“You look Jewish,” she said.
“I’ve been told. But I need you to know I’m not.”
“OK. Your Greaves book is amazing.”
She was amazing. She was all the positive African American characters on TV rolled into one, characters created to combat the negative black stereotypes we see on the news every day. She was articulate, educated, athletic, beautiful, charming, enormously sophisticated. And I suspected I had a chance with her. This would do amazing things for my self-worth, as well as my stature in the academic community. I asked her out to coffee. It’s not that I thought of her as a prop or a thing to obtain or something for my résumé. Well, I did think those things, but I wanted not to think those things. I planned to work on those unappealing thoughts, to make them go away. I knew they were wrong. And I knew they weren’t the entirety of my thoughts. So I would keep them secret and instead focus on the feelings of genuine attraction I felt for this woman. Eventually, the novelty of her African Americanness would recede, and I knew I would be left with a pure love for her, as a woman of any color, of no color: a clear woman. Although I understood that even my feelings for women in general were not pure. Attractiveness was a determining factor, which is wrong. And of course any exotic racial, cultural, or national characteristics were appealing to me. I would be as excited to show off my Cambodian or Maori or French or Icelandic or Mexican or Inuit girlfriend as I would my African American one. Almost. It was something I needed to better understand about myself. I needed to fight my instincts at every turn.
Left thumb and pinkie.
Left thumb and pinkie.
I have often felt that I am being watched. That my life is being witnessed by unseen forces, that adjustments are made as these forces see fit, to thwart me, to humiliate me. I worry that the disabled drone might still have a functioning tracking device smeared on the bottom of my shoe.
I drive to the beach and blow the drone through my Slammy’s soda straw, like a pea, into the ocean. Then I scrub my shoe with seawater. I feel suddenly so very lonely. Maybe it is the sea. The vast ocean. Maybe it is the sea that brings on these feelings. I have often felt a certain melancholic homesickness looking out at it. Am I remembering when I once lived there, forty trillion years ago, next to a hydrothermal vent, when I was just a sea slug or whatever?
I arrive in downtown St. Augustine. It’s early and still closed up. The city is, as is everything now, just more Disneyland. Magic castles. Quaint architecture. That the buildings are authentic somehow does not change the sense of falseness, of fetishization. I grieve for us, a world of tourists, for cities in drag, for our inability to be real in a real place. It is 5:00 A.M. The Slammy’s burger sits uneaten on the passenger seat. The car smells of onions and sweat. I dial my girlfriend’s cell. It’ll be 10:00 A.M. in Tunisia. Seems a safe time to call. She’s filming a movie there with a director you’ve heard of. I won’t say his name. Suffice to say, he’s a serious filmmaker and this is an important career milestone for her. So although I miss her with a heretofore unexperienced fierceness, I respect and even applaud her decision to take this role. Although I will admit I was hurt. There were some words exchanged. I am not proud of that. But our relationship is new and consequently fragile. To force an extended separation at this point is worrisome to me. That it was not worrisome to her did not go unnoticed by me. Undoubtedly, there are some very handsome African American actors from all over the world cast in this movie. She is young and beautiful and sexually liberated, so even though I am supportive of her career, even proud of it, I have insecurities. I hate myself for them, I do. But I have them. I call her often. Often she cannot pick up. They shoot at all hours. I won’t tell you the subject of the film, but it is a well-known historical event that took place at all hours. For the sake of cinematic verisimilitude, of which I am certainly one of the foremost champions, by the way—just look at my monograph Day for Day: The Lost Art of Verisimilitude in Cinema for evidence of my strong feelings on this issue—they must shoot at all hours. So it is a delightful surprise when she picks up.
“Hi, B.” (I don’t use my Christian name so as to maintain a gender-neutral identity for my work.)
“Hi, L.” (Not her real initial, to protect her privacy.) “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s it going? I just arrived in St. Augustine. Long drive.”
“I’m well,” she says.
She never says “I’m well.” It sounds formal somehow. Distant.
“Good,” I say. “How’s the shoot?”
“It’s going well.”
Two wells.
“Good, good.”
I say good twice. I don’t know why. I do realize the second good modifies the first good to make the whole thing less good. I know that much. It was not intentional. Is anything ever?
“So,” she says, “what’s on the agenda for today?”
“I’ll check in to the apartment. Maybe grab a few hours’ sleep. Then head down to the historical society. I have an appointment at three with the curator.”
“Cool,” she says.
She does not use the word “cool.” Cool equals this doesn’t interest me and I can’t think of anything else to say.
“I miss you,” I try.
“Miss you, too.”
Too quick. No pronoun.
“OK,” I say.
“OK?” she says.
She knows I’m upset and she’s calling me on it.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just wanted to say hi. Should probably get some shut-eye.”
No pronouns back at her and the term shut-eye. I don’t say “shut-eye.” What am I going for with that? I don’t even know. It sounds casual, tough, maybe, like I’m a gumshoe? I don’t know. I’ll have to look up the etymology later. All I know now is I hate those handsome, young African American actors over there, with their cocky bravado, their cool confidence, their meaty appendages, their well-muscled bodies. How incredibly narcissistic to spend that kind of time and energy on one’s body. Doesn’t she see that about them? Maybe not. After all, she does that herself, with her yoga and triathlons and Pilates, her boxing lessons and modern dance classes. But it’s different for women, isn’t it? We don’t like to acknowledge that in our steady societal slog toward genderlessness. But it’s the truth. Women are celebrated and rewarded for that type of preening. And now even men, more and more. Certainly the traditional American masculine ideal is strength and muscles, but not for show, not for the sake of muscles. We admired men whose muscles came from work or sport, not muscles that came as a result of the self-conscious pursuit of muscles. Is it any accident that bodybuilding has been, historically, by and large, the domain of the homosexual male? Muscles as adornment.