Free Reckless Eyeballing by Ishmael Reed

suggestions.” You were right the first time, Ball thought. “And give me a call. We’ll meet at my place early next week.” She handed him her card.

12
    The doorman at Tremonisha’s apartment building was Randy Shank, the first playwright who’d made the theater feminists’ sex list in the 1960s. The one who’d gotten into trouble with his satire The Rise and Fall of Mighty Joe Young , whose premise was that American women craved to be raped by a beast. The play not only caused problems for the author but for one of the male critics who’d given it a good review. Feminists had the man followed. The women who dated him were harassed outside their apartment buildings by something calling itself “the feminist education committee,” whose members shouted all kinds of rotten things about the critic as these women attempted to enter and leave their homes. The feminists ransacked his office and smeared blood all over his typewriter and papers. Ball was surprised to see Randy because he’d heard that Randy had left for Europe. He’d heard rumors about Randy and his travels through Amsterdam and Brussels. How women waited for him in shifts at his favorite cafés. Shank was stroking his chin and looking Ball up and down. He frowned and folded his arms. He still walked with his shoulders stooped. In his doorman’s outfit he resembled a World War I Ukrainian general.
    â€œRandy, what are you doing here?” Ball asked.
    â€œWell. It talks,” he said, glowering. “You weren’t so friendly the other night. I caught you down in the East Village on Avenue A. I called and you didn’t even turn around to acknowledge me. And that woman you were with. She looked like a bat out of hell. Had that next-wave shit all over her face and one side of her hair dyed blond, the other looking like a rooster had slept on it. What were you, high, or something?”
    Funny line coming from a guy who in the sixties was so full of heroin he couldn’t stand up, Ian thought. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
    â€œIt was Tuesday night, at about eleven A.M. down in the Village. Avenue A. You walked right by me.”
    â€œI was working on my script Tuesday night; I didn’t even come out of the house.”
    â€œWell, if it wasn’t you, somebody was wearing your face.” All of the fellas were saying that something had happened to Shank in Europe. That there had been a personality change. Maybe he was beginning to see apparitions.
    â€œI thought you were in Europe,” Ball said, hoping to steer the conversation in a different direction.
    â€œOh, that. I got into a lot of hassles. Man, as soon as Tremonisha’s plays and those other feminist bitches’ books started to get translated into foreign languages, the women in these countries began to come down hard on black men. With the missiles and the strong dollar, anti-Americanism is very rife.”
    â€œLook, I,” Ball reached into his pocket.
    â€œI don’t need your money,” Shank sneered. “I make enough here. Got me a one-bedroom up on West End. I’m saving my money and I’m going to stage my new play myself. That way I’ll have independence and won’t have to rely on these downtown Jews to get my stuff over. I won’t have to kiss anybody’s ass to get over.”
    Ball lifted the man from his feet. Ball may have been from the South, but he knew about Afro-American signifying. “What do you mean by that?” he said, ready to punch Shank.
    â€œNothing, man. I don’t mean nothing.” Ball let him down.
    â€œMan, you country niggers are sure paranoid. Every time somebody say something, you think they talking about you. I just be hearing things, that’s all,” he said, brushing himself off.
    â€œHearing what things?”
    â€œAw, man. You know there’s always going to be talk. They say