Stranger than Friction

Y’Boy did well-feel he was wasting he time, but he still put on he musty-frowsy West Indies shirt and head down to Kensington Cemetery after lunch Wednesday to watch the Aussies put the last few nails in the coffin of the first Test. Y’Boy tell heself that, if he sit in the crowd and send good vibes, them boys who wearing the white and carrying the maroon and giving all o’ we the blues might just catch some of Y’Boy concentration, and play every ball as though it really matter; which it did; which they didn’t. When the Aussies post the hundred, Y’Boy and he pardner, who come to Bim for the Caribbean Tales Film Festival, left the ground, jump in the car and, rather than listen to the death notices they calling “the commentary,” plug in the iPod and hit “Shuffle”—and, out of near ten thousand songs, you go feel Y’Boy lie—but what it is come up, if not Rally? You could axe Y’Boy pardner, if you feel is lie. Not for the first time, Y’Boy shake he head and study how the truth does be stranger than fiction. As they driving, Y’Boy pardner steady talking but Y’Boy making even less answer to anything Y’Boy pardner say than the Windies to the Aussies’ own declaration. Y’Boy quiet-quiet, studying whether to pelt a next thousand words at West Indies cricket. He ent fraid the licks he would get for it—Y’Boy ent no stranger to friction—but, even as he thinking ’bout throwing he few words that way, he realise it would be throwing them away.

It more productive to stone za-boca tree than West Indies Cricket Board; at least you would get a little creamed zaboca to lick off your stones from the tree. (Y’Boy suddenly remember one of the best shiretrit-ups he ever hear, but, to understand it, you had was to walk under a hog plum tree at some time in your life, and mash ’bout a thousand hog plum fall down there on the ground: one tess say, of a next fella he want to call stupid, “He does stone hog plum tree.”) You could spend 50 years writing the most truest thing it have to write about West Indies cricket, picking sense from nonsense with more accuracy than Brian Lara picking out the gaps in a 50-overs game—and still you could be completely ignored, like third man begging the umpire for LBW: Tony Cozier is living proof of that. So Y’Boy shrug off the cut-ass like one of them 17-year-old Trini multiple murderer does shrug off they dead witnesses—or like one of the West Indies players themselves, who doesn’t ever seem bothered enough about losing to play every ball of a whole game or go to the nets instead of church—and turn to study the wider ball park of how people does lose opportunity. And Y’Boy ask heself how it is that a team like West Indies could work for four days and throw ’way they advantage with one lapse; and whether that lack of professionalism cut from the same (rass?) cloth like how it is the feminists of Trinidad, of which Y’Boy is one of which, starting to run laps around theyself in trying to excuse Mother Kamla from accounting for half-a-million state dollars she most spend out, towards Tampax-haulage.

Y’Boy throw he eye on the Thursday Guardian and what it catch, if not another set of drivel from a man who does advocate all kinda anti-woman nonsense. Yesterday, now, instead of advancing his anti-woman, anti-human, anti-human rights, anti- child-rights diatribe in the usual straightforward way, the old fella start off with a quote from HL Mencken, a liberal American journalist who did stand against everything this old fella stand for—is HL Mencken-self who give the Scopes Trial the apt nickname of “the Monkey Trial.” This old fella citing HL Mencken come like Vbyz Kartel quoting Oscar Wilde. But Y’Boy head did only now start to reel; becaw, when he look at he co-feminist pardner, Gab Hosein, who Diary of a Mothering Worker he did glad to see reach in the Guardian (becaw Y’Boy likes nothing more than a ’ooman who could put down good work), when Y’Boy only look at Gab Facebook page, what he see there but a link to this same column by this same old fella who does argue that 14-year-old girls should be “married” to 60-year-old men. And Y’Boy do a double-take when he see the same Gab describing the column as “a fascinating take on the intersections of gender, family, culture, religion” and more! And Y’Boy tell heself that politics does make for strange bedfellows. To be the underdog is really a bitch. Y’Boy suddenly understand why it is Australia does win Tests and women doesn’t pass the test, even if they get the biggest work in the land, with fringe benefit of half-a-mill for a Tampax-carrier for a period they doesn’t even get any more.  Is becaw is the very people who supposed to stand they grind and take they blows for the long-term gain does sell out for the short-term advantage. You have a West Indies captain saying one-all is a perfect result and a card-carrying feminist taking basket to carry water for a man who does defend the “right” of old men to have carnal knowledge of 14-year-old girls.
 

BC Pires is burning his bridges, if not his bra. E-mail your fire extinguishers to him at bc@caribsurf.com