Can you say TUSKER DU? or Mykels May 2025 Blog/Column

  

You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's

May 2025 Blog/Column

A TUSKER GREETING

I’m leaving London because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.

– Groucho Marks

An antitourist is a tourist whose vanity and tourist angst compels him to distance himself from other tourists by shunning organized tours, consuming local food no matter how nasty, eschewing the use of taxis in favor of public transportation, and ostentatiously not carrying a camera.

– Paul Fussel

It is not the fully conscious mind which chooses Africa in preference to Switzerland.

– Graham Greene

When I first arrived at London Heathrow, coming from New York, I asked a random person sitting behind a random desk dressed in a random uniform, about my up-coming trip to Kenya. “When should I check in for an international flight?”

“You should be at the airport three hours before departure,” she says.

The plane is scheduled to leave at 9AM.. That means I should be here at 6 in the fuckin’ morning.

“Shit,” I answer her.

She shrugs.

Heathrow Airport in London is one of the busiest in the world. And they skin you every step of the way. You even have to pay to drop someone off at the curb and let them walk to the terminal!

It’s 5:30AM. Anant is picking me up from Claire and Alistair’s in a couple minutes. He’ll drive me to Heathrow… and pay to drop me off. Watta guy! Claire and Alistair are up to see me leave and to greet Anant. 5:30 AM!!!! For me, that’s bedtime! The world doesn’t turn itself on at 5:30AM. There is no dawn’s early light. No rockets red glare. NOTHING HAPPENS at 5:30 in the morning. Except that I leave for Heathrow Airport to catch a 9:00AM flight to Nairobi, Kenya.

 [ Note: I’ve visited Anant when he lived in Bermuda, New York, Oxford and London. In India, his family adopted me for a tour of the North of that country. And yes, I saw the Taj Mahal. Here we are in an Oxford pub]

The airport too is just waking up. I look for my flight on the electric signboard. It’s not there. I walk past closed concessions… closed duty free shops… restrooms with yellow triangle CLOSED, BEING CLEANED signs in front of them. I check another TV screen. I see what seems like my flight… looks like it’s telling me to go to another terminal for the gate. I want to check in first… no I don’t. I can’t. There is no place to check in.

I walk to the British Airways section of the main terminal. There are no uniformed people sitting at counters, waiting to for me to hand them my passport. Zero. It’s all machines. Scan. Scan! Scan! I don’t know what to do. I’m an hour and a half early… typical for me. Fuck that scan shit. I want a real flesh and bodily organs person-- not a machine. How can I tell a machine it looks like Diana Rigg?

Somewhere, there is a check-in area (AREA D) for the Nairobi flight. I have to check-in and get my boarding pass. There’s a map, showing where the check-in area is supposed to be. I follow the map and find myself in a large space with a lot of empty chairs and some of those stanchions with flat red ropes like you find outside of stores in New York, holding back lines of Generation Z’s waiting to spend their parent’s money.

[NOTE: I don’t know about your city. But one of the newest fashions in New York is waiting on line (most Americans says “in line”, in NYC we wait on-line) to shop. Walk down any Soho street and you’ll see line after line waiting to get into some clothing store or restaurant. Most of the waiting people are 20-somethings taking selfies and texting their friends. Wow! Look at me! I’m in line at the new Kith in New York fuckin’ city!]

“Can I help you, sir?” asks a… er… mature woman wearing what looks like a stewardess uniform.

“I’m supposed to be on the 9 o’clock flight to Nairobi,” I tell her. “I don’t know how to check in. No bags, I’m carrying everything on board.”

“I’ll help you,” says the matron. “Follow me.”

I follow her to one of the machines. “Let me see your passport,” she says as we approach the machine.

I hand it to her. “And I need to see your visa… and your PTA.”

“PTA?” I ask. “I’m not a parent. No kids in school.”

“ETA,” she says. “Not PTA… ETA… Electronic Travel Authorization”

I take out a folder with a printout of what I think/hope is my ETA. I hand her the printout. It has the ugliest picture of me anywhere. I had to take it from my home computer as I was doing the paperwork on-line.

 “This isn’t it,” she tells me. “It’s a piece of it, but not the whole thing. Check your phone. It should be in a message from the Kenyan Consulate.”

I turn on the the phone and open messages. Somehow, I to find the right page… a tiny attachment to a consulate file. I don’t know how it can be usable… but it is. The woman scans the phone, pushes some buttons, flips some levers, hands me my passport and a boarding pass.

“You’re all set,” she says.

“Thanks,” I answer, “but I’m never all set.”

She doesn’t laugh.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like Diana Rigg?” I ask.

“Who?” she answers.

I take my leave and find the right gate at about 8:15. It’s an ordinary airport-looking gate. A few people are there already... and boy am I pissed off. They’re all white. How is Willy going to find me among this crew? All white people look the same… except for hair color. That’s not enough.

[Note: I “met” Willy on the internet doing a search for PUNK and NAIROBI. Turns out he plays guitar in POWERSLIDE, a Kenyan punk band. We corresponded and he promised to meet me at the airport in Nairobi. He’ll also set up one night at a hotel. The next day, I’ll couch-surf with some locals. Willy asks me to bring him some books that are hard to find in Kenya. “No problem,” I tell him.]

Near the Heathrow departure gate is a DUTY FREE shop-- open now, I buy some Jack Daniels for my couch-surfing host. Willy will meet me at the airport... if he can find me. I still have half an hour before the plane leaves. I check my phone to see if there are any messages from the other side of the world. There is one from Albert, my future host in the Nigerian countryside:

The banditry crisis in our area has reached alarming levels. Even our area chief was recently killed while escorting some tourists. The situation has become unbearable—these bandits terrorize us every night, leaving us in constant fear and unable to sleep. Just yesterday, I was on duty with ten other men, trying to protect our community from another attack. We are doing everything we can, but without proper support, our efforts may not be enough.

Shit... just what I need to start the adventure. BANDITS! I look up how to say “Oy vey” in Swahili. Google Translate doesn’t.

I quickly text back to Albert, asking him if he thinks it’s too dangerous for me to visit. He tells me Kenya isn’t dangerous, but his area, Saburu, is. My friends who’ve been to Kenya say that everywhere is dangerous. Nairobi is commonly called Nairobbery, they tell me. I buy one of those chain wallets… you know. with thick links from wallet to belt… then a leather loop around the belt. I have a spare $20 and a 1000 shilling (about $10) note in a secret zippered compartment in the back of my belt.

“The pickpockets work in pairs,” my friend, Terry tells me. (She’d been in the city at the turn of the century.) “One person will grab your right shoulder from behind. You turn to him and his accomplice will reach into your left pocket and be off with the loot before you can say nakupenda.”

The plane boards on time. It’s a huge British Airways plane-- a US built Boeing 777... a dozen seats across in the economy section. Aisles so narrow that when the stewardess walks down them, she alternately hip bumps first the passenger on the right and then the one on the left.

FLASH TO INSIDE THE PLANE. While we sit on the runway, I wonder about my couch-surfing host and hostess... wonder about my bag of books… wonder how Willy will find me… I clearly will NOT be the only white guy on the plane. I mentally go over my Swahili.

Nimefurahi kukutana nawe (nice to meet you) Mimi sim Kenya. Mimi nim mwamerica. (I’m not Kenyan. I’m American) Nina njaa (I’m hungry). Samahani. (Excuse me) . I learned that you address an older woman as mama and a young woman as bibi. A male stranger is bwana. Which is what, I think, Tonto called The Lone Ranger.

We’re off! Regular readers know that I’m usually opposed to the death penalty. One exception I often talk about is driving at the speed limit in the left lane. Another, for public transportation, is leaning the seat back, often slamming into the knees of the person behind you. Yo! Look behind you! If no one is sitting there, you can recline your seat, but keep an eye out for a late-arriving passenger. If someone IS sitting there, sit up straight like your mama told you. Leaning back where there are only inches to go is rude, thoughtless, smug, and worthy of beheading. Luigi Mangione, you’d know what to do.

The “safety instructions,” usually given by a steward or stewardess… you know “you fasten the seat belt by inserting the tab into the buckle like this… and then pulling the belt firmly... like this.” is given in a video now. The screen on the back of the seat in front of you shows a video of middle ages knights in armor… strapping themselves to their horses. They have to put on their seatbelts. (Saddle belts?) The part about the dropping oxygen mask is given by the queen in her royal parlor.

The people sitting next to me seem deeply involved in the royalty on the screen. Yeah, I’ve got an aisle seat in this monster of a plane. Each section has four seats… that means there are TWO middle seats. I should have asked for one of them this time, so I could free myself from the stewardess’s hip bumps. The serious looks on the other faces in the row tell me this’ll be one of those flights where I’m not going to make any new friends. I don’t really care. The whole row is white anyway. That’s NOT why I’m going to Kenya!

I lean against the upright back of my seat… I still have 6 hours ahead of me… ahhhh! Shit! The asshole in front of me leans his seat back into my lap. I open the table in the back of his seat. Slam it open. Using two hands like I’m playing a bongo, I bang out an I Want Candy riff. The girl by the window... seeing what I’m doing… and knowing exactly why I’m doing it… turns toward me and smiles. The guy in the seat in front of me pretends nothing is wrong. We’ll see who wins this contest.

Ah, the food cart comes around. I signal the stewardess maneuvering the cart. I push my hands forward, looking at the seat in front of me. She gets it. She walks up to the guy and taps him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir. We’re serving our first meal,” she says. “Please put your seat in an upright position.”

He does, and I give a thumbs up to the stewardess. She’s cute… and I feel an stirring between my legs toward its own an upright position

British Air still gives free non-alcoholic drinks with its meals… though the portions are smaller than what you’d normally buy in the local deli.  

After dinner, I try to sleep. The asshole in the seat in front of me reclines it again. I kick his seat. He pretends not to notice. I half drift off to sleep, dreaming of the Nairobi airport with huge Barack Obama murals… maybe with the former president cavorting among the elephants and giraffes. Fuck, I can’t sleep... maybe if I turn and try to sleep on my side. BLAM! I slam my knee into the back of the asshole’s seat. He clears his throat.

We land very close to the scheduled time… 9:35PM. I’m sitting toward the back of the plane, where the cheap seats are. I’m in a half-sleep fog when the pilot announces we’re preparing for landing PUT AWAY YOUR TRAY TABLES AND PUT YOUR SEATS IN AN UPRIGHT POSITION. He does not say “assholes.”

As we taxi towards the gate, the more awake among us are already standing up and getting their stuff out of the overhead compartments. My backpack is under the seat in front of me and my computer bag (with trinkets for the natives), coat and hat are stuffed in one of the overheads, now being ruffled through by THE ASSHOLE.

Things retrieved, I follow the slow-moving line out of the plane, down the portable stairs rolled up to the door. We’re then shuffled into a shuttle bus to go through immigration. I check my wallet to see if I have an available 1000Ksh (Kenyan shillings) note, in case I need it for a bribe. Remembering my arrival in Senegal a couple decades ago… and talking with my travel agent in New York (from Ghana)… I come prepared.

It turns out I don’t need it. Kenyan immigration and customs is maybe the easiest of all of the 71 other countries I’ve visited. Passing through a large hall… with NO Obama pictures, I show my passport and that stupid ETA on my phone to a guy sitting at a table. He looks up at me. Smiles like a grandfather indulging his grandson, stamps my passport, and says “Welcome to Nairobi!”

I thank him and exit into the baggage room. Having no bags to retrieve, I walk through the room, asking a guard for the mensroom. He shows me the exit-from-the-baggage-pick-up door and tells me there’s a “toilet down the hall on the right.” Aaah, a civilized country where the word “toilet” isn’t taboo!

I take care of business then look around for Willy, who said he’d be at the airport to greet me. Not that I know what he looks like. Despite all the white people, there should at least be one local looking like he’s looking for someone. And no, there are no Obama pictures inside the terminal… or anywhere else I can see.

I walk around, trying to look like I’m trying to look for someone. It doesn’t work. In my trench-coat and fedora, in any other country, I’d have a man in uniform immediately asking, “Can I help you with something?” while radioing headquarters with my description.

I leave the terminal. Outside are a lot of men who look like they’re cab drivers looking for customers. I look around for someone who looks like I imagine Willy looks. No luck. I walk up to one of the cab-driver looking guys.

“Unaweza kuongea kiingereza?” I ask.

He laughs at my stumbling Swahili. “Everybody in Kenya speaks English,” he says. “We learn it in elementary school.”

“I can’t find my friend,” I tell him. “Could you speak to him and tell him where I am? I don’t know where I am.”

He laughs again, but says, “sure.”

I call Willy’s number on my Samsung, then hand the phone to the driver. He runs away with it. Naw, I’m shittin’ you.

Really, he speaks to Willy and explains where we are. Around ten minutes later, Willy and his attractive girlfriend, Jecinta, show up right in front of me.

“Mykel!” he says giving me a hug.

After a short conversation, Jecinta says she has to leave… work tomorrow morning I think. We give our good byes. This will be the last time I ever see her… for the whole duration of the trip. After she walks off, Willy texts his uber, waiting in the airport parking lot. We get it and the driver goes off to the expensive hotel, Hotel Ibis.

It’s near the airport. And it’s my first night... after a long flight, I can spring for the $70. No shower for the week in London. I expect there’s one in the hotel room. Nothing like arriving at a couch-surfer’s home smelling like Irish Spring.

I check in at the hotel desk. The woman at the desk takes my credit card, runs it through her machine and hands me a card for the room, and, as it turns out, is also a card for entrance to the hallway that leads to the room. And for the upper floors in the elevator. This is my first experience with SECURITY… actually over-security… in Kenya. In many ways, I think Kenya will prove to be a model for future America. I’ll write about that later.

After checking in, Willy and I go to a table near the entrance and sit down so I can give him  the books I bought for him. Mostly Nietzsche, and Eastern philosophy… [NOTE: as time goes on, I notice Willy sits with his eyes closed, hands on his lap in deep meditation before every meal. He’s a Buddhist... like YOUTH OF TODAY] I bring him one extra book he didn’t ask for and explain that it’s written by a much respected American author and he should read it to really understand America.

After that, I drop my bags off in the room. And go up to the rooftop bar with Willy. Oh yeah! Tusker beer at the hotel. Looks like it’s only us in the bar. I toast Willy with HONGERA, the Swahili word for “cheers” taught to me by Albert in a facebook message. Willy doesn’t react. The waiter frowns. 

“What’s that?” he asks.

“I thought it was cheers in Swahili. My facebook friend taught it to me.”

“Maybe it’s a local language word.” he says. “We usually say, mad-LOW-ba!”

Willy smiles. Now I don’t know if they’re shittin’ me or not. Serves me right. At Drink Club in NYC, I tell my Japanese friends that Besa mi culo means “cheers” in Spanish. I tell my German friends that Pitchka ti mate in Serbian means “cheers.” Everybody else learns from me that Mong chong ii is “cheers” in Korean.

After I buy us a few drinks. At around 12:30, Willy takes his leave, I go down to my hotel room and DON’T take a shower. I’m beat. I’ll just do that thing that guys do to help them sleep… and sleep I do. Check-out is 10 AM!!! Whoever heard of such a thing? But it is. So I have to get up at 9 o’clock, eat my free breakfast and make my way into downtown Nairobi.

My phone alarm wakes me at 9. I stupidly hit the SNOOZE button, and get up again with 10 minutes to spare.

[To be continued…]

See you in hell,

Mykel Board

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]

→ Next Surveillance Dept: Sid Yiddish sent me this… about a new bacteria find that can be traced by machine. I can’t imagine who would be interested in the possibility of infecting people with a bacteria that makes them easy to follow. Can you?

→ I Wrote on Facebook Dept: I posted this on Facebook. So sorry to see George Santos going to prison for longer than he has served in Congress. That guy was such a great actor... and the most atoms person in government. Only my pal Tony Autoharp asked what “the most atoms person" meant. The other commenters –and there were a bunch– were just interested in chiding me for my opinions, even though I’m sure they didn’t get the "atoms" either. Oh yeah, you know atoms, right? They make up everything.

→Repeat Performance Dept: The Week magazine had this article that shows the effect of a well-placed sharp piece of metal. I hear the insurance company in the article reversed itself right after the Luigi Mangione adventure: See? It works.

LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:

LINKS

I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.

Here's a start:

Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.

I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.

Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year.

Also on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the US

Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it here.

And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!

Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.

Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.

Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.

You already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.) Their online version is here.

The Clean Boys from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we recorded as The Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a 10-incher!

Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brian asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.

Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.

Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com

(MRR 353) Nice (Zombie) Ass

[This is the column BEFORE the one that MRR refused to print. It has never been posted.]



You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

Column for MRR 353 (Nice Zombie Ass, or Mykel Explores his inner Muslim)

""I see your point, but I still think you're full of shit." --The Improper Newspaper

It's a tight stall in the bathroom. From above, we see four highschool girls, all in Japanese school uniforms. They're crowded together in the stall. One is kneeling, head bent over the toilet. The others' hands push on that girl's head, forcing it into the bowl.

“EAT SHIT!” yell the girls.

“EAT SHIT!” they yell again.

What happens next is unclear, but after some splashing, the girls drag the poor abused one out of the stall on to the bathroom floor. The victim's head drenched, she shouts into the air.

“Sister save me! Save me!”

Another girl in uniform, cute in a slightly butch way, comes running... bursts into the bathroom... slams the door open against the tile wall. The three evil girls look at her.

“If you want to save your sister,” says one of them, “then fart. Fart right now!”

“Don't sister!” begs the drenched girl. “Don't lose your dignity. Don't do that for me... for anyone!”

The girl who had her head in the toilet breaks away from the other three. She runs upstairs. Apparently, they're in a gym, and she's now in the top seats... high up in the stands. She jumps, falling head first to her death.

Cut to a few weeks in the future: It's the first time out for the sister. She's on a camping trip with a few other girls. Along is an older 20-something who wears a low-cut blue dress. The valley on her chest separates bazzooms usually not found on Japanese women.

The crew is in a van driven by a sniffing cokehead: shaved bald, he has a perpetual runny nose.

Here they are, by the lake.

“Everybody out! We're going fishing!”

Little do these innocent hook-and-liners know that the fish from this lake host a tapeworm. Bazzoom girl knows. She also knows that those tapeworms steal food from their hosts' intestine. That theft prevents nourishment from reaching the host, making the fish thin, no matter how much they eat. Cleavage girl figures if she eats one of the tapeworms, she too can stay thin.

“I got one. I got one!” says our highschool heroine.

The cokehead yanks it off the line and slices through its belly. Inside is a tapeworm: white, wiggly and as long as a garter snake.

The woman with the tits snatches the worm and gobbles it down. Her stomach rumbles. She cries out in pain.

“I've got to fart! I've got to fart!” she yells, running to hide from the shame.

We hear the farts. She bends in stomach-ache agony. She farts again.

“I'm going to die!” she says. “I've got to find a doctor”

Our heroine checks the map. There is a small town nearby. They run. They come on a house... with an outhouse in back. The woman runs to shit in the toilet... but from beneath the toilet comes a zombie.

Before long the campers are dead. Murdered by zombies and tapeworm-laced spaghetti, fed to them by a mad scientist. All die horribly... except for the sister who was saved from farting. Now she's in a sword fight with an evil giant tapeworm. They're aloft, she riding on a tenuous strand soon cut by the evil worm.

She falls. Head first downward. Doomed! Suddenly the sound of a tremendous fart. A huge BRRRRRAAAAAP! An anal tornado... from the rectum of our heroine. The power of the wind saves the falling girl and hurls her back into space. A series of superfarts allows her to keep aloft and eventually defeat the evil tapeworm.

The movie is: ZOMBIE ASS, TOILET OF THE DEAD. I've just seen it with a Toshi, a Japanese pal, Bryan and Randy, my Trini friends from ANTI-EVERYTHING, and Taina, the Puerto Rican singer of COJOBA.

“That may be the best movie I've ever seen,” I tell the crew as we leave the theater.

“Was that really Japanese?” asks Toshi, shaking his head.

“I don't think so.”

“What a great movie!” says Bryan. “Shitty but great.”

“It was feminist!” says Taini.

“Huh?” grunt the rest of us, eight eyebrows raised in unison.

“Sure,” she explains. “Don't you get it? Girls are told they've got to be thin. So they'll do anything to stay that way... even eat a tapeworm... and you see what happened to her...”

“Okay, but still...” I answer.

Taina cuts me off, as she is wont to do.

“There's more Mykel,” she says. “Girls are told to be proper. Nice girls don't fart. That's a boy thing. Girls should hold it in, be feminine.... but being feminine killed the sister. And only when the heroine could let it out... could fart like a man... could she save herself and save the world from the evil tapeworm. She had to let go of traditional femininity and become natural, human, to fart is to win...It's empowerment. Get it, Mykel?”

At first my contrary nature refuses to accept it, but the more I think about it, the more I realized Taina is right.

Flash to The Gambia, Africa Spring 2012:

Yesterday's dinner has worked it's way through my bowels. I squat, my pants pulled down over my knees, trying to aim my asshole at the hole in the ground that is the toilet. I'm outside, in a fenced off area that marks the toilet's boundaries.

“You need water?” asks ST (pronounced Esty), my host and one of the coolest people I've met in Africa.

My several weeks here have taught me the code. If you're going to piss, you just piss, shake off and zip up. If you're going to shit, you wipe with your left hand, and then use the water to wash the hand, and wash away any shit that misses the hole in the ground.

“Do you need water?” is the polite way to ask Shit or piss?

Although I'm a cultural rebel, I cannot get used to the eco-friendly hand method. I carry paper with me. I use water to flush the evidence of my squeamishness.

“Yeah,” I tell him.

The door creaks open and a teapot full of water comes through the gate. I re-squat, and let loose yesterday's dinner... blissfully unaware of the zombies that may lurk below.

It's dark... the only light is from a cloud-covered moon and a faint glow through the windows of the compound. I have a bit of trouble finding the hole in the ground. I use the water to clean up. Then, I make my way back through ST's room and into the back yard.

A group of students has already gathered there. It's time for their nightly think-a-thon.

Flash to right now:

I write this column in the THINK coffee shop, eating an almond croissant sipping on iced tea. Around me, a sea of glowing apples occupies the tables. Bob Marley is too loud in the background.

Me? I occupy two tables: one for my computer, one for the iced tea and croissant. I munch the $3 sweet roll and sip the tea. Across from me sits an attractive girl with bronze skin and wavy black hair.

The girl sips hot tea from a coffee cup. The teabag string hangs over the edge of the cup... like a tampon string hangs from a bloody twat.

My tea is iced. Hers is hot.

The Japanese are famous for their tea ceremony... a ritual in which every step from pouring to stirring to drinking has a method and meaning. Though it looks robotic, the idea is to transform the activity from mundane unawareness to perfect awareness. I never had the patience for it, but I love the idea.

In Africa too, there is a tea ceremony. I saw it in Morocco and Senegal. I see it here in The Gambia. It starts with boiling water and tea together in on a tiny charcoal stove. While the mixture is boiling, you fill a small glass with sugar. After a few minutes, you pour the tea-water mixture into the glass... swish it around to dissolve the sugar.

Then you raise the glass and pour it into another glass the same size. You have to pour from a great height. Only a thin stream of liquid... from the right hand down into the glass in the left hand. Then left to right. Back and forth until the tea is cool enough to drink. When the tea is ready, it's handed to you. Then the host starts on the next glass. You only get a tiny bit... like a shot glass... but it's perfect.

A bubble of gas slides through my large intestine.

Let's shoot, gliding on my fart-- from the tea of THINK CAFE to the tea ST is making in the back yard. There are eight of us, crowded around a few benches, sipping the small glasses of tea ST hands us, one-by-one.

Babucar, whose fauxhawk could be on any teenager in America, likes to gangsta-gesture, extending the pinkie and forefinger of both hands-- pointing downward.

“Mykel,” he tells me. “I want to visit America... to live there maybe.”

“You need an American wife,” I tell him. “If you get an American wife, you can live there.”

“How 'bout an American SECOND wife?” he says. “You know Muslims can have five wives. My first wife should be Gambian.”

“I'm not sure that American women would like to be second wives,” I tell him. “I don't even think it's legal... Even if you're a Muslim-- or a Mormon-- or anything that starts with M.”

“Here it's okay,” he says. “Don't worry Mykel, we'll find you a Gambian wife.”

“I don't want a wife,” I tell him, “Gambian or otherwise.”

Babucar sucks down the rest of his tea.

“What if your parents said that?” he asks. “Then you wouldn't be here.”

“I'm not sure the world would complain,” I tell him.

ST chimes in, “I would complain,” he says. “I like you. You're a nice guy.”

The conversation continues through the night. The tea flows. Ideas jump from one person to another like tapeworms in zombies. Only nobody gets sick. Nobody gets angry.

“Mykel,” asks ST, “do you ever give money to beggars on the street?”

“Often,” I tell him, “I think begging is a noble profession.”

“See,” he says, “you're a Muslim.”

I wish I had space to include the whole conversation, the rational debate. The tea drinking on tea drinking. The participation of Adama, a local deaf-mute who is as much a part of the group as any of us. Just a guy... his “disability” as unnoticed as a nose pimple.

The key is the discussion: reasoned, in good humor, with laughing, farting, back slapping, but NO anger. No American-style “question my religion or my politics and you're THE ENEMY.” No making US and THEM. No WHITE and BLACK. No zombies and free-farters. Only WE, a bunch of guys hanging out in a back yard in The Gambia.

Maybe I AM a Muslim.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, CDs/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]

-->Wouldn't want to be offensive dept: The New York City Department of Eduction is removing "upsetting words" from their standardized tests. They are afraid the nasty words might offend the test-takers, or their parents. The words include "dinosaur" (might offend creationists), "Halloween" (might offend Christians because of its pagan origins), and "birthday" because Jehovah's Witnesses don't celebrate their birthdays.

-->3some Thanks dept: I don't know how you got the PO Box address, but I'm glad you did. Not that I believe the names: Connor, Kale and Trixie? Come on! But I sure believe the video. Thanks a lot!!! I've used up half a dozen tissues so far. You've even inspired me to include my postal address in every column. Thanks again... and I'm waiting with baited cock for the rest of my readers!

-->More thanks dept: I also want to thank Vanessa X, the editrix of Asswipe Zine (POB 82010, Los Angeles CA 90008) Not only did she send me a copy of her cool little zine, but she also wrote a personal letter... in pen... by hand! She says she loves me! Yowsah!

-->True Game App dept: http://tinyurl.com/phonegame1 connects you to a game you can download for your iHell. In the "game" you get to see the shit people go through to make the phone. In the words of the creator:

Phone Story is a game for smartphones that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. The game represents the process of device creation through four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in The Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West.

Let's see how long before Apple puts the kibosh on THIS one!

-->What's good for business dept: The Wisconsin state legislature has repealed the Equal Pay Enforcement Act, that guarantees equal pay for men and women doing the same job. State representative Glenn Grothman said, “This is an important bill because it improves Wisconsin's business climate.”

-->Ungrateful dead dept: There are very few famous people whose death would bother me. We all gotta go sometime. Here today, plant food tomorrow. But recently deceased Alexander Cockburn was a hero. I never read anything he wrote that wasn't right. I don't mean sort of right or a little right... I mean EXACTLY right. The Gay Marriage scam, Obama as a banana republic dictator, and a ton more. I've mentioned him often in my columns. The world has lost an important voice.

(MRR 352) Mykel Learns How to Top Himself

You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board

[NOTE: I have translated a bit of French here for the linguistically untalented. The translated part is in BOLD CAPITAL ITALICS]

"America has Race Fever. It's not an actual race war, but a sort of racial Cold War. A grinding war of nerves. And it's impossible to escape. A race war would be anticlimactic at this point... Let's cool down just a tad. We don't need MORE sensitivity. If we got any more sensitive, we'd all break out in a rash.” – Jim Goad

I love the way my white penis looks against black flesh. The way its blue veins contrast with the smooth bumps of tight dark brown skin.

1998: THE HELLFIRE CLUB: a notorious New York S&M bar. I'm a regular... took Jennifer Blowdryer and Dave Diktor here... an exciting and painful place... blaring disco music... the slap slap slap of the patrons keeps the beat.

I like S&M more for the novelty, the weirdness, the adventure, than actually giving or receiving pain. I mean, I enjoy rubbing alcohol on my balls as much as the next guy, but I don't like them in a vice. Fuck, if it's an adventure... and it gets me laid... it's what I do.

Tonight, I meet this incredibly beautiful Negress. Half-foot taller than me, slim, with Grace Jones hair, skin the color of Africa, and a face that would harden a eunuch.

She wears, when I meet her, something between a bikini and a harness. Bright red leather, cross belts, the good parts barely covered in leather and metal ringlets.

FLASHBACK A FEW SECONDS: I'm watching a very ordinary-looking white woman getting fisted by a somewhat less than ordinary-looking white guy. The woman is saddled in a sling... her legs wrapped around chains hung from the ceiling. The man stands between her legs with his right hand wrist-deep in her twat.

A crowd grows around the couple, as it often does at The Hellfire Club. Voyeurs out-number performers by at least twenty to one. I stand in the middle of the watching crowd, trying to look over the shoulder of the tall hippie in front of me.

Then I see her... the Negress... Actually I don't see her at first, I feel her. There's pressure... a squeezing on my crotch.

“I want this,” demands the velvet voice next to me... Then, I see her.

“It's yours,” I say.

“I'm Tanisha,” she says.

“I'm yours,” I say.

We walk to the exit. At coatcheck, Tanisha hands over a ticket and retrieves a bright red raincoat. Even in New York in the 80s, you can't walk around outside in just leather straps.

We don't have to go far.

Tanisha lives in a Hell's Kitchen apartment... a dangerous neighborhood. If you're as horny as I am, danger means nothing.

We walk up the creaky stairs to the third floor... a classic tenement... bathtub in the kitchen... tiny room for a toilet, no sink in the toilet room. It's the bedroom, though, that interests me.

The bed is an old metal cot with a thin mattress. Attached to all four corners of the bed, where the legs meet the spring frame, are leather handcuffs. Padded, black, each with a pair of shiny buckles.

Yes! Lie me down on that mattress. Strap me down. Use me! Abuse me! Just do me! Press your naked blackness against my hairy whititude.

That's not what happens.

Tanisha takes off her brief body belts. Then, she lies naked, face down on the bed.

“Cuff me,” she whispers, “and don't be gentle.”

She's so beautiful, I'll miss seeing her face as I lay myself down... but that ass. Wow! It'll be my blue-veined hardness against that double black mound. That'll more than make up for lack of face.

I struggle with the buckles, opening and closing the cuffs until she's in tightly. Then, I peel off my clothes and nestle in to seek that brown hole within the blackness.

“Not, so fast,” she says. “Abuse me. Talk to me. Call me a slut. Slap me around. Use me. I'm your slave.”

My hardness begins to wilt at the word SLAVE. I can't treat a colored girl like a slave. That would be... I donno... WRONG.

Okay, I concentrate on the task at hand. Rub my hands along her risen mounds. Reach around and grab handfulls of nipples. I bring one hand to my mouth and wet my middle finger. I slide it between her delicious glutea, seeking to soften that inviting hole.

“Talk to me!” she says over her shoulder. “Call me a slut, a whore! Tell me how bad I am. Abuse me. Don't soften me... go in dry! Hit me! Spank me! I'm your slave!”

I feel myself slowly drooping.

“I... I can't,” I say.

”What the fuck?” she yells. “I don't have to put up with your white guilt shit. This is the 20^th century, not the civil fuckin' war!”

“But, I just feel so bad...” I stammer.

“Your bad feeling is your racism,” she yells back. “Pure and simple. If I was a white girl, you'd spank me in a second. Oh yeah, that red handprint on a white ass..... But Mr. Namby Pamby liberal can't top a black girl without shriveling up to pig-in-a-blanket. You can't call me a slut and a whore because all you see is a black girl! A former slave, someone you should take pity on... Fuck you! I'm not A BLACK GIRL! I'm ME, Tanisha!”

“But... I just can't,” I say.

She looks between my legs.

“I can damn well see you can't,” she half says, half spits. “Unhook me, get dressed and then get the fuck out of here. Go fight oppression someplace and feel sorry for The Poor Colored Folk. I don't want to put up with your racist baggage. You disgust me.”

FAST FORWARD: Senegal, West Africa May 2012... Goree Island. It's right off the coast. You go by ferry. Tourists pay about $10 for the boat. Senegalese pay half that. I'm with my pal and host Osman.

Goree is an artist colony and home to a Senegalese history museum. There's a beach. Several fishing crews work out of the place. There's an old fort that used to belong to the Portuguese. But that's not why Goree is famous.

Goree Island is home to the Maison des Esclaves, the House of Slaves, a slave holding pen during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Slaves were brought here from all over Africa and kept in very tight quarters... men and women separate... ready for shipping.

“YOU'RE OLD MYKEL...” says Ousman.

I wince at the introductory phrase.

“YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER AN AMERICAN BOOK,” he continues. ROOTS, IT WAS CALLED.

DURING THE 1980S, BLACK AMERICANS CAME TO THIS PLACE EVERY DAY. THEY ENTERED AND CRIED. THEY SAID THEY COULD FEEL THE PAIN OF HISTORY. MY FATHER TOLD ME ABOUT IT.

We approach the maison, a non-descript colonial building, near the beach. I walk in with Ousman. I'm nearly in tears. Not for the emotion, but from the need to take a fierce piss. I had two Cokes on the boat, and I need to let them out.

I buy us both an admission ticket. Inside, mostly white people with big cameras take pictures of the bare adobe walls.

Just inside the entrance... to the left... is a sign that says HOMMES. Yes! Just what I need.

The sign is over an archway. I walk through. On the other side is nothing. Just an empty brick room with very small windows. Am I supposed to piss in the corner? All the tourists can see what I'm doing.

“Sont il les toilettes?” I whisper to Ousman, pointing to the sign.

He looks... and laughs.

“Les toilettes sont à l'étage,” he says, pointing to a curved staircase. At the head of the stairs is a door with a sign TOILLETTES over it.

Sheepishly, I head upstairs and relieve myself. Then, I leave the bathroom and look out the window on the second floor. I gaze over the ocean that confronted the chained cargo shipped out those hundreds of years ago. I think about the packed conditions, the chains, the family separations into hommes and femmes, the crying children, the rebellious ones forced into a tiny Cellule des Recalcitrants as punishment.

I think about the actual ocean voyages. The sickness, poor food, the unknown future. And I feel nothing. Zero. No emotion. No tears. No heavy heart or lungs.

That racial baggage that Tanisha complained about when I went limp twenty years ago... it's gone. Maybe 200 years ago this was a chamber of horrors. Now, it's a piece of history and a tourist trap. It has nothing to do with me.

I expect (hope) I'd feel the same way at Auschwitz... a place I've never been, and one I want to avoid. It's a museum of the past. It has nothing to do with my own life. It's a bunch of buildings. Some ovens. Pffft. It has as much to do with me as this HOUSE OF SLAVES. The rationale is that if we remember the past we somehow prevent its repetition.

Bullshit.

Remembering the past CREATES repetition. Remembering the past is the basis of revenge. The Hatfields and the McCoys.. they remember the past...Remembering the past lets Israel torture Palestinians with impunity and keeps colored people victims in the American mind.

At this moment in the Senegalese slave museum... I can feel my baggage lost. I can feel the ability to call ANYONE a slut if that's what they want. I'm ready for Tanisha now, the little whore! I can feel myself harden at the thought.

ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column]

--> Heart Attack Dept: My 20 year old niece gave me her old iPod. As I didn't pay for it and it would end up in a landfill... and as it's pinkish so no one else would buy it... I'm keeping it, using it while I use the treadmill at the gym. Since all music I listen to is loud and fast, I expect a heart attack soon. Right now, here's what's on the box:

-->THE DESTRUCTORS sent me their SEX, DRUGS & ROCK'N'ROLL CD. It ROCKS. Sometimes I'm not sure how pro-Sex or pro-Drugs they are... but that's part of the fun. In any case, I can't get the song I'M IN LOVE WITH A PORNSTAR out of my head! It may be a cover, but it's a great one. Info is at www.destructors666.com.

-->Let's get tough to get votes dept: I've mentioned often that the US has a higher percent of its population in jail than any other country in the world. You probably already know that the private prison industry benefits from that, as does the Republican party which knows that once jailed, the mostly Negro and Hispanic population lose the right to vote... forever. Now there's ANOTHER benefit to having all those prisoners.

The Prison Policy Initiative has found out that several, mostly Republican, counties in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and others are counting their prison populations as citizens. That means they can get more representatives in state and federal offices... plus more federal funding! That prisoners can't vote is an added bonus for the Republicans.

With slaves, the constitution said to count each of them as 3/5 a person. The NEW slaves get a full ONE person. Isn't that great?

--> Can they Photoshop the West Bank? dept: A new Israeli law requires magazines to identify models who've been Photoshopped. It's a kind of truth-in-advertising. An interesting idea, although PC World reports that it is not necessary to reveal real-life cosmetic surgery.

-->That takes REAL balls dept: Speaking of Israel, a former Israeli soldier has renounced his Israeli citizenship and move to a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Andre Pshenichnikov, a 23-year-old Jewish immigrant from Tajikistan, says he plans to live in the Deheishe Refugee Camp near Bethlehem. He used to work there as a waiter and a construction worker. He began questioning Israel's policies toward Palestine while he was still serving in the military.

-->It's always “Protecting the Children” dept: It's called: The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.

What it does is force any business offering paid Internet access--airports, hotels, coffee shops, and ISPs--to keep records of users’ online activities. If the government wants to inspect them, it easily can.

Americans are such suckers... Call anything “protecting the children” and they'll cut their own toes off to do it. Makes you hate kids EVEN MORE, doesn't it?

-end-