Live from Planet Woke by Kwan Booth

Live from Planet Woke

On a morning that was remarkable in no other way, the famous sports star stared into the bathroom mirror, at his own face, and the huge problem hovering above it.

A kinky revolution had sprouted atop his head as he’d slept. A tiny 2 inch afro now stood triumphantly after toppling his closed cropped Caesar like a corrupt regime.

After breaking two sets of clippers and chipping his favorite sheers trying to rid himself of the stubborn scruff he headed down to breakfast, where he lamented to his wife while devouring an egg white omelette.

The news was on. A young woman had been shot by police the night before and there were protests happening all over the country. The famous sports star ignored the journalist’s voice like he always did, but had to call his wife’s name loudly to draw her attention away from the big screen.

He complained about the new edition to his profile and worried that it would be taken the wrong way. Like some kind of political statement or act of defiance.

Indeed this new face, with it’s black power coils, did resemble the pictures of the old activists and rabble rousers he’d seen in the books his wife was always reading. Books with titles that promised of uprisings and critical examinations of things that the famous sports star had either taken for granted or never fully understood.

His wife listened to his concerns, clutching a large mug of tea to her chest and nodding with the attentiveness of a compassionate lover.

She told him that he was overreacting. That it was probably just temporary. And besides, “if some people were rattled by a little something like this,” she said “then those people needed to have their coat tails pulled to the real ways of the world that they were living in.”

The famous sports star trusted his wife and knew that she had a much better grasp on these things. So with a heavy sigh, he pulled his jersey over his head with a bit more difficulty than usual, and headed out to practice, where he avoided questions about his new hairstyle and led the team through their morning routine.

But by the end of the month his mini fro had blown out into a perfect 12 inch sphere and a short beard and goatee had sprouted up to match. He’d begun to resemble some of the men on his father’s side, with their dark oak skin and drawls that stretched clear back to Mississippi. The ones that the god fearing Catholics on his mother’s side didn’t like very much.

And despite the fact that he’d made a point to stay away from the bruising debates on race and sex and oppression that had been igniting all over the country, his new ‘do was taking a political stance for him.

He noticed the new attention whenever he wore a hoodie, stood in elevators with white women or made late night grocery store runs. Not famous sports star attention. But something else entirely.

Once his fro reached two feet in length, certain friends said that they were shocked and slightly dismayed that he’d decided to play the race card. They’d never seen that side of him before.

“We didn’t think you were one of those people” they’d said, shaking their heads and scowling like they’d somehow been betrayed.

At the three feet milestone, photos of the star and his new hairstyle were leaked to the media. Sports commentators and pundits denounced his actions and questioned his allegiances. They fumed. Sport was no place to insert one’s personal political opinions.

By the time his afro topped six feet in circumference, the town where he’d grown up-which happened to have more churches per capita than any city in the United States-was torn in two.

At the local pizza parlor where he used to work-someone painted a Hitler moustache on his portrait, right before someone else covered it in kisses.

One restaurant named a hot dog in his honor on the same day that a lynch mob hung a mannequin with an afro from the Oak tree in front of his mother’s house.

By the time the season rolled around the sport star’s afro was the size of the state of Virginia and there was no way that he could play in his current condition.

Which suited him just fine. At his wife’s encouragement he’d began reading the books that she kept in stacks around the house. And the more he read, the more that the protests erupting across the country started to resonate.

He’d taken to spending the majority of his time with his books and his thoughts and his wife and the growing movement of people who’d begun to gather around him-drawn by the news reports and social media feeds and the buzz that something new was coming.

It was like his hair had it’s own gravitational pull as people from all over the world were drawn to the man with the planet sized afro. Together, under the shade of his curly hair, they’d discuss politics and philosophy and revolution, mapping out a new world that the famous former sports star now knew that he played a part in creating.

The afro ballooned until soon it eclipsed all of the west coast and some of the more adventurous had began to climb to it’s peak, scaling the sides to hike across its wide expanse. Desperate to see the world from a new vantage.

Over time they discovered that the kinky curls were an excellent medium for growing crops. A little digging revealed a network of underground freshwater streams. Carpenters sheared off long planks of the dense tresses to build libraries and schools and more and more like minded people began to join.

The famous former sports star’s wife was elected to oversee the development. Villages began popping up on the hairy horizon, with small houses and customs and names that reflected the values this group of idealists were working towards.

At a press conference, when he was asked about the developing community and what he was hoping to accomplish, the famous former sports star said that he was just doing his part to create the world that we all wanted to see.

“We’re just trying to be our best selves” he said, staring directly into the cameras and the flashing bulbs.

“We believe that it’s time to build a world where that can happen.”

And high above them all the sound of hammers and working drifted down to the press conference. The sounds of children and singing soon followed, as the promise of something better floated just above them all, between the ground and the sky. A new world: huge and living and clearly visible to anyone with the courage to just look up.

This short story previously appeared in the Afrofuturism issue of Chicago Literati