Basquiat's Best Bro

Ashley Bradley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kyle was a black dude with permed bangs who moshed to Joy Division and ate, exclusively, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Well, he'd buy the knock-off version from the dime store, dump it in a bowl, and run it under the lukewarm tap in the apartment he shared with his mom, Linda, and her live-in lover, Abraham.

 

Abraham used to tell Kyle to call him "dad", but after Kyle was like "Bro, you work at the post office. You're a cog in the machine, bro.", Abraham stopped telling Kyle anything. He'd avoid him completely in the apartment. If Abraham was in the living room watching news about Lyndon B. Johnson or some shit on their black and white television set and Kyle came in to eat his bowl of room temperature tap water and freeze-dried cheese noodles, Abraham would clear his throat, get up out of his recliner chair he got off the side of the road, and go into the bathroom and sit and read the paper. Probably something about Lyndon B. Johnson in there.

 

Kyle didn't have a lot of friends. When he was younger he tried to be friends with the black kids at school. First, the black boys. He wanted to be friends with this kid Daniel Richardson so bad. Daniel always had the bluest shirts and cleanest sneakers and jeans. Kyle thought he was so cool and tall. His hair was cool, too. It was like, real fresh looking or something. Kyle's hair was always dusty and unkempt. He never got it cut real close to his head like the other boys. Like Danny Richardson.

 

Kyle wanted to blame his lack of father figure on why he always looked so crusty dusty and musty, but most of the other boys were dad-less as well, and they all still managed to look like acceptable human beings, and not garbage animals like Kyle. So then Kyle wanted to blame his mom, Linda. She was kind of a space cadet, and not really all there. She wasn't like the other moms who were always yelling at their kids, which seemed to keep them on the up and up, and non-dusty. Kyle's mom was too busy daydreaming and spacing out to teach him about lotion application, or that showers are a regular thing, not for every once and a while. Kyle was glad his mom was smart and had some government science job, or else she'd be like Paul Rotter's mom, who got sent away to that institution for saying she was a butterfly and trying to fly out of that window. Kyle was glad his mom knew science. He figured it overpowered her looniness a lot of the time, and prevented her from trying to flutter out the window like a goddamn Monarch.

 

So Kyle's dusty, non-lotioned ass wanted to be friends with Danny Rich and his Cool Boy Crew, but was swiftly, almost violently, rejected by them.

 

"You think we want some nigga in here gettin' ash flakes all over our brand new Jordache jeans?" Danny asked pretty much basically rhetorically in front of his crew of friends when Kyle approached, asking if he could sit with them for lunch. "You some sort of comedian?"

 

Kyle shook his head, "No, I could never be Andy Kaufman. He's so transcend--"

 

"Nigga, get!" Danny Richardson yelled, and he stood up and almost did the Heil Hitler sign, but he did his own little remix of it so it looked like a dismissive wave from someone's bitchy spinster aunt, which is completely Hitler's aesthetic.

 

Everyone in Danny's Cool Boy Crew laughed.

 

Kyle wanted to die. But he wasn't big on suicidal ideation. He liked being alive pretty much because he could eat unlimited mac and cheese, and brush his mom's hair while she fell asleep. So he picked himself up pretty quick and decided to turn a negative into a poz. So okay Danny Rich and the cool black boys didn't want him to get his ash on them, but what of the black girls?

 

Nope, wrong move, they were even meaner.

 

Tiffany LaLakes, the leader of the black girls, not just the cool ones, but all of them - their manager more than anything - scoffed at Kyle when he asked if he could join their "set". And she had the audacity to do it while wearing a Polly Pocket necklace.

 

"Nigga, are you for real?!" Tiffany recoiled in horror while wearing pink glitter lipstick. The glitter was these big chunks just hanging off her lips. She looked like a fucking idiot, and simultaneously the most glamorous bitch to ever live.

 

"I am," Kyle said, sort of bowing? If he ever had a chance, he completely salted what was left of the earth with that bow? Why was he bowing? Too many kung fu movies in the middle of the night while eating from the Cracker Jack box. Kyle didn't like the "prizes", they were always really dumb. Who wants some dumb temporary tattoos? Could he get an African grey parrot?? Like.

 

"No, thank you!" Tiffany spit at him, intentionally, but made sure to do it while speaking so it'd look like an accident. But Kyle saw her lips form how they form only when you're basically about to hock a loogie in someone's face. He forgave her, though. Kyle heard Tiffany's mom had Multiple sclerosis. She was probably going through a really tough time.

 

So after the black kids totally rejected Kyle, he decided to tell his mom that he needed to change schools. She initially said no, but Kyle made up some bullshit about how his learning was being stunted being at a "dumb school", and if he was going to be an environmental scientist or "whatever the heck" she was, she was going to have to send him to a "good school", "Where the white kids at. Or at least where the Orientals be at."

 

Though Kyle's mother expressed disappointment in how her son broached the subject, calling him crass for talking bout some "Orientals", she did ultimately end up agreeing. If Kyle was going to amount to anything more than some weird kid who could color really good inside the lines even though it's not that hard, like unless you're blind it's not that fucking difficult, he was going to have to go to a "good school", ie: where the white kids was at.

 

Kyle flourished well enough at white kid private school. There were five black students total. Two were girls: Cindy, who was stamped "Bitch" because she had long hair and never addressed anyone when they spoke to her, and Jerry, who everyone ignored because she had a hump and a tube going through her nose. No one wanted to catch whatever Quasimodo disease she had.

 

Neither Cindy, nor Jerry were competition for Kyle. But the two other black dudes were: Tyler H., and Casey. Both of them were "cool" black dudes, who would've easily fit in back at Kyle's old school, but they also had some weird Caucasian Veneer™ affixed to them, that allowed them to relate to and bond with the white kids. It wasn't that they were being accepted because they were Cool Blacks, but because they were Cool Blacks who could Do White. They were multi-talented renaissance men. Neither of them would have ran away from a black school to try their luck making friends at a seemingly "easier" caucasianally populated school. They'd fit in and be popular anywhere. They had swag in both races, and probably also in Mexican and Oriental, too. Tyler had a weak baby stache, and Casey's eyes were really squinty, and Kyle really wanted to throw up just thinking about being multi fucking racially cool when he couldn't even be one...racially...okayish.

 

But ultimately, solely because he was black, Kyle was considered at least a little bit cool at white school, and was able to, eventually, form a solid white boy fanbase. He even had some of the white girls like Fat Laura, and her "cousin from Ohio", Darlene, asking him if he'd kiss the backs of their arm fat. He said no in daytime, but in the dark was a different story.

 

Anyway, glowing up through white school, Kyle formed his identity based on "Will this make my fans like me more?". So he got really into, like, Ryan O'Neal movies, and calling teachers "old sport", even when it got him a detention every time. Anything for his fans.

 

Kyle never considered his white boys his friends. He never felt they genuinely liked him for him, but that was at least partly Kyle's fault, as he'd just present to them whatever he thought they would like. It was easy to get the white kids to like him once he knew what white kid shit they were into, so he'd just be like "Yes, I, too, love just squirting mustard from the bottle directly into my mouth!". He...actually faked liking white people shit so long that he started to really get into some of it, like using mayonnaise as some sort of all-purpose cure-all, and The Brady Bunch. Kyle really thought it very weird and ratchet, this Brady family, but the more he pretended to like it because his "best friends" Billy and Bobby did, the more he kinda got into it. He really hated that Alice bitch, and didn't understand why Mike was clearly mulatto but no one said anything, but other than that it was pretty cool and he enjoyed watching except for Cousin Oliver episodes and when they went to Hawaii that shit was fucking stupid.

 

But anyway, once Kyle graduated from his private school, he went on to community college, and his white boy fanbase quickly dissipated. It was too difficult for Kyle at community college, the student body was too diverse. He couldn't manage to get a good group of gluesticks going to worship him. So he just decided to drop out because what was the point of being anywhere if you didn't have fans kissing your ass every second because they don't know how your hair works? Fuck that.

 

So Kyle was twenty-three now and, looking back, he has no idea what he's been doing the past five years. No clue. At one point he had a job at some off-brand KFC? Wyoming Wet Wings? It was, obviously, opened and closed in under three months. What the fuck are wet wings? Exactly. So ever since then...Kyle's just been kinda fluttering about like that butterfly Paul Rotter's crazy ass mom thought she was before breaking seventy-three bones in her body and being sent away to "rest".

 

Kyle was grateful that his mom had given up on him a while ago and didn't care too much what he got into. She wasn't making him move out or get a job or anything like he could hear the other black moms in the neighborhood yelling about, and he was just so grateful for her deep family history of schizophrenia and dementia and that she has always had at least a touch of both. It could have gone the other way, too, with that, and he was also glad for that that it didn't. She just stared out of windows a lot and sometimes called him Joseph. All in all, not a bad lot.

 

So Kyle basically spent his days just walking around looking at shit. Looking at people, and dogs, bits of garbage flying in the wind, that dude who pushes an applesauce cart down the street screaming with operatic despair "Apple Sauce! Apple! Sauc--Apple Sauce!" - Kyle enjoyed his days and carefree life.

 

But he was lonely, and wished for a friend. A real one now, not a fan. So of late, he's been secretly on the hunt. Secretly, because he was not even been able to really admit it to himself that he is lonely, and looking for companionship. He had a lot of pride for someone so bummish, and just did not like to admit such things, but he really wanted to share the love he had in his heart with someone. He never really got to do that, not even with his mom. He loved his mom, but she was pretty detached. The only ways he could reach her growing up, was the hair brushing, and pretending he didn't know what species koala bears were. "Are they bears or marsupials??? It's so confusing, mom!". Kyle wanted to hara-kiri open his heart and let all his love and light spill out onto another person, a friend.

 

Being lazy, though, Kyle thought maybe he'd just get a cat or some shit instead. So off he went to the pound, to look at some scraggly, two-legged street warriors. He planned on getting the one that looked the most like Stacy Keach.

 

At the pound, which was very frightening with its Orwellian grey overcast, and death-rattling collection of beasts, Kyle was taken aback by a creature stranger there than any of the animals who some seemed to be screaming in perfect, clear English "Get me the fuck outta here!". It was some random black dude, peering inside the cage of a cat the pound worker described as a "Dishwater Tabby". Whatever that is, don't ask any questions.

 

The weird black dude, who had hair like a disease, asked the pound worker what the cat's name was.

 

"Tinkerbell," she said like vomit was sludging from her face orifice. She was big and grey, like everything else. Her voice sounded like pudding mixed with wet cement. She was gross and looked like her name was Vance.

 

"That's very cute," the weirdy black dude said, sort of teasing his finger at the rabid animal through the cage. It made a terrifying screeching gasp that sounded like Satan had a chokehold grip on that bitch from some hell portal he managed to access through its cage.

 

"Youwanthimornot?" the pound worker burped. Some green chunks came out and Kyle felt sick and had to excuse himself.

 

"Excuse me," he said to no one in particular. No one had acknowledged his entrance or even seemed to know he was there. What else was new post-mediocre white kid school fame?

 

After that venture, Kyle decided maybe he'd join the Army. There were people there to be friends with. Lots of pals. And he could even maybe try to befriend some of their enemies, in case it doesn't work out with the Americans, which, let's be honest, knowing Kyle's propensity to write haiku love letters to Karl Marx, was very very more than likely.

 

After the dystopian steampunk hellscape acid wash nightmare dreamtrip that was his visit to the pound, Kyle decided to go to the park and try to steal food from one of the cart vendors. Kyle did not like to steal, but at the same time, no one really owns anything. We are all free. There is no mine or yours, but ours. Ours ours ours.

 

While sneaking up to snatch some oranges off a fruit cart ran by an Indian man Kyle had heard call some little black kid a "raisin" once, so he didn't feel too bad about stealing his food, Kyle heard someone yelling over by the trees where the acid kids pass out.

 

"Bruh, you're dusty as fuck! I aint looking at no paintings!"

 

Kyle saw this person kick his foot through a canvas some ginger root haired...bla..ck...dude--It was the weird black guy from the pound! How'd he get to the park so fast? And why was that guy in a basketball jersey with no undershirt underneath kicking a steel-toed boot through what appeared to be a painting he'd done? And what was up with the dichotomy of a basketball jersey and a steel-toe work boot? Where do you even work that requires a steel toe? Was he a miner? Frankenstein's monster? But why would Frankenstein's monster need a steel toed boot? He's already like the Hulk, chill.

 

Speaking of chill, "Hey, bro, chill out!" Kyle found himself saying to Steel Toed Boot, which he immediately regretted upon approaching him and realizing he was like eighty feet tall and looked to be made of granite. Cool. Cooooolcoolcooool.

 

"Who the fuck is this?!" Steel Toe asked in a high, squeaky voice. His jersey said Chamberlain on the back. "Who the fu-Who. the. fuck. is this nicca?!"

 

The squeaky voice did not make him any less intimidating. It actually reminding Kyle of the black moms from his first school right before they unleashed a can of whoop ass on their kid for "talking back" even though they had been demanded to answer, but anyway.

 

Weird Hair just shrugged. A little too casual for Kyle's taste. A little too blasé blasé. Kyle had just run over there to save his life and here this nigga go shrugging like they was eating froyo at TCBY.

 

"Bro, just...can you just leave him alone?" Kyle asked Steel Toe, shaky as hell. He still felt he'd be respected anyway for standing up to him. Respected, but still probably steel toe kicked to death. In the end they'd say he was a hero. It wouldn't matter at fucking all, but they'd still say it. Actually, probably not. Most would call him an idiot and some would even spit on his grave. How dare you stand up to someone wearing a Wilt Chamberlain jersey so boldly with no undershirt and army green cut-off khakis as knee-shorts. Steel Toe was serving looks. No one ordered any of the shit, but he was still serving it, nonetheless.

 

"You know what this nigga try to do?!" Steel Toe barked, and Kyle braced for death, "This nigga gon' ask me to look at some fucking painting 'n shit, like imma nigga who got gay eyes or some shit! Like I'm some little butt boy or some shit. I look like a butt boy to you?!"

 

Kyle felt very strongly this was a rhetorical question, and that if he answered he'd be beaten with an Ebony magazine like those black moms from his old school. But he knew he could not just stand there staring at this man, who, actually, kinda did look like a butt boy. Kyle had never before in his life ever thought of the phrase "butt boy", never mind wondered what it meant, but now being asked to define it, all he felt he needed to do was point at the man standing before him. But though Kyle was largely pretty slow, he knew enough to know that that would definitely not allow him to keep being alive so he can continue complaining about the whack prizes in the Cracker Jack box, so he, whilst drooling a little because he hadn't realized his mouth had been hanging open the whole time, shook his head no.

 

"Nah! I aint!" the dude yelled, and to be honest, it was giving very the gentleman doth protest too much, but, sips chamomile.

 

Then he just walked away. But stopped about twenty long steps away to turn around and give a last minute review. "Them pictures shit anyway! Look like doodoo! Go work at the post office, nicca!"

 

Weird Hair winced, and Kyle totally understood. Abraham, his snake fake-stepdaddy, worked there, too. Kyle knew what a loser you had to be to hand out mail for the government, he knew how Weird Hair felt inside to have someone say for him to go work there.

 

"Hey, sorry, bro. Sorry about that totally not cool bro just now." He kneeled down to help pick up a few pieces of the canvas that Steel Toe had ripped off with his fairly rude kicking problem. Keep your hands and feet to yourself, the woman who ran the latchkey daycare Kyle went to as a kid used to say. Miss Molly. He always remembered that. He always thought that was fair advice.

 

"Did you know him?" Weird Hair asked. "Was that your dad?"

 

Kyle looked deeply into this weird boy-man's face. Was he doing a joke? "Ha...no?"

 

"You don't know?"

 

Kyle was afraid, but felt something else? Excitement? Indigestion? "Um, no. Uhhh. No that wasn't my dad. I don't know that guy. Do you think we were...trying to run something on you, or..."

 

Weird Hair laughed lightly and Kyle felt like a fucking huge dummy idiot.

 

"Oh, you were like joking or being facetious or...one of those?"

 

"I'm still unclear on whether or not that was your father," Weird Hair smiled and Kyle wanted to throw up, "But that's okay, we're not our dads."

 

Kyle shook his head, "I don't know my dad." He shrugged, "To be honest...that could be him."

 

Weird Hair laughed and Kyle felt a sense of relief. He had done an intentional joke almost kinda sorta this time, so the laughing was warranted? Maybe?? "My name is Jean-Michel Basquiat," the Weird Hair dude said, putting out his hand that was covered in callouses and paint and he was fairly a pretty dusty and ashy dude if Kyle wanted to be honest, "and I'm a butt boy. Are you?"

 

Kyle shook his equally ashy hand onto this Jean-Michel nigga's hand and turned up his face, "The hell kinda name is that? You France?"

 

 

John Meech, which Kyle decided to call him, even though John Meech was like "no", asked Kyle if he wanted to go look at some of his other "doodles". Here, Kyle thought he was being propositioned for gay sex. He'd heard about these weirdie art dudes, but it didn't seem like some great threat to him like it did to other people he heard talking about it, but being faced with the prospect of having to suck the nips of some crusty, paint-splattered artiste was slightly more than Kyle could stomach. It's not that he was anti-homosexuals, but he wasn't exactly pro them either. Or at least, not pro having to suck on one of them. But tbh, it figured better than joining the Army to try and befriend a bunch of milk teeth dudes from Arkansas, so Kyle ultimately shrugged internally and decided he was gonna suck some doodler nipple. It's not like he had anything else to do.

 

John Meech's loft, or whatever he called it, was pretty weird, but not as weird as Kyle was hoping/expecting it'd be. It just had a bunch of canvases with doodles on them up everywhere. Bunch of weird skulls and one canvas had a bus or maybe a stoplight? on it. All the shits looked like Halloween. Kyle dug it pretty much. He was glad John Meech made "cool" art and not some weird frilly shit with like cats wearing bows or some suspect shit he'd have to cringe-smile at while holding vomit down as he attempted to complinsult it.

 

"Cool art, bro," Kyle was like and he didn't feel like throwing up for one second.

 

"Yes, very cool," Jean said, mocking him, while doing some surfer dude sign with his hand. "Tubular, bro."

 

"Fuck off," Kyle said, hurt as shit. He flipped his permed bang out of his eye and tried not to cry. The last time he cried was when he realized Murder, She Wrote can't be on TV forever. It's fucking bullshit! Wait - reruns! Kyle forgot about reruns oh mygodddddd!!!!!! "Wait, whoa whoa, whom the fuck is that?" Kyle asked, pointing at what appeared to be a foot soldier from the Skeleton War. Or, not--maybe a colonel. He looked fancy or something. But like a corpse. Look like John Meech's weird ass dun dug up a corpse and just sat the shit up in his studio. To be honest, Kyle loved it. John Meech's art was so very...like, abstract or some shit. But like absurdist also? But like coloring with shitty crayons at IHOP alsoalso. It was so, so.

 

"Oh, that's Andy," Basket was like, mad nonchalant. He named the corpse he dug up? That was so him.

 

Then the corpse rose up out the chair he was sitting in like a tomb throne, and he walked over to John Meech and said, "Hey."

 

Kyle wanted to scream until he died like that corpse John Meech had up in his loft. It was just talking and shit. Halloween was not for five months. But Jean's whole aesthetic seemed to be Halloween every day, but to be honest, it took away the creepiness and made it seem like a theme park ride. Or maybe not a theme park, but like some shitty carnival that comes through town every year with its rickety ass rides but you love it because it's like nostalgic and absurd and so many people keep getting killed and injured. And there's corn dogs.

 

"Who's your friend?" the corpse asked. He had a toupée and it looked like it was made out of Victorian children's screams.

 

"This is..." J Basket started, but then remembered Kyle's doofy ass never told him his name. Who just brings someone up to their flat and they don't know their name? Maybe Basket felt safe because Kyle had that permed bang.

 

"Kyle," Kyle was like, shaking, and wishing he had a corn dog to hold as a distraction.

 

"Kyyyyylllle," this decayed corpse sang. He smoothed his clammy hand over his fake Christmas snow hair and smiled and it made that creamy noise. "A new boy."

 

Chills went down Kyle's spine. The last time this happened was when he thought he caught a sex moan coming from his mom's room after she and Abraham had left the living room when he came in to change the channel to Nash Bridges even though they were already watching In the Heat of the Night.

 

"We met at the park," John Meech smiled. "He saved me from a horrible man wearing a basketball jersey."

 

Corpse Bride fake shuddered, "How dreadful."

 

Kyle agreed but he stopped himself from nodding. Nothing. Nothing. Was more dreadful than that shit up top his head, so he needed to fall back.

 

Rat Test Experiment turned to Kyle and had the audacity to ask, "Would you like some ravioli?"

 

Kyle pulled back a bit, "You're just offering me ravioli in some other dude's home?" He turned to Basket, "Is this your dad?"

 

John Meech laughed like Kyle was joking. Jean Meech was starting to seem...mixed. "I remember that from earlier! Good callback!"

 

"No, I'm not joking, John Meech!" Kyle said in a panic, getting scared, and frustrated that it seemed like he and John Meech weren't about to play Scrabble like he'd planned for them to do alone in his head without discussing it with John Meech and also without the knowledge concerning whether or not he had the board game in his possession for them to even play.

 

"Is this your dad?! Why is he offering me ravioli? And what is that on his head?! How are you laughing at the dude in the basketball jersey when you have a skeleton friend who stole scalp hairs from the hairbrush of someone's ailing grandmother?! I don't understand, John Meech. I don't understand you at all."

 

John Meech looked sad, "You don't want to be friends anymore? I thought we'd play Scrabble..."

 

"Oh my god, yes, me too!" Kyle screeched, jumping up, forgetting all about everything. "I had this whole plan in my head like...we're gonna play Scrabble, then we're gonna have some bread sandwiches...though it looks like maybe you have money so maybe you can spring for some bologna?" Kyle waited for John Meech to answer, and when he nodded yes, continued, "and then I thought we could knit each other some blankets and then after that go to the butterfly museum, or just skip the blanket knitting because I've never done that before in my life, but I do always fantasize about--"

 

"I have crochet hooks," The Ghost of Christmas Past offered, pulling out a bag of crochet hooks from his man purse, which was Marilyn's Monroe's head with a bullet wound in the front. It looked all hand-sewn which was cool, but what was not cool was mocking Marilyn's death she was an icon it's not funny she's not JFK.

 

"Look bro, like," Kyle went, cupping his hands, getting into rare for him Black Man Aggression Mode, "But like can you leave? I'm just trying to hang out with John Meech one on one. I don't know who you are...like if you're his dad or something weird, and I don't want to be rude, but at the same time I feel uncomfortable because you look barely alive, and you have all those crochet hooks for some reason. Also I don't think it's funny to mock Marilyn Monroe like that she didn't even die by gunshot wound the government poisoned her because she knew John Kennedy was really a mulatto like Mike Brady so it's not funny and I'm just in general not digging your vibe and I feel like I was put on Earth to protect John Meech. Like when I met him today getting his shit kicked in I just got this strong feeling that I was meant to be his guardian angel and never get a real job or anything, so, like, this is an a & b convo so c you're way out, bro. Unless you have mozzarella sticks, then you can stay."

 

Andy Warhol did have mozzarella sticks, and the rest was history unfortunately.