by Kevin Wilson
Trey declined the invite to the party at the bar and instead rode his bike home, feeling slightly more at ease, noticing that his way home was a few degrees downhill and a little easier to maneuver. He felt grateful for Wildfire Johnny, for the way he had calmed the disturbance in his life, and he looked up briefly at the sky, which was hazy with streetlights and lacked stars, but he felt an overwhelming sense of oneness with the world. Half a block from his apartment, he crashed his bike trying to hop onto the sidewalk, but it wasn’t very painful and it wasn’t worth changing the outcome by going back in time. He limped home, pushing the bike, still so very happy.
About five months later, Trey wrote a “Man Manners” column where he made a joke about affirmative action, and it blew up in a big way. A woman on Twitter named @dee_light82 tweeted:
Look at this bullshit about affirmative action that this guy wrote. Typical white privilege. People wonder why I’m so upset all the time.
It got retweeted too many times to count and his boss called Trey into his office. “The article is going viral, dude,” his boss said. “In the worst possible way.”
“I’m so sorry,” Trey said, somewhat mystified by how this had gotten so intense so quickly. “It was just a joke.”
“Well, I didn’t really get it, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else did, either.”
“It was just one line in the column,” Trey said, feeling helpless.
“I think we might have to suspend you,” his boss then said. “Just so people understand that we’re not racist.”
“I’m not racist, either,” Trey said, nearly shouting.
“Well,” his boss said, “some people think you are. And we can’t have them thinking that GC is racist, too. That would be real bad for us.”
“Could we ask Jayson to write something to say it’s all a misunderstanding?” Trey asked, desperate. Jayson was the only black guy at the Gentleman Caller, and though Trey did not know him well, had never really clicked with him, he thought maybe Jayson could vouch for him.
“I’m not going to ask Jayson to do that,” his boss said. “That seems like a bad move.”
“I guess so,” Trey said. “How long will I be suspended?”
“A week or two,” his boss said, looking at his Google Calendar. “That should be enough for people to kind of forget.”
“Do you think they’ll forget?” Trey asked hopefully.
“Well, they’ll forget where they read it. They might not forget that you wrote it.”
His boss put out a post saying that the Gentleman Caller was committed to diversity and equality and that this particular column was a gross example of how important it is to remain aware of how words can affect those around us. Trey was not mentioned by name, but the post did say that the writer of the offending column had been immediately suspended and would undergo sensitivity training.
Trey timidly walked back to his boss’s office and asked about the sensitivity training.
“That’s just for show,” the boss said. “I don’t have time to look into that and set it up. Just don’t do it again, man.”
“And I’m suspended right now?” Trey asked.
“I guess so,” his boss said, looking at his watch.
“Can I go home, then?” Trey asked, and his boss nodded. Trey walked out of the office; no one would look at him, especially not Jayson, and he got his bike and rode the long way back to his apartment, feeling the wind against his face, wanting to drive right into an oncoming car.
He spent the rest of the afternoon googling his name. He had already shut down his Twitter and Facebook accounts when it became too much to handle. The first page of the search was still populated with his articles for GC, but it didn’t take long before the newer articles about his racist column were coming up. He had such a unique name, Trey Beauregard, that nothing came up but his own information; there was no way to hide among other Trey Beauregards.
He called his mom and she assured him that he wasn’t racist. “We didn’t raise you like that,” she said.
“What can I do?” he asked her.
“Continue to be the person that I know you are, and people will come to understand that you’re good.”
He thought about writing to one of his college girlfriends, who was Hispanic, to ask her what she thought, but he hadn’t talked to her in a while, and he was afraid of what she would say.
If you now searched his name on Twitter, it was impossible to keep up with it. He took out the razor blade and opened it up. This seemed like an emergency to him. Trey felt intense anxiety about the pain that would come, but he assured himself that it was temporary. He had to trust Wildfire Johnny’s promise that this was an unlimited power, that he hadn’t used it all up already. He checked the Internet one more time and then dragged the razor across his throat so quickly that he surprised himself when the blood spurted out of him. He felt the blood rise up in his throat, could taste it on his tongue, and it dribbled out of his mouth. He fell forward onto his laptop and shuddered a few times.
When he woke up, twenty-four hours in the past, he was just about to leave the office, having finished his column, which would run the next morning. It took him a few seconds to orient himself, for the realization of what had already happened to fully hit him. He went back onto his computer, took out the offending joke, and sent the new draft to his boss to okay. He took the deepest breath he had ever taken, could feel his life solidify around him again, his identity preserved. He looked around the room at the few people still at work. They had no idea what had transpired. Again, he thought about it in terms of selfishness. Yes, he had prevented himself from being labeled as a racist, but he had also saved the magazine from embarrassment and helped preserve its integrity, whatever that might be. He had done the right thing. He did not feel racist. Trey was certain about this. He would be more careful in the future. He would be a little more aware of his actions. It shouldn’t be too hard, he assured himself.
The next day, he did some Internet searching and found some information about a writer who was going to be reading in town the following week. His name was Gordon Gibbs, a sixty-three-year-old African American writer who had built a small but dedicated following for his novels about African American life in Detroit, dealing with family and race and identity. His novels rarely sold more than a few thousand, but his newest book, a huge departure, was a fantastical, sprawling novel about a group of African Americans who discover and decide to repopulate the lost city of Atlantis. It was getting big reviews, was steadily rising on the bestseller list, and there was talk of a film option in the works.
Trey pitched the interview to his boss, who okayed it because he was intrigued by the “underwater stuff,” and Trey met with Gibbs in the back room of the local bookstore an hour before the reading.
Gibbs was six feet nine inches tall, bald, with hoop earrings. He wore an olive green corduroy suit with sneakers. He was holding an unlit cigarette and expertly flipping it around his fingers. He looked furiously bored. Trey instantly wished that he were more than sixty pages into the novel.
Trey asked him questions about his career, about the novel, and Gibbs spoke in a measured voice, with great patience. Trey asked him about why he had decided to move away from Detroit and write about this mythical landscape.
Gibbs asked Trey if he would come outside with him, and they stood and walked outside and stood on the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, where Gibbs lit his cigarette and began to smoke.
“So I’ve been writing these books, and they’re very good books, but nobody was reading them. They were complicated novels about race and about being black in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and most people don’t have time for that, or don’t want to have to think about it too much. I wasn’t making much money. So I thought I’d take the same issues that I always write about but hide them in this fantasy about Atlantis. And it worked.”
“That’s brilliant,” Trey remarked.
“Well, I don’t know how w
ell it worked,” Gibbs continued. “I think most people might miss what I’m really trying to say.”
He looked at Trey for a few seconds, took a long drag on his cigarette. “I think maybe you might miss it,” he said to Trey.
“I’ll try not to miss it,” Trey promised, and Gibbs nodded, finished with his cigarette.
“I guess all I can ask is that you try,” Gibbs replied, but he wasn’t looking at Trey any longer.
After the post went up, Jayson came over to Trey’s desk. “I had wanted to write about Gordon Gibbs,” he said flatly.
“I had no idea,” Trey admitted. “I’m sorry.”
“Have you read any of Gibbs’s books?” Jayson asked.
“Well, I’m almost done with the new one,” Trey said, smiling.
“I see,” Jayson said. He started to walk away and then turned back to Trey. “Why did you want to write about Gibbs, anyway?”
“He seems important, like people should know about him. Race is important, right?”
“It is,” Jayson said, looking at Trey like he couldn’t quite figure him out or perhaps that he had him figured out and was hoping to be proved wrong. Trey just smiled.
“Sorry again,” he told Jayson, who nodded and held up a hand in acceptance of the apology. Trey thought he should invite Jayson out for a drink that evening, but the longer the day went on, the less it seemed like a good idea.
Six months later, the media company that owned the Gentleman Caller decided to start a similar website for women, called the Hatbox. One of the ways to cross-promote the sites was to start a new column that would run on both websites called “Mr. and Mrs. Lonelyhearts,” where Trey and a new advice columnist would respond to the same question about relationships and love to highlight and try to navigate the complications between men and women. The company set up a lunch date for Trey and the new columnist, a woman named Ashley Taylor.
When he got to the restaurant, an upscale version of authentic Texas barbecue where the waiters came by often to replenish your stack of warm, damp cotton napkins and refill huge jars of jalapeño-infused iced tea, he saw Ashley waiting at a table. She was black, which he noticed right away, and he was happy that this was not surprising to him or cause for him to be nervous.
She waved to him, and he waved back and walked over to the table. “Mr. Lonelyhearts,” she said, smiling.
“That’s me,” he said.
“I like your work. It seems just barely aware of how silly it is. I liked your advice column. And I liked that Gordon Gibbs profile that you did; he’s one of my favorite writers.”
“Mine, too,” he replied; though he’d only read the most recent book, he’d meant to check out his other books. He wished now that he had read some of Ashley’s own work; why had he not done this? Jesus.
“I really love your stuff, too,” he ventured, hoping not to be questioned too deeply. “I think we’ll be a good match.”
“I hope so,” Ashley said. She had a southern drawl that sounded similar to a kind of sorority girl from big southern schools, like a girl from Texas who went to the University of Alabama. A girl who wore pink but had handled a dead deer.
She was light-skinned, had a smattering of freckles that covered her face. She had a gap between her two front teeth. Her hair was in a bob, straightened, and dyed blond at the edges. She had thick-framed glasses, but he wondered if they were prescription.
“Where are you from?” he asked her.
“Mobile, Alabama,” she said. “But I’ve been in New York since I graduated from college and went to grad school. I’m not sure about coming back, if I’m being honest.” She looked around at the restaurant. “But Nashville feels kind of like a Disney version of the South. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Probably bad.”
“It’s okay,” he said.
“So are you ready to work together?” she asked.
“I think so. I think it’ll be fun,” he answered.
“What do you know about relationships?” she asked him.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Not enough to be an expert.”
“Are you dating someone now?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Not for a while, actually.”
“I left somebody back in New York,” she admitted. “I actually moved here to get away from the fallout from that relationship. So I guess we’re just two lonely hearts, telling people how to get other people to fuck them.”
“I guess so,” he said.
“Do you think it’s better if we agree with each other, or if we have different viewpoints?” she asked him.
“I think it’s good if we’re just honest and see how it lines up,” he said.
“I’m pretty sure that we’re going to have different viewpoints,” she said, smiling. He smiled back, but his lips stuck to his teeth and it looked like he was having a stroke. He blushed.
“Your ears are bright red right now,” she said.
“I’m nervous,” he said.
“Don’t be falling in love with me, Mr. Lonelyhearts,” she said.
“I’ll try,” he said.
The column was an immediate success. It struck the right balance between irreverence at even doing an advice column in this day and age while also treating the questions with some degree of seriousness. People liked it. Ashley and Trey would simply get on GChat and go over the questions for that week, and they would publish the chat, with edits to remove the moments where they simply talked about TV shows or music, which happened more and more as they got comfortable with each other over the computer. They met up once a week at that same Texas barbecue restaurant to pick the questions for that week. Ashley drank Palomas through a paper straw, and Trey drank smoked mescal that burned the shit out of his throat.
With the questions, Trey favored loyalty while Ashley always encouraged those who wrote in to leave before it got worse. Trey wasn’t sure that true love existed and so thought it was nice to simply accept what you had in the moment in order to give tangible meaning to your life. Ashley thought everything should be predicated on good sex and good communication and that life was too short to live without these things. Trey thought most of the questions revealed weird hang-ups on the part of the writer, while Ashley thought people weren’t as fucked-up as she’d anticipated.
“So,” she asked him over GChat one night, “are you using my good advice to find a girlfriend?”
“I’m compiling it,” he responded. “I’m studying it. But no luck yet.”
“Have you ever dated a black girl?” she then wrote, and Trey felt his heart do that weird hiccup thing where you knew that your life could change if you did everything just right.
Before he could write back, she added, “I bet you haven’t.”
“No,” he wrote. Then he added, “I dated a Hispanic girl in college.” There was no response from Ashley, so he then added, “Maybe she was half Hispanic.”
“Good lord, Trey,” she finally wrote back after an agonizingly long time.
“What?” he typed.
“Good night, Mr. Lonelyhearts,” she said, and she left the chat.
He thought about slashing his throat, but what would it accomplish? He would still have the same answer for her when the moment came around again. Perhaps he could slash his throat enough times that he would be far enough in the past that he could date a black girl, then come back to this very moment and reply to Ashley that indeed he had dated a black girl before, indeed he had.
It was an interesting hiccup in Wildfire Johnny’s gift that he hadn’t considered. If he slashed his throat to go back twenty-four hours in the past, if he did it again, right away, he’d go back another twenty-four hours. As long as he could keep doing it, he could go back as far into his past as he wanted. All he’d have to do then was live his life again, which seemed like it would either be very exciting or very boring. His head hurt. He didn’t even bother reaching into his pocket for the razor. It wasn’t worth it.
The following week, he met with Ash
ley at the restaurant, and after they talked about the questions for the week, he asked her out on a date.
“You don’t think these are dates?” she asked him, smiling.
“Oh,” Trey said, confused. “I guess I haven’t thought that.”
“Maybe they’re more like pre-dates, practice dates,” Ashley said.
“So would you be interested in an actual, real date with me?” he asked her again.
She considered the question, looked at him. He wondered what she saw. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Okay.”
Trey was as happy as he’d ever been, in a life that had been mostly easy, mostly happy.
Ashley was still staring at him, which made him self-conscious. “You won’t regret it,” he said.
“We’ll see,” she said.
They went bowling at a restaurant that had its own alley, as well as an outdoor pool, a shuffleboard. Reese Witherspoon was right next to them. Ashley took a picture of her with her phone. They drank beer out of cans. They ate fried avocado. Trey nearly bowled a perfect game, only fucked it up at the last possible moment. Reese Witherspoon had cheered for him. Ashley had rubbed his shoulders for good luck before each frame. In the car on the way back to Ashley’s apartment, she told him that she didn’t realize that bowling could be sexy.
When they had sex, Trey was so nervous that he asked for her advice before he did anything. “You’re lucky,” she said, when he was going down on her, as she shifted his head to the place that she wanted him to be. “Some girls wouldn’t like a dude who didn’t know what he was doing, but it’s better this way. I get exactly what I want.”
After they had fucked, Ashley said he could either stay the night or go back home. Trey said that he wanted to stay. They couldn’t sleep, so they drank some whiskey and answered questions for the “Lonelyhearts” column. “Go for it,” they both instructed the sad people seeking love. “Fall in love. Do it.”
