by Paul Beatty
“How about ‘In general, singular subjects connected by or, nor, either/or, or neither/nor take a singular verb if both subjects are singular, a plural verb if subjects are plural’?”
I left to a scattering of sotto voce insults: “Nigger crazy, he trying to confuse the youth”; “Smart-alecky fool need to be playing basketball, that’s what he need to be doing.”
When I reached the door, Jamal Vickers handed me a manila-colored flier and sneered, “Why don’t you join Concoction? You think you better than everyone else.” Concoction was an organization of mixed-race kids who felt ostracized by both white and colored students.
CONCOCTION—THE HUMAN STUDENT UNION
The primordial soup’s on! Tired of being stewed because of your biracial heritage?
The jambalaya of ethnic duplicity too complicated for your “black” friends?
The reality of the American melting pot too hot for your “white” amigos?
Come and be a part of Concoction’s goulash and celebrate your ethnic hybridization.
Future Topics of Discussion:
• How to check African-American/Latino/Asian on your job application and rise above your employer’s stereotypes by asserting your biraciality in the workplace in a nonethnic manner.
• Why jazz musicians tend to date “white” women.
• How to prove you are not a nigger.
• How to explain that you’re basically white despite having Lopez as a surname.
• Jane Paleface, renowned Indian rights activist, explains how to claim one sixty-fourth Native American heritage and get your oil and casino kickback checks without having to live on the reservation.
• Plebiscite on admitting full-blooded Puerto Ricans into the Concoction ranks.
Jamal stood there, hands on hips, waiting for a response. I wanted to explain that I’d already tried to join Concoction under the guise that I was a Rwandan exchange student of Hutu and Tutsi descent but was refused admission on the grounds that its bylaws didn’t consider African exogamy dual ethnicity. I decided it was pointless to talk to someone who believed a fashion show would save the black race. Folding the flier into an origami turtle, I handed it to Jamal as a symbol of the progress of his struggle.
My next foray into student activism was with SWAPO, Spoiled Whities Against Political Obsequiousness. SWAPO’s main concern was the school administration’s support of the National Party’s forces in the South African civil war. The best thing about the SWAPO meetings was that I was allowed to drink beer while they wrote the latest act of an ongoing guerrilla theater production, an interminable piece called Black Consciousness Is a Sovereign State of Mind.
“Okay, here’s the part where we hammer home the point of the play, that white liberalism is the bane of black South Africa. Gunnar, will you be the ghost of Steve Biko?”
“Fuck, no.”
“How about the pacifist mediocre tennis player who deserts the revolutionary army, marries a white debutante from Nashville, writes a bestseller on how he found true love in the arms of a white woman and true freedom in the American South.”
“You must be high.”
“But you’re our only black member.”
“I wonder why that is?”
“Why aren’t there more black people at these SWAPO meetings? We’ve reached out to all the black organizations, the frats and sororities, the track team. We play classic soul music at the parties. Don’t they care?”
“Remove your hand from my shoulder and I’ll tell you. See, it’s like this—no one could possibly care enough to be treated like a baby seal. Colored people aren’t mascots for your political attitudes.”
“Then why do you come to the meetings?”
“Because y’all got the best weed on campus.”
“What can I, as a progressive white male, do?”
“If it’s at all possible, shed the fucking John Brown vibe. I don’t need no crackers kissing me on the forehead like I’m a swaddling infant and leading me out of slavery. Did you know that the first person killed in the raid on Harper’s Ferry was the town baggage master, a free black man?”
“No.”
“There are no John Browns. Thank goodness.”
The white boy burst into tears, soaking his shirtsleeves.
“Come on, guy, why are you crying?”
“My name is John Brown.”
My last SWAPO event was a teach-in on civil disobedience in preparation for Boston University’s gala welcoming of the South African politician M’m’mofo Gottobelezi, the Zulu puppet of the National Party rebels. A graying man in a Grateful Dead T-shirt was singing Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Find the Cost of Freedom” and taking extended bong hits between choruses. I looked around for a young Rosa Parks, a gold-toothed Ralph Abernathy, but as usual I was the only black there. A grungy imitation Abbie Hoffman offered me a Che Guevara LSD tab: “Power to the people, my brother.” When the radical hippie stopped staring at all the braless coeds, he taught us how to form human chains by linking our arms and ankles, how to double our body weight by exhaling and letting our bodies go limp as the fascist pigs carted us off the paddy wagon, and how our parents could use the bail money as a small tax shelter.
As the session wound down, someone asked about the specter of police brutality. The glassy-eyed facilitator ground his joint into an ashtray and for the first time looked me in the eye. “When things get rough, I’ve found that the police treat us longhairs much more violently than they do our black and Hispanic hermanos y hermanas.” I passed my hand over my lumpy scalp and heard my father tapping his billy club on the cement. “So, mis compadres, when things get bleak, remember to sing and sing loud.”
A stale version of “We Shall Overcome” chased my shivering body through the snowy streets of Boston, catching me near a statue of Abraham Lincoln lightly touching the head of a kneeling slave. The slave’s pleading expression seemed to say, “Free me, boss. You ain’t got to free nobody else, just me.” I leaned into the slave’s brass ear and whispered, “Tag, you’re it.”
The next night Yoshiko and I woke up with soggy pillows and tear-stained cheeks.
“What was your dream about?”
“What was your dream about?”
“I asked you first.”
“I dreamed me, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Cinque, and Didi Lancaster were fighting alongside the Irish Republican Army, driving through the streets of Belfast in a station wagon, shooting at the British troops, and singing ‘Find the Cost of Freedom.’ ‘F-i-ind the c-o-o-st o-of fr-e-e-e-dom buried in the gr-ound.’ After a while we got tired of the British machine-gunning us, so we tied a baby to the back of the station wagon. We’d buzz the Brits and they’d turn to shoot but wouldn’t fire when they saw a wailing kid lashed to the rear door. But one day they said fuck it and shot back, killed Nat, Gabriel, Didi, and the baby. I ended up teaching at a hearse-driving school.”
“Who’s Didi Lancaster?”
“This girl I knew in the eighth grade. One day in front of the whole class, Ms. Hanger, the social studies teacher, said she was stupid and would never amount to anything. Didi beat Ms. Hanger to a pulp and threw her out a window. Broke her jaw and cracked three ribs. The whole time she was kicking her ass, Didi was screaming, “Just because you a teacher don’t make you innocent.” What’s funny is Didi’s grades improved after that.”
“Whose baby did you tie to the car?”
“Ours.”
“Good.”
“What was your dream about, Yoshiko?”
“We had a kid and we were tucking her into bed, telling her bedtime stories.”
“What’s so bad about that?”
“The stories went like this. ‘This story is called “The Little Fuck Who Cried Wolf.” Once upon a time there was this shepherd boy who always screaming wolf like a little bitch …’”
“Oh shit, you got to stop hanging out with them Onyx niggers.” I put my head back on the pillow. “Yoshiko, you pregnant?”
“I think so.”
“Good.”
*
Having failed to find a stimulating extracurricular activity, I soon found myself in familiar surroundings: the basketball gym, my sneakers squeaking, yelling “help right” and “switch,” and watching Coach Slick Palomino shout and throw chairs at the white kids. Despite playing well and enjoying Scoby’s company on the court, I became depressed with my purposeless life; sad-eyed, I’d toe the free-throw line in an arena filled with screaming maniacs, pondering the worthlessness of my existence.
“Two shots, gentlemen. Relax on the first.” The referee would hand me the ball with a stern look, trying to talk with the whistle in his mouth. “Kaufman, you look glum. What’s wrong—having a poetic moment?”
“I don’t know. Been reading Schopenhauer and I can’t figure out my raison d’etre.”
“Your purpose in life is to make these free throws, then run back and play defense.”
“Fuck that.”
Scoby, his chest heaving up and down, would chime in. “Your purpose is to take care of your pregnant wife and raise your kid.”
“That ain’t no purpose, that’s a responsibility. If I had the money, I could pay someone to do that.”
“Kaufman, shoot the ball.”
“Yassuh, massa.”
Swish. Swish.
My only comforts were the boxes of Japanese literature Yoshiko would send me on the road trips. Returning to the hotel exhausted from another game, I’d find carefully wrapped copies of the love-suicide plays of Chikamatsu, the biographies of Yukio Mishima and Sakai Saburo, the diaries of Heian ladies-in-waiting on the bed. My favorites were the autobiographical tales of Osamu Dazai, the heavy-hearted writer who wandered the back roads of Japan struggling to raise the nerve to commit suicide in the Tamagawa River. In return I would send Yoshiko rocks, seashells, and fossils from riverbeds and oceans across America. Sparkling checkered periwinkles and smooth pismo clams from tidepools in Monterey, California. Hideous skeletons of trilobites and dalmanites embedded in sandstone from the Black Hills in the Dakotas. Purple fluorite cubes, emerald-green malachite, sharp clear spears of gypsum from the Utah flats, toast-black slabs of slate from Vermont, tenderly wrapped in love letters.
*
Dear Yoshiko,
I’m writing this letter during halftime of the Cornell game. Coach Palomino is foaming at the mouth, kicking lockers and shit, screaming like Fay Wray. “This is a must-win game! I know you boys—excuse me, Gunnar, my apologies—I know you men are trying to be winners …” Every game is a “must win” game. The shinos and the other coco-jin (not including Nicholas, of course) are looking shameful and nodding at every word Coach says, like they’ve done something wrong. Most of these stupid clowns don’t even play. I can’t understand why they give a fuck. Oh shit, Coach just slapped Isaac Gottlieb for missing a lay-up during the pregame warmup.
Yoshiko, I miss you so much it hurts. Sabίshi kunaru-yo. I really don’t have anyone to talk to. Scoby is losing his mind. Hold on a moment, Coach Palomino is going into the teamwork speech, I don’t want to miss this. Two days ago against Dartmouth he pulled down his pants and stroked his penis. “Now I’m going to shoot my wad. Then we’ll be on equal terms.” Tonight’s exhortation looks more conventional—it’s the hackneyed “There is no ‘I’ in team!” speech. There’s no ‘U’ either, but I guess that’s immaterial when you’re getting paid thousands of dollars to teach young athletes how to navigate the perils of life and hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure that these same athletes wear a certain brand of sneaker. I still won’t wear the shoes. Slick offered me a thousand dollars a game, but I told him to get fucked. He realizes that if he wins, it doesn’t matter what shoes I wear. Did I tell you I refuse to stand for the national anthem? Pissed off everybody. I guess Coach has been telling the media I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, because during a postgame interview a reporter asked me did I think the United States was in cahoots with Satan. I went into some diatribe on how America is Satan. Some shit about how the United States of America anagrammed was “Foes in death tear. I cum. Taste.” The media pretty much leaves me alone now.
All this talk about teamwork and self-sacrifice is making me think about the books you sent me. Mishima said that to reach a level of consciousness that permits one to peek at the divine, one must sacrifice individual idealism. I’m like “Nigger, please.” What in hell is the divine? Some bright light with a walking cane and a beard? A state of being so enlightened that you know everything worth knowing? I can pay a drug dealer ten bucks and achieve that level of consciousness, at least for an hour or so. Mishima goes on to say that “only bodies placed under the same circumstance can experience a common suffering … Through the suffering of the group the body can reach the height of existence that the individual alone can never attain.” I agree, but this “height of existence” trip doesn’t have much value on the open market. I think that 6 million gassed Jews, 15 million dead Africans, their lungs filled with saltwater, 436 Champawat Indians eaten by a single tiger in 1907, might agree with me. And what is “the group”? You can’t put numbered uniforms on people and say this is “the group” or say everyone born on this side of the fence is “the group.” And not everyone experiences pain and suffering in the same way. I can see some masochistic slave fucking up on purpose just for a few precious licks of rawhide.
Speaking of suffering, I think Scoby is going insane. The scrutiny he is undergoing is unbelievable, ten times worse than in high school. What seems like every sportswriter in America, the entire Boston University Philosophy, African-American Studies, Religion, Biology, Mathematics, and Physics Departments, and a horde of German and Japanese scientists are following him twenty-four hours a day. Keeping track of his meals, sleeping habits, shit like that. Once a day some Nobel Prize-winning professor has a press conference to announce a new asinine theory on Nicholas’s uncanny ability to put a ball in a basket. The philosophers are easily the most despicable of the lot. I suppose they have the most to lose. Every other scientist can say, “Well, it is at least possible” (they haven’t really accepted that he is never, ever going to miss), but Socrates never said nothing about a motherfucker like Scoby. Nick’s thrown every theory, every formula, every philosophical dogma out of whack; he’s like a living disclaimer. “I am perfection; everything else is bullshit. Your life is meaningless.” So the philosophers show up at the games, full of anticipatory schadenfreude, armed with computer printouts calculating the odds of Scoby’s missing his next shot. Praying that Nick’s next attempt will roll in and out of the rim and the universe will return to normal. Invariably, Scoby goes six for six and leaves them in tears, ripping their papers to shreds and cursing epistemology. They would be a lot better off if they simply called Scoby a god and left it at that, but no way they’ll proclaim a skinny black man God.
The scariest part is the team introduction. Silence for everybody except me and Scoby. I’m the preliminary booee—I run out to a smattering of boos, dodge a few paper cups, and try to ignore the catcalls. “Communist sonofabitch. Love it or leave it, you black bastard.” Scoby’s introduction is communal catharsis. Within moments the court is covered with bananas, coconuts, nooses, headless dolls, and shit. I’m into it, but Scoby gets shook. The few black fans in the house, mostly boosters from the Onyx and the black kids from whatever campus we’re at, stand and applaud, but they’re quickly shouted down by whites. After Scoby hits his first basket, fights break out; it’s sick, there’s so much scorn in the world. Usually when you dive into the crowd for a loose ball, the fans try to catch you, help break your fall. When Nick goes headlong in the stands, the reporters scatter, picking up their coffee cups and laptops and letting Scoby crash into the table. They don’t even help the nigger to his feet. Assholes. Funny thing happened the other day in Michigan, though. Nicholas was running full-tilt toward the basket and did a swan dive into the crowd for absolutely no reason. His form was perfect; chest out, arms spread, fe
et together, toes pointed. The fans flew out of harm’s way like parking-lot pigeons. In the center of the vacated section stood a small black girl forming a basket with her spindly arms, poised to catch the airborne Scoby. Wouldn’t you know it, Scoby landed right on top of her, but she caught his ass. His feet didn’t touch down till she lowered him to the ground. The crowd booed her, but it was the first time I’d seen Nick smile in two weeks.
It’s not all bad though; sometimes the crowd is on our side. “Our” meaning down with me and Scoby. When we played Columbia, I swear, all of Harlem was in the gym. They were quiet except when one of us scored; they could give less than a care who won. Remember at the Harvard game, black folk from as far away as Peabody and Scituite were in the house. I bet the Harvard kids didn’t even know so many niggers existed. It was good to see you in the stands, and hearing you scream, “Take the motherfucker to the hole, Gunnar!” I could feel your eyes on me wherever I went. Did I tell you how mad Coach got when you came to sit next to me on the bench? He thinks it sets a bad example for his best player to hold hands with his wife during the game. Now I pretend you’re always there right next to me—Florida, Colorado, wherever. Sometimes if I need to talk to you I’ll commit a stupid foul on purpose so Slick will take me out of the game and I’ll get a chance to talk to you on the bench. Do you hear me? Ikaga desu ka? Mai asa nani o shimasu? Asahan ni sakana o tabemasu ka? Senakao sasurishoka? Sometimes I’ll be dribbling up-court and I’ll hear your voice: “Take that motherfucker to the hole, Gunnar!”
