by Kiese Laymon
LaThon called me a sellout and sucker when he found out about Abby Claremont. “We from Holy Family,” he said. “We know better than to do that kind of shit. You forgot where we from?”
Instead of chilling with him after practice, or going to watch Mid-South Wrestling with him on Friday nights, I found ways to be with Abby Claremont. I wanted to talk to him about what my body felt during love and sex, and ask him if his body felt anything like mine. I wanted to know if he kept his shirt on when he had sex. How did he feel right before and right after orgasms? What did he do when sweat dripped in his eyes during sex? If his girlfriend wanted to have sex in the car, but he really needed to take a shower first, did he tell her he was musty so the stank wouldn’t be a surprise? I wanted to tell LaThon I wasn’t a sellout and I wasn’t in love with a white girl but it was hard when I was doing sellout/in-love stuff like riding in her black convertible with the top down, or holding her hand in between classes, or watching her white friends use vowel sounds we prided ourselves on obliterating and never calling them meager to their faces.
The only other girl at my school who asked me to touch her was my friend Kamala Lackey. Kamala Lackey was husky, quick for her size, fine as all outdoors, darker than me, and the wittiest junior at St. Joseph. Like me, Kamala Lackey didn’t have a car or a license. She lived twenty miles away in Canton. So if Kamala Lackey was ever going to ask me to do anything other than hold her hand or touch her breasts in the art closet, we would have to do some serious planning. I was scared to plan or initiate anything with a girl because if a girl said yes to anything I planned, I wondered if it was because she was scared to say no because I was so heavy. I never wanted anyone to do anything with their body they didn’t want to do. If Kamala Lackey kissed me first, I would have kissed her. If she asked me to have sex with her, I would have happily, and fearfully, done it. But I didn’t know if I would have felt as free or defiant after Kamala Lackey and I had sex, though I know I would have felt as beautiful. Kamala Lackey reminded me every third period, “Abby Claremont got that big ol’ jungle fever and you the big ol’ jungle,” since Abby’s last boyfriend was a fat black boy like me. “I’m the big ol’ jungle, too,” she said. “Big ol’ jungles need to be with big ol’ jungles.”
I laughed and laughed and laughed at Kamala Lackey’s joke until I didn’t.
I kept my relationship with Abby Claremont a secret because I knew you would beat me if you knew I was having sex with a white girl, but mostly because I didn’t want you to think you’d raised a big black sellout who thought you were ugly. I wasn’t completely sure I was a sellout, but I knew you were the most beautiful woman in the world. In my imaginary conversations with you, you shook your head and hugged me when I told you I just really liked having sex with a girl who only wanted to have sex with me, and Abby Claremont was the only person in the world for whom that was true. In my imagination, you kissed me on the cheek for saying “for whom.”
Abby Claremont and I had sex a lot but we never asked each other one question about our relationships to sex, other than “why don’t you ever initiate” and “did that feel good to you?” I didn’t know how to answer those questions and I worried if I said the wrong thing, Abby Claremont would think I was weak and wouldn’t want to have sex with only me anymore.
Friday and Saturday nights, Abby and her friends hung out and got drunk in the parking lot of St. Richard. Sometimes I’d be the only black person there. On those days, I tried to stay in the car listening to the new Black Sheep tape until she was ready to leave or too drunk to know where she was. Abby Claremont wanted to have sex a lot of those nights when she was drunk. Usually, I said no because my body told me it was wrong. Once I said yes because I wanted to feel touched, but I didn’t want to be judged if my touch was meager. The day after I had sex with Abby Claremont while she was drunk, I knew I’d done something wrong, though Abby Claremont told me she wanted to do everything we did. I just didn’t know how she could remember anything we did.
When I told her I wanted to talk to her about having sex while she was drunk, she said, “I trust you. Don’t worry about it. I know you’d never hurt me. I know you’re a good dude.”
Near the middle of the basketball season, I played like basketball wasn’t the most important thing in my world. Our coach, Coach Phil Schitzler, a gravelly voiced white man who was also the most popular teacher in school, told Donnie Gee he thought my problem was “that white girl.”
When I went to talk to Coach Schitzler, he demanded I get my priorities straight and stop running around after Abby Claremont. “It’s in your best interest to not be running around chasing no nut with that fast-ass gal,” he told me. “Wait till after the playoffs. Then you can chase all the nuts you want.”
“Chasing a nut” became the phrase all my boys used to describe a person who was fiending for sex, but not fiending for a relationship. Even though LaThon knew I was a sellout, he died laughing every time I said, “That nigga stay chasing a nut.” I never told him I stole “chasing a nut” from Coach Schitzler.
On March 4, 1991, a few weeks after we lost in the playoffs, I went to Jabari’s house after open gym. Abby Claremont was going to pick me up later that night, have sex in the parking lot of Red Lobster, and take me to the end of my street, where I would walk home. While we were watching a basketball game, the news was interrupted with a video of a gang of white police officers surrounding four other white police officers. The four officers in the middle were beating the life out of this heavy-chained black man.
We watched the news replay the video four times.
We all had cops rough us up, chase us, pull guns on us, call us out of our names. We all watched cops shame our mamas, aunties, and grandmamas. We all floated down I-55 creating lyrical force fields from the police and everything the police protected and served, rapping, “A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown.” But here we were, in one of our safe spaces, watching white folk watch white police watch other white police destroy our body.
Abby Claremont’s horn surprised me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as I got in her convertible.
“Nothing,” I said, and kept picking around the minibag of Funyuns I took from Jabari’s house. “Can we put the top up and can you just take me home?”
“Why?”
“My mama just said I have to be home earlier than usual. She sick. The flu.”
“You are such a fucking liar, Keece,” she said. “Tell me why you want the top up? I’m asking. And what is that smell?” I looked at her in a way I never looked at her before. “Why are you looking at me like that? Say it.”
“Can we just talk about what we’re doing tomorrow?”
Usually when I got out of Abby Claremont’s convertible, we kissed on the lips with lots of tongue. Tonight, I kissed Abby Claremont on her cheek and told her thanks for being so nice to me. She started trying to talk to me about what was happening at home between her father and her mother, but I told her I could not talk about that right now because you were sick.
“Asshole,” she said as I got out of the car. “Don’t fucking call me tonight either. Or tomorrow.”
When I got in the house, you brought your belt across my neck. Earlier in the day, Ms. Andrews, one of your friends who was a teacher at my school, told you Coach Schitzler said I was in a sexual relationship with a white girl. You heard this “news” on the same day you watched a gang of white police officers try to kill a chained black man they later claimed had “Hulk-like” strength.
I did not know Rodney King, but I could tell by how he wiggled, rolled, and ran he was not a Hulk. Hulks did not beg for mercy. Hulks did not shuffle from ass whuppings. Hulks had no memories, no mamas. I wondered what niggers and police were to a Hulk. I wondered if all sixteen-year-old Americans had a little Hulk in them.
I knew, or maybe I accepted, for the first time no matter what anyone did to me, I would never beg anyone for mercy. I would always recover. There was physically nothing anyo
ne could do to me to take my heart, other than kill me. You, Grandmama, and I had that same Hulk in our chest. We would always recover. At some point during my beating, I just stopped fighting and I let you hit me. I did not scream. I did not yell. I barely breathed. I took my shirt off without you telling me. I let you beat me across my back. It was the only beating in my life where watching you beat me as hard as you could felt good.
After the beating, you came to my bedroom. You told me I really needed to think about the difference between loving someone and loving how someone made me feel. You said if I liked how Abby Claremont made me feel, I really needed to ask myself why. You kept telling me I was beautiful. You said there were plenty of black girls in school and I would be safer “courting” one of them. You used words like “fetish” and “experimentation” and “miscegenation.” You said Abby Claremont’s parents were breaking up over our relationship. You said Abby Claremont didn’t know me well enough to love me and only loved the excitement that came with the danger of being with a black boy who drove her father crazy.
I wasn’t sure if you were right, but I knew you were in no position to give me advice about relationships given your experiences with Malachi Hunter.
And I told you exactly that.
You beat my body the fuck up again that night. I did not cry. I just watched you swing down until your arms got tired. “What is wrong with you, Kie?” you kept asking. “I know you’re a better child than this. What is wrong with you?”
I did not answer because I did not know what was wrong with me.
Abby Claremont and I continued to have sex until near the end of the school year, even though I lied and told you we thought it was safer to just be friends. One weekend, when Malachi Hunter invited you to New Orleans, I told you I was staying at LaThon’s house. When you left, I climbed through a window I left open and Abby Claremont and I spent the entire weekend having sex in your bed. We did not use condoms.
That Sunday night, Abby Claremont sat on the edge of your bed talking about cycles of depression in her family, and how our relationship was triggering responses from her parents she never expected. I’d never heard an actual real-life person use the word “depression” before. Scarface was the only artist I knew of who talked about depression. I didn’t understand what depression meant, so I told myself it was a made-up white word Scarface stole and it meant “extremely sad.”
I asked Abby Claremont if she thought we should stop seeing each other since our relationship was making people in both of our families extremely sad.
“I’m not talking about extreme sadness,” she said. “I’m talking about fucking depression.”
A few weeks later, you saw me crying in my bedroom after I found out Abby Claremont was considering hooking up with Donnie Gee’s cousin, a kid with the highest vertical leap in Jackson. You asked me what was wrong. I told you I was upset that you and my father didn’t try harder to make it work.
That made you cry and apologize.
That made me smile and tell more lies.
Other than playing basketball, writing paragraphs, and having sex with Abby Claremont, making you feel what you didn’t want to feel when you didn’t want to feel it was one of the best feelings in my world. Another incredible feeling was getting away with lying to Abby Claremont after we got back together. I congratulated myself for only kissing and having sexy conversations with other girls, but never having sex with them at Donnie Gee’s parties.
Donnie Gee didn’t drink our entire junior year because he wanted a basketball scholarship. I lied and told Donnie Gee I wasn’t drinking for the same reason. Really, I was afraid I’d hurt myself or someone else if I ever got drunk again.
Before the first party of the year at Donnie Gee’s house, Donnie Gee and I bought two forty-ounces of St. Ides. We poured out the malt liquor and filled both empty bottles with off-brand apple juice. We checked each other’s noses for floating boogers. We checked our breath for that dragon. We stuffed our mouths with apple Now and Laters and cherry Nerds. When Donnie Gee’s doorbell rang, we stumbled around the house, whispering Jodeci lyrics inches under the earlobes of girls who didn’t run from us.
Abby Claremont wasn’t at the party because she was on punishment for dating me.
About three hours into Donnie Gee’s party, Kamala Lackey asked me to follow her into one of the bedrooms. I walked into the dark room behind Kamala Lackey loud-rapping Phife’s “Scenario” verse. The room we walked into was the same room where Donnie Gee and I watched Clarence Thomas talk about experiencing a hi-tech lynching when Anita Hill told on him for sexually harassing her. I knew Clarence Thomas was lying because there was no reason in the world for Anita Hill to lie, and because I’d never met one older man who treated women the way he wanted to be treated. Every older man I knew treated every woman he wanted to have sex with like a woman he wanted to have sex with. Clarence Thomas seemed as cowardly as every older man to me.
Once Kamala Lackey and I were both in the room, I complimented her on hair I couldn’t see and asked where she got the perfume I couldn’t smell. I turned on the light. Kamala Lackey just sat on the edge of Donnie Gee’s bed, her fists filled with the comforter, her eyes staring toward the window. I wondered how drunk she was.
“You, you look like Theo Huxtable tonight,” I remember Kamala Lackey stuttering as she got up and turned the light off.
I was a sweaty, bald-headed, six-one, 224-pound black boy from Jackson, Mississippi. I owned one pair of jeans, those fake Girbauds that were actually yours, and one decent sweatshirt. Nothing about me looked, moved, or sounded like Theo Huxtable.
When Kamala Lackey asked me if I wanted to see her boobs, I ignored her question, assumed she was definitely drunk, and tried to tell her what I hated about The Cosby Show. The sweaters, the corny kids, the problems that weren’t problems, the smooth jazz, the manufactured cleanliness, the nonexistent poverty just didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t only that the Cosbys were never broke, or in need of money, or that none of their black family members and friends were ever in material need of anything important; it was that only in science fiction could a black man doctor who delivered mostly white babies, and a black woman lawyer who worked at a white law firm, come home and never once talk mess about the heartbreaking, violent machinations of white folk at both of their jobs, and the harassing, low-down, predictable advances of men at Clair’s office. I remember telling Kamala Lackey how never in the history of real black folk could black life as depicted on The Cosby Show ever exist. And it only existed on Cosby’s show because Bill Cosby seemed obsessed with how white folk watched black folk watch us watch him.
I didn’t exactly say it that way, though.
“Bill Cosby and them be lying too much,” is what I said. “That shit fake. You think it’s because white folk be watching?”
“Why you still watch that show?” Kamala Lackey asked me. “A Different World is way better.”
When I got ready to ask her why Denise wasn’t on the show anymore, Kamala Lackey asked me again if I wanted to see her boobs.
Of course I wanted to see Kamala Lackey’s boobs. Or, of course I wanted Kamala Lackey to think I wanted to see her boobs. Or, of course I wanted to know Kamala Lackey wanted me to see her boobs. When I fake yawned and coughed, Kamala Lackey stood up and asked if I had any more Now and Laters. After I handed her what was left of the pack, she asked if I was really drunk. Before I could lie, Kamala Lackey told me she wasn’t drunk either.
She sat on the floor with her back pressed against my knees and made me promise not to tell anyone what she was about to tell me.
I promised.
Thirty minutes later, when Kamala Lackey stopped talking, she also stopped digging her fingers into Donnie Gee’s nappy carpet. “You know what I’m trying to say?” she finally asked, and stood in front of the bed. “I feel like I’m dying sometimes.”
I said I understood, even though I didn’t understand why she was saying any of it to me.
“Y
ou gone say something?” I remember her asking. “Go ahead. You know you can talk, right?”
I wanted to tell Kamala Lackey that when I was younger, a few miles from where we were, I got drunk off this box wine you kept in the house. I drank until I was numb because it helped me feel better about what was being done to lips, nipples, necks, thighs, a penis, and a vagina in our house. It felt so scary. I felt so stuck. It all felt like love, too, until it didn’t.
Then it felt like dying.
But I didn’t say any of that. I told Kamala Lackey thank you for talking to me. I told her I wouldn’t tell my boys anything she told me if she didn’t tell her girls I was acting drunk. Then we just sat there, wondering who would walk out first.
Like most kids at Donnie Gee’s party, I had to sit and listen to hundreds of talks from you and your friends telling me no black hoodies in wrong neighborhoods, no jogging at night, hands in plain sight at all times in public, no intimate relationships with white women, never drive over the speed limit or do those rolling stops at stop signs, always speak the king’s English in the presence of white folk, never get outperformed in school or in public by white students, and most important, always remember, no matter what, white folk will do anything to get you.
I listened.
I never heard the words “sexual violence” or “violent sex” or “sexual abuse” from one family member, one teacher, or one preacher but my body knew sexual violence and violent sex were as wrong as anything police or white folk could do to us.
The night Kamala Lackey talked with me, I walked out of Donnie Gee’s room the same way I walked in: loudly rapping Phife’s “Scenario” verse, with a turned-up forty in one hand and cupped testicles in the other. Kamala Lackey rolled her eyes at me, shook her head, and turned left down the hall.
I turned right.
When Donnie Gee asked me if I had sex with Kamala Lackey, I smirked and said, “Fool, what you think?” I remember feeling really good about myself because I technically didn’t lie to Donnie Gee, and technically didn’t touch Kamala Lackey, so I didn’t technically cheat on Abby Claremont, the only girl I’d ever kissed.