My Dad Loves Popeyes Organizations and I Love My Dad

Kiese Laymon

Ben Carson is not my father. Ben Carson is My Dad. Earlier today, My Dad was tongue-lashed by this Golden Girls cousin–looking White woman on national TV. My Dad said it’s harder to make him the victim of a high-tech lynching if he doesn’t have a neck, so he successfully made his neck the opposite of erect.

My Dad is hilarious. I love My Dad.

Right before the high-tech lynching, My Dad gave back over $30,000 worth of love seats, waterbeds, lotion dispensers, and butter knives he bought for Mama. Right after the high-tech lynching, My Dad told me that the entire political charade was an inevitable consequence of working for Uncle D to The. “It’s a witch hunt,” My Dad said from the passenger seat of his Lexus. “But niggas gotta eat, son. And we eating so good, son.” This is how My Dad talks in his Lexus, the bedroom he shares with Mama, and the basement of our six-story home that is five stories bigger than yours.

My Dad’s skin is so supple. I love My Dad.

When My Dad gets embarrassed on TV or in print, he likes to eat at Popeyes organizations. I stayed out in the car while My Dad walked into the Popeyes organization on the corner of Jackson Avenue and Highway 6. As soon as My Dad walked in, I could see My Dad get swarmed by Black folks fiending for selfies and autographs. The Black patrons of the Popeyes organization looked longingly into My Dad’s eyes, surprised that My Dad was so handsome, so fine.

I love My Dad.

All of a sudden, I saw that something near the cash register had the attention of the Black patrons of this Popeyes organization. Three people ran out of the Popeyes organization yelling, “They shooting,” and, “Chile, somebody ’bout to shoot Ben Carson up in Popeyes,” into their cell phones. My Dad was no longer in my line of vision, but I wasn’t worried. I know from previous trips to other Popeyes organizations that when Black folk run out saying, “They shooting,” and, “Chile, somebody ’bout to shoot Ben Carson,” there are rarely shots and no one is ever actually attempting to shoot My Dad.

Still, I slid My Dad’s semiautomatic weapon into the back of my waistband, got out of our Lexus, and burst through the doors of the Popeyes organization to see what high jinks the Black patrons in the Popeyes organization were up to.

Two cashiers, surrounded by at least sixteen Black patrons in the Popeyes organization, were six inches from each other, arguing loudly. Both held their left hand in their right fist until it was time to make their most effective points. I considered the hand gestures quite Negroid.

“You see that fruit punch?” the short cashier with the long ashy neck said to the tall cashier with wet lips. “That fruit punch ain’t just make itself. See how that shit cascade up, down, all around that container? That shit ain’t cascading ’cause it want to cascade. I made that shit cascade. When I got here, that shit was just sitting in basic white pitchers. No kind of style. Fuck is wrong with you questioning my Employee of the Week status?”

“Right, right,” the cashier with the juicy wet lips said back to the cashier with the ashy neck. “You see that shine on them biscuits, though? Do you see that shine, nigga? That’s all I’m asking. Do you see that shine? I ain’t met nan biscuit that woke up this morning and said, ‘Let me bathe myself in this regal-ass butter before I start my day.’ I did that shit. And I learned to paint with butter interning at Red Lobster, Papa John’s, and then at the movies. Ten years it took me to learn my craft. I brought that biscuit fashion here. When I got here, you know good and well that the butter was in the biscuit batter. Wasn’t no kinds of shine. Am I lying?”

“She ain’t lying,” a few folks from the kitchen said to each other. “She did do that.”

“Brothers and sisters,” My Dad said to both workers in slow-bop public-talk style. “As I’m sure you know, I would never ever support a living wage, but please know how much I appreciate your labor. You are all Employees of the Week to me. That cascading fruit punch, there’s nothing better when my throat is parched. That buttered coating on those rolls, it is really some kind of exquisite.”

No one corrected My Dad when he called a biscuit a roll. I love My Dad.

Both cashiers came around in front of the counter. I thought My Dad and I were going to have to fight some Blacks at the Popeyes organization by the look of their eyes. But we didn’t. The cashiers hugged My Dad’s neck, took more selfies, and apologized. My Dad told the cashiers that strange things happened every time he entered a Popeyes organization. Then he made me go out to his Lexus and get his bag. My Dad calls his bag his “grip.”

When My Dad placed the grip on the counter and unzipped it, I saw thousands of Amazon gift cards. “I’m going to leave these with you people on the condition that no one in here tells anyone in the media where you got these. If I hear on the news that I blessed your rusted working hands with these gift cards, I will be forced to immediately cut off service to these cards. Let’s go, son.”

On the way out of the Popeyes organization, the cashier with the wet juicy lips asked the cashier with the long ashy neck if My Dad was saying “rusted” or “rusty” or “rustic.”

“Rusted,” I told the cashiers. “My Dad called your Black working hands ‘rusted.’”

I love My Dad.

My Dad and I were in the Lexus for fifteen minutes before either of us said a word. “You ever think it’s strange,” I asked him, “how Black working people call you all kinds of names on the internet, but every time we run into Black working people in real life, it’s like they love you?”

“Niggas love me,” My Dad said to me. “Why is that strange to you?”

“Yeah,” I told My Dad. “I mean, why do you think they’re so nice to you in person, but…”

“Because they know,” My Dad said.

“They know what?”

“They know niggas gotta eat. They know a hustle when they feel one. They know a hustler when they see one. They know this is all bullshit. Same reason they loved Obama.”

“What’s bullshit? And Obama, he loved them, or at least acted like he loved them.”

“Right. That was his hustle, son. Niggas loved that hustle.”

“So Black people will love any Black person who hustles themselves to the national political stage?”

“You gotta be hated by White folks for us to really support you,” My Dad told me. “We love a clean nigga hated by White folks. But even if you’re loved by White folks like me, privately, niggas know the hustle. This ain’t new, son.”

“But if you could get love by loving Black people, why make hating, or hating on, Black people part of your public performance and hustle?”

“Two reasons,” My Dad said. “One is that White money spends way better than Black love. Black love ain’t buying us no leather couches, no leather coats, no leather pants, no fine cutlery. I been successful since you were born. Have we ever ate as good as we eating since I started really fucking with these racist-ass White folks? If all these brothers out here slanging little dime bags decided to use their little platforms to shit on niggas and hoist up White folks, do you know how much better they’d be eating?”

“Not really.”

“Exactly. Second, it’s all about suicide bombing, son.”

“What you mean?”

“I mean, people think this political apparatus is about greed. Maybe. But it’s really about old-ass White people not being okay with just harming themselves. Why is there a minimum age requirement for the presidency but no maximum age limit, son? These old wealthy White motherfuckers want to hurt themselves by applying for jobs that will kill them faster, but they want to hurt us too. They hate themselves. They hate us too, though. And then they hate the country by extension.”

“Hillary Clinton?”

“Lackluster-ass suicide bomber.”

“Biden?”

“Lazy-ass suicide bomber.”

“Bernie?”

“Loud-talking, one trick pony-ass suicide bomber,” My Dad said. “Look. Did you see a seventy-five-year-old working at Popeyes or anywhere you have to actually do work?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Exactly. Do you see any niggas lucky enough to make it to seventy-five fiending to be president of anything? Niggas who make it to seventy-five with money are trying to sit they ass down somewhere, watch some Family Feud, and not lose they money. The last thing I want at seventy-five years old is the hardest job in the world.”

“That explains them,” I told My Dad. “But what explains you?”

“I’m a nigga. I look good, but I’m old. I gotta eat,” My Dad said as we pulled into the driveway of our house that is five stories bigger than yours. “That explains me.”

We sat out in the garage. I looked out the front windshield as My Dad finished eating the life out of his last Popeyes biscuit. My Dad asked me why I looked so confused.

“Don’t be confused, son,” My Dad said. “The question is how healthy can a nation be when its racial majority’s appetite for Black, Brown, Muslim, and nasty women’s suffering is literally insatiable? For real, this is really one of the only questions that matters. As long as that appetite can’t be quenched, hating on niggas will always be a thorough hustle. And this,” My Dad said, “is a question with an answer that will never qualify as Breaking News, son.”

Earlier this summer, My Dad and I took a road trip across country in his Lexus where he told me everything that was going to happen to D to The’s administration. While I was watching a fifty-four-inch television on the twenty-sixth floor of a Mississippi Gulf Coast casino, Boyz II Men were on television singing to a White woman with an apparent belly full of gas. I felt so much shame for Boyz II Men. But like My Dad said, niggas gotta eat. When the commercial went off, there was Breaking News that My Dad already predicted.

A man who looks like an American Psycho remix of That ’80s Guy from Futurama was enjoying telling reporters how much “respect” he has for Sean Spicer and how much “love” he has for D to The. The American ’80s Psycho Guy kept saying, “One more question. Should we do one more? Let’s do one more.” My Dad said that American ’80s Psycho Guy loved attention too much to be good at anything that required listening. Like D to The, he seemed to lack shame, humility, home-training. But unlike D to The, he could be fired. My Dad said he would not last a week.

Later that night, while I was on one of the beds looking up YouTube videos and My Dad was brushing his waves in the hotel bathroom, Ced the Entertainer came on the television over-enunciating every syllable while earnestly looking at the camera talking about My Dad’s “diabetic nerve pain.” I felt so much shame for Ced the Entertainer. But I understood. Niggas gotta eat, and My Dad has diabetic nerve pain too.

Near the end of our road trip, I asked My Dad how anyone who had ever seen the tens of thousands of empty United States miles could talk about building a wall to keep people out. “White folks love to keep darker people out of things, son,” My Dad said. “And as long as this shit is true, someone will capitalize on that. This ain’t new.”

All of a sudden, there was Breaking News on SiriusXM. Mueller apparently convened a grand jury. I looked at My Dad and waited for him to say something. My Dad looked afraid. Eventually, he said, “Oh well. Guess this shit will be ending sooner than I thought. Barack Obama was the best president White folks ever had, son. He just was. The nigga was hired to clean up their mess. He cleaned that shit up. In way more ways than White folks on the left and right want to admit, he saved them. Saved their jobs. Saved their retirements. Saved their health care system. Saved their country. And what do most of them do? They despise him for it.”

I asked My Dad if he felt that way, why was he working for Uncle D to The? My Dad just looked at me without blinking, and this was hard because My Dad blinks more than you. My Dad sucked his teeth. My Dad ran his palm over his waves. “My bad,” I told My Dad. “Because niggas gotta eat, right?”

“What in the world am I doing?” My Dad said to himself. “What in the world am I doing?”

That was then.

Tonight we are home from a trek to the Popeyes organization on Jackson and Highway 6. “Donald is in trouble, and when this is all done, he will eventually be destroyed not because of what he’s done to vulnerable Mexicans, Muslims, White women, queer folk, poor folk, and Black folk in this country, and not because his White ass conflates the health of his reputation with the health of the country,” My Dad says as we sit in the Lexus. “That mediocre man is headed toward absolute destruction because of money laundering, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and really because of what he dared to say about the media and the intelligence community while working with, and really for, Vladimir.”

“Right,” I tell My Dad. “But what about you? Aren’t we eating good enough? Can’t you walk away and spend the rest of your retirement at home singing and eating that dark meat with Mama?”

My Dad ignores my question and gets out of the Lexus. As we walk through the door, he says, “There is no clean work for any Black person in this country who wants to be rich.”

“Is there clean work in this country for any Black person who wants to be free or healthy?”

My Dad is standing in the kitchen. He’s looking me directly in the eye. I see My Dad thinking, wondering, wandering. “There is cleaner work at that Popeyes organization,” My Dad tells me. “But who would you rather be? A clean, hungry, Black rusted hands–having nigga who works at a Popeyes organization, or a rich, sellout-ass nigga who stays full like us?”

I love My Dad too much to answer his question. My Dad loves me too much to wait for an answer. I look down at both of our hands. Our palms are not rusted or rusty. Our palms are actually quite rustic.

“Us,” I finally tell My Dad while he is laying his head in Mama’s lap eating that dark meat, tears sliding down his beautiful face. “Right,” My Dad says. “I’d rather be us because we are eating. We are compromised, but so are all niggas. And so are all Americans. But niggas gotta eat. And we are eating so well.”

I love My Dad.

Kiese Laymon is a Black Southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. A professor of English and African American studies at the University of Mississippi and distinguished visiting professor of nonfiction at the University of Iowa, he is the author of the novel Long Division, an essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the memoir Heavy.

QUESTION, ANSWERED

Here we consider the question: how does humor inform the way you move through the world?

Kenrya

You know those sad clowns? The ones with the red lipstick smeared down to their chins, the painted-on furrowed brows, and the scraggly orange hair grazing their collars? The ones who make people cringe and titter uncomfortably as they recognize their own pathos in their downer one-liners?

I’m not one of those.

I’m more like: Where does she keep digging up these Black-ass gifs? Yup, she’s right, that is a word, bitch, your auntie is hella shady funny. As my Bumble connects know, my hobbies include baking, reading, getting lost in Twitter black holes, and talking shit both inside and outside. My texts are full of side eyes, laughing so hard they’re crying faces and skulls, ’cause I stay killing it in my “this seat’s taken”–ass group texts. And I’ve been known to earnestly describe myself as a funny bitch, ’cause, Aries.

My sister Leena has been a victim of and party to my bullshit her whole life, and I’m more than happy to put on a show for her, my first and best audience. We were downloading about our day last night, she taking a break during her shift as an emergency medical technician, me cleaning my kitchen before bed.

“So we’re sitting in the antiracist, antibias training that I helped organize at the school, and the facilitators are talking about the history of race, who created the concept, how they used propaganda to spread it, all that. And out of nowhere this old White dude raises his hand as they are presenting and just starts talking on some ‘fuck yo’ presentation’ shit. He’s like, ‘But Black people have been enslaving and killing each other for years, all over the world. What does that have to do with White people? We didn’t do that to them, they did that to themselves.’ Bitchhhhhh. I couldn’t have stopped myself from yelling, ‘Are you kidding me?’ if I wanted to; they’re lucky I didn’t cuss. Meanwhile, the head of the school looked horrified, a few folks near me fidgeted mad uncomfortably, and the Black mama sitting beside me was telepathically communicating that we might need to morph into the Dora Milaje and fuck shit up. And I was with her, but I was also thinking, Lord, can you please tell me who this racist motherfucker is in case Saa wants to have a playdate with his kid? Like, really, b? Your trash-bag ass might as well have stayed at home if you were gonna bring this shit in here. The fucking Caucasity.”

It should be noted that Leena started tittering around the time I got to “old White dude,” and was full on cackling when I lamented the Caucasian audacity of it all. The laugh helped her get through a long shift and gave me an opportunity to vent my annoyance and horror that my child might come across this man on the playground.

Because trauma—whether it’s the type whose scars disfigure our bodies and psyches in an instant or over time—is a motherfucker, and I think we all know that comedy is often the show we put on to convince ourselves that we are “Dy-no-mite!” Those sad clowns know it. Our ancestors who made fun of massa in the moonlight knew it. But knowing that laughter is a mask for our agony doesn’t shrink its impact.

In a world that gobbles up Black pain, there is something luxurious about spinning the blocked hair touches and outright bigotry into stories that start with “Niggggaaaaaaa” and end with your sister not being able to catch her breath because “How dare you?!” Those tears of laughter you’re wiping away? They seep back into your body and heal the abrasions your heart collected during your morning commute that included the man who decided his bag deserved a seat on the crowded subway car more than you did. That scream laugh you let out when Kid Fury read the White man outside the expensive theater who assumed he must be waiting there to sell him weed? It clears your skin and fills in your edges. The joy that collects in your body when you hear “Harrison Booth” say that he wears “a thick brown leather belt” to express himself as a White man on that very special episode of Atlanta? It presses Pause on your anxiety and gives you permission to step away from your constant vigilance.

When we allow laughter in, we unfold, relax our shoulders, loosen our limbs, release our tongues, throw off the invisible cloak of respectability, and feel rejuvenated enough to head back into battle, heads high.

It lets us return to ourselves.

Akiba

One time I went on a magazine job interview where the Black guy doing the hiring asked me, “Are you even funny?” This was a trick question. First of all, a job applicant declaring that she is funny suggests that she is ready to bust out her best material over a haphazardly toasted conference-room bagel and tap water. Wocka, wocka nah.

Second of all, this dude had already made it clear that he didn’t think I was right for the job. To him I was the constipated hall monitor, the sooty Tipper Gore, that bitch who would invade and neutralize the locker room atmosphere of his workplace. I don’t remember how I responded to his question, but what I know for sure is that what I said was flaccid.

At the pre–social media time of this interview, there were next to no outlets for a droll Black girl to shine on her own terms. And I cared too much about what men thought of me. So young Akiba actually saw his question as a flaw in my personal brand. If this particular cornrock didn’t think I was funny, that meant that the satirical and biting writing I was becoming known for didn’t land right.

At this point I guess I should explain why being Black and funny meant and means so much to me. I do this with trepidation because I decided early in my career that I would never serve as a translator. This mapping-out is only okay because Zora Neale Hurston famously said, “I love myself when I am laughing… and then again when I am looking mean and impressive.” Zora already told us the entire thing! Laughing? Mean and impressive? Same difference.

The long version: For a people who were seized and stripped of our bodily autonomy, our history, culture, language, and traditions, humor has always been a way for us to touch and care for one another. Laughing is an underground railroad for those of us lucky enough to ride its tracks, the vehicle through which we have mushed you in your savage face for murdering us because you are a land-thieving lazy ass who believed that something called God told you to kidnap, dehumanize, and torture other people into doing your fucking farming, child care, and nation-building.

In today’s context, humor is how we tell our coworkers that we are code-switching rather than telling all the family secrets. From Jourdon Anderson to Moms Mabley to Donald Glover, Black humor that does not explain itself is the marrow of our tradition.

As I’ve written elsewhere in this book, I was raised Black nationalist in West Philadelphia in the ’70s and ’80s. If you’ve spent any time with these beautiful, committed, brilliant folks, you know that irreverence is not necessarily the goal. If Baba el-Something called everybody at the program a bunch of sellout Negros, that charge would be entertained.

Also, the fonts of the movement were very severe. This meant that 98 percent of the people who took the flyer about the program already agreed with us. Despite the near 100 percent buy-in, Mama Somebody was still going to deliver her 7,000-minute address about buying Black (we already did this) and learning who we were (that’s why we were at the program). Then would come Baba Two Times telling us to throw out the White man’s TV (no).

At one gathering, someone who very likely had PTSD from the Vietnam War, COINTELPRO, Reaganomics, or all three yelled at us children about how we needed to learn how to eat roaches and rats because that was going to be our diet during the revolution. No adult that I know of said, “N***a, this is the worst recruitment method ever.” Or, “Do we really plan on losing that badly?”

This daunting thing could have flattened me, except humor is such a huge part of my family culture and resistance.

My mother, father, and sister, my aunts, uncles, and cousins, and my crazy grandma Mamie know (or knew, for the homies who aren’t here) that real laughter is non-negotiable if you are to beat White supremacy. A major component of enslaving Black folks was keeping us terrified at the whims of untalented and ridiculous White people.

Part of how we survived lies in how and why we laugh. I’m not a sociologist, anthropologist, or psychiatrist. But I do know that Black hilarity heals. On lock, we have deadpan, absurdity, signifying, one-liners, tall tales, the dozens, silly faces, bizarre inventions, shit-talking, and pretending not to know the names of people we don’t like, like your girl Whatsherface from that Rick Ross video who was in Clueless that one time.

My favorite joke from my father involves a family friend who always rocked his fraternity’s paraphernalia at holiday dinners, including purple and gold beaded necklaces. Once, as my baba helped set the table, he asked, “Is Mardi Gras coming?” then pantomimed flashing his nonexistent breasts.

My favorite mom humor is her calling every talented Black male my age or younger a sibling. “Your new brother Hazim,” she said of a Black academic who came to dinner after winning a prestigious prize. “Your brother Damon is hilarious!” says Mom of a popular writer from Pittsburgh. “I love your brother Ta-Nehisi’s new book,” she will say of a friend from Howard University. Really, she just wanted a boy.

My sister cracks me up so much, it’s hard to pull up a good example. My current favorite is a text involving “unresolved feelings about Drake.” Get it? Somebody who is not Aubrey Graham has a lot of feelings! Wocka wocka!

So no laugh-deficient hiring manager can stop my shine. I have a tribe that seems to find me amusing and understand why that even matters in the world. My 1,875 Oldbook and 4,273 Twitter followers indicate that at least 6,148 people could be chuckling at my cat jokes and pictures of my ugly writing socks. I do this for the people. It is the people who shall determine whether or not I deserve a pie in the face or a genuine laugh. The laugh is one of my life’s best rewards.

* I have no proof of this happening.