she knew I was black. My Prince CD came on the stereo and I said, “My dad loves this song.” Then I listened to two seconds of utopian keyboard funk before saying, “My dad’s black.” Feeling less suave by the instant, I put my hand to the curls on top of my head and said, “People can’t always tell.”
She smiled, kept smoothing the plastic wrap on a plate of peanut butter cookies, and said, “I could tell.”
She was covering my shift. I wondered if any of the regulars would be pleasantly surprised to see her instead of me. I texted her, How are tips?
Nap ruined, I wiggled out of the loft and sat on the bench seat behind Russell and Mason, rolling my stiff shoulders, watching Russell ash his smoke into a green plastic soda bottle. He’s an easygoing, scruffy redhead who looks like he was born in a baseball cap. We’ve drunk countless beers on the porch of the punk house where, at twenty-four, he’s the oldest of six roommates.
Mason’s a nervy, dark-haired guy with broad shoulders and sunken eyes. He always seemed to have an ulterior motive. We were technically roommates, but his girlfriend lived half a mile from us and had air-conditioning. You can guess where he tended to stay.
“One of you guys gonna ask her out?” Mason asked.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Russell got busy shaking another cigarette from the pack in the cup holder. Mason chuckled and shook his head.
“Don’t get jealous of each other,” he said. “Don’t break up the band.”
“We won’t,” I said.
“I never went out with a black girl before,” Russell blurted out.
“She’s black?” Mason asked.
“Yeah.” Russell nodded and took a drag.
I sat dreading the question I knew was coming next.
“How about you?” Mason asked me.
“Yes, I’m black.”
“Nice try, dude,” Mason said. “You ever dated a sista?”
“Man, you ever know him to date anybody?” Russell punched Mason’s shoulder and the van wavered in the lane.
If I cussed him out, I’d have to prove him wrong, and I couldn’t. It had been thirteen months, three weeks, and two days since I’d had sex. When I hit the one-year mark I told myself I was gonna give up on trying. Tell that to my body, though. That last girlfriend had been white, and she’d ended it because she was “looking toward life after college.” The girl before her was white too, but dark and Jewish, which made me feel a bit better. And before her were a couple high school relationships that lasted a month each.
Except for a mixed girl I made out with in twelfth grade, none of these girls had been black. I did plenty of looking, got shot down a couple times, and never quite clicked with any black girls in high school—not their fault, I knew I was the odd man out. I’d been relieved to have the friends I had, even if most of them were white, but lately I’d been sure I was missing something.
I glared while Mason hooted at Russell’s joke.
Then Mason said, “Like you should talk, Russell.”
I laughed. Russell jabbed his cigarette into the air between us and said, “It doesn’t work like that! He’s clowning both of us!”
“He’s just jealous because he’s watching us players from the bench,” I said.
Russell nodded.
“You players don’t seem to be scoring,” Mason said, and I leaned back in my seat, defeated. I’d heard that men date their mother’s color. My dad disproved that theory, but it still made me feel a bit better when I got down on myself for not dating black women.
Russell looked out the window and smoked. Mason took a hand off the steering wheel and cranked the radio back up. A dancey rap song with chintzy synths roared over the engine.
“Yay-uhh,” howled Russell, imitating one of the rappers.
I growled, “Get low, get low,” like the other guy on the song. The synths kicked in and Mason murmured, “Get low . . . butts . . .” reverently, like his mind was in a strip club.
We were all quiet for a few seconds, then Russell lolled his head over at me and asked, “You ever had butt sex . . . with a girl?”
Mason gave the windshield a creepy smile and cut out around an eighteen-wheeler.
“No. No, I haven’t.” I sent a nervous grin to the windshield then asked, “You?”
He set the soda bottle ashtray in the cup holder and shuddered, almost offended I’d ask something so dumb. “No—”
“I mean, I’d try it,” I said. “But the chance hasn’t come up. And I’m not pushing for it.”
“Ha,” Mason said, and humped his seat like a dog scratching its ass on the rug. “‘Pushing for it.’”
Russell leaned in, voice hushed like white people do when race comes up, “But I thought black guys fucked girls in the ass.”
Suddenly, the radio cranked up louder. We all startled as the bass made the speaker covers buzz, and the van shook as we cut it close in front of the truck. Mason reached for the volume knob and it snapped off in his hand. He tossed it on top of the dashboard and clutched the steering wheel with both hands. A gleaming black luxury sedan shot up the highway and matched our speed in the right lane.
Our van’s side door slid open as another Yay-uhhh blasted from the speakers. Wind roared in and the gray highway flew by between us and the fancy car. I gripped the back of Russell’s seat, shouting, “Damn! What?”
The other car’s back window slid open and Lucius rocketed out, drilling through the air between the vehicles. He landed next to me on the bench seat, slammed the van door, clapped his hands to his knees, and bellowed at Russell, “What did you just say, cracker?”
Russell threw his chin back in offense and whined, “Sorry.”
I tried to smooth things over by saying, “Not that I’m aware of.”
I hated to admit that, because then Russell could say, “Well, maybe if you were all black instead of half black, you’d do it.” He stayed quiet, though, and Lucius turned to me and shouted, “Well?”
I wondered if Russell had some info that I didn’t, so I asked, “Why do you think that?”
“Yeah,” added Lucius. “That’s foul.”
Mason was sitting there, listening and driving.
“Well, just,” Russell opened his hands to the road in front of him, “all the rap songs talk about booty and get low and you always hear about girls’ butts, so I figured that’s what it was all about.” He had his hands spread in front of him, jiggling the biggest invisible booty in the world.
“No, man. No,” I said. “The vagina is right there, too. You
