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Then Mason said, “Like you should talk, Russell.”

  I laughed. Russell jabbed his cigarette into the air between us and said, “It doesn’t work like that! He’s clowning both of us!”

  “He’s just jealous because he’s watching us players from the bench,” I said.

  Russell nodded.

  “You players don’t seem to be scoring,” Mason said, and I leaned back in my seat, defeated. I’d heard that men date their mother’s color. My dad disproved that theory, but it still made me feel a bit better when I got down on myself for not dating black women.

  Russell looked out the window and smoked. Mason took a hand off the steering wheel and cranked the radio back up. A dancey rap song with chintzy synths roared over the engine.

  “Yay-uhh,” howled Russell, imitating one of the rappers.

  I growled, “Get low, get low,” like the other guy on the song. The synths kicked in and Mason murmured, “Get low . . . butts . . .” reverently, like his mind was in a strip club.

  We were all quiet for a few seconds, then Russell lolled his head over at me and asked, “You ever had butt sex . . . with a girl?”

  Mason gave the windshield a creepy smile and cut out around an eighteen-wheeler.

  “No. No, I haven’t.” I sent a nervous grin to the windshield then asked, “You?”

  He set the soda bottle ashtray in the cup holder and shuddered, almost offended I’d ask something so dumb. “No—”

  “I mean, I’d try it,” I said. “But the chance hasn’t come up. And I’m not pushing for it.”

  “Ha,” Mason said, and humped his seat like a dog scratching its ass on the rug. “‘Pushing for it.’”

  Russell leaned in, voice hushed like white people do when race comes up, “But I thought black guys fucked girls in the ass.”

  Suddenly, the radio cranked up louder. We all startled as the bass made the speaker covers buzz, and the van shook as we cut it close in front of the truck. Mason reached for the volume knob and it snapped off in his hand. He tossed it on top of the dashboard and clutched the steering wheel with both hands. A gleaming black luxury sedan shot up the highway and matched our speed in the right lane.

  Our van’s side door slid open as another Yay-uhhh blasted from the speakers. Wind roared in and the gray highway flew by between us and the fancy car. I gripped the back of Russell’s seat, shouting, “Damn! What?”

  The other car’s back window slid open and Lucius rocketed out, drilling through the air between the vehicles. He landed next to me on the bench seat, slammed the van door, clapped his hands to his knees, and bellowed at Russell, “What did you just say, cracker?”

  Russell threw his chin back in offense and whined, “Sorry.”

  I tried to smooth things over by saying, “Not that I’m aware of.”

  I hated to admit that, because then Russell could say, “Well, maybe if you were all black instead of half black, you’d do it.” He stayed quiet, though, and Lucius turned to me and shouted, “Well?”

  I wondered if Russell had some info that I didn’t, so I asked, “Why do you think that?”

  “Yeah,” added Lucius. “That’s foul.”

  Mason was sitting there, listening and driving.

  “Well, just,” Russell opened his hands to the road in front of him, “all the rap songs talk about booty and get low and you always hear about girls’ butts, so I figured that’s what it was all about.” He had his hands spread in front of him, jiggling the biggest invisible booty in the world.

  “No, man. No,” I said. “The vagina is right there, too. You can reach it from behind. White guys’ dicks go that far, right?”

  Mason guffawed. Russell gave an embarrassed grin and nodded. Lucius fell sideways laughing, then hopped back to dap me up. The lines on the highway ahead glowed chalk-white in the overcast afternoon. I worried at how Russell was one of my closest friends and could still ask questions that made me feel so alone.

  TWO

  Our show was at a dive in a part of Wilmington far from the chain restaurants and traffic that clogged southern cities in the ’90s. The peak-roofed club looked like an old barn and smelled like one, if the animals smoked.

  You’d think that the best shows would be in the biggest cities, but if you’re in a lesser-known band like ours, you do better in smaller towns, where people aren’t so jaded. They come out of the woodwork just because something’s going on. That doesn’t happen in places like New York and Los Angeles. People there have more options.

  On the short stage, I peeked up from fiddling with my amp and saw a good fifty people already waiting. More were drifting in from the bar and parking lot, called by the twang and drone of our tuning. They seemed like our crowd: the weird kids, from “my first show” fifteen-year-olds in new cutoff army pants, to older guys in the sweet spot between high school and pain pills. Searchers, intent on finding their own fun. We were that fun, dug up online or passed along on a mix CD.

  I ran through the slinky riff from Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” to tune the A string to the E and looked to my bandmates for levels. My breath got short as my racial hang-ups and stage fright melded into a sun-hot beam that turned my fingers electric as we passed eye contact in a triangle and nodded, ready to blow off the long drive, the stupid week.

  Mason was irritated about the shift-leader job he might as well quit.

  Russell was ready to hit the drums so hard he’d get out of his dead-end life.

  I wanted to turn a shade blacker every time I hit a bass string, envisioning a funk bassist with star sunglasses and a five-pointed bass; a jazz musician with his head back, the neck of his standup bass by his ear; even a lanky baseball pitcher folding himself into a crane shape on the mound before unleashing a fastball. Anything that read as black and performing.

  I’d been playing shows for years. I was twenty-one and among the oldest people in the room. Still, I was hooked on the moment when the amps’ hum faded, Russell sat back on his drum stool, and silence washed back through the crowd, loud and full, like a two-string power chord could burst it.

  I held my breath as Mason said, “Hi, we’re Paper Fire from Richmond, Virginia.”

  At that moment, everyone was on the same side. We all wanted four clicks of the drumsticks and twenty minutes of release. I wanted to disappear and sense how far my headstock pointed out so I didn’t knock over a cymbal. I wanted to whip sweat from my forehead before it slicked up my bass, make eye contact with the knot of people up front headbanging and shaking their fists, and be amazed when they knew the lyrics Mason had written on a gas station napkin.

  All the funk records I played at home, and I learned none of their rhythm by osmosis. In that punk band, my soul flailed and thrashed, and the room felt it more than heard it: a thick rumble that ripples out from the heart, shaking loose all the problems inside me.

  THREE

  My lips are full, my nose is broad, and my hair’s a cloud of cinnamon. Usually, black people can tell that I’m black, because we know how to find each other in an unfriendly world. But white people see my green eyes and freckles and assume I’m white. They live in a world where they are the norm. Why would they expect me to be anything but?

  Still, there’s something about the way I look that gets black and white people to try to place me. This leads to what I call the “You Look Like” Game, where they explain my existence to themselves by telling me I look like someone else. The more they decide, the less control I have over my own personality.

  Here are the “You Look Like” Game’s top scorers:

  Kid from Kid ’n Play

  The light-skinned guy from a fun early ’90s rap duo that did synchronized dances and starred in some movies that still pop up on cable. He was famous for his high-top fade, a cylinder of hair rising nine inches off the top of his head. He’s also a mixed brother, and basically my color.

  The good part about being told I look like Kid is that people love Kid ’n Play. No one’s ever said, “You look like Kid ’n Pla
y. I wanna fight those fools.”

  On the downside, I think white people are into old-school black stuff like Kid ’n Play because it’s from the past, and can’t change anything right now.

  Embarrassing fun fact: I can’t grab my ankle and jump over my leg to do Kid ’n Play’s trademark dance.

  Justin Timberlake

  He’s straight-up white, but has curly ramen hair, which I guess is where we sorta link up. He’s also a great dancer with hit songs for days. I actually get called “Timberlake” a lot by black people, but mainly associate it with drunk white girls pushing up on me at dance parties. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and I’m jealous of how much black people like J.T.

  Lenny Kravitz

  He’s handsome, half Jewish and half black, and dresses like he’s from the ’70s—he probably has a whole shelf just for the leather vests he wears with no shirt. We look nothing alike. This one bugs me. Out loud, I say it’s because his music is bland and unoriginal. Truth is, I’m mad because he’s beating me at my own game: he’s got a better music career, money for cool vintage clothes, he looks blacker than me, and a couple of his songs are pretty ill.

  “This light-skinned cat useta work with my sister at the supermarket”

  This one’s followed by an expectant look, like I should know the name of this random high-yella cashier. But not all mixed people know each other. We don’t have brown bag parties where we listen to smooth r’n’b and make jokes about people working all day in the field. Sometimes I wish we did, though. Then I’d have someone to talk to about this stuff without feeling like a stereotypical halfie having an identity crisis.

  Getting called “light-skinned” is a blessing and a curse, though. It’s cool because it means I’m black, just paler than the average black person. Since being mistaken for white erases half of me, and happens so often that I think I’ve failed at blackness, I cherish being called black. Still, it also makes me feel like I have to reject my white side. That’s why I feel guilty for loving punk rock.

  FOUR

  After our set, I spread Paper Fire’s albums and T-shirts out on a sticky black table by the bar. Lucius presided over our merch from the back of the booth, the red-and-white beer light glowing off his white football jersey. He sipped a brown-bottled beer, actively ignoring me while I stood by the table. It was a good show, but he was clearly unhappy with the evening’s demographics. A hundred people had watched us play, gawking, nodding their heads or bouncing on their toes, and they were all white, an ocean of moons spreading back through the small club.

  A dozen boys crowded around the booth, bought a record or a shirt, clapped my sweaty shoulder, and said, “Nice show.”

  “Nice show” is a greeting and a compliment among the punks. You can only respond with a thanks or a self-deprecating, “But we (broke a string/messed up a bunch/played better last night),” because acting like you know you rock is to imply that you’re above the audience, and that’s not punk.

  But it also means nothing. You could improvise an hour of free jazz country covers and everyone would still say, “Nice show.”

  I felt guilty for thinking something that snotty, and for looking down on these kids for having a good time, and even for deciding that something that saved my ass as a teenager wasn’t good enough now that I was old enough to buy beer.

  By the time the record-buying crowd dispersed, Mason and Russell had moved all of our equipment offstage to the corner by the back door. After the last band, we’d form an assembly line and load the van, lingering by its open doors and chatting with the locals to see if there was a party.

  I picked up the beer I’d been nervously sipping and sat by Lucius.

  “Been a minute,” I murmured, under the heavy metal that was pumping on the house system.

  “Whose fault is that?” he asked.

  I sipped again, still nervous.

  “I see you takin’ some steps,” he continued. “But the records you play at home don’t count for much. If you go out and you’re the blackest one there,” he gestured around the room, “it ain’t black.”

  I sighed and nodded in agreement.

  “And, it’s the new millennium.” He clapped on the last two words. “Why’re you playing records, anyway? Ain’t you got CDs?”

  “I like records!” I said, waving my hand over the Paper Fire records. “They’re cheap. And cool.”

  A punk kid walking past gave me a sarcastic thumbs-up.

  Lucius rolled his eyes. “Look, being black is bigger than whether or not you play old-school soul at home or scream music for a bunch of teenagers at the club. You know your Black Card’s set to expire. You ain’t done much to keep it.”

  Heavy metal growled. I sighed.

  “So, what do I do?” I asked, holding my head in my hand. “Head to M.L.K. Boulevard and ask the first brotha I see if I can kick it?”

  “No, man. No.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “You gotta know you’re black. Then the rest will fall into place. Every time I see you in a group of white folks, it looks like you’re running from being black.” He scissored his elbows like he was running. “It’s time to stop, or it’s gonna let you get away.”

  Since Lucius gave me the Black Card, I’d figured it was settled: I was black. I shook my head, starting to get worked up.

  Mona would quiet this static in my head. This was my first time out of town since I’d started crushing on her, and I kept scanning the room for that soft baby-blue T-shirt she wears, willing her to appear with that Tupperware of salad she’d always bring to our shifts. Instead, I saw a room full of punks, mainly male, all white. I slugged my beer and wiped the condensation from my hand on the thigh of my damp jeans.

  I pulled my phone out of the little shoulder bag I’d carried into the show.

  Mona 7:43 pm

  Tips were ok. How was your concert?

  It’s called a show and I loved that she didn’t know that.

  9:45 pm

  Pretty good. Think we’re going to a party next.

  Thanks for covering my shift.

  JJ, the bassist for Kill All Their Infernal Soldiers, the local band whose name was longer than their songs, walked up. He skipped the southern summer punk uniform of limbless black tees and work pants in favor of a dirtbag raver look, featuring a scraggly goatee, faded baggy jeans, and a visor from a fast-food pizza place. We’d snuck a couple beers in his hatchback during the nine-piece high school ska band who’d opened the show, and he’d told me about his funk side project. The fact that he stood out, even in a goofy way, made me like him and even wonder if his funk friends weren’t white. Sometimes I get jealous of white dudes with black friends because, hey, if they can pull it off, why can’t I?

  “Nice show, by the way,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “So, I think y’all are staying at my place tonight,” he said.

  “Cool, thank you.”

  I immediately started guessing what his spot was like. It’s a reflex after going on a couple of tours. You look at your host’s grooming and guess how dirty their floor will be. If they’re smoking, you assume they do it inside and that your sleeping bag will stink the next day. If they say they’re having a party, you hope they live in a big house so you can get loaded fast then sneak upstairs to sleep. He wasn’t smoking and he had a quiet air of having his act together, but I couldn’t get a read on him.

  “Well, not my place.” He shrugged. “I live with my dad.”

  “Oh, cool.”

  Parents’ houses meant clean and quiet, extra beds and blankets, and an adult who might cook cheese eggs in the morning.

  “Well, not really cool,” he said.

  FIVE

  Sober Mason drove, gunning it to stay with JJ, who took wide turns on the suburban corners. I sat shotgun, palming the dash for balance. Behind me, Russell shouted over the engine in a slow, hippie drawl, “Heyyy, mannn, think JJ likes weeed?”

  I turned and said, “I hope so, brahhh.”
br />   We both drooped our eyelids and nodded slow and groovy, pinching invisible hookah hoses.

  Lucius went, “Pssh.”

  Mason said, “Just be coool when we get theeere, bros. This is JJ’s daaad’s house and he might be a naaarc, maaan.”

  He was using the same voice as us, but somehow he sounded like the narc.

  Last fall, Mason saw this hippie freshman guy perched on the steps of the college library, smoking a four-hose hookah by himself. Mason cracked up Russell and me with an impression of him, and it wasn’t until later that I thought about how hookahs have a few hoses, and there’s something very lonely about smoking one alone. Still, whenever weed comes up, my bandmates and I pretend to be the Hookah Guy.

  We coasted to a stop in front of a brown ranch house. JJ’s bandmate Tim, an uptight guy with a pointy chin and suspiciously new guitar, pulled up next. We were the only signs of life on the sleepy street, so we left our stuff in the van and single-filed into the backyard through a gate in the tall wood fence. Waiting under a safety light by the back door, I watched Lucius emerge into the yard last, shoulders hunkered forward, looking around and nodding slow.

  Mona wasn’t there, and I was jealous of all of Richmond for having the chance to see her that night.

  A teenager who shared JJ’s horse jaw and curve of goatee sat spread-kneed in a lawn chair, pursing his lips to spit into a plastic fast food cup. A middle-aged man in an open Hawaiian shirt sprawled in the next chair, an arm’s length from an aboveground pool. The dad was the swarthy, 1970s version of handsome, with broad shoulders and a mustache. Lucius and I both thought of the rerun detective shows we’d watched while skipping school, guys like this, smart-talking ladies’ men who could take a punch. What would it be like to have a dad who checked out your girlfriends?