that word people scream when they’re drunk

yesterday i would’ve told you i’d probably heard them all — from “yo my niggahs” (here in the neighborhood) to “show us your tits” (at a monster truck show in bloomsburg, pennsylvania where my biracial boyfriend was the very only niggah at the racetrack). people like to get drunk and drunk people sometimes like to yell, or seem to like to yell more often than undrunk people do. or maybe the yelling of the drunkards is in some way more compelling, more memorable (or simply much more fucking annoying) than the yelling of the sober.

anyway. this is about people yelling after rather than before they’ve embarked upon their various forays into alcohol (near-)poisoning.

it’s usually a single word, or a very simple phrase — Freebird! Captain Video! — some fragment of the buddycircle’s inside joke du jour distilled and compressed into the minimum possible syllables then sung, chanted, shouted, screamed, perhaps spray-painted on handball courts and left in various voicemail messages. often forgotten by morning, these catchwords fire and power the night. toasts are drunk to them. I’m your Huckleberry…

but until tonight, i have never heard a politician’s name used this way. maybe in france they stagger down the boulevards shouting for Le Pen or de Gaulle (do they?), but outside of a protest or support rally i’ve never experienced anything like that in new york.

loping down the washington square subway station’s uptown ramp was a loose-connected quartet of midlife latinos shouting …. Obama! that’s it, just the name, no exhortations, no “You Go”s, just the word. Obama! then, “Yo, Yo, Rose — Obama!” and then “Listen up, listen up, I said Obama!” and it passed back and forth and it spread from the original gang of four to a few other half-lit (and maybe even a couple spber) wannabe subway-catchers and for a few moments tonight, at 8pm in the west village in the united states of america, a grinning posse of citizens jogged toward the station nudging and elbowing each other and shouting Obama! Obama!

and i, idiot, had neglected to recharge my little minicam.

they seemed to just love having his name in their mouths, igniting from tongue to tongue as the train barreled in and the group moved faster. Obama! like AC/DC fans chanting for Angus before the lights come up in madison square garden.

we all ended up crammed in the last car of the uptown C, where among all the standees and backpacks and crowding and shouted conductor announcements, Obama slowly petered out, reduced to a bit of sotto voce chuckling and a couple of high-spirited elbowed ribs.

i’m a bit miffed at obama myself, since the FISA vote. an early and fervent supporter, i would have turned cartwheels in the street when hillary finally conceded, if my weary old ass was still in cartwheel-capable mode. (who am i kidding? even at 25 i couldn’t manage cartwheels! i do cartwheels of the heart, that’s as good as it gets.) but he got it dead wrong about immunity for the wiretappers, and i am miffed. as if he neglected to buy me chocolate on valentine’s day.

mccain can’t tell viagra from birth control the banks are failing your house is in foreclosure take nothing for granted nothing is safe war without end amen toxic ocean fish killer salmonella tomatoes all the bees are dying bird flu hepatitis AIDS AIDS AIDS darfur iran the NRA on a throne of spent AK-47 cartridges and ten elderly couples murdered in their beds.

Obama!

Recent Posts:

• more on moron rick warren
• is rick warren insane? or simply retarded?
• don’t drink the water — it’s spoiled
• XXX-rated santa
• On Gaza [a guest post]

bookmark to: