Alisa: A Story of Race, Sex, Class, and Shame

“You drunk asshole! Is that what it is now, you’re a drunk? A 15-year-old alcoholic? You friggin’ asshole! I’m telling your father to get his ass up here!”             “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…” Sobs.                A grimaced face, the universal expression of grief at, perhaps, the human condition itself. Though, like Shakyamuni Buddha, I had not yet been exposed to the full ravages of sickness, old age, and death. Are we all brothers and sisters in suffering, or did I suffer more than most? Others endured their own trials and travails of lack and grief, but at least most of them found themselves placed and ensconced in either a close familial unit or the larger community.             I felt so alone (most of the time… at least Lewis and Trish and who the wha’ the…)      ...

SEPTEMBER 1995: “Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…”             Freshman year of Wall High School. Cousin Myra had graduated the year before. She had not put the word out for me; talked to the Juniors (now Seniors) below her; the “jock and cheerleader crowd” elites who looked up to her. She had neglected to wax-stamp a royal letter of introduction to a cornucopia of preppy pussy; had not scanned my Wonka Golden Ticket to the exalted ranks of microcosmic fame and fortune. Though a “look out for him” or “do not fuck with him” or “make sure nobody fucks with him” order would have been enough, especially in such a prison-like environment. “Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…” “Like a twister I was born to walk alone…” Whitesnake is bland and overplayed. “Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh… Huh…” I never breathed, but only hyperventilated. I never perspired but dripped the sweat of a savage, the last member of an uncontacted Amazonian tribe, a Neolithi...