SECTION FOUR

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COLUMN FORTY-ONE, JANUARY 1, 1999
(Copyright © 1999 Al Aronowitz)

THE SAGA OF MANUEL MENÉNDEZ (CONT'D.)

MANNY.jpg (41134 bytes)
MANUEL MENENDEZ

PART 6: IMMOLATION!

Again, I'll let Manuel's email do the telling:

Subject: Present life, report of.
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 1998 16:50:44 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

Saturday, June 20, 1998.

Dear Mr. Al:

Sorry for my long silence, it's just that I've worked three weeks in a row, doing overtime on weekends, and I'm exhausted. I arrive here in this scruffy room so tired that I swallow my pills and fall into that bed in a coma. I'm writing, slowly but steady, perhaps a page a day. I want to publish my novel in the Internet. I guess I'll need Website of my own. Give me your advice.

Loves you:

Manuel.-

* * *

Subject:
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 15:20:12 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: blackj@bigmagic.co

Monday, June 22, 1998.

Caro Maestro:

Sorry for not haven't written this couple of weeks. On weekends I'm doing marathons, doing overtime. Three weeks working non-stop, and I arrive to this scruffy room exhausted, I just want to drop in bed in a coma. London at it's most beautiful, sunny and balm, but I don't go anywhere, I'm too tired.

I'm writing again, little by little, like a child learning to walk, but it's something, a beginning. The writing block is somehow lifting. And that's my reason de etre, the only reason that keeps me alive. Take care:

Loves you:

Manuel.-

* * *

Subject: The usual complaints.
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 17:00:28 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

Tuesday, June 24.

Cher Maitre:

That couple of lines you wrote to me mean a lot, you see, I arrive here at 1:30 AM, tired as a dog, and first thing I check my e-mail: nothing, and I write to a lot of people. You, even if laconic, are the only one who answers. It makes me feel that I'm not alone, existentially and in that long research inside my conscience that it's [is?] my novel.

This new job tires me, exhausts me, drains my brain, but I feel very lucky to have gotten it. It's in computers too, but much more abstract stuff, and the foreman is a young American girl who apparently wants do a career here in London, and pushes me and the other guys relentlessly.

Well, my friend, I'll keep in touch every second day or so, so you don't forget me in the avalanche of your own endeavor.

Loves you:

Manuel.-

* * *

Subject: Negroes, another reason to complain.
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:12:33 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
CC: actionab@passport.ca

Saturday, June 29, 1998.

Caro Maestro:

I was happy, you know, I was coming back to the tube after filling my tax return, and then these two niggers (sic) tried to mug me, at ten o'clock in the morning, at an ATM machine outside the Midland bank, right there in front of a video camera, at Kings Cross. That's like saying 42nd and Broadway.

Them niggers (sic) broke my nose, a couple of ribs, and, worse of all, my glasses. But I'm satisfied, 'cause I gave as good as I got. The one that was pulling at my knapsack, I put a suri-komi-gochi on him, and smashed him to the floor. Then they got really nasty and pulled knives and cut my left hand. But they couldn't get a cent from me. The cops said it was their second mugging in the morning.

I know you have this humanistic, Steven-Spielberg-like, very Jewish streak, that all men are equal. And Bill Clinton the pedophile went to Africa and apologized for slavery. But you see, the best thing that could happen to the niggers (sic) was slavery. Now they are American citizens, fucking around and leaving 13-year-old Negresses pregnant, living on Welfare, smoking crack and spreading AIDS.

And, according to the Bell Curve, the general IQ of the US population is dropping 1% a year, thanks to the niggers (sic) and the latinos.

That's why I'm researching about the Aryan Brotherhood, and I plan to create an England chapter.

Yours, with all poison:

Manuel.-

* * *

Subject: Youse smartin' ain't yah?
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 21:45:02 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
CC: actionab@passport.ca

Wednesday, July 1st. 1998, 5:05 AM.

Cher Maitre:
You're railing against me because I called a spade a spade, don't you? I' don't give a fuck: your silence is eloquent. If you write, by all means; if you don't, you're the loser, not me. First of all let me tell you this: my current best friend, perhaps the only one, is a black young guy whose name is Orson. Tonight he gave me his only joint, something I'd never could pay. The two other ones disappeared, one returned to Ecuador, and never wrote me, and the other, an Italian, who doesn't call me either, even if he lives here in The Smoke.

As Sergei Stuchenvko wrote on Martin Luther King Jr.: "Black, but with a white soul. . ." Not at all like that bigot unlicensed preacher, skilled demagog who in the afternoon prophesied: " I had a dream. . ." And that same night, on record on FBI tapes, in a Virginia motel, was fucking a white blonde chick, and shouting with his stentorian, pedantic voice: "I'm not a Negro now. . . !" "I'm fucking for God. . . !" God bless him, if there is one, which I don't believe and he don't deserve. But now his birth is a Holiday. For a cocksman.

Well, I'm tired, have to work early tomorrow, and nevertheless it's not worthwhile preaching to white sepulchers: Only a Partisan arrow, as farewell: Have you ever being mugged? Have you have ribs broken? Have you ever been beaten at all? Well, I, yes, many times. By the Cuban cops, the niggers in the Combinado El este in Havana, "Carbo Servia" and other seclusion facilities. Do you really want to know what it's like in a Cuban prison, harassed by hardened black criminals?

Either you are naive or a Tartufo. Show this e-mail to this buddy of yours with the "Baraka" nomme-de-guerre, I would like to know his impressions.

Take care:
Manuel.-

* * *

Subject: Shuffling off this mortal coil.
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 1998 14:05:02 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

Wednesday, July 1, 1998.

Caro maestro:

Blows never come in one, but in threes: I don't care so much for my several broken ribs, and the pain immune to Ibuprofen. I've got far worse beatings in my tormented prison life.

But what hurts worse is that I lost the UN Cintas Fellowship. To two nonentities: one named Andrea García and, can you imagine? A guy called Zodíaco Antonovich. When I sent to them perhaps the best short story ever written about the Cuban Revolution, and in impeccable English, and the big guns in "The Miami Herald" gave me the best possible references. It's so unfair, so obvious an injustice. And I was counting on that money to last me a year to write my novel. Thought it was in the bag.

Well, it wasn't, and even worse: I lost my new job due to a lack of thorough training, and an instant dislike between my boss, a 24-, 25-year-old American girl, pretty, with a degree in Computer Science, full of ambition, on the way to make a career inside the company.

Fuck it all, Mr. Al. I'm going to finish that novel even if it kills me in the process. I'm a very stubborn man; perhaps that's the main reason I'm still alive. But I can't deny from you that they were two big blows, coincidental and parallel. It's so fucking unjust. But I'll show them assholes that I'm the bigger writer of my generation, even if by default.

Loves you:

Manuel


* * *

Subject: Clinton-Lewinsky
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 13:31:21 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: Letters@time.com
CC: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

July 9, 1998.

Letters to the Editor,
TIME.

Dear Sirs:

Already ravaged by AIDS, the late Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas declared to the French TV: "I believe that pleasure knows no sin, and sex has nothing to do with morals. . ." I wish the Clinton-bashers kept that in mind when passing judgement.

Manuel Menéndez
10 Colenso Rd.
Clapton (E5-0SL)
London.

* * *

Subject: Night of the soul
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 14:40:02 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

Saturday, July 11, 1998.

Caro Maestro:

Received your piece on Ginsberg's burial and how the deluge spoiled all your efforts. Myself, I'm going through a killer depression. I lost my new job because the young pretty American bitch who's boss regarded me as an incompetent. So I went back to my old job, this time as a freelancer, until the Titanic sinks in August 19th. I spent this whole weekend sleeping nonstop, trying to evade reality, dreaming of my parents. Right now I wish I could join them, only I'm aware that there's no afterlife, and when you go you go.

Depression is the cancer of the mind, and mine are getting deeper and longer as I get older, and drift into involuntary melancholy. I don't want to live anymore. Freud said that the two instincts that drive human life are sex and the fear of death. The latter keeps me going, entangled into this flesh, this mortal coil.

Loves you:
Manuel.

* * *

Subject: Immolation.
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1998 01:53:57 PDT
From: "manuel menendez"
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
CC: jose.javier@sympatico.ca

Wednesday, July 22, 1998.

Dear Friends:

I decided to immolate myself to call once again for the freedom of my country. I'll douse myself on gasoline, and I'll set myself on fire in front of a BBC filming crew, chained to the railings outside Kings Cross station. This Sunday, the 26th. of July, the anniversary of the Moncada, the day of infamy. My decision is irrevocable. I'm sending by snail the manifesto I plan to distribute.

Good luck:
Manuel.- ##

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