by Barry Wolfe
On the third ring, a lethargic voice answers the phone, “Yeah?”
“Hi Mel. It’s Izzy.”
“What you want white boy?” I pick up on the depressive timbre in Mel’s voice and know immediately that he too has watched the horrific scene in Birmingham.
“Look Mel, I know you are not terribly fond of white people right now, but you know that ain’t me.”
“Really? How can I be sure?” Sarcastically, he adds, “Y’all look alike to me. What’s worse is y’all act alike.”
“Right. That’s why James Peck got his head broken in Birmingham because he was a white Freedom Rider.” The conversation is heating up and now Mel’s voice possesses no trace of its previous lethargy. “Well, if that white man can join the struggle, why can’t you?” Now I get angry. “Oh come on, Mel, Peck is a trained and seasoned activist. He took part in the earlier freedom rides back in the 1940s. And he’s a conscientious objector. His whole life has been about the nonviolent struggle for civil rights and freedom for the oppressed.” There is a long pause and then Mel finally asks, “So why you calling, Izzy?” I didn’t want to just come out and beg him not to hate me because of what the racists in Birmingham did. Instead, I try to turn him into my counselor. “I have a dilemma. I don’t know whether I should postpone graduate school and fight for civil rights with you and Desirie.” Another long pause. “I guess you watched the news too, Izzy. “ The edge in Mel’s voice disturbs me. “It was horrible,” I reply. “Yes it is, Izzy, and after watching that obscenity, I’m convinced that there’re two reasons why you shouldn’t go with us.” Deflated, I ask what the reasons are.
“If you go, you will be killed. I am convinced of that. And I told you before it’s not your fight.”
“Mel, why do you keep pushing me away. Look, no one is really free unless we’re all free.” I say this with undisguised anger. “Oh I see that you’re now parroting our history professor,” Mel says with a contemptuous laugh. “But I believe it. This is everyone’s fight.”
“Then what’s the dilemma? Why aren’t you jumping right in?” Before I can answer, Mel answers for me. “I’ll tell you why it’s such a dilemma for you. You’re a very idealistic person, Izzy, but it’s the idea that you love: Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And I don’t trust the love of an abstract idea. I don’t trust it, because in the day-to-day struggle, the sweat, pain, and grit it takes to wage this fight is beyond you. I’m convinced that when the going gets tough, you gonna get going, Izzy… in the opposite direction.”
“So you can read my mind now Mel? He chuckles. “They don’t call me X-Ray Grey for nothing.” I reflexively laugh back. “As long as we’re speaking truth to one another, let me tell you that another part of my dilemma is you.”
“What d’ya mean by that?” I take a deep breath before I can spell it out.
“I want your friendship, Mel, and your opposition to me and Desirie being together frankly stymies me. You know how much I love your cousin…”
“No, Izzy, I don’t know that! Here again, I think you love the idea of being with a Black girl and that she seems to have some feelings for you. I think you bathe in your own self-reflection as a tolerant liberal.”
“I know. You said that before. So I guess you also think that I hang around with the likes of you because it proves that I’m a great liberal?”
“If the shoe fits, Izzy.”
“Jesus, Mel, I thought we’re further along than that.”
“Look, Izzy, you don’t really know her or me for that matter. You two come from different worlds. It can never work, not in today’s America. And I don’t want to see her hurt. She’s already had her heart broken once, and she almost didn’t recover. I could kill that bright-skinned motherfucker. He was so color-struck that he crapped all over Desirie.”
“Yeah, she told me about Carter, but she said it was his mother who thought she was too dark for her son.”
“Then he’s just a punk-ass Mama’s boy.”
“OK, but what’s that got to do with me? Look, Mel, I desperately want your friendship, but you keep rejecting it. What can I do to get us passed this impasse?” Mel is silent for a moment. “I don’t know Izzy. Sometimes I look at you and I think you’re the best friend that I never had. I see how hard you work to be my friend. But when I feel myself moving toward you, I feel like I’m somehow betraying my people. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I just know that no matter how much I love you, if a race war were to break out--and it seems like one will soon--I know deep within me which side I would be on; and I would have no problem blowing your head off.“ I stare at the phone in absolute amazement. “Mel! What are you saying?”
“I’m sorry, Izzy, but that’s how I feel. I know you’re basically a good guy, but you are one of them; and I would rather die shooting white people than be killed by one of my own because I either opposed my people or stood on the sidelines.”
“So let me get this straight. You would kill the closest thing you’ve ever had to a best friend out of a sense of loyalty to your ‘people’?”
“Tha’s right my white brother. Dig ya later.”
I am dumbfounded and sad….and lonely as I absorb the fact that he has hung up on me.. I realize that despite his homicidal fantasy and his occasional anti-Semitic outbursts that I still want Mel as a friend. I hear myself saying, You mean more to me than I ever could have imagined my Black brother.
The next day, I arrange to have lunch with Desirie. We both have some time on our hands so we decide to drive to Chinatown for lunch. We find a secluded table at the China Doll restaurant. The place is strangely un-crowded for a weekday lunch hour. But I am happy because I need privacy for what I expect to be a difficult conversation with the love of my life. We sit down and Desirie looks at me with a nervous smile on her face. She knows that I am about to give her my decision on whether I am going to join her in a life of civil rights activism, and she is dreading the likelihood of my saying no. In a misguided effort to soften the blow, I begin to tell her how much I enjoyed being with her at last month’s demonstration. As soon as I see her eyes brightening up with hopeful anticipation, I know I’ve made a mistake. “I can see how exhilarating and meaningful direct action can be, Desirie, and I know there’s a strong part of me that wants to join you in this work, in this adventure….”
Excitedly, her voice rises as she interrupts and asks, “Then you’ll do it?”
“Hear me out, honey. You know I’m committed to equal rights for Negroes, and you know how much I’ve come to hate segregation and white supremacy.” She nods her head first with enthusiasm and then with caution. “I hear a ‘but” coming,” she says. I nod in agreement. “But, number one, I don’t have your passion; and I realized that if I do it, I am doing it for you, just to be with you, to be the person you want me to be.” Her eyes well up with tears, but she continues to listen intently to my apologia. “I would do almost anything for you, Desirie, but the one thing that I cannot do is to be something I’m not. No matter how much I want you, to be with you and be the person you need, I can’t. It kills me to say it, but I just can’t. I can’t bear to lose you, but I know I am. I know it sounds silly to say, but I must give you up in order to save me. If I were to say yes today, I would destroy something vital in me, and in all truth I would then become useless to you.” Desirie fixes her eyes on mine for a long moment. Her pleading expression swiftly changes to a stone cold stare.
“You know, Izzy, maybe Mel’s right. This is not your fight. We Negroes must do this for ourselves. We appreciate your support and your sympathy, but we have to do this.” She says without feeling, “Izzy, I loved you terribly.” Her use of the past tense crushes me. “But now,” she continues, “I see that we are different and we’re moving in different directions in our lives.” My response to her pulling away from me makes me blush. “So we’re breaking up?” I can’t believe that at this very delicate and painful moment that I can be such a ninny. In a disgusted tone, Desirie says, “
No, bright boy, you’re breaking up with me.” I look at her dumbfounded, which she finds unbearable. Shaking her head in disbelief, she says. “Listen, Izzy, I gotta go.”
I watch her walk away in total disbelief. What have I done?” I’ve never felt this way about any girl and I’m giving her up. And for what? Some precious notion of authenticity? What’s wrong with me? You know how they say that just before you die, your entire life flashes by in your mind’s eye. All of the great times that Desirie and I had together rush through my brain and then…nothing except despair and self-loathing. Could dying be any worse?
For me the merry month of May is one of cauterizing sadness. I cry an ocean of tears, and the more I cry the less I feel. By the last week of May, I am completely numb. Now all events and their significance—good or bad-- wash off me like water off a mallard’s back. I learn that I have aced all my finals, will graduate eighth in my class, and will soon be off to graduate school at the University of Illinois reputed to have one of the best graduate psychology programs in the country. But all of this good news has the same effect on me as the terrible news that continues to ooze out of Birmingham. On the 11th there are bomb attacks on a local motel where many of the protest leaders are staying, and another on the parsonage of Martin Luther King’s brother. This leads to a riot that brings a large battalion of state troopers armed with submachine guns, and the ensuing confrontation results in at least 50 people wounded. Nothing touches or penetrates me. The misery of numbness is accentuated by the fact that Desirie has not spoken to me since our lunch at the China Doll. Being alive but “dead” is not new to me, but now feels more intense than ever before. By the end of May, I can no longer stand it. Without any willful intervention on my part, the tears reappear, a flood of unrelenting sorrow. Although I have promised myself that I would not call her, I find myself dialing her number on a grey Sunday during the Memorial Day weekend. I do not expect to get her. In fact, I fantasize that she is having a wonderful time in some beach-like setting with another man. When she answers the phone, I try to strangle my fantasy-induced tears. Her noncommittal hello feels like a beam of sunlight soothing every sore spot in my soul. “D’Desirie? It’s Izzy.”
“Izzy?” Desirie says excitedly. She allows a slit of enthusiasm to open and then quickly close. “What do you want, Izzy?” She says flatly. I want to tell her that I take it all back. That I want to be with her always and that I’ll go wherever she goes and fight whatever battle she fights. But instead of noble apologia, I choose maudlin drivel. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“Why are you calling? We’re broken-up.” Forlornly, I reply, “Yeah, I know, but it’s so hard.”
“Well, you’re making it harder, Izzy. You don’t think it’s hard for me?”
“Desirie, I know that we can’t be together, but can’t we be together one last time?”
“You’re just a horndog, Izzy?”
“It’s not just about sex. I want to be close to you one last time.”
“Oh, it’s a goodbye fuck you want?”
“Damn, Desirie, why do you have to piss on everything I say?”
“Because I’m pissed off at you. Look, Izzy, I think I know you better than you do yourself, and I know you’re making a terrible mistake. And your mistake is my heartbreak.”
“You may be right, Desirie, but I can only go with my gut. For me to postpone or more likely give up grad school and join you in the Struggle just doesn’t feel right. I know for sure that I don’t want to be a professional activist. And you do. I know that and I accept that; and given that we seem to be on two very different paths in our lives, I don’t know how we can be together.” Apparently wearying of the argument, Desirie agrees to a final meeting. “Where?”
“The only place I know where we can have any privacy is Bobby’s place. You know, where we were before.”
“I used to think that being with a white boy meant that we’d go to fancy restaurants and maybe spend a night at the Shoreham Hotel. Instead, I get the Fleabag Hilton.”
“Oh come on. It’s not that bad.” I can hear her breathing in a way I know to mean that she is concentrating hard on making a decision. “Okay, Izzy, when?”
“How about Saturday? In fact, how about I pick you up at 6 and we’ll have dinner first? “
“No Izzy, no dinner. Pick me up at 7:30.”
“Seven thirty, then, I’ll be at your door.”
The next evening Bobby Levine and I meet at the Silver Spring Hot Shoppes. We each order a Mighty Moe and a coke. As we wait for our food, I very cautiously broach the subject of “borrowing” a bedroom at his apartment building near 16th and U Streets. “Again?” He bellowed. “Can’t you find another place to get laid?”
“Actually no. That’s why I’m asking. Listen, this will be the last time and you won’t even have to spring for the rubber.” He laughed his high-pitched laugh of incredulity. “The last time my ass.”
“Seriously. Desirie and I are breaking up.”
“So this is a good-bye fuck.”
“Those were exactly her words. I prefer the term swan song.”
“You sure it’s not a rabbit duet?” Bobby laughs profusely at his word play.
“Very funny.” My sour response provokes even more high-pitched laughter. It finally registers that I’m not laughing and he says, “OK, when?” I throw my fist in the air and scream out, “Yes!” Several diners turn in their seats to gawk disapprovingly at me. “Saturday night, around 8?” I ask in a voice now reduced to a conspiratorial whisper. “Fine, Bobby replies with his customary smirk. “Now you owe me two”
“Two what?”
“That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”
“Oh God, I’m not sure I want to know.”
I pick Desirie up at 7:30 sharp. I know it’s corny, but she really is a vision of loveliness. She is wearing skin-tight blue shorts and those chocolate extremities emanating from the bottom of her shorts are putting me in an incredibly agitated state. Her breasts push tightly against her pale grey tee shirt. Her welcoming smile is suffused with sadness. Bobby has given us a different room. This one is much nicer than the last and more formally decorated with aging mahogany furniture. For a second I think we are in the great room of a men’s club whose grandeur had faded long ago. I move toward Desirie to kiss her, but she gently pushes me away. With the same sad smile on her face, she looks at me directly and begins to undress. Staring back, I do the same. Our previous shyness has completely disappeared. We stand naked in front of one another. I am so aroused I want to just leap upon her. I’m so enthralled with her beauty that I find it hard to believe there was ever a time when the sight of a brown body turned me off. Still standing, we kiss. I can wait no longer. I guide her to the bed and carefully lay her down. She places the rubber on my penis quickly and with consummate skill. I fit my loins to her and try to enter her. With a rubber on, my member is blinder than usual, and again, I hit the wrong spot. “Ow,” Desirie cries, “that white pole can’t see shit.” We both burst out laughing. “I’m embarrassed to ask you again to help me find Nirvana.”