As I've mentioned in prior posts, I recently acquired a second job. A few nights a week, sometimes immediately following my "real job" and sometimes on the weekend, I bartend at the hip hop club that operates on the first floor of my apartment building. Though I had offers to work at brighter, possibly more lucrative, and definately cleaner establishments, I chose this auxiliary position due to its key advantages: it's 3 doors down the hall, my friends and roommates are regular drunks, it's literally in my apartment building, it has super fun events and parties... and did I mention I don't even have to walk outside to get there?
This past weekend I worked my standard favorite event, the Wassabasco Burlesque show, and what I thought would be an awesome party. And I guess it was an awesome party. It was DJ Vic Black (of Gangstarr)'s birthday party. Our dingy, dirty little club was transformed into a bona fide cabaret joint, with black tables and candles. Nina Simone's daughter played and then Paul Mooney did an hour long set. He's pretty funny, but Jesus-H-Christ does he hate white people. I'm not easily shaken, but as I was cocktailing the crowded tables, some of his jokes made me sweat a little.
He fucking hates white people. This is a celebrated man, noted for writing such real and raw material for Richard Prior, for his own stand up, and his brief role on Chappelle's Show as Negrodomus. And his words are real. And it's awful that they're true and it's awful that we laugh. But, god, do we laugh. The crowd, mostly black, in actions and behavior mirrored Mooney's words. They cackle-laughed louder than anything I've ever heard outside of a ghetto movie theater, they polished off bottles of Hennessey, they tapped their weaves, and huddled outside smoking packs of Newports. Mooney joked about fried chicken, big lips and big butts, Mammy, and white cops shooting black men. Some heavy shit.
Though I didn't get to pay attention to his every set-up and punch line, I did catch a few here and there. I was busy taking orders for chicken wings, "Henny" and pineapple (my god, black people drink cognac with anything and everything!). I would be lying if I told you that I didn't feel uncomfortable, if not mildly threatened by some of what he said. And in a way I feel like Paul Mooney, the entertainer wear's my admission like a badge of honor. I'm not too sure if Paul Mooney the man is as calloused and hateful as that. At the end of his set he talked about his living in an mostly-white Harlem neighborhood, equality, and slipped in a little bit about Vietnam, as most Viet-vets are proned to doing. It sort of took the razor sharp edge off of him... not all the way, but maybe down to a dull butcher's knife from the diamond-bladed, full-sized sythe he started out as. Anyway, Negrodomus himself came to play a tiny little club in Brooklyn, I got to serve he and Miss Simone their wings and Alizé, and me and my drunk-ass roommates took the side door home.
For those of you interested in a way-less-acidic flip of the race card, check out Stuff White People Like.
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