by Barry Wolfe
Shannon invites me back to her motel room. She says she wants to minister to my wounds. When we arrive at the motel, she makes a cursory examination of my cuts, makes sure the bleeding has stopped, and then washes my arm. After she has completed her ministrations, we settle ourselves on the pull out sofa. She faces me with her legs tucked underneath her knees and gently touches my hand. Her whole demeanor has suddenly changed. “Izzy,” she purrs softly. “I have something to tell you.”
“What is it?” I ask. Her tone begins to make me nervous. “You know we have been friends for a long time.” My anxiety spikes as I think, “Oh God, another rejection.”
“But when I saw you on the beach yesterday,” she continues, “I don’t know. Something came over me. It just hit me that this is a guy who’s always cared about me, been there for me, told me the truth. And yet I’ve been chasing one jerk after another with only one thing on their puny minds. All they want is to get in my pants and use me. But you, Izzy, with all your brightness and sweetness, you’re the real deal. Let me show you what I mean.” She leans in to kiss me, but I’m a step behind because I can’t believe what is happening. We bump noses and both of us laugh nervously. Finally, we reach serious liplock, and her tongue is making unfamiliar intrusions into my mouth’s interior. She is kissing me in ways that I have never experienced before, either with her in our make-out sessions on Valley Street or with any other girl for that matter. “Oh Izzy,” she sighs, “I think I’m falling for you.” She grabs my hand and begins moving it down to the hem of her dress. She guides my hand under her dress. “Please touch me,” she demands with fierce urgency. She feels me tighten up as I begin to remember our previous encounter in this neighborhood. As if she’s reading my mind, she says again, “Touch me, Izzy. I’m not wearing my Playtex Living Girdle.” I almost burst out laughing. No girl has ever uttered such a phrase to me. In the heat of the moment, I am struck by its absurdity. As I become more aroused, I keep seeing the television ad in which a very fetching blonde dances around in her Playtex Girdle while the unseen announcer waxes poetic over its slimming and liberating powers. My cock alternates between tumescence and deflation—mimicking the action of a slide trombone. Shannon’s moans free me from my absurd dilemma. She is wet with pleasure, which helps to increase mine; until, that is, my mind’s eye is suddenly filled with the smiling image of Desirie. Shannon sees, feels, and hears the change that has come over me and asks, “What happened Izzy? What’s the matter?” After much hemming and hawing, I tell Shannon my long tale of woe; how I met Desirie and the way our relationship has played out. Shannon tries her best to listen to my tearful tale of unrequited love, but the effort it takes to shift gears from pre-orgasmic bliss to selfless sympathetic friend sends her mounting frustration through the roof. When it finally dawns on her that my failure to “finish the job” is due to my feelings for another woman, she becomes apoplectic. She burst into tears. “How could you, Izzy? How could you leave me high and dry because you were thinking of another woman.” Then the final realization turns her into a screaming banshee. “Oh my God, Izzy, Desiree is colored isn’t she? You were trying to make love to me while thinking about a colored woman? And a colored woman who has dumped you? You’re pathetic Izzy, and I hate you for the way you’ve humiliated me!” No apology, explanation, or appeal will mollify her. “Just get out, Izzy,” she wails mournfully.
“But Shannon…”
“GET OUT!” She screams, as she runs into her bathroom and slams the door.
Chapter
11.
Is You Is or Is You Ain’t
Shannon is right. I am pathetic. I had the opportunity of my lifetime, something that I’ve wanted to do with Shannon for years and I blew it. Why? Because I’m thinking of a girl who doesn’t want me. A Black girl yet who comes from another world, a world I know nothing about. It’s pathetic. But what is Shannon’s anger about? Is it because I was thinking about another woman or because I was thinking about a Black woman? Oddly, the thought that she was offended because Desirie is Black eases my pain a bit. Shannon has become one of them—the prejudiced, the bigoted—and therefore unworthy of my tears.
Still in pain, I walk down to the ocean and watch the waves breaking to the shore with a rebuke that pulls the water back and with it the earth’s sand and shells into the thrust of the next wave. As I watch enthralled by the water’s energy and strength, the waves’ rhythmic cresting and crashing, a wave of hope crests within me that I can be lifted out of the dark mood in which my encounter with Shannon has left me. The smell of the salt, the heat of the sun, and the blasting sounds of the ocean lift me out of my funk and into a feeling of wellbeing. I see two dolphins moving in an arching pattern rising above and then dipping into the water’s depths. The dolphins disappear, and in their place appear four pelicans swooping down into the waves and then flying upward in a movement so graceful and elegant that the loudest sound I hear is my own gasp. I return to the ocean as much as possible for the rest of our vacation so that I can take in nature’s drug in the needed daily dose.
After we return home, I go back to work at the Shepherd Park Playground. During inclement weather, I’ m confined to the school lunchroom with typically a dozen kids creating exquisite crafts, gossiping, or dancing to the latest rock n’ roll hits. I really get into the dancing and am thrilled to teach them how to do the Pony, the Slop, and the Snap. On nice days we walk out onto the blacktop where there is a basketball court and picnic tables that are constantly occupied by kids playing board games. Down the hill are the two baseball fields where my 12-and-under and 14-and-under baseball teams play. Late in August my 12-and under team plays for the championship against Takoma playground. With the score tied 1 to 1 in the final inning, Takoma has men on first and third. The Takoma batter hits the ball right back to the pitcher. Elton, our star pitcher and homerun hitter, has a mental lapse and throws the ball to first base. The man on third easily trots across home plate with the winning run and the championship. I lose i t and blast Elton for his “idiotic error”. Elton lets loose with a flood of tears, but I can‘t let go of my rage.
My work at Shepherd greatly distracts me from the pain I feel about Desirie, about Shannon, the lost scholarship, and the realization that I do not feel at home in either my white world or my Black world. I’m about to start my sophomore year at Howard in a week and I feel no enthusiasm at all about my continuing education. As I contemplate my return to Howard, I’m clear about one thing. NO MORE HITCHHIKING! With a loan from my father, I am able to scrape together $150 to buy a 1954 Plymouth. I’ m dizzied by the sense of freedom that this purchase produces. I’m free not only from the racist chatter that I had experienced on every ride to Howard, but also good old Betsy—the name I have given my new set of wheels—extends the range of my travel s and my education. Betsy takes me to parts of D C. that I have never seen or even knew existed. It has only been three years since Black people made up a majority of the residents of Washington D C., but as I travel in the Northeast , Southeast, and Southwest quadrants of the city, I see firsthand how segregated a city Washington is. I encounter very few white people in these three quadrants. I see fewer and fewer exclusively white neighborhoods in the city, and these are concentrated west of Rock Creek Park, the sylvan glade that runs from the southern part of the western half of the city to the northwestern District line and out into the suburbs. There are geographical, as well as psychological, reasons for my feeling stuck between two worlds as I travel every weekday from home to Howard and back.
I begin my sophomore year with my mind filled with contradictions. I’ m not sure I even want to return. But return I do, still a Chemistry major when it is very clear that I have fallen out of love with the laboratory. Whenever I’ m cooped up in the lab holding smelly test tubes, I look longingly out the window and crave human companionship. The dark world of Howard still feels strange, but I’m growing increasingly distant from my white friends. Many of my high school friends left town for college and most o
f these left my life forever. Several attend colleges in the Washington area such as American, George Washington, or Maryland University and consequently are living very different lives. The lines of connection formed in high school have either atrophied or died out entirely. The courses that I’m scheduled to take also cause me no reason to be excited about my education. I’m taking American Government, which had bored me to tatters in high school. I’m also required to take an English literature course that I dread. My scheduled chemistry course is Qualitative Analysis, which promises a meaningless search for metallic ions uncovered by a series of tricky chemical manipulations. My required math course is Differential Calculus, the front end of a two-course sequence that produces a week‘s worth of anticipatory nightmares. I’m also required to take a language and for some inexplicable reason, I choose German. Finally, my anti-military biases crash headlong into my necessary immersion into ROTC. None of these courses is of any interest and yet I have to do well in order to retrieve my lost scholarship.
I have lost track of what my friends in NAG were up to since we picketed Glen Echo together at the end of June I see them from time to time during the beginning of the new semester, and each time they would inform me of the great things NAG is doing and entreat me to join the group. Each time their entreaties leave me sympathetic, guilt ridden, and fearful, and I would politely refuse. I learn from my politically active friends that with the establishment of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April, NAG has become one of the new organization’s chief affiliates. I learn that after I left the picket line on June 30, Gwendolyn Greene, a fellow Howardite that I had once briefly met, along with four other Black protesters was arrested for climbing onto one of the hand-carved wooden horses of Glen Echo’s famed merry-go-round. Just hearing about her courage fills me with shame.
A chief topic of conversation on campus is the upcoming presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Although I’m still too young to vote, I’m an ardent supporter of Kennedy. I hang on his every word and search the papers for any clue to his political positions and policy prescriptions. I’m not alone because it seems like most college students want Kennedy to win. I don’t think I have met anyone at Howard who supports Nixon. Yet the members of NAG, as well as many other Howard students, are suspicious of Kennedy and have serious doubts about his commitment to Negro rights because of his frequent attempts to placate the Southern segregationists in Congress. In October, Dr. Martin Luther King had been arrested for participating in a sit-in at Rich ‘s Department Store i n Atlanta, Georgia. The sit-in charges were dropped, but King received a four-month prison sentence for violating probation that he was placed on back in May when he received a traffic ticket. King was never informed that he was on probation. The judge refused to let King free on bail. Instead, King was secretly moved in the middle of the night to Reidsville State Penitentiary, infamous for its chain gangs and mysterious killings of Negro prisoners. . King’s family and staff tried to contact both the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns. Nixon did not even respond. But Kennedy called Coretta King to offer his good wishes.
NAG’s desegregation successes and its growing prominence are still not enough to turn me into a student activist. My heart is clearly with the developing student movement for equality, but I can’t overcome my fear. I need a distraction from the assaults of recent events. My love life is a bust; my courses are a drag; and my fear of joining NAG appalls me. I need something that will prevent these worries from achieving a coup d’etat over my mind. It comes to me one day in Phys Ed. while I’m mindlessly shooting a basketball. “Basketball! That’s it! I’ll try out for the varsity basketball team,” I exclaim to no one in particular. It’s a long shot to make the team, but it would be fun to try and maybe I won ‘t worry so much about the rest of my life. Maybe I can surprise myself. After all, my success in high school came as a complete surprise to everyone-particularly me. In fact, the only reason I had tried out for my high school team was because no one believed I could make the team. “You’re too short,” they said. “You don’t stand a chance,” they said. When, in my senior year, I had become the team ‘s leading scorer, my friends now assured me I was too short to play college basketball. What better reason…right? The first day of try-outs, however, merely gives me another thing to worry about. The cracker-box gymnasium—a refurbished Quonset hut—is fragrant with perspiration. The water rises from the sprinting bodies in miniature geysers. The reeking oppressive odor is all around me, leaking out of every pore of the undersized gym. Is it worse than in high school? The odor inspires me to wonder. I can’t remember. A bolus of racial myth and fear presses inside my stomach as the ten brown men sprint by me. They do smell different! Ridiculous! No, it’s not! The debate rages within me while I watch my competitors, in a furious scrimmage. The panic comes on, and the world changes. Everything in the dilapidated gym inspires fear. The thump of the basketball reverberating against ugly walls creates strange auditory patterns as if someone is being beaten with a rubber hose. The staccato pounding of basketball shoes in continuous motion suggests to my overwrought ears a stampede of, well, bison. The players’ frenzied chatter is an eerie echo of doomed tortured voices. What am I doing here, anyway? These guys are big, strong, fast, and BLACK!
I watch the returning starters from last year’s team and consider how I had watched them before, but only as a spectator. Now I have to play against them in order to one-day play with them. There is George Black, the size of a college guard, who wants to be the team’s leading rebounder. He is only 5’ 11” tall, but he easily out-jumps and out-rebounds men several inches taller. At the age of nine, on a Northeast Washington DC playground, he vowed to all who would listen that he was going to grow to be over 6 feet tall. When his growth stopped just short of his goal, he was inconsolable and unforgiving, although he did not know who to blame. So he blamed everyone, his parents, his peers, and especially anyone who was over 6 feet tall. To compensate for his cruel fate, he spent most of his spare time strengthening his legs and practicing his jumping. His leaping exercises were a familiar sight at the Turkey Thicket playground. From sunup to sundown, he would stand in the same spot underneath one of the basketball goals jumping and jumping like a solitary Yemenite dancer. The wound has never healed, and his hatred continues unabated for all men over 6 feet. In every game, under each basket, George Black can be seen jostling for position and yelling at the top of his lungs, “Come on six-footers! What’s the matter six-footers, you can’t out-jump ole 5’ 11” George Black?”
Hard as he tries and high as he jumps, George Black cannot out-rebound Lincoln Haskins. Linc, after all, is 6’ 9” and weighs 260 lbs. In the pivot, or under the basket, Linc looks like one of the giant boulders of Stonehenge. Opposing players fall off him like luckless, ill-fated mountain climbers. Linc is the only member of the team who thinks seriously about playing professional basketball, who thinks he even has a chance to make the pros. Whenever he begins one of his patented, fluid moves to the basket, the nearest players can hear him muttering under his breath, “I’m pro caliber!
By far the fastest member of the team and its second leading scorer after Linc is Whee Willie Watson. Whee Willie got his name from the Howard University fans. Whenever he flashes by his opponent, the crowd bellows, “Wheeeee Willie!” He’s a joy to watch, his body a beautiful moving sculpture. With his thin mustache he resembles a brown Ronald Coleman. At 6 feet, Whee Willie is small enough and quick enough to dart around bigger opponents. His great strength, however, also gives him an advantage over men his own size and smaller. He seems capable of every move and skill I have ever acquired. His shooting accuracy from 20-plus feet is equal to mine. What can I do against that?
Watching Whee Willie glide into his favorite move—a fake to the left and then a swift move to the right—I suddenly see how it is done. For the first time, I notice Whee Willie’s sudden shift of the hip to the left and a subtle drop of his shoulder in the same direction. Then, wit
h unseen speed, he shifts his entire body to the right. It looks very similar to a move that I use consistently to gain an initial edge on my opponent. But I use my shoulders more. Whee Willie’s hip fake is even quicker, and it is something one can do off a full-speed dribble. “I can do that,” I think, now eager to enter the game. “White! Take Johnson’s place and cover Whee!” I leap from the bench as if I have been ejected from a burning cockpit, and I search for the Ronald Coleman smile. For the first few minutes, I do little more on offense than pass the ball off to my teammates. I’m too nervous to move freely. Soon the rhythm will come—I hope—and my jittery awareness that I’m now actually trying out for a college basketball team will fall away. While I ease myself into the game, Whee does little to reassure me of my chances for making the team. First he applies the move I have just mastered and fakes me out of my shoes for an easy lay-up. Then he lofts a feathery jump shot over my head for an easy two-pointer. On his third attempt, I time my jump perfectly and partially block his shot. But I foul him badly in the process. “Hold on, white boy, thi s ain ‘t no playground ball,” Whee Willie fumes. “You can’t do that shit here”.