Yesterday I ran into my former stoner roommate on the bus again. I asked him how his Fourth of July was and he grumbled, “At least someone still cares,” then launched into a brief monologue about his holiday celebration and his place in the American sun on a bus full of mostly young blacks, in which we are the only whites, and the only people to courteously address the black woman driving the bus, who did likewise. JimBob, the inspiration for Stoner Joe in the book Planet Buzzkill, drawled on in his deep smoker’s voice, which, in his youth, he used as a carney, in his capacity as barker and water tank jockey.

“There’s no sense in hating something as big as a country—even when it turns against you—and not much sense in fighting it either. Why ring the dinner bell immediately after finding out you're on the menu? Live a little, I say.

“Got together with ten or so friends and headed out right here, across the county line in Fullerton to watch the fireworks. No sense in going to the Inner Harbor, to the Black City. Let them celebrate their victory in peace, while we celebrate our survival in one piece. There will be a final battle one day. Until then I try to preserve my heritage. I might have to take the flag down out of the window—already have, in fact—but it still hangs respectfully in my basement. Every great people have a period of wandering in the wilderness—their forty years in the Sinai—before they decide to fade away or rise again.

“I wore my grays, my shirt with the Confederate flag, the hat, with the Confederate flag—and so did the rest. It’s not against the law yet. Fuck it. I’ve lived in this city for three decades and have been attacked and hunted in the streets by pigs, and The Oppressed, the entire time. You think I’m going to forget that—forget to celebrate that I’ve survived their attempts to digest me? Fuck, them! I survived thus far and I’ll thrive.

“When it comes down to that [outlawing Confederate symbols], I’m not surrendering to The Machine. I smoked pot on the courthouse steps and then argued with the judge about it. There are more of us then they think, and it’s good to have an enemy that has such poor intelligence that they do not know they’re outnumbered. A silver spoon white command structure and ghetto foot soldiers—there’s a gap in that chain of command you could drive this bus through.

“Later, Bro. Be safe, but don’t be good.”