the rulers of the earth were, was clear. My mind was split by oppositions, by mutually exclusive categories. Manichaeism, as Frantz Fanon would say. To succeed in the man’s world you must become like the man and the man sure didn’t claim no bunch of nigger relatives in Pittsburgh.
Who, me? You must be kidding. You must be thinking of those other guys. They’re the ones listen to the Midnighters, the Miracles, the Turbans, Louis Berry, the Spaniels, the Flamingos. My radio stays set on WFLN. They play that nigger stuff way down the dial, at the end, on WDAS, down where WAMO is at home.
Some of that mess so dumb, so unbelievable I can laugh now. Like when I was driving you up to Maine to work as a waiter in summer camp. Just you and me and Judy in the car for the long haul from Pittsburgh to Takajo on Long Lake. Nervous the whole time because you kept finding black music on the radio. Not only did you find it. You played it loud and sang along. Do wah diddy and ow bop she bop, having a good ole nigger ball like you’d seen me having with my cut buddies when we were the Commodores chirping tunes on the corner and in Mom’s living room. The music we’d both grown up hearing and loving and learning to sing, but you were doing it in my new 1966 Dodge Dart, on the way to Martha’s Vineyard and Maine with my new white wife in the backseat. Didn’t you know we’d left Pittsburgh, didn’t you understand that classical music volume moderate was preferred in these circumstances? Papa’s got a brand-new bag. And you were gon act a nigger and let the cat out.
Of course I was steady enjoying the music, too. James Brown. Baby Ray and the Raylettes. The Drifters. Missed it on the barren stretches of turnpike between cities. Having it both ways. Listening my ass off and patting my foot but in between times wondering how Judy was reacting, thinking about how I’d complain later about your monolithic fondness for rhythm and blues, your habit of turning the volume up full blast. In case she was annoyed, confused, or doubting me in any way, I’d reassure her by disassociating myself from your tastes, your style. Yeah, when I was a kid. Yes. Once upon a time I was like that but now. . .
Laughing now to keep from crying when I think back to those days.
My first year at college when I was living in the dorms a white boy asked me if I liked the blues. Since I figured I was the blues I answered, Yeah, sure. We were in Darryl Dawson’s room. Darryl and I comprised approximately one-third of the total number of black males in our class. About ten of the seventeen hundred men and women who entered the University of Pennsylvania as freshmen in 1959 were black. After a period of wariness and fencing, mutual embarrassment and resisting the inevitable, I’d buddied up with Darryl, even though he’d attended Putney Prep School in Vermont and spoke with an accent I considered phony. Since the fat white boy in work shirt, motorcycle boots, and dirty jeans was in Darryl’s room, I figured maybe the guy was alright in spite of the fact he asked dumb questions. I’d gotten used to answering or ignoring plenty of those in two months on campus. “Yeah, sure,” should have closed the topic but the white boy wasn’t finished. He said he had a big collection of blues records and that I ought to come by his room sometime with Darryl and dig, man.
Who do you like? Got everybody, man. Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy. Lightning and Lemon and Sonny Boy. You dig Broonzy? Just copped a new side of his.
None of the names meant a thing to me. Maybe I’d heard Leadbelly at a party at a white girl’s house in Shadyside but the other names were a mystery. What was this sloppy-looking white boy talking about? His blond hair, long and greasy, was combed back James Dean style. Skin pale and puffy like a Gerber baby. He wore a smartass, whole-lot-hipper-than-you expression on his face. His mouth is what did it. Pudgy, soft lips with just a hint of blond fuzz above them, pursed into a permanent sneer.
He stared at me, waiting for an answer. At home we didn’t get in other people’s faces like that. You talked toward a space and the other person had a choice of entering or not entering, but this guy’s blue eyes bored directly into mine. Waiting, challenging, prepared to send a message to that sneering mouth. I wanted no part of him, his records, or his questions.
Blues. Well, that’s all I listen to. I like different songs at different times. Midnighters. Drifters got one I like out now.
Not that R-and-B crap on the radio, man. Like the real blues. Down home country blues. The old guys picking and singing.
Ray Charles. I like Ray Charles.
Hey, that ain’t blues. Tell him, Darryl.
Darryl don’t need to tell me anything. Been listening to blues all my life. Ray Charles is great. He’s the best there is. How you gon tell me what’s good and not good? It’s my music. I’ve been hearing it all my life.
You’re still talking about rock ’n’ roll. Rhythm and blues. Most of it’s junk. Here today and gone tomorrow crap. I’m talking about authentic blues. Big Bill Broonzy. The Classics.
When he talked, he twisted his mouth so the words slithered out of one corner of his face, like garbage dumped off one end of a cafeteria tray. He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket. Lit it without disturbing the sneer.
Bet you’ve never even heard Bill Broonzy.
Don’t need to hear no Broonzy or Toonsy or whoever the fuck he is. I don’t give a shit about him nor any of them other old-timey dudes you’re talking about, man. I know what I like and you can call it rhythm and blues or rock ’n’ roll, it’s still the best music. It’s what I like and don’t need nobody telling me what’s good.
What are you getting mad about, man? How can you put down something you know nothing about? Bill Broonzy is the greatest twelve-string guitar player who ever lived. Everybody knows that. You’ve never heard a note he’s played but you’re setting yourself up as an expert. This is silly. You obviously can’t back up what you’re saying. You have a lot to learn about music, my friend.
He’s wagging his big head and looking over at Darryl like Darryl’s supposed to back his action. You can imagine what’s going through my mind. How many times I’ve already gone upside his fat jaw. Biff. Bam. My fists were burning. I could see blood running out both his nostrils. The sneer split at the seams, smeared all over his chin. Here’s this white boy in this white world bad-mouthing me to one of the few black faces I get to see, messing with the little bit of understanding I’m beginning to have with Darryl. And worse, trespassing on the private turf of my music, the black sounds from home I carry round in my head as a saving grace against the pressures of the university.
Talk about uptight. I don’t believe that pompous ass could have known, because even I didn’t know at that moment, how much he was hurting me. What hurt most was the truth of what he was saying. His whiteness, his arrogance made me mad, but it was truth putting the real hurt on me.
I didn’t hit him. I should have but never did. A nice forget-me-knot upside his jaw. I should have but didn’t. Not that time. Not him. Smashing his mouth would have been too easy, so I hated him instead. Let anger and shame and humiliation fill me to overflowing so the hate is still there, today, over twenty years later. The dormitory room had pale green walls, a bare wooden floor, contained the skimpy desk and sagging cot allotted to each cubicle in the hall. Darryl’s things scattered everywhere. A self-portrait he’d painted stared down from one dirt-speckled wall. The skin of the face in the portrait was wildly molded, violent bruises of color surrounding haunted jade eyes. Darryl’s eyes were green like my brother David’s, but I hadn’t noticed their color until I dropped by his room one afternoon between classes and Darryl wasn’t there and I didn’t have anything better to do than sit and wait and study the eyes in his painting. Darryl’s room had been a sanctuary but when the white boy started preaching there was no place to hide. Even before he spoke the room had begun to shrink. He sprawled, lounged, an exaggerated casualness announcing how comfortable he felt, how
