Chair of Tears by Gerald Vizenor

Author:Gerald Vizenor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-18T13:51:54+00:00

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Skin Dunk

Old Darkhorse was the ingenious founder of a timely and necessary postindian bodily hue and colorant service. The Half Moon Bay Skin Dunk was an essential application for many urban natives, and much later for primarily native nationalists. The skin dunks were inaugurated in the quaint town of the same name in northern California.

Darkhorse produced a secret character concoction of herbs, roots, twigs, bark, fish bone, and the bile of wolverines, a fermented sauce that changed the color of ordinary human complexion. The only telltale signs of a skin dunk were slightly darker cuticles.

Captain Shammer summoned the prominent shaman of skin dunks and identity brews as a consultant to provide that singular service to natives in the department, and to others who favored the discrete pleasures of darker skin. Shammer observed that academic politics evolved with the color of skin, and that faculty

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dunks were directly related to more serious associations and promotions at the university.

The Skin Dunk center operated late at night in subdued light and only by appointment. Flying Colors or Skin Dunk was the obscure name printed on a simulated birch bark signboard over the former faculty office. Most of the skin dunk clients were secretive, a contradiction that indicated the insecurities of race and identity. The shy clients did not want to be seen emerging from the dunk center with the radiance of darker skin. My cousin told me that progressive white lie liberals with a lack of color confidence were the most frequent late night dunkers at the Flying Colors.

The immersion time in the brew was no more than thirty minutes, and the distinct color lasted for about six months by ordinary erosion and daily showers. The choice and intensity of the color determined the actual brew time. The only abuse of the service was a power dunk of three tipsy blondes after a wild party on the riverbank near the university. The police arrived an hour after the dunk and considered the incident a blonde moment because no one conceded or protested the evidence of color.

Captain Shammer declared that there was nothing new about the concept and practice of the color dunks because natives have forever blackened their hair for cosmetic authenticity, and overnight brunettes have become blondes. So, never mind, my cousin raved, that the body is a stretched canvas for distinctive tattoos. No, no, the body is a palette of complexions and substitute identities. Turn out the light and listen to the tone of a voice, an honor song, a tease, the stories of irony dogs, the glint of an eye, the erotic scent of sweat, and the generous touch of a lover to determine the praise of color and the pleasures of native identity.

Old Darkhorse, a native nickname that became a surname, was dark but not by the dunk. Old is an adjective, not his given

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name. He has no archived first or given name. No one doubted that he was native, and yet he was vague about his ancestors.

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