added.
Bern said, at most, if I didn’t just make this up, “Thanks.”
“Yeah, I’ve got all your records, all the way back to
Dog Boy Van
. I reviewed a couple of them for the
Miami New Times
, the weekly down in Miami, I was the music editor down there for a while, though I’m a writer now, you know, fiction, poetry, that kind of thing, though I still do some editing on the side just to pay the bills, whatever, actually we might know a few people in common …” I began listing people we might know in common.
At a certain point, two guys walked into the bathroom. I was talking excitedly in the direction of a bathroom stall. They stared.
“Right!” I said. “Okay. We can talk later on, I guess.”
4. Nearly Getting Stomped by Kid Frost I very much doubt you’ve heard of Kid Frost, but I spent most of 1990 listening to his debut,
Hispanic Causing Panic
. I was an Anglo carpetbagger living in El Paso and trying to expand my Spanish vocabulary beyond
chimichanga
. Listening to Frost’s raspy sermons about street life made me feel as if I were bonding with the city’s Chicano underclass. (I was not.)
When Frost’s name appeared as an opening act on a rap tour heading to El Paso, I arranged a phone interview. Frost did a lot of cussing. He was in a dark mood, he said, because his cousin had just gotten arrested. It was the sort of detail that made me feel we had bonded.
This, I suspect, is why I felt no compunction about approaching him when I spotted him swaggering through the lobby of the arena before his set. “Kid Frost,” I called out. “Mr. Frost, or maybe it’s just Frost! I’m from the
El Paso Times
. I interviewed you for the newspaper!”
Frost glared at me with his hooded eyes. He was radiating menace, as befitted a budding hip-hop star in a public setting. But my Drooling Fanaticism wouldn’t allow me to see this. I assumed Kid Frost had read my glowing profile and felt embarrassed. Kid Frost was
shy
.
“I’m a big fan of your music,” I said.
“Fanático grande.”
Kid Frost continued to glare at me (shyly!). Because I could think of nothing else to say and because I imagined referencing his cousin would somehow make me sound “down” with his “struggle” and that of La Raza in general, I added, “I hope your cousin is doing okay.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’d you hear about my cousin?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just that he was, you know—”
“Don’t fucking say
nothing
about my cousin.”
Frost scanned the lobby for potential witnesses.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just, because remember we talked about—”
Frost flexed the fingers of his right hand and leaned toward me. The air between us was ripe with Paco Rabanne cologne, his, mine, ours. He murmured something in Spanish, of which all I could make out was a conjugation of the verb
chingar:
to fuck. Did Kid Frost want to fuck me?
He set his hand on my chest and gave a brisk shove.
Shit
, I thought,
I have somewhat misread this situation and am now going to get boot-stomped by a guy in patent leather shoes
.
But Frost saw something that gave him pause (a security guard, it would turn out) and brushed past me.
5. Smoking More Pot Than Bob Marley and Possibly the Wailers Before Entering Graceland Why did I do this? Because I was secretly dreading Graceland, the preening necrophilia of the scene, that tawdry American knack for spiritual projection, for worshipping the wrong savior for the wrong reason in the wrong way. I figured getting stoned might make the experience seem more profound, and therefore less depressing. It’s the same doomed theory I continually apply to Hollywood films.
I needed Graceland to be profound, at least a little, because I had driven seven hundred miles to be there, as a favor to my lovesick friend Tina who was, unbeknownst to me, a Devout Elvis Person. It was a bitlike discovering someone is Born Again. You have to respect the purity, but you don’t really want to
Bern said, at most, if I didn’t just make this up, “Thanks.”
“Yeah, I’ve got all your records, all the way back to
Dog Boy Van
. I reviewed a couple of them for the
Miami New Times
, the weekly down in Miami, I was the music editor down there for a while, though I’m a writer now, you know, fiction, poetry, that kind of thing, though I still do some editing on the side just to pay the bills, whatever, actually we might know a few people in common …” I began listing people we might know in common.
At a certain point, two guys walked into the bathroom. I was talking excitedly in the direction of a bathroom stall. They stared.
“Right!” I said. “Okay. We can talk later on, I guess.”
4. Nearly Getting Stomped by Kid Frost I very much doubt you’ve heard of Kid Frost, but I spent most of 1990 listening to his debut,
Hispanic Causing Panic
. I was an Anglo carpetbagger living in El Paso and trying to expand my Spanish vocabulary beyond
chimichanga
. Listening to Frost’s raspy sermons about street life made me feel as if I were bonding with the city’s Chicano underclass. (I was not.)
When Frost’s name appeared as an opening act on a rap tour heading to El Paso, I arranged a phone interview. Frost did a lot of cussing. He was in a dark mood, he said, because his cousin had just gotten arrested. It was the sort of detail that made me feel we had bonded.
This, I suspect, is why I felt no compunction about approaching him when I spotted him swaggering through the lobby of the arena before his set. “Kid Frost,” I called out. “Mr. Frost, or maybe it’s just Frost! I’m from the
El Paso Times
. I interviewed you for the newspaper!”
Frost glared at me with his hooded eyes. He was radiating menace, as befitted a budding hip-hop star in a public setting. But my Drooling Fanaticism wouldn’t allow me to see this. I assumed Kid Frost had read my glowing profile and felt embarrassed. Kid Frost was
shy
.
“I’m a big fan of your music,” I said.
“Fanático grande.”
Kid Frost continued to glare at me (shyly!). Because I could think of nothing else to say and because I imagined referencing his cousin would somehow make me sound “down” with his “struggle” and that of La Raza in general, I added, “I hope your cousin is doing okay.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’d you hear about my cousin?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just that he was, you know—”
“Don’t fucking say
nothing
about my cousin.”
Frost scanned the lobby for potential witnesses.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was just, because remember we talked about—”
Frost flexed the fingers of his right hand and leaned toward me. The air between us was ripe with Paco Rabanne cologne, his, mine, ours. He murmured something in Spanish, of which all I could make out was a conjugation of the verb
chingar:
to fuck. Did Kid Frost want to fuck me?
He set his hand on my chest and gave a brisk shove.
Shit
, I thought,
I have somewhat misread this situation and am now going to get boot-stomped by a guy in patent leather shoes
.
But Frost saw something that gave him pause (a security guard, it would turn out) and brushed past me.
5. Smoking More Pot Than Bob Marley and Possibly the Wailers Before Entering Graceland Why did I do this? Because I was secretly dreading Graceland, the preening necrophilia of the scene, that tawdry American knack for spiritual projection, for worshipping the wrong savior for the wrong reason in the wrong way. I figured getting stoned might make the experience seem more profound, and therefore less depressing. It’s the same doomed theory I continually apply to Hollywood films.
I needed Graceland to be profound, at least a little, because I had driven seven hundred miles to be there, as a favor to my lovesick friend Tina who was, unbeknownst to me, a Devout Elvis Person. It was a bitlike discovering someone is Born Again. You have to respect the purity, but you don’t really want to
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