

### Black & White

### A Cat Oars Publication

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright 2011 Cat Oars

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This ebook may not be re-sold.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Table of Contents

Introduction

R_Toady

Community Service

Ghostofmajestic

Lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel

Brimmer

Gone, There, Now

Leesbitch

Missionary Position

Meme_in_Situ

Found Floating in the River Lithium

R_Toady

Separate Way

TapasTonight

Black Leather, White Powder

Laiadevorah

Photographic Memory

Tejas

Missionary Position (Reprise)

Meme_in_Situ

White Dog in the Snow

Teenager

And Read All Over

CGT

Singed Black

Sandshovel

Trace and the Black and White

Brimmer

The Penguin and the Panda

TapasTonight

The Black and White Ball

Tejas

Neegee

Francais

Black Grounds on White Paper

Sandshovel

Black and White Hands

Litteratzi

No Help

Francais

Last Reunion

IAA

Light Assignment

Kohno

The End of the Age of Cannibalism

Joeebbe

Negative Time

Sheisty

Introduction

### R_Toady

**I GREW UP** in a very ethnically diverse part of a mid-sized town in southeastern Pennsylvania. Although my grandparents were all extremely racist (you better believe there were lots of nigger jokes at that dinner table) my parents did their best to raise us kids to be fairly accepting of people of other races. (Except the Puerto Ricans, all of whom were lazy slackers, according to my dad.)

There was a black kid a few doors down from us we used to play with in the vacant lot across the street from our line of identical row houses. One day when I was about ten years old my brother and father and I were playing whiffle-ball in the field with this kid, I'll call him Darren, who was incidentally about five years older than I and therefore really a little too cool to still be playing with us little kids. I was up at bat and he was catcher, with my dad pitching and my hyperactive brother running back and forth like a lunatic in center field somewhere. We had no bases, just a few uneven patches of dirt where the grass had been worn away. Darren was kneeling down on the bare swath of earth that served as home plate; to tell the truth I have no idea what the hell he was doing down there, but for some reason I decided to scare him with my practice swing, and so I pulled the plastic bat back and swung it as hard as I could and – whap! – it hit the side of his head. He screamed and fell to the grass, rolling around and crying, clutching his head as my dad came running over. I just stood there, still holding the bat, apologizing over and over. We walked him back over to his house; his mom was pissed but he was fine; no broken skin, no concussion. Needless to say we never played together again. I don't know why I hit him; it certainly wasn't done maliciously, but it wasn't really an accident, either.

I don't feel guilty or proud of it now; it's just a dumb story to add to all my other dumb stories. No lesson, no allegory; but I thought it might serve as a good introduction to this collection of stories, written by contributors to the Literary & Writing forum on Craigslist. Given only the theme "Black and White" and a deadline of a month, we took free rein to do whatever we wished as long as it somehow fit this theme. The stories were posted on the site Nov. 14, 15 and 16, 2005. They were about photographs, newspapers, cop cars, a penguin and a panda, and more.... Given such an open-ended assignment, it is interesting to see that so many of the writers chose to take on the challenge of grappling with some of the more clichéd images associated with the phrase in question. I consider such a strategy rather daring: There is such danger of succumbing to triteness or predictability.

I'm reminded of Stephin Merritt, head of the musical group The Magnetic Fields, who decided to not just take on the almost completely played-out topic of love as a subject for songwriting, but to go as far as to make a triple album's worth of "69 Love Songs" that range from silly to exquisite. Offering such a huge number of different styles and perspectives on this tired subject ended up breathing new life into it. (Of course, the catchy melodies didn't hurt.) We took a similar challenge, likewise proving that it is indeed still possible to walk the razor's edge of cliché without necessarily cutting oneself. (And we didn't even have any catchy melodies to fall back on!)

I also find it interesting that most of the writers chose to take on the racial connotations of black and white. I usually tend to have an adverse reaction to stories about ethnicity or racism; I often feel that there's not much more that can be said about these topics that hasn't been said before. Furthermore, as most of those who tackled the topic here claim (or imply in their stories) that they are white, I admit I had to fight my own knee-jerk reaction toward what I assumed would be yet another collection filled with white people ranting about (1) How non-racist – honest-to-God-really-truly-you-gotta-believe-me – they are or (2) How horribly guilty they feel when they are forced to admit that they really could possibly be even just a teensy bit racist deep inside. Now, being as pink as a baby mole rat myself, I understand the tendency to err on the side of political correctness in the fear of offending someone. But the truth is, such a political approach often rings false and, more importantly, makes for dull reading. (As my story above illustrates – perhaps a little too effectively.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the final results of the project, however; not once did I feel embarrassed or that anyone was compromising or pandering to anyone in their work. As in the case of Merritt's magnum opus, the sheer variety of strategies used to tackle the theme is what gives this collection its strength. From those loaded words, we created twenty-two pieces ranging in tone from lightly playful to darkly painful, touching along the way many of the shades of gray in between.

Portland, Oregon

Nov. 19, 2005

Community Service

### Ghostofmajestic

**WHEN I WAS TWELVE** or sometime thereabouts, I was a Boy Scout. I wasn't really any different from the thousands of other kerchief wearing, merit badge earning, square-knot-tying pubescents who were doing the same all over the world, camping and whittling and roasting marshmallows over campfires. I canoed the same rivers, memorized the same oath, and understood the value of dry socks. Actually, I wasn't that good of a Boy Scout. I never got past the rank of Second Class.

One summer in some Midwest city (big enough to have a place known as the "projects") I volunteered to help on a guy's Eagle Scout project. Senior scouts have to perform a number of hours of community service in order to become an "Eagle." It wasn't just tying obscure knots or swimming a mile within a certain benchmark time. You had to show you were a good citizen to become an Eagle Scout. Mr. Model Citizen had decided to clean up a downtown cemetery in between two inner city housing projects. We loaded up the lawn mowers, rakes, and hedge clippers in the back of Model Citizen's Chevelle and drove off.

Model Citizen also packed away a pair of shiny machetes to hack away at the tougher weeds and brush. So there we were, six Boy Scouts rolling down the highway in a souped-up Chevelle, taking the downtown exit, armed to the teeth with lawn-care implements. I had never even been to this part of town. It was all concrete, liquor shops, pawnbrokers, and Church's Chicken franchises. I wondered where one would have hidden a cemetery. Where could the dead rest around here?

We parked just outside a chain link gate. Father Dominic and another priest, a black priest, were chatting away, wiping their brows in the noontime heat. Father Dominic introduced Father Ronald, and shook Model Citizen's hand through the open driver-side window. Father Ronald pulled a key off a huge set attached to his belt, and opened the padlocked chain link fence. We pulled into the inner city kingdom of the dead.

The cemetery was small, perhaps fewer than a hundred headstones from what we could see, but it hadn't been cleaned out in years. Wild brush and towering weeds hid the names of those buried there from view. You could only see the tops of the granite and marble monuments. We filled the lawn mower's gas tanks, unsheathed our machetes, wielded our hedge clippers and went to work.

I don't know what compelled me to go over to the playground – maybe I was just bored with cleaning up graves – I spied through the fence on the far side of the graveyard. I had clearly outgrown swings and slides and seesaws. Perhaps I thought I wasn't being watched. I was very wrong.

Getting off the slide, I was met by two girls, maybe my age or a bit older, several pounds heavier, at least three inches taller, and several shades blacker. I was surprised, a bit embarrassed at being caught on playground equipment, and I probably said something stupid like "Hi." Here it all gets a little hazy.

One answered me with a swift right to the side of the skull. I was instantly on the ground. The other pounced on my chest, pinned my arms down, and began coming down on me with her fists, straight into the side of my head. Yes, I was getting beaten up by a girl. The other one must have been kicking my ribs in. Couldn't see, only feel. I squirmed one arm free but I didn't fight back. All I remember was Father Dominic telling me something about "turning the other cheek." Every time the girl's closed fist pounded my face, I would turn the other cheek. That cheek would swiftly feel the wrath of her other closed fist. I was getting my ass kicked by a housing project tag team.

After a minute of battering, the girl got off my chest. I heard her and her friend running away, laughing hysterically. Two other scouts had seen the carnage and had run toward the playground. I was still able to walk, and we made our way back to the cemetery. By the time I reached the Chevelle, a warm trickle of blood was flowing out of my nose. I could taste iron on my lip. One of my eyes was swelling closed. Mr. Model Citizen, Eagle Scout to be, was slashing the air with his machete.

"Let's go kill all those niggers down there!" he screamed. He flung his cigarette to the ground. All the others were picking up their rakes and hedge-clippers. I whispered "no" and pulled on the sleeve of Model Citizen's flannel shirt. I uttered something about cheeks, and dead people, and something about an oath. Again, it is real hazy. Nobody was quite in his right mind. I put some ice from the cooler against my head while I watched the other scouts looking out through the fence at the project towers only a little ways off. Some of them were cursing, their knuckles white on the chain link.

A little while later, while rolling down the highway back to the 'burbs, I imagined black kids running around with their arms cut off. The girl who had kicked my ass held up her sliced-off arm in her one good hand while yelling, "Look what that cracker Eagle Scout did to us!" Another boy hopped around on one leg while blood spurted rhythmically from his stump. Driving his Chevelle, Eagle Scout smoked another Marlboro and said something else about "niggers." All the while, my cheek ached and throbbed. My neck was sore from all the turning.

Lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel

### Brimmer

" **BLACK AND WHITE."**

"You want him to shoot in black and white? Yeah, that could be interesting."

"No. I don't want him to shoot anything. Not from this screenplay."

"Why? You told him one more pass on the script and we would take it to the studio."

"It's too black and white."

"Of course it is. It's about a race war."

"Do you take pills to be this stupid or were you born that way? This is a complex issue and the writer only sees it in terms of black and white. Even the title is a judgment. 'Bad Badge.' He makes no effort to explore the gray areas."

"A massive earthquake strikes L.A., the blacks and the Mexicans go on a rioting rampage when aid is slow to arrive in their communities, and the only people who can save the city are a band of rogue cops. It's an action picture. What d'you want?"

"I want a human face on the rioters and looters. And I want the cops humanized too. Right now they're goddamn cartoon characters. You're gonna have to work a lot harder with this writer if you want to see this project fly."

"Well, are you going to make me figure this out myself or are you going to give me some ideas?"

"Ideas? OK. Flashback to 1992, the Rodney King incident. Officers of the LAPD applied a flood of brutal blows to a black man while he's down on the ground. Now, there was a certain herd mentality going on – there always is in situations like that – but at the end of the day those were individuals, unique people with their own reasons for doing what they did. What happened when they got home that night? What did they say to their wives? How did they handle seeing what they did displayed on national TV for the whole world to see? What they did looked animalistic but they weren't animals. They were human beings with a complex set of emotions. That's what I'm talking about. Are you writing this down?"

"No. This is my grocery list. Of course I'm writing it down. All right, I see where you're going here. What about the rioters?"

"That's the simplest fix of all. More than a quarter of the population of this country lives below the poverty line. Millions of people can't afford the basic necessities of life. The distribution of goods in this goddamn country is subject to those who can best afford them, not those who most need them."

"Aren't you getting a little political now?"

"Absolutely. Didn't I say I want to explore the gray areas? Hell, this isn't even a gray area. This is the meat of the story. Look, the seizing of commodities – the looting, the rioting – is a natural force of circulating commodities that have been long denied to those participating in the action. Are you getting me?"

"I think so."

"OK, let me put it in terms you'll understand – hopefully. I was here during the Rodney King riots. I watched the city burn on TV in the comfort of my home just like millions of other Angelenos. And do you know what image stays in my mind? A black woman sitting on the curb outside a looted Payless Shoe Source slipping new shoes onto her kids' feet. That's not looting. That's providing a basic need. That's what this movie needs to be about."

"So – we won't be calling it 'Bad Badge' anymore?"

Gone, There, Now

### Leesbitch

**IT WAS RAINING HARD** the night she died. At 7 p.m. she counted out her till, had her shift drink plus a few more, smoked a roach in the parking lot, and climbed into her Dodge Colt. At 8:19 p.m. the Colt sailed over the double yellow line into an old Buick.

The oldest of her children had a vision at the moment of impact. It was mistaken for an anxiety attack. She saw herself sitting on the ground with a body cradled in her arms. A voice told her this body was a husk, that everything familiar and real was gone from it, and that she should let go of it. The emptiness frightened her so badly she curled up with her clothes on in the shower and stayed there until the hot water ran out.

At 12:35 a.m., the doorbell rang.

"Steve, please go answer it. Somebody is dead," she said to her roommate.

Her father was at the door.

"What are you doing here?"

"They called me first... It's your mother..."

He waited in the hallway, then helped her down the stairs and into a rented car.

The youngest of the children was sleeping alone in her mother's house. The oldest child woke her sister and told her. The screaming went on for almost two hours.

The middle child lived 3,000 miles away. His father no longer lived there. His stepmother put him on a plane. They picked him up at the airport later that night. Something broke behind his eyes but he did not cry.

The family all lived together in a hotel for the next few days. It rained and rained. The father and the oldest child made phone calls and arrangements, visited with the lawyer, and drank steadily. The middle child remained broken and watched cartoons. The youngest was taken to a doctor and sedated.

On the morning of the third day, a man came to the door. He was twenty-five, but he looked middle-aged. His suit and his hair were deep black, his voice was soft and flat. He looked at the three children standing in the doorway and handed over a small, brushed metal can with a white label. The children sat on the bed and held it for a few minutes before placing it on top of the dresser, next to the Bible.

On the last day, the sun came out. The sky looked and smelled like a sheet of clean glass.

They dressed in their funeral clothes and drove to the place where she had wanted to be released. It was a secluded and beautiful place. They chose a spot where they could walk out on a few big rough rocks, into the river. Their father stayed alone on the bank.

Each child took a handful from the little can. The older sister was surprised by the texture, like sand and shells. She rubbed her thumb over the ashes three times before she threw them in.

As the fragmented and powdered bits of bone met with the sun and water, there was an explosion of white light. The children looked at each other, then at their hands, and then back into the river, into the face of God.

They fed their God, handful by handful until everything was gone.

Missionary Position

### Meme_in_Situ

**MOST MISSIONARIES KNOW** to avoid my house, so suddenly I'm surprised when I look out the window and see one with the standard issue brief case, the white shirt and black tie, the creased black slacks and shiny black shoes. Ding dong on the bell. I go to the door and open it.

"Good afternoon sir, my name is Samuel Gleason and I'm going door to door with this petition – " he pulls a clipboard out from under his arm " – that calls for an constitutional amendment that will make all abortions illegal. Are you a registered voter?" He smiles, his teeth as straight and white as accordion keys. I successfully refrain from laughing in his face, though some of my amusement must have come through; his smile gets a little bigger, a little faker. "Abortion is murder. Babies are just as much people as you and I are. How can killing them be right?"

I look over my shoulder at the clock. I have a few minutes before the rugby match starts. "So you want to make all abortions illegal? Even first trimester?"

"We are people, we have souls and rights from the moment we are conceived. Abortion is murder."

"So you're saying a single cell can have a soul?"

He looks a bit confused; this one isn't on his play list. He decides on a lateral kick: "The baby has a soul from the moment it's created. We have a duty to God to protect our children, no matter how small they are."

"So a single cell can have a soul?" Are his eyes a little glazed or is it a trick of the lighting? I shouldn't take such satisfaction from making him sweat. Heh-heh. "You do know that a baby starts from a single cell don't you?"

His smile: He looks like he's found half a worm in an apple but it's impolite to spit it out or even show disgust. "Do you think it's right to murder babies?"

"Have you stopped fucking your dog?" I figure anyone who asks me a question like that deserves one right back.

He backs away, his jaw clenched, smile gone. "God will remember this." And he's leaving. I hope he makes a note next to my address, a note something like the one the other missionaries have made.

"Good! I have a few things I remember too." I call to his rapidly receding back. "Like my puppy that died. And ...." Oh, why bother. I look at the clock. Time for the game. The All Blacks are going to get their asses kicked today.

Found Floating in the River Lithium

### (for Lisa)

### R_Toady

Mighty Eros, how great art thou! ... All things fear thee, the wide heaven above and all that is beneath the earth and the lamentable tribes of the dead, who, though they have drained with their lips the oblivious water of Lethe, still tremor before thee.

– _Oppian, Cynegetica 2.41_

**THERE WERE THOSE** striped stockings; I'll start with them. You wore those black and white striped stockings as we lay on our stomachs on a yellow bed of gingko leaves and you asked me

Would you like me to show you how to kiss?

Your mouth was sweet from the medication

Your lips were soft and sticky

Your tongue was warm

(and if I forget part of the story, I'm just supposed to

make the rest up, right?)

... Do you remember an

early November evening, the sky heavy with the setting sun, the split triangles of the leaves beneath us on the dry grass. And maybe if you hadn't started having those seizures oh no who am I kidding it would not have made a difference, there would have been something else, something that would have been just as hard maybe even harder. And oh yes, I wanted to run my fingers over those stockings, with no room for maybe, not even the existence of maybe, no lines in between those clear lines....

so a month later we were watching TV (Remember?) & you started shaking I pulled your head back so you wouldn't bite your tongue (I don't know how I knew to do this) & so it began, ended, continued. I was warned. Kiss me. The next day you fell off your unbreakable stool during art class, your burlap painting of white X's and black O's toppling off the canvas after you as you flopped across the concrete floor. I sat in the nurse's office with you but you didn't know me. Please kiss me. After that it was the hospital. No room left for indecision, no scissors and no wrists, no sky blue sterile room with straps on the bed, huh, uh... no no it would have made no difference, no goodbyes, overheard murmurs from the nurses station, unbreakable plastic chairs, no belts or shoelaces, nothing that could blur the boundaries, nothing that could cause you to end or change...overheard conversations between doctors "she's to be kept on Suicide Prevention all night. That's arm's length at all times."

The small town hospital was not good enough for your father, nor were the doctors; not Jewish enough perhaps... a doctor himself (he was the one who'd been writing your prescriptions), he pulled some strings had you transferred to an expensive psych ward perched atop the northernmost tip of the island of Manhattan; overlooking the river, a gleaming modern palace on the edge of a ghetto. They let you out once and (closely followed by your parents) we walked around the neighborhood, kids peering out at us from behind chain link fences plastered with trash, eyes full of something, I can't remember. White sails floating across the surface of the dark water origami cranes you picked at your food paper wrapper said you didn't feel anything.

They released you, woozy but officially sane; I remember how dark the circles under your eyes shone when you pulled off that mask & I remember the dead voice you spoke with when you told me it was over. "Some black guy tried to rape me in there and I can't see you anymore" well what could I say to that I bit my tongue. Not for the first time. There was no discussion. It was just turned off. It all just reinforced what my parents had shown me: men are bad and women are, if not exactly good, then at least beyond reproach. I had waited for you & it didn't matter.

A few years later I was diagnosed with the same thing as you. It was weird. It was an obvious misdiagnosis but by then it was too late: the prescription was written out & filled & I just drifted along with it. I was already half lost by then, half gone. I swallowed the pills and vanished. For months. It was not a pleasant vanishing; it was not like being drunk or high... did I catch it from you? Is crazy contagious? Is wanting to die contagious?

(Not that I could ever really completely pull it off)

It didn't matter.

I don't remember much. I could make up details. Slow motion drowning; I know it's been done to death. I spent some time up there too, for a while, in that small town hospital, in the ward on the sixth floor just down the hall from where they'd kept you, with the same view of the parking lot out my window. Tried to end it myself. I remember it as being fall but in reality it was spring. They took away my belt and shoelaces and all my meals were served with plastic forks & spoons. It wasn't bad up there. Everyone was nice, the nurses were pretty. The old widows and widowers loved me. The doctors asked politely if I wanted to receive shock treatment. I said no thank you. When I got out is when things really got bad. They dosed me up hard. I have no idea where I went. The lights went out. Months & months & months disappeared without a trace.

Eventually I decided I couldn't do it anymore; flushed my pills down the hopper, shivered through the withdrawal. It took a long time for me to feel normal. Years later you got in touch with me again. You were on something new, said it was really helping. You sounded the same, though. I wondered... we tried to be friends but I was more apathetic than ever. Never really cared enough I guess. Still don't.

Eventually we just stopped talking. It's been a few years now. It doesn't matter. Not much.

Mist hangs low over the surface of the river; the entire world has gone gray with fog. All men are the same, all women are the same. All rivers are the same.

There was a time I could tell the difference between pleasure & pain, good & bad, but those days are long gone. One thing looks like any other thing. Thinking back on those times, and going through difficult days again lately, I now offer up a little prayer, scrawled on a scrap of paper and thrown as an offering into the water that laps at my feet:

Please cleanse this world

of all uncertainty

Please give me the strength to always be

either one thing or the other,

to always be either fully alive or to be fully dead,

but to never ever exist

in that horrible vague space in between.

And please let me find the strength

to forget that I ever did.

Separate Way

### TapasTonight

" **YOU KNOW, LAUREN,** we love you, your father and I. You know that, don't you, dear? It will never matter what you do, what law you break, what sins you've committed."

Lauren could feel herself tense as she braced herself for what would come next.

"You could bring home a black man and we'd still love you," her mother continued, as if that would settle it for all time. (Proof of unconditional love!) It both disturbed and amused her how Mrs. Wraithborn could measure the depths of parental love against the perceived uproar of her daughter bringing home a man who was not white like them. This wasn't the first time her mother had used the black man analogy to convince Lauren of her love. She'd heard it ever since she was old enough to date. (I wonder what they'd do if I brought home a woman?) Lauren could only gaze at her mother and smile back. Mrs. Wraithborn's attempts at bonding with her daughter had often resulted in Lauren's realization that, in important ways, they were worlds apart. (How did I turn out so different?)

"Mom, what do you mean when you say that?" Lauren inquired. She hoped the question would not make her mother feel defensive. She really wanted to know.

"Say what? That we love you?" Her mother looked perplexed.

"No. That you'd still love me if I brought home a black man. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Oh, you know what I mean," Mrs. Wraithborn waved her hand dismissively. "I'm just kidding about that. You know I don't have anything against black people. Your father maybe does, but not me." Mrs. Wraithborn went on to recount how much she enjoyed the humor of Flip Wilson and the music of Natalie Cole; her unfaltering fanhood of the "Oprah!" daytime television show, and how, during the holiday season, she always gave "that black mail lady" a hug. (Well! That proves it, then! My mother is NOT a racist!! Shout it from the rooftops!!)

"Why? Are you saying I'm a racist?" asked Mrs. Wraithborn.

"No, mom."

Lauren did not know how to approach the subject with her mother, or if it would make any difference. It was easier for Lauren to believe that her parents' way of thinking was the result of growing up in a small town hemmed in by farmland and conservative ways. They were of an era when 'likes married likes.' The Wraithborn's same-colored community must have made them that way.

"Stay for pie?" Mrs. Wraithborn busied herself at the counter, cutting into the lemon meringue.

"No, mom, I'd better get back to the city. So, I'll see you and Dad at Missy's wedding in two weeks?" she asked, upbeat. Lauren was ready to go. Her mother insisted that she take a slice of pie in Tupperware.

She kissed her mother on the cheek and went into the living room to do the same for her father, who had fallen asleep in the leather recliner by the television. He awoke briefly and smiled at his youngest daughter and said goodbye before pulling the John Deere cap back over his sleepy eyes.

On the hour-long drive back into the city, Lauren fumbled for the cell phone on the bottom of her brown leather purse. She could feel the grit of linty tissues and a few loose coins as she did so.

She flipped open the phone and punched in the familiar code. It rang twice.

"I was waiting for you to call. How was dinner?" His voice was deep and smooth and familiar. Lauren was in love with this voice, this man. It seemed insane that after a year and a half, she had yet to expose their relationship to her parents. Yet, he seemed to understand the reasons why, and it had not deterred him.

"Will you come with me to my cousin's wedding in two weeks?"

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." Lauren inhaled a deep, cleansing breath then slowly let it out. "We'll take Mom and Dad to dinner the night before."

You can bring home a black man and we'd still love you ...

Her mother's words ran through Lauren's head the remainder of the drive home.

Black Leather, White Powder

### Laiadevorah

**COPERNICUS AND I** met at the Aztec Lounge. He flattered me with poetry. He was a spoken word artist with an album on the college charts. I was a regular at Aztec. I supplied mix tapes to the manager and occasionally slept with the bartender.

I always wore black. That night's ensemble: black fishnets, black leather jacket, black miniskirt and authentic black cowboy boots bought in Tucson. Copernicus wore a white poet shirt and jeans. He reminded me of a young deranged Einstein.

We had drinks at Aztec and then grabbed a cab to the Voodoo Lounge where I had a gig spinning discs for the 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift for the early after-hours crowd. My music was right on. I segued Souxsie with NWA, mixed Madonna and the Belle Stars with the Beastie Boys, and The Cure's "Let's Go to Bed" with "Beat It." Guys crowded my booth, asking me to play the hits and rolling up twenty-dollar bills to snort lines.

I played with the rainbow. Nothing was ever black and white. The whole Pantone guide was my roadmap. I spoke conversational Spanish and French. I mixed Hip-Hop and Soul with Alternative Dance. I hung with homeboys, Mohawk Men, Goth Girls, and Eurotrash – sometimes all in the same evening.

Maybe I was naive? Maybe I was lucky? Maybe I was just more tuned in to my surroundings. The color issue had never surfaced. I looked into the eyes of my playmates and knew who was safe and who to walk away from. Skin tone wasn't an issue. Though I do believe I ran from clear light blue eyes more often than cloudy brown ones.

I was in my zone that night. With New Years around the corner, holiday spirits were plentiful. Copernicus showed up in the DJ booth a few minutes before one.

"Hey Tina Turntable, I wrote you a poem. When you're done here come find us. Me and Dante wanna take you uptown to a great new club."

"Sure, sounds good. But stop calling me Tina, OK? That name's a joke. I don't use it anymore."

"Aww. OK, Linda. Sorry, hon. Tina Turntable is just so much fun to roll around your tongue."

"Roll this." I flipped him off friendly-like. "I gotta go play 'Pretty in Pink' for some prep dude and his Barbie doll. He gave me a twenty."

After my shift I bought some drinks and met Copernicus at his table. He was sitting with Dante, Steve, and Tommy.

Dante was a well-dressed, gold watch, shined shoes kinda dude. Tommy, I knew casually. I found his rough edged blond in black leather biker groove strangely compelling. He bounced a few nights a week at the Milk Bar. I sat next to him. He smelled like earth and had this super charged sexuality, all catlike and sinewy. His stare conveyed tangible heat.

Tommy was the reason I left caution to the wind and went to Harlem with Copernicus and two black men doing lines of coke and joking all the way to the club.

Steve drove us uptown in his boat sized Mercury Marquis. He wasn't quite bouncer material but he was a well-defined black man with beautiful dark lashed eyes and nice clean effeminate hands.

At the club we were ushered into a quiet VIP room. We sat at a table in a dark wood paneled lounge with a professional billiards table. The chairs were red and the bar was lined in 50s era scarlet Formica. I drank Grand Marnier and made jokes. Copernicus read the poem he wrote me about a dangerous lady. It sounded like U2's "Mysterious Ways." Flattered, I flirted and played my part.

When I got up to go to the bathroom, Dante followed. I didn't think anything of it.

After freshening up my lipstick and wiping the powder off my nose, I found him outside the bathroom door. He asked if I wanted to do another hit and motioned to the stairway door.

"Sure, I'm up for it." We went into the stairway. He put the powder on his hand and I snorted it from the web between his thumb and finger.

"Thanks." As I turned to go back he put his hand on my shoulder.

"You know...we been giving you blow all night. I think it's time you give something in return."

"I have some coke too, Dante. Here. I got the next line." I reached into my purse. When I looked up I no longer felt safe. I honestly believe I saw red devils laughing in his bloodshot brown eyes.

"What's up Dude? We got a problem?" His stance changed, he stood tall and his tone went gangsta on me.

"Yeah, Whitey DJ, my problem is you out of your place up here. You the last chick left in the club? I been watching you all night walking around thinking you so cool in that black leather. This is what I want. I want you to show me your cunt."

"WHAT THE FUCK, YOU WANT WHAT?" I flew out of control. I didn't think about the danger I was in. I screamed. "YOU BASTARD, HOW DARE YOU!"

He smacked me across the face. I felt the blood rushing to my head. I turned to go and he grabbed my arm. I looked him dead square in the eye. I tasted fear and blood and rage. If I had been packing a weapon he would no longer be on the planet. Maybe he noticed my intent, cause he paused and looked confused for a second.

I wiggled free and went back to the club. Copernicus was talking with Steve. They looked my way oozing prime rib lust. A quick glance around told me, sure enough, I was the last lady in the club. A few seedy looking guys at the pool table were arguing over a missed shot. Dante, Steve, and Copernicus were wearing viper smiles. All of a sudden that poem was a piece of trash and I was an idiot to be so flattered.

I felt disheveled and leveled from the sting of that slap back to reality. My cheek was actually smarting. I put my hand to my face as a great rush of fear and nausea ran through me. I was twenty-six years old and the only girl in a bar full of druggies at 5:30 a.m.

Coke made me talkative, active, funny, and friendly. But I could see it was not having the same effect on my "friends." I imagined whispers. My mind flashed on the prospect of a possible gang rape.

Tommy stood alone by the bar. I made my way over to him. He put his arm around me and whispered, "I think it's time for us to go now, yes?"

Dante looked over and yelled: "Yeah, whitey you best get on home now. You're up way past your bed time."

Tommy directed me to the door and out into the sunlight. I had my sunglasses in my pocket. I put them on with shaking hands as the roar of trucks and grating sound of steel gates opening brought me back to my senses.

"Whoa! Shit! Thanks for the save, Tommy. Want to go get breakfast?"

What I really wanted was to take him home, rip his clothes off and bury those last dreadful moments in lust and sweat.

"I live a few blocks away," he said, as if reading my thoughts. "What do you say I make us breakfast? I'm brilliant at scrambled eggs."

He moved in close and put on a pair of aviator shades.

I didn't leave his place for three days.

After that night I quit cocaine for good.

White powder brings out the worst in all colors.

Photographic Memory

### Tejas

**THERE IS NO PLACE** to hide in those old black and white photographs of my family.

They're captured, the lot of 'em. Tiny Papa Sam, all Old World mustache and fedora. He looks around blankly in most of the pictures, as though wondering how he ended up in this strange America. His wife Biddy Esther, predatory beak aquiver with suspicion, shown as the sour old thing she was. Creased shadows on Aunt Beck's face anticipate the disease that was to claim her life only a year or so after this shot was taken. And I am there, seemingly too young for awareness, yet this is exactly how I see them in memory.

There's my father, still wearing his war uniform and bitterness. Next to him is handsome Uncle Marty, staring hungrily at my mother. I can see the way his gaze is riveted, as my father and grandparents must have seen it before me.

The photographs of my mother are saved for last. You can't run away from me this time, Mommy, I tell her image. You're trapped. I can study you at my leisure. As a child, it was too hard to look at her. She dazzled the naked eye. In a black and white snapshot, I can follow her lines a little bit at a time. I like to imagine that the camera invented her, fashioning those fine bones, that taut skin. Her beauty could make sense, looking at it that way.

The most painful photograph is the one in which she is holding a crying, squirming child. At first glance, I thought maybe she was comforting me. Then the camera reveals the truth: She is looking at Marty. Why, I ask my mother, trying after all these years to bring me into her focus, why did you choose him over me?

These images tell a part of my family story. They were found eventually, in her effects, with instructions to deliver them to me. I look at them now, in full knowledge of what happened when they were developed. And what happened after that, the epilogue that I am still living.

There is no place to hide in those old black and white photographs of my family, but my mother manages to elude me still.

Missionary Position (Reprise)

### Meme_in_Situ

**I'M A LITTLE NERVOUS** when I ring the doorbell. I've heard about this house. Its occupant is well known to missionaries. Marked next to the address on our canvassing notes it says "Occupant uses profanity and is belligerent." Which means: Don't bother. But I'm not doing missionary work today – I usually don't do political work, but this was such an important issue: the murder of innocent children. Maybe he would sign my petition. There's a movement in the window and a few seconds later the door opens. He's not wearing a shirt and he has tattoos up his arms and across his chest. Some of them are racist. There are a few on his neck too. His head is shaved, but I don't see any tattoos up there. I take a breath.

"Good afternoon sir, my name is Samuel Gleason and I'm going door to door with this petition – " I pull the clipboard out from under my arm – "that calls for a constitutional amendment that will make all abortions illegal. Are you a registered voter?" He's looking me up and down. I remember the words of Martin Luther King: " _Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend._ " And smile.

He has a smile that makes fun of me. I repeat the words to myself and try to love him. I blurt out: "Abortion is murder. Babies are just as much people as you and I are. How can killing them be right?"

He looks over his shoulder. I can hear the sounds of a sports cable broadcast on the TV. Something about a rugby match that's about to begin. Not surprising that he likes such brutal sports. I'm not feeling hopeful; but I have to do this.

He's looking at me again, still wearing that smirk. It reminds me of a boy in my high school. In a high raspy voice with an eastern accent he says: "So you want to make all abortions illegal? Even first trimester?" The Lord commanded us to witness. I tell the tattooed man what I believe. "We are all people, and we have souls and rights from the moment we are conceived. Abortion is murder."

His eyebrows go up a little and he says: "So you're saying a single cell can have a soul?"

Was he an atheist? The notes would have indicated that if he had already said so. So he must believe in the soul. Maybe if I take another tack.

"The baby has a soul from the moment it's created. We have a duty to God to protect our children, no matter how small they are."

He repeats himself: "So a single cell can have a soul?"

There's no way I want this to get bogged down in a pointless discussion about biology. What can I say to make him see the truth? For some reason, I want to convince this man. Am I still trying to win over that boy in high school who knocked my books down and flicked my ears whenever he got behind me?

The tattooed man says: "You do know that a baby starts from a single cell don't you?"

I don't know what to say. That is not the issue. The issue is the sanctity of human life. If our lives are not sacred inside the womb, then what makes them so when we are born? This man. This man doesn't care. I can't make him care.

I try once more though. I say: "Do you think it's right to murder babies?" Surely he will agree with me that murdering babies is evil. Instead he asks me if I still have sex with my dog. It's over. At least he didn't start hurling racist remarks at me. He's just looking at me with that same little smirk, his eyes slightly hooded. I have to leave. Before I leave, I remind him of what he must already know.

"God will remember this."

Then I turn my back on him and walk away. He yells something about his puppy that died. I'm thankful I didn't hear the rest. I pull out the list and add a small note under the other: "Vicious dog."

White Dog in the Snow

### Teenager

**BOLD BLACK LETTERS** stare up at me from the white page and then jumble before my eyes, mixing up the words, the sentences, that I have been writing since early this morning.

If there's a better way of telling my story, I don't know it. Yesterday I stood in my yard, looking out across the pastures at three white baby goats. As if on cue, they commenced their high-pitched bleating. Just beyond them, the yearling ram with his thick, black fur and milk white tail gave me a challenging look. I stared back before turning around to step into the house.

And here I still sit.

It was only four days ago that I returned home from Jamison Mines without you. Frozen and numb, I drove home blindly, letting myself be hypnotized by the freeway markers, afraid that I'd crash if I let your face surface in my mind. You parade now in the fore of my vision, recalcitrant as always, but allowing me to experience the torment of your loss.

Outside the window I see your station on the deck. It was there that you watched the fields with sharp black eyes, never missing the stray black and white cat, Tuxedo Man, that used to drink milk from our porch before you came to us. Tuxedo Man became a stranger, but I wonder now if he will return in your absence.

That absence dilates like a gaping black hole in the center of that white-out day. It didn't feel like day at all, or night. There was only snow, continuing in an even sheet from my feet into the sky. I felt my pack pull me back as I struggled for balance on a terrain I couldn't see. I stepped forward and slid down onto my knees, painfully wrenching an already sprained ankle. Gasping, I looked up to call you, expecting you to be nearby. Directly ahead I saw your white form darting through the trees. I called again, my voice shushed by the snow. My throat felt hollow and cold. I swallowed hard, rising up, jerking myself toward the trees. I called your name. I called and called, staggering along.

Later, in my tent beneath the trees, I knew you had finally chosen to follow your wanderlust. I saw before me your black almond eyes, victorious, against the ice white of your face. That night I cried pitifully, imagining that you regretted having gone too far and that you searched for me. I awoke the next morning with swollen eyes and cold joints and looked at the sun coming up over the mountains. The light erased black shadows in the creases of the snow until the ground sparkled. The peaks mimicked the graceful arch of your ears.

When I returned home I told no one what happened. I felt paralyzed, and even now I cannot speak. And so I write this and imagine your final resting place, your brave end without fear as your white form sank down, slowly covered by silent snow.

And Read All Over

### CGT

**WHEN I WAS** a little boy, I had a great idea. I was going to be the first person to publish a newspaper in color. The idea came to me while throwing newspapers from door to door.

The black ink from the Huntingdon Daily News would rub off on my hands after delivering 98 papers each evening. Not only were my hands jet black, but the webbed patch of skin that connects the thumb to the pointer finger was dried out and cracked from eight years of being the town's newspaper boy.

My customers were addicted to the black and white daily. They waited for me to show up each night around 6 p.m. with a wad of paper, rolled like a joint, secured with a pink rubber band.

Witnessing the sheer panic of my customers when their paper was late, I knew that if I were to publish a newspaper in color, readers would become alcoholics for the news.

There was more to the Daily News than black words printed on cheap white paper. My hands were not only stained by the black ink, but I lost my soul when I delivered lies for a mere three cents a copy.

I felt powerful as a newspaper boy – like a Walter Cronkite on foot. I fell in love with the power of the pen. When my mother would complain about a town resident who rubbed her the wrong way, I would often throw newspapers really hard against his screen door to make mamma happy!

The Huntingdon Daily News was – and still is – a classic hometown newspaper. In the boredom of delivering papers, I actually started reading the front cover. The paper hosted a "School News Page" for the eight area high schools located within the boundaries of its circulation district.

My high school, Southern Huntingdon, had the reputation for being the winner of the Traveling News Page Trophy most times during the twenty-five years the paper hosted the Friday School News Page Section.

One August day in 1982, on the front cover of the Daily News there was a black and white photograph of the reporters from my school who had won the traveling trophy again. My girlfriend, Aileen, was one of the reporters. She had made the front page of the Daily News and when I folded the papers for delivery, the seam went right down her face.

Aileen talked me into becoming a writer for the school news page during my sophomore year in high school. I failed English my freshman year. It was the only big fat red F ever to hit my report card. I was a wiz in science, but for the life of me, I couldn't comprehend parts of speech. I hated English and the teacher who instructed me during the ninth grade – Mrs. Robinson.

By an act of God, Aileen was able to convince Mrs. Hicks, the school news page advisor, to let me join the Southern Huntingdon writing staff as I entered tenth grade.

The things I had written must have made real work for Mrs. Hicks to tighten up. I was surprised to see my first article appear in the Daily News with my name in big, bold dark letters: By Charlie Taylor.

After growing comfortable with such a talented advisor, I really didn't worry about what I turned in as a school news page story each week. Mrs. Hicks made my words read like Shakespeare's.

Soon, Charlie Taylor started winning "best news story" week after week. It was frightening to receive all that praise. I too was becoming an alcoholic for that black and white daily.

When Mrs. Hicks was my English teacher, I started getting all A's in class. My grammar didn't improve, I just learned how to be flirtatious with the advisor and those people who knew how to correct the things I wrote.

I went on to win best story award the most times my senior year, and was also selected as Reporter of the Year by some famous journalist who worked for the Pittsburgh Press.

The Huntingdon Daily News hired me as an intern staff writer the summer before I was supposed to start Penn State's journalism school.

I sat in the newsroom with a bunch of professional writers day after day and lost my desire to become a writer and bailed out of my enrollment to Penn State.

They were really sad, the reporters who worked for the paper. They told me secrets about the publishing world that I care not to repeat.

Not only did I give up my desire to become a writer, I also threw away my idea to print the first colored newspaper.

USA Today came around and brought color to news racks across the nation, and then the local dailies started using color, then the big metro papers – even the New York Times. But I don't care. You can find plenty of color everywhere you go.

Singed Black

### Sandshovel

**WE BURIED MY FATHER** on an unusually warm November day. Odd how the sunlight looked through branches without leaves. There were maybe thirty of us surrounding the burial site and I heard the priest's monotone voice, but the words did not register. I didn't think I really needed anyone to help me through this but was grateful to feel my best friend's arm around my waist ... just in case. Then it was over.

Coffee Cake and Conversation

My mother's house was filled with relatives and a few friends. Laughter... teasing ... eating ... drinking. I knew I could escape. Almost out the door, my mother called to me.

"I want to give you something," and she disappeared into her bedroom and returned with dad's forest green fall jacket. "Do you want this?"

"OK... sure... yes... I do... I'll wear it, I think," I stammered and put it on and it felt good – I knew he would have worn it recently. "I'm just going for a coffee, OK?"

I didn't wait for a response. I avoided her eyes and made my escape. I had to be alone.

Starbucks, Sunshine and Smoke

I pulled into a Starbucks half a mile away and sat with my bitter cup outside and alone with the November sunshine hurting my sleep-deprived eyes. I put my sunglasses on and pulled his coat tightly around me. I wanted a smoke and couldn't find my lighter in my purse. But because my father had a fatal addiction to cigarettes, hope rose in me that there would be matches in his pocket. Eureka! Not just a pack of matches but a cigarette that looked like he had lit up and put out after one or two puffs.

I stared at the white cigarette with the black singed end and thought it was probably the last one he'd attempted to smoke. The doctor had told my mother to stop nagging him about quitting; that it was too late and she shouldn't make him suffer anymore than he already was.

I held the cigarette to my lips, struck a match and inhaled that intoxicating poison deeply into my being and for the first time felt the tears stinging my eyes.

Trace and the Black and White

### Brimmer

**THE LAPD BLACK-AND-WHITE** glided to a stop at the curb and the young officer in the passenger seat shot a long, level gaze in Trace's direction. Trace shifted the bag of groceries to his left hand, keeping his right hand free to carefully reach for his wallet, as he knew he would be asked to show identification.

"Where are you heading to?" the young officer asked as he stepped out of the black-and-white, left hand resting on the baton strapped to his hip. Trace imagined the cop, with that buzz-cut blond hair and cold blue eyes, as a German tank commander emerging from his hatch in the African desert.

"Home," Trace replied with as little tone as possible.

"Where's home?"

"Up the street."

Trace fished in his back pocket for his wallet and offered his ID before it was requested. The officer gave thanks with a curt nod of his head and strolled back to the patrol car to have the driver radio in Trace's information for outstanding warrants.

"There's a reason we stopped you," the blond officer said after dispatch confirmed that Trace was neither a wanted murderer, rapist, bank robber, pedophile nor anything equally unpleasant. The officer was suddenly unfolding a piece of paper in Trace's face.

"Does this guy look familiar to you?"

Trace was looking at a Xeroxed mug shot of a slate-eyed criminal. "No. Never saw him in my life."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. What did – "

"He's someone we're looking for, and I think he kind of looks like you."

Trace laughed. Actually he tried to laugh because right then he wasn't feeling very well. He bore absolutely no resemblance to the man in the photocopied mug shot but this German tank commander obviously thought otherwise.

"When did you get out?" the cop asked. His cold eyes took in every detail of Trace's wardrobe: the baseball cap, faded denim shirt with a ballpoint pen and a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket, black jeans with a fashionable tear in the knee, old tennis shoes.

"Get out of what?"

"Did you get out of prison recently?"

"Ummm – no."

"Ever been in trouble?"

"Never been caught." A laugh choked in Trace's throat. The cop didn't think that was very funny.

"You have a job?"

"I'm self-employed."

"Oh really?" He said it as if Trace had admitted to being one of L.A.'s thousands of street beggars.

"What do you do?"

"I'm a writer."

"Uh-huh." Totally unimpressed. He studied the photocopy of the mug shot for a good thirty seconds and then rested his gaze back upon Trace's face.

"Are you sure this isn't you?"

"It's not me."

"Thank you."

The young officer stepped back into the black-and-white. Trace hit the WALK button and waited to cross the street.

The Penguin and the Panda

### TapasTonight

**WENDY THE PENGUIN** and Dean the Panda met at an antiques auction in New York City in the winter of 2003. They were both attracted to each other for the same reasons: They were both black and white and of the same stature, financially and physically. They both had jobs in the fashion industry.

Wendy really liked the way Dean pronounced her name "Windy" instead of the traditional way. And she liked how he would quizzically raise his eyebrows when he asked her if he could do anything nice for her:

"Wendy, would you like more ice cubes?"

"Wendy, would you like me to lower the thermostat?"

Dean really liked the way Wendy looked over her shoulder and shook her wings and tail every time she had parting words for him.

"Dean, I'm trying out a new recipe with bamboo shoots tonight!" _(shake, shake)_ "Dean, you have some leaves stuck on your coat!" _(shake, shake)_

The two adored each other and soon married, rented a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper Eastside and enjoyed the peaceful life of couplehood. Often, Wendy and Dean would lounge in bed on lazy Sunday mornings, cuddling, and saying things to each other like, "I don't know where I end and where you begin." They both enjoyed listening to the Ying Yang Twins and were major donors at the annual New York City Philharmonic Black and White Ball at the Plaza hotel. It was at this particular fundraiser that Wendy met an interesting new friend near the appetizer buffet. The newcomer was a Holstein bovine named Mullata and she had luxurious taste in eveningwear. Diamond and onyx jewels adorned her ears, and around her ample neck was a choker made of black and white freshwater pearls. It was rumored that Mullata had a little black book of celebrities whom she assisted with adoptions of Eastern European and African babies.

Wendy and Mullata chatted amicably about the silent auction items, the high quality of the caviar and the exquisite crab puffs. Eventually, the conversation turned to family and children. Wendy lamented the lack of children in her life. Dean was always working on new tuxedo designs for his employer, and she was always laboring late into the night, poring over the negatives of the latest fashion show she photographed.

Who had time for children? Wendy made up her mind that the joy of parenthood was missing from their lives. She was ready for kids.

At midnight, back at the apartment, Wendy fixed a snack of chocolate milk and Oreos for herself and Dean. Then she pulled out the chessboard for a pre-bedtime round. She knew the contemplative mood and deep thinking required of the game would lend itself to the topic she was about to broach.

"Dean, I want to have a baby," she simply stated. "I'm ready."

Wendy shook her wings and her tail as she usually did, then slid the knight to a position of leverage.

Dean looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

"Have you given any thought to how this will change our lives?"

"Yes," was the reply. "I'd like to continue working after the baby is born, and you can be a stay-at-home father."

"Hmmmm."

Dean reached for another Oreo.

"I think I'll make a Kahlua and cream nightcap. Would you like one, Wendy?"

"Please don't change the subject, Dean!!"

Wendy wanted to continue talking about having a baby. She knew Dean's propensity for meandering.

After two more weeks of discussion, Wendy and Dean decided to have a baby after all. Wendy would resume her career as a fashion photographer after the baby reached the age of three months, and Dean would then stay at home to care for their little one full-time.

On the day of the birth, both were delighted to witness an adorable baby flamingo spring from Wendy's eggshell. Both Wendy and Dean were overjoyed at the sight of the little gray bird they knew would bring a splash of color into their lives as her adult bird feathers grew in. They named their little flamingo Pinky and dressed her in blue denim rompers and mint flannel blankets, red beanies, and yellow sleeping gowns.

On Pinky's first birthday, the little family celebrated with a party, inviting only close family and friends. Pinky tried to blow out her solitary candle on a brightly frosted cake shaped like a cluster of balloons. Ice cream in every flavor was served, and decorative crepe streamers hung from the ceiling. Children received party favors from the hired clown, and Pinky received children's wear from the United Colors of Benetton and gift certificates for Jelly Belly.

Tillie the Rainbow Trout (Pinky's Godmother) raised her Dixie cup of fruit punch.

"I'd like to make a toast!" she announced. All the guests gathered 'round to hear Tillie's good wishes.

Dean and Wendy assumed the traditional Tillie would exclaim something like, "Life is not always black and white so make sure you paint your world brightly!" Or, perhaps Tillie would go for her usual "Life's decisions can be good or bad, cut and dry, or black and white.... It's your life! Make your decisions count!"

Instead, Tillie simply raised her cup. Surely, she would speak soon? The guests waited patiently. Soon, Tillie began to look alarmed; her large unblinking eyes were wide with fear. She began to cough violently. A harsh, choking, wheezing sound emanated from her gaping mouth.

At that moment, Tillie slumped. Her eyes glazed over, and her tail and dorsal fin flopped against the hardwood floor with seizure-like tremors. Dean quickly sprang into action and tried to resuscitate Tillie, but his efforts went unrewarded.

"Breathe, Tillie, breathe!" everyone at the party wrung their hands and paws and wings with anxiety. Frustrated, Dean tilted Tillie's head back and peered into her throat.

"Ah-HAH!" Dean shouted triumphantly.

He reached down into the gaping trout's mouth to hook a wayward smoked almond from the depths of her gills. Immediately, Tillie began to sputter and gasp and breathe again. Everyone patted Dean on the back and announced how brave and special he was for his speedy reaction to the terrible incident.

The event caught the attention of news reporters and bloggers alike. The next few days were a whirlwind of media coverage. Photo ops, interviews, and guest appearances on the local news filled each day. The two appeared on "Larry King Live."

A celebration was held at a SoHo restaurant, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented Dean with an award for his bravery. Unfortunately, a grease fire in the kitchen's restaurant erupted at the same time as all the hoopla in the main dining room, and few attendees escaped the engulfing inferno.

The next day, the headline of the New York Times read:

"Trout, Almond, Dean Focus of Recent Deaths at Local Restaurant"

The Black and White Ball

### Tejas

**I WENT TO** a Black and White Junior League Ball once. Junior League was out of my league, but the man I was seeing came from that world and he wanted to show me off.

My pale skin – lots of it showing – was shockingly white next to the black of my dress. In a crowd where the tannest ruled, it was obvious I hadn't been to St. Tropez for centuries.

Black and white. It's a useful expression as in, "Look, it's right there, in black and white," but it's boring at a ball. Half the fun of an elegant evening of dancing in the society world is the swirling array of colorful gowns – luscious sherbet shades for the ingenue, shimmering teal for the still-beautiful matron of 50, any shade of red for the recent divorcée. Black and white is the rainbow stripped naked.

Conversation at The Black and White Ball was reserved. I didn't know for whom it was reserved, but I did know who it wasn't for. Me. Now, I had enough common sense not to get involved in a conversation about politics with CEOs of major corporations, but I genuinely thought that food was an acceptable subject to discuss around a buffet table. No, I did not mention the starving children in India. But I couldn't help asking a vice-president of corporate doublespeak about the contaminated milk formula his bosses couldn't get past FDA inspection in this country, but were able to market successfully in developing African nations.

The only other discussion I took part in was in the powder room, with a fluffy white personage whose dress was adorned in feathers from "a rare albino ostrich" (oh, unicorns aren't available any more, I speculated silently), and her friend, a honey-skinned goddess one could easily mistake for a person of color. They were lamenting the laziness of the black bathroom attendant. "Good help is SO hard to find these days," Fluffy the Ostrich complained vaguely, in my direction. I made an appropriate noise, somewhat between a cluck and a hoot, but it was definitely an animal sound: my effort to communicate with her species.

Black and white, right and wrong. I was the wrong sort for this gathering, clearly.

My date was delighted with the impression I made. "I adore bad little Jewish rebels," he grinned, and bent over to plant a daring kiss upon my alabaster décolleté, making sure everyone saw. I didn't mind the word rebel because I came from a long line of Marxists, trade unionists, and war protesters. What I objected to was the fact he had invited me simply to flaunt me in front of his family, to show off the Jesus-killing Jewess he was with instead of the good girl debutante he was supposed to marry.

Black and white, right and wrong, good and evil.

I decided to make a dramatic exit, so I slapped him and walked out of the building. I whistled for my unicorn, but was just as happy seeing my first glimpse of color since leaving the ball when a yellow cab picked me up.

Neegee

### Francais

**THE SCHOOL BUILDINGS** were brick, and the bricks were deep red. The leaves of the trees that dotted the playground had turned golden yellow in the New York autumn and each morning of those first few weeks of school brought a new bright blue sky.

I walked to first grade at P.S. 135 every day with Joey and I walked home with him every afternoon. And every morning as we got to school a black kid walked toward us on the playground on the other side of the fence. Going home, he'd be walking the other way, too. We'd see him every day, coming and going.

He wasn't in our class. He was probably in kindergarten, and because that was in a separate building, he was walking in the opposite direction.

We'd say hi to him and he'd say hi back.

So Joey said to me one morning while we were on our way to school: "I wonder if we'll see that colored kid today?"

"You're not supposed to call them colored," I told Joey.

"Why?" he asked.

"I dunno," I said. "My mom just told me. You're supposed to call them Negro."

Joey disagreed.

"No," he said. "I think my mom said you're supposed to call them colored."

When we saw him that morning, walking toward us on the other side of the fence, Joey asked him: "Hey, what are we supposed to call you?"

"Huh?" he said.

"Are we supposed to call you Negro or colored?" Joey asked him.

"I dunno," he said. "Colored, I guess."

"Colored!" Joey shrieked. "With crayons!"

"Hi," I said. "My mom said we're not supposed to call you colored. My mom said we're supposed to say Negro."

"I know!" Joey said. "We'll call him Neegee!"

The black kid looked at us and we walked away.

"Bye Neegee!" Joey said.

There was a break in the good weather, and one morning was overcast. I was walking to school with Joey and his older sister Leslie. There was a crowd of other kids at the crosswalk and we all were stopped to wait for the green light. I put down my little brown leather briefcase to get a better grip on it. Suddenly, I saw Leslie, Joey and all the other kids were already half way across the street. I grabbed the briefcase and hurried after them. I don't know if I fell asleep standing up or what happened.

The bright sunny autumn days returned. Joey fell on the playground and a doctor had to come to school and stitch the cut on his temple. I found my cousins Arlene and Jeffrey and I started walking home with them. Then I noticed Joey and Leslie were walking behind us.

I turned around and said, "Hi Joey."

"Shut up, Artie," Leslie said.

"Yeah, shut up, Artie," Arlene said.

I guess they thought I was making fun of Joey and how he fell, but I wasn't. I was just trying to say hi.

The crisp autumn days continued. Joey and I were walking home one day under a crystal blue sky, the red brick buildings behind us, the golden leaves scattered at our feet.

On the other side of the fence, Neegee walked toward us.

"Hi Neegee," I said.

"Hey, c'mere," he said to Joey.

"Wha?" Joey said.

"Lemme show you somethin'."

"Wha?"

"Gimme yo' hand."

"Wha?"

"Gimme yo' hand."

We stopped walking. Neegee wanted Joey to stick his hand through the chain link fence.

"Nuh-uh," Joey said.

"Jus' gimme yo' hand," Neegee said. "Lemme show you somethin'.

Neegee put his fingers through the fence. Joey held out his hand toward him.

Neegee gripped Joey's fingers so their two fists formed interlocking hooks. I didn't know what was happening. I thought Joey was smiling, like it was a joke, but the smile was just the start of the twist his face made into a mask of pain. In an instant, tears were running down his cheeks. Neegee laughed.

"Ow, owwwwwww," Joey howled. He wrenched his hand away, stuck it between his thighs, doubling over, sobbing and drooling. Neegee cackled, jumping up and down.

"Are you OK, Joey?" I asked.

"Shut up, Artie," he sobbed. "Just shut up."

Neegee hopped away, dancing toward the red brick buildings, still laughing.

Black Grounds on White Paper

### Sandshovel

**BEING THE SO-CALLED WRITER** of the family means I sometimes get assignments that no one else wants. Writing my mother's eulogy was one of these.

"I'll write it," I told my sister, "but I won't read it." She nodded her head and muttered something like, 'whatever' and so I sat down in front of her computer. What to say? I had a tumultuous relationship with my mother and her attributes did not jump right out at me. I sat for an hour before anything came to mind and then I started writing like a racehorse leaves the gate.

"Come and read this," I called out to my sister. She read over my shoulder.

"It's fine... good... but you'll have to read it at the funeral. Who else is going to do it?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "I'll do it... somehow I'll do it."

The day of the funeral arrived. She was going to be buried next to my father, who'd gone two years before. I'd set the alarm three hours before I needed to be at the church. I was staying with a childhood friend, Linda – I no longer lived in the area. When Linda woke up she found me fully dressed in my black designer dress, black lace shawl and impeccable patent leather shoes.

"Wow! You look stunning."

"Thanks. I'm pretty nervous. I read the eulogy out loud a few times already this morning. Want to hear it?"

"Sure. Let me get dressed. How long do we have?"

"Less than an hour. Go get ready! I can't be late."

I went into the guest room to get the two-page printout. It wasn't there on the bed where I remembered leaving it. I checked the kitchen table, the countertop and then the bathroom. Not there.

"Don't panic, it has to be here ...." I muttered and began tearing apart the bedroom. I checked under the bed and between the blankets. Nothing.

We had forty-five minutes to get to the church. Linda lived only five minutes away... but I didn't want to be rushing in and stressed. Why had I agreed to this?

"What's the matter, Elaine?" Linda stood at the doorway.

"I can't find the freaking eulogy. It's gone. We have less than forty-five minutes and I can't find it. I've looked everywhere."

My mother's voice spoke in my right ear. "Where do we look when we have lost something?"

"The garbage?" I answered.

I went into the kitchen and pushed the lever of the chrome can with my foot and underneath the dumped black coffee grounds was the eulogy.

I gasped, pulled it out of the trash and shook off the wet grimy grounds. My beautiful white document now had black streaks across it, and some of the words were illegible. Linda and I looked at each other and we both burst out laughing.

"I have to re-type this!"

I dashed to her computer room. My fingers flew over the keys and I paid no attention to typos.

When we were racing to the church, both of us were feeling giddy and lightheaded. It didn't feel like I was going to my mother's funeral. Linda said she was going to heckle me while I spoke to the congregation.

"I'm going to yell 'Sit Down' when you start your little speech," she said.

And that's why I was laughing as we got to the church where I was going to deliver the eulogy for my mother.

My immediate family was standing in the back of the church and they looked at me with relief.

I saw the coffin. The lid was open. A woman from the funeral home whispered to me: "If you want to see your mother you should do it now. We are about to close the coffin."

I had not seen her at the prayers the night before and had not seen her during the last four months of her life. She was dressed in her powder blue suit and her hair was perfectly set. Her face looked frozen and unnatural. But it was her. I didn't want to kiss her cheek but thought that I should so I wouldn't regret not doing it one day. So I did. So cold.

We settled in the front rows of the church. The priest announced almost immediately that he thought the eulogy should be given then and not near the end of the mass. I snapped to attention.

"What did he... ?"

I glanced at my brother next to me and he smiled.

Then I was standing behind the microphone and looking out on the crowd. I knew where Linda was sitting so I didn't look at that area. I no longer was nervous or anxious, but warm and confident, and I opened my mouth and the words came out.

Later, many people remarked that it was a job professionally done.

I knew my parents expected nothing less of me.

Black and White Hands

### (for Rosa Parks)

### Litteratzi

**YOU KNOW IT'S FUNNY** but I don't remember the day that I discovered my hands as a child. I don't remember the day that I discovered my ears, or my eyes. Perhaps it's because I was too young to remember, or because they were always there. But I remember the day that I discovered the color of my skin. There are some things you just never forget.

"You're black," she said, with her golden pigtails flapping in the breeze. "You're black, and that's why I'm not going to hold your hand."

I stood there embarrassed, in front of the big yellow school bus that was to take us on our field trip to the museum. Her words knifed through the chatter of my classmates and murdered what had begun as a perfect day. I'd gotten up early that morning and, without the usual prompting from mom, donned my freshly starched uniform – white shirt, khaki short pants and a pair of new brown shoes. In my right pocket was a little notebook and pencil. I knew that mom would quiz me as soon as I got home to make sure that I'd paid attention so I was going to take notes.

Now, just before embarking on my journey to the museum, I was getting a different kind of education.

"But Miss said that we must hold hands in pairs to enter the bus," I said.

"I don't care what Miss said! My mommy says that all black people are criminals. She says that I should never mix with you people. She says that if you mix colored clothes with white clothes, then the colored clothes run on the white clothes, and the white clothes become useless."

Her thin mouth narrowed into a slit. Her straight nose held itself aloft as if avoiding some ghastly smell. Her icy blue eyes glared at me, daring me to contradict her.

"You're black," she repeated, stomping her feet, "and I'm not going to hold your hand. That's final."

I stared at my tiny outstretched hand – the hand that would one day wield a surgeon's scalpel. I listened to her with ears that would one day hear the symptoms of patients. I looked at her with large brown eyes that would one day see Ms. Golden Pigtails' very own mother come to me for treatment, and get it with the respect and dignity that every human being deserves. I stared at my tiny outstretched hand, and then I burst into tears.

No Help

### Francais

" **WHATEVER YOU DO,** don't shake hands with the new guy. He does this thing, man, it really hurts."

That was James talking to me, one morning in the third grade. One thing I was glad about was that it meant there was a new kid in our class, so I wasn't the new guy anymore. I had just moved to L.A. from New York, and I was sick of being the new guy. People made fun of the way I talked, the clothes I wore, even the way I walked. So now there was a new new-guy. Great.

"Hey," he said. "Shake." And he stuck out his hand. I just looked at it.

"Somebody told you, huh?" he said. And then he cackled and walked away.

His name was Marcus and it turned out he lived in the same apartment complex as James and me. Most of our other classmates were white. There were a few Asians. Robert was black, and there were a few other black people in our class, and a few more throughout the rest of the school. But not many.

Marcus was great. He was always making jokes, he was always there to play ball, he was always with us, having fun, passing time, all the afternoons of our childhood.

There were about twenty kids in our complex, a stretch of pink towers and white courtyard apartments in the middle of L.A. We'd go to the recreation center after school every day to play tetherball. When we got to know each other better we played pickup football games in the fall and baseball in the spring and summer. Marcus had a brother a year older named Tony, and a younger sister, Susie. Along with a couple of other guys from the complex, Marcus, Tony, James and I would play ball games on the field, a huge stretch of lawn, and Susie would jump rope with the other girls on the cement walkway down by the entrance.

I don't remember where Marcus and Tony Robinson came from. Marcus was smaller and could lose his temper. Tony would always keep his cool. And he always had a kind word. One day I showed up to play football in a red shirt and black pants. "Nice colors, Artie," he said. Funny that I still remember that, huh?

Marcus would get mad if we'd lose. Tony, never.

We formed a softball team and played in a league. We even had shirts made: "All Stars" in blue letters and blue sleeves on a golden-yellow torso. Tony was the best athlete. My dad would come to the games, and so would Mr. Robinson. He was a lawyer.

One day we were doing our cheers after the game. "Two-four-six-eight who do we appreciate?" Except the other team didn't do a cheer for us. And as they walked by, one of the kids said something to Marcus.

"What?" Marcus shrieked. "I'll KILL you!" Tony grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. The dads from both teams pow-wowed. Then we all left.

I asked my dad what the kid said to Marcus. My dad wouldn't tell me. I asked my dad if the kid apologized. He wouldn't tell me that, either.

We formed a Boy Scout troop. It was pretty pathetic. We were in the middle of the city. We hardly ever did anything. You had to do three five-mile hikes to pass from Tenderfoot to Second Class. We did one along the beach in Santa Monica. I had to miss the second hike. There was never a third hike. But some of the dads did organize a trip to a Dodger game one night. I'll never forget it, and here's why:

It was twilight, the sky was glowing a beautiful deep blue and the stadium lights were on. We were in the center field bleachers. Tony had just come back from buying a Coke. These were the days before they put lids on cups. Tony was sitting down about three seats to my left. The batter popped one straight over the field, straight toward us. Toward me. I saw it coming. Right at me. Tony stood up, drink in his left hand, and balancing in an awkward stance, grabbed the ball with his right hand – I still remember the sound, slap! – just before it would've broken my nose or a rib, or something, I couldn't quite tell. He turned around to me, realizing he had gotten out of his seat and snatched the ball from in front of me. He didn't know that my reflexes hadn't kicked in and I'd just been sitting there, not ready to do anything.

"Oh sorry, Artie," he said.

"No, don't be sorry, thanks, it would've hit me."

I think it put him at ease.

He'd barely spilled any of the Coke. I can still see him, standing in front of me, to this day, making that catch, baseball in one hand, Coke in the other. Whenever I go to Dodger Stadium, I look out at the bleachers and picture us, exactly where we were sitting, exactly as it was that night.

One weekend morning we were sitting on the tables at the entrance to the rec center waiting for whatever activities were scheduled to start. I was there with Tony and the McConnell brothers, Pete and Tommy.

"Heard about your dad," Tony told them.

"That was pretty screwed up, huh?" Pete said.

"What happened?" I asked.

"He was out for his jog Monday night and he got jumped by two guys with pipes and they took his wallet," Tommy said.

"Wow, was he hurt?" I asked. There wasn't a lot of crime in the complex. That was a really unusual case. I lived there four years, and that was the only time I'd heard of anything like it at all.

"A little, a few scrapes and a black eye. He says it looks worse than it is."

"Do they know who did it?"

"Couple of spades," Pete said. Then he turned to Tony and said, coolly: "No offense."

"None taken," Tony said.

And from the way he said it, I thought he was sincere. He knew Pete was talking about the kind of people who would jump a guy and beat him up and take his wallet and that even though it was a racist word, it didn't apply to him. I thought.

My mom came home from grocery shopping one afternoon. It was the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.

"I saw Mrs. Robinson at the store," my mom said. "She came up to me and said: 'What are they doing to us?' She was crying."

After elementary school, my family moved away, out to the suburbs. I was miserable. I missed my friends from the apartment complex. I hated my new classmates, snotty rich kids who grew up in big houses and made fun of me because I was a good student in music appreciation and I dressed the way we did in L.A., nice pants and paisley shirts with Nehru collars – it was 1969 – instead of T-shirts and jeans. And just about everyone was white. There were about three black kids in the whole school. I didn't make friends with any of them. Or anyone else.

I learned to get along. I made it through junior high somehow, and in high school I was starting to have a little fun. I had an electric organ and I was playing in some bands and my parents would go out on Saturday nights so the other musicians could come over and we'd jam. Some girls would come to hear us, too. We even had a black singer joining us every now and then; a guy named Dennis. He had a great voice. He'd come out from the east and was living with a girlfriend at her parents' house in my neighborhood.

One night when my dad came home from work he wanted to talk to me so he came into my room. And just like I'll remember that night at Dodger Stadium, I'll remember this night, too, only for a different reason.

My dad was usually a lighthearted guy, but I could tell just from the way he was carrying himself that he had something important to say.

"You remember Marcus and Tony, don't you?" he asked.

"Of course," I said. They'd come to my birthday parties when I was in elementary school. There was a picture of us together in our family's photo collection. But it had been four years since I'd seen them.

"Their dad came to my office today. He'd tracked me down. He remembered where I worked and he came to my office. He didn't call. He came in person. Did you know they moved to Beverly Hills?"

I didn't. I wasn't in touch from anybody from my old neighbor-hood at that point.

"Wow, Beverly Hills," I said. "How great. The dad made it big, huh? Great. They were great people. Remember? How great for them. Great."

We'd moved out of the apartments, too, but out to the suburbs, not to Beverly Hills. Big difference in money. Big difference.

But I could see that my dad was upset.

"No," he shook his head. "Not great. They're miserable. They've got no friends. Nobody at Beverly Hills High will be friends with them. They're outcasts. You know what I'm saying."

He didn't use the word black. He didn't have to.

"And the dad was miserable, too. 'If I'd known, I never would've moved there, Ed,' he told me. 'I would've stayed in the complex. Everybody would've been happier.' "

My dad handed me a piece of paper.

"Here's their phone number. But when you call, don't say the dad tracked me down. Say that we bumped into each other at a restaurant and I got the number then. Don't say that you know they don't have any friends. Just invite them to hang out with you and your friends on Saturday nights when we're not home, OK?"

"OK," I said.

But I didn't.

Even though I was starting to fit in – finally – out in the suburbs, and was making some friends, I had been damaged by the humiliation, the teasing, the taunts, the fights during my first years there. I had no confidence. I just didn't feel good about myself. Things hadn't turned out the way I thought they'd be when I was a kid, when I was friends with Marcus and Tony. I thought I'd be having fun, but I hated myself. And I didn't want them to see me that way. Pretty bad, huh? Pretty selfish.

But there was another reason I didn't call them.

As I looked at the number, and I thought about this new crowd that I was just starting to fit in with, I thought – for just a brief moment:

"Wow, you know, it might be cool to have some black friends."

And then I said to myself:

"What kind of person are you? What kind of person have you become? What kind of human being would think that thought? You would even consider, even for a moment, using your childhood friends as status symbols? You don't deserve to have them as friends. You don't deserve any friends. You don't deserve to walk among decent human beings."

So I didn't call. And a couple of weeks later, when I decided that I should put myself aside for a moment and reach out to them, and I went to look for the piece of paper with the phone number on it, I couldn't find it. And that was proof, I decided, another sign that I didn't deserve to have them as friends. Then I got really sick – hepatitis, then spinal meningitis – and life became even more challenging through the rest of high school.

I wonder what Mr. Robinson thought of me and my dad afterward. 'Oh, just more of the same,' he might've said to himself. 'I practically begged Ed to have Artie call, but no, nothin,' no help from nowhere.'

I hope Marcus and Tony and Susie made it through Beverly Hills High OK. Marcus, the jokester, the fiery, friendly, funny guy, and his older brother Tony, so calm and cool. And they were both so handsome. I still have that picture of us at my sixth-grade birthday party. I look at it sometimes. I hope they're OK.

They didn't deserve what they got in Beverly Hills. And they sure didn't deserve the blow-off they got from me in my self-absorbed adolescent anguish. Yeah, I know. I was 15. It's a good excuse.

But not good enough.

Last Reunion

### IAA

" **I DON'T CARE WHO DIED** – just do it," Rich barked into the phone. Darrin had only heard this nasally snarl once before – after Rich gave the game-losing answer in college bowl finals.

"OK... No! That's why... Fine..." Rich tried detachment. Darrin glanced at the clock again: It had been six minutes since Rich had said '...in a minute.'

"I agree, it's a sad end. I hope you get your company fixed... no, you're wrong... That's not the way to do business... Fine." Darrin tried reading the documents on Rich's desk but they were just a jumble of black on white. Rich made quick eye contact with Darrin and grinned:

"Hi buddy, I'll be with you in a minute." The smile vanished – Rich switched his attention back to the phone:

"How am I? I'm sad to see your company fall apart... I agree... Sure... What? You wouldn't be anywhere without me. I kept your business alive for years... I'm sorry, too... you know where to mail it."

Rich hung up and studied Darrin's Brooks Brothers suit.

"Looks like you're moving up in the world."

"Heh, well, you know – gotta keep up appearances," Darrin said carefully.

"Sure," Rich sank back into his black vinyl chair and folded his fingers together behind his head. Darrin thought his elbows looked like the pincers of a beetle. "... So, what can I help you with?"

"You know what you can help me with."

"I'm not sure I do..."

"Dammit Rich, my wife saw that Notice of Default."

"How's that my problem?"

"How am I supposed to pay you back?"

"Start by selling that watch... and the suit."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Hey, take it easy."

"You take it easy. You coulda called me an' we coulda sorted this whole thing out."

"What's there to talk about? We sent you three bills. For all I knew, you threw them away."

"Now, you see? There you go again, thinkin' the worst."

Rich sighed.

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Give me another loan."

"Not going to happen."

"I got almost two hundred thousand between my house and lot..."

"And you're a deadbeat."

Darrin blinked twice.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"You think that because I owe you six gees, you can just take everything I've got?"

Rich's phone started to ring.

"No, but how else was I supposed to get your attention?"

"What's wrong with you man? I've known you twenty years!"

"Has it been that long?"

"Yeah Rich. It's been that long, but I guess that can't even buy a phone call from you."

Rich lowered his voice half an octave.

"Do you think I have time to deal with that crap? Look at my desk. And seriously, what's with the suit and watch? You came here wearing my mortgage payment and now you want more? What's wrong with _me_? What's wrong with _you_?"

"Come on man. We went to school together."

"Yeah, and now you live off loans to impress your teenage wife. I did you a favor."

"You've jacked me, asshole! Now I can't get a loan anywhere."

"Exactly."

Darrin blinked twice again, mouth agape in disbelief.

"You racist motherfucker."

He lunged across the desk, scattering paper out the window in a fan-blown breeze. Rich jumped sideways, narrowly evading Darrin's huge, grasping fingers. As Rich opened the door into the reception area, Darrin kicked a hole in the wall.

Rich slammed the door shut. He grabbed a chair and braced the top of its backrest beneath the doorknob. He looked through the window to see Darrin squatting on his desk.

"Amy, call the cops. I'm going to lunch."

Light Assignment

### Kohno

**THE PROJECT** for my high school photography class was called "Light Assignment." In those days, you only used black and white film in school. So the assignment was tailored to the medium. And vice versa.

But my only interest in photography class was the teacher. Her name was Peggy and she was young and pretty and she treated her students as if they were her friends.

And she coached girl's lacrosse. I got to know her when she asked me to be a cheerleader for the team. That particular cheerleading squad was designed to be unusual. It was an exclusive club. You had to be male. And you had to have long hair. Hence her invitation to me. It was one of the few groups that would ever have me, and I was glad to belong somewhere for once.

Peggy had a kind of Irish look, fair-skinned and freckled, and she wore her light brown hair parted down the middle. She was thin and petite. Plus her small breasts were usually visible through her shirt as she never wore a bra. She had gone to a fancy all girls' school near D.C. It had been run by Scarsdale diet doctor murderess Jean Harris.

But Peggy didn't seem like the preppy rich girl she'd been, and I was instantly interested in her. So I transferred into her photography class shortly after I joined the cheerleading squad and got the "Light Assignment."

In hindsight, it wasn't a good idea to make friends with my 11th grade photography teacher. And I'll bet if you asked Peggy she'd express some regrets about that year, too. She probably learned to have more boundaries with her students.

The first bad thing to happen was that I thought our easygoing, casual relationship meant that I didn't have to hand in any work, so I didn't do anything about "Light Assignment." I did volunteer to help Peggy's mom with some fall leaf cleanup, though, and I brought my friend Tom along, too. In my teenage imagination I thought that endearing myself to her would let to her kissing me one day, or at least leaning over to let me look down her shirt at those nibblings.

But on the way to her mom's place, Tom and I smoked a joint laced with PCP. I'm not sure what Peggy and her mom thought of me that day. I probably didn't make a great impression.

I did go to Photo Club every Wednesday night, though. This delighted my parents. Finally, their little stoner was doing something more socially acceptable than passing out in some ragweed field after smoking or drinking too much.

The club met in the photo lab, amid the enlargers and developing and fixer trays, in the basement under the auditorium stage. Most of the students in photo club were actually productive and were printing and developing the pictures they'd done for "Light Assignment." But I was among the red-eyed who showed up late and took a lot of "breaks" outside.

Of course kids should experiment with pot. It's part of growing up. You've got to know what's out there. But experimenting is one thing and what I did was something else. When I got stoned, which was all the time, I got really stoned, and when I got really stoned, I was stupid.

One night a really pretty girl named Dawn invited me over to the stagecraft side of the basement because she said she wanted to talk to me. I agreed and flirted with her as much as I knew how, which wasn't much. I am sure she wanted to kiss. But I was keeping my ear out to hear if the other red-eyes in Photo Club were heading out to smoke another joint. I don't have to say the lesson in that, but I can't resist stating the obvious here: My priorities were all wrong, all wrong, all wrong.

Then a bunch of us from the lacrosse cheerleading squad helped Peggy and her husband move to Georgetown. It was hard work climbing the steps of one of those old town houses. But we were rewarded with an invitation to the faculty Christmas party she threw in her new place. When I saw that her bar had so many different types of liquor I decided I should try one of each. I am sure it was the rice wine that made me get sick on her front stoop.

I was out there for a while, until some of my friends moved me to the side of the house so that people arriving late to the party wouldn't have to see me barfing. We left early and I was still heaving. I vomited out the window on the drive home, but it didn't clear the car. So the next day my buddy called all pissed off – his dad had seen that the puke stripped some of the paint off the door and the rear fender.

The end of the semester was coming up and that meant "Light Assignment" was due soon. Peggy realized a bunch of us fuckups hadn't even shot any film for it, though, and started ragging on us – even threatening to give us F's. That was a violation of our unwritten contract as student-teacher friends, though. In my mind, she was supposed to cover for us even if we didn't do any work. She hadn't thought about the implications and consequences of getting so friendly with students who had no motivation to perform at even C level.

She was coaching some students who had shown interest and initiative in photography, but she had never given me any direction for "Light Assignment." Maybe she thought I didn't need any because of my outrageous humor. Maybe she liked my guitar playing and she thought I was cute. But I didn't even know what "Light Assignment" meant and I was too dense and too self-conscious to ask. I took a camera and got to work.

I thought a good idea would be to take pictures of pictures. Again, I don't need to state the obvious, but I will anyway: It was a high concept for a teenage pot smoker, but a stupid idea for anyone else. I took a camera and rolls and rolls of film home and shot pictures and pictures of my Beatles memorabilia. I went to Photo Club, processed the film and printed out the results.

There was no real light in my pictures and no contrast. Most of the pictures of pictures were even overexposed and came out grayish. But because I was stoned and stupid, I was impressed with my work and proud of my effort, so I brought the pictures to Peggy hoping for her approval.

She looked at me as if I were crazy and sort of laughed. She finally realized that I had no clue what "Light Assignment" was, so she explained to me that she wanted photos showing contrast between light and dark, photos that showed light and shadow in nature or in everyday objects. Not washed out pictures of pictures.

So the next day I went out with more film and shot some scenery. Winter was approaching and the days were getting short; the only good shot I got was of the bridge on Old Baltimore Road from the embankment on the side. It showed the shadow of the bridge in the creek below, it showed light coming through the broken concrete barrier and the reflection of the thick steel cables above. I got a passing grade, but after seeing what some of the more motivated kids did I regretted that I hadn't put the time and energy into creating art for "Light Assignment" like they had.

To my relief, though, Peggy still seemed to like me. And that was even after I drank too much before a lacrosse game and got the cheerleading squad kicked off the field for yelling obscene things at the girls on the other team.

Finally, one of my antics did end our friendship. And could have even jeopardized her job. On a day Peggy was out sick, I pulled this prank that I had been planning for a while. The part about using the photo lab as my base of operations was a last minute thing, though, and I hadn't thought about what kind of trouble I could be causing for her.

It was the day after a fight broke out between some black kids and white kids at the school. People were even calling it a race riot. I brought in my old Kustom 200 guitar amp and a Shure microphone and hooked them up to the P.A. system through the wiring in the photo lab.

I began to make announcements to the entire school. Timmy was with me because he'd given me the idea – he'd done it one day in shop class. I handed him the microphone to say a few words, and before I knew it he was disparaging blacks, even using the "N" word. I was horrified. So I cranked the amp up so loud it almost blew the speakers out, and grabbed the microphone back from Timmy. I disrupted the entire school for a total of an hour, singing "Don't Bogart That Joint" and reciting free-association nonsense as the principal tried to shout me down. I finally got busted by the vice principal: She thought of checking all classrooms belonging to teachers were absent. I was suspended for two days. Peggy got into some trouble, too.

I don't remember if she ever told me how mad she was at me. It was the beginning of an ugly pattern, though. In the years that followed, again and again I'd fail to think about the consequences of my actions as I inflicted injuries on women in my relationships. And in each case, I'd be initially oblivious, only finding out much later how much hurt I'd caused.

I saw Peggy again 20 years later – a chance encounter at an AA meeting. I was there to speak at the anniversary of a friend's sobriety. He's a carpenter, and he'd done some work at Peggy's cabin because they had mutual friends, so she was there to show her support for him, too. Peggy came up to me and smiled. Was it some kind of knowing smile, with her signaling that she'd believed my adolescent dramas would either kill me or not? I'll bet it was just a smile, though: Happy to see you again, kid, after all these years.

If I could do adolescence over I would do it sober. I would still want to be friends with Peggy but I would do the light assignment in earnest. I would still try to look down Peggy's shirt as often as I could, but I would also try to get her to teach me what she meant by "Light Assignment" so that I'd know it was about the contrast between light and dark, and the relationship between the subject and its shadow. I would take go back to photo lab on Wednesday nights and I would kiss Dawn in the darkroom.

I would still take over the public address system but I would splice the wires so they wouldn't know were I was broadcasting from, and wherever it was, it wouldn't be from Peggy's classroom. I would still try to piss off the vice principal. After all, I'd need some stimulation, because all my other friends would be off smoking dope and drinking.

The End of the Age of Cannibalism

### Joeebbe

**IN A DARK CORNER** of Africa, I happened upon a tribe of cannibals. Thanks to my knowledge of the region's dialects, I'd been able understand when I overheard talk of some of their rituals. Whatever outlander they happened upon – friendly or evil, man or woman – they ate. After the feast, of which every tribesperson was obligated to partake, they fasted. They deprived themselves of all food and all water, until they were beset by visions from another world. Sometimes this took two to three days. Once these visions began occurring, they knew that the spirit of the consumed being was escaping their bodies into the sky, and only then could they go back to village life as usual. This was the way to excise intruders, who were thought to bring corruption to the village.

I crawled through the most heavily thicketed and hidden areas back toward my tent, slowly as to not make a sound. At night, I heard queer screams and percussions from the cannibal village. It was the glug of my canteen – a foreign sound to them – that must have alerted two hunters of my presence. They quickly apprehended me with tools woven from acacia.

They demanded to know where I came from and what had caused my strange pale skin.

"I was once like you, robustly dark. I was born in a nearby village, you know Glaxon? I fought with my father. He demanded that I leave our community. Even though in the outside world, people think it queer and evil to eat human flesh, I could not change my ways. I would wait by the sides of trails and pounce on men. I would sear their flesh and eat them as they still breathed. A cannibal is always that way and cannot change.

"As I waited on a quiet trail I saw a strange pale man, dressed thoroughly and walking alone. His body was thick and powerful like a wildebeest's. He heaved and tossed me off of him although I had already wounded him badly. He breathed heavily and yelled in a nasally language. I lugged him to my fire and began cutting off his flesh. He screamed, tied up as he was. But before I ate the first bite, he began speaking in words I could understand. 'I am plague,' he said, 'you eat me, you become white.' I ate him anyway, and as you can see, I did become white."

One tribesman laughed loud, from his stomach. The other breathed deeply and examined me. Tied up as I was, he approached me and rubbed my skin, pinching my flank. He then rubbed those fingers together and held them to his nostrils, again breathing deeply.

"I will not eat him, then."

The other one, still amused, said, "We have to. It is custom."

"If we leave him here, no one will know about him and no one will eat him."

"We cannot allow an intruder to walk on our sacred land and walk out. I cannot lie to my cousins, either."

"Do you want your cousins to turn this color? Like him?"

"He's lying."

"How else do you explain this skin?"

"He is like the mongoose with the brown tip. It is rare, but it happens."

"True."

"The elder can decide better than we. Our duty is only to bring him, not to decide."

"Once we bring him to the center of the circle there's no way to pretend he never came."

They grabbed me by hands and feet and carried me at a trot. The elder was small and wiry with a body that contorted like an accordion. He danced to accept an outsider into the circle. At the beginning, only half of the tribal instruments were being played. The elder's feet moved as deftly as a man's hands, while his arms supported his weight as firmly as his legs. Only once, turning his head, did he glance at me. His eyes were hot and frightening.

The two hunters carried me into the circle.

"You ate the plagued man," he said. "And how long did it take for you to lose your color?"

"I felt a burning in my stomach which spread out into my groin and then my limbs, lastly my head. Within nine breaths I held my hand up to my eyes and saw it was white."

The elder crouched down in thought. The percussion from the gallery of villagers slowed. He rocked back and forth on his haunches and finally pronounced his decision:

"I, but only I, eat you. We will keep you breathing. If I turn white, I will finish your whole body alone. If I don't turn white, we will know you are lying and we will all eat you."

A stringed instrument, high and caustic in sound, began its piercing melody. They untied my binds and began affixing the ceremonial ones, hot embers were pushed under my feet until I could find no cool place among them, and I began to smell burning flesh.

"I hope you are lying."

"He's lying. He's from outside. They have strange people like him... You should have stayed where you came from."

"What will happen if the elder turns white?"

"Nothing. We will laugh at him."

At that, they threw the dry brush on the embers and left me there in the growing heat. The elder approached me as my calves, thighs and flanks began to singe.

"You are not white down here anymore," he said mirthlessly.

"I am plague," I said. "You eat me, you become white. You'll feel me in your stomach spreading outwards like a spider web of splinters. A hot raging bile will rise – "

"I don't care. You think I don't know where you come from. I know. Stop struggling and lying. You will pass through our bodies and into the sky."

All dulled. So it was my destiny to die this way, to go out the same way I came in.

"What if," a voice came out of the circle, "the elder resists the plague because he is strong, but we all are too weak?"

Negative Time

### Sheisty

### I

**WHEN SAMUEL WENTWORTH** heard that Arnold Rump had been nominated, along with himself, for the Academy Award, he put down his morning coffee, looked out the window at the long stretch of buildings beneath his Manhattan penthouse, and wondered if his whole life had been a series of mistakes.

Wentworth was a well-respected Documentarian. For the last 15 years he'd been arguably the best living Documentarian alive. He'd already won three Academy Awards for his work, revolutionized the art with his neoclassical decadence, and worked from the same basic premise for the last thirty three years: Documentary was simply a high art form of propaganda. And the further he'd taken this premise toward its logical extremes, the more successful his work had become. But this morning, over coffee, a newspaper, and a fine cigar, all of that was about to be challenged by Arnold Rump.

II

Arnold Rump was born on June 16, 1971, the son of Gordon and Samantha Rump. They were a modest family living just north of Boston, in the suburbs of Malden, Massachusetts. Arnold's father was carpenter, and Arnold's mother was a nurse. Arnold was an only child. They weren't wealthy, but they were happy, spending cozy evenings together in their cramped little apartment. Arnold's father was always building new furniture around the house, and Arnold's mother was always reading to him as a child. Later, growing up, Arnold's mother would sit with him in the evenings in front of the television, and they would discuss the programs they watched. From an early age Arnold was fascinated with television. More than anything, though, he was fascinated by documentaries. His mother would find him up all hours of the night watching PBS, documentary after documentary.

By the time he was in high school, Arnold was filming his own documentaries. All his teachers said he had a great eye, and a wonderful gift for telling a story. His journalism teacher said he was a natural. His photography teacher said he was the real deal. Arnold just said he was pursuing his passion.

Arnold would go on to receive a full scholarship to the New School in New York City, where he continued on his filmmaking path. Two years into his college career, he shot a documentary on the history of the East Village. This documentary was shown at a small film festival in the city, and caught the attention of Documentarian giant Samuel Wentworth. After seeing the film, Wentworth arranged for a meeting with Rump, saying: "This kid Rump may very well be the future of the Documentary."

III

That afternoon Wentworth took a car out to meet his agent. His agent confirmed the rumor. "They say this kid Rump really is onto something. He's challenging everything you built. Call me paranoid, but I'd say this kid is gunning for you. He's not just after your spot; he's after your vision."

His agent pulled out a copy of the Daily News. "You see what he says right there? 'The Documentarian who views Documentary as propaganda is not an artist. He's the equivalent of a dishonest journalist. If he's any kind of artist at all, it's nothing more than a con artist.' "

"Well..." said Wentworth.

"Oh, it goes on. Look: 'Any true artist is dedicated to the truth. The Documentarian bears the burden of relating history to the generations. A propagandist is a liar after the public's reality. Such a man is no artist at all.' "

Wentworth's agent looked up. "There's more, too. See – "

"I've heard enough."

IV

Samuel Wentworth was born on Aug. 23, 1941 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The son of two New York socialites, Wentworth grew up among well-known artists and celebrities. From an early age, Wentworth showed a talent for reading and writing. It was only, however, once he reached his college years that he began to pursue a career in film. It was Sheila Maxim, a talented young photographer and his college sweetheart, later to become his lifelong companion, who convinced him he should try his hand at making documentaries. Wentworth, who believed in doing everything to the full, dived into the art with fervor. He studied the history of the documentary, spending days and nights watching film after film, taking notes and – in the meantime – writing a dissertation on the theory of the Documentary. His dissertation was published in 1965 under the title "Documentary and Propaganda: A study of the History of Filmmaking." It was greeted with much critical acclaim, and a few years later, Wentworth made his first full-length documentary on the '60s youth culture.

By the mid-'70s Wentworth was already a household name. His neoclassical, black and white documentaries were meant to strike an emotional chord with his viewers. He almost always hit the mark, winning him his first Academy Award for best film in 1978. When accepting the award, the host smiled, shook his hand, and said: "Wentworth, you know, you may very well be the future of the Documentary."

V

From the very beginning Wentworth and Rump had differences, but Rump was learning a lot from his mentor. He was the most talented person Wentworth had had the pleasure of tutoring. Rump caught onto the nuances of the craft as if he were born knowing them. "Like he just had to recollect them," Wentworth said of his protégé.

But the first time Rump shot a documentary in color, Wentworth was upset. "Color upsets the balance. It lets the viewer see things that you as the director might not see. Documentary, more than any other film is about holding your viewer hostage. You have a perspective you're coming from, and you cannot leave anything up to the viewer. It is a dictatorship, a documentary."

VI

In 1999, Wentworth and Rump had a public falling out. Wentworth called Rump, "an arrogant young upstart." Rump said Wentworth was, "a dinosaur who needed to die off so younger artists could breathe." Each announced they were at work on a documentary of the other.

VII

When Arnold Rump heard that Samuel Wentworth was nominated, along with himself, for the Academy Award, he put down his morning coffee, looked out the window at the long stretch of buildings beneath his Manhattan penthouse, and wondered if his whole life had been a series of mistakes.

Editor: Francais

Co-editors: Ghostofmajestic, R_Toady, BowlOfCherries

Cover: Daniel

Special Thanks: Craig Newmark

Dedication: To all who've pulled for us and against us.

For information on paperback editions, e-mail:

catoars at rocketmail.com

