a row house for Mother and one next door for me, with a real laboratory where I could work on my inventions, instead of just a basement.
That’s not going to happen, though. I am not bitter or anything, but this is all about television ratings, and like I said, the game is rigged.
Confessional: Jamal Norwood aka Stuntman
Okay, so long, Diver. Fly away, Brave Hawk. Head on down the road, Spasm. Hop away, Toad Man.
Yeah, we lost again, and now we’re down to three Clubs—Jade, Roller, and yours truly, the one and only Stuntman. Accept no substitutes.
It’s getting a bit like Omaha Beach in the Clubs House. You’re in the LST, sicker than [bleep], the ramp drops, and people start getting plugged with bullets.
I tried out for that movie my first year out of ’SC—Going After Malone. Had my agent and my buddy Schaef, who was the stunt coordinator, and the writer, this dude McKenna, who owes me a round of golf, even Nic Deladrier—all of them called Spielberg for me. Not that I wanted to sign up for two months of bull[bleep] boot camp in Ireland. But a Spielberg picture . . . I really wanted to do it. It sure beat signing up to be thrown off a bus in Friday the 13th Part Eleven.
No way. No brothers at Omaha Beach, ergo, no brothers in the movie. I even said to the agent, hey, Spielberg whipped up a [bleep]ing dinosaur for a couple of his movies, how difficult would it be to make me less black? Still waiting to hear back on that.
I’m not saying I miss all of our Discards the same. I was starting to really like Diver, even though her wild card really only helped if you were in the Pacific or maybe George Clooney’s swimming pool. Brave Hawk? Being able to fly has its definite uses, but this dude was hampered by bad headwork and the entirely mistaken idea that being a Native American gave him some kind of mythic destiny or immunity or access to the operating system for the whole universe. Or not. He can go back to something he’s good at, like stringing beads in Arizona. And Spasm? Spaz is right. That orgasm power might come in handy on a date, but elsewise . . . And the less said about Buford the Toad, the better.
So, yeah, no real losses—but at some point it is a numbers game. I’m fairly confident I can carry my share of the load for the Clubs. What I’m worried about is whether the others have my back. I know it’s a game. I know that at some point we’ll start snarling at each other like starved dogs . . . but first we’ve got to win some [bleep]ing challenges. I’ve been working Jade a bit. And I’m sure she’s working me. It’s a mutual thing—an alliance with benefits.
We’ve finally negotiated an agreement on the food thing, if nothing else. As in, a man needs a meal more than once a day, and something more substantial than one of those little cartons of Coffee Dannon yogurt and an apple. Jade doesn’t have to cook . . . she doesn’t have to share . . . she needs to stay out of the [bleep]ing kitchen when I’m in there.
Sorry, I’m sounding like that English guy on Hell’s Kitchen, which runs opposite us, so you better be DVRing it. But that’s what I feel like a lot of the time. Besides, everybody expects me to be angry, so why not? It’s not as though I have to look far to find something annoying. Like a bumper sticker that shows a hand with index and middle finger crossed, and says “Me and God are like this!” Fine for you two. Get a room. Why do I have to know?
You know, while we’re at it, here’s another one of the apparently infinite number of things that [bleep]s me off: everyone, even Jade, thinks that what makes me angry is the way the white man keeps the brothers down . . . and, well, yeah, that has been a bit of a problem and will be a problem till the end of the time, I suppose. I’ll be honest with you . . . that’s not a battle I’ve had to fight much. My dad and mom, yeah. The generation before them, [bleep] yeah. But not my generation . . . thank you, wild card, for giving normal whites a whole new