by Omar Tyree
By then, everything Troy said was awarded by a roar of laughter. “You know what, Jay? I’ll play you whenever you wanna go, and then we’ll see how much you’ve learned from riding the bandwagon,” he added.
James giggled and didn’t care, as long as he was on the winning team.
Troy arrived at his dorm room, a double. He noticed that it had been filled with clothing and boxes. Suspecting that his roommate had arrived, he walked into the floor’s bathroom, to find a crowd of freshmen being lectured to by an older Black student who spoke proper English and wore blue high-water slacks:
“Any damages on the floor will be paid for by, if not the person who has perpetrated the particular crime of damaging campus property, then by the entire floor.”
Troy searched the faces of his fellow floor mates, who all appeared to be bored. Not including the speaker or himself, he counted only three brown faces: there were two massive football players and one small student wearing glasses.
The speaker acknowledged Troy’s presence. “Hello, fellow floor mate. My name is Charles Davison, and I will be your resident assistant for the year. Aah, what have you missed? Well, basically, nothing. The boys and I are just sitting in here bullshitting around and playing with ourselves,” the cone-headed resident assistant said. He paused to collect the laughter before he continued.
“No, basically, we just went over the rules, I told the guys my duties, and we introduced ourselves. So what else do you want to know?” Charles asked, receiving more laughter from the students. He looked as if he wanted to pat himself on the back.
Troy watched the football players, who were smiling.
“No, seriously. Aah … person,” Charles said, extending his hand for a shake. The students were all beside themselves with hardy laughter. “Come on now, you guys, so we can get this thing over with,” Charles told them. “Well, I. We,” he continued, smiling to himself, “would like to know your name and room number. R-i-i-ight guys,” he said, stretching his eyelids and expecting another laugh. Charles was trying hard to be a comedian.
Troy smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, well, my name is Troy, and I live in room eighteen-ten,” he told them seriously. He effectively stopped all the silliness that had been going on.
“Hey, guy, that’s my room! You must be my roommate, then!” yelled a tall, green-eyed White fellow with light brown hair. He stepped toward Troy for a handshake.
“Do you see what we have here? You two buckaroos are roommates,” Charles said. “Now isn’t that special?”
“Yeah?” Troy responded, wishing that Charles would shut up and get on with business.
The wavy-headed roommate was still excited. “I saw you running ball at the gym, Troy. You’re pretty good. By the way, my name is Simon Osenberg,” he said.
After more discussion, the ordeal was finally done with. All of the students were released to their rooms.
“So you was up at the gym, hunh, Simon?” Troy asked to start things off.
“Yeah, I was there. But the guys I was playing ball with were bums, a bunch of Italians,” Simon told him. “They couldn’t run ball for shit, I tell ya. Your team was doing all right against those big guys, though.”
“Dig, cuz. You see how big them suckas were? And we still hung in there!” They chuckled as Troy felt proud of himself.
“Maybe we can go run ball sometime, Troy,” Simon offered.
“Whenever you down, man. I’ll go.”
“Great, but Troy, I have some more stuff in my car, if you could give me a hand.”
“Aw’ight, man. Let’s go get it,” Troy responded. He left the room immediately and headed for the floor’s elevators. Simon quickly followed him.
They jumped onto the elevator, conversing while riding down eighteen floors and stopping to pick up other students. Lots of freshmen, as well as returning students, crowded the large freshman dormitory lobby. The college hype was stirring, and classes did not begin for another two days.
Entering the refreshing night air, Simon showed Troy to a dark gray, up-to-date Cadillac Coupe de Ville parked inside the student car lot.
“Damn, cuz! This is your car?” Troy exclaimed, shocked.
“Yeah, I just got it a couple months ago,” Simon said with a grin.
“Is it brand new?” Troy asked. He looked at the shiny outside coat and the clean, gray, velour-looking interior.
“Well, it’s not exactly new,” Simon hinted. “See, my father had gotten it from some guy who wanted to trade it in.”
Troy nodded. “Y’all Jewish dudes get all kinds of deals.”
Simon looked at him, surprised.“Wow! Get out of town! How did you know I was Jewish?” he shouted.
Troy searched the parking lot to see who had heard before answering. Simon had a loud mouth. “Because of the name, man,” he explained. “All names I’ve ever heard of with ‘Bergs’ and ‘Steins’ in it, I just thought were Jewish.”
“Yeah, I forgot all about that. You’re right,” Simon agreed.
They grabbed two handfuls of items to take back to the dorm. Troy quickly realized that Simon had a lot more stuff than he. He began to wonder if his roommate was rich. He thought that not only would he have a so-far-cool White roommate, but a wealthy one as well. Troy didn’t plan to be a leech, he was simply interested in experiencing how wealthy Jewish people really lived.
After they returned to the room and put the items on Simon’s side, they began to discuss their separate plans for the night.
“So, Troy, what are you going to do tonight?” Simon asked, as though he was interested in tagging along.
“I’m goin’ to that freshman party in the student game room. They’re supposed to have a reggae band over there too. Why, you wanna go?” Troy offered. He would feel guilty if he did not at least invite Simon.
“Yeah, I like reggae,” Simon said. “Then again, I still have a lot of unpacking to do, and I’m the type of person that has to do something immediately, or it won’t get done.”
Troy looked around at all the chaos created by Simon’s things inside their small, shared room. “Who you tellin’? You got shit all over the place. This place looks like a damn flea market in here,” he said. “You might be unpacking until tomorrow.”
They shared another laugh as Simon agreed. “Yeah, I know, right.”
“Aw’ight, Sime, I’m ’bout to take a shower and go to this party, then,” Troy informed him. He took off his clothing, partially, while keeping his underwear on. He rubbed plenty of thick yellowish shampoo into his hair and grabbed his slippers, soap, washcloth, and drying towel. After cleansing and grooming himself, he got dressed and returned to the freshman dormitory lobby to catch up to his friends, succeeding only in finding James Clayton.
“You going to that party?” James asked him. He spoke with the smooth voice that he had been speaking with all day. To Troy, it seemed a bit fabricated. He suspected that it might sound sexy to some women, though.
“Yeah, man, but where’s everybody else?”
James hunched his shoulders. “I’on know, homes. I thought they was with you.”
Troy, thinking about his new friend’s voice, began to grin.
“What’s so funny, homes?” James asked curiously.
“Nothin’, cuz. Nothing at all,” Troy insisted, still smiling.
“Did you meet your roommate yet?” James asked. He frowned as though he were expecting bad news.
“Yeah, he’s cool as hell, too. He got his own car, a nineteen-inch color TV, and clothing up the ass,” Troy answered.
James sucked his teeth. “Homes, I got this fat-ass White boy, man. This dude is goofy as hell. But oh, he got a computer with games and shit on it. And he got a printer hooked up to it, homes. So you know I’m gon’ be right there using it,” he said, cracking a smile.
“You got any sisters, Jay?” Troy asked, leaning up against a video game.
“Yeah. How you know?”
“Oh, I was just askin’.”
; James shrugged and looked around. “It’s a whole lot of White girls up this college, homes. I know I’m gon’ be gettin’ me some,” he said, as if he had planned it all.
Troy looked bewildered. “You had some White girls before?” he queried.
“Hell yeah, homes!” James exclaimed. “This White girl lives right next door to me at home. I used to knock her every day.”
Troy smiled in amazement. “You live right next to a White girl, hunh?” he asked. “I ’on know, man. These White girls look like virgins to me.”
They both looked around at the flirtatious damsels who seemed to be everywhere in packs of five.
“Naw, homes, some of these White girls are dying to talk to a brother,” James assured him.
Troy stood firm. He was in need of proof.
“Watch this, homes,” James said.
They gave their attention to a slender, dark-brown-haired, olive-toned girl.
“Excuse me, pretty, what’s your name?” James asked her.
The olive-toned girl glared, responding as if James had said something nasty to her. She leaned away to avoid him.
James rubbed his goatee. He seemed to treasure it, as though he had waited awhile for it to grow and was in love with it. “Oh, you ain’t got to act all scared of me,” he commented, smiling at the olive-toned girl.
Three other girls appeared from nowhere and rudely inserted themselves into the conversation. “Well, h-i-i-i. Who are you guys?” one asked. The first girl then decided it was safe to talk to James, since the cavalry had arrived. Her feathery white hand reached out toward his chest.
James was intrigued. “My name is James, but just call me Jay,” he responded.
Troy backed away to avoid being so close to them. They were already invading his buffer space. He knew his time was coming, though. He looked away in an effort to halt the aggression of the four single White females, who all of a sudden appeared to be in sexual heat.
“So what’s your friend’s name?” one asked James. They all looked toward Troy.
“Oh, that’s my boy Troy,” James answered, grinning ear to ear and continuing with his plot.
“Well, he’s cute. But is he that shy?”
Troy frowned, turning his back to them completely. He could not believe that a skinny, long-nosed White girl had called him shy.
James chuckled. “Naw, he ain’t shy. So what y’all gon’ get into tonight?” he asked, deciding not to bother Troy. James figured that the first girl he had spoken to was indeed the prettiest. He directed all of his questions to her.
“Well, I don’t really know,” she responded. “It’s like whatever comes up, I guess.”
Troy turned back around to view their facial expressions. He felt that James was attempting to go for the gold.
“So aah, why don’t you and your girl chill with me and my boy Troy, since you don’t have anything to do tonight?” James suggested to the girl who had called Troy cute.
“Well, she would like to, but I don’t think her boyfriend would go for that,” one of the remaining two interrupted.
James grew testy. “How come she ain’t say nothing about him, then? I think y’all two should mind your own business,” he said, asserting himself.
Troy started to enjoy the situation.
“Look, why don’t you two just go ahead? Your girlfriends will see you later,” James suggested. He was determined to convince them. And like clockwork, his plan succeeded; the two outcasts fled while the two prospects remained.
“So what we gon’ do?” James asked them.
“Well, we’re gonna go to the party because our friends will be waiting for us. And besides, I have to get up really early tomorrow for the reading and math tests and all. Don’t you guys have the exams?” the olive-toned girl said, all in one breath.
Troy was dazzled by her quickness of tongue.
James, however, was not impressed. He attempted to hold her by the arm and sweet-talk her. “Come on, now, you gon’ see your girlfriends every day up here. They ain’t goin’ nowhere. I mean, you ain’t gon’ be out all night. It’s only nine o’clock,” he said slowly, to let it sink in.
Breaking free of his subtle hold so as not to make him angry from rejection, the girl whined. “Well, that’s really OK. We’ll just get with you guys another time,” she suggested, backing away in the direction of the party.
Her long-nosed friend, who had expressed her liking to Troy, stayed to take a last look at him. And he ignored her.
“Damn, homes! We almost had ’em!” James shouted to Troy. “See how you talk to White girls? You gotta be rough with them dips so they know you ain’t going for no dumb shit. We ain’t get ’em tonight, but they’ll remember us. Watch.”
Troy just smiled, thinking that James had a case of jungle fever. He then strolled in the direction of the party.
“Where you going, homes?” James asked him.
“To the party. It’s probably thick as hell by now,” Troy answered.
“Yup, it probably is,” James agreed, following. They both wore logo T-shirts and shorts. They entered the party and had to point out fellow Black students through the overflow of Whites.
“It ain’t that many brothers at all at this school, just a bunch of White people,” James mentioned. “It’s a whole lot of Oreos here, too.”
They walked though the crowds, both searching for pretty women. Troy was searching specifically for Blacks. James was searching for them all.
“Ay’, Troy, I introduced myself to this one brother, and he sounded just like a White boy, homes,” James alluded. “I was like, ‘Hold up’ and shit, you know? ‘Is homes a brother, or what?’”
James continued talking while Troy observed the sights.
“You know what else, homes? I was talking to this old-head, and he told me that most of the Blacks up here are in C.M.P.”
He finally got Troy’s attention. “For real?” Troy asked him.
James’s smile turned into laughter. “Yup, homes. I guess we just ain’t smart enough to get intothis school, besides them Oreos. And they might as wellbe White, to me. So they don’t really count and shit.”
They chuckled as Troy agreed. “Yup, cuz. It was, like, thirty people in our C.M.P. advisory group today. Only two were White.”
While at the party, Troy observed, time and again, James getting turned down by White girls. Troy then spotted an entire crowd of Blacks. Finally! He approached them as James followed, practically begging to go to bed with someone’s phone number in his pocket.
All their conversations went smoothly, and before the night was over, Troy had left the party with three phone numbers to James’s four. All of Troy’s numbers were from Black students. But James got a number from a White girl to break the tie in their contest. Troy told him that the White girl’s number didn’t count. Returning to his room at three o’clock in the morning, he found Simon still awake and listening to his radio through a pair of earphones.
“Hey Troy, how was the party?” Simon asked, taking off his earphones.
“It was cool, man. I met, like, ten girls and got three numbers,” Troy answered. “But yo, my boy Jay got flagged by, like, twenty white babes.”
Simon sat up in his bed. “Did he really?”
Troy smiled. “Naw, he just got flagged by, like, seven,” he responded, chuckling. “Damn, Sime, I didn’t even think to buy some earphones.”
“Well you’re welcome to use mine when I’m not using them,” Simon offered.
“Aw’ight, then, bet,” Troy told him.
They talked all night, getting better acquainted as the new day set in for scheduling and testing.
Troy caught the elevator down to the dormitory lobby in the morning and spotted Matthew walking out from the staircase.
“Yo, Mat, what’s up, man? You’re in the same building as me?”
“Yeah, I guess so. What floor you on?” Matthew asked him.
“The eighteenth.”
“Word? You way up t
hat dip? I’m only on the third floor.”
“Yeah, cuz. But where was you at last night? I ain’t see you at the party,” Troy quizzed.
“Oh, I knocked some boots last night, troop,” Matthew said in a low tone, as if it was a secret. He was loosely dressed again, with an extra long red T-shirt that covered half his blue shorts.
Troy grinned. “You workin’ kind of fast up here, Mat. Was she good-lookin’?”
“Naw. She’s kind of big, too,” Matthew answered.
Troy laughed. “You had a fat babe?”
Matthew giggled himself. “Yeah, but yo, don’t tell nobody,” he whispered.
“Aw’ight, cuz, I gotchu. I’m just jokin’, man. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with having a fat babe every now and then. It’s probably good for you.”
After their second meeting with the C.M.P. counselor, everyone went their separate ways, except for Bruce, who followed Troy.
“Yo, Troy, where you goin’, mayn?” Bruce asked.
“To my reading test in room three-fourteen.”
“Yeah, well I gotta go to another building,” Bruce informed him. Troy continued to walk as Bruce followed. “So, Troy, what y’all do last night?”
“Me and Jay was at that party,” Troy answered nonchalantly. He was not up for a discussion. He was thinking about a girl he had met.
“Yeah, well I was talking to my girl back at home last night,” Bruce told him.
“All night?” Troy asked, finally showing some enthusiasm.
“Yeah, mayn, she got me in love in do.”
Troy frowned, turning the corner of Mason Hall, located in the middle of campus. “Yeah, well you and your girl picked a hell of a time to fall the fuck in love,” he hinted.
Bruce chuckled again as Troy smiled.
“Troy, you’s a funny-ass dude, mayn,” Bruce said as they parted ways.
“Aw’ight, Bruce,” Troy responded, still beaming about his comment. He entered room 314 and realized that he was the only Black student. He hoped that another melanin face would appear before things got started. However, the instructor wanted to set a friendly atmosphere, inquiring about the party.
