by Barry Wolfe
Miles’ question grabs me by the short hairs. I’m so troubled and preoccupied by it that I walk a mile down New Hampshire Avenue before I stop at a traffic light to thumb a ride home. I have really never thought about my whiteness and what it means to be white. Of course I know that there are non-white people in the world, but my horizons are so limited that I have had contact with very few people who are not white. Until integration came to Coolidge High School, the most exotic people I had encountered were the large number of Greek kids that I had met in the nearby neighborhoods and on the close by playgrounds. Native Americans, Asians, even Hispanics barely register a blip on the screen of my life experience. I obtained most of my ideas about members of these groups from TV and the movies. This was also true of my experience with Negroes. But now I’m adding some real life experience with Negroes to the myths and stereotypes I had absorbed from the media. And I am slowly becoming aware that I have implicitly thought of whiteness as natural and everybody else as the Other. This awareness was achieved through electric shocks to my assumptions. In one of my classes a rather dark young woman responded to a professor’s question by vociferously complaining about the “white standard of beauty” and how Negroes’ allegiance to it makes it next to impossible to appreciate the beautiful features of black people. I was so perplexed. White standard of beauty? Is there more than one standard of beauty? I fall into a reverie about the women I consider beautiful. Images of Elizabeth Taylor, Jean Simmons, and Marilyn Monroe flood my mind. Doesn’t everyone agree? It has never occurred to me that I possess a white standard of beauty. When I discovered Lena Horne, I thought she too was beautiful. But she is light-skinned and possesses thin lips and a delicately thin nose. My reverie continues with images of the many fine-looking, light-skinned women I saw at the Howard student union and all of them approached the white ideal of feminine beauty. But then I think of Desirie, Dark Desirie, who is clearly darker than all of the light-skinned girls at the Union. Dark she may be, but she possesses a slender nose and luscious, kissable lips.
When I reach my apartment, I’m happy to find I’m alone. My parents and my brother are all working and I have my bedroom—a bedroom I share with my brother—all to myself. I pull out my stack of 45s and put on “Desirie”, a beautiful doo-wop ballad recorded by the Charts in 1957. The lead singer Joe Grier’s falsetto intro sends me into an altered state of consciousness. After spending about a half hour in this altered Doo-Wopadized state of mind, I decide to call Desirie. I need to talk to her. She lives in Crandall Hall, which is a freshman women’s dorm in the Harriet Tubman Quadrangle (better known as the “quad”). The quad is located on Fourth Street between Howard Place and College Street and actually houses five dormitories: Baldwin, Crandall, Frazier, Truth, and Wheatley, which are connected by a series of tunnels. Over 500 women live in these dorms. When Desirie finally comes to the phone, I’m so nervous that I utter a barely audible hello. I can hear female voices in the background presumably waiting in line to use the phone.
“Who is this?” Desirie asks with perceptible annoyance in her voice.
“It’s Izzy, Desirie, how are you?” I say in a more confident voice.
“What is it Izzy? What do you want?” She sounds even more annoyed. I hear in the background a voice saying “Izzy? Isn’t he that white cat I saw on campus.” (Laughter). “Is he Izzy or is he isn’t?” Another voice says. (More laughter). The girls in line begin to clap and chant, “Is he Izzy or is he isn’t.”
Desirie, evidently embarrassed and angry says, “Izzy, this is not a good time. I will talk with you in class.” And she hangs up. This is such a departure from the tone of voice I have been hearing from Desirie that I shatter inside like crystal. The pain is so intense I need to medicate it. My drug of choice is Doo-Wop music. I rummage through all of my 45s and finally find the one I am looking for, "Devil or Angel" by the Clovers. I long so for an altered state of consciousness. After about three plays of this song, the hurt begins to ease. But it is soon followed by anger, a soul-searing inner cry of injustice. Why treat me this way? I’ve done nothing to deserve such a curt dismissive reaction to my phone call. In my reverie of rage, Desirie’s sweet smile transmogrifies into a malicious cackle that seems to say, “Take that white boy.” Then I see her with Carter, see them making love and I’m there watching. I get so angry I storm out of the bedroom and I hear her say—just as I heard Sophia say to me last New Year’s Eve—“Aw Izzy, don’t go. We’re supposed to see the New Year in together. I want to be with my boyfriend and my best friend.” I scream in protest. Desirie then turns into Sophia, only Sophia is now a Negro. And I am standing over her like an Old Testament prophet berating her for her immoral behavior. “God punishes fornicators,” I hear my prophet self bellow. Now I start to laugh because I want nothing more than to fornicate with Desirie. It is now me with Desirie in bed and I don’t know what to do. Desirie looks at my “equipment” and says, “Is that all there is, Izzy? I mean Carter’s is so much bigger…” Imagining her saying this to me feels like she has pushed me into an icy river of penis-paralyzing, soul-shriveling shame. And I get angry all over again.
The weekend arrives and brings an icy December day. I have made plans to go with the Three Miscreants to Ledo’s for pizza. Ledo’s is situated on University Boulevard in Adelphi, Maryland, not far from the campus of the University of Maryland. Ledo’s has the best pizza in town as far as we all are concerned. Unlike most pizza palaces, Ledo’s serves their pizza in squares and rectangles rather than circular pies. The pizza is always served steaming hot, and the flavor of the cheese and the tomato sauce is exquisitely unique. James is our chauffeur and as usual, he treats University Boulevard like a racetrack. Why he never gets a ticket for speeding is beyond my comprehension.
As we enter the restaurant, our senses are assaulted by the din of the crowd and soothed by the wonderful pizza aromas that permeate the entire restaurant. After a short wait, we are seated and virtually no time has elapsed before an attractive but taciturn waitress comes over to take our order. She takes our order after uttering only a single word-- “Yeah?” Given the large number of patrons that are always present at Ledo’s, I’m amazed at how quickly our pizza is served. We have the habit of diving into our food and then beginning a conversation rather than the other way around. This requires the utmost in attentiveness if we’re going to understand each other amidst the crowd noise and our own stuffed mouths through which we attempt to speak. We resemble four Demosthenes speaking with pizza rather than pebbles in our mouths. Peter begins the muffled colloquy. “So Izzy (Which sounded more like, “Tho wiffy”), “How’s Howard? Have you become black yet?” Peter says, with an open-mouth grin that revealed fragments of unmasticated pizza. “Come on, Peter,” I complain, “I’ve only been there a few months so I’m not even high yella yet.” Bobby chimes in, “What’s it like to be in such a minority? I mean you were a big fish in high school and now you’re a little white fish in college. “ Everyone laughs.
“Yeah, and a little white fish is good with a bagel and some lox and cream cheese.” When I feel attacked, I often get silly. James gives me his “You’re weird,” stare. Bobby L ignores my attempt at humor and continues his interrogation. “Have you met any black women yet?” He asks with a salacious smile on his face. I hesitate, I blush, I stutter and before I can more fully answer, Bobby starts laughing his high-pitched, hyena laugh and triumphantly bellows, “You have, you have, you have!” All three of my friends now stare at me with great attentiveness waiting for my confession. After too long a pause for their comfort, Peter coaxes, “Come on, Izzy, spill. Give us the details man. Like, what’s her name?” With great dignity, I announce, “Her name is Desirie Jackson.” The Three Miscreants look at one another and say in sequence, “Desirie?” “Desirie?” Desirie?” Peter waving his hands like a bandleader directs, “Hit it boys!” The three of them commence to caterwaul the worst version of “Desirie” my ears have ever been subjected to.
The three of them
collapse in a heap of giggles. I can’t help but laugh at their ghastly rendition of this beautiful song.
“What’s she like?” Peter asks with genuine curiosity.
“She’s beautiful,” I rhapsodize, “And she’s really smart. I never know what she’s gonna say or do next.” Then Peter asks me the inevitable question, “What does she look like? I mean, er how dark is she?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, Peter, what does it matter?” I disgustedly reply.
“It matters, “he answers, defensively. “Look, Izzy, I know you have your head up your ass about race, but it really does matter. What do you think people are gonna say when they see you walking down the street with a Black girl? And Black people will be just as surprised and maybe as appalled as white people.” Peter continues his hectoring. “I think you’re out of your mind doing this. But then I thought that about your going to Howard.” James put his hands behind his head and leans back in his chair, gives me an earnest look and lapses into “Roll Over Beethoven”. We look at James who has a big grin on his face and laugh at his rhythm and blues parable. Excited by James’ cryptic support, I suggest with a smile in my voice, “Now James here has the right idea, Peter. You have some screwed up ideas about race. Why can’t whites and blacks be together and, if it happens, love one another?” Peter in an exasperated voice answers, “Izzy, that may be the way the world should be, but it’s not the way it is. You have to deal with the world as it is.”
“But it’s stupid!
“Yes, but it is real.”
I can feel myself getting angry and more animated. “So then we need to change the real world!” Bobby jumps in. “Calm down, Izzy. You are not that powerful. You can’t save the world.” My God, I thought I was listening to my father. His variation on this depressing theme is “You can’t carry the world on your shoulders. Nobody gives a shit about you, anyway, except your family. So why should you care what happens to a bunch of Schwartzehs?” As I replay this chronic argument with my father in my mind, I find myself saying to him, “How about because I’ve fallen in love with one.”
As I watched my three white friends stuffing their mouths with pizza, I’m suddenly struck by how different a world I live in with my white friends than I do with my acquaintances at Howard University. I look around Ledo’s and see no black faces. At Howard, there are a few white faces, but these are literally few and far between. My borrowed rides from home to school and back seem like interplanetary excursions between the worlds of black and white, worlds that are separated by a distance measured in psychological light years. I wonder how or whether this expanse can ever be bridged? Even my frequent rides with Miles Taylor serve less as a bridge and more like a running commentary on the reasons why the bridge hasn’t been built. Ironically people from both worlds ask me the same questions. Why are you going to Howard? What are black/white people really like? Are you sleeping with any black women? Why are you messing with long-established taboos? The rides between the two worlds are not the long, lonely excursions that I imagined trips in outer space to be. The agonizing loneliness comes after I land. At Howard, the question is how do I adjust? How do I fit in? But when I return to my pale suburban world, the question is how do I continue to fit in. I have been at Howard only a few months and already I feel myself changing and beginning to leave the orbits of each of my uncomprehending friends.
It is now January 1960, a new decade. I am filled with hope that the putrefying hand of old ideas will loosen its grip on the human mind. I spend the bulk of the Christmas break goofing off, going to dance parties, and wasting time with Peter, Bobby and James. On occasion, I ponder what I have thus far learned about the state of race relations and do not like what I have learned. The gulf between blacks and whites seems even greater than that between Jews and gentiles. And the reasons for these divisions strike me as idiotic. It seems that whites never got over being slave-owners and therefore are unable to accept any black person as an equal. Many blacks carry the stigma of slavery through many generations and find it difficult to think of themselves as equal to whites. I know that is not the whole story and I know it’s beginning to change. What I don’t know is how to change myself and rid myself of the remnants of white supremacy. My hope is that with more education and more exposure, I will begin to feel cleansed. I no longer want to be a prisoner of my own putrid ideas.
I don’t see Desirie again until our natural science class resumes. She is cordial but cool and seems to want to keep her distance from me. This only enhances my hurt and anger. Instead of driving me away, however, I begin to pester her. I ask her to have coffee with me, and she refuses. She won’t take my phone calls. Every rejection brings a new and more desperate entreaty. The more she rejects me, the more in love with her I feel. Desirie is now every girl who has ever rejected me. In my agony, I fall again into reverie and remember the exquisitely humiliating experience of my first date. When I was in the 11th grade, I sat behind the cutest redhead I had ever seen. Sally Oster was always smiling, always had a twinkle in her eye. She smiled at everyone so there was nothing special in being smiled at by Sally Oster. But when she smiled at me, I became convinced I was her special love. It took me six months to work up enough nerve to ask her out. When she said yes, I thought I had found heaven on earth. Although I had just turned 16, I had no car and had to double date with James. He was dating Shirley Kaplan who was enamored of James’ unique forms of communication—stares and rock n’ roll lyrics. We went to the MacArthur Theater to see The Green Man with Alastair Sim, a hilarious British comedy that advertised itself as a mystery. I was surprised that all four of us liked the movie, because only Sally and I possessed intellectual pretentions. After the movie, Sally and I bored the other couple with our hymns of praise to the profundity of British comedies. To rouse himself from his boredom, James drove faster than usual. In no time at all, we had made our way from downtown DC to suburban Maryland to feed ourselves at our favorite fast-food drive-in, Tops Sirloiner. There everyone ordered the eponymous hamburger with the magic sauce and a milkshake. Afterwards, we dropped Sally home first, and I walked her to the door. Gentleman that I was, I nervously asked her if I could kiss her goodnight. She replied, “I better not. I might burp from my milkshake.” I was so astonished by her answer that I stood there wordlessly staring at her with a moronic grin on my face. She slowly closed the door and I fled down her steps in tears. In their laconic fashion, James and Shirley tried to console me. This time, however, James was unable to come up with any appropriately consoling lyrics from Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley.
When it becomes clear that Desirie will not take my calls, I finally show up in person at Crandall Hall. As I enter the dorm, there is a group of about five Negro women standing in the lobby. My entrance draws their attention and in unison they look at me, as if to say, “Umph, umph umph and what brings your white self around here?” “Is Desirie Jackson available?” I ask. One of the women answers, seemingly for the group, “ Available for who?” She queries with a sardonic smile on her face and moving her head from side to side. “Izzy White?” I answer. They hear the question in my voice. “I don’t know,” jokes the spokeswoman. “Is he white? You sure look white to me. If you don’t know, who does?” All five of my tormentors begin cackling with their hands over their mouths and their bodies bending toward one another in a circle. Finally, one of the women finds an ember of kindness in her soul, smiles sweetly at me and says, “Let me get her for you, Izzy.” I wait for 10 to 15 minutes before Desirie appears in her maroon coat.
“What do you want, Izzy?” She clearly wants to get away from me as fast as she can.
“Can we talk, Desirie?” I ask in a hurry-up voice.
“We have nothing to talk about,” she answers.
“What is going on with you? We had talked about seeing one another.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Izzy.” She hurries out of the dorm and I struggled to keep up. “Why not?”
“It just isn’t, Izzy. Now leave
me alone.” I can hear that she is crying.
I stand there mute, uncomprehending, and flooded with questions. What have I done? Is it me? My color? What? I remember what I had said to her when we first met—that I was an equal opportunity blunderer, and that I turn off women of all races, religions, and nationalities. What I originally meant as a joke now feels like a devastating truth. Once again I have tasted the bitter fruit of my heart’s desire. I watch her walk away across the Valley and up the stairs toward Founders Library. For only the second time since I arrived, I entertain the unacceptable idea that enrolling in Howard University has been a terrible mistake.
Chapter
9.
NAG (Nag nag, naggety nag)
I spend the winter in despair. My heart is as frozen as the mounds of plowed snow that remain for weeks after a sudden January blizzard. My morning routine is to weep upon awakening, have breakfast and weep again. I cry behind closed doors because I don’t want my parents to see that another girl has broken my heart. I look in my mirror and see an even paler white skin than usual. I’m beginning to hate my white skin because I believe it’s the sole reason that Desirie wants nothing to do with me
It’s difficult being in the same class with Desirie As before, she sits behind me. I do not look at her or speak to her; and despite our close proximity for much of our time in class during the winter/spring semester, I try everything I know to wall off my feelings. I even imagine that she is not there. Occasionally, I sneak a peek at her as she leaves the class. This is a mistake because each time I do, my heart and tear ducts spring a link. By the end of February my feelings are entirely frozen over and not just for her. Little in life is capable of arousing any feelings in me. I inadvertently see her one more time before the end of the school year. I’m looking out the window of my Douglass Hall classroom during English class. Spring has just been reborn. The trees are sprouting their resplendent green leaves. The warming noonday sun is high in a clear blue sky. Noontime on Friday means that all the fraternities and sororities are gathered at their special spots, singing their special songs, moving to the beat of their own unique choreography. Right out front of my window, not two yards away, are the Deltas. Across the yard are the dark and brainy women of Zeta Phi Beta. Down a ways from the Deltas, but on the same side of the Yard, are the Kappas and close by their sister sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha or AKA. Omega Psi Phi, the “Ques”, have circled the sundial in the middle of the yard. Each fraternity and sorority has adapted its songs of praise and fealty to the current rock n’ roll hits of the day. I am thankful that such a joyous cacophony just outside my window manages to create a brief release from my despair. The Deltas, whom I can most clearly hear, are singing the virtues of being a member of Delta Sigma Theta to the tune of “Step By Step”, a new hit by Johnny Maestro and the Crests. As I watch the Delta sorors swinging and swaying, I see the smile that stands out among all the smiles, the face that shines above all faces. I can see in her face and in her smile the joy Desirie feels because she is now a full-fledged Delta. My heart starts to pound and I want to cry out her name.