1.
Amy, her eyes cartoon blue, devil in a blue jogging suit blue, West palm white sky beach blue, a father who loved Churchill and George W., blue. Amy in her knee length skirt, adjusting herself in the mirror, while I squirmed in the moist bed, still sweaty from stank breath morning sex. Amy in her blue jogging shorts, stretching in front of the mirror, while I tumbled back to sleep and missed another class. Her hands squeezing my ass, urging me
deeper
,
harder
, while I clamped my eyes and thrust and imagined I was fucking someone else, a little prettier with perkier tits and not such a flat wisp of a Wasp ass. Flat as a pancake, a fly smashed against a white wall. Splat. Flat ass the bottom of my father's flat feet, fifteenth century fall of the end of the earth flat.
I woke in my room between four walls, off white. Me, ashy brown. Face mottled with pimples, nappy beard sprouting on my neck. Three days without showering, three days of caked sweat inside my shirt, in between my thighs. Three days of barely throwing water on my stoned face. I crawled out of bed, dug the grime out my eyes, and slipped on my glasses. Out the second story window car lights speared the dark in route for the highway. I plodded down two flights of stairs into the living room. The living room floor, sticky and strewn with ash. I shuffled into the narrow kitchen. Four day's stacked dishes in the sink --plates, forks, knives, spaghetti strands, and two sodden cigarette butts. While the coffee machine dripped, dropped, and spit steam, I sat on the couch rolling a cigarette. Fingers jittery, teeth clattering.
Adam on his bed smoking, and I am next to him. His arms, turrets, loaded and cocked, jutting out a white tank top. One bicep barbed with wire, the other winged by a medieval dragon. And next to his bed the protein packed ammunition that he mixed and gulped down after his workouts. Adam who had a literary childhood. Sick beds, failing limbs, coughing fits. Who still had the stick figure legs that wobbled under his squared and bulked upper torso. A ball of fire flaming on his calf. Chestnut eyes flickering behind rectangular lenses. Adam whose stubbly face and fear of women I admired. Who still stank of two years' worth of vegan dishes. Tofu, soy burgers, since renounced, scraped from the palate into the trash. Adam the apostate, half caste, mongrel Jew from a Lilt white Long Island Township.
Every night between three and four AM, we sat on the edge of his bed. Sat and passed a joint, pointed and laughed at the screen. The show, BET Uncut. An hour long reel of twenty first century blackploitation flics. Hip hop videos too raw to be shown during normal business hours. We sat on the edge of bed laughing and pointing. At the dollars crumpled and tosses at the jiggling black asses' at the black men with gilded teeth and chains fighting for face time; at the spinning rims; the faces contorted for the camera;
fists full of cash; and at the pimp in the green suit, drinking from a diamond studded cup. The show ended, we smoked another one. And I headed out to Dupont Circle.
Five AM bleary sky looming over groggy streets, and I turned right at Twenty First into Dupont Circle. Delivery trucks honked, stopped short. Swarthy men in hoodies pedaled bikes. And I walked up a hill into Dupont's main arteries. Entered a bagel shop, the one with the clenched face Korean manning the counter. On guard, I saluted tip toed through the DMZ, placed my order, then sat down. I reeked of Turkish tobacco. I frowned at my yellow stained fingertips, ground my teeth, bit into one of my jagged nails, chewed on a fragment. Swallowed it. The wall clock read, 5:45. Three hours left before I went to sleep. Six more rolled cigarettes, two more cups of black coffee, another twenty pages of reading, before I went back to bed. And ground and turned and tossed though the morning into the afternoon.
I placed the bubbling cup on the table. Unwrapped the bagel, stared with steamed open eyes at its assortment of seeds. Poppy, sesame, fragments of onion and salt. The wax paper wrapping crinkled. The buttery heat warmed my fingers. Chomp, chomp. I sloshed it down with bitter swigs. Grease stains and poppy seeds on the wax. Dregs swirling in the cup.
While I sipped black coffee in D.C.'s white triangle, a hundred and fifty miles north in southern New York, my mother staggered down stairs. One arthritic hand on the banister, her long black robe sweeping the steps, her eyes circled by rings as deep as sand dunes. Her face, half caste Creole syntax. Punctuated by pulpy lips, a wide nose, and Caribbean Sea green eyes. My mother with spent arsenal of Australian Chardonnay bottles assembled in her closet. The bottles she placed in a discrete black garbage bag and smuggled to the end of the driveway. Instead of putting them with the other recyclables. My father in the driveway limbering up, stretching his quads. Yale alumni cap on his bald head, Harvard Law Degree folded and tucked in his socks. Just in case he was stopped and frisked on his morning jog.
My parents. Yes, they'd made it. Pulled themselves up from the Bottom of the Well, scaled the Bell Curve, bridged the Achievement Gap, and slipped onto the Affirmative Action Express, chooo choooo!
They rode the express north out of Brooklyn, along the Hudson River, and got off in Larchmont, NY where I was raised. Where I was the only black kid in the fourth grade class. So the teacher sent me packing, sent my pimply forehead and seven inch afro out the door and down the hall. Down to where the other two black kids in the school, alongside a poor white boy and stuttering Mexican, huddled over remedial texts. The other two black kids in the school who snickered and called me nigger when I passed them on the playground. Four days of testing. Math, reading comprehension, logic. Four days until the Special Ed teacher realized that I didn't belong in the classroom. Four days until I walked back down the hallway, handed a note to my bemused fourth grade teacher, and reclaimed my seat by the window.
I never told my parents about that four day experiment. Never told them because we were the others. The other black people. The good, upstanding, well spoken black people. We prayed Episcopalian, not Baptist or Methodist. We integrated a country club. Voted Republican. Ate sushi. Skinned our chicken. Tolerated lactose. And nibbled funky ass French cheese.
College was the way out. Out of monochromatic Larchmont. And Howard University, the Mecca of black gals with mocha skin and Jack and Jill memberships, was my first choice.
