“Flatbush by Car”

Outline of a skit about a lesbian couple living in Flatbush. LW and I performed it at a talent show organized by Caribbean Pride, and held at the Audre Lorde Project in August 1999.  Feel free to add your own (experience?) version of content for both scenes!

Scene 1: Errands

Car alarm

–         no batteries

–         use key

–         knock on window

Car Confusion

–         dirty windshield

–         radio

Route

–         post office

–         dog food

–         overdue video

–         library books

–         stop by Auntie Dell; she say to stop by

Seatbelt

Bad driving

–         air conditioning

–         near accident with motorist

–         pot holes (cough)

–         stop sign – girl watching

–         air conditioning

Ambassadors

–         hail up friends

–         gossip session

Reach post office – park vs. double park

–End—

Scene 2: Red Herring

Switch drivers

Can I turn on the AC?

No- I smell stew peas.  You nuh smell it? That smell good, sah.  What we going to eat for dinner? I tired to eat macaroni…

I don’t know…probably red herring with something.  I saw a piece down there in the fridge

Silence….How long that piece of red herring in there now?

I don’t know.  It  no matter. It won’t go bad. pause. Right?

So, if you not sure, how you planning to cook it?  The thing in there so long it nuh have any smell anymore.  And is me you want to go eat that?

So come up with an idea nuh?  Is me one have to think of something to eat?  Chuups…

You feel for Chinese…

Kinda.

We have money?

No…plus we have to go back home to order, cause you know how them take long…

Pointing – Pull over so we can stop at the bank…you never hear what me sey? You just drive right pass the bank…

You nuh see the dollar van cutting me off…

And why we have to drive on Flatbush Avenue in big-big rush hour, anyway?  It’s like you choose the longest route with the most traffic….you can make a u-turn right here…

Where?

Here so…you drive right pass it – chuups.  Alright.  Yuh feel for saltfish and bakes?

No sah.  Is hit or miss.  The last time you buy it, it taste like the lady season it with kananga water.

But you never say anything when I gave it to you.

Nooo….

I don’t feel for no saltfish.  How about that fish?  From that jerk place?

What place?

The place down on Flatbush – near Parkside.

What place? Oh, but that nuh in the other direction.

So we can’t turn around?

Remember we have to go to Canarsie to go buy the car part, so we should just go….

But Canarsie is behind us!  Why we can’t go buy the car part tomorrow or something?

Well I want to do it today, since the repairman told me last week that I should bring it in this week so he could work on it.  That way, you can just go drop off the car in the morning.

What you mean drop off the car?  I have an appointment at 9 o’ clock.

You have an appointment?  You didn’t tell me anything.  The car has to go in the shop, or we won’t get it back in time…

To do what?  We not going anywhere this weekend…

You forget?  We have to drive up to Albany to ….

To Albany?  For what?

To go take…stop acting like is the first time you hearing this – oh…

Uhm huh.

I never tell you.  I could swear I told you….

Uhm huh.  I’m hungry.  What we going to eat?

And that jerk place so dirty. And all them men up in there.  I don’t want to go all the way back down there and deal with that.

So what we going to eat then?

Silence

We have some smoked herring…

So, can I turn on the air conditioning, babe?

Yes.

Whose Culture is it Anyway?

I don’t remember why I wrote this, but I am saddened that it still speaks to the current moment. Much has changed – in both directions – so I remain hopeful.

It has become quite commonplace to hear someone from the Caribbean will say “it’s against [name an island nation ] culture to be gay” or “that’s a foreign thing, we don’t have that here.”

And it is also very difficult to come up with a response to that kind of argument.  Where do you start?  How do you begin to sift through the values that you have taken for granted as “Caribbean” or “West Indian”, to find the one thing that may be affirm your sexuality?  How do you say that I am Caribbean and Lesbian without being considered a strange cookie? If it is illegal in the Caribbean to be gay, how can you [willingly] be both at the same time? Strange cookie indeed…

Within the past year, Jamaica, along with several Caribbean and African countries have taken public stances against homosexuality as a “contamination” of the local culture.  Indeed, the idea that a gay identity is a “foreign import” strikes a bitter chord, because indeed, where has much of the organizing been happening around sexual identity? Certainly NOT in our backyards.  These sentiments have long laid dormant, or have been cemented into laws and social policies of these countries so that it is taken for granted that “we are illegal.”

It is quite a shock – a bitter pill to swallow – as we have stood by and watched these arguments take on new life and take center stage in the backlash against lesbians and gays in the Third World organizing against the conditions that oppress us daily.   Much of that organizing has been both a protest against the ways “culture” is used to malign and misrepresent us, as well as the violence – physical, economic  and political – that is waged against us to deprive us of basic social rights, including the right to speak out against the conditions which make it unsafe for us to be fully human.

Why should we organize? Because, in Audre Lorde’s words, we were never meant to survive.   Because to make change, only “we” can do that. When we organize, we use our collective voices to make positive change.  We are responsible for what we believe.  And if some members of our society are being unjustly victimized, then we have the responsibility to address that.  Not to say, well that’s just how it is, or always has been.  Can we see another way that is more fair, that is more just? I think we can. I think we must.

March 10, 1999