CHAPTER 30
There’s a time when every black person I see looks like O.J. to me. It’s the one period when I can say we all look alike. Let me bring you back to the mid-1990s: TV is all O.J., all the time. Same with newspapers and magazines. I spend months O.J.’d out. The coverage bumps Oprah, it bumps the soap operas. It’s a modern-day Othello.
I see that white Bronco on the freeway on TV, and I’m screaming “Run, run, run!” Because all black men know that if they’re chasing one of us, they’re chasing all of us. He has the gun up to his head, I’m saying, “Please don’t kill us!” Just like Black Bart in Blazing Saddles. When O.J. finally turns himself in, I can finally get some sleep, because I’m not up all night waiting for the LAPD storm troopers to kick in my door.
Like I say, I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night. I may not know anything about complex shit like the space program, but I do know one thing that’s pretty damned simple.
O.J. ain’t did that. He ain’t did what they say he did. That boy ain’t did that. No murder weapon, no eye-witness. He’s not guilty in a court of law.
White folks just want to play blame-a-nigger. Blame a nigger, any nigger. He kills two people and still catches the red-eye? He wasn’t that quick even on the football field. He ran like any good black man will run. We know our history. If the police come through the door with a simple traffic ticket, I know what can happen, and I’d run, too. Any brother will run if he has any sense.
O.J. is under that illusion of inclusion—he ain’t been black since he is seventeen years old. He’s the only black man in America who can get on any golf course, any time. White America loves that boy.
But he finally gets what I always describe as “the nigger wake-up call.” We all get it. Michael Jackson gets it when cops bust into his Neverland Ranch and search his bedroom. Oprah gets her nigger wake-up call when she is closed out of that upscale store in Paris. (I blame her. You can’t recognize that woman as being Oprah without makeup. If she doesn’t have her hair done and her makeup on, I wouldn’t let the woman in my own backyard.)
O.J. finds out but quick that he ain’t white, that he’s a nigger after all. If he wasn’t on camera in the Bronco, they would have found him dead somewhere. The coroner would solemnly testify that he’d broken his neck somehow. Where are all his solid white friends when he is on the run? He has to get his black friend Al to drive him in that Bronco. He has to go back to the ghetto and find someone to help him out, his black friend, his diaper buddy who he grew up with. A nigger wake-up call is the fastest way to see your white friends vanish.
I see O.J. and Al Cowlings in that Bronco and I have to ask myself: if I am accused of a double ax murder, who can I ask to give me a ride? How about if someone else who is accused of a double ax murder comes to my house and asks me to drive them? Ask yourself. Is there anyone I would do that for?
In that situation, I might drive Richard around. I might. We’re that tight. I am with him after he shoots up Deborah’s Buick. I am with him when he’s lying in the burn center. But if he kills someone? I don’t know if I could drive with him. In fact, I don’t know if Mama came around that I would go with her. “Here, Mama, here are the car keys. I love you, Mama. Call me when you get to Mexico. See you on Hard Copy.”
It’s times like these that I miss my friend Richard. He’s still around, but he’s gone. The MS has already taken him. He can’t talk much now, can’t form words, can’t use sign language. I would go up to his house, and I would talk about O.J., trying to get Richard to laugh.
“Just in case he did do it, I’m sending my résumé to Hertz.”
Richard laughs, but his laughter immediately turns into a horrible bout of coughing and hacking. When he finally quits, his mouth hangs open, slack and round, like he’s in shock or something. It’s awful to see. When I leave him, I’m grieving.
O.J. is exactly the kind of thing we’d crack up over, because it lays bare the kind of race shit that America usually keeps so well hidden. It’s that old complexion for the protection bullshit. White people have it, and that means they have the luxury not to think about race except when it suits them. I see a white homeless person on the street, acting the bum in downtown L.A. or somewhere, and I think, What a waste of a white skin. He could use that skin for protection, and instead, he’s throwing it all away.
Friends to the end: Me with Richard in the last days before MS takes him
It’s during the O.J. trial that I start to feel how alone I really am. I’ve broken up with Lori. Richard is gone without being gone. I turn more and more to my children.
I do another album, Master Piece. O.J. is front and center, race is front and center. It is a bad time for black people in America. There are nigger wake-up calls being placed right and left. The f*cking mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, kicks it off by being caught on tape smoking crack. James Brown, Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, O.J. They all get their wake-up calls. I lay it all out on Master Piece, and sometimes I flip it over and do it upside down, too.
Michael Jackson went out and married Elvis’s daughter? Go, Michael, go! Elvis Presley’s daughter? I was celebrating. I was getting naked and pouring champagne over myself. Yes, yes, yes! I love you! Elvis Presley’s daughter? Elvis’s daughter? Pimped his ass. Elvis Presley stole so much from black people, it’s about time he gave us something back!
I record the album in Harlem. I still keep a house in L.A., but I am spending more and more time in the city. I like it there, because they like being black in New York. They’re very comfortable and not in denial. It’s not Hollywood—it’s the neighborhood. It’s where I feel safe.
I play Master Piece for Richard. He doesn’t get out to the clubs anymore, so all the material is pretty much new to him. He listens, and when I look into his eyes, they glitter and smile. I know he is getting it. But he can’t communicate what he’s feeling. He can’t express himself. There’s good days when he can whisper out a few words, and bad days like this one, when he’s mute, locked into silence by the disease. Richard lives to connect, convey, communicate. That’s when I know the truth: MS is the last demon he’ll ever face. Richard Pryor is in hell.