He shrugged. “There’s a lot of frat idiocy on this campus.” He looked at me and seemed to consider his words. “You might like it, though. Who knows? You should talk to other people about it. I’m not the person to ask. Where are you living now?” Before I could answer, “Don’t tell me. I’m really not interested. Besides, it’s a good rule to never trust anyone who tells you all their business right away. Mind if I have a couple of your fries?”
I gestured that it was okay.
He popped one into his mouth. “Been over to Spelman yet?”
“No.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? That’s why men come to Morehouse. The only good reason.”
“I thought it was because of the storied history,” I said, using a phrase I’d read in some brochure.
“Well, there’s that. Whatever that is. What doesn’t have a storied history?” Everett ate another couple of fries. “Well, I’ll see you in class, Mr. Poitier.”
But he didn’t get up. It became clear that he expected me to leave. He pulled out a cigar as I collected my tray.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t light it in here. They’ll all have a fit. I usually don’t light them at all anymore. I read a book about U.S. Grant, and he had tongue cancer from these things. He felt as if he were swallowing razor blades at the end. I’ve never swallowed a razor blade, but I imagine it’s awful.”
“See ya,” I said.
“Don’t be a sheep, Mr. Poitier. Be anything, be a deer or a squirrel, a beaver or a gnu, but don’t be a sheep.”
“Okay.”
“Be a gecko or a platypus. Be a panther or a sparrow, but not a sheep. Promise me that.”
“Okay.”
I walked away and out of the building. People moved by me like animals and in fact they were, as am I, but they seemed so far away. Or at least I did: I felt like a study by Muybridge. Occasionally I sensed the gaze of someone on me, as if I were being watched, and I imagined them wondering, as I walked too quickly, whether my feet were ever off the ground at the same time, like a horse trotting.
A strategically placed phone call to Gladys Feet and the promise of a few more dollars got me a room in Brazeal Hall and a roommate. It also got me a clearer sense that Gladys Feet was flirting with me.
“Perhaps we could have lunch again,” she said.
“I don’t know why that would be necessary.”
“I thought you might give me a sense of how you’re adjusting to campus life. I’d love to hear how you think we might improve things.” In a softer, slightly deeper voice, she said, “We could meet well off campus.”
“No, thank you.” I hung up.
My roommate was the kind of guy who was considered cool on campus. In other words, my opposite. And he was none too happy to see me show up, as he believed that he would be living in the moderately tight space all alone. His name was Morris Chesney, and it’s fair to say that he hated me from the moment he laid eyes on me. He was not quite as tall as me and this stuck in his craw. He had loose curly hair that he loved to run his fingers through, all the time. His eyes were green, and, from his generously offered reports at least, the Spelman girls loved them. When I arrived with my one bag, Morris had to abandon a closet; however, it was clear that all of his stuff would not fit into one, so I suggested, like a simp, that he take some space in mine.
I said, “Really, Morris, I don’t have many things. You’re welcome to use this side of my closet.” I made the gesture in the spirit of getting along, being college buddies, elementary generosity. And so he proceeded to store his dirty gym shorts and sweat socks in there. To have called Morris Chesney passive-aggressive would have been a glaring understatement, as much as any understatement can glare. To have called him an egotistical, self-centered, not-terribly-bright asshole with a mean streak a mile wide would have been fairly accurate.
The room was what one might expect, essentially a cell. On the walls that were a color I called cholera were posters of musical groups the names of which I had heard in high school only in passing. Lots of guys in silky white suits who looked as cool as Morris Chesney—all either running their fingers through their hair or looking like they had just done so, and scantily covered curvy women in impossible, though not altogether uninteresting, poses.
Morris laughed when I told him my name. “What kind of stupid-ass name is Not?” he said.
“My name is Not Sidney.”
“Excuse me, Not Sidney. I’ll say you’re not Sidney.”
What was meant as an insult would have been a glancing blow at best, if I had cared. But what Morris Chesney had done was articulate what no one else ever had. He had said what probably everyone else meant to say but couldn’t come up with, or wouldn’t. He had pointed out to me that not only was I Not Sidney Poitier, but also that I was not Sidney Poitier: a confusing but profound and ultimately befuddling distinction, one that might have been formative or at least instructive for a smarter person.
Still, I responded to his intended insult with, “But you are every bit Morris Chesney.”
This stung him though he had no idea what I meant, and he really couldn’t have because I didn’t know what I meant, however much I believed it. This started an application of what would become a familiar, though not unwelcome, silent treatment that lasted two whole days.
Not surprisingly, which is the understater’s way of saying of course, Morris Chesney’s friends saw fit to dislike me as much as he did. From the first day, they would litter the room with themselves and trash and stare at me. Sitting there in a clump like that they reminded me of the bullies that used to beat me up on the playgrounds when I was growing up, but now I was unafraid, perhaps a foolish condition in any situation. One asked me what my major was and I said I didn’t know. Then they all laughed. Then he asked how I came to be in an upperclassmen’s dorm and I offered a lie, said the others were full. The answer seemed in some way to satisfy them, but did not make them happy.
Morris Chesney belonged to a fraternity. Natch, as my mother would probably have said. He asked me that third day, at the end of the silent treatment, after his cronies had left, if I might be interested in pledging. I had no idea what he was talking about and I think what I said was, “What are you talking about?”
“How would you like to be an Omega?” he asked.
“?”
“You really are a nerd, aren’t you?” he said. “I’m asking if you want to join my fraternity, Omega Psi Phi.”
“Why would I?” I asked, but not in a snide way.
“We have great parties for one thing. Bitches will sleep with frat men, especially Omegas. And business connections after college. One brother got a job making six figures right out of school.”
“What would I have to do?”
“Not much.”
That sounded so much like a lie that I wanted to believe him. This was when my life again became essentially a wildlife film, in the way that it worked itself out as something of a vast morality play, where the strong survive and the maintenance of social conventions seems the most certain and steadiest hedge against the harsh and unforgiving environment.
The mammals in the fraternity employed a kind of moral biology. If ugly and cruel, it was at least consistent. I showed up with Morris at the frat house, not a dorm but a hovel where they met to drink, and, I was told, have wanton sex with any willing and drunk woman. The members wore black robes and held staves. Candles, black and white, burned in every corner. And there seemed to be a constant humming, like chanting, but I couldn’t hear or see that any of them were making the sounds. It all made for bad music. They talked rather nicely to the seven of us standing in that poorly dressed living room, and then, after we seven agreed that we would be pledging, they shouted and made as if to punch us. They did punch one guy who failed to flinch with appropriate fear. After that he flinched as well as the rest of us. Morris Chesney was one of the bigwigs, strutting around in his dark glasses and red beret and casting an especially mean
eye at me.
A tall man whom we were instructed to refer to as Big Boss addressed us as a unit. He said, “You are going to cross the sands. You are not yet black enough to be Omegas, but you will burn under the sun on this, our terrain. If you are man enough you will make it across and be made right.” He turned to Morris. “Isn’t that right, Big Brother Chesney?”
“Right you are, Brother Benson.”
This hazing business wasn’t going to get started too quickly. I knew that. Too harsh too fast and the lot of us, dumb and smart alike, would have called it quits. No, they wanted us to invest some energy and time. They were simply what nature had made them, small bullies. And yet, there I was, more fool me, because I wanted the college experience.
I could see immediately that Morris Chesney wanted me to fail, a blind man could have seen that, but not too quickly, because as long as I was pledging and was subject to their commands I was essentially out of our dormitory room. I was required to wear a red T-shirt, the same one at all times, without washing or rinsing it, though I was allowed to bathe every other day.
At the first meeting of Professor Everett’s class, he walked by me, observed my red T-shirt, smiled, and said, “Baaaa.”
Ted was equally unimpressed. He said, “A fraternity? Hell, why didn’t you just go to LSU or some damn place? Have you ever seen a badger? They’re kinda like little bears.”
I had a vague understanding of their disappointment, but I wanted the full cliché college experience. In fact, I even attended the convocation in King Chapel, red T-shirt and all. There a short round vice president of something or other stood to address all of us, at least all of us who attended, and that turned out to be a small fraction of the student body. His name was Dudley Feet and so had to be in some way related to Gladys Feet. How many Feet could there be? There were at least two. He rose to the lectern and cleared his throat for about ten minutes, cast an eye about, no doubt counting the empty seats that so greatly outnumbered the scattered attendees.
He said, “Men, special men, men of our race, men of our future, our future men, our future, manly men, men men, Morehouse men, we gather here today to celebrate a mission, a mission that has produced the likes of the Doctor Reverend Martin Luther King Junior and Edwin Moses, Maynard Jackson and Spike Lee, Howard Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson. These men are more than graduates, they are alumni. This is more than a college, it is an institution. We gather here today on this the beginning of a new academic year to join our spirits and minds together, to move them in one fluid and forward motion toward that great good that is our mission and legacy here at Morehouse. We are called the Harvard of the South, but we here at Morehouse know that Harvard is the Morehouse of the North. You will be tested here on these grounds, tested for what life will throw at you. I ask you to recall the Book of Psalms, sixty-six, ten through twelve: ‘For Thou has tested us O Lord; Thou has tried us as silver is tried. Thou didst bring us into the net, Thou didst lay affliction on our loins, Thou didst let men ride over our heads. We have gone through the fire and through the water; Yet Thou has brought us forth to a spacious place.’ We ask what it means that silver is tried. It means that silver was tried, and it was not as good as gold. That’s what that means. And you wonder what the psalm means when it addresses the affliction that has been laid on our loins and I will tell you what it means: it means leave those girls alone and you know the ones I mean or else men will ride over your heads. We will cross the desert together, our naked toes sinking luxuriously into the hot loose sand, our naked backs darkening beneath the hammering of the eternal sun, our sweat mixing, our blood boiling and becoming one, our voices lifting into one great instrument, our manhood rising into one massive thrust against the oppression that rides us!” Feet was sweating now, though the only rise he had gotten out of his audience was a shifting to become more comfortable and the exit of two students who had wisely seated themselves by the door. “I am pleased today to present our guest speaker. You all know him. He has done much to uplift the race. He was the first black man on television to carry a gun. He is a gentleman, an actor, a comedian, an author, and above all else, an educator. You all know him from television, but we know him as a friend. Students, Doctor William H. Cosby Junior.”
There was an enthusiastic welcome. In fact there was more applause than seemed possible from the audience that I had roughly counted. And when I looked again, the empty seats had been filled, including the one next to me, which had been filled with a smiling Morris Chesney. The smile was a bad sign. After only a week in college I was able to deduce that much.
“Sit on the floor,” he said.
“What?”
“Big Brother Morris says sit on the floor, you pimple.”
I stood, folded up my chair seat, and dropped my stupid ass to the sticky floor. Why? Because Big Brother Morris had said so, and I had entered into this social system willingly for some reason and felt strangely compelled to abide by its rules. I sat, my sight just cresting the level of the seat back in front of me.
Cosby fumbled with a fat unlit cigar and adjusted his dark glasses. “You men think I’m going to take it easy on you. You think because you’re in college and sitting here in khakis and loafers that I’m all right with you. You think that because you’re not bopping your heads to rap music while sitting here that I’m going to embrace you. You’re wrong. You’re all pathetic. You’re pathetic until you’re not pathetic, until you do something strong and good and not until you do that. You think because you probably won’t be clad in an orange jumpsuit for stealing a piece of pound cake that I feel all warm and fuzzy about you. I sell Pudding Pops for the white man. I don’t know why I’m saying that, but I am. I make myself sick, but the white man is not to blame. He didn’t put the gun in the hands of the black kid down in juvenile hall. No, his missing father put it there. Pound cake. I’m on television. Black girls have babies by three or four fathers and why? Pudding Pops! That’s what I’m saying. Some of you are probably wondering how I can stand up here, call me high and mighty, talking about how I can stand here when I’m being sued for having babies with a woman other than my wife. Well, hell, I can afford to have babies. Pudding Pops! If you don’t know who your children’s friends are, then you’re not doing your job. Some of you have probably fathered children already. Babies having babies. Pound cake. Did you know that black girls graduating from high school outnumber men seventy to thirty? Where are these educated, fine young women going to find suitable partners? That’s why I have some babies on the side. Pudding Pops! Pants down around their cracks. What’s wrong with them? There’s something wrong with these people. When you put your clothes on backwards, there’s something wrong. Fifty percent dropout rate. Where are the parents? What kind of parents will you be? That’s the test. What kind of parents are you now? I’ve been on television since nineteen sixty-two. I kissed a Japanese woman on screen in nineteen sixty-six and managed not to have a baby with her. I want to thank you for having me here today, and I want you to know I will be more than happy to sign copies of my book, Fatherhood, which is on sale just outside at an attractive discount. Believe me, you need to read it. Thank you.”
Everyone stood to applaud. I didn’t know why. However, I saw it as an opportunity to get up off the filthy floor. Morris Chesney kicked me when I started to rise.
“Did Big Brother Morris tell you that you could get up?”
“No, Big Brother Morris.”
“Then keep your sorry ass down there on that floor.”
I looked down past the row of trousered legs to my right to see the filthy red T-shirt of another pledger, the smallest and meekest of us, Eugene Talbert. He was seated on the floor as well. I realized that though he was eight inches shorter than me, we were the same size.
I wouldn’t say that I had custodial, protective, or even particularly warm feelings for Eugene Talbert, but I wouldn’t say a lot of things that are true. He lived in DuBois Hall with many other freshmen, so I didn’t see him except for shared
hours of humiliation and torture at the hands of the Big Brothers. He was from New Jersey, I knew that much. I also knew that he was a chemistry major with little or no interest in chemistry. He wanted to be an Omega as his father was an Omega, as his uncle was an Omega, as his brother was an Omega. They were all chemists and loved chemistry and worked in labs making flavor additives and enhancers for the fast-food industry. They were all tall. Small Eugene told me all of this while we stood side by side with pails of sand suspended up and away from our bodies. We were standing in a room with maroon, flocked wallpaper cleared of furniture while the Big Brothers watched a Spike Lee film in an adjacent room. Eugene was sweating profusely; his eyes were starting to roll back into his head. I told him to take deep breaths, to try to get into a zone, to visualize something peaceful, quiet, a place he loved, which was all bullshit. I was still holding my load up because I was stronger than the little guy. He collapsed and Big Brothers Morris and Maurice came slowly walking in, heads bobbing or nodding, I didn’t know the difference. They laid into Eugene without pause.
“Goddamn! What the fizzy fuck is wrong with you, EUgene?!” Morris shouted or maybe Maurice did; it didn’t matter which one. That was how they said his name, EUgene.
“I think little EUgene here thinks we just give instructions to smell our own breath!”
“Thinks we’re kidding!” The Big Brothers had a habit of echoing each other.
“Seems he thinks we didn’t mean for him to keep the pails in the motherfucking air! What should we do to you, you little maggot?!”
“What should we do?!”
“I don’t know, Big Brothers!” Eugene barked out.
“Do you really want to be an Omega, EU-fucking-gene?”
“Yes, Big Brother!”
“Then, tell me, you tiny worm, why did you drop those pails, the ones we told you to keep in the air?”
“My arms got tired, Big Brother.”
I Am Not Sidney Poitier Page 10