believe it. He was hung up in the aesthetics of the thing. thousand-year-old niggers all over the street, He wheeled away from her and threw His hand was unbearable now but up his knowing it shocked into rare soberness by cold dirty air. He would get worse gave it a weird kind of hands, the act trying to convey as much of this beauty. stepped off the curb and walked in the street for fitful helplessness as he thought was He had no idea where he was possible. going and didn't a while. "For Christ's sake. An old man. For Christ's care. He wasn't going back to the bar and there When he got there he stared from the top sake." was no place he could think of to go without step down into the half-open basement door and She watched him in silence. Then ultimately lying to himself. He knew only that he knew that she couldn't be there because she, finally, "Don't be so young, dammit. What's the matter was walking in the street avoiding with her ungodly greed for heat, would never with you?" thousand-year-old niggers and the old man's voice was still in his ears.