An Amtrak Journey

In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth

May 25, 2010
NYP (Penn Station, New York) to SOP (Southern Pines, North Carolina)
Amtrak Train #91

Train #91 left New York’s Penn Station at precisely the scheduled departure time of 10:52 a.m. For whatever reason, it arrived at Newark’s Penn Station – its first scheduled stop – fifteen minutes late. And sat for a while in the station. A young boy – maybe four years old – asked his mother, “Mommy, why are we on a train?”

Actually, I had not understood what the boy had said, but because of the laughter I decided to ask my (randomly selected, I hope) traveling companion in the next seat what the boy had said. This fellow, assigned to the aisle seat next to my window seat, was a 48-year-old White man from Connecticut. He tried to sit elsewhere – and did for a while – but was persuaded by the attendants (I don’t know their official titles), and by the increasing fullness of the car, to remain in the seat he was assigned to. I didn’t take it personally. I do the same thing – preferring solitary meditation on passing scenery to the uncertainties of close contact and conversation (or awkward silence) with a total stranger.

I tend to sleep most of the time, anyway.

He was a drinker. He had not had a drink yet – perhaps not even earlier that morning – but I looked at him and knew he was a drinker.

He was torn between reading his book – a baseball book (Game Time by Mike Angell, I think) – and being, in my opinion, unnecessarily friendly. He seemed to be a nice fellow (which, I guess, is a sort of insult) and I did not dislike him, but by the end of our common journey I knew more about him – his age, his hometown, his profession, his girlfriend/fiancée, his blue-collar background, her mansion “across the tracks,” his daughter, father, mother, brother, sisters (and their ages) – than he knew about me. Knowing that someone is Black sometimes seems enough for most White people. They make unfortunate and sometimes embarrassing assumptions – which are no longer dangerous to the Black person involved (unless the White person is a policeman) – but which leave me wondering, “Who did he think he was just talking to?”

We spent a small but significant portion of the eleven hours between New York and his Raleigh destination talking to each other. Did he have any idea that he was sitting next to (pick one or more):

• the fourth African American to get both a B.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard
  
• a homosexual (repressed? – I don’t know any more if I need sex or affection from men, but, in this society, the latter cannot be got without the former; holding hands is considered a sex act in America – and an abominable one, if it’s between two men. It is possible, though you may not believe or understand it, that my desire to be affectionate with a man is not a homosexual desire. Many years ago, I met an Ethiopian who confused the two, after spending two years in this crazy society, and committed suicide, thinking he was homosexual.)
  
• a violent psychopath (definitely repressed – for one thing, I neither assaulted nor murdered the White man sitting next to me, even though his crude and almost entirely unspoken, and willfully so, ignorances impinged on that part of my psyche that caused me on previous occasions to commit one or another unmentionable assault on some unsuspecting ignoramus, although I do regret having assaulted two teenaged African American males – one of whom stood his ground, and rightfully so, but was probably still hurt in being so unjustly attacked by one of his elders, the other of whom had only committed a mild and childish offense but which was met with a response on my part that was totally psychotic, and while being undamaged physically, he has probably never fully healed from the psychic damage, inasmuch as I was no stranger to him but someone who had been of some kind assistance to him on previous occasions. I never saw him again.
  
  There is no stigma in America – and I repeat this with emphasis – there is no stigma attached to being a homicidal psychotic. Such a person might be called a “nut” but there is no name for him with the blunt force and menace of “faggot”. In America, a homicidal psychotic is often called sir or officer or general or admiral or mister secretary or President. Whoever unleashed the maniacal General Curtis LeMay on Japan in the closing months of World War II was a greater homicidal nut than the general himself – however mild his moment-to-moment demeanor. Whoever decided that consuming tens of thousands of Japanese civilians in the flames of fire-bombed cities was not enough and who proceeded to order the dropping of two bombs that could accomplish such extermination in an instant as would otherwise require hours, days or weeks, and whoever then proceeded to decide that such an abomination was insufficient and needed to be exceeded by the development of weapons several thousands of times more destructive – these people are the very essence of homicidal psychosis, especially because their everyday demeanor is so apparently a model of sanity. There is no stigma. A public revelation of homosexuality would require immediate dismissal. (By the way, as best I can tell, I’ve never actually killed anyone.)
  
• a classical pianist and serious composer – which means nothing to most Americans except to be impressed, or not impressed, inasmuch as few Americans have developed, or not lost, the faculty for actually hearing music. Music – along with food, conversation, computers, the media, and life in general – has become simply a means of amusing ourselves. Something is serious only if it threatens to kill us physically – or take our money. Life is not serious; disease is serious. In this context, my life – my commitment – as a serious musician has no meaning or purpose. Except to be called Dr. Knibbs (or if one of these baited fish-hooks called universities hires me, then Professor Knibbs – and sometimes I bite, because sometimes the fish actually gets the worm and gets away, and I’m smarter than a fish, I think).
  
• a Muslim who has read the Qur’an, beginning to end, in Arabic, well over a hundred times, and who considers himself a fundamentalist, if that word has any meaning, which unfortunately it no longer does – so-called fundamentalist Jews, Christians and Muslims, and even Hindus, all have the same faith, which is devil-worship. They have fancy, self-glorifying names for themselves and spend more time and energy hating other people than loving the Creator and his creatures.
  
  Some years ago, I came to the conclusion that if other African American Muslim men loved Allah (the Creator), then they would love me. As an openly homosexual, repressed homicidal psychotic African American scholar-pianist-composer, I could have had a comfortable and prosperous career at Harvard or some other gushing fountain of artificial prestige, but I chose to walk away from that, join the Nation of Islam, work with and for the benefit of the African American people, and follow – as best I can – the path laid out by Allah and His messenger, Prophet Muhammad.
  
  How many Harvard professors do you know? I went to Harvard. I met tenured professors who were among the stupidest people I’ve ever met – intellectually brilliant, perhaps, but stupid. I’ve taken courses with tenured professors who were insane. During my aborted first freshman year, I saw a tenured professor cruising in the park at night. Some friend of my roommates had thought it was the funniest thing that all these guys were just walking back and forth down by the river, and invited us to go watch them. So we went. While we were standing there – four of us, I think – some guy walked up and stared one of us in the face, from no more than two feet away, apparently didn’t find what he was looking for, and walked away. I was shocked to see this same guy standing at the front of a great and ancient hall, addressing hundreds of Harvard students on some seriously academic subject. No, it can’t be him! I went into strenuous denial – which contributed to the intensifying downward spiral of my mental state.
  
  Before dropping out, I had assaulted (and perhaps permanently injured) one of my roommates, exhibited other symptoms of mental collapse, and finally, attempted to kill myself. All I had to do – as I’ve eventually come to realize – was to accept homosexuality as my identity and way of life, and I’d have had a clear, comfortable and prestigious life laid out before me. I discovered years later, when I went into the Gay life for a few years, that I was not a homicidal psychotic when I was Gay. For Gay people, this is no dilemma whatsoever. Gay is good, they say. I don’t hate them – I’d be hating myself – but I disagree. I have always believed in my heart that it is not good for people to have sex outside of sex between a man and a woman who are married to each other. Not because of what people say. People say many things. They say Gay is good. They say fornication is good – using the shorter “f” word. Some people are swingers. Or bisexuals. If it’s good to you, it’s good for you.
  
  So they say.
  
  But after reading the Qur’an – reciting the rhythmic and symphonic verses and chapters that Allah has given us – day after day, year after year, I’ve come to realize not only that Allah has forbidden certain things but that I have always felt in my heart that those things are wrong. My dilemma is that, as the Qur’an is remaking me – that is to say, as qur’aan (reading/reciting the word/music Allah has given us) is remaking me – I am struggling against not only the society in general but against the Muslims, as well – swimming upstream against a raging downward current fed by the collective energies, psychic and physical, of an entire society of Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists and others, working in concert. I am a Muslim, nonetheless. I surrender to the One who created me, you and everything in heaven and earth.

Who (or what) did this White man think he was talking to? I have no idea. Not simply from lack of knowledge, but because I have come to find it increasingly difficult to see myself as a Black person living within definitions provided by White people (or a Muslim living within definitions provided by Christians). You may disagree with me – and I would hope, knowledgeably, but I doubt it – that any African American who believes that jazz or blues or rhythm-and-blues or soul music or gospel or rap is our music, any African American who believes such a thing is living a life as a Black person whose identity is defined by White people. We do not fit into his world. We do not fit into his definitions, his writing of history, his notion of his own identity. In the real actual world in which African Americans have an actual identity, there is no such thing as a White person. As an identity, White is a fraudulent pseudo-reality. Every so-called White person must lie or be lied to, wallow in delusional history, in order to believe they are White.

I wondered if he was drinking beer because of me. His color went from pink to red. His frequent and lengthy departures to the lounge car were followed by increasingly lengthy bouts of talkative friendliness. I’ve known White men to drink because I wasn’t talking Black with them or because I corrected them. He occasionally lapsed into some blue-collar dialect I would have thought of as Brooklynese – except that he was from Connecticut. A few beers later, and in the company of White friends, he’d have probably relaxed into his usual blue-collar dialect. But, apparently, he was not comfortable enough to do that with me. No matter. I never speak Harlem with anyone. If I speak Harlem with those who ought to accept it as my hometown dialect – after all, I grew up in Harlem – they think I’m mocking them. To them, I’m the Harvard man (or, more probably, the faggot who went to Harvard). So I never just relax and speak my own language. If you think you know me, think again. I am never relaxed. If I drink some booze, I fall asleep – and then I’m giving you nothing.

2 Ramadan 1432
August 2, 2011

unedited (except for a few paragraph breaks)
25 Ramadan 1443
April 27, 2022