I sipped on the picnic-plastic cup of my Maker’s and Coke as we passed the dance floor on the way to the men’s room. One of my wingmen for the night asks “You fuck with blow?”
The forehead between my eyebrows probably dented on the right side as it usually does when I’m heavily concentrating on something. At that moment, I was heavily concentrating on communicating that, no, in fact I do not fuck with blow.
“Nah dude. That’s not my scene.”
“Alright then, I’m gonna take a quick bump,” he replied as he and Wing Three stepped into the same bathroom stall. ‘No homo’ ran through my mind.
Before I took a piss, I made sure to grab the drink I’d placed on the barrel at the men’s room entryway and take it into the stall with me, sitting it on the toilet paper roll dispenser, so as to make sure nobody would snag a beverage on me.
I watched Wing Two and Wing Three’s feet shuffle around in the stall, and imagined how strange it must look to other dudes in the bathroom. I linger, shaking a few extra times, actually washing my hands, using soap, lathering up and imagining I’m in 7th grade home economics again and trying to demonstrate I can thoroughly scrub my hands with anti-bacterial soap and save humanity from the scourge of the common cold; I stretch out extra seconds by using multiple towels to make sure my hands are really, really dry. All this to avoid going back out into the crowd, vulnerable, without a Flight Crew, and lots of Mig Ryans and Penelope Cruises performing lines, loops, rolls, spins, and hammerheads in a faded effort to avoid all the Ice Men in the spot.
Two and Three continue shuffle around in the stall. Bumpin’. I delay by the entryway, pretending to check statuses on my phone, although nobody has updated their status since I checked it in the last 20 minutes. It’s Friday night.
Makers and Coke. Tanqueray and tonic. Kettle and soda. That’s the order of the night. We run circles round the club, the DJ blasting shotty Top 40 remixes. It’s 11:45 p.m.
“Yo Son, we gotta make moves,” Wing Three says. He gestures to Mig and Cruise in strappy black minis dancing together. Two slender, raven-haired, olive-skinned women, dancing together. We move and they go into defensive mode. One of the girls drops it on her friend in a show of sexually-charged pseudo disinterest. The game is on. They disappear into the crowd. “Keep it movin’,” says Wing Three. And we make our way through the crowd again, holding drinks above our heads. I imagine my drink knocked from my hand and baptizing somebody. Throughout the night, Mig and Cruise repeatedly come into our proximity. Mig probably bumps into me three times that night. She’s a hard tease. “Oh yeah, real sorry, be careful,” is my not-so-subtly-implied neg that she’s getting sloppy.
Fasted forward. 2:30 a.m.
Me and Wing Two are hailing a cab. A silver Honda Civic honks and bulls up next to the curb, his window rolled down, “Where you going brothers?” and we don’t really negotiate a price. I estimate the cab ride and throw on an extra $5 because he’s taking a risk. Wing Two balks at the fare and wants to wait for a cab. I want to be home and tell him to get in the car.
“I don’t usually pick up black people,” he says. “They’re really mean.”
Wing Two is black.
We exchange what-the-fuck glances. It’s 2011 in the most progressive city in the United States and the dude still has to deal with blatant racism. I realize this is only a small glimpse of his world and the latent, passive, and explicit racism he must deal with on a regular basis.
“I once picked up a black man in Michigan and he punched me in my temple,” the driver continues his story.
The dude’s a Muslim. He goes into a monologue about doing good for people and God blessing you for good works. He talks about family, finding a wife, and happiness. Wing Two just wants the ride to be over. His body language conveys that he’s actively rebuking the driver’s comments. To be fair, the dude lived up to stereotype and started talking about terrorism and how the U.S. government is after oil. I agreed with him throughout his monologue, peppering my replies with an occasional “insha’Allah”. It slips in so easily, I don’t know whether he’s absorbed into his monologue and simply doesn’t hear me, or whether he must be incredibly offended that a yuppy-ish Christian-sympathizing white boy would affect such a pretense. Either way, the situation is already extremely bizarre. We make it to our destination. Wing Three jumps out of the car throwing cash at the guy. I shake his hand. “God bless you brother,” I tell him.
Fast forward.
It’s 9:43 a.m. I get a text: “Just leaving o girl place . Were they in the club”.
Smashed. It’s a new term for me.
I lay in bed, hungover, ruminating. ‘This is not the life my father led.”