-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

We have moved to a new house

A grey stucco, two-story, decrepit hulk

My room upstairs, the parents’ down

Sister and the little boy in the basement

My father’s face glowers brighter than his cigarette ash

We move like dance partners in and out

bumping rumps until bruises burst purple blue

My shawled mother, Hispanic,

scuttles about like a mouse

My starving sister and the little boy

sit at the kitchen table and drink air from teacups

I stand in my empty bedroom – no bed or chest or lamp

Up the stairs from the kitchen, as huge as a tennis court

We could all sleep in here in the lightless cavern

Then the wood floor creaks:

the little boy peeking in the doorway

Next morning, I go anywhere

When I return, the stairs leading to my room

have been sawed off, the kitchen bathed in sawdust

My sister and the little boy refugees

and plates and cups all drenched in deep, sweet dust

I look up to the gaping hole in the upstairs floor

Mother chewing her cheeks, kids licking sawdust

like it was powdered candy

Mother’s face an old, folded roadmap,

her rosary beating like a heart

I walk to my father’s chair, he reads the funnies

Why did you do that, I ask, why cut off the stairs?

Be out of the house by night, or I will beat you senseless

growls the crackerjack in the Lazy Boy chair

He has already done that – what is different

in this new old, old new house?

You cannot hurt me, I say,

I can lift you with a finger

And he throws the stare that used to horrify me

I no longer afraid, but in the next war

I know we will fight to the death

He flings the newspaper in the air and stands

grabbing the little boy by the throat

Then he runs out the doorless front entrance

In the kitchen, the mother brushes the children’s hair,

The little boy rhythmically clapping his hands on the table

She fingers the rosary and offers a silent prayer

a prayer for this house not meant to stand

We must go, Son, she whispers,

the little one has told me things

“The little one” drawing prophecy in sawdust

Then we pack our no belongings, our no clothes, no photos

We walk through the garden alone

then we are in the alley, long walls of garages

We look back at the grey stucco, two story, decrepit hulk

Our father lighting it afire

reveling in the flames on his arms

We drive away, my bent mother in her shawl, the little boy, crying

my sister holding him – me – while I watch

And we drive into the sun

It is a dream, remember

Representative Steve King of Iowa is enthusiastically expounding his theory, that so-called Western Civilization is in peril because the birth rates of European states are dropping to a net loss. There goes the neighborhood, King implies, everything good came from Europeans. He means, of course, white people.

Representative King is in fact an example of why Western Civilization, beyond the obvious thinkers and innovators of history – European history – is composed of largely ignorant masses who ride on the coattails of Aristotle and his ilk. Whenever a few self-interested conservative elites control a mass of people, Holocaust of non-whites often follows.

King sneers when he talks about culture, in a racist, good old boy tone. It is likely that he never read the classics of Western Civilization. It is just as likely that, as a school boy, he was mesmerized by the stories of the “conquerors” of the West, represented as heroism in history books, when guns beat spears every time.

I have mentioned before a life-changing book that I read two decades ago, which shatters the myth of white supremacy. “Guns, Germs and Steel,” by Professor Jared Diamond, explains how the sheer luck of Europeans (really one of eight groups migrated out of Africa), landing and living in the only world zone of east/west axis, replete with nutritional plants and forests and animals for domestication (leading to germs which would play a huge role in conquest), and moderate climate, led to discoveries and enormous advantages based on comfort of people to pursue ideas rather than stay in survival mode.

In other words, white European people (we paled as the melanin in our skin was no longer required for tropic mode), we won the advantage lottery – after we migrated from Africa. Had any other ethnic group won the land lottery, their cultures would have thrived in the same or a similar way.

“Guns, Germs and Steel” won the Pulitzer Prize and was translated into thirty-three languages. Diamond is considered one of the top scientists and intellectuals in the world. The book is also a hell of a read and one the seminal books of the history of human evolution. It is one of the greatest refutations of racism you will ever read.

Steve King, not to be confused with Stephen King (though Steve is a horror beyond Stephen King’s imagination), has discovered nothing, possesses little or no talent, talks like “Babbitt” and is at best unread, unwashed, and unfulfilled. He dropped out of college, received three draft deferments, and is the founder of King Construction. Talk about Representative material. He reminds me of that pillar of conservatism, former pest control business owner, founder of the birther movement, and convicted criminal Tom Delay.

Compare those gentlemen to, say, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Louis Gates (those two professors at Harvard), Malcom X, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, etc., whose lineage was not lucky-European, to see the absurdity of Representative King’s racist dogma. Bannon and Breitbart would have us believe that intellect is European, therefore white.

Can advantage, lasting thousands of years, have caused a defect which runs through the generations, leading to hate mongers? It’s how defective genes cause cancer.

Bannon and Company is a cancer. Perhaps we ought to ponder if there is such a thing as defective soul.

She poured me a cup of coffee and said she couldn’t wait for tomorrow, Sunday afternoon. She was going to lie on her couch and watch the NASCAR race on television. I told her I had read that attendance for car racing was down sixty per cent. She fired back: Racing started dying when “they” outlawed the Confederate flag. Racing fans could no longer wave those banners.

I asked her, was car racing a sport or a cultural event, or both? She said, “I never hurt any blacks. I had nothing to do with slavery, and I am sick and tired of the protests and of the government telling me I can’t proudly wave my Confederate flag, and I ain’t apologizing to no one. I didn’t do anything.” She stormed into the restaurant kitchen, her face beet red.

America is a land of regional myths. The Southern one, of gentility and nobleness, leaving out that genteel people placed slaves in smokehouses with meats, partially cooking them to teach them a lesson, and branded their slaves like cattle, and hung them and raped the women and girls – the Southern one most mystifies me.

In fact, the majority of Southerners wanted no part of slavery and certainly no part of war. It was their silence that allowed the horror to take place. But not always. The citizens of Jones County, Mississippi, declared war against the Confederacy and fought to a draw against far superior forces.

Somehow, between 1865 and the Vietnam War, the southern white working class started donning Confederate flags, waving the flags as though the good old boys had won something, with the craze spreading to every redneck in every state. Perhaps NASCAR got squirrely about publicity over its drunken fans. I can’t imagine they were reaching out to a black audience.

What, exactly, was won? The Confederate leadership and generals were, in fact, traitors.

A few days ago, the family of Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice circa 1835 who wrote the Dred Scott decision, united with members of the Scott family. Dred Scott, a slave from Missouri, crossed into Illinois with his master then ran for it, claiming he was in a free state. Taney and his fellow justices ruled that negroes were not persons, thus not citizens of the United States. Ironically, Taney himself a slave owner, freed his slaves and gave them pensions.

Right away, we see that allegiance to strict interpretation of the Constitution directly led to events in this country as horrifying as the Holocaust. The Trumpists, Justice Scalia, intent on conservatism, may justify ANY action, so long as it adheres to the document. Which, by the way, is why so many amendments were passed, to clarify the many flaws of the original document.

Charlie Taney, the great-great grandson of Roger Taney, said to Lynne Jackson, great-great granddaughter of Dred Scott, “I’m sorry.” “You can’t hide from the words,” Taney told reporters. “You can’t run, you can’t hide, you can’t look away.” He apologized to all African American citizens of this nation, for the transgressions of his ancestor. He and Lynne Jackson hugged. Their families had a picnic.

You can just see Nazi lover Steve Bannon and his red meat boys sneering at forgiveness. Can’t you? Can you? Are you sneering?

Silence was never golden. Silence was an accidental terrorist. Silence was a coward. Rise up, brothers. Rise up, sisters. March. Speak. Let you first words be, “I’m sorry.”

Silence is never golden.

I recently read where teenagers have a secret code wherein they can communicate about sex, “sexting,” without parents being the wiser. The article purported to have decoded the code, meaning teens will have to evolve.

But this gave me an idea. I am nothing if not experimental. Maybe I could attract a woman, using the very same code. What could go wrong? So, I posted the following message:

To Whom It May Concern: I am NIFOC while I write you this note. IWSRN – please! So LMIRL, GYPO, and I’ll CU46 today! MY ASL: 50-ish, M, Godfrey. I’ll be serving PRON and DOC. Call me “GHC.”

I posted the message over the weekend, and the responses came pouring in: “Hi, GHC. I’m coming to St. Louis to gather alternative facts, and will have some free time. 50-ish, F, D.C. The stress of my job makes me needy. I could use some PRON, you devil’s spawn FOH, so GYPO and I’ll GMPO, pronto. WH! Call me ‘KAC.’”

“Yo, GHC! Call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner! (TEBGTPC), 70-ish, few extra lbs., F. NH. CU46? PAL. They’re dead! MFNI69, lover boy. PMU? CTTBD.”

Translation: To Whom It May Concern: I am naked in front of my computer while I write you this note. I want sex right now – please! Get your pants off, and I’ll see you for sex today! My age-sex-location: 50-ish, Male, Godfrey. I’ll be serving porn and my drug of choice, red wine. Call me Genehouse Chronicles.

“Hi, GHC. I’m coming to St. Louis to gather alternative facts, and will have some free time. 50-ish, female, Washington D.C. The stress of my job makes me needy. I could use some porn, you devil’s spawn friend of Hillary, so get your pants off and I’ll get my pants off pronto. Woohoo! Call me Kellyanne C.”

“Yo, GHC! Call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner! (The early bird gets the pork chop), 80-ish, female, nursing home. See you for sex? Don’t worry – parents ain’t listening. They’re dead! My favorite number is 69, lover boy. Pick me up? Come through the back door.”

Relax, reader, I have come to my senses. I know, I’m not 50-ish. I’m not even 60-ish. I don’t sit naked in front of my computer anymore. A friend told me that President Trump can see me though my camera – ewww. It’s just that, I have reached the age where Sarah Palin and Kellyanne seem babe-ish – so long as they don’t talk. And “She’s got Michele Bachman eyes.”

Go ahead, feminists, let me have it. I’ve read Simone Debeauvoir and Angela Davis and Miley Cyrus. Beat me up, handcuff me, whip me, spank me – I deserve it.

Please.

Oh, and remember: Come through the back door.

Dear Mr. Baldwin,

It has come to the attention of the White House staff that you are making fun of us. You refer to “The Whitey House,” and me as “Steve Talibannon,” Kellyanne “Con’s Way,” “Flaky Mikey Flynn,” “Mein Kampf” Miller, Penthouse Pence, “Spicer Girl (actually I quite like “Spicer Girl”),” among other, even less flattering garbage. (How dare you call me a wife beater even though I am one? I’d like to punch your girly mouth!)

We’d just like you to know, we can see you through the camera in your computer. We see you in your undies, slothful and pathetic. We see your porn site, your commie short stories, your doctors and what ails you, the empty wine bottles, your seditious emails, you picking your nose, black people coming in and out of your house, that Girl Scout that was sitting on your lap so you’d buy her out of cookies. Okay, I made that last one up—fake news—just like you do! And there is a cat wandering in and out. We could easily kidnap that cat nip.

Get it? With one keystroke, we could humiliate you, destroy you, Genehouse!

But! You’re clever! You’re funny! “Whitey House”: what a hoot! “Talibannon” Haha! Mein Herr, have you ever thought of turning your writing gifts into a force for change? You could “chuck” Shumer, play reed on Harry, pluck that Nancy P-gal’s face job, ham hock Hillary, make Governor Moonbeam into a moon shadow, ram Rahm, burn, Bernie, burn. You are just writing for the wrong team, guy!

In a short amount of time and a large amount of untraceable cash, we could show you how to write “birther-style” (Obama, oh-gone-uh), jig the Jews, bash the blacks, wuss the women, lambaste Latinos, disorient Orientals, mix the Mex, light up the libtards. Sound like fun? Hell, yeah!

Or: We can “show” you having sex with sheep, loving llamas, 69-ing the San Francisco 49ers, sodomizing songbirds! Your choice!

Actually, you have no choice. See the attached file to know that you’re now the author of “The Pussy-House Chronicles: How the Alt-Right Put Women in Their Place in the Kitchen with Dinah.”

“Makes America great again!” Amos Fitz, author, “The Klan Kookbook: Foods for Righteous White People.” “A slap in the face to cunts everywhere.” Ted Newgent.

You always said you wanted to publish a book. Well, you “have,” Genehouse! We’re lining up your book tour now, starting with a string of snake handler churches in Alabama and an TV appearance with Pat Roberts where you tell how you were converted from liberalism and homosexuality!

Your ghostwriting pal,

Steve “Tali”Bannon

Richard Spencer, the neonationalist guy who first used the phrase “alt-right,” recently weighed in on the Super Bowl and his glorious team, the New England Patriots. Many people I know spoke similar sentiments. But.

Spencer commented that the Patriots victory was “a win for the NFL’s whitest team.” Quarterback Tom Brady, according to Dick, was “an Aryan avatar.” And noted evolutionary reject David Duke, formerly of the KKK, now running for office in Louisiana, tweeted: “Can White people celebrate that the greatest football player in history is White and an open Trump supporter?”

Isn’t the question obvious? Don’t you think that a lot of drunken white guys openly root for players according to race? Don’t you think that March Madness will bring out the same sentiments?

Sport, as it exists today, is about well-paid gladiators. Black players get the “Oprah” exemption, the one where she is “good colored,” and loveable. But love them off the field, away from the TV screen? Are you fucking kidding me?

I had a Philippina landlord in Chicago who calmly told me she was white—General McArthur had told her people that, during the Great War. And from her lofty perch as a White person, she denigrated Blacks and Hispanics with rapier-like precision. Except. . . she loved Oprah. This was her exact quote: “Oprah, she white, not like those blacks.”

All black players in the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, in my humble opinion, should refuse to play for billionaire owners who espouse nationalism. All black college athletes should have to take a course on white nationalism, just so they become gladiators with eyes wide open.

I weaned myself off of football this year, so I assume I’m in the 1% on the issue of the old pigskin. This wasn’t moral high ground by any means. I just became sick of the spectacle. As a child, I heard my dad and others talk about “black bucks,” like Jim Brown and Bob Gibson. Remember that satanic commentator Jimmy the Greek, as he spoke openly about the breeding of blacks for the benefit of sport?

My dad, like most dads, would refer to black baseball players as a credit to their race. I absorbed this wisdom. But then I became educated and learned that there was no such thing as “race.” The term was coined somewhere in the old British Empire, over tea. It had no actual meaning.

Now we know that every last one of us comes from one of eight tribes in Africa several hundred thousand years ago, that color is but a function of evolution, that Icelandic people didn’t need melanin, and over time they turned as white as driven snow.

Aryan. Black. Negro. White. Asian. Yellow. These are mere words, handy for the unwashed when they need somebody to hate. The President of the United States, the puppet of Bannon and Spencer, found gold in that mine, and here we are. Science and knowledge are out. Creationism, that oxymoron of choice for witch burners, jingoists, politicians and snake oil salesmen, is one of Kellyanne Conway’s alternative facts and a fervent belief of our Secretary of Education. Betsy DeVos, mind, has a dunce cap up her ass.

Hell, let’s lose the stadiums, and everybody let’s get violent. Tom Brady won’t profit from these free-for-alls, poor Aryan avatar. Holding footballs won’t protect him when the masses eat the rich.

What would Sweeny Todd and his pie making friend Mrs. Lovett make of Trump steak? “Too fatty, my dear.” But Tom Brady, as Archie Bunker would say, “is cherce.”

Dear Mr. Baldwin,

We know that you are a big fan of the Kennedy Center Honors (we monitor your viewing habits; you taste in porn is weirdo no-no, Gino), the annual December event in which the nation’s greatest artists are honored. Each and every honoree is feted by peers in their profession, with speeches, video clips, performances etc. The celebration is taped and shown on television a few days later.

We have a problem, Mr. Baldwin. The 2017 honorees have been contacted, and well, they all turned us down. Something about sitting next to President Trump. We’re sure you agree: the liberal arts community will not dictate to us.

Shame on: poet Rod McKuen, philosopher Dr. Wayne Dyer, columnist George F. Will, the cast of “Cheers,” and musicians Jackie Evancho and Jim Nabors.

We tried contacting a B-F List of possible honorees including the enchanting Meatloaf, Jon Voight, the great actor Scott Baio, and the stunning band Hitler Youth and the Nazi Femmes with their hit song, “Blow Me, Libtards.” Alas, none of them were available.

On a positive note, Christian rocker and bow hunter Ted Nugent of the G List will be there! Why are we contacting you? Mr. Baldwin, congratulations, you lucky man, we hereby name you a Kennedy Center Nominee! Come December, you will be sitting in the balcony of the Kennedy Center next to the Tedster, with your hand on Ivanka Trump’s pussy, and your smiling Donald J. Trump to your right, also with his hand on his daughter’s pussy!

We honor you, of course, for your slightly irreverent and naughty Genehouse Chronicles. King Trump lovingly refers to you as his Fool. Hold on to your hat, Gino, the lovely long-chinned Kellyanne Conway will read from your work onstage! Holograms of Phyliss Schlafly, old dead eyes Michelle Bachman, Miss Hopey Changey Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney’s dick, and the cast of the Jim Baker Show will read, read, read Gene!

And! A chorus line of young women in yoga pants will bend over backwards in your honor while Newt Gingrich plays with their camel toes!

See, by honoring you we prove once and for all we are not liberal haters! We love liberals—except for gays, lesbians, negroes, chinks, spics, breast feeders, Injuns, trans’, lefty elitists, people who wear glasses to prove they’re smarter than we are (ask that rascal Pol Pot how he dealt with four-eyes’!), MADD, NASA, MENSA, menstruaters, minstrels, morphydites, mitochondrial DNA, masturbators, mucus mopes, and majority-mullers!

Finally, accept this honor or you will be assassinated, you G-Lister! Better a live Genehouse than a dead Bauhaus!

Sincerely,

Brittney Spears Mint,

Chairman, The Kennedy Center Honors Soon to be The Trump Honors at the Trump Center

Have you told them, yet –
your boy or your girl
that we’re born to death

Your nephew or niece
We are slaughtering apes
who will never know peace

Your granddaughter grandson
that they’re dying by seconds
and that fairytale “Son”

Isn’t coming

Have you told them, why –
that schoolchildren’s books
necessarily lie

That learning’s not meaning
black holes sucking spewing
‘life is but’ dreaming

Have you comforted them
when you know no comfort
and the god you invent

Isn’t coming

And ‘born to run’
that whirligig song
of romance and fun

Is a lie.

December 24, 2016

We were very poor, when I was a kid. Presents consisted mostly of necessary items such as shirts, socks and underwear. “Toy” was a word I related to mostly from watching TV commercials.

My cousin Louisa May, oh how she loved seafood and dolls. Her parents scrimped and saved and bought her a used Barbie doll. She would sit under the dining room table and pin shrimp on the Barbie.

Christmas dinner often consisted of root vegetables from the root garden and rusted truck parts from our truck farm, mashed or boiled. Meat was rare. There were some years when all we had was the result of my dad shooting robins with an air rifle, and every two of us at the table would share the teensy, boiled robin breasts. The winter of ’55, we were hungry and barely alive, and we ate the cat.

We drank milk from our own cow, an old bossy named Ring, who we would adorn with sleigh bells for the holiday, and sleigh bells on Ring rang riotously. Her milk and butter were bitter but balm for beggars and better than bleak blank.

Desert would be frozen winter berries of unknown species and withered poison ivy leaves. We would eat the brightly colored berries and leaves and then vomit them into the vomit bucket at mid-table. We children had the task of cleaning the grandparents’ bibs and mouths and mustaches and laps, of berry bulimia.

Grandpa would give each of us a hand-rolled cigar fashioned from dried prairie grasses, and we would light up and smoke and sing Christmas songs, until the children coughed their lungs out. Oh, the laughter!

After the Christmas meal, my job was to take all the robin bones and bury them in the back forty, even though we were so poor we only had a back twenty. Then I would swab the outhouse in case company came. Company never came.

After chores, I would hunt in the fields for a special stick, for carving. I would strip the bark with my Barlow knife, until I had a smooth stick, that “became” a conductor’s wand, a sword, an old man’s cane, a slave owner’s whip, a girl’s private parts. I would always name it “Dicky the Stick,” and Dicky and I would play and play, not a care in the world.

At sunset, the family would strip naked and take turns having a bath in a metal washtub in the kitchen, with cold well water heated by the woodstove. The children always went last. But I didn’t care. I had my stick stuck up my ass, so that I could play with my Dickey in bed.

We had a loony old great-aunt who would wander the halls at night and slip into my room and attempt to breast feed me, and this was so comforting, if dry. This was my Christmas mammary.

I am alone this Christmas, but there are plenty of sticks in the front yard, for carving my new Dicky. From Scout the Cat and me, Merry Christmas, and don’t eat the berries!