more from Pricks, Cunts, & Motherfuckers: the Novel about New York City
by Wolf Larsen
Chapter 10
Around that time I got a call offering me work on a construction site. I was so happy! Well, not really. Yes I was! No, I wasn’t.
My body (and especially my *^&%#$& back) wasn’t looking forward to a return to *^&%$%# manual labor at all. But the office environment was so repressed and stifling. And the office wages – my god – I swear my bosses’ name was scrooge!
Besides at the office I was still a “temp”. They didn’t have work for me everyday.
I showed up at the construction site and boy was I surprised! There was a “picket line”. Scabs were crossing the “picket line” in masse. There were some cops around to protect the scabs.
It wasn’t a real picket line. This was one of those worthless toothless “informational” picket lines set up by the trade union bureaucracy. Hell, if it lets scabs in it ain’t no picket line!
I just stood there watching. I’ve done plenty of rotten things in my life that I’m not too proud of – but I’ve never crossed a picket line. Even a beast like me with low morals has to draw the line somewhere.
Somebody walked up to me. “Are you one of the strikers, sir?” he asked.
I looked at the guy.
“No,” I said. “Who are you?”
“My name is Who Cares,” he said. “I’m selling a newspaper called The Worker’s Blah Blah Blah.”
“Oh wait!” I exclaimed. “I’ve heard about you people. You’re communists. You guys come down to picket lines & strikes & that sort of thing and sell newspapers.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said smiling.
“But isn’t communism dead now? I mean, the Soviet Union has collapsed,” I pointed out.
“The Soviet Union wasn’t communist,” he said. “The Soviet Union was state-capitalist.”
“What?! The Soviet Union was capitalist?!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, that’s right!” he said with a smile.
At first I thought this guy was weird. Now after talking with him for two minutes I thought he was real weird!
“Well, what do you think of all the racial tension between white & black workers?” I asked him. “Back in the Rust Belt the racial tension was bad – even horrible. Here in New York City it seems ten times worse!” I exclaimed.
“Our answer to racial tension amongst American workers is to plant our lips all over the ass of black nationalism,” he said. “We support the struggles of heroic black leaders like Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.”
“But Elijah Muhammad conspired with Farrakhan to have Malcolm X killed,” I said. “And how should we make political change? How do we bring about change to benefit the workers?” I asked.
“What we want to do is bring the Democrats to the left,” he said. “We want to make the Democrats a party of the people!”
I was wearing work boots that went past my ankles. If I had known I’d be talking with this guy instead of working I would have worn boots that went much higher! This guy went on talking & talking and the bullshit was getting deeper & deeper by the moment.
Then he wouldn’t go away! Motherfucker!
I still didn’t leave. I had nothing to do. I had turned down something with the temp agency today to try this construction job out. Now I had nothing – no work at all today! That made me mad enough. What made me REAL MAD was watching the scabs cross the “picket line”. The guys on the “picket line” were being pumped up by the speech of some union bureaucrat –
“I’M A UNION BUREACRAT MAKING SIX FIGURES A YEAR! SO YOU KNOW I CAN REALLY RELATE TO YOUR PROBLEMS AS WORKERS! WHILE THE EMPLOYERS ARE KNIFING YOU IN YOUR FRONT WE UNION OFFICERS ARE KNIFING YOU ALL IN THE BACK! ISN’T THAT GREAT?! LOOK AT ALL THOSE SCABS CROSSING THE PICKET LINE WHILE WE DON’T DO A GODDAMN THING ABOUT IT EXCEPT MAKE MILITANT SOUNDING SPEECHES! ISN’T THAT GREAT?! WE UNION OFFICERS ARE DOING EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER TO MAKE THIS STRIKE AS WORTHLESS AS POSSIBLE! IN FACT, WE HARDLY HAVE A STRIKE FUND! WE’VE BEEN GIVING AWAY YOUR UNION DUES TO THE ELECTION CAMPAIGNS OF THE DEMOCRATS INSTEAD!”
Some of the workers on the picket line cheered. Others stood there silent. Their faces said it all; they knew they were being betrayed.
The scabs were still arriving. Work had not started. For some bizarre reason it angered me that the scabs were arriving late. They were obviously nothing but bums!
Somebody else came up to me. She wasn’t selling the Worker’s Blah Blah Blah like the other guy. This woman was selling The Blah Blah Blah Worker.
She had blue hair. She also had a big ass ugly earring in her lip. She was attractive in a bizarre kind of way.
“Hi!” She said.
“Uh… hi,” I said.
It occurred to me that I had never fucked anybody who looked as weird as her, so it might be like a sexual adventure. But I’d definitely insist she take a shower first.
“You one of the strikers?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“You’re a scab?” she asked angrily.
“Hell no!” I exclaimed. “I don’t cross picket lines! I got a call offering me work. I got here and I see picket lines. When they called me for work they didn’t say anything about picket lines…”
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,” she said.
“Why is there a Workers Blah Blah Blah and a Blah Blah Blah Worker?” I asked. “Why do socialists or communists or whatever you call yourselves put out different newspapers? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Oh, they’re trot-in-the-sky-bites. We’re meowists!” she said with pride.
“You see we’re into the great deep forward and the cultural revolution,” she continued. “As meowists we want to counter-culture a revolution of the working class by coloring our hair blue and putting big ugly earrings in our lips. That’s why I’m a vegetarian,” she said.
When that other guy talked I felt like my boots weren’t high enough because the bullshit was so deep. Now with this meow-ist lady talking it didn’t matter how high my boots went because I felt like I was absolutely drowning in bullshit!
I walked away from the talking meow-ist lady while she was in mid-sentence. I had to get away from her before something mean came out of my mouth. If she had been a man I probably would have gone ahead and said it. But I wasn’t really mad about the people with their “worker’s” newspapers. I was SO MAD about those SCABS. My fists wanted some contact so bad!
As I was walking away a normal looking person holding another newspaper approached me saying, “Excuse me sir!”
I glared at him with silent words that all had four letters.
“I don’t want to hear about no meow-ism,” I said.
“What?!” he said.
“You know! Meowism? Aren’t you one of those meow-ists?” I asked.
“Meow-ists? Oh! You mean Maoist. No, we’re trot-ski-mists,” he said.
“But that other guy was a trot-sky-mist too. He was selling the Wokers Blah Blah Blah. But you’re selling the Workers Vanguard. What’s the difference? Aren’t you all trot-sky-mists?”
“The word is Trotskyist, not trot-ski-mists. My god, where’d you get trot-ski-mists from?” he asked with an amused smile.
“From the meow – I mean Mao lady – whatever,” I answered.
“O.K. We’re not Maoists. We’re Trotskyists. That other group, that sells the Worker’s Blah Blah Blah they CALL themselves Trotskyists, but they’re full of a bunch of nonsense. They think the Soviet Union was state capitalist. We don’t think that,” the guy explained.
“So you think it was communist then – see I knew the Soviet Union was communist.”
“No, it wasn’t communist,” he said. “The Soviet Union was a degenerated worker’s state.”
“A what? A degraded worker’s fate?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
And then he went on to explain how there had been a revolution in Russia – the October Revolution he called it – and how workers had made a revolution because they wanted a better life and the common soldiers joined the workers because they were sick & tired of the war – World War I it was – and the peasants wanted land and so the workers peasants & common soldiers all united and took power away from the rich people & the politicians. Then he explained that later the government bureaucrats took power away from the workers. The bureaucrats even had the leaders of the October Revolution killed, exiled to Siberia, or thrown in prison. He explained the bureaucrats in the Soviet Union betrayed the Soviet workers much the same way that the union bureaucrats were betraying the workers in this strike. This guy explained that today’s communists were Trotskyists. He explained that the other group that called themselves communist & Trotskyist was neither of the above because they wanted to move the Democrats to the left. He explained that what workers needed was a third party – a workers' party – a party that would fight for all workers – including women workers black workers immigrant workers & gay workers.
“I thought communists were against gays!” I said.
“No! No!” he explained. “The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to take all the anti-sodomy laws off the books. That was back in 1922. In contrast, many American states still have anti-sodomy laws even today! It was Joseph Stalin & the bureaucracy that brought back all the homophobia. Women also got the right to vote in the Soviet Union before they got the right to vote in the U.S. Women in the Soviet Union got the right to an abortion in 1920.
“Anyway,” he said, “we defend the rights of gays to get married.”
“I defend the rights of homosexuals to marry too,” I said. “But if they start getting married we’ll have to call them something besides gay, because gay means happy, and I don’t know anybody that’s happily married.”
He laughed. “Yes we also defend the right of people to get divorced.”
“What other things do you communists – Trotskyists – whatever – believe in?” I asked, curious.
“We believe in free abortion on demand, quality free child care for all working women, black liberation through worker’s revolution, we believe in the immediate withdrawal of all American troops from overseas, we want the government out of the unions, we believe workers should take over the unions for themselves, we believe in REAL picket lines that do NOT let the scabs through –”
“THAT’S GREAT!” I blurted out. “WE NEED TO STOP THESE SCABS!”
Some of the strikers looked at me with smiles. A union bureaucrat, on the other hand, gave me a nervous look.
I liked what this guy was saying. I didn’t feel like I needed boots that went up to my knees when he talked about his politics. I bought his group’s newspaper and everything he had on the Afro-American thing.
“You seem to have a lot of interest in the black question,” he asked.
“Long story,” I said.
“Is there a short version?” he asked curiously.
“I wish there were,” I said.
“I’m all ears,” he said. “If you have a short version.”
“Black people didn’t have a choice,” I began, “they were brought to this country on slave ships in chains. White people had a choice – they could have stayed in the old world and starved to death or they could come to America. Then there was an argument between the north and the south over the slavery thing – so hundreds of thousands northern men died to settle the argument. No more than the North wins the argument than the Democrats withdraw the troops from the south and stab reconstruction and the black people in the back. Anyway, some of the black people came North.”
“Yeah, so?” he asked.
“Well, I can’t help but notice that half of these black people are beautiful. And some of them are really really sweet to me – sweeter to me than most white woman.
“But it seems,” I continued, “that whenever I walk down the street with a beautiful black woman that’s when the other half of the black people – you know, the ugly dudes – well some of them don’t like seeing a black woman with a white man,” I explained. “Anyway, I hope I don’t have to hurt no one, but I’ll be damned if those black nationalists are going to put Jim Crow in my bedroom!”
The communist Trotskyist guy explained, “We defend the right of interracial couples to be left alone and defend themselves. We also defend the rights of gays to be left alone and defend themselves. Gays & interracial couples are all too often the subject of harassment and even violence.”
“I think –” I began.
“We also defend the right of women to defend themselves. Women are also too often the victim of violence. We defend the Second Amendment.”
“Yeah! I agree! I hate cowardly so-called men that attack women! If a man wants to be violent and ignorant he should be violent and ignorant with other men!” I exclaimed.
The guy looked at me in a weird way. “I have to go now,” he said.
I stood there all alone.
Copyright 2006 by Wolf Larsen