Kanye West opened his eyes to total darkness. As he began to walk, each step was like a shovel digging away at shadows to create light. He kept walking, until a long bright hallway opened before him.
The hallway was filled with a row of doors, each sealed tight like Chris and Snoop from The Wire came through with their nail gun to board them shut. The last door on the left had a sign that read, “Genius Assholes, Douchebags, Scumbags, and Jerk-Offs.”
This door was not sealed shut. With no other option, Kanye twisted the knob, pushed the door open and walked in.
Whitewashed walls and black and white chessboard floors encased the room. In the center of the chessboard were four chairs facing inward. John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Joe Strummer sat in three. The fourth was empty.
Lennon looked up at Kanye. John’s white clothes hung over his skinny frame like drapes, just as his long hair hung over his thin face. He spoke in his heavy Liverpoolian accent. “Welcome ,Kanye! You’ve made it in the fookin’ club!”
“Have a seat,” growled Strummer, looking like he was pulled fresh from the New York Palladium stage in 1979.
Kanye walked toward the empty seat, glancing at these men who looked less like iconic rock stars and more than junkies pushing stolen shopping carts.
He sat down. “What is this place?”
“We’ve been waiting for you for quite some time, Kanye,” John said. “Like us, you are a genius … and an asshole. It’s not easy to make it in this group, friend.”
“No one, I think, is in our tree, right John?” Strummer smiled and winked. “What put you over the top, Kanye, was the way you treated Paul McCartney like a wanka’–just like John used to do.”
“What a fookin’ cunt that Paul is, eh Kanye?” John said.
“I don’t get it. I mean, I sit with Puff. I sit with Dame. I sit with Jay. I sit with Farrakhan. I’m not sure why I’m sitting with y’all. And who is this dude sleepin’ over here?” Kanye gestured at Dylan.
“Hey man, I’m awake,” Dylan said as he revealed his face from under the large Baron hat that covered it. “My eyes may be closed but they’re wide open, you dig?”
“Damn, okay, that’s deep right there, you know what I’m sayin’. Y’all deep then, just like me. And geniuses too, huh? This the genius and asshole group like it say on the door? So we got Lennon and Dylan, I get that. But who are you?”
“I’m Joe, mate. Leader of The Clash.”
“Okay, okay. I know The Clash. Y’all was dope. I get it. We buildin’ right here. We here to bring our resources together, right? But why y’all douchebags and assholes and shit though?”
Lennon started off. “Ya know, Bobby here, he just treated everyone like they were below him. Especially anyone from the press.”
“Fuck those cockroaches, man,” Dylan said. “I answer to God, not to no goddamn reporters. I did some other things too that might have been a little douchebaggy-ish. I distanced myself from my parents to build more credibility, you know, to be seen as a rebel … a loner. I couldn’t be this lyrical profit when I grew up in a normal family with respectable white Jew parents. So I made up stories about how bad they were … to give me some street cred.”
“For real?” Kanye said. “For me, I would never do that to my parents. I loved my mom ‘til she ain’t hurt no more!”
“That’s not even close to as bad as what I did, mate,” Strummer said. “I fucked me drummer’s wife on the tour bus while he was sleeping right next to us.”
“That’s skanless. What the fuck, fam?!”
The door to the room creaked open and the group all turned to see Chris Brown walk in.
“Wrong room, brotha’,” John said. “’Women Beaters’ is down the hall with Tommy Lee and Ike Turner.”
Without saying a word, Brown turned and walked out.
John leaned over and smiled as he whispered in Kanye’s ear. “Technically, I could be in that group, too.”
Disturbed, Kanye just shook his head. “Man, John, you messed up. Should I even ask what you did to get in here?”
“Shit, brotha, what didn’t I do? Let’s see. My wife walked in on me meditating in the nude with some strange Japanese chick I just finished making love to, and instead of apologizing, I told her to leave the house. As you probably know, that Japanese chick turned out to be Yoko Ono. Then, Yoko and I had a son named Sean, and I basically disowned the other son from my first marriage. I even wrote a song called ‘Beautiful Boy’ where I only talked about Sean. I’m pretty sure Julian never got over that one.”
“Damn, dog,” Kanye shook his head. “How you gonna write a song about only one son when you have two sons? You know, you actually could have messed up his head real bad. You ain’t ever seen East of Eden with James Dean?”
John continued, “You know how you like to heckle white people who win Grammy’s?”
“I mean, I don’t really heckle nobody …”
“I was like that, too. During comedy shows, I would get fookin’ high off cocaine and drunk off brandy Alexander’s and absolutely destroy the acts on stage. I once made The Smothers Brothers cry, heckling them about how they had gay brotherly sex with each other and were raped by their mom.”
“Didn’t you walk up on stage with a tampon stuck to your forehead, too?” Strummer asked.
“That was a different night and a different show.”
“I’m not really even sure what y’all is talkin’ about right now,” Kanye said.
“It doesn’t fookin’ matter,” John said. “People hated me, just like people hate you.”
“Yeah, but they hate me and I ain’t even do half of what y’all did.”
“John also fucked Yoko’s assistant,” Dylan said.
“You fucked your nannie,” John shot back.
“He fucked a 17 year old,” Dylan said, his thumb pointing at Strummer. “While married to his first wife.”
“I tried to divorce me wife when I met the 17 year old, but I had no idea where she was,” Strummer said. “Couldn’t find her. We didn’t have cell phones or GPS back then. I guess it didn’t matter. I slept with so many girls during that time. I ended up cheating on both my wife and my 17-year-old girlfriend at the same time. But, also, let’s not forget Bobby – what about that girl you forced to get an abortion?”
“I didn’t really make her have it,” Dylan said. “She chose the money I offered her to get it done, so it was her decision.”
“Didn’t she try to commit suicide after that?” John asked.
“I mean, yeah, but one, it wasn’t a successful suicide, and two, who says she wouldn’t have tried to kill herself on her own if she had never met me?”
“Goddamn, y’all muhfuckers really is assholes,” Kanye said. “Way worse than me. And people look at y’all as legends … building up our culture and shit. Realistically speaking, I’m working on bringing power to the people, not taking power away from the people. I’m sorry. I’m outta here. I ain’t on y’all’s asshole levels.”
Kanye started to walk out, but then turned, smiled and came back.
“Nah, I’m just playing. I’m just as big a asshole as you three. I mean, I did marry Kim Kardashian and make a baby with her. What kind of asshole does that, you know?”
Kanye sat back down in his chair. “So, what’s the worst way y’all ever humiliated the media for not being geniuses like us? Did you hear about the time I told Sway he ain’t have the answers? That was crazy, right?”
As the day faded, the four remained in their chairs for hours, laughing as they shared stories about cheating on females and the ignorance of the human race. The concluded the evening with a toast for the douchebags, the assholes, the scumbags and the jerk-offs. They toasted themselves.
Kanye felt great. He was finally accepted among other music legends that were just like him.
