“I’ve been known to accept a few campaign contributions from well-meaning donors,” he says, smiling slyly.
“Man, you guys give dogs a bad name.”
“Don’t look so shocked. They’re getting their money’s worth,” Augustus insists. Then, in a television sotto voce, he adds, “For as little as pennies a day, you, too, can make a difference in the life of a Negro. That’s right. Guess who’s coming to dinner?”
“And sleeping over in Jenny’s room?” Breffni contributes.
“And keeping the spoons,” Crispen adds. “Now, of course, some brothers—” Crispen glances at Augustus “—sway a little too far over to the light side. Remember Bobbi?”
Augustus groans.
“Biggs was living with this 200-pound woman. She paid the rent. She gave him a car...”
“The Mazda?” I ask.
“The same. Bobbi’s doing. But when she caught him with all those other girls, she gave him the boot. And that’s how he ended up here.”
“It was only supposed to be for a couple of weeks,” Breffni says. “That was last year.”
“Speaking of white trash, me and Breff saw Bobbi at the Palace last week. With some short brother. Small-time player.”
“No surprise,” Augustus says. “Like they say, once you go black...”
They set off on a second round of Bobbi stories, but they’re all variations on a theme. I gather my things from the corners of the living room and cart them into my room. It smells strongly of incense and slightly of naphthalene. I open the window and study the view of a brick wall. The fire-escape ladder is a ladder to nowhere. I dump socks into drawers, hang shirts in the closet, fold sweaters into milk crates.
Simien has kindly left his mattress. I lower myself onto it gingerly. If what they said about him is true, these stains could have come from two dudes.
As I become slowly sealed in the envelope of sleep, I wonder what Melody would have thought if she heard the boys talking about their white girlfriends. I suppose I should be outraged, but instead I feel strangely left out. Cheated, because I’m not getting anything out of my relationship except suicidal affection. I wonder if Melody would have been as willing to bleed in the bathtub for a white man. I wonder how long it’ll be before she realizes she’s being short-changed. I ride horses. I don’t mind the Beach Boys. I think black people are better off here than they were in the jungle. When Melody’s with me, does she really notice the difference? I’m not the genuine article. I come with no pedigree of negritude. These things never would have crossed my mind back in the days when I wore corduroy pants that went zwee, zwee with every step.
There was no black or white in my world until that day at camp when David Wiener asked me why I looked like poo. Since then I’ve realized the world isn’t shot in colour film, where everyone’s a different hue. It’s shot in black-and-white. There are only different degrees of one or the other. We’re black, or we’re white. Or, like me, we’re shades. Insubstantial images of something real. Reduced almost to nothing. The only thing worse than living in that black-and-white world is living in a grey one, in which race doesn’t matter except to everyone else. In which nothing’s black or white, and everything’s both. The problem with living in grey is that one grows no natural defences. Growing up grey is like growing up weightless on the moon. To return to earth is to be crushed by the weight of one’s own skin.
FOUR
“Look up. Look to the side. Wow, your eyes are, like, really scratched, man,” the makeup man says. He gives me drops that make the world go around. “And you have an oil slick happening on your nose.” He wheezes out the contents of a bottle, splurts it onto a cloth, and wipes my face. Then I’m frosted with brown powder.
“I...don’t normally wear makeup.”
“Then you don’t normally work,” he says, and continues dusting with his makeup brush. Craning his head back every so often, he holds me up to the light to make sure there aren’t any patches of my true colour showing through.
“What’s this for, anyway?” Crispen, already made up, is sipping water in the corner.
“I don’t know. I wrote it down somewhere. Something for a software company, I think.” I pull out my appointment book. My go-sees, appointments, and auditions are written in red. This, my first booking, is written in black. Our Feyenoord appointment books are the same ones used by all five Feyenoord agencies across the world—books obviously not manufactured by a Canadian printer. Every page is full of obscure holidays and questionable celebrations. Samoan Independence. Jeudi Noir. All-Cherubs’ Day. And every day, the size of the moon: quarter, half, full, harvest. I can’t figure out who would find that useful other than a werewolf.
“Let’s see. All I wrote down was ‘computer shoot.’ Sorry.” I probably should have paid more attention when Shawna explained it to me. I simply went into shock when she told me I was actually booked.
The photographer, Brian Bean, claps to get our attention. Next to him are a man and a woman, both short, both, it would seem, younger than I. “This is Darryle and Jeanie from Mycrotel. They’d like to go over the concept for this spot.”
Darryle plucks out several sheaves of paper from his briefcase, sets them out in order on the large table by the window. “Hi, everyone,” he says. Everyone is me, Crispen, one female and two male models from other agencies who I’ve seen at auditions but usually ignore, a young black boy, a young white girl, the stylist, his assistant, Brian Bean, and his assistant.
“This is the storyboard. We’re going for a friendly, family fun-type thing. High-tech, but warm. Approachable. Big smiles and all that. Making learning fun.” Jeanie nods. It doesn’t look as if she ever approves of much.
“Does everybody have sunglasses? A white T-shirt?” The stylist takes over, issuing each of us bright silver jackets. “If you do, put them on. These jackets go on top of them.”
“Shawna didn’t tell me anything about bringing anything,” I whisper to Crispen. He pulls out a white T-shirt and sunglasses from his bag. “You should always carry that stuff in your modelling bag, partner. Makeup, tape, a towel, lip balm, a white T-shirt, a black T-shirt, sunglasses...and a book, if you don’t like waiting while you wait. I have an extra T-shirt in my bag, but you might not want it. It’s sort of a backup backup. I call him Old Stinky.”
The stylist spots me. “No shirt?” He turns to his assistant. “Do we have anything for him? Thank you.” He tosses me a white tank top, and I sling it on.
Soon we’re twirling and gyrating to trip-hop as multicoloured lights flash overhead. An intergalactic dance bar. I, as usual, am the family man. In tow, the young black boy—my six-year-old “son,” whose mother is obviously several shades darker than I am. I’m to take the kid in my arms and hold him up to the lights.
“It’ll all make sense in post-production, don’t worry. There’s all kinds of special effects and characters and things that the computer guys are going to cook up for the ad. But I need you to hold him up like you mean it. You’re in love. Not...like that. You know what I mean. Like a son. He just won the pennant, or whatever. Yeah, like that.”
The
