Black Like Us

by Devon Carbado

  Dixon’s second novel, the critically praised Vanishing Rooms (1991), also examines themes of African Americans attempting to reconcile history, with the notable exception that the book’s plot centers on an interracial gay male couple in New York City. Arguably the author’s most important work, Vanishing Rooms boldly pushes boundaries with forthright considerations of gay racism and explicit homophobic violence. Dixon was also a well-respected scholar, publishing a critical study, Ride Out the Wilderness: Geography and Identity in Afro-American Literature (1987), and in 1991 a translation of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s collected poetry. Dixon contributed to a number of groundbreaking black gay anthologies, notably Essex Hemphill’s Brother to Brother: Collected Writings by Black Gay Men and Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS. The author was teaching at City University of New York at the time of his death from AIDS in 1992.

  Fundamental to the plot of Vanishing Rooms is the story of Lonny, a young gay-basher who has killed Metro, the white lover of Jesse, the novel’s African American protagonist. Although much of the book concerns Jesse’s attempt to surmount his grief around Metro’s murder, this confessional excerpt is revealing for the ways in which Dixon objectively allows the white attacker to share his troubling perspective of the killing.

  from Vanishing Rooms

  [1991]

  Like I keep telling you. October is a bitch, a mean, red bitch. And you still don’t believe me. Shit, you got the red leaves, you got early nightfall and twisted chilly mornings freezing you back into bed. You got people in scarves and caps tilted to the side like Hollywood detectives. You got October. What more do you want? You want red leaves clogging the sewers? You want legs and arms splayed out like tree limbs after a storm? You really don’t believe in fall, huh, or how people can change too, just as fast? You want all this? Then you’re no better than that faggot who wanted me.

  He said his name was Metro. Just like that, he said it, out of the blue. So I said, “Yeah.” Nothing more. The way he looked at me I could tell he was thinking he’d seen me around and knew I’d seen him around, too, and after saying hello just once he could come up to me a week later and tell me his funny name.

  I was on my way to meet Cuddles who had the smoke this time. I had my mind on herb and didn’t really see him until he was close enough to speak. “Metro,” he said. I thought he was asking for directions. But he stuck out his hand, ’cause it wasn’t a place he was telling me, it was his name. I felt a load on me from the moment he spoke. All I said was “yeah.” He didn’t take the hint. He waited for more. Maybe he was thinking the cat got my tongue and he wanted it. I looked closer. He was about my height and build. Had wavy hair, not stringy like mine. He looked like any guy, except he spoke in a drawl straight out of Gone with the Wind, then changed back to a normal voice, like my voice changes sometimes, but not that bad. He said again his name was Metro. What could I do? He waited for me to tell him my name, but I never did. I finally said, “You know what you are?”

  “Metro.”

  “Shit, man, you better get out of my face.” And I left him standing there, looking like he just lost some money or came home to find his apartment broken into and his stereo and favorite record gone. With the wind. How do I know he even had a stereo? I don’t know. He never invited me in to smoke dope or listen to records. Which is the only reason anyone would go with him. With a name like Metro, what would you expect?

  I didn’t expect nothing at all. The third time I seen him walking into the corner building, I knew he lived there. I wasn’t meeting Cuddles that time. I didn’t know why I was even in the neighborhood. You get used to meeting friends in the late afternoon and it gets to be routine. Metro was dressed in a suit, no jeans, no flannel plaid, no white undershirt poking from inside the open collar. He looked like one of those Wall Street businessmen, he looked so square, so regular. He might have been somebody’s husband or somebody’s father even though he wasn’t that old. You should know about fathers. They’re the most important people to a kid trying to be a man, when everyone is out to get you or fix you into a can or a crate going six feet down.

  My father built things. He was a carpenter mainly. He’d build things, take things apart, and build them again. But he was also an electrician, a house painter, a wallpaper hanger, a welder, a car mechanic, a plumber. All for money and for fixing up other people’s houses. He could fix anything. A regular Jack-of-all-trades. I remember he used to make toys for us at Christmas because he couldn’t buy any. We was living in the Bronx then, and my father would load up his beat-up station wagon every morning and go off on the jobs people called him for. He owned his business. He was his own business. That’s what Moms said to write in the blank beside “father’s occupation” on school registration forms every September: “self-employed.” I didn’t even know what it meant, because my father never talked to us. He didn’t tell us about who we were. I mean, as a family. And since I didn’t know who I was aside from nothing or no one, I thought I could be anybody I damn well pleased.

  “You ain’t never had a chance, have you?” Moms said once.

  “What are you talking about? I’m anybody I’m strong enough to be.”

  “And mean enough,” she said, shaking her head like she did when my father died. He worked all the time and kept his feelings locked inside him until his heart burst open. The fucking load he must have been carrying. Shit, I coulda carried some of that load.

  “You ain’t never had a chance,” Moms said again.

  “I make my own chances. I’m self-employed.”

  Naw, Metro couldn’t have been anybody’s husband or father. You could tell by the way he walked and, if you listened close enough, by the way he talked. He had what you call opportunities. Maybe if you don’t ever have kids you can build things for yourself. Do things. He just made the mistake of wanting to do me.

  “You can come up to visit sometime, you know. Now that you know where I live.”

  “You mean me?”

  “Sure. What’s your name?”

  “Lonny.”

  “I’m Metro.”

  “You told me before. Remember?”

  “Yes. I thought you didn’t remember. You didn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t know what to say. Besides, where’d you get a name like that?” “You’ll see.”

  “Listen man, you trying to get wise or something?”

  “Let’s be friends, Lonny.”

  “I got to go now.”

  “Some other time, then?”

  “Sure, man, sure.”

  “Call me Metro. I like that.”

  “Sure.

  I got away and ran all the way to Cuddles’ place. He wasn’t even expecting me. But I was there just the same, leaning against the corner beam of the loading platform. It was about five feet off the ground so that the packing trucks could be loaded from the level of the storage and work areas. I could have been holding up the very corner of the building myself, or at least the sign saying Holsworth Meat and Poultry Packing, where you could actually see the sides of beef, the blood and fat making the loading-platform floor slippery and the whole place smell like rotten armpits.

  Maybe it was the heat. Or just me, hot with my tangled nerves sizzling electric. All from talking with that guy Metro and running at breakneck speed to Cuddles’ job like it was the only safe place. I was hot standing there thinking about Metro and hating myself for letting him talk like that to me. Shit, he talked like he knew who I was or who I could be. Like he could actually see into my corduroy jacket, his eyes like fingers in my clothes—touching me. You ever get that feeling talking to someone? Shit. I hated him for thinking he knew who I was and could come on to me like I was some bitch. He didn’t know who he was messing with. Sure, I told him my name. We was just talking. Wouldn’t you talk before you realized his eyes were fingers crawling all over you? I know you would, mostly because you’d think a guy wouldn’t do that to another guy.

  Later, you’d swear he hadn’t t
ouched you. Wouldn’t you? You’d think that talking was all right. It was only some words between you, not hands. You’d think that as long as he didn’t touch you it would be all right to speak. Long as neither of you was touching. It don’t mean that you’re one of them, just ’cause you say “Lonny,” like I did. We was only talking, man. But when you realized his eyes were fingers taking hold, you’d hate him even more for pulling it off, undressing you right there with his eyes and laughing at your naked ass or shriveled-up cock. You’d be mad enough to kill him.

  “You lying,” Cuddles says when I tell him. “You lying, man.”

  “Naw, I ain’t.”

  “Shit, man. Wait till I see Maxie and Lou.”

  “What for?”

  “We oughta kick his ass.”

  “Look, Cuddles. Maybe we can just forget it, huh?”

  “Naw, man. You one of us. What happens to you, happens to us. You forgetting the pledge.”

  “What pledge?” I ask after him, and he’s dancing on the same short circuit I’m on.

  When we catch up with Maxie and Lou, it’s Cuddles doing the talking. “Man, we should celebrate,” he yells, looking me over.

  “Celebrate what?” I ask.

  “Losing your cherry to a faggot, what else?” he says.

  My face burns. “He didn’t touch me, man.”

  “Aw, Lonny, we know you got a little bit,” says Maxie grinning.

  “Don’t start no shit,” says Lou.

  “Maybe that’s what I’m smelling,” says Cuddles, moving up then back from me and flailing his arms like he’s brushing me off.

  “You mean the shit on your breath,” I say, stepping up to him.

  And Maxie jumps up and goes “Whoa,” and Lou goes “Whoa,” and I go “Whoa.”

  Cuddles backs off. “I’ll fix your ass,” he says. “Fix it real good.”

  “Aw, man, we been low too long now, let’s ride high,” says Maxie. “Beer and smoke?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s ride and fuck the night,” adds Lou. He revs up the cycle with Cuddles holding tighter to him than I ever held. At the first red light Cuddles turns to me, saying he’ll fix me real good. I tell him where to put that shit.

  Around midnight, after five trips to Burger King for fries and hot apple pies to ease the munchies, we get back to the garage in Chelsea. I’m high, yeah, I admit it. Feeling good. We stop cutting up with each other and just enjoy being so bloated we can barely move. We keep talking shit, though, like it’s all we can say. But I still feel funny about meeting Metro earlier in the afternoon. A numbing tingle comes through my face like I’m getting high all over again or just burning slowly inside. Then I feel light again as if something is about to happen to ease the beer and marijuana out of me on a cool streak, and I’d lift off the garage floor, lift up from the street and glide out to 12th Street and Bleecker and on to West 4th, where I’d be sure to see him and we’d talk. Just talk. Maybe this time I would get to hear his stereo. Maybe he likes the same music I do. Maybe he really is like me or Maxie or Cuddles or Lou, just a little haywire.

  But we leave the garage again and move in a group through the meat-packing section of West 12th and down toward Bleecker where men walk alone or in twos, passing us. Lou scowls. Cuddles sets his shoulders broad. We’re a solid block, and tough. Them faggots is just maggots on rotting meat. They move away from us and off the sidewalk quick. Lou and Cuddles laugh, and I hardly know their voices. When I laugh too, just to be laughing, the chuckle comes out of some pit inside me, and the voice ain’t mine, honest. Like the shit you don’t know you carry around until it starts to stink.

  Some guy up ahead is selling loose joints for a dollar. “All our joints loose,” says Maxie, laughing and trying to unzip his pants. When we come up to him Maxie asks, “Got fifteen?”

  “We’ll get blasted to hell,” I say. But no one answers. They all look like they know something I don’t know.

  Maxie asks for change of a twenty. I see Cuddles and Lou sneak in close, so I move in close. The guy fumbles around in his pockets and gives me the joints to hold. As soon as he brings out a wad of bills it’s a flurry of green and fists. Cuddles first, then Maxie, Lou, and me pounding hard on the upbeat.

  “That’s all the money I got,” the guy whines. Cuddles pushes him away from us. The flash of metal makes the kid back right into Lou who feels his ass. Cuddles gets a feel, too. The guy’s face goes red and his voice trembles, “Leave me alone. You got what you wanted.”

  “You oughta be glad we don’t make you suck us off,” Lou says, pushing him away. “Now get the fuck outta here.”

  The kid disappears down a side street. We count the new joints and money and move in close ranks like an army of our own, the bad-dest white boys out that night. Everyone else moves off the sidewalk as we approach, some we even push into the street, just close enough to a car to scare them clean out of their designer jeans and alligator shirts. The funniest shit is that some of them have on leather bomber jackets, and here we are doing the combat. We blow some of the cash at the liquor store off Sheridan Square.

  On a vacant stoop near West 4th Street, we finish off the beer and the joints and divide up the rest of the money. Everything is sweet now. Sure we have our fights and fun and great highs. So what if they don’t last long? Sure as shit and just as loud as the beer and smoke would let him, Cuddles goes, “Lonny, man, how’s Beatrice these days?”

  “Don’t be bringing my Moms into your shit,” I say.

  “Keep it clean, guys,” says Maxie.

  “I was trying to keep it clean,” Cuddles starts. “But the bitch had her period right when I was fucking her.”

  In a second I’m on him with fists and feet. He deserves no better. “We dancing this one, asshole.”

  “Yo, man, cool it,” says Lou. He and Maxie pull me off Cuddles, but not until I land some good ones. Cuddles is too high to fight good. I could be faster myself, but what the hell.

  “Aw man,” Cuddles says, rolling to his side, sliding down the concrete stairs away from me. “I just wondered if she knew about your boyfriend. You know, the one you said lived around here.”

  “Whoa,” says Maxie. “Lonny getting faggot pussy again? Keeping it all to himself?”

  “It ain’t true, man,” I say.

  “What ain’t true?”

  “This guy just told me his name, that’s all. I didn’t say nothing else. Nothing.”

  “Why he tell you his name then?”

  “’Cause he wanted to, that’s why. You jealous, Cuddles?”

  “Shit, man.”

  “He wanted to do something, I guess,” I say.

  “Of course he wanted to,” says Maxie.

  “He was trying to rap to me,” I say, but I’m talking too much and can’t stop. “Like I was some bitch.”

  “He touch you, man? He touch you?” Maxie asks.

  “Shit,” says Cuddles. “Faggots everywhere.”

  “I ain’t no faggot,” I say.

  “He touch you, man?” asks Maxie.

  “Like you touched that reefer kid back there?”

  “That’s different, Lonny. We was on top.”

  “Shit,” says Cuddles. “Pass me another joint.”

  “Me too.”

  “Pass Lonny another joint. He cool.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hours pass. Or minutes that seem like hours. The streets are suddenly quiet and so are we. But that kind of quiet—sneaking up and banging like a fist on your face—makes you think something’s about to happen and no laughing or getting high can stop it. What you do won’t be all that strange, either, more like something you always thought about doing but never did. I hate that feeling. It makes me think that something’s burning in me that I don’t know about. And I’ve got to let it out or choke on the fumes.

  Cuddles is the first to see him strolling down the street. He nudges me and Maxie. Maxie nudges Lou, who’s half-asleep and stroking himself hard again.

>   “Aw, shit.” My voice gives it away.

  “That’s him, ain’t it?” asks Cuddles. “That’s Lonny’s faggot, ain’t it?” “I didn’t say that,” I say, but it’s too late.

  “He the one touch you?” asks Maxie.

  “That’s the one,” says Cuddles.

  “How do you know?”

  “You told me,” Cuddles says, but his voice also tells me something I can’t get ahold of. They ease into the street and wait. I join just to be joining them. Metro approaches dizzily, either drunk or high or plain out of it, but not as bad as the rest of us. Cuddles speaks up like he has it all worked out in his head.

  “Hey, baby,” he goes, in a slippery, chilly voice.

  “Huh?” says Metro.

  “Hey, subway, baby,” Cuddles goes again.

  “The A train, right? I just took the A train,” says Metro.

  “We got another train for you, baby. A nice, easy ride.”

  I can’t believe what Cuddles is saying. I try to hide my surprise by not looking at Metro, but they both scare me like I’ve never been scared before. It’s something I can’t get hold of or stop.

  “Metro. Why do they call me Metro?” he goes, talking to himself all out of his head now. Does he even see these guys, hear them?

  “Hey, baby,” says Lou, getting close to him.

  I stay where I am near the concrete steps.

  “Oh, baby,” says Maxie, joining in.

  “They call me the underground man,” says Metro, his words slurring. “You wanna know why? I’ll tell you why.” His eyes dart to all of us, locking us in a space he carries inside for someone to fill. Then he sees me for the first time. He stops, jaws open, eyes wide. “Is that you, Lonny?”

  I say nothing. The guys are quiet, too.

  “You wanna know why, Lonny? ’Cause I get down under. Underground. Metro. Get it?” Then he laughs a high, faggoty laugh. And I don’t know him anymore. He stops suddenly. No one else is laughing. He feels something’s wrong. He looks straight at me, then at the others now tight around him.