Pamela Sneed

Kong

from

The Best American Short Plays 2005–2006

Kong—Part 1

Hands folded

Head down

Shoulders slouched

which I’ve told my students in the University to never do

but that was at a time when I earnestly believed

and I now I stand here wearing big Dumbo ears

a pig snout

carrying shards of a broken heart

looking like a cartoon character in a medieval play

because I earnestly believed

but before I go there

I want to talk about that last Star Wars movie which

they promised was a final installment

But we’ll see

all I can say is it really sucked

except for the part near the end

where you see the transformation of Luke Skywalker’s dad

Anakin

into the evil Darth Vader

His innocence destroyed

crawling through some molten lava—limbless

He looked like a soldier

or something out of a war movie

one of those battered survivors

who has left his child self behind him

But, I earnestly believed

And now all I can do is carry myself/battle scarred

to some semblance of safety

All I can do is hold on like a survivor of the tsunami tidal wave

Hold on to a tree, a pipe, anything, my papers from an

old life

verifying who I am

wait for the storm to pass

a shoulder to lean on/anything

But I earnestly believed.

You know when I left my parents’ house

the small town for a big city

and experienced all accoutrements of a counter culture

I earnestly believed

queer boys

queer nations

nose rings

dread locks

muscle shirts on girls

dykes with nipple rings

punk rockers

were all some semblance of an alternative

I believed poet Glen James

who called us the sissified warriors

I believed when Marlon Riggs premiered the groundbreaking

film

for Black Gay Men, Tongues Untied.

I believed Audre Lorde when she said in synopsis if we

don’t do our work

One day women’s blood will congeal upon a dead planet.

I believed poet Assotto Saint in all 6 ft. 4 of his cross

dressing self

I believed when he stood up at the funeral of Donald

Woods

and said in essence we must tell the truth about who

we really are.

I believed Black lesbian writer Pat Parker when she declared

straights are okay, but why must they be so blatant

I earnestly believed when my child eyes almost twenty

years ago

first saw bisexual poet June Jordan

and the first thing she said was this country needs a

revolution.

I believed when I first read Christos, the Lesbian Native

American author of Not Vanishing and Dream On

when she wrote of AIM, the American Indian Movement,

and said

“when I first heard you’d surrendered you don’t know how

much

I needed for you to go on.”

I believed ten–fifteen years ago when the Hetrick-Martin

Institute for queer youth

was still just a one- or two-room shack

located on the Westside Highway across from the piers

and no one invested in our lives

I believed even as an almost child working in that

agency

when many of us who pioneered were like slaves,

singularly doing the work

of twenty, thirty people

I believed in Nelson and Winnie premiering even at the

height of apartheid with their fists

and heads held high

I believed before Jennifer, Jessica whatever her name

is on The L Word.

I believed even after they found Angel my student at

Hetrick-Martin murdered

a handsome boy chopped into pieces

Yeah when they were still pulling queers out of the

river there downtown

Dead from queer bashings and suicide

And then Kiki another bright young black queer

was murdered in the Meat District

Before him was Marsha P. Johnson, a drag queen and

neighborhood fixture

bashed and thrown into those waters

Even after they buried brethren artists and poets,

Essex, Rory, Don, Donald, Craig, Alan

And cancer got Audre, June and Pat Parker

I kept on believing change was possible.

I read the literature

had hope

I lived in America after all.

I’ve sort of joined the middle class.

I believed when I first saw a woman’s silhouette in

5 a.m. light.

I believed kissing her nakedness

there’d be honor there.

I earnestly believed.

You know this is an aside but

I’m tired of the previews for that latest King Kong

movie

Tired of all the actors looking to the sky with that

same

perplexed look,

That over the top awesome

because King Kong is computer generated

they can’t see him

so they’re really acting

and you know King is a thin veil for a Black man

America assuaging its racial fears.

Still, I’ll pay ten, or twelve or twenty with popcorn

to see it.

There was a time too when I earnestly believed in

theatre

in performance

Believed I’d be a great big overnight success

that courage, innovation, tenacity would be recognized.

I earnestly believed

And I know there are those who will say I’m bitter

mislabel me

say I spew hatred

am raining down on their parade

That I lack optimism

when I try to say there is another America

when I try to say things are not equal

when I try telling them there are crimes

being carried out with doctors

many of them are modern criminals

who don’t deserve white coats

There’s another final solution that’s occurring

right under our noses

and it’s gonna get tougher and tougher

and tougher and tougher to hide the bodies

I earnestly believed

Saddam Hussein has been tried and convicted

but maybe it’s just my secret silly wish

I keep wanting them to try George Bush

I keep wanting those feared 30,000 Iraqi soldiers dead

I want their bodies to rise up

walk to the White House

speak against this senseless war

For them to matter

to someone besides their mothers

I want those countless Americans killed little Black and

Latino boys

I want all their lovers

Both women and men to tell what they’ve lost.

I want to see something like the truth and

reconciliation

hearings after apartheid

where this country must admit to committing atrocities

I want those millions of Americans living without health care

after working an entire lifetime . . .

I want seniors who can’t afford their prescriptions

I want my parents to go

I want America’s poor

ones who know about when hospitals and doctors

pull the plug on those who can’t pay

I want the family of that little Black girl in New Orleans

whose body was found floating facedown

still wearing pink short shorts and a pink squeegee in

her hair.

Again, in New Orleans, I want the son whose mother

died during the floods

waiting for governmental help,

I want everyone to see the eyes of my student,

a black girl whose family is from the Ninth Ward in New

Orleans

and how she looked the day in class when she said

they won’t give us back our houses

want everyone to hear my friend when she said Bush

got up in the middle of the night to sign papers to help Terry

Schiavo

but did nothing to help the people of New Orleans

I want every year for those gays and lesbians in New York

during Gay Pride

to stop dancing on the piers and form a political movement

I want all those voiceless people we’re turning our

backs on

right now in the Darfur region of Africa to speak

And thank you Oprah, Thank you Bono, Thank you Jon Bon

Jovi

for your generous donations

but the system has to change

Yes, there was a time when I earnestly believed

People get so defensive when I try telling them

what’s happening systemically

when I say under this regime censorship has increased.

Artists no longer have spaces to work

nor money

and it’s not just all about personal will

pulling oneself up by a bootstrap

There is marginalization and silencing

occurring across the board more than in other eras

perhaps this is a return to.

I honestly believed once that there were people more

enlightened

that competition and jealousy couldn’t destroy our

world.

I believed helping a neighbor

was more important than money

I earnestly believed

Yes, by now I’m probably like someone in a horror film

who gets killed off easy

wasn’t careful enough

Kept running toward instead of away

from the monster

The one who stayed in the haunted house

you know who goes into an attic or a basement

to investigate what’s going on

when they should have been long gone, the one who

stays in an abusive cycle

believes the partner will change

The one who hasn’t read all the signals

walks into a thieves den

like on the old 42nd St.

with money hanging out of their pockets.

I earnestly believed like Anne Frank in human good.

I believed the slogans I read in kindergarten

that policemen help you across the street

will return lost children to their parents.

Maybe I’m as naive as MLK

when he said he had a dream of what America could

become

Maybe he isn’t here to witness

just how tough things have become

Integration is now only a small step or

small slice of what we need.

Yesterday I sat down in the sun

and let it beam across my face

I prayed like Martin Luther King

I could live one day in freedom

One day not racked by pain or injustice.

I felt like Harriet who lived in slavery

Just one day wanting to feel freedom’s kiss

And caress.

Kong—Part 2

I have to go back in my mind

Because I saw that Kong movie last night

It was spectacular

except for the first hour which dragged on

and I almost walked out when the crew got to

Skull Island aka Africa

where Kong comes from

and I saw all those white oil painted actors playing natives

when everyone knows lots of Black actors need jobs

but the movie might have been even more offensive

if they’d cast them

Anyway, this Kong was an alpha if I’ve ever seen one—

He was like the Zulu warriors handling his business in

the jungle

Directed by the same guy who directed the Lord of the Rings

trilogy

this Kong gets medieval

There’s a part where he snaps the neck and jaw of another

animal

then thrusts it aside

leaves the carcass

I mean this computer generated you could never guess was a

cartoon Kong

was so fierce

The American government could use him in their war to

fight Iraq

He could help them find looming terrorist at large

Osama Bin Laden

They could send him to change history

He could be like Rambo and try again to singlehandedly

win the Vietnam War—

Like Donald Trump, Charles Bronson, and Rambo rolled

into one

This Kong’s got dominion

He’s Shaft, a ’70s icon

A private dick/ex-cop dispensing his own brand of

street justice

This Kong is like a Dominican warlord, not at all to be

fucked with

I mean this Kong had that Fay Wray bitch climbing into

his hand

Excuse me, Naomi Watts

no argument, minimum screaming

What is it about sex or attraction to a good woman

that makes you want to beat your chest, go all

illiterate, yell oonga fucking boonga,

jump from the bushes, tie her up, dance with wolves,

unleash your inner self

Well this Kong is pure and unadulterated

He’s some straight-up niggah, no rocks, no chaser

He’s got a little of the fucked-up wild haired Ike

who told Tina

Don’t you ever try to leave me

He’s like Samuel Jackson on a bad day

Have you ever noticed how Sam Jackson, talented actor

that he is

plays the same character in every movie

He’s perpetually angry

and excuse me for asking but what was he doing in the

Star Wars movie

He was like speaking Ebonics in space

You know how every syllable is over exaggerated and

drawn out

Like M-A-S-T-E-R S-O-L-O

I saw Sam’s latest movie last night

Provocatively titled Freedomland.

All the acting screamed this is an important film

discussing race in America.

It’s typical Hollywood fare

where complex human emotions

complex characters get reduced down to broad sketches

and caricature

not to mention everyone knows in 2007

parts of America are no better than Soweto during apartheid.

I mean come on I saw that new movie Hustle and Flow

sitting in the all-black audience

It was like back to days of segregated cinema/produced by

MTV films

about a ne’er-do-well pimp/who just happens to also be

a rapper

trying to make it in America

The theme song just won an Academy Award called

It’s hard out here for a pimp,

but everyone knows it’s those who built America

slave labor.

I’ll tell you this if you think I’m lying—

Stretching about this King Kong, Black man link

One of the white racist cops yells out to Samuel

Jackson’s character

who is also a cop, You’re supposed to be lord of the

jungle—

and then he points to a young black kid standing by

and says “So,

why aren’t you handling this monkey?”

You’ve probably asked by now what’s her investment

Why does she even care

and this is gonna get pretty painful

because I don’t want to say

There were times right here in America

when I needed simple things like friendship, health care,

love, resources

And I was made to live like an animal

Less than

Caged in

Speaking of pimps and hos

Can any of us ever forget the way Tina Turner was

treated by Ike

She was actually beaten with the heel of his shoe

Games, betrayals, sabotage, competition

Conscious and unconscious

Anything he could do to destroy her spirit

Not let her use that powerful beautiful voice she had

Except as a way for him to make money

I mean real moments where I’ve felt like this is

Cambodia 1975

And these are killing fields/like in the movie/the story of

that skinny war-torn reporter who gets left behind

while everyone else escapes

And all he tries to do every day is just survive

and I’m not the only one

with the way things are going

there will be more and more who’ll one day

have to choose between their breakfast cereal

and taking their own lungs out

and if we don’t watch out/this is the fall

the end of a once great civilization

a crumbling empire

I read recently in the paper

They found one of the Black men, a government official

dead in a ditch—

He was one of many who helped orchestrate the

Rwandan massacre

We all remember 1994 right

1/2 million dead

Black tribes in Africa warring against each other

And I can’t believe I’m saying this about another

human being,

But I’m glad they killed that motherfucker

I’m glad he’s dead

I have to go back again because I feel guilty that

earlier I mentioned Cambodia and killing fields

and the nature of that extermination

was so huge actually an estimated 1.7 million

but just today I read in the paper about a measure

being discussed in the Senate

on how to rid the United States of 12 million illegal

immigrants

and the language they used was rid.

The thing about this King Kong which differs from the

classic

is you can see what a great warrior he is

but a monster too

he’s kind of human/contemplative

He actually manages in ape talk to sign the word

beauty

when they take him down/chloroform him

it’s human beings/white people who look barbaric

when they put him on display

and you see his great paws

you know there isn’t a theater big enough to contain

him

and the chains around his wrists represent all of our

greatness

both blacks and whites wrapped up in human bondage

all of our potential that’s been lasso’d, corralled

Yeah, the only difference is when this Kong

Climbs on top of the Empire State Building to escape

Instead of seeing him shot down

Broken in captivity

This one, unlike the classic/that unruly inhumane

beast

This Kong—you want to be free

Kong—Part 3

It wasn’t until I put posters up

handed out flyers of me, a 6 ft. 2 black woman

presiding over the city in a bra

while an image of King Kong lurked in the background

did I realize how long people had waited to see images of

Kong usurped—

to see images we could laugh at/point fingers at/subvert.

It wasn’t until then I realized how long King Kong had been

lurking

in our cultural history/in our shadows/our shame.

Most of us know where he came from

from that birth of a nation era

born in 1933 from that great depression

where the Klu Klux Klan held dominance

not more than fifty years out of slavery

he was the story of slaves/a savage

brought here in chains/driven by his desire for a white

woman.

He is the myth/the fear

just two years after the Scottsboro boys/twelve Black men

were accused of raping a white woman.

We continue to see him over and over in our movies

He is the subject of To Kill a Mockingbird

and the film just cause

he is the recent real-life story of a garbage man accused of

raping

and murdering a white woman in a upper-middle-class

neighborhood

as her five-year-old daughter stood by

he is the accused wilding wolf pack that went after

a Central Park jogger

And you wouldn’t believe the responses I got

from people who weren’t even followers of performance art

who weren’t black clad

with purple hair or shaved heads

like the black security guard at LIU where I teach

who never gets involved in anything

saw the poster and said to me you go girl

Miss Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones

and then gives me a hug

and then the young black boy who works behind the counter

in the school cafeteria

who recognizes me from the poster

He says, Your piece looks interesting

and asks if I’m going to be playing King Kong or Fay Wray

and then the secretary in the school where I work

actually pulls notes she wrote out of her desk drawer she

wrote

after seeing the Kong poster and says

I think he’s a gentle giant.

And to her he is a symbol of good.

Then there are the more radical/expected/unexpected

responses

like from the genteel black screenplay writer on my block

whom after I tell him casually I’m doing a piece on Kong

his face breaks into a disdain and grimace

as if he’d gone to the cinema and been betrayed

I brought my niece to see that new Kong film

I was so angry after I left/I wrote the producers a letter

which reminds me of another black man on my block/an

investment banker

whom I’ve only ever seen planting flowers on the street

in boxes that aren’t even his

he is genteel and middle class

and I thought to ask him what he thought

about what happened to blacks during the floods in New

Orleans

and his face breaks into a Rubik’s Cube I’ve never seen before

suddenly he thrusts his hands into the sky and starts to yell

It was wrong what they did to those people/it was wrong!

And all of this is coming from people

who would consider themselves to be ordinary people

not the lefties or revolutionaries

Even Donald Trump said the other day on television

President Bush has grossly mismanaged this country

and they found no weapons of mass destruction

and it all reminds me/shows me how under this regime

years of living under it has made a lot of us, everyday people

into heroes.

But the flower guy reminds me of something Audre Lorde

said

in the book Our Dead Behind Us

She like the flower guy is gardening

but thinking of the violent deaths of black people in America

and then in her lover’s country which is South Africa,

And she says,

My hand comes down like a brown vice over the marigolds

reckless through despair

we were two black women touching our flame

and we left our dead behind us.

Someone else sends me an article

about King Kong written by a man with my father’s name

James Snead

Someone else, a young white girl when she hears me recite

King Kong

says excitedly and angrily

You should talk about how the FBI was an organization

built primarily to destroy radical movements.

Look what they did to the Panthers.

Someone else calls Peter Jackson a fascist

and I’m actually afraid to tell him I like the Lord of the Rings

trilogy.

Someone else says you mentioned Top Model

will you talk about that

and I say I do in another piece

and then I try to prod people as gently as I can

and say these are your stories to tell now.

I simply pressed buttons, opened a door

but then something else comes to mind

that’s unexpected after all is said and done.

Something that still haunts

I keep telling everyone who works on Kong

the video person and poster designer

make sure there’s a skyline

we need images of the skyline it’s important

since 9/11 I say the skyline/the city Kong stomped over

has changed

I’m aware now whether it’s shown or not in pictures

something in our skyline is missing

Poet Sekou Sundiata said America lost her innocence

and it’s true

it’s like a jack-o’-lantern

someone took a knife and gauged out

a huge hunk of who we are

gone is our candyland

our jungle gym/our slide/our Tarzan-like swing

our playground of yesteryear

Poet Sekou Sundiata said America lost her innocence

and it’s true.

And all I can say revisiting Kong trouncing through

all of the footage

suddenly the image of a great goliath

being taken down by tiny planes

has entirely new and different meaning.