One Hand Jerking (47 page)

In recent years, an alliance of hip-hop and the porn industry has been developing, and therein lies another possibility. Can't you envision a computer screen with Snoop performing anal sex on a voluptuous blonde—a common theme in the world of Internet pornography—and, accompanied by a heavy drumbeat, he is rhythmically chanting, “Ooh ooh ooh ain't ya glad I mixed some Preparation H with the Astroglide so who's your product-placement daddy
now
?”

But please, gentlemen, try not to come on the keyboard.

Tragedy and absurdity were two sides of the same coin, from O. J. Simpson's “suicide” note with a smiley face in the O of his signature, to the woman who pinched lawyer Robert Shapiro's ass because “I wanted to be part of history,” to Simpson walking into the courtroom humming the melody of “Touch Me” from the Broadway hit
Cats
and explaining to reporters that he was thinking about his children.

Of course, I'm reminded of that criminal trial because of Johnnie Cochran's death. I met him once. Shortly before Simpson's civil trial began in 1997, Cochran was the guest of honor and luncheon speaker at a national convention of criminal defense attorneys held in a huge banquet hall at a hotel in Santa Monica. No media were allowed.

One of the attendees was Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld, also known as Dr. Hip from his days as a syndicated columnist for the underground press. He now testifies occasionally as an expert witness, and was at this event for that reason. Nancy and I were his guests.

Cochran's speech reassured the enthusiastic audience: “In the Simpson matter, we just did what
you
do every
day
”—that is, defend their clients by any means necessary and chalk up a bunch of billable hours in the process—and he received a standing ovation.

In the afterglow of his speech, colleagues came up to Cochran to shake his hand and get in a little banter. One well-wisher shared this joke: “If Chris Darden spent as much time trying to nail O. J. Simpson as he did trying to nail Marcia Clark, he might've won the case.” The other defense attorneys all had a good laugh at that one.

Schoenfeld joined the line of lawyers waiting to have photos taken of themselves standing alongside Cochran. When it was Schoenfeld's turn, Nancy focused her camera. For this particular occasion, Schoenfeld had stashed a hand printed card underneath the standard, plastic encased ID lapel card. As in the previous poses, Cochran and Schoenfeld put their arms around each other though they were looking, not at each other, but straight ahead and smiling at the camera.

Thus, Cochran didn't notice how, just before Nancy snapped their picture, Schoenfeld subtly managed to pull away the ID card and reveal the hand printed card, which declared, in large printed letters, “O. J. DID IT!” I published that photo on the front cover of
The Realist
that spring. It was the result of a good, old-fashioned guerrilla action.

Ever since I was three years old, I wanted to be inducted into the Countercultural Hall of Fame. It finally happened, at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. I joined such luminaries as Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Ina May Gaskin, founder of the modern midwife movement.

The previous year, the emcee of this event was San Francisco stand-up comic
Ngaio Bealum, whose parents were both in the Black Panther Party. “You know,” he said, “when we were kids, we didn't have bongs. We just had to fill our mouths with water and suck real slowly.” He described smoking pot while drinking coffee as “the poor man's speedball.”

Ths time, the emcee was stand-up comic Watermelon, who lives in Vancouver, where she sells marijuana-laced gingersnap cookies at a nude beach. She describes herself as “the only nudist, pot-dealing comedienne in the world.” She presented me with a silver cup, a framed plaque—and a three-foot-long bud of marijuana.

“That's for you to tickle your wife with,” she said.

“Thank you. Y'know, Watermelon, you have very nice pits. Somebody had to say that.”

“And I've got a brain that just won't quit, Paul.”

“Well, let's see, this cup will be great for keeping my stash in. This plaque will be great for rolling joints on. And this big giant bud—‘It's a French tickler,' I'll say, and I'm sure that will get me through Customs without any problem.”

Watermelon has just been acquitted of all charges relating to her arrest for selling gingersnap cookies laced with cannabis resin at, yes, Wreck Beach, because, it was explained, “It is no longer in the public interest to continue with the prosecution.” The judge admitted having “reasonable doubt,” due to the unquantifiable traces of cannabis in the cookies.

Watermelon's attorney had argued that resin wasn't found in the cookies when examined by forensic experts—just cannabinoids—and she wasn't charged with possession of cannabinoids. He said that she regards the beach as her church, adding that now “she'll be able to attend her church again.”

“And I thought my cookies tasted good,” Watermelon told me, “but victory tastes sweeter.”

She plans to focus on extending her cookie brand and newfound legal expertise to the medical marijuana market for patients who'd rather ingest than smoke.

Meanwhile, in an article for
Razor
magazine, Martin Lee writes, “No American has ever been granted Canadian refugee status because of the war on drugs, but the times they may be changing.”

“I think the stereotypes don't exist as much any more—girls and boys
both
see oral sex as not being a big deal,” says Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, head of a study at two California schools which concludes that about one in five ninth-graders
(average age 14-1/2) have practiced oral sex, and almost one-third say they intend to try it during the next six months. Could this be why a state report shows that teen birth rates continue to decline across California?

Ironically, the April issue of the
Journal of Adolescent Health
cites a study of 12,000 youngsters indicating that teens who pledge virginity until marriage are more likely to have oral and anal sex than other teens who have not had vaginal intercourse. The pledging group was also less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience or to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

In one high school, where free condoms are available for students, there is a sign proclaiming that “The Peppermint Condoms Are For Oral Sex Only.” Yet there is a certain twisted sense of continuity. We used to practice oral sex as a way of preventing pregnancy. Young people today mistakenly do it as a means of preventing AIDS.

Oral sex is so much in the air these days, it's hard to remember what a tremendous taboo it once was. But in the wake of blow jobs in the White House, kids began embarrassing their parents by asking, “What's oral sex?” Biblical scholars got busy checking to see where God said that oral sex is not adultery.

An entire episode of
Seinfeld
was devoted to oral sex. Moreover, an entire episode of
Curb Your Enthusiasm
was concerned with
Seinfeld
creator Larry David having a pubic hair stuck in his throat as a result of performing oral sex on his wife. And incredible hype from the distributor of
Inside Deep Throat
, General Electric's NBC Universal, claims that
Deep Throat
is the most profitable picture ever made, falsifying its gross as $600 million. That's more than
Star Wars
, which has grossed “only” $461 million.

Surprisingly, oral sex was missing from a proposed amendment on sexual misconduct in the Student Council Code at the University of Oregon. In an effort to prevent date rape, a motion was presented to the University Senate, defining rape as “an offense committed by a student who engages in penetration of another person, and who does not obtain explicit consent.” Penetration means “any degee of insertion, however slight, of the penis or any material object into the vagina or anus.”

Hey, what about somebody's
mouth
? Forcible fellatio is rape.

Even while you're laughing at Lewis Black ranting and raving about cultural and political insanities, his physical fury fuels his comedy so blatantly that you
worry he's going to burst a blood vessel any second. When I asked him over lunch how he originally adopted that angry persona, he responded in a very calm manner.

“I was working one night with Dan Ballard, a very funny and very huge albino comic from Michigan,” he recalled. “After I came off stage, he grabbed me and said, ‘Listen to me, I am on stage screaming like an idiot and I am not even angry, and you are angry and you're not yelling, so when you go back on stage I want you to start yelling.' So I did, and my persona was born.”

In his new book,
Nothing's Sacred
, Black writes about a heckler who “felt I was being too hard on Vice President Cheney. He informed me in no uncertain terms that the vice president was serving his country, and asked what was I doing for my country. I paused and said, ‘I do this. This is what I do.'”

Recently, though, he performed at the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, and sat next to Dick Cheney. A situation like that can make any comedian uncomfortable, except maybe for Don Rickles.

“It truly was hell preparing for the event,” Black told me, “like taking a comic's SAT test. President Bush was supposed to be seated to my right while I performed, but divine intervention from the pope saved me from that, so I was now staring at Vice President Cheney—which was bizarre, to say the least. It is an out of body experience. And I am supposed to make him laugh, which I actually did, which also freaked me out, as it made me wonder what was wrong with my comedy. He went on before me, which means that I can now put on my resumé that the vice president opened for me. And he was funny. Then he got serious. I felt sick for a week before this event, because this is one of the most uptight group of folks you could ever perform for.

“It worked out fine, as I had destroyed my usual act, in the name of entertainment. As long as you take the gig, you should be good at it, and I feel that nothing would have been accomplished if I had pissed all over them. I didn't want to spend the next week talking to reporters about it. I stopped and talked to the vice president as I left the dais. One of his closest friends is the brother of a close friend of mine who passed away a number of years ago. I asked him to please say hi to his friend for me—I hadn't seen him in quite some time. So basically I asked the vice president to be my messenger boy, and hopefully it would keep him out of trouble for a few minutes.”

But that's what Cheney
does
.

In connection with the 10th anniversary of thebombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, I've managed to obtain an exclusive prison interview with Terry Nichols.

Q. What are your thoughts today about that horrific act of domestic terrorism in which you participated?

A. Oh, I'd say, the irony of how we got caught.

Q. What do you mean?

A. Well, think about the odds. Timothy McVeigh was against the United States government. He didn't want to have anything to do with this government. He didn't even want to have a driver's license. He didn't want to have a license plate on his car. But the reason he got
caught
was because some traffic cop happened to notice that the license plate was
missing
from his car.

Q. And what about you?

A. Well, just like Tim, I hated the federal government. I refused to pay taxes. And yet the reason
I
got caught was because they found a six-months-old receipt for a couple of tons of fertilizer. I can't explain rationally why I ever
saved
that receipt. I mean I wasn't gonna pay my taxes. And what would I do if the bombing failed? Go back to the store where I bought it, show my receipt and say, “I'm sorry, but your fertilizer didn't work. I'd like to get a refund, please?”

Q. I understand that you believe there was a certain relationship between the bombing and the O.J. Simpson murders.

A. Yes, there was some guy, it was his job, his mission in life, to determine that the disembodied leg which was found in the rubble of the Federal Building did not belong to a white man but to a black woman, and furthermore, just like the glove that was planted in the Simpson case, that leg was planted in the rubble by Detective Mark Furhman.

Q. Aha! But whatever the defense and the prosecution and the judge did in that trial, there was also the media fallout. I have a friend who has two young daughters, and they said to him, “Daddy, we have a question to ask you. If you ever killed Mommy—and we're not saying you would ever do a thing like that—but if you ever killed Mommy and we asked you if you did it, would you tell us the truth?”

A. You know, if a character on a TV sitcom ever said that line, there would be a laugh track right after it.

Q. I suppose so. One more question. I understand that you also believe that there was a certain relationship between the Oklahoma bombing and the murder of Laci Peterson and her unborn baby.

A. Oh, definitely. This never came out in my trial, but it was Scott Peterson who sold me those two tons of fertilizer.

At Wordstock, the first annual Portland (Oregon) Book Festival, I was invited to open for Norman Mailer and then introduce him.

“The thing I most admire about Mailer,” I said, “is a combination of his courage as a writer and how much he respects the craft. He writes in longhand with a number two pencil, he told me once, because it puts him in more direct contact with the paper that he's writing on, and I felt so guilty because I was still using a typewriter at the time. You remember typewriters. In fact, I have a niece who saw a manual typewriter, and she said, ‘What's that for?' I explained, and she said, ‘Well, where do you plug it in?' ‘You don't have to plug it in, you just push the keys.' And she said, ‘That's awesome!'