by Barry Wolfe
“It’ll be fine, Izzy, I’m a big boy.”
“That’s great, Mel. So I’ll see you Sunday morning at 10:30 in the lobby of Suburban Hill. You still have the directions?” “Yes, Izzy, I still have the directions.”
At 10:30 sharp Sunday morning, I see Mel X-Ray Gray walking toward the front door of Suburban Hill Apartments. He is dressed in a Navy blue suit, white shirt and a skinny blue and white striped tie. Oh my God, I forgot to tell him to dress casual. Mel looks like he is going to church rather than to brunch. Then I thought maybe his garb is a plus and will help tranquilize my father’s prejudices. We greet each other with a half hug and a handshake. “You look real sharp, Mr. Gray. Real sharp.” As we take the eternal elevator ride to the third floor I remind him of the possibility that my father might pop off and inadvertently say something offensive. Again I ask him to try and not take it personally. I think I see his body tighten, but conclude I must be mistaken. In an effort to take his mind off what my father might say, I tell Mel that I’m sorry that he won’t have a chance to meet my brother Adam. “He went with a friend to Baltimore to take in a mid-day classical concert.” This information seemed to make him even more uptight.
When I introduce him to my parents, Pearl is her usual welcoming self. I am happy to discover that the jovial Mort White, rather than the angry one, has shown up. Nonetheless, Mel seems stuck in a rigid posture with a smile frozen on his face. He and I sit on the couch while my father sits in his favorite armchair. Mom is in the kitchen preparing brunch. My father looks at Mel and remains silent. He looks like he is trying to decide something. The longer the silence persists, the more uptight Mel seems. He sits straight as a board while looking warily at my father. Dad breaks the silence with this unexpected question: “What do you call a line of rabbits walking backwards?” Mel is so flabbergasted by the nature of the question he doesn’t know how to answer. Finally he manages, “I don’t know?” With a triumphant grin Dad replies, “A receding hare line.” Mel and I look at each other and burst out laughing because my father’s answer is so unexpected, and the joke is so hopelessly corny. Dad, however, is warmed by our apparent appreciation of his wit. He joins our laughter. The tension now is broken with the three of us laughing hysterically at Dad’s silly joke. The commonplace conversation that follows relaxes us further. My father asks Mel what his father does for a living. “He works in a chicken processing plant in Gainesville, Georgia, where I’m from.”
“Well, I’m a butcher so I guess me and your dad are in the same kind of business.”
“I bet you two would like each other,” Mel suggests. “You appear to have a lot in common.” I thought for sure Dad would be upset at this comparison with a working class Negro, but he didn’t flinch. Instead he asks Mel a lot of questions about his father’s work and about life in Gainesville, Georgia. Much to my greater surprise, Dad easily shares with Mel the details of his own work and even some of his frustrations. “There’s this one lady, Mrs. Katz, who comes into the market every other day to bust my balls about something.”
“Mort!” My mother cries, “Watch your language!”
“Sorry Pearl,” my father answers and then continues with his story. “Anyway, one day she’s shopping for chicken. She must have looked at four different chickens before settling on one. So this one she wants to examine carefully. First she lifts a wing and sniffs; then she lifts the other wing and smells. Then she spreads the chicken legs apart and smells again. ‘Mort,’ she says, ‘this chicken is no good. I want to see another one.’ By this time I’ve had it with her and I say, “Mrs. Katz, could you pass a test like that?” Mel and I are laughing so hard we knock heads. Dad’s laughing at our laughter. Mom is giggling but then adds, “Mort, that story is so old it’s got a beard on it. OK boys it’s time to eat.”
Mom lays out our typical Sunday brunch Jew food on the side of the table closest to my father, the bagels, lox, cream cheese, tomatoes, onions and Chubs. On the side closest to Mel, she places scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. She does not want Mel to be embarrassed or go hungry if he doesn’t like or want to try the Jew food. But I strongly nudge Mel to try the bagels and lox. He looks at the Jewish delicacies with the same expression I had when I first encountered chit'lin's. “I’ll give the bagels and lox a try,” Mel says with exaggerated enthusiasm. Mom makes him a sandwich with all of the accoutrements. Mel holds the alien sandwich in front of his face for an entire minute and then takes a healthy bite. After several chews, he nods his head approvingly and then reaches for the bacon and eggs. We eat in silence for awhile. My mother breaks the silence by asking Mel about his mother. Mel somberly replies, “She died three years ago.” My mother is shocked and she gives her genuine condolences to Mel. “Thank you, Mrs. White. She was a great woman and I miss her terribly.” I can tell that Mom feels guilty for bringing up his mother. She asks him no further questions.
Much to my astonishment, the rest of the brunch flows very smoothly. The four of us gab away as if we are old friends. When Mel gets ready to leave, my father says to him, “It’s been a real pleasure meeting you, Mel,” and I know he’s being sincere. Mom too seemed to really like Mel. As he and I travel down to the lobby in the eternal elevator, Mel turns to me and says, “I could kick your ass, you dumb honky. Your parents are great. I wish you hadn’t said anything beforehand and just let me find out for myself how your father would be with me. Instead you scared me to death with your premonitions of racial insults spewing out of your dad’s mouth.” I hesitate before responding to Mel’s resentment. “You’re right, Mel, and I’m terribly sorry. In trying to protect you, I made things worse.”
“Yes, you did!” After we say our good-byes, I run up the stairs and back to my apartment. I am very eager to know what my father thought of Mel.
“You know, Izzy, I really like that Schwartzeh!”
Mel and I also play a lot of B-ball together even though we both soon realize that basketball is just a pretext for us to get together and talk. Our courtside revelations, discussions and debates become the highlight of our week. Both of us are currently taking Introduction to Psychology, a year- long course taught by Carolyn Payton, the best psychology professor in the department. We both love everything about psychology, but we are inclined to talk mostly about theories of normal and abnormal behavior and psychotherapy. I have fallen in love with the apparent precision of Skinnerian Behaviorism, while Mel is more excited by Freudian psychoanalysis.
As we’re shooting jump shots, we pick up our debate from where we left off. “But Mel, we now possess a wonderful method for discovering the truth about human beings, the experimental method of science. Through precise observation and experimentation, we can learn verifiable facts about human behavior. Then we can develop methods to modify unwanted behavior. Behavior therapists are beginning to do that now.”
“The problem is, Izzy, there is so much about human beings that you cannot directly see. We can’t see the workings of a person’s mind, his inner world. It’s difficult enough to know our own mind. Not even science can shed light on another person’s mind.”
“Not directly, maybe, but by observing human behavior we can infer what people are thinking. Besides what’s our alternative?”
“Let’s start with our own minds. Through introspection we can learn a lot about ourselves. And because we are all more alike than different, we can make inferences about what people are thinking and feeling and why. Most importantly, we can’t just rely on appearances. People deceive themselves and usually try and present themselves in a favorable light to others. We know people defend against revealing unacceptable attitudes. In fact, as Freud tells us, they hide these forbidden thoughts and wishes from themselves, not just from other people.”
“Yes, and all of those internal factors you mention are virtually impossible to study scientifically. “ Mel’s eyes light up as he senses the core weakness in my argument.
“Well whose problem is that? Is it that our inner world is not important or is it
that science is not yet able to study it?” We go on like this for over an hour, but I think we score more points with our jump shots than with our arguments. The truth of the matter is that I also love Freud and psychoanalysis. I introspect with a vengeance; and with each insight I uncover I feel a surging sense of power, the power to see beyond appearances, the power of a very special kind of knowledge. Mel, on the other hand, is playing to his strength. There is good reason for his fraternity brothers to refer to Mel as X-Ray. He has a natural gift for understanding what people mean but haven’t said. He quickly grasps the feeling behind a person’s words, particularly when the words are meant to conceal what a person is really feeling.
Our shared passion for psychology also has a dark side. Whenever we have a quiz or an exam, the first thing that Mel would do is to find me and ask how I did. He then compares his test score to mine and is visibly dismayed if his scores are lower than mine. It takes awhile for me to fully grasp the extent to which Mel is competing with me. At first, I assume that Mel is just a competitive guy and that academics is now something we can compete about in addition to basketball. But it eventually dawns on me that I have become the standard by which he judges himself. On the day of our final exam in Introduction to Psychology, Mel seems more agitated than ever. “What’s the matter, Mel,” I ask with genuine concern for him. “Nothing, Izzy,” he answers with such tension in his voice that I can’t discern whether he’s angry or just nervous. I think it best to leave him be. After the exam, he leaves without saying a word to me. I fully expect that we will spend some time talking about the questions on the exam. That has been our routine. But he vanishes from the exam room, and I’m very hurt. In fact, I don’t see or hear from Mel until we bump into each other in Douglas Hall where the grades for our courses are posted. Our final exam scores are listed as well as our course grades. “How did you do?” he asks with the same tension in his voice that I noticed at the final exam. “I got an A, Mel. How about you?” “I got an A too. But I mean how did you do on the final exam?”
“I got a 98, Mel.” He explodes. “SHIT! I only got a 90.” Mel is so agitated, he’s turning in circles and stomping his feet. I don’t understand his reaction. I attempt to pull him back into reality. “But Mel, we both got As in the course. Why are you so upset?”
“Goddammit, Izzy, it’s barely an A. How’m I ever gonna make it as a psychologist in the white world. I’m gonna have to compete with the likes of you and all the other privileged white men out there. I’ll never be able to get a job in psychology. Izzy, you don’t have a clue about the advantages you have over every Black man who competes with you in the job market. You can’t possibly understand what I have to deal with.”
I’m so taken aback, that I’m rendered speechless. I can’t believe the hostility pouring out of him, and that it’s being directed at me. I feel like my best friend has just sucker-punched me in the gut. I want him to feel better. I want to reduce the distance that has suddenly sprung up between us. “But Mel, we both got As in the course. So my score is a little higher. So what. We both got As.”
“Yeah, but you did better than I did. You always do better. There’s no beating you, Izzy.” There’s just no beating you. “ Mel starts crying. You’re just superior, Izzy, and I’m inferior. No matter what I do, I’m inferior.” Other students coming to look at their grades are staring at us with expressions of perplexed concern. I grab Mel and virtually drag him into an empty classroom. I push him into a chair and sit in another chair close by. “What’s going on, Mel?” Mel waits a few minutes for the tears to stop and he can once again speak in a firm clear voice.
“Izzy, you just don’t know. You just don’t know what I’ve had to put up with all my fucking life. Growing up black in Georgia ain’t no picnic. I could never tell a white person the truth about how I feel. I had to bow my head whenever I saw a white adult, and move out the way to let white people pass on the sidewalk. And if I dared to raise my voice to a white man, I would get a beating, either from the white man or from my father for being so stupid in talking back. And I couldn’t just go into the front door of a movie theatre. Oh no; me and my Black friends had to climb up a fire escape to get to the balcony. You can’t possibly know how it feels to bow and scrape and say Yassuh to all those sour-faced peckerwoods. Do you know how all this makes me feel, Izzy? Sometimes I’d see a white kid my age with these beautiful new textbooks, and I’d look at my raggedy-assed hand-me-down books and I would feel like NOTHING! You know, Izzy, that’s what nigger really means. You’re nothing! An inferior nothing! It don’t matter who you are or what you’ve achieved. A black man with a mlllion dollars and a bunch of degrees by his name is still a nigger. You know, there are days when I look in the mirror and curse my blackness.” I shiver at the memory of my hallucinatory black reflection.
“But Mel, you’re telling me the truth about how you feel and ain’t I a peckerwood?”
“No, Izzy, you’re just white. You’re neurotic as hell, but you are a kind person. I saw that kindness in your eyes the first time I met you. I said to myself, this is not your garden variety Honky.”
“With friends like you, who needs therapists?” He gives me a weak smile.
“Mel, you’re right. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, and I haven’t lived under white apartheid, maybe a little gentile apartheid, but nothing like what you’ve experienced. But I sure understand your fear of white people because I’m afraid of black people.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing at Howard?”
“Trying to understand it. Trying to cure it. You know my fear of Negroes cuts two ways. For the longest time, I’ve been afraid that some kind of contamination would happen if I get too close to black people. It’s Negrophobia, that’s what it is. But I’m also afraid of getting my ass kicked by a bunch of angry black kids.” I told Mel the story about how my best friend Eddie and I were confronted by a bunch of “Block Boys” in the alley, and how we would have had our asses kicked if it hadn’t been for an older black guy I had played basketball with on Canteen Night. He had recognized me and convinced the Block Boys to leave us alone. “And now Mel that I’m at Howard, I have a new fear-that the word nigga might come out of my mouth. You see I’ve grown up. Instead of fearing black adolescents, I now fear black college students. “
“No, Izzy, now you’re afraid of yourself. You’re just as afraid and paranoid as I am.”
“That’s right, Mel, this is what segregation and white apartheid produces, fear-based hatred.”
“Ain’t that right. Jim Crow makes Jim Crazy.”
“I guess the difference is you feel inferior because you’re black, and I feel inferior because I’m me.”
“Comes to the same thing, Izzy. We both feel like nothing.”
Maybe not quite nothing! When I see my grades, I discover that I’ve received all “As” for the second straight semester. This is good news and bad news. The good news is I’ve preserved my scholarship for my senior year and won’t spend the summer worrying about money. The bad news is I felt the first comforting hug of superiority about my alleged intelligence. I have given up the fantasy that I am so talented a basketball player that every team in the National Basketball Association would surely come begging at my door to play for them. But now I imagine that not only am I smart enough to succeed in this life, but maybe I’m one of the smartest people alive. I’ve jumped on board a fast train at Inferiority, missed my stop at Smart Enough, and traveled all the way to Superiority.
Mel notices a change in my voice the next time he calls me. “What’s happening Honky?” He says with a smile in his voice. “I will not dignify that question with a response, “I answer haughtily. Upon hearing this new Izzy persona, Mel’s clearly perturbed. “Hey, what’s up with you?”
“Why nothing, “ I reply. “It’s just that I do not want to be referred to by such an odious expression. After all, how would you like it if I referred to you as Nigga.”
“What you say? You call me
that all the time, and I know you mean it in a friendly way, and you know I mean the same thing when I call you Honky. What the hell’s wrong with you today?”
“I shall endeavor to explain.”
“Oh, wait a minute. I think I know what’s going on with you. You got all “As” again, didn’t you?”
“That is correct!”
“And now you think you’re smarter than everybody.”
“Indubitably!” I try to keep up my condescending demeanor, but in fact, my bubble has been burst by Mel X-Ray Gray’s perceptiveness. The fact that he can see right through my arrogance and my ersatz professorial air both terrifies and relieves me. Mel just brushes it off as crazy white boy play-acting and decides not to give it any credence.
“Listen, Dr. Freud, the reason I’m calling you is to invite you to an end-of-the-year dance sponsored by B.O.S.S. I want you to take a second look at B.O.S.S.”
“Aw Mel, you know how I feel about this…”
“Yeah, Yeah, I know how you feel, but I’m convinced you’re making a mistake. You need us. You just don’t know it yet. Besides I need you.” I’m taken aback by his straightforward confession of his attachment to me, but I try not to show it. Instead, I nonchalantly say, “You’ve got me. What’s B.O.S.S. got to do with our friendship?”