Read Online I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell - Free Book Online
Authors: Kent Russell
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codes be damned. We never lived as high as before the hurricane or as low as immediately after it. When I got back from the Gathering, I learned that my parents had closed on a deal to sell the house to the neighbors. Then they put their stuff in the van and lit off for California. The neighbors demolished the house posthaste.
I was awake and jackknifed in my tent after a juggalo hollered “WHOOP, WHOOP!” right outside it. Those in the vicinity returned the call, and it redoubled on the trails, an aural telegraph relaying the A-OK. Security stayed near the front entrance; juggalos were very much in charge here. Adam and his brother were gone. I’d slept for five hours, and now it wasearly evening. The bigger acts were beginning their sets, and everyone was making their way to the main stage.
The setting sun made candy floss out of the clouds. A kid leaned against a tree and faced the procession with this sign: NEED COKE ? SHOW ME YOUR OPEN BUTT CRACK, GIRLS . The helicopter had not stopped—nor would it stop—buzzing ’Namishly overhead.
I paused at a carny food booth to buy a cheesesteak. I took my sandwich to a large wooden pallet to sit and eat, but I was shooed by a child huckster who was using it as a stage. “What up, fam. Help a juggalo get home. Three dollars for one kick, five dollars for two.” He wore a red jumpsuit and had braids like dead coral. On the back of his jumpsuit was the Hatchetman, Psychopathic Records’ logo and Kokopelli. The Hatchetman is a cartoon profile of a guy with a big head, the aforementioned braids, and a goatee, who’s running with a hatchet in one hand. Over the course of four days, I saw the Hatchetman stitched onto shirts, pants, cheer shorts, bikini tops, beanies, caps, and shoes; I saw it shaved into heads and chests; and I saw it tattooed on so many pounds of lacquered flesh—on arms, shoulders, and forearms, over the avian bones on the backs of hands, across necks and asses, in the lee of breasts, on calves, clavicles, and feet.
A topless woman wrapped in the Canadian flag walked up next to me to watch, her boyfriend behind her. She noticed the VIP signboard around my neck.
“What makes you so special?” She was ghost-colored, but her eyes were blue to the point of looking colorized.
I stammered something about maybe trying to write about the Gathering. Then I asked if they’d met any other international juggalos.
“Fuck yeah we have,” the boyfriend said. He was bullish, his head shaved. “Finns, Australians, English, Japanese.” He wasfrom Windsor, Ontario, right across the border from Detroit. He’d been waiting ten years to go to a Gathering. He wanted to know: “You going to shit all over us like every other newspaper?”
“They want to shut us down,” the woman added. “If this was political, they’d shut us down.”
Her boyfriend leaned in: “Look, dude, there’ve always been juggalos. It’s just, before ICP, nobody gave us a name. We were just walking around in Bumfuck by ourselves, you know? But get us all together? Tens of thousands of us? And everybody wants to shut us down.” At this I nodded, but I didn’t know who “everybody” was; overall, the Gathering seemed more ignored than persecuted. “Just tell everybody the truth, ninja,” the boyfriend said. “Tell them what we’re like. Maybe when they read it, they’ll be, like, ‘That’s me, that’s where I belong.’ ”
A man working a barrel grill paid his three dollars and had his kick. The kid didn’t even need to catch his breath before reprising his spiel. “Man, I was a punter in high school,” the griller said, shaking his head. “I heard them shits pop.”
The valley that held the main stage and carnival was filled with juggalos. After sunset, the only light came from the stage and the winking bulbs of the Octopus, the Swinger, and the Hustler. I lingered in the light of the rides, scribbling notes and drinking the Nattys I’d brought. Several
I was awake and jackknifed in my tent after a juggalo hollered “WHOOP, WHOOP!” right outside it. Those in the vicinity returned the call, and it redoubled on the trails, an aural telegraph relaying the A-OK. Security stayed near the front entrance; juggalos were very much in charge here. Adam and his brother were gone. I’d slept for five hours, and now it wasearly evening. The bigger acts were beginning their sets, and everyone was making their way to the main stage.
The setting sun made candy floss out of the clouds. A kid leaned against a tree and faced the procession with this sign: NEED COKE ? SHOW ME YOUR OPEN BUTT CRACK, GIRLS . The helicopter had not stopped—nor would it stop—buzzing ’Namishly overhead.
I paused at a carny food booth to buy a cheesesteak. I took my sandwich to a large wooden pallet to sit and eat, but I was shooed by a child huckster who was using it as a stage. “What up, fam. Help a juggalo get home. Three dollars for one kick, five dollars for two.” He wore a red jumpsuit and had braids like dead coral. On the back of his jumpsuit was the Hatchetman, Psychopathic Records’ logo and Kokopelli. The Hatchetman is a cartoon profile of a guy with a big head, the aforementioned braids, and a goatee, who’s running with a hatchet in one hand. Over the course of four days, I saw the Hatchetman stitched onto shirts, pants, cheer shorts, bikini tops, beanies, caps, and shoes; I saw it shaved into heads and chests; and I saw it tattooed on so many pounds of lacquered flesh—on arms, shoulders, and forearms, over the avian bones on the backs of hands, across necks and asses, in the lee of breasts, on calves, clavicles, and feet.
A topless woman wrapped in the Canadian flag walked up next to me to watch, her boyfriend behind her. She noticed the VIP signboard around my neck.
“What makes you so special?” She was ghost-colored, but her eyes were blue to the point of looking colorized.
I stammered something about maybe trying to write about the Gathering. Then I asked if they’d met any other international juggalos.
“Fuck yeah we have,” the boyfriend said. He was bullish, his head shaved. “Finns, Australians, English, Japanese.” He wasfrom Windsor, Ontario, right across the border from Detroit. He’d been waiting ten years to go to a Gathering. He wanted to know: “You going to shit all over us like every other newspaper?”
“They want to shut us down,” the woman added. “If this was political, they’d shut us down.”
Her boyfriend leaned in: “Look, dude, there’ve always been juggalos. It’s just, before ICP, nobody gave us a name. We were just walking around in Bumfuck by ourselves, you know? But get us all together? Tens of thousands of us? And everybody wants to shut us down.” At this I nodded, but I didn’t know who “everybody” was; overall, the Gathering seemed more ignored than persecuted. “Just tell everybody the truth, ninja,” the boyfriend said. “Tell them what we’re like. Maybe when they read it, they’ll be, like, ‘That’s me, that’s where I belong.’ ”
A man working a barrel grill paid his three dollars and had his kick. The kid didn’t even need to catch his breath before reprising his spiel. “Man, I was a punter in high school,” the griller said, shaking his head. “I heard them shits pop.”
The valley that held the main stage and carnival was filled with juggalos. After sunset, the only light came from the stage and the winking bulbs of the Octopus, the Swinger, and the Hustler. I lingered in the light of the rides, scribbling notes and drinking the Nattys I’d brought. Several
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