by Barry Wolfe
“I’ve never heard it called that before. Here, I’ll guide you in.” She takes hold of my penis and gently moves it to the correct orifice. I glide along this beautiful chocolate river, confident as a seasoned river pilot, and as content as a baby in its mother’s arms. We move slowly at first and then with a speed that feels out of both our control. At our mutual crescendo, we both scream with joy and relief. Bobby is right. A rabbit duet after all!
Afterwards, I stand up and Desirie notices that I have a half erect but naked penis. “Izzy where’s your rubber?” She says with genuine fear. “I’I don’t know.” I look on the floor and under the bed, while Desirie frantically searches the sheets. Out of the corner of my eye, I see something hanging between Desirie’s legs. She looks as if she is giving birth to a very small alien creature. Semen is pouring out the open end of the wrinkled condom on to the bed. She finally notices what is happening and quickly extricates the semen-smeared “afterbirth” from her body. I double over with laughter. But Desirie’s face is fixed in …terror. “Oh Izzy, what if I get pregnant?”
“You won’t. All of the semen is leaking out now.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“I don’t know anything for sure, but the chances are slim.” I get back on the bed and wrap my arms around her. I kiss her passionately and we both are quickly aroused again. Breathless, she manages to ask if I have another rubber. I don’t and am seized by a swamp of confusing feelings: Anger, panic, disappointment, and humiliation. I begin to frantically search the room for perhaps a left-behind condom, hoping against hope that Bobby has repeated his generosity. Now that I’m in a panic, Desirie is sitting on the bed with her hand cupped across her mouth, laughing long and hard. But there on a dark dresser in the darkest corner of the room is another little box with another little condom. Underneath the condom is a note from Bobby, which simply says, “Now you owe me two.”
Now that I’m properly sheathed, we begin again. We make love like we have known each other forever. As she gently moans, I feel myself falling into a whirlpool, which spirals downward into some unknown place. I tighten momentarily out of fear, but then let go hoping that wherever I land I will be safe. I thrust and she thrusts back harder and faster and takes me to a higher speed. With my cheek sealed to hers, we come together. I feel tears running down the side of my face and I don’t know if they are hers or mine. I pull my cheek from hers to look at her and see that she is now sobbing. “Oh Izzy, how can you leave me? I love you so much!” Our unity is shattered. I sit up and look at her sobbing, and I feel helpless to alter the departing trajectory of our lives. I feel the full force of my decision now, and the sights and sounds of two hearts breaking render me speechless. I want to say something, words of comfort or explanation that will ease her pain, but no words come. Until this moment, Desirie was the one person I could say anything to, open my heart to.
Now, it’s as if the plugs have been ripped out of our private switchboard. The sight of her imploring eyes is unbearable. I turn my back to her and dress without saying a word. Now I hear an angry voice exclaim, “Damn you, Izzy, take me home.”
We drive to Desirie’s apartment in silence. She is too angry to speak, and I don’t know what to say. I park in front of her apartment building and words continue to fail us. We look into each other’s eyes searching for an improbable solution to our dilemma. “Well Izzy,” she says, finally, “you had your goodbye fuck.”
“For Christ’s sakes, Desirie, don’t say that. Fucking is not what we did. The word hardly captures the love in our love-making and you know it!”
“What difference does it make? We’re breaking up.” Speechless again, I say nothing.
“Aren’t you gonna say anything?” Desirie asks plaintively. Her sadness corrodes my coherence and I search desperately for something comforting, useful, healing to say. All I can manage is, “Desirie, I love you more than I thought possible and I will miss you terribly.” Before I can see her face completely crumble in sorrow, she turns her back to me and opens the car door. “Have a nice life, Izzy.” She slams the car door and runs into her apartment building. As I watch her disappear, a sense of emptiness overtakes me. Even though I am the one who initiated the break-up, I feel bereft. For the thousandth time, I am sitting in my car in front of the house of a girl I love balling my eyes out.
Howard University’s 95th Commencement takes place on a hot Friday afternoon in early June. The ceremony is being held in the Yard with the speaker’s platform located at the entrance to Douglas Hall. During the Procession, I am already roasting in my academic robes. We march to our seats in alphabetical order. Because of the distance between Jackson and White, I don’t even manage a glimpse of Desirie. After the Invocation and a musical number by the University Band and Choir, President Nabrit’s brother, who is President of a Black university in Houston, begins the Commencement Address. Unfortunately, it is a tedious, pompous bore from start to finish, and my mind has no choice but to escape into the nebulous realm of my reveries. I want to discover in my musings a multi-faceted gem of meaning, significance, and purpose. After all, in another hour I will be a full-fledged college graduate, and I should know by now who I am, what my path in life is to be and what I have learned in my four years at Howard. But my reveries are jumbled, involving quick flashes on some of the emotion-charged experiences I had at Howard. On my freshman year’s daily hitchhiking trip to school with drivers from all walks of life, I witnessed their ubiquitous regression from generous human benefactor to prurient racist voyeur into the sexual anatomy and characteristics of Black men and women. Next I see myself in a sea of Black students entering the Rankin Chapel for Freshman Orientation, feeling alienated, vulnerable and overwhelmed by my Negrophobia. I see my chemistry lab partner’s acid-stained hands offering me a powdered donut, and I’m having an anxiety attack out of fear that such intimacy will engulf me with Negritude. I remember the shock I felt when I encountered Negro students who were not only my intellectual equal, but who were also superior, in intelligence, education and attainment. No one in my white world prepared me for such a “counter-intuitive” discovery. I recall the struggle to make the Howard varsity basketball team and how during the entire season I alternated between feeling like a white token and feeling so Black that I had concluded it was alright to call my new friends on the team that weird and wonderful term of endearment—nigger. I recollect the initial thrill I felt in intellectual pursuits. I came to love learning passionately and eventually fell in love with psychology. And psychology is providing answers to human mysteries that have caused me great befuddlement and angst. It was not long before I knew I was committed to the profession. Yet another image focuses on the few intimate friendships that I have made during my time at Howard. These allowed my empathic antennae to absorb on several levels the pain, joy, anger, frustration, and marvelous achievements that arose from the three and a half century experience of being a Black person in America. I conclude perhaps self-righteously, but accurately nonetheless, that no white person can really understand what it means to be Black without immersing oneself imaginatively into the multifaceted Black experience. And yet those friendships also taught me that despite culturally generated differences, people are people with all the same faults, foibles, and heroic tendencies that make up the human comedy. Next I focus on my flirtation with becoming a civil rights activist and my constant struggle between fear and exhilaration, disillusionment and hope. Then there is Desirie who I love even more than psychology, but apparently not enough to commit my whole life and being to her. I flash on many of the wonderful conversations we had and the love we made and gave one another. I am deep in one of those skin-on-skin recollections when I faintly begin to hear the Hallelujah Chorus, which lets me know that the Commencement Address is over. My reveries end as well. During the subsequent Conferring of Degrees, I automatically stand up to get a better look when Desirie Jackson’s name is called. The surrounding laughter makes me aware that I’m the only one sta
nding. I sit my mortified ass down.
After the ceremony, I join my parents and brother who are all smiles. My brother claps me on my back. My father is taking pictures while my mother hugs me tightly. She appears to be afraid to let me go as if I were leaving forever. For a brief moment, I see Desirie with her parents and siblings, but she does not see me. I wrestle with myself over the idea of going up to her to congratulate her. But I know that what I really want from her is forgiveness and a pledge of her continued love. I therefore remain rooted with my family by the sundial.
Chapter
26.
Blowing in the Wind
Throughout the summer of 1963, there has been a great deal of publicity about the upcoming March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom. Publicity is probably not the right word. Hysteria is more accurate. The entire city is besieged by an overwhelming fear of a pending race riot. The week before the March newspaper columnists and TV commentators predicted that a racial Armageddon was about to descend upon the “Capital of the Free World”. It got so bad that I was afraid to mention my interest in going to the March alone to any of my friends or family. If you think my father fearfully fought the idea of my attending Howard four years ago, he’s now apoplectic about my attending the March. Even my mother rushed in to share her anxious premonitions. “Izzy, I’m so afraid that you’ll be killed in that March. Please don’t go!”
“I have to, Ma. I made a promise?”
“A promise? Who did you promise?”
“I promised myself.”
“So you’ve never broken a promise before? I rather you live than you be so honorable.”
“Nothing will happen to me, Ma.”
“How do you know this? You have a crystal ball?”
“Ma, it’s gonna be a peaceful march. My mother shakes her head and walks to the kitchen mumbling, “My son the oracle.” My father is sitting in the adjacent dining area trying to eat his breakfast. “Mort,” my mother implores,” “Talk to your son.”
“Aw for Christ’s sakes, Pearl, can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace?“
My father yells from his seat, “Izzy, don’t be such a meshuganah. It’s crazy for you to go to that March. Don’t you realize that you and all the other naïve students are being manipulated by the Communist Party.”
“Aw Dad, there ya go again.”
“It’s true. J. Edgar Hoover has the proof. “
“I’m sorry, Dad, but you’re full of shit.” His eyes begin to bug out in fear and anger. He rises and with both hands on the table he yells even louder. “YOU LISTEN TO ME YOU LITTLE PUTZ. YOU’VE GOT TO LEARN THAT IN THIS WORLD NOBODY REALLY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU EXCEPT YOUR FAMILY.” I can’t take it anymore. I turn my back on both my parents and head for the door. “Bye Mom, bye Dad. I hope to see you tonight.” As I walk in the corridor toward the stairway, I can hear my parents arguing about which one of them should have stopped me.
Because I know that it will be impossible to drive my car all the way to the Washington Monument Grounds, I park my car at the Eastern Avenue District Line and take the Federal Triangle bus to get within striking distance of my destination. I long for the recently retired streetcars that would have taken me right to Constitution Avenue. I arrive at the Washington Monument around 9 AM and see a smattering of people sitting on the grass waiting for some signal for the March to begin. I hear a voice ask over a loudspeaker, “Has anyone seen Lena Horne, because she is supposed to perform shortly.” There are so few people so far that I begin to worry, and there is no one that I know. Within the next hour, however, more and more people show up, and I can see a train of buses lining up at a pre-ordained bus stop. A woman in a white dress with a blue sash comes up to me asks me to sign a pledge card that commits me to working toward the achievement of “social peace through social justice.” Soon the grass by the Monument seems to be completely covered with marchers who collectively have brought a large variety of protest signs. There are red-letter signs on a white field combined with white letters on a red field that say We March For Integrated Schools Now! We Demand Decent Housing Now. We Demand Voting Rights Now! I see a union sign that says Civil Rights plus Employment equals Freedom. The pace of the burgeoning crowds picks up rapidly. Before long the grassy area of the Monument and Constitution Avenue is filled with people and signs. Just as I slip into feelings of loneliness and alienation I hear a familiar refrain, “Hey white boy!” In the blinding sunlight I see five tall dark shadows walking toward me. It’s Courtney Cartwright and his friends Claudine, David, Vincent and James. “Hey Courtney, you’re a sight for sore eyes, and I mean that literally.” In my effort to discern the shadows, the sun hurts my eyes. There are greetings all around. “What’s happenin’, White. I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Why? Aren’t we on the same page when it comes to human rights?”
“But this March is about Negro rights.”
“Same thing,” I opine. James laughs and asks, “When did you become Colored?”
“When I tell people I just graduated from Howard, they all think I must be Colored.”
“Me too,” says Vince. I’ve seen you play B-Ball and dance. No white boy I know moves like that.”
“They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Claudine weighs in. “Do you still dance, Izzy?”
“Whenever I hear the music.” This makes everyone chuckle. “How are you Claudine?”
“Look Izzy, this is how I am.” She holds out her left hand, which is sparkling from her dazzling diamond ring. “Me and Courtney are gonna get married.”
“Whoa, that’s exciting. When?”
“In two weeks, Izzy. And after a weekend honeymoon in the Bahamas, I start working on a Masters in Social Work.”
“Where, Claudine?” “Here, Izzy, at Howard.”
“And you, Courtney. What are you up to?”
“I got an apprentice type job at an architectural firm downtown.”
“Wow, you guys are starting a brand new life. That’s great!”
“How about you, Izzy?”
“I’m going for my Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Illinois. In fact, I leave for Champaign-Urbana in a week.”
“That’s so great, Izzy. You’ll be a great head-shrinker,” Claudine says with a wide smile. I have to chuckle at that. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’d rather expand minds than shrink heads.” Vincent says, “Hey I see people gathering at the Ellipse. I think there’s gonna be music. Let’s go.” The six of us head toward the Ellipse with hundreds of other marchers. We see more colorful signs: We Demand an End to Bias Now. UAW Says Jobs and Freedom For Every American. Now we hear music—Joan Baez singing “Oh Freedom”. Then, Odetta sings “I’m On My Way.” We hear the voices of the Marchers watching the singers as well as those coming from all up and down Constitution Avenue. After a few songs, we notice that there are people marching up Constitution Avenue, and we think the March is beginning. Further up the avenue I see two very unexpected signs: BOSS for Jobs and Freedom; BOSS Demands the End of White Supremacy. I try to see who’s carrying the signs, but their bodies are blocked by the crush of people. As the spacing of the marchers changes, I see the Negus of BOSS. He has on a multi-colored African shirt and a matching hat. And now it’s clear that Colby Betterman is carrying one of the signs. Next to him is Mel Gray carrying the second sign. Eight other BOSS brothers are with them. In a few moments, we catch up with them. I introduce Courtney and his friends to the brothers of BOSS. Courtney and the Negus are about the same height, but while Courtney is loose and lanky, the Negus is ramrod straight. The Negus’ entire demeanor is Africa Proud. Tentatively, I say hello to the Negus. “That’s a beautiful shirt. What do you call it?” It’s called a Dashiki, which derives from a Yoruba word for shirt. And my cap is called a Kufi. My question, however, provokes a monologue from the Negus about the importance for Black people to re-engage with their African roots. The Negus addresses Courtney and his friends as a group.
“I hope
you folks are in touch with your African lineage because Black people don’t really know who they are unless they reacquaint themselves with their place of physical and spiritual origin. You know my birth name is Lloyd Redmayne, but I am thinking of changing it. I don’t buy that shit of Malcolm’s of putting an X after your name, but I haven’t come up with an Africanized name that feels right.” Courtney eyes the Negus questioningly trying to decide if the Negus is serious or play-acting a roots man. Courtney decides to take him seriously and replies, ”I’m not sure about that Lloyd. Africa is a very different place than here, and I’m not sure what relevance it has for me or my family. I’m an American not an African. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mel Gray slowly and surreptitiously nodding his head. I also see the anger in the Negus’ eyes. “Well, Mr. Cartwright, you must be one of those soulless Bougie Negroes who thinks he can make it in the white man’s world.”