Mixed

by Angela Nissel

  She didn’t know I struggled not to do that every damn day. And I hated it. I couldn’t willingly let people define me again, especially if it meant not being black. I just hoped to draw on some of the boldness I had gained there and use it more often in my daily life. My armor was getting heavy.

  Besides, I had more important things on my to do list, and now that I’d found out I could fool people just by wearing a wig, I wanted to think of a few more things to add to that list. Maybe I could infiltrate other cultures and see what they said when they thought no black people were around.

  The idea excited me. I turned to walk to the bathroom door and noticed that my elbows were ashy. Damn, I got ashy quick. Until I found the perfect lotion, I’d have to limit myself to cultures that got ashy like black people. I lotioned my elbows up and straightened my wig. Hiding the Keri deep in my pocketbook again, I teetered on my stilettos and followed Morgan to say goodbye to my fellow strippers.

  Fat, Black, and Ugly

  Although the bitterness that some black women feel over intermarriage is well known, the imbalance rests even more heavily on Asian-American men. For every 1,000 Asian women with husbands, only 860 Asian men had wives, leaving a large number of Asian bachelors left over. In contrast, for every 1,000 black women who were married, there were 1,059 black married men.

  —“2000 Census Shows Interracial Marriage Gender Gaps Remain Large,” UPI, March 14, 2003

  Are you half black and half white? Feeling unattractive? Before you revert to plastic surgery, consider a simple change of venue. You’ll find you can go from ugly to amazing in one day, with no anesthesia or scarring!

  Take this example: A is a twenty-six-year-old mixed girl. She’s average height, with a healthy weight according to government guidelines.

  She goes to a predominantly white Center City Philadelphia bar. She’s a bit too plump and too dark for the men. She sits all night and watches thinner white girls get hit on.

  She gives up and goes to a bar down the street where the majority of patrons are black—and suddenly she’s stunning! She gets complimented on the extra meat on her ass and watches as bigger, darker women get ignored.

  Maybe being pretty isn’t enough for you? Perhaps you’d like to lose all traces of your black side? Again, before you go all Vin Diesel on us, try a quick trip out of the United States.

  Same mixed girl, same size, in Rio de Janeiro: Fat but white. Brazil has an entirely different racial classification system! “There is no one-drop rule here! No one judges you on the ethnicity of your parents,” A’s tour guide told her. “Here, it’s all about how light your skin is and how much money you have.” As A was staying in a four-star hotel with an all-white American tour group, she too enjoyed the privilege of being white for five days!

  Whatever you do, mixed girl of average weight; be very careful if you choose to move to Hollywood. When A went there, she found she was considered unattractive by men of every race. She sat in bars and watched as white and black men both flocked to women blonder and thinner than she was.

  According to the 2000 census, 4.9 percent of people in Los Angeles County consider themselves mixed-race. That’s more than twice the national average. I’d love to find out how all those mixed-race couples met; I saw only white people my first month in Los Angeles. “Where are the black people?” I finally asked the first black person I met, the guy who delivered my sofa.

  “Magic Johnson’s Friday’s,” he answered. He was right. I drove by there one night and, like magic, all the white people disappeared a few blocks north of the restaurant.

  Still, gas was too expensive and traffic too brutal to drive to Friday’s every night. How does anyone, let alone interracial couples, get together in LA? I wondered. Los Angeles is so spread out, no one walks; everyone lives in their own bubble inside their air-conditioned car. I was lonely. I called the one person I knew who had lived in Los Angeles. Davina was a black writer who gave up on Los Angeles after three years, not because she couldn’t find a job but because she couldn’t find a man. I broke down to Davina over the phone. “I hate this city. I hate the segregation, I hate the smog, and is it me or does every black man in this city look right through me?”

  Davina laughed like she’d heard the frustrated ramblings of black female LA transplants numerous times before. “Girl, back east, the black men want black women who look close to white. In LA, they done went all the way; they only date white. Trust me, they’ll make babies who look like you, but they won’t date you.”

  “What do I do for dates? For sex? For someone to put together my coffee table?” I asked her.

  “Go find an Asian man,” she said. “They’re going through the same thing as us. When’s the last time you seen an Asian woman with an Asian man?”

  I honestly couldn’t remember.

  After almost a year of celibacy and unrequited flirting with Toshi, my Japanese neighbor, I decided to divert my attention from my lack of dates by surrounding myself with female friends. I put an ad up on the clubs section of Craigslist: “African American Book Club Forming.” Eight black women responded. We talked about books for one meeting; after that, we gave up even acting like we were reading.

  “I wish I had a man. If I did, y’all would never see me again,” Leslie, a beautiful struggling actress, said.

  “Well, I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of you. This is Hollywood. If you see a brother with a sister, it’s his biological sister,” someone responded. I had recently started working for a production company. Of the six black guys there, five had white wives and one was dating an Asian girl. Whenever I’d walk on the studio lot and see a black man with a black woman, I’d smile and stare longingly. Wow, there is still hope.

  “Give it up,” Janine, a stunning woman with legs up to her neck and a sexy European accent, said, making a dismissive motion with her hand. “I’m forty, and I haven’t found one yet. If you want to stay in California, you deal with it.”

  Most of us met Janine’s lecture with teeth-sucking; we refused to give up the fight even though it was clear we weren’t winning.

  “I’m telling you, y’all should start dating white guys,” said Nikki, a thirty-year-old kindergarten teacher who was usually quiet throughout the meetings. “I’ve just started, and let me tell you—they know how to treat a woman.” She smiled coyly.

  “You must be lying,” I said. “I’ve been in clubs, and not one white man would give me the time of day.”

  “Girl, every race of people in LA bars is crazy. You’ve got to go online,” she whispered, as if telling me where buried treasure was hidden.

  White men? No way, I can’t do it. First of all, I knew they didn’t all treat their women well. I’d had too many visits to child support court as a kid to think that. Second, I’d made a promise to my mother when she was in the fifth year of trying to divorce my father that I’d never marry a white man.

  “Can you believe the judge had the nerve to ask your father if he was sure you were his children?” my mother asked me, exhausted from another day at court. “I’m telling you, love may be blind, but the justice system isn’t—especially when you’re a black woman trying to leave a white man.”

  I imagined my mother’s face and her thoughts if she saw me return home from LA with a white guy: Dear Jesus, didn’t she learn anything from what I went through?

  Still, it wasn’t like I hadn’t disobeyed my mother in the past. I decided to upload my best photo to Match.com. I’ll just try a little bit of white, I thought, as if I were on a diet and the Caucasian race were a piece of cheesecake.

  After I uploaded my photo, I checked off that I was looking for men of all races within a hundred-mile area. But that sounded pretty desperate, so I limited the distance range to fifty miles and took Latinos off my wanted list. Then I wondered if that seemed racist, so I took Native American men off, too.

  The initial plan was to ease my way into dating white men by starting with Jewish guys. They’re not really white, I reasoned. No J
ewish guys responded to my ad. I later found out that most of the mensch daters hung out at Jdate.com. God knows I wasn’t about to put a photo of my black self up over there.

  After automatically deleting all e-mails from white men, I started corresponding with Andrew. After a couple of e-mails, I had learned he was from Connecticut and that his parents were both Protestant doctors who paid his way through Northwestern so he wouldn’t be burdened with working and studying at the same time.

  Lord, how much more white can he get? I thought. Well, if you’re going to learn how to swim, might as well jump in the deep end.

  In his e-mails, Andrew never told me what he did for a living; I’d asked him three times, but he seemed always to skip right over that question. Cool, I like a bit of a challenge, but he better not be unemployed.

  I was intrigued about why Andrew had e-mailed me. What in my profile suggested to him that we’d be a match? Maybe he has a black-girl fetish? I’ll bet he has some pretty, thin blond fiancée waiting in the wings and he’s using me to fulfill his interracial fling fantasies before he weds Becky.

  When Andrew hadn’t responded to my last e-mail in three days, I convinced myself that there was a Becky and that Andrew was a horrible racist, despite all evidence to the contrary. Just before I typed a “have a happy marriage, white supremacist!” e-mail, I saw a new message from him. He finally admitted to his job. He was a movie stuntman and had been on set twelve hours a day for the past three days, hence the late reply.

  Lord knows my dating history suggests I love dangerous men, especially dangerous men with a high possibility of being brain damaged, so I e-mailed him right back and asked if his parents were pissed that they spent Northwestern tuition on a son who jumped out of moving vehicles and got shot with rubber bullets.

  The next day Andrew instant-messaged me and said his dad had been upset for years but was now over it. We ended up talking on the phone that night, and the most exciting part for me was finding out that his voice was deep and not nasal like the white anal-retentive stereotypical voice I expected.

  Andrew spoke slowly and put thoughtful pauses in his speech when I asked him questions. I love that. Nothing like a good pause instead of a drawn-out “uhhhhh.” If he was black, I’d have been thinking, Omi god, he could be the one, but instead I thought, He could still be a serial killer who hears voices telling him to kill medium-sized black girls.

  Despite my reservations, I accepted his offer to meet him for sushi on Third Street in Santa Monica the next night. I’ll start cutting carbs next week, I thought.

  Third Street Promenade is the closest thing you’ll find to Times Square in Los Angeles. The stores stay open late; there are crowds of different-colored people walking around checking out street performers and getting their caricatures drawn by Asian men. (So this is where the rest of them are. If it doesn’t work out with Andrew, I’ll come back here.)

  Because of the crowds, it’s the perfect place to meet an Internet date—you can easily happen to “get lost” if the person looks nothing like their photo. Since Andrew had revealed he was a stunt actor, I was a little concerned that he would arrive on a mobility scooter powered by a breathing tube and ask if I minded pushing him around all night.

  Thankfully, I didn’t need to hide. Andrew was waiting for me in front of the sushi spot, and he looked just like his photo. About five foot eleven, thick curly hair, green-gray eyes, and a nice olive complexion. He was darker than I am. Usually I think it’s a bit unfair when white people have a deeper complexion, but on Andrew it looked perfect.

  He greeted me with what felt like a reluctant hug. Oh, God, I thought, is he being reluctant because he thinks I’m ugly or is he feeling as weird as I am because we’ve talked but never met?

  Andrew had called ahead for reservations, so we sat down right away. Since he was also from the other side of the country, we did what most transplanted East Coasters do enthusiastically when making small talk: make an exhaustive list of things that are so much better about the East Coast, then realize we sound like whiners and wind the conversation down with “But, boy, you can’t beat the weather out here.”

  Once we finished small-talking about being blessed with the ability to go “to the beach and the mountains all in the same day,” we talked about his job.

  Andrew pulled up his sweater sleeve to show me a thick, jagged scar that ran the length of his forearm.

  “Would you believe I got that from an independent movie?” Andrew said.

  Yup, I could sleep with this man, I thought, as the waitress put the California rolls down on our table. He’s definitely tough enough not to back down from any brothers who might have a problem that I’m dating him. Being able to scare off a militant brother was a requirement for any white man I dated. I knew at least one angry black man would purposefully bump into him or call me a sellout under his breath when I walked hand in hand with Andrew. I’d heard my mother’s stories about dating my father. Then again, this is LA. You can go months without seeing black people.

  Of course, I wasn’t sure if Andrew liked me. I mean, I’m pretty confident with black men, but I couldn’t shake the idea that white men prefer leggy blondes. That’s the type of girl who is always on their magazine covers, right? Why would a fine white guy with a degree and a job want to date a black woman?

  My “I must be the representative for all black people” paranoia started to kick in as well. I couldn’t just have a one-night stand with him even if I wanted to; he might think all black women are easy. When our main dishes came, I hoped I wouldn’t forget how to use chopsticks or get a piece of rice in between my teeth. Andrew would probably go to work the next day telling everyone, “Well, that’s the last black girl I date. That’s a race of messy eaters, right there.” Even on dates, I had to be a credit to my race. Damn, it’s a heavy burden, feeling like you’re always under a microsope. Somewhat like a celebrity, I suppose. If black people can’t get reparations, we should at least get free goody bags and commercial endorsements for this burden. Shit.

  Andrew seemed to be enjoying my company and the food, so I tried to quiet my neuroticism. I made it through the sushi without incident and after he paid the bill (and left the appropriate tip— yes!), he suggested we take a walk. That he didn’t want to end the date right away was a positive sign that loosened me up a bit. Forget about his race and just act how you would act with a black guy, I told myself. If Andrew was going to like me, he was going to have to like regular ol’ black me.

  We got up and walked down the promenade past a toy store window. I pulled him inside the store. In the front was a hand puppet display. Andrew grabbed a firefighter puppet and put his hand inside it.

  “I want a puppet!” I said.

  “I only talk puppet,” Andrew replied through the firefighter. “You have to talk to me through a puppet.”

  I was feeling a bit self-conscious. I’m not one to just pick up a rag doll and talk in a cartoon-character voice on a first date, but what the hell. I promised to stop worrying about what people think. I noticed one black puppet on the rack and decided I would talk back to him with the African American doll.

  My hand snapped back when I noticed the black girl puppet had on a gold chain, gold earrings, tennis sneakers, and a T-shirt that said BASKETBALL IS MY LIFE. Hell, no, I thought. I am not talking with Stereotype Doll. I twirled the puppet rack around to find another black doll. Could I get a firefighter like Andrew? A cop, a doctor—hell, a waitress, even?

  There were two other black puppets among the white ones on the display. Both were males, both had on two gold hoop earrings, sneakers, jeans, gold chains, and logo shirts. One had on a do-rag. Why, God, why?

  Andrew still had his white firefighter puppet on his hand, with a look on his face like, Are you going to choose a doll, or am I going to stand here looking like an idiot?

  “Who made that puppet?” I asked Andrew. He looked at the tag. “Sunny Puppets,” he said, his face suggesting asking for the name of a toy manufa
cturer was a weird inquiry.

  “Well, fuck Sunny Puppets,” I said, trying as hard as possible to laugh and keep the mood light. That’s what I would have said with a black man, so I said it to Andrew. Keepin’ it real, what?

  Andrew, looking a little confused, lowered his fireman. I didn’t mean to scare him with my shift in attitude, but how could I explain to a white guy how much seeing a rack with only gold-chain-and-sneakers-wearing black puppets pissed me off? Would he understand? If he didn’t, I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Andrew might be a really nice guy, he’d just never had to deal with his people being portrayed as puppets without jobs. He never had to ask if there was a firefighter puppet in the back that looked like him. Toys that looked like him were always on display.

  Still, I didn’t want this date to go south. Freakin’ smiling gold-chain puppets. There was a white cop puppet. A white doctor puppet. A white army puppet. Why couldn’t there be at least one black military puppet for me to pick up? There are black people in the military! The top U.S. military commander was black! Where is the damn Colin Powell puppet?

  I had to get away from the puppet rack. Toy stores are supposed to be fun.

  “I have a new game,” I said, leading Andrew away from the display with his nonpuppeted hand. “It’s called Find the Black Doll Not Wearing a Gold Chain.”

  Andrew looked like he wanted to laugh but wasn’t sure if he was allowed to. I smiled to let him know it was okay.We started our game in the first aisle, with me leading the way.

  “Ooh! Black girl doll! Six o’clock!” I picked up a Barbie-type box with the word FLAVAZ emblazoned across the front. According to the box, the doll’s name was Kiyoni Brown. Kiyoni came complete with boom box and tight pants (maybe I can forgive that; Barbie dresses like a ho sometimes). But I couldn’t forgive Kiyoni’s gold chain, which meant the game was not over. We had to keep looking!

  Andrew started getting into it. He pointed to a wall of Matrix dolls. “Look! Laurence Fishburne! Morpheus doesn’t have on a gold chain!” Andrew was right, but c’mon, Laurence Fishburne couldn’t count. He’s a black man in real life and of course I’ve never seen him wear a gold chain. Though I’d bet money that if they come out with a line of Fishburne dolls, someone in marketing will try to stick a chain on at least one of them. No points for the Fishburne doll.