The Sellout

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016

Paul Beatty

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781786070166
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations

A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent) * One of the New York Times' '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'

A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD SATIRE ABOUT RACE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, BY A LITERARY GENIUS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, 2016

In his trademark absurdist style, Paul Beatty will make you laugh and cry in this outrageous – and outrageously entertaining – indictment of our time.

Born in Dickens on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that this work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a drive-by shooting, he discovers there never was a memoir. All that’s left is a bill for a drive-thru funeral.

What’s more, Dickens has literally been wiped off the map to save California from further embarrassment. Fuelled by despair, the narrator sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. The results will take him from Dickens to the Supreme Court, in the trial of the century.

‘Outrageous, hilarious and profound.’ Simon Schama, Financial Times
‘The longer you stare at Beatty’s pages, the smarter you’ll get.’ Guardian
‘The most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read.’ New York Times

APPLES AND ORANGES

Seventeen

I’m frigid. Not in the sense that I don’t have any sexual desire, but in the obnoxious way men in the free-love seventies projected their own sexual inadequacies onto women by referring to them as “frigid” and “dead fish.” I’m the deadest of fish. I fuck like an overturned guppy. A plate of day-old sashimi has more “motion of the ocean” than I do. So on the day of the shooting and drive-by orange-ing, when Marpessa stuck a tongue suspiciously tangy with satsuma tartness into my mouth and ground her pudenda into my pelvic bone, I lay there on my bed—motionless. My hands covering my face in shame, because fucking me is like fucking Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus. If my sexual ineptitude was a problem, she never let on. She simply boxed my ears and worked my beached-whale carcass over like a Saturday-night wrestler looking for revenge in a grudge match I didn’t want to end.

“Does this mean we’re back together?”

“It means I’m thinking about it.”

“Can you think about it a little faster, and maybe a little more to the right? Yeah, that’s it.”

Marpessa’s the only person to ever diagnose me. Not even my father could figure me out. I’d make a mistake, like, say, misidentify Mary McLeod Bethune for Gwendolyn Brooks, it’d be “Nigger, I have no fucking idea what the fuck is wrong is with you!” Followed by all 943 pages of the BDSM IV (Black Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition) flying at my head.

Marpessa sorted me out, though. I was eighteen. Two weeks from finishing up my first semester of college. We were in the guesthouse. She—thumbing through the bloodstained BDSM IV. Me—in my usual postcoital position, rolled up into a ball like a frightened teenage armadillo, and crying my eyes out for no earthly reason.

“Here, I finally figured out what’s wrong with you,” she said, snuggling up to me. “This is what you have, Attachment Disorder.” Why do people have to tap the page when they know they’re right? A quick read-aloud will suffice. You don’t have to rub it in with all the smug finger tapping.

“Attachment Disorder—Markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness in most contexts, scenes, and happenings. Beginning before age five and continuing into adulthood as evidenced by either 1. and/or 2.:

1. 1. persistent failure to initiate or respond in a developmentally appropriate fashion to most social interactions (e.g., the child or adult responds to caregivers and black lovers with a mixture of approach, avoidance, and resistance to comforting. May exhibit frozen watchfulness). Hoi Polloi Translation—The nigger flinches or jumps whenever you touch him. Runs hot and cold, and has no friends to speak of. And when he isn’t staring at you like you just got off the banana boat, he’s crying like a little bitch.
2. 2. diffuse attachments as manifested by indiscriminate sociability with marked inability to exhibit appropriate selective attachments to black people and things (e.g., excessive familiarity with relative strangers or lack of selectivity in choice of attachment figures). Hoi Polloi Translation—The nigger fucking white hos out there at UC Riverside.

It was a miracle we lasted as long as we did.

I stared at her blurry silhouette for a long time before she poked her head from behind the chessboard-patterned shower curtain. I’d forgotten how brown she was. How good she looked, her stringy hair clumped to the side of her face. Sometimes the sweetest kisses are the shortest. We could discuss the clean-shaven pubes later.

“Bonbon, what’s the time frame?”

“For us, from now until. For the segregation thing, I’m thinking I want to be done by Hood Day. That gives me another six months.”

Marpessa pulled me in and handed me a tube of apricot scrub that hadn’t been opened since the last time she showered off here. I rubbed the exfoliant into her back and scratched a message into the grainy, supposedly skin-softening swirls. She always could read my writing.

“Because between that nigger Foy and the rest of world, this shit’s going to catch up with you sooner or later. Forget the racial segregation, you know motherfuckers wasn’t too keen on Dickens even when it did exist.”

“You were in that car today, weren’t you?”

“Shit, when Cuz and my brother picked me up from work and we drove back here, soon as we crossed that white line you painted, it was like, you know, when you enter a banging-ass house party and shit’s bumping, and you get that thump in your chest and you be like, if I were to die right now, I wouldn’t give a fuck. It was like that. Crossing the threshold.”

“You threw that fucking orange. I knew it.”

“Hit that stupid motherfucker square in the face.”

Marpessa pressed the crack of her shapely rear end into my groin. She had to get back to the kids, we wouldn’t have much time, and knowing me, we wouldn’t need much time.

Despite that initial scratch of her seventeen-year itch, Marpessa insisted we start slow. Since she worked weekends and put in crazy overtime, we had to date on Mondays and Tuesdays. Our nights on the town were trips to the mall, coffee shop poetry readings, and, most bothersome for me, open-mike nights at the Plethora Comedy Club. Marpessa hated my Wheaton-Chaff segregation joke and insisted that I improve my sense of humor by learning to tell a joke. When I protested, she’d say, “Look, now you ain’t the only black man in the world that can’t fuck, but I refuse to go out with the only one with absolutely no sense of humor.”

From the music clubs to the jailhouses to the fact that you can find Korean taco trucks only in white neighborhoods, L.A. is a mind-numbingly racially segregated city. But the epicenter of social apartheid is the stand-up comedy scene. The city of Dickens’s paltry contribution to the long-running tradition of black funnymen is an open-mike night, sponsored by the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, that on the second Tuesday of the month transforms the shop into a twenty-table club called the Comedy Act and Forum for the Freedom of Afro-American Witticism and Mannerisms That Showcase the Plethora of Afro-American Humorists for Whom . . . there’s more, but I’ve never managed to finish reading the temporary marquee they hang over the giant donut sign that hovers over the parking lot. I just call the place the Plethora for short, because despite Marpessa’s insistence that I had no sense of humor, there were a plethora of unfunny black guys who, like every black sports analyst trying to sound intelligent, use and misuse the word “plethora” at every opportunity.

As in:

1. Q: How many white boys does it take to screw in a light-bulb?
2. A: A plethora! Because they stole it from a black man! Lewis Latimer, a black man who invented the light-bulb and a plethora of other smart-ass shit!

And believe me, jokes like that would get a plethora of applause. Every black male, I don’t care what shade or political persuasion he is, secretly thinks he can do one of three things better than anyone in the world: play basketball, rap, or tell jokes.

If Marpessa thinks that I’m not funny, she never heard my father. Back in the heyday of black stand-up comedy, he also dragged me to the Tuesday-night open mikes. In the history of American black people, there have been only two with the complete inability to tell a joke: Martin Luther King, Jr., and my father. Even at the Plethora the “comedians” would occasionally lapse into unintentional humor. “I’m auditioning for a role in Tom Cruise’s newest movie. Tom Cruise plays a retarded judge . . .” The problem with open-mike night at the Plethora was that there was no time limit, because “time” is a white concept, which was fitting, because the problem with my father’s comedy was that he had no sense of timing. At least Dr. King had the good sense to never try to tell a joke. Daddy told his jokes the same way he’d ordered pizza, written poetry, and written his doctoral thesis—in APA format. Following the standards of the American Psychological Association, he’d toddle onstage and open up with the oral equivalent of a Title Page. Stating his name and the title of the joke. Yes, his jokes had titles. “This joke is called ‘Racial and Religious Differences in Drinking Establishment Patronage.’ ” Then he’d deliver the Abstract of the joke. So instead of simply saying, “A rabbi, a priest, and a black guy walk into a bar,” he’d say, “The subjects of this joke are three males, two of whom are clergymen, one of the Jewish faith, the other an ordained Catholic minister. The religion of the African-American respondent is undetermined, as is his educational level. The setting for the joke is a licensed establishment where alcohol is served. No, wait. It’s a plane. I’m sorry, my mistake. They are going parachuting.” Finally, he’d clear his throat, stand too close to the mike, and deliver what he liked to call “The Main Body” of the joke. Comedy is war. When a comedian’s routine works, they’ve killed; if the bits fall flat, they refer to it as dying. My father didn’t die onstage. He martyred himself for that other unrecognized completely unfunny black man who, just as there must be extraterrestrial life, is out there somewhere. I’ve seen self-immolations that were funnier than my father’s routine, but there were no gongs to ring or oversized canes with which to pull him offstage. He’d just ignore the booing and segue from the punch line to the Conclusion. The Results of the joke were a smattering of coughing. A chorus of vocalized disapproval and a plethora of yawning found to be significant. He’d end with the joke’s Reference Section:

“Jolson, Al (1918). ‘Sambo and Mammy Cleared for Takeoff on Runaway 5,’ Ziegfeld Follies.

“Williams, Bert (1917). ‘If Niggers Could Fly,’ The Circuitous Chitterling Tour.

“The Unknown Minstrel (circa 1899). ‘Dem Vaudeville Peckerwoods Sho’ Am Stealing My Shit,’ The Semi-Freemason Hall, Cleveland, Ohio.

“And don’t forget to tip your waitress.”

Even though she’d be exhausted from a long day transporting the masses, Marpessa would make sure we arrived early, volunteering me for comic duty by putting my name at the top of the signup sheet. I can’t tell you how much I dreaded hearing the emcee introduce me. “Now put your hands together for Bonbon.”

I would stand on that stage feeling as if I were having an out-of-body experience. Staring out into the audience and seeing myself in the front row prepping rotten tomatoes, eggs, and spoiled lettuce heads to throw at the droll motherfucker telling every ripped-off, antiquated Richard Pryor joke he could remember from his father’s record collection. But every Tuesday night Marpessa forced me to take the stage, saying that she would continue withholding sex until I made her laugh. Usually after my so-called routine, I’d return to the table to find her fast asleep, unable to tell if she was exhausted from work or from boredom. One night I finally managed to tell an original joke, that in homage to my father had a title, albeit a rather long one:

Why All That Abbott and Costello Vaudeville Mess Doesn’t

Work in the Black Community

Who’s on first?

I don’t know, your mama.

Marpessa cracked the fuck up, rolling in the thin space between the folding chairs that passed for an aisle. I knew the sex drought would end that night.

They say never laugh at your own jokes, but all the best comics do, and as soon as the open mike was closed, I sprinted outside and hopped aboard bus #125, which was parked right outside the club, because Marpessa was using it as the family car, afraid to let the rolling memorial out of her sight. Before she could even think about releasing the parking brake, I was already lying naked on the backseat ready for a tinted-window quickie. Marpessa reached under the driver’s seat, pulled out a large cardboard box, dragged it down the aisle, and dumped the contents in my lap. Burying my aching erection in two inches of report cards, computer printouts, and progress reports.

“What the fuck’s all this?” I asked. Sifting through the paperwork so my dick could get some air.

“I’m acting as Charisma’s go-between. It’s early yet. It’s only been six weeks, but she thinks the segregated schooling is already working. Grades are up and behavioral problems are down, but she wants you to confirm those results with some statistical analysis.”

“Goddamn it, Marpessa! It’s going to take just as long to put all this shit back in the box as it will to do the math.”

Marpessa grabbed the base of my penis and squeezed.

“Bonbon, are you ashamed of my being a bus driver?”

“What? Where’s this coming from?”

“Nowhere.”

No amount of my amateur ear nuzzling was able to erase the wistful look on her face or make her nipples erect. Bored at my attempts at foreplay, she slipped a progress report into my pee hole and twisted my dickhead around so that I could read it like it was the Early Bird dinner menu. A sixth-grader named Michael Gallegos was taking subjects I didn’t understand and getting grades I couldn’t decipher. But according to the teacher’s comments, he was showing marked improvement in something called number sense and operations.

“What the hell kind of grade is a ‘PR’ ?”

“PR means shows proficiency.”

Charisma had intuitively grasped the psychological subtleties of my plan even as it was just starting to make sense to me. She understood the colored person’s desire for the domineering white presence, which the Wheaton Academy represented. Because she knew that even in these times of racial equality, when someone whiter than us, richer than us, blacker than us, Chineser than us, better than us, whatever than us, comes around throwing their equality in our faces, it brings out our need to impress, to behave, to tuck in our shirts, do our homework, show up on time, make our free throws, teach, and prove our self-worth in hopes that we won’t be fired, arrested, or trucked away and shot. In essence, Wheaton Academy is saying to her students what Booker T. Washington, the Great Educator and founder of the Tuskegee Institute, once told his uneducated people: “Cast down your buckets where you are.” While I’ll never understand why it had to be a bucket, why the shortsighted Booker T. couldn’t recommend that we cast down our books, slide rules, or laptops, I did sympathize with his and Charisma’s need for an on-call Caucasian panopticon. Believe me, it’s no coincidence that Jesus, the commissioners of the NBA and NFL, and the voices on your GPS (even the Japanese one) are white.

There are no greater anaphrodisiacs than racism and a report card in one’s urethra, and when a half-naked Marpessa clambered on top of me, both she and my penis laid their sleepy heads down in the vicinity of my belly button, she still clutching my phallus, having gone to wherever it is bus drivers go to dream. Flight school probably, because in Marpessa’s dreams buses can fly. They arrive on time and never break down. They use rainbows for bridges and clouds for docking bays, and wheelchair riders roll and yaw alongside like fighters protecting a bomber wing. When she reaches cruising altitude, she clears flocks of seagulls and niggers migrating south for the rest of their lives with a horn that doesn’t beep but plays Roxy Music, Bon Iver, Sunny Levine, and Nico’s “These Days.” And all her passengers make a living wage. And Booker T. Washington is a regular rider who, when he boards the bus, tells her, “When you see Bonbon, the Cosmic Sellout and your one true love, cast down your panties where you are.”

Eighteen

Come November, about six weeks after the shooting, I was making good progress with Marpessa, but less headway on what were, since I was now having sex on a semiregular basis, the two more immediate goals in my life, segregating Dickens and raising a successful potato crop in Southern California. I knew why I couldn’t get the potatoes to grow, because the climate’s too warm. But when it came to thi...

Table of contents

• COVER
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• TITLE
• CONTENTS
• PROLOGUE
• THE SHIT YOU SHOVEL
• THE DUM DUM DONUT INTELLECTUALS
• EXACT CHANGE, OR ZEN AND THE ART OF BUS RIDING AND RELATIONSHIP REPAIR
• TOO MANY MEXICANS
• APPLES AND ORANGES
• UNMITIGATED BLACKNESS
• CLOSURE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• COPYRIGHT