by Mat Johnson
It wasn’t that bad, really. I wore two pairs at a time and when I got cold he let me wrap them around my feet like slippers, around both shoulders like slings, even on my head as a skullcap. The Cottonals were so soft, their downy glowing whiteness straight from their plastic womb, silently holding me there, hugging me with gentle, unconditional support as I slammed my fingers into the old manual typewriter I’d been given. David sat behind me, smoking something pungent he occasionally offered and I steadily refused. The method insane but the only way I would have come up with the idea, If Comfort Came First: a campaign bearing that slogan depicting men in a variety of life’s duties wearing only Cottonals as the rest of the room, fully clothed, ignored them. A ballroom dancer performing on the floor with evening-dressed partner in hand. A bus driver who opened the door for the camera/passenger while seated in only his Cottonals and his black cap. One Cottonal-clad man on a subway platform amidst a sea of pinstripe, herringbone, and pleats, the method insane but not so crazy when David walked up the office steps a week later, fresh from his Soho meeting, and said, ‘We got the bastards,’ screaming it again as he spiked his suitcase to the carpeted floor.
Home
My London begins as the view from my window, the park behind me and the street through the trees in front. Then, as I learn the way, it is the distance between the lock on my front door to the buzzer at David’s, and everything on that trail. Then, with time, it grows to the distance from those two places to Brixton High Street and the tube there, linking me to all the other places the city becomes.
Soho was tiny streets of cobblestones and heavy buildings that seemed to lean in against one another to create a cave above you. Record shops with only a few records but good ones and they let you vibrate the store with their sounds. Sex shops selling everything but sex (but you could smell it maybe), signs selling amyl nitrate (poppers!) for flaccid love. East London voices trying to bark punters into red neon doors. Sparse hookers at night (are there any actual female hookers anymore?) and pubs that overflow onto the street with smoke, beer, guffaws and too-loud conversations as people carried their pint glasses from one door to the next.
Ladbroke Grove on Saturdays. Get off at Notting Hill Station and walk down till first you get the antiques (so many little white tags with prices so high) and then after a few blocks you get the food (all eatables should be wrapped in off-white paper), then the clothes, the racks of them, dancing to the silent music of the wind. It doesn’t matter if it’s cold, there will still be brothers hanging in front of Ground Floor Pub, funky dressed and afros tight, sculpted sideburns and silver hoops in ears, pints in hand talking junk. By Ladbroke Grove Station there will always be crowds regardless of rain, weaving between stalls as vendors sit on lawn chairs listening to radios held together by electric tape. And wasn’t it a heaven, where Camden was a place of wealth and joy and not just a place in New Jersey for negroes so poor they couldn’t even afford to live in Philly’s ghettos?
Oxford Street was narrow but endless, padded with cheap synthetic clothes, hung in store windows and off vendor’s stalls snug between behemoth chain stores. The screech of the auction shop man pimping whatever cheap shit someone had shoved into his hand, outdated crap with the fragility total incompetence creates, things without packaging, logo or even proper company name. American fast food joints, both the authentic and replicated ones that look like movie props (the main character would work there). Buses fire engine red and soaked in time. End of the world: cockroaches and London buses, them all driving around, having fun till Armageddon remembers itself and comes back for them. Fun fun buses open in the back so I could jump on or off as they paraded down off into Knights-bridge, or back up Tottenham Court Road, ride one all the way back into Brixton or Clapham if I had the time. Or go to places that didn’t even exist yet for me. Looking out the window wondering if I’m in the same city at all, if some neighborhoods have their own decade they choose to live in, some time they’re so sweet on they never move forth. Riding, knowing that someday, when I had time, I would do that: just get on, just go, just ride, every dirty red bus it had to offer, letting the network of roads provide more grooves for my mind to take hold. I read a book that said that in this old city of Albion, the roads were here before man, cut by animals long extinct, the ground made solid and permanent by hooves and paws guided only by their feel for the energy of this land. Man just came and paved over the trails that were already there, making these roads as sacred as concrete could muster. I was from a people that saw deities at crossroads; I could understand that.
Home was Brixton, this burgeoning outpost of urban negritude. Africans in London since the Romans arrived but never like this: so many native born, a mass to whom their ancestral land was just a second-hand memory. A myriad of melanin born of multiple hemispheres, small islands to big continents, a populace as worldly as their American counterparts were provincial. A negropolis forming, looking at itself, trying to figure out what it was. And here I am, David’s newborn pride: an ambassador from the most successful (hah!) black folks in modernity, the culture to which this new community looked for definition, (mis)guidance. A people, who despite defining the popular culture of the new world, barely knew of this other’s existence, who rarely made it across the Atlantic for a visit and almost never came to stay. And me, the traveler from this mythic land. This was a city that smiled when it saw me coming. And I smiled back. I had a purpose here. There were mistakes they hadn’t made yet, things I could help them with.
When Lennox Lewis (British-born, North American-raised, London-adopted) returned Stateside to fight Alabama holly-roller Evander Holyfield, it was as if Lewis were personally doing me the favor of going back to kick black America’s ignorant ass. I said, This is the sign of the torch passing. I said, Look, my former tormentors, there is a bigger, stronger, more articulate Afro-urban nation on the rise. I said, Behold the warrior of the new tribe. David said, You’re mad, that big wanker’s going down, and proceeded to drop five hundred quid on ‘the American one, whatsit’ at the off-off-track betting club he’d dragged me to. And after Lewis had made his appearance, had patted the American around the ring for twelve rounds like a cat playing with his food, and the judges had tried to deny fate by deeming it a draw, I didn’t even care that I’d lost the two hundred pounds I had riding on the knockout. The message had been sent: that even their champions were in danger. At this club, 100 per cent loss ratio meant chairs flying, male cursing, and female crying. I remained seated, in the tuxedo David had taken me to buy hours before, laughing. Mouth wide, chest bouncing, hands easily behind my head, legs crossed, staring at the frustrated gamblers rioting before me. David, his soft roundness hiding underneath the square table, started pulling on my leg with his blanket hands.
‘Chris, you fucking nutter, get under the table before you get killed.’
But it was just funny, that’s all it was. Beige, black, and brown hands swinging to claim maroon blood. So many sounds, everything moving: chairs across the room, pictures off the wall, projectile napkin dispensers, even my chest jumping as I go ha-ha-ha and laugh at all this around me. Play on. My first public brawl outside the States and I didn’t care because they didn’t have guns, did they? It wasn’t like home, they could beat on one another all they wanted, there would be no random shooting. The pop-pop wouldn’t find me here. This was a new, safer world. What were they going to do, kick my teeth in? I could get caps.
We took the night bus home from Trafalgar after that. That was when Margaret wouldn’t let David have the car (note: speed bumps are not to be used as ramps, particularly not at four in the morning, in a quiet suburb like Croydon, in a Fiat hatch back when the driver is drunk and the car is too too fast for such roadways). I made us sit on the second level, in the front, my novelty spot. David sat next to me eating the hot dog he bought for two quid right next to the stop and I looked at the road as we wandered south. We were going through hotel-lined streets and I was staring at the buildings, their smooth w
hite facades going on for blocks like an army of cream cakes, occasional small signs hung before them to offer entry to the temporarily homeless and financially secure. No one was on the streets, not even rats. No light was on. No one was awake because no one knew each other. A neighborhood of strangers probably thinking about someplace else, maybe on their way there, maybe not.
‘It’s lonely out here, isn’t it?’ I asked. David’s hot dog was gone and he was brushing mustard off his face.
‘Sure. It’s a lonely world. Why do you think people get married?’
‘Why?’
‘Love shits on lonely.’
‘If we ever have Aphrodite as a client, you got to use that one.’
‘My Margaret, she’s my world. She’s what keeps me weighted.’
‘I feel the same way about my account at Barclays.’ We were crossing over the Lambeth Bridge and I was checking my watch against Big Ben’s yellow face and getting off on that, loving a cliché.
‘Oi, you little yardie, I know what’s in there, I’m the one that puts it. But I’m telling you, you gotta have someone. My Margaret, she’s my roots, man. She’s like, if somebody shook the world, y’know, she’d be the thing that keeps me from flying off. A man has to have that, can you understand?’
Twenty minutes later, we were at the Chinese take-away off Effra Road bleaching our brown under bright fluorescents. ‘Chris, that’s what you need.’
‘Whatever boss.’ I reached for my bag. How did I live before curry and chips? Fuck cheesesteaks. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I added, but I wasn’t thinking about no woman, not in any sense beyond the normal unceasing mindless fantasies that populated straight men’s minds. What I was doing was staring behind the take-away counter at the aluminum trays with their clear plastic tops and thinking, That’s the only thing I miss about America: Chinese food in white cardboard boxes with little tin handles and red dragons on the side. Going on eight months over here and wow, look at that, that’s the only thing missing for me.
Love
Friday, I opened the door for her. This little woman, too proud to even look up at me past the rib she came to. She stood, beneath layers of white skies and before wet sidewalk, a vision. A face so black it was bold, cheeks a duo of sweeping circles beneath the soft rainbow of a head wrap that contained all the colors that could scream or cry for you.
‘Is this the place?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is this the place that’s supposed to be taking pictures of me?’ she asked. She was so much smaller than I’d been expecting, but she had to be the dancer David hired: she was too pretty not to be getting paid for it.
‘Please, please come in,’ I managed. I shouldn’t even have been answering the door because by this time, besides clients growing and waiting for our attentions, Urgent had a secretary too, a bony, Marlboro Light-smoking Brixton boy named Raz who should have been down here with this woman, saving me from my awkwardness. The shoot was scheduled for a half hour before, but models, David reminded, were always late. Taking in the smell of her: of violet water and hot sauce.
‘Fionna Otubanjo?’ She just walked by me and started heading upstairs; I couldn’t tell if she’d nodded. Tiny, this one. The size of a girl but the shape and proportions of a woman, making the stairwell look cavernous as my eyes struggled to keep perspective.
After I took her coat, introduced her to the photographer, the stylist, and even Margaret, who was taking a rare intermission from her reading to make an appearance on the third floor, I showed Fionna to the bathroom that would be her dressing room for the day. Then I pulled David to a far and relatively secluded section of the floor.
‘Cuz, she’s gorgeous.’ Somebody in the room had to acknowledge this.
‘Really? A bit of a head on a stick, I thought. A short stick at that. She looked bigger on her Z card. If you like, maybe later we’ll go for a curry or something, you could ask her to tag along.’ David reached into the cereal box in his hand and threw a kernel into my mouth.
Golden Crowns, an old-brand cereal owned by one of several companies that realized Urgent knew how to implant hunger in even the most bloated, who understood that our work was the stuff people were starting to whisper about, the kind that would be bringing back industry awards in the year to come. Its box stood in the center of the white cove, ready for its picture to be taken, short and proud and belligerent with caloric prophecies. Golden Crowns, a combination of flour, water, high fructose corn syrup, and yellow dye number 24, but also something so sweet it didn’t need milk or morning.
‘Alright, luv,’ David was bellowing at the emerged Fionna. ‘What we need you to do is just run, leap right over the box, right? Spread your legs open like scissors, give it as much as you can. We want to capture you directly above the Golden Crowns, almost as if they gave you the gift of flight.’
‘I can do that,’ Fionna said, looking at me, and wasn’t it immediately clear that she could do much more? That she could hold your head in her lap, rub her little palms over your face and wipe away everything else besides the blackness behind closed eyes? That if there were arranged marriages I would have had David call her family immediately on my behalf, have stood behind him smiling and jumping up and down like a horny Masai?
The photographer’s tin can lights sat on the floor, hung from erected scaffolding, rested on the ends of tables and chairs, all pointing in one direction, metallic ravens holding brilliant court. The heat almost solar in intensity, pulsing away from the illumination to the rest of the space beyond, the warm touch linking all those in the room together. And within the fire, one body moving. To watch her run, to see her leap. The determined start with bare feet slamming the floor and then the jump, the seizing of space with a ferocious kick, a smile that flashed gloriously as soon as the pivot foot left the ground. How could one so short fly so high? And all this along with a bowl of glued Golden Crowns in one hand and a spoon in the other. Running and leaping and landing. The toe and ball of one foot touched back down and the rest of the body followed, the flesh moving slightly past the limits of her bones for a moment until it bounced back into structure again. David walked behind me and snapped his fingers by my ear – ‘Pay attention to the work’ – but how could anyone with her perspiring until the midnight fabric of her leotard became even darker beneath the neck and arms, her form becoming an essay on the possibilities of blackness, a diatribe about refusing the limitations of one word? I sat, leaned against David’s desk with my shirt open, my sleeves rolled, watching. Witnessing the sweat drip away from her as she ran and explode around her when she landed, giving a shine to the floor. Steaming the windows to opaque rectangles, forcing me to sweat along with her, to feel my own oily wetness and susceptibility, until, in one particularly triumphant soar (spoon and bowl held by hunger), she landed in the puddle of sweat that she created, broke the spell, and bore a new one in a helpless painful cry.
‘Oh, fucking hell!’
The first to reach her, I held Fionna’s back as she held her ankle. ‘Are you okay?’
‘No, it’s not okay, I’m hurt!’
‘Is it broken?’
‘No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ Inspired by the urgency of the moment, I moved around Fionna and gently took her leg into my lap, touched her ankle with my famished fingertips, bent the joint slowly in my hands up until ‘Ow!’ and slowly back down until ‘Oh!’ and left ‘Ew!’ and right ‘AY!’ until ‘No, it’s not broken’ but damn, isn’t it divine to hear you scream and imagine that the sound must be the same when pleasure motivates it?
After the food, after the drinks, after it was too late for a limping girl to ride all the way back to East London, I offered my place to her for the night. It was the perfect time to ask the question: I had finally reached that delicate plateau where I was drunk enough for bravery but not too smashed to pronounce the words. Fionna agreed that would be good, ‘Because I’m very tired.’ When I carried her from the cab into my apartment, the driver looked at me fun
ny: even he knew she was too pretty for a wreck like me to be holding. I managed to get out my keys and open the door without dropping her or her overstuffed duffel bag that weighed nearly as much as she did. What’s in it?
‘Just some of my clothes. Lately I’ve been staying with girlfriends while I hunt for a new bedsit. This is your place?’ Fionna asked inside.
‘Yeah. This is me.’
‘You live alone then? No flatmates or anything? How much do you pay?’
‘I don’t know. David says he takes it out of my salary.’
‘I’ve been looking for a new flat for months, and I haven’t seen one this nice. Not one that didn’t cost a fortune.’ She made me feel unusually lucky.
I turned on every light in the house as I carried her upstairs to the living room, trying to destroy any shadow that might scare her. Trying also not to bang her bad ankle against a wall. The swelling had gone down in the hours since the sprain, assisted by a variety of towel-wrapped foodstuffs Margaret found for her, but it was still an ugly thing sitting above her foot.
‘Were you robbed recently?’ Fionna looked around like maybe she didn’t want me to put her down in this place.
‘No, is something wrong?’
‘You don’t have any furniture,’ she said, shocked, staring at my apartment with nothing more than its own dust and possibilities to fill it. ‘How long have you been living here?’
‘About nine months. I bought a kitchen table and some chairs.’ Actually, Margaret had made that donation from her basement, along with some dishes, flatware, and pots and pans after the time she came by the house to offer me leftover spaghetti and had to watch me sit on the floor eating it with my hands.
‘Do you like it here?’ Fionna’s was a new voice echoing around these walls.
‘I love it. I’m not going back to America.’