by Saeed Jones
* * *
NO ONE WOULD admit it, but we were nervous and underprepared. A few yards into the trees, we realized that our tennis shoes—already falling apart—were no match for the brambles and cacti hidden in the thick grass. We didn’t talk much because we were busy wincing, dodging thorns, and looking out for madman-shaped shadows. Our view of the brick apartment buildings was soon eclipsed by tree branches. The sun’s glare was replaced by pockets of shadow. We heard birds and somewhere, out of sight, the gurgle of a little creek.
Eventually, we made it within a few yards of the shack, half amazed to find that it actually existed. A hodgepodge of wooden planks, cardboard, random strips of metal, and other scraps, it looked like it wouldn’t survive the next thunderstorm. But it also looked as if it had been there longer than the three of us had been alive.
We crouched behind some mesquite trees. Cody made fake military signals indicating that we should sit still and wait the old man out. I bit my lip to keep from giggling at how serious he was. Sam took off his shoe and inspected the thorns lodged in the sole.
After what Cody decided was a sufficient amount of time, with no sight of the man, he whispered to me, “You go in.”
“Hell no.”
“Oh, you fucking punk.”
“Fuck you!”
Wide-eyed and frustrated, we cursed each other in hushed tones until we agreed to go in together. I grabbed a tree branch of my own just in case the man was as crazy as we thought. Cody looked at me like I was a wimp for doing so, then grabbed a branch too.
With our weapons raised high above our heads, ready to beat anything that moved, we crept up to the shack. If a rabbit or squirrel had darted out of the tall grass right then, we would have pummeled it out of sheer panic.
Rounding the corner of the shack, though, we found that it was empty, aside from the smell of piss, some candy wrappers, and beer cans. It looked like a hideout for kids a little older than us, not for a wild old man.
“Well, shit,” said Sam. “All that for nothing!”
“I knew it was all bullshit,” said Cody, even though it was his idea.
I had already turned around and started clambering back through the tall grass when Sam started cursing again.
“Holy fuck! Holy fuck! Holy fucking fuck!”
At first, I thought he was just holding up a pile of tattered newspapers. Taking a step closer, I made out, just under the part of the page he was holding, a topless woman. Head thrown back, rouged mouth open. Sam was holding three rain-soaked magazines.
The word “porn” hadn’t even made it out of my mouth before Cody made a run at his brother. He lunged to snatch the magazines out of Sam’s hands, but Sam threw himself to the ground, tucking the magazines under his stomach. Cody gave Sam a few good kicks. Sam wasn’t budging, though.
“Fuck you,” Sam spat while Cody looked at the tree branch in his hand like he was ready to make use of it.
“Stop,” I said before I knew what I was doing. “I saw three.”
“What?”
“Sam held up three magazines.”
Cody stooped down again to turn his brother over, but Sam still wouldn’t budge. He had some mud on his chin. “They’re mine! I found them! Fuck y’all!”
“God damn it,” exhaled Cody. He raised his branch like a hammer and cracked it over his little brother’s back. The branch broke in half, and Cody walked off like he was looking for something bigger.
“What if we shared?” I said, keeping an eye on Cody while he tested the weight of another branch. “Sam, there are three, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. What if we each got a copy and traded… or something?”
Sam put his chin back on the ground and mulled the idea over. Cody had stopped moving behind me.
“I found ’em so I get to choose which magazine I want first,” Sam finally said.
“All right.” I nodded, turning to Cody. “All right?”
“Yeah,” he said, more to the branch he was holding than to us.
Sam made Cody and me keep our distance while he paged through the magazines, deciding which one he wanted. Each of us would have a magazine for two nights, then we would trade.
“Come the fuck on already,” Cody yelled.
“Fuck you!”
“Sam…” I said, starting to enjoy my role as hostage negotiator.
“All right, I want Hustler,” he said, then threw us the other two magazines. I took High Society, which left Cody with Playboy. Each of us shoved our chosen magazines under our shirts—thinking nothing of just how gross that was—and headed back to the apartment complex. We didn’t mind the thorns anymore. Instead of cursing, we started chanting different names for porn. When we got to “smut,” we liked the way it sounded, and it replaced all other words in our chant. “Smut, smut, smut, smut,” we whispered, all the way back to our apartments.
Right where the sidewalk forked, leading to our separate buildings, I patted the magazine under my shirt and said, “Two days.”
Cody nodded. “Two days.”
“Smut,” added Sam.
* * *
IN THE DARK, alone in bed with my copy of High Society, I eased down under the sheets, but kept the light in my closet on so I could see. Mom was in her bedroom on the other side of the apartment, watching television. Every time I heard her footsteps, I would shove the magazine under my pillow and pretend to be asleep until I was sure it was safe. My heartbeat kept speeding up, then slowing down again.
I flipped through the pages carefully, afraid the magazine might fall apart in my hands. The pages were faded and grainy to the touch. The image of a ragged old man in a shack jacking off to this very magazine surfaced for a moment, then I pushed the vision away. I couldn’t shake him, though. My finger brushed against the surface of one of the magazine’s rough pages and I thought of skin, wrinkled and uncared for. Had the homeless man been there all along, watching us from the safety of the nearby trees? With his face pressed against the leaves and bark, had he stared out at the three boys stomping into the woods, ready to break already broken men just because it was summer, because boredom was made to be broken, cracked open, and robbed? Where was this man now? Had he returned to his shack to rest? Could he see the stars from where he was sleeping tonight?
Again, I tried to push the thought of him away. There probably hadn’t been a man at all. That’s what I told myself. I paged through the magazine distractedly, until I came to a spread that began with a wealthy housewife inviting her chauffeur inside for a glass of wine.
I was surprised to find that the magazine spreads were so glamorous. I thought it would just be picture after picture of naked women posing, but this magazine had plot lines. The pictures looked like stills from a soap opera in which every scene builds to the same inevitable conclusion. A wealthy white woman tanning by the swimming pool while the pool boy looks on. A wealthy white woman taking a bath with all her jewelry on while her husband shaves his beard.
The women, and their perfect makeup, and the heels they kept on at all times, became a blur. But one man stood out: the chauffeur. He had green eyes, olive skin, and a body that made me wish I knew words in a foreign language. By luck, the page on which he appeared wasn’t faded or ruined by the rain. He kept his black jacket on, but nothing else, reclining on the couch while the housewife kneeled before him. She was posed off to the side, legs impossibly splayed.
There is something about being able to study another man’s body. No sneaking glances or peeks, no pretending to be looking at something else. There is something about the unshielded gaze. Once in my middle school PE class, we were all sitting on the gym floor while the coach showed us how to make a perfect free throw shot. He kept aiming for the top right corner of the square and making the shot over and over to prove his point. Tyler, a boy near me, was sitting cross-legged in his soccer shorts. My eyes followed his bare thigh up to where his balls had slipped out of his loose boxer shorts. They were pink and smooth, n
ot quite hairless. I wanted to keep looking—I wanted to really see him—but I forced myself to turn back to Coach, still making one perfect free throw shot after another. For the rest of class, my eyes kept finding their way back to Tyler, then darting away a second later. One more good look, that’s all I wanted. And, of course, that’s not all I wanted. But it was all I wanted until I had it.
In bed with that dingy copy of High Society, I could stare at the naked chauffeur’s body full on and for as long as I wanted. Sometimes he was posed as if looking up at me, other times he’d stare into the housewife’s eyes, their bodies hooked into each other. They knew they were not alone. In one shot, the housewife had a smirk that reminded me, briefly, of a smiling man I’d seen before. “Caught me again,” I imagined her saying, just before going back down.
* * *
WITH THE MAGAZINE tucked into the front of my shorts, I met Cody and Sam back on the sidewalk between our apartment buildings. After they walked up, I reached to pull out my magazine but Cody held up his hand to stop me.
“Not here. Let’s go to our place.” He saw the question on my face and added, “Safer.”
I don’t know what I thought their apartment would look like, but all the doilies, pink lampshades, and porcelain animals threw me off. I guess I thought the apartment would look like Cody and Sam themselves, the décor equivalent of sweat-stained soccer jerseys, faded jeans, and Vans. When I reached to pick up a white porcelain elephant, Cody looked at me like he was going to punch me so I left it alone and followed him into his bedroom.
Sam plopped down on the bunk bed and took his magazine out from under his shirt. “Which one do you want?” he asked, flipping through his copy of Hustler one last time. I caught a glimpse of a topless woman arching her back. No pearls and champagne glasses.
“I want the Playboy,” I said, looking over at Cody. He shrugged and handed it to me. I paged through the magazine and pretended not to be disappointed by the fact that it had so many articles and no naked men at all. Cody pretended not to watch me.
“A lot of words,” Cody offered while handing my copy of High Society over to his brother in exchange for Hustler. “But a few pretty good chicks. I’ll say that.”
We all fell silent for a moment, flipping through the pages of our magazines. Since Cody was standing in front of me, my eyes didn’t have to stray too far from the pages of my Playboy to see the bulge in the front of his shorts, slightly larger than a few moments before. I wanted the answer to the question uncurling there. When I looked back up, Cody was staring at me.
“Ready to go?” he asked, his eyes intense and unreadable, locked on mine.
I shoved the magazine under my shirt and made my way to the front door without another word. Cody’s eyes burned holes into my back until I was all the way in the living room. Neither brother bothered to walk me out. I knew the way. Their apartment was laid out just like mine.
* * *
WHEN IT WAS time for the next switch, I met them at their front door. Cody opened it but stopped me before I could step inside.
“Out there,” he said. Sam smirked.
Backing up, I pretended not to know or care why he didn’t want me inside their home. We walked around to the side of the building, over to where the air-conditioning units were concealed by tall bushes.
“Ready,” Cody said, reaching for the magazine under his shirt. Sam nodded, his smirk still etched into his pink face.
“I want the Hustler,” I said, trying to steer the moment back on track.
“All right.” He paused, looking at Sam, then me. “Go!”
Cody snatched the Playboy from my hands and they bolted, their white T-shirts sudden blurs racing away. I was already sprinting after them before I realized it. With all three magazines, the brothers were making a run for their apartment. At first, I gave chase because I thought they were just messing around, sure to stop any second. But then I realized they were playing for keeps. “Fuckers!” I screamed.
Spotting a plastic baseball bat in the grass, I picked it up without stopping. Just as Cody made it into the doorway of his apartment, with Sam just a few steps behind him, I brought up my arm and swung the bat as hard as I could. The bat struck Sam just above his right ear, but he slid into the apartment and slammed the door shut.
Alone outside now, I swung hard at the locked door. I was soaked in sweat. Laughter trickled out from behind the door. I started swinging the bat wildly, like it was an ax and the door was tinder. Then, just when I was about to exhaust myself, Cody knocked against his side of the door and yelled, “You faggot!”
I slammed the bat against the door and it cracked open, into two useless black halves. I beat the door with my bare hands until my fists stung and went numb. I kept at it even when I heard the brothers laugh once more and walk away from their side of the door. At last, I slid down to the ground. I don’t know how long I sat on their doormat, knees against my chest.
You were never going to be one of them, said the lightning in my shoulder. Stupid, stupid, stupid, answered the thunder in my fists. I felt like I’d been split open. And my head rang with Cody’s voice.
You faggot!
It was almost a relief: someone had finally said it.
3JUNE 7, 1998
JASPER, TEXAS
After a long day of work, James Byrd Jr., a black man, accepted a ride home from three white men. Three white supremacists, he realized a moment too late. They beat him, chained him to the back of their truck, and dragged him for more than a mile down a desolate country road. Jasper, where Byrd lived and died, is just a four-hour drive from the living room where my mother and I sat that evening.
Separated by a heavy silence, we watched the local news reporter’s mouth twist and morph to find the right shape for the word “dismembered.” I don’t remember if we turned to each other then, after Mom picked up the remote and hit the power button. I wish I could. I hope we did. I’d like to think that together we were able to name the fear that burrowed into the both of us that humid evening.
I was the kind of boy who collected rocks. A red book of Greek mythology “for children” was always just an arm’s reach from my bed, next to a notebook of, well, not poems exactly, just stray phrases I’d jot down when I was tired of repeating them to myself. When I went to bed that night, instead of going to my notebook, I dug through my rock collection until I found my piece of jasper. The polished stone was smooth to the touch and rust red. I saw the image of three boys with three branches in their hands, stomping into the woods. For a moment, I was less than innocent—not terrified, but the possibility of terror itself. For a moment, I was the wolf outside the door. But then I was a black boy in America again, curled fetal in his twin bed, a bloody stone in hand, ears ringing with the rattle of chains. Silent, troubled, and helplessly myself.
Just as some cultures have a hundred words for “snow,” there should be a hundred words in our language for all the ways a black boy can lie awake at night.
4SUMMER 1999
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
Mom, a single parent working two jobs, would send me to Memphis to stay with my grandmother for the second half of summer each year. Growing boys devour electricity, fully stocked refrigerators, pantries, and patience, and Mom couldn’t afford the cost when I was out of school.
During these summer visits, my grandmother took me to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday. She introduced me to people as “Saeed, my grandbaby visiting from Texas.” Her friends would lean down with one hand holding up their extravagant church hats and slip me a strawberry hard candy. These ladies would say, “Boy, I knew you before you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye” or sometimes just “Boy, I knew you when.” I loved hearing that sentence the most.
But the summer I was thirteen, something shifted. My grandmother started going to a new church, one with a fervent evangelical streak. She stopped introducing me as her grandbaby and started saying: “This is my grandson, Saeed. His mother is Buddhist.” The first time I
heard it, I assumed she was just in a mood, that maybe the heat had taken some of the usual warmth out of her voice. Then I heard it again and again—that same flat, dry tone as if she didn’t know or care that such a sentence would electrify the air in any Southern church’s sanctuary.
Mom had been practicing Buddhism since her early twenties, well before I was a when, so it’s difficult to explain why everything changed that summer. Until then, I hadn’t thought of their difference in religion as a source of real tension in our family. Mom was Buddhist; my grandmother and uncle were Christians. In Texas, I went to Buddhist meetings with Mom; in Memphis I went to church with my grandmother. The first few times I heard “His mother is Buddhist,” I looked at my grandmother out of the corner of my eye, trying to read her. I saw nothing; she was a cipher. I, on the other hand, was all capital letters. Maybe that’s how I would’ve been anyway that summer. Crossed arms, eyes just waiting for another reason to roll, a hand always finding its way to my hip.
Sitting in her living room one evening, my grandmother looked across the room at me and picked up a conversation I didn’t realize had been going on.
“Worldly. That’s how you’re acting now,” she announced. Then she went back to reading her Pat Robertson book. The word had sat on her tongue like a drop of acid. “Worldly.”
An evangelist preacher was visiting my grandmother’s church that summer and gave regular sermons for most of his stay in Memphis. All he ever seemed to talk about was how we—we?—had to save as many people as possible from the fires of hell. The blood of all the loved ones we failed to save would be on our hands come Judgment Day.
Instead of going to church only Sundays as before, my grandmother and I now went three or four days a week. At first, we would stop at my uncle’s house on the way to church to pick up my cousins, who also attended the same church. Uncle Albert was a man of God. Sometimes I would watch him talking to his wife and kids and, I swear, I could see him connecting his choices to the exact Bible verses that were guiding him. I admired that sense of purpose—but it also looked, well, a bit exhausting. Even though I liked him, I mostly steered clear of Albert, already knowing that I’d find a way not to live up to all those Bible verses.
