vote.
There's a cartoon I cut out of
Harper's Weekly.
I'm looking at it now. It's a drawing of Jefferson Davis, him that was the President of the Confederacy, Davis, with a big cloak wrapped all around him. His face is long and thin, his eyes so dark, when you glance at the drawing it looks like a skull with a hat and hair, like a skeleton wearing a cloak. And this JeffersonâI like to call him by his first nameâhe looks like a figure on stage, like a demon sneaking off to do wrong, except he's in the center of the picture, but off to the side
is
the center of
this
picture, and Jeff, he was standing there, looking back into the Senate chamber at a Negro man taking his seat, his Senate seat. A deep dark Negro man surrounded by compatriots is what it looked like. And the Negro man is reading. His hands are on one book, and another book has slid off his table to the floor at his feet. He's propped up and on books. His colleagues are turned to question him, and he's ready.
That's what it looked like to me. There's a caption: TIME WORKS WONDERS . I do not know if it was meant to be for or against this dark legislator. Certainly it was the truth. Under that title was written the words of Iago, and between Iago's name and his speech was inserted, in parentheses, the name "Jeff Davis." I read
Othello
again after I saw this cartoon. The speech says, "For that I do suspect the lusty Moor hath leapt into my seat: the thought whereof both like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." If I had been Othello's friend, Desdemona would still be alive, and they'd have plenty of pretty babies.
Othello's just a creation. Maybe just like me. But Robert B. Elliott be real. He be born in Massachusetts. He studied at Eton College in England and now he's in the Congress. Robert B. Elliot be real and my Congressman knows him. James Rapier studied in Canada and now he's in Congress. He's another "historical figure." And my Jeems, his beloved Smalls, I've found all about him now, for Jeems's sweet sake. Smalls was wholly self-educated and wholly factual. He taught himself to read and write. How you do that? John Roy Lynch, he worked in a photographer's studio and he looked across an alley into a white schoolroom and followed his lessons from a distance right into the Mississippi house and on into the Congress of these United States. He merits a line in anybody's history of these United States. But it's one thing to read about them and quite another to smell a man's scent, hear his quicker mind responding to your own quick thought. Tick-tock. It's an altogether different thing.
There are facts can poison you dead as arsenic. I have long known this to be true. There are facts can get you drunker than sipping whiskey straight. This is a sweet and new discovery.
O brave new world!
Sweet Jesus! Let me know some more about it! Please God!
54
R.'s returned. He looks a thousand years old. His hair is turning white, and he has let it grow long. This is a Southern city, but he doesn't fit in here. He strides about in black silk and velvet and looks like the ghost of the Confederacy, a sauntering relic haunting the place. Like the evil Godmother at the baby's christening. Why do I write that? I feel like the princess who is cursed at birth. And they try to change the curse, try to move her to safety. Why does R. look like the evil Godmother? Who looks like the prince? Who does R. look like?
His face looks so different in this light. I call out to myself, "Who is this man I lay with?" and I have no response. This man is unknown to me. Perhaps even unknowable by me. And maybe that is exactly what I love about my man. Not knowing him feels so familiar, as familiar as the smell of whiskey, and leather, and horses, and a certain cologne, yes. He is the stuff of Lady's dreams, my dark-eyed gambler and arrogant risk-taker. The arrogance was essential...
If he has anything to say to me, he should just say it.
55
One of our Senators, a gentleman from the
There's a cartoon I cut out of
Harper's Weekly.
I'm looking at it now. It's a drawing of Jefferson Davis, him that was the President of the Confederacy, Davis, with a big cloak wrapped all around him. His face is long and thin, his eyes so dark, when you glance at the drawing it looks like a skull with a hat and hair, like a skeleton wearing a cloak. And this JeffersonâI like to call him by his first nameâhe looks like a figure on stage, like a demon sneaking off to do wrong, except he's in the center of the picture, but off to the side
is
the center of
this
picture, and Jeff, he was standing there, looking back into the Senate chamber at a Negro man taking his seat, his Senate seat. A deep dark Negro man surrounded by compatriots is what it looked like. And the Negro man is reading. His hands are on one book, and another book has slid off his table to the floor at his feet. He's propped up and on books. His colleagues are turned to question him, and he's ready.
That's what it looked like to me. There's a caption: TIME WORKS WONDERS . I do not know if it was meant to be for or against this dark legislator. Certainly it was the truth. Under that title was written the words of Iago, and between Iago's name and his speech was inserted, in parentheses, the name "Jeff Davis." I read
Othello
again after I saw this cartoon. The speech says, "For that I do suspect the lusty Moor hath leapt into my seat: the thought whereof both like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." If I had been Othello's friend, Desdemona would still be alive, and they'd have plenty of pretty babies.
Othello's just a creation. Maybe just like me. But Robert B. Elliott be real. He be born in Massachusetts. He studied at Eton College in England and now he's in the Congress. Robert B. Elliot be real and my Congressman knows him. James Rapier studied in Canada and now he's in Congress. He's another "historical figure." And my Jeems, his beloved Smalls, I've found all about him now, for Jeems's sweet sake. Smalls was wholly self-educated and wholly factual. He taught himself to read and write. How you do that? John Roy Lynch, he worked in a photographer's studio and he looked across an alley into a white schoolroom and followed his lessons from a distance right into the Mississippi house and on into the Congress of these United States. He merits a line in anybody's history of these United States. But it's one thing to read about them and quite another to smell a man's scent, hear his quicker mind responding to your own quick thought. Tick-tock. It's an altogether different thing.
There are facts can poison you dead as arsenic. I have long known this to be true. There are facts can get you drunker than sipping whiskey straight. This is a sweet and new discovery.
O brave new world!
Sweet Jesus! Let me know some more about it! Please God!
54
R.'s returned. He looks a thousand years old. His hair is turning white, and he has let it grow long. This is a Southern city, but he doesn't fit in here. He strides about in black silk and velvet and looks like the ghost of the Confederacy, a sauntering relic haunting the place. Like the evil Godmother at the baby's christening. Why do I write that? I feel like the princess who is cursed at birth. And they try to change the curse, try to move her to safety. Why does R. look like the evil Godmother? Who looks like the prince? Who does R. look like?
His face looks so different in this light. I call out to myself, "Who is this man I lay with?" and I have no response. This man is unknown to me. Perhaps even unknowable by me. And maybe that is exactly what I love about my man. Not knowing him feels so familiar, as familiar as the smell of whiskey, and leather, and horses, and a certain cologne, yes. He is the stuff of Lady's dreams, my dark-eyed gambler and arrogant risk-taker. The arrogance was essential...
If he has anything to say to me, he should just say it.
55
One of our Senators, a gentleman from the
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