Monday morning. The party I went to last night didn’t have as many guests as expected, so naturally I was obliged to stay and help empty the keg. I walked home this morning from my girlfriend’s house in a foggy state feeling kind of scraggly and numb. This dark skinned guy with a black shirt and baseball cap stops me just as I’m passing and asks me if there are any liquor stores open. It’s about 9:00, so I say , “No, the liquor store doesn’t open until ten, wait, Roger’s Rec opens early.” I remember seeing guys there early waiting by the door, waiting for the place to open so they could have their first drink of the day, or maybe their first game of pool.
“No,” the guy says, “I can’t afford to go to a bar.” “They sell six packs to go at Roger’s,” I say. “No,” he says, “I’ve only got a couple bucks. I just want to get a pint somewhere. I just quit my job. Man, I’ve gotta have a drink.” The guy was probably forty, weathered, his flesh pushed out, seemed constrained by his clothes, boots and hat. I already liked him, he had a friendly, outgoing manner. A cleancut kid with a backpack walks by, and my guy says, “Good morning,” The kid just keeps walking. “GOOD MORNING!” my guy says. The insistence in his tone works. The kid turns quickly, says good morning back, and hurries on.
“I hate it when whites think they can just walk on by without even acknowledging my presence,” he says, “and I hate when they call me a Mexican, too, I’m a full blooded Apache for christ’s sake!” I looked at him, “yeah, I would have made you for a native American.” His mind seems to have gotten on the topic of racism, and he keeps talking, “And black people, they say not to call ‘em niggers. No, I don’t call ‘em niggers, I call ‘em porch monkeys.” He grins. He’s talking in an exagerated way with a laughing expression that conveys an absurtity he sees in the whole thing. “You ever hear the way they talk? It’s Mutha’ Fuck this and Mutha’ Fuck that. My nephew heard some little bitty black kids cussing, and boy was he surprised. His daddy don’t allow that kind of talk.”
An early twenties hipster dude walks by eating a muffin. “You gonna eat that all alone?” my guy says in a hassling but good-natured tone. The hipster says, “Here, I’ve got another, you guys can split it.” He hands us a muffin in a plastic bag, and passes on. “What is that,” the Apache says. “It’s a muffin,” I open up the bag and hold it in front of him so he can look at it. He breaks off a small piece and eats it. “Mmm, that’s good. Sure was nice of him to give us this. What I really need is a drink.” I break off a piece of the muffin and eat it. “Brothers break bread,” I say, mostly to myself, as we watch the distant muffin giver hurrying towards the campus. “You want some more of this muffin?” I say. “No,” he says, “you have it, but you look stupid standing there eating it. Here, sit down.” He offers me a low brick wall. We sit down. “I’m Frank,” he says. I tell him my name and we shake hands.
What I really need is some coffee. "...Yeah, I guess prejudice is just everywhere," I say, breaking the short silence. "You know what gets me is when the Christians go around trying to convert everyone,” he said. “Hell, they’d even try to de-jewify you. And the Moslems, killing someone and then saying ‘God is great.” God is great! Can you believe that? After they just killed someone that God made.” I nodded. I believe pretty much anything these days. “You know, the tribe is pretty prejudiced against black people. You ever see a black at a pow-wow? Whites are accepted, but if a black person shows up someone would tell him he’s in the wrong place. I mean, the Indians and the whites, we’ve killed and fucked each other...there’s an understanding.” “A relationship?" I query. “Yeah, but the blacks... You know, it’s not that I’ve got anything against the black man, I just dont know him. I don’t know how to talk to him. ‘Cause it’s always Mutha’ Fuck this and Mutha’ Fuck that. You ever hear them talk?”
I remember that I have to get to work, so I get up. Frank gets up, too and we start walking. I’m quite a bit taller than Frank, and I’m used to walking across town. He keeps wanting to stop. Pretty soon we stop and he says, “You walk fast... I really gotta have a drink. You know I walked off my job this morning. My family’s gonna be pretty upset. I think maybe if I have a drink, I could get it together. Just sit and have a drink and think for a while. I’m a registered alchoholic, you know. I really don’t like it much here, I want to go back to Oklahoma, where I’m from,” he sat down, “You go on, I can see you have to go. You got any change, just so I could get a drink somewhere?” I felt my pocket. No change. I shook his hand and wished him well and sped back to my daily routine. I did have a couple of dollar bills in my pocket. Normally I probably would have shelled one out, but this time something stopped me. I just couldn’t bear the thought of giving money for the sole purpose of buying this good man a half pint of nasty, rotgut whiskey. I felt bad later, because, as a fellow addict, I understand the urgency of a need for a fix. And who was I to deny a man what he needs to get through the day. Hell, a slug or two of whiskey probably would have steadied his nerves.
Later note: I'm sorry if you have been offended by the racist language in this piece. I assure you that I didn't make any of it up. This piece was written down only a few hours after it occurred, and it is just a straight account of what I observed. It was also written before 9-11, so Frank's comments on Moslems could be considered prophetic or just more bigoted stereotypes. As a white man, raised by hippies, I was taught never to use any of these epithets, and I try to discourage myself from even analysing human relations in terms of race. The obvious question that comes to my mind is this: is racism any less repugnant when practiced by a member of an abused and oppressed minority? Answering my own question, My feeling is an emphatic NO, but then I am an evil white man and probably have no right to comment.