I stepped back, shaking my head, until paper crumpled under my butt and I was sitting on my desk.
“We’ll see,” he said. “You got it now, but you gotta maintain it.”
I was playing bass in a punk band called Paper Fire. We were popular enough in our sliver of the music scene that we could play to a basement full of people in most cities. On this night, we had a gig in Wilmington. We were rumbling down the interstate near the North Carolina border when the singer/guitarist Mason shouted, “Watcha doing up there?” from the driver’s seat.
“He’s doin’ black stuff,” Russell the drummer answered from shotgun.
I was lying in the plywood loft that stretches over our amps, drums, and guitars. I fired back a response that would have got me lynched fifty years earlier: “I’m lookin’ out the back window for white women.”
We all laughed.
We got “black stuff” from a comedy video we watched at a crash pad after a show in Pittsburgh. The comedian spotted a white man with a black woman in the crowd. In the nasal white guy voice that black comics do, he said, “This week, honey, we’re doin’ black stuff. We’re going to see that new movie with the rappers in it and we’re going to the Def Comedy Jam.”
I’d recently started soaking up black pop culture, hoping for pointers, and this joke was the first time I could confidently call bullshit on what I heard. My black father’s and white mother’s interests overlapped naturally. They didn’t have to plan individual racial fixes.
Still, when my white bandmates snickered across the couch at me, I knew I was stuck. “Doin’ black stuff” became the answer to what I was up to when I was lost in thought. I wondered if the joke reminded them I was black, or helped them deal with the fact that there was something different about me and them, but I still liked it because it confirmed my blackness.
“Well, tell us if you see any good white women,” Mason said, tapping the top of the steering wheel. “So we can protect ’em from you.”
“What would Mona say to you checking out babes?” asked Russell.
“Nothing,” I answered. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
Sigh.
“Who’s Mona?” asked Mason, flicking his eyebrows in the rearview even though he’d had a girlfriend for over a year.
“We work with Mona,” I said, hoping the subject would change. Dating a coworker usually ends with an unemployed person.
“Mona’s tight,” Russell said, and dragged on his cigarette.
I nodded, even though the guys weren’t looking my way.
“Like, other girls are tight too,” Russell said, then lowered the radio a bit. “But, you know how everyone always knows who cute girls are?” he asked.
“Sure, sure,” said Mason. Richmond’s a gossipy, small city. Dating is tricky.
“She didn’t useta hang out with someone we know. She’s no one’s ex. She isn’t even some classic girl that we’d always see working somewhere and wonder how we’d ever get to talk to her.”
“She hot?” asked Mason.
“Yes,” Russell and I said at once.
There was a pause while Mason waited for us to elaborate on our answers, and I thought about how there seemed to be a thin layer of cool water under Mona’s skin, just enough to make me want to touch it and feel still.
Then I blurted out, “But she not, like, a hot girl. She’s a cool girl. And that’s more important.”
Russell nodded and took another drag.
Mason shrugged.
Mona came up to my shoulder, and I could see where her shiny round dreadlocks escaped into her bandana. She drove a dusty Saturn, wore faded jeans, and kept skittery folk CDs in rotation at our coffee-shop job. In other words, Mona was a black hippie. I wish I knew more black hippies, because they set me at ease. They’re basically a combination of my folks.
She started after this other hippie, who went by Nesta even though his paychecks said Ethan, quit to work at the new Ben & Jerry’s ice cream place, which he called “B&G’s.” She was friendly to the awkward dudes who came in with their laptops, and the tips were higher, so I didn’t mind that I’d always wind up mopping when we worked together.
Our first shift together, Mona stood about two inches closer than expected when I was showing her how to work the espresso machine. I caught myself staring at her reflection in the chrome, thinking we looked good next to each other, even when we were funny mirror distorted.
I hoped she’d like me if she knew I was black. My Prince CD came on the stereo and I said, “My dad loves this song.” Then I listened to two seconds of utopian keyboard funk before saying, “My dad’s black.” Feeling less suave by the instant, I put my hand to the curls on top of my head and said, “People can’t always tell.”
She smiled, kept smoothing the plastic wrap on a plate of peanut butter cookies, and said, “I could tell.”
She was covering my shift. I wondered if any of the regulars would be pleasantly surprised to see her instead of me. I texted her, How are tips?
Nap ruined, I wiggled out of the loft and sat on the bench seat behind Russell and Mason, rolling my stiff shoulders, watching Russell ash his smoke into a green plastic soda bottle. He’s an easygoing, scruffy redhead who looks like he was born in a baseball cap. We’ve drunk countless beers on the porch of the punk house where, at twenty-four, he’s the oldest of six roommates.
Mason’s a nervy, dark-haired guy with broad shoulders and sunken eyes. He always seemed to have an ulterior motive. We were technically roommates, but his girlfriend lived half a mile from us and had air-conditioning. You can guess where he tended to stay.
“One of you guys gonna ask her out?” Mason asked.
I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Russell got busy shaking another cigarette from the pack in the cup holder. Mason chuckled and shook his head.
“Don’t get jealous of each other,” he said. “Don’t break up the band.”
“We won’t,” I said.
“I never went out with a black girl before,” Russell blurted out.
“She’s black?” Mason asked.
“Yeah.” Russell nodded and took a drag.
I sat dreading the question I knew was coming next.
“How about you?” Mason asked me.
“Yes, I’m black.”
“Nice try, dude,” Mason said. “You ever dated a sista?”
“Man, you ever know him to date anybody?” Russell punched Mason’s shoulder and the van wavered in the lane.
If I cussed him out, I’d have to prove him wrong, and I couldn’t. It had been thirteen months,