Bull Daggah

excerpt from an unfinished autobiography

I was born back when they put Negro on your birth certificate and lesbians were called bulldaggahs.

the sixties.

The earliest memory of my family is of my dad and my mom and me, in bed. I remember the heat from their bodies and the feeling it gave me, warm, secure and comforted. I remember the nape of my momma’s neck as I nudged my tiny nose against it, cavernous light brown softness, faceless in the first light of morning. Daddy’s arms, strong and consistent nudging me toward the window, “Look!” sudden snow in central California. My big daddy, eager like a puppy looking for a bone, wanted me to be warm enough, had to have the right amount of layers for this, “a new experience for my baby!” Momma’s yellin in the kitchen at the start of cooking breakfast like it ain’t. Then the big Black Hand, daddy’s hand, leading me to my first snow, the white snows of salvation. Daddy’s introduction. Forever introducing….
In a distant memory I can hear momma moaning in the other room, the smell of the air, the feel, electric, have to see. Little girl, me, rises out of bed “Have to see”. More moaning and groaning, little girl, me, walks through the door. They look like trees. Bound together for all eternity. As the little girl, me, watches, her hands fall softly between her legs. Unsuspecting daddy moans a bass note, it becomes music. Forever introducing.
As I run through the snow I squeal, “It’s cold daddy, like ice”. His reply, “Yea baby like ice, better run cuz I’m comin for you!” then running like crazy through the thick white blanket of snow.

death and doug

The music was deep in the in the room down the hall, like heavy hearted spirits. Smoky, on refer wings, the presence of madness and genius. Daddy playing his bass like he fuckin this large feminine structure between his knees. Open resonate sounds from popping, prodding fingers. “The low ones know where to go man” he says. He’s on his pulpit, testifying in the ‘feel good’ church, the “hush little baby don’t you cry’ church; first song I ever learned.
The first crush I had, after daddy, was with the man behind the drums. I called him Dougie. He gave me my first set of bongos that changed my life. He would kick his drums with wild and crazy beats from sticks to large for his hands, but not for his heart. “ Cat got soul”, daddy would say “for a white man” and I would say, “Come down off that stool, Dougie, you too high,” and he would peer over his dark glasses with slanted drugged eyes and say in a scratchy tenor voice “Never too high for you sweetness”. Then a flurry of beats, wild and distinctive, sounding like gunshots in the dark countered by high pitch sax squeals, tinkling ivory and daddy’s sliding bass scale.
There was always the music precursory some life event. Some little bit of something voyeuristic to change my view of things.

64 like 69

The smell was sweet and acrid as I recall, like life and death. My first vicarious introduction to the classic “Orgy”. The bodies were slithering on the floor like a mound of worms. There were crazy sounds that night, shrieking delight and pumping fury. With Monk on the high-fi, the people did their clandestine dance. Entranced, I wanted to learn this dance, Momma flanks me, “ what’s the matter baby, you can’t sleep?” she said. And for the briefest of moments I feel strange, giddy in my guilt. “Sweetheart, go on back to bed,” she said, so beautifully stern. I comply.

It would not be long before I would put into practice what I saw