Read Online I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kent Russell
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worse-than-mediocre acts came and went from the stage, and the juggalos chanted “FAM-I-LY” at the ones they liked.
I felt it necessary to get more than a little buzzed that night. The nigh-illegible notes I took in the rides’ glow became suffused with a false and beery insight. After one of the cars in the Hustler rained solid waste upon me, I wrote, “In another time, these people
still
wouldn’t have belonged to unions, or the Elks.” When a group of teens who hid their faces with bandannas passed me by, I wrote, for reasons that remain inscrutable, “Ohio is SHAPED LIKE AN ANCHOR!!” and underlined it hard enough to tear the page.
I also wrote that juggalos seem far more comfortable around black people than your average middle American, and I stand by that. There were a handful of black dudes at the Gathering who weren’t performers, and their interactions with juggalos were some of the most natural black-white interactions I’ve ever observed. It was just guys talking to one another.
By the time Naughty by Nature took the stage, I was good and drunk. They kept spouting malapropisms like “We’re glad to be at the juggalo!” and “Much love to the ICP posse!” As with the rest of the non-juggalo rappers performing at the Gathering—including Tone Loc, Warren G, Rob Base, Slick Rick, and Coolio—they were clearly in it for the money. All I wanted was to hear “Hip Hop Hooray,” but they kept demanding that I and everyone else chant “WHITE BOYS!” first. Meaning Naughty by Nature misunderstood their audience. They saw the crowd as another mass of white boys, same as at every other gig they’d played over the past two decades, and they betrayed a little passive-aggressive weariness. The juggalos around me seemed mostly confused. Their collective, grumbled response could be summed up as: “These guys don’t understand that we’re just like they are, or like they used to be, before they made money.”
I was a white, middle-class teenager, but where I’m from I was the exception. My Miami high school was five times the size of the average Florida school and 80 percent Hispanic, 10 percent black, 10 percent other. Most of the student body qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch. My friends were Cuban, Nicaraguan, Haitian, Brazilian, Panamanian, Colombian, Bahamian, Mexican. Few of their families could be considered solidly middle class. They were working-class immigrants, born overseas or else first-generation American.
Assimilation is a fascinating thing to watch happen. Themetaphor of the melting pot is pretty spot-on. Over time, immigrants’ original cultures are rendered, and they take on the essence of ours. That’s what stewing does—it takes disparate ingredients and imbues them with a single general flavor. In Miami, most people I knew assimilated. They put on polo shirts and said “dude” and drove circles around malls on weekends. They affected middle-class white adolescence, with quite a few cultural tics. (For instance, their Super Bowl parties included
croquetas
and boner grinding.) As an American, you have to believe that’s something everyone strives for, becoming the “we.” You feel good seeing it. You’re a little affronted if someone doesn’t strive for that inclusion.
In my high school, the kids who assimilated had a derisive term for those who didn’t:
ref.
Short for
refugee.
Fashion could be reffy, as could hair, mannerism, inflection, you name it. The assimilated kids picked on refs, who were considerably poorer. They screamed “INS!” and waved lit matches around refs’ oiled hair. The refs never protested. They shoaled along walls and stared straight ahead, always maintaining the same imperturbable expression.
Me, everyone mostly ignored. Sometimes I got pushed into the hydrangea bushes and called white boy. Sometimes Latinas feigned interest in me while their unseen
novios
busted guts behind lockers. But, foremost, I was an anomaly. And, at the risk of
I felt it necessary to get more than a little buzzed that night. The nigh-illegible notes I took in the rides’ glow became suffused with a false and beery insight. After one of the cars in the Hustler rained solid waste upon me, I wrote, “In another time, these people
still
wouldn’t have belonged to unions, or the Elks.” When a group of teens who hid their faces with bandannas passed me by, I wrote, for reasons that remain inscrutable, “Ohio is SHAPED LIKE AN ANCHOR!!” and underlined it hard enough to tear the page.
I also wrote that juggalos seem far more comfortable around black people than your average middle American, and I stand by that. There were a handful of black dudes at the Gathering who weren’t performers, and their interactions with juggalos were some of the most natural black-white interactions I’ve ever observed. It was just guys talking to one another.
By the time Naughty by Nature took the stage, I was good and drunk. They kept spouting malapropisms like “We’re glad to be at the juggalo!” and “Much love to the ICP posse!” As with the rest of the non-juggalo rappers performing at the Gathering—including Tone Loc, Warren G, Rob Base, Slick Rick, and Coolio—they were clearly in it for the money. All I wanted was to hear “Hip Hop Hooray,” but they kept demanding that I and everyone else chant “WHITE BOYS!” first. Meaning Naughty by Nature misunderstood their audience. They saw the crowd as another mass of white boys, same as at every other gig they’d played over the past two decades, and they betrayed a little passive-aggressive weariness. The juggalos around me seemed mostly confused. Their collective, grumbled response could be summed up as: “These guys don’t understand that we’re just like they are, or like they used to be, before they made money.”
I was a white, middle-class teenager, but where I’m from I was the exception. My Miami high school was five times the size of the average Florida school and 80 percent Hispanic, 10 percent black, 10 percent other. Most of the student body qualified for free or reduced-cost lunch. My friends were Cuban, Nicaraguan, Haitian, Brazilian, Panamanian, Colombian, Bahamian, Mexican. Few of their families could be considered solidly middle class. They were working-class immigrants, born overseas or else first-generation American.
Assimilation is a fascinating thing to watch happen. Themetaphor of the melting pot is pretty spot-on. Over time, immigrants’ original cultures are rendered, and they take on the essence of ours. That’s what stewing does—it takes disparate ingredients and imbues them with a single general flavor. In Miami, most people I knew assimilated. They put on polo shirts and said “dude” and drove circles around malls on weekends. They affected middle-class white adolescence, with quite a few cultural tics. (For instance, their Super Bowl parties included
croquetas
and boner grinding.) As an American, you have to believe that’s something everyone strives for, becoming the “we.” You feel good seeing it. You’re a little affronted if someone doesn’t strive for that inclusion.
In my high school, the kids who assimilated had a derisive term for those who didn’t:
ref.
Short for
refugee.
Fashion could be reffy, as could hair, mannerism, inflection, you name it. The assimilated kids picked on refs, who were considerably poorer. They screamed “INS!” and waved lit matches around refs’ oiled hair. The refs never protested. They shoaled along walls and stared straight ahead, always maintaining the same imperturbable expression.
Me, everyone mostly ignored. Sometimes I got pushed into the hydrangea bushes and called white boy. Sometimes Latinas feigned interest in me while their unseen
novios
busted guts behind lockers. But, foremost, I was an anomaly. And, at the risk of
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