GOATMILK: An intellectual playground edited by Wajahat Ali

© [Originally written in 2004]

F.O.B. : Fresh off the Boat (An Immigrant)

DESI : Referring to one with South Asian ancestry

The Players: Me, Desis, White People, The City of Fremont, Desi F.O.B. technical stalkers

The Location: Barnes + Nobles, Borders around 10 mile vicinity of Fremont + Milpitas, California

The Breakdown:

If you are like me, and thankfully you’re not, you spend your carefree Friday, Saturday, and perhaps other midweek nights loitering aimlessly around behemoth, giant bookstores. Like Starbucks, IKEA, Microsoft, and other $$ guzzling Unicrons [The name of the giant planet eating planet in "Transformers: The Movie"], Borders + Barnes and Nobles have respectively assimilated and destroyed the majority of their competition. (more…)

THE PERPOOSE STORY

THE MINORITY PRESCHOOL EXPERIENCE

Wajahat Ali

The Calm Before the Storm Spotlight On: A five-year-old Pakistani American kid speaking Urdu with an assortment of English words to pepper his rhetoric. Those words were limited to three:

1) “Shut up!” A phrase commonly deployed by the dictator, my mother, to silence all of my unruly verbal dissent.
2) “Uh oh Pasghettio” A fobby butchering of “uh oh spaghettio” by a portly child, which was deemed “cute” during my youth and “disturbing” as I became older.
3) “Idiot”: A loving term of endearment used by the dictator to admonish the portly Pakistani American child after any and all perceived wrongdoings.

ASCENT to Purgatory

I awoke one day to find my parental units, mother and father, casually taking me for “a ride” to a “nice place”… or so they said.

Ice cream store? No. Toys R’ Us, where a kid can be a kid if he has access to a platinum visa card? No. Comic Book Store? Sorry, but no Spiderman today. Instead, we pull into a foreboding driveway of a large, ominous brown building. Since I was a 5-year-old Fob near illiterate I missed the sign, which glared, “Child’s Hideaway.”

My spidey sense hits 3. (more…)

***Goatmilk Exclusive***

A true story, first of three parts.

By

Corporal Youssef Snuffy

I was in the Reserve Officer Training Corps or ROTC when the attacks on September 11, 2001 occurred. Every American felt something on that day. Those of us in ROTC knew one thing … we would be going to war.

Everyone deals with war in a different way. But as a recent convert to Islam I had a lot more to worry about. How was the Army going to treat me? Would I be cast out, scapegoated, ran out or worse? Stories about Chaplin James Yee and the John Walker Lindh (American Taliban) didn’t help.

Luckily, I was chosen to receive more schooling and went to law school. However, this educational delay wouldn’t last forever and soon I would be back in the Army. A new army, a changed army, I would also be changed.

Before being a cadet in ROTC I was an enlisted soldier. My military occupation specialty or MOS was a combat engineer (code 12B). I volunteered to be a paratrooper and was stationed at Fort Bragg North Carolina. I was placed in a combat unit and trained. Trained all the time, trained for a mission that under Clinton never came. However, I always knew there was something more for me out there than being a grunt with C4.

Being a paratrooper in a combat unit means you give up, on occasion, substantial freedom. You are subject to room inspections in the morning and at night. You sometimes are locked down and on 2-hour recall for parts of the year just in case we had to go to war at the drop of the hat. Peculiarly, any time I was reading during a nightly room inspection my team leader would ask, “What are you reading … the Qur’an?”

Prior to joining the Army, I involved myself with some haphazard soul searching. Sometimes it involved learning about religions and trying to find the meaning of God. Other times in involved various recreational activities of which I am not proud. The Army, at first, delayed this soul searching as I got caught up in an isolated lake called “the barracks” and like a piranha went into a drinking frenzy.

After about a year of drinking almost everyday I decided this is not how to live life and stopped. At the time it was normal for me to vomit almost every weekend. Something that is so foreign to me now.

During a real soul searching session before joining the Army I caught a hint of a religion called Islam. I knew very little about it. No one teaches you about Islam in public school where I come from. You would have to specifically ask to learn about it in a college course, but I was a chemistry major. But I remembered one tenet was no drinking.

After I stopped drinking I picked up a copy of the Qur’an and began too read. One evening, just like every evening when I was reading, my team leader asked in a harsh yet civil tone, “What are you reading … the Qur’an?” To his amazement I was. Shortly there after I left the army and was in ROTC in sunny southern California.
To be continued.

***(Editor’s Note: This short story was written  when I was 21 for Ishmael Reed’s short fiction class at U.C. Berkeley. First time published.)***

Bulbus and Rotunda’s Anniversary

By Wajahat Ali

In a land not too far away, in a time not too far back, there lived a simple loving couple in a simple cottage house celebrating their fiftieth marriage anniversary quite simply.

“Silence your undulating phallus, Succubus! Thou art the most vile, reprehensible, ungodly, irretrievably ugly, debased, bestial creature that I have ever laid my fair eyes upon,” shouted Bulbus lovingly, as lovingly as he could in his thick brogue towards his lovely wife of fifty years, Rotunda.

The Succubus just sat there and laughed her usual demonic laugh, probably summoning all the powers of her evil, dark relatives from Hell against me. Laughing at me with a piercin’, shriekin’, banshee laugh of hers which sounds like two mutated goats in heat fornicatin’. The laugh that’s like a dagger ripping through my flesh. Flashin’ those putrid teeth of hers, which resemble jagged rocks painted yellow and fungus green. I am forced to listen to her inhalin’ and exhalin’ with each monstrous nostril. I’m amazed that air can even escape that thick maze of nostril hair. Snortin’ her laughs and rubbin’ her belly like a well kept sow, the Succubus sneers at me with those oil black, reptilian eyes of hers, mostly covered by large flaps of eyelid fat.

Fat. A very descriptive word. The three letters F-A-T combined together basically describe the bovine that is my wife. A behemoth, stout bovine with uncombed, coarse greyin’ hair on the head…and other places, mind you, standin’ on what appears to be two inverted bowlin’ pins that I like to call her legs. My God, look at the size of those! But, hopefully, if the angels are by my side, I won’t have to gaze upon them ever more after tonight.

“Oh, shut yourself up, ya no-good, bald plated, impotent, flatulent son of a thievin’ whore. At least my phallus undulates, as it should, unlike someone’s I know. Hmmm? What’s that? Cat got your tongue? Probably has pecked your pecker as well. Probably played a little diddle on that tiny fiddle. Probably played a doodle on that limping noodle. Probably picked a berry that wasn’t that hairy,” scoffed Rotunda lovingly, as lovingly as she could, towards her beloved husband of fifty years, Bulbus.

Fecus, as I like to call him because his entire body permeates a terrifyingly, mind numbin’, odious odor, sits there on his oak chair where his GI-gantic arse has left a permanent groove in the wood. He’s red with anger –as usual. Oh, how I love it when I get him riled so. It just tickles me pink. Ah, one of those feelings that make a lady feel alive again.

Sigh.

But then I see that pathetic, hulkin’ slob of a man, my soul aches with disgust again. The ogre grovelin’ away at the turkey – my turkey! Even eatin’ the bone with his three good teeth. A pity. The creature with the tinier brain eatin’ the creature with the larger brain. How unfortunate – a word that perfectly describes the man, and I wouldn’t even call him that but I’m feelin’ generous today, that happens to be my husband. He usually sits on his arse groove because his pregnant belly conveniently hangs over his belt, almost conveniently coverin’ his family jewels.

The added weight from the front end is almost, but not quite, counterbalanced by the heavin’ sacks of gravy that I like to call his arse on the back end. It would be enough to balance both sides, however one must take into account his saggin’ man-breasts that push the scales in front and cause his height to decrease by about 5 inches. It’s convenient for him though; at least he can lick off some of his spilled food from his collars. Speaking’ o food, I actually tried makin’ the turkey somewhat tasty tonight – thought he might as well enjoy the last few licks he’ll ever have.

“This turkey tastes like somethin’ the devil himself crapped out!” complained Bulbus vehemently. “Oooooh, God Forbid, the Succubus could’ve made somethin’ edible for once. Why don’t you use some of yer black magic voodoo potion and ask yer relatives from Hades for a tasty recipe?” asked Bulbus in a sneering, sarcastic way that only Bulbus could.

“Oh, quit yer yappin’! You wouldn’t know the difference considering yer obscene lack of personal hygienics,” retorted Rotunda. “Now why don’t you shut yer balls for once and quit complainin’ ya three toothed, hairy, incompetent wolverine. Eat yer food and don’t mess up my anniversary party,” demanded Rotunda in a snide, condescending, emasculating way that only Rotunda could.

“Patience, Bulbus, patience,” Bulbus told himself. “Just tolerate that banshee’s screams for just a tad bit longer, and then sweet, heavenly silence shall be yours for eternity. All I have to do is act cordial and nice for a moment and propose a toast. I’ve done that before, I recall….where was that? Ah yes….the time I sold my humanity and soul to Satan and married his bride, the Succubus!!! Argh! I’ll try not lookin’ at her directly, lest her Medusa-face makes me vomit her wretched excuse of a turkey- dinner, and instead propose a toast.”

“Don’t inhale for the next two minutes,” Rotunda coached herself. “Try to bear his noxious odor for a little while longer, just a few more minutes take in the fumes of ugly and then ye can finally be free. All I have to do is smile and propose a toast, and unnatural elements shall take care of the rest. Smile, I remember I did that once, ah yes, right before I gave my chastity and purity away to the obese, baldin’ anti Christ himself!!! Just smile and propose a toast.”

“I prop -,” started Rotunda.

“I prop –,” started Bulbus.

“Oh, please you first, my…fair lady,” gushed Bulbus biting his lips in an attempt to hide his childlike glee.

“Oh no, no, no umm brave err most umm non-obese prince, you first,” pleaded Rotunda. Averting her eyes from Bulbus and dry hacking in response to her false words.

“Well, if I must. A-hem. Let me begin To Rotunda, the  most eloquent…loving…and healthy…very, very healthy wife a man like me could ever have. I propose a toast to you and our…oh so happy, happy 50 years of marital bliss…and hopefully many more years to come.”

“And to you, Bulbus, my…oh…so charming…fragrant prince…you have pleased me…in ways…. that no man ever has…nor can. I, in return, propose this toast to you and our…oh so happy, happy 50 years of marital bliss…and hopefully many more years to come.”

Rotunda and Bulbus both drank from their respective goblets, looking at each other all the while. Both hardly able to contain their happiness as they imagined their new lives and new beginnings. As their lips and tongues caressed the sweet wine, Rotunda and Bulbus, eyes on the other, momentarily recalled a brief, fading flicker of happiness both felt on the day of their marriage. After the moment faded, both the goblets fell to the ground, and Rotunda and Bulbus began their new journey together.

Wajahat Ali wajahatmali@gmail.com