"Ellison, Harlan - Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Jenny was gone, and Kenneth Duane Markham was gone, and soon enough Rooney would be gone from me. All I wanted to do was get back to Los Angeles and try to be someone else. The taste of tequila was still strong in my throat, and I knew that would help a little.
--Tijuana and Hollywood, 1963
THE UNIVERSE OF ROBERT BLAKE
And this is what Robbie Blake learned that day...
On the bus, an old man in an overcoat--so hot for July, that shapeless, whatcolor rag--sat mumbling to himself, next to the window. Occasionally he would rub his palms against stubbled cheeks, a sound like new sandpaper to Robbie's ears.
When the old man got up and left the bus, Robbie Blake saw a small dirty-white card thrust into the window-frame. He moved across the aisle and pulled the card out of its slot in the anodized aluminum frame. It said, very neatly:
BO BO THE CLOWN
Available for Picnics, Clubs
and there was a number, an address. Robbie Blake replaced the card precisely, for even at six years of age, he knew a man has a right to advertise.
Later that day, looking out from behind the billboard at the side of the clothing store, Robbie saw a fat woman with a mustache, carrying a shopping bag at the end of either meaty arm. One of the bags burst as the fat woman passed Robbie's waiting-place, and he watched carefully as she got down on her knees--in stages, like a great beast unhinging itself at a waterhole--puffing, sighing. He watched her as she retrieved the packages of frozen foods, the asparagus, the oranges. There was something very natural about the fat woman. Something essential. Robbie Blake watched, and remembered.
A big truck with EMPIRE HAULING on its side went past, and Robbie dashed out from behind the billboard to catch the truck as it stopped by the corner. He pulled himself up onto the lowered tailgate and grasped the anchor chain firmly in both hands as the truck moved with the changing traffic light. Robbie rode along with the smell of his world whipping past; the smell of the rotting gourds in the sidewalk markets; the smell of oil and grease, rainbow puddles among the bricks; the smell of chemicals from some tiny manufacturing company on a side street. He looked and looked and everywhere people dashed and walked, doing things with paper and leather and words. He smiled at the gray sky that promised rain, and he stuck his tongue out when a policeman made a short move to haul him off the fleeing truck as it whipped through an intersection.
Finally, Robert Blake tired of his truck ride, and slid to the edge of the tailgate. When the truck paused for breath at another traffic light, Robbie bounced down and dogtrotted away, in a new place, with wonderful things to see. He saw a shop with bright and coppery bracelets, and a man in a great wide hat. The window of the shop said MEXICO ARTS and Robbie knew where Mexico was. It was someplace downtown, very far downtown in another country.
What it is, to be six years old, is to need to go to the bathroom frequently. That is part of it.
Robbie Blade needed to go to the bathroom, because he had had three papaya juices at 'Nrico's stand, before he had stood behind the billboard, watching the fat woman who might have been his mother or somebody's mother, maybe. So he looked for a place to go.
He saw a group of people going into, and coming out of, a big restaurant called FELLOWS' RESTAURANT in red and blue neon lights that went on and off in the late afternoon gray. He decided if all those people were going in and coming out, that at least one of them must have had to go to the bathroom sometime or other, and if that was so, then there had to be a bathroom inside. (Never say "I have to go wee-wee"; always say "I have to wash my hands," Moms had said to Robbie.)
Robbie Blake, just like all those other people--well, not quite; shorter, perhaps, but pretty much the same--strode purposefully to the restaurant, and went through the revolving door. It was cool inside, and hard to see very well, but he walked around, and listened to the people eating and talking to each other. He stared over the shoulder of a man cutting a baked apple with a fork, and smiled when the man tried to get a piece too big into his mouth. The man half-turned as Robbie smiled (was it a sound, not a smile?) and gave a snort of annoyance. Robbie moved on.
This was a fine world; a fine, fine place to be a little boy, with people eating and talking and taking too big bites of baked apples.
The bathroom was still very important, but in a world as nice as this, well, such things can wait a few minutes longer. After all, one can always cross one's legs and stand hidden in a corner, waiting.
Robbie knew the words to look for, and when he saw the door that said GENTLEMEN, he recognized MEN and went inside. A man with a bow tie and a blue shirt was washing his hands, and he saw Robbie in the mirror, and he chuckled softly, saying, over his shoulder, "Pop, this one yours?" and Robbie saw another man, wearing a white jacket, with a towel ready to be handed to the man with the bow tie.
The man in the white jacket (oh, didn't he look nice and important dressed up that way) gasped, and laid the towel down on the sink next to the fellow with the bow tie. He came to Robbie very quickly, and took him by the shoulder, and dragged him out of the room that said GENTLEMEN. He pulled him through another door, and Robbie suddenly smelled all the wonderful brown and green and pink smells of food. Food that called to him and said I am meat! I am tossed greens! I am something you don't know, very nice! It was a kitchen, and Robbie wanted to faint with pleasure. Oh, such a grand world.
Then the man in the white jacket was kneeling in front of him, saying, "Boy, watchu doin' here? You crazy or somethin'? You know you can't come in here!"
Robbie did not understand. He smiled nicely at the man in the white jacket. "Hello," he said, politely as Moms had taught him to do.
"Don't be smilin' at me that way, chile! I'm tellin' you it's trouble for you in here. They don't allow it!"
Robbie was confused, but he mustered another, tinier smile, and said to the man in the white jacket, "I hadda use the bathroom."
The man took Robbie to the swinging door that led back into the restaurant, and he pulled it open a crack.
"Look." He pointed. "You see alla them people? They can use the bathroom, but not you. Now you g'wan get outta here befoah we all get hell!"
Robbie knew what was right. He was just like everyone here. He had a right to use the bathroom. He said so.
The man in the white jacket frowned and pulled the swinging door open again. "Now look, boy, I mean really look. You see them? They not the same's you. They white. Now look at you, look at me. Are we white?"'
Robbie looked at his hand. It wasn't white, that was true. He looked at the man in the white jacket. He wasn't white, either. But what did that have to do with the bathroom? Did it mean he wasn't ever allowed to go to the bathroom? It would be very unhappy and painful if that was so.
Then the man in the white jacket--who was very black and almost bald, except for a few curlicues of wispy whiteness that came out of his scalp--was hauling Robbie to the back door of FELLOWS' RESTAURANT, and opening it into the alley, and putting Robbie outside in the growing darkness.
He paused, and bent down, and said, very softly, so the cooks and waiters and busboys rushing would not hear, "Boy, someway you haven't been brought up right; din't yoah parents tell you the way it is? You better learn, boy. You better learn."
And he pushed Robbie gently, out onto a loading dock, and closed the door, the light narrowing to a splinter and then all gone, all gone. Robbie stood in the darkness and waited for something more to happen. But nothing more happened.
Then he turned, ran to the edge of the loading dock, jumped down, and walked very quickly to the end of the alley.
For a very long time Robbie stood in a doorway, nothing but his eyes seeing out, his body, his strange black body hidden. He watched everyone as they went by. He stared very carefully, as he had stared at the policeman, and the fat woman, and Bo Bo the Clown who was available (which seemed a nice thing to be).
After a very, very long time, he felt he understood.
Then he went home.
It had been a full day, a surprising day--and one filled with learning things. Robbie Blake had learned what it meant to know, and what it meant to watch, and what it meant to live. Somehow, his education till then had been love and kindness from Moms, and respect from his sister and his three brothers, and no one had mentioned the Difference. But now he knew.
Robbie Blake had learned many things that day. He had learned which colors were right, and which were wrong; he had learned what color hands must be to open certain doors, and what color thoughts must be employed to exist in the fine, fine nice world. He had learned when to lower his eyes.
And most of all he had learned what it meant to be a nigger.
And most of all he had learned:
It is not enough for a little boy to know his place in the Universe.
He must also know which Universe is his.
And that is what Robbie Blake learned that day.
--New York City, 1962

G.B.K. -- A MANY-FLAVORED BIRD
So garbled was my secretary's mind, that early in the morning, that I had to call Western Union later in the day, and have them read me the telegram again; even then, in the clarity of a monotoned operator's recitation, the message barely made sense. It read:
CAMPAIGN MATERIALIZING TO ROCKET YOUR
FORTHCOMING MOVIE "THE LATTER LIFE OF GOD" INTO
INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL GOLD MINE.