Now that I am an adult, I realize that everything I ever learned about white people, I learned from the enormous color television set, a Magnavox, that sat front and center in our tiny, ramshackle living room. It was the only one in the house, and it was on constantly. It served as a clock telling us what time of day it was by whatever show was on. It was a babysitter for when my mother had to go to work and my father laid in bed all day behind a locked door. It was a disciplinarian in absentia when my mother took it away or hung the privilege of watching it over our heads like the Sword of Damocles. Since there was only the one, there were evenings when the fighting over it shut the whole place down.
When my mother turned it off as punishment, it sat there, dark and dead of all its potential; drained of all its colors.
It was an almost seaworthy floor model in which a thick glass screen wrapped in a credenza’s-worth of lacquered, brown wood was the gateway to all the things in the world that I couldn’t have. A crystal ball of covetousness. I sat day after day allowing that television to teach me that the most important thing in life was to be liked. By everybody. Between its teachings at home and social life at school, I learned that the whiter you acted, the better liked you were. So I changed the way that I spoke to mimic the characters on television. I concealed every part of myself that I deemed to be too ‘Black.’ Because my life up until then had shown me that white wasn’t just a race, it was a goal. And, at fifteen years old, I decided that this was a goal I wanted to achieve.
Now that I am an adult, I realize that everything I ever learned about white people, I learned from the enormous color television set.
Sitting cross-legged and a foot from the screen, I looked up at the TV and learned that white children were ethereally beautiful and perpetually innocent; even their mistakes were charming. White children got sent to their bedrooms or were given a good and loving talking to – punishments that shamed the knee-jerk ass-whuppin’s my siblings and I were subject to for a misspoken word or the slightest infraction. I didn’t even have a bedroom to get sent to.
White children were given ‘allowances.’ Allowances: money that was given to them just for being alive. White children became indignant when their television parents did not raise these allowances or withheld them as punishment for some adorable mistake they’d made. Their household chores seemed more of an option and not a command necessary to keep the very household functioning. Their clothes were never out of style, never dingy with wear. Their homes were beautifully decorated. They all had bicycles and their own bedrooms, and I was in thrall to the opulence and ease of it all. The parents of white children were loving toward each other and playful with their children. They acknowledged them and talked to them and always seemed to be in a good mood. In contrast, my parents were endlessly angry – either at one another or at their children – and our existence was anything but opulent. Our home was a shack, especially when compared to the two- and three-story palaces that lay just at the other end of town. Money was a constant discussion: lack of it, what to do with it, where it was going to come from. It was always a problem. The white parents on television were always canoodling, doting on their children, and smiling at one another with an air of playful romance, but my mother didn’t like my father at all and it was fairly evident. Their utter lack of resemblance to the white parents on television made me wonder why they’d ever married in the first place. They seemed to tolerate each other well enough when my father had a job. But once he lost it, there were chasms of silence between them filled only with duty and avoidance. I didn’t quite understand what was going on between them, but they seemed to view my siblings and me as an inconvenience at best. But the white people? They had it all figured out. They always had money. Their problems were fixable within thirty minutes if you added in the commercials for things we couldn’t afford. I watched them through the looking glass of the Magnavox with my mouth hanging open, wanting so badly to be a part of their world.
Money was a constant discussion: lack of it, what to do with it, where it was going to come from. It was always a problem.
Between the family sitcoms and commercial breaks, there were brief seconds when the screen would go black, and I would see my reflection in the television screen. It was then that I knew I would never get to experience the heady highs of Caucasianism. My skin was so black. I could barely make out my features in the darkness of the glass. I was just eyes looking in on a world that I’d never be invited to join. In those seconds, I wondered if Blackness was responsible for inferiority or if God just made those who were inferior Black.
Growing up, my town was perpetually colorless and damp, even in the summertime, and the place where I showed up every day for education was built like a prison. The school colors were red and gray, like a gunshot wound through an old man’s head, and every wall in the high school hallways was painted pea-soup green. There was no place more miserable than my high school. The floors were the gray kind, speckled with different colors like vomit. I would often stare at the flecks, zeroing in on the silver ones and trying to connect the dots. They looked to me like an infinite cosmos, a getaway route I could follow to escape having to use the dreaded welfare lunch card, which glowed fluorescent pink, begging for attention.
When the steel mills in Warren and the Rockwell bumpers plant in nearby Newton Falls closed, every Black family in the area was thrown into turmoil. With no other work options, every Black man in the area was left stunned. Some took to the bottle and became either angry or maudlin drunks. I watched them stumble around the streets of our town and vowed that I would never be so pathetic as to touch alcohol. And because these manufacturing jobs left to seek out greener pastures for their executives, every Black child’s hand was holding a fluorescent pink free lunch card. I hid mine to avoid the embarrassment. It was a mark, a brand. In the end, it was just easier to skip lunch. I tried to be cool about it even when my stomach growled.
A boy in my class, Alex, embodied all the boys I saw on television. He had a father who wore a suit and tie to work and who would show up for school events and smile at his son lovingly and with open affection like the TV dads. They even hugged. His mother was the typing teacher at the school and surely didn’t come home with a scowl carved into her face only to grumble out grievances before she fell into bed exhausted like my mother did. His sister was pretty and outgoing. He had no older brother under whose shadow he lived or was so embarrassed by him that he didn’t want anyone to know they were related. I imagined their house to be a three- storied affair – white with brown trim and all manner of shrubbery and flowers surrounding it, which I assume his mother tended to vigilantly in a sun hat with a wide and floppy brim. A house that was a perfect backdrop for after-show credits to roll. Our house was a hovel in comparison.
All in all, Alex and his family were just better people than us. Alex himself was the epitome of the gentle and thoughtful white boys I could only have access to via the electricity running through the Magnavox that my family could barely keep on half the time. He was the exact opposite of the Black boys who gave me hell every day. He was sensitive. I wanted Alex and I wanted to be Alex.
Homosexuality, as it so often does, attacked me in my bed in the middle of the night. I resisted with every fiber of my being until I could resist no longer. Alone in my bed, thinking about Alex unendingly, my eyes rolled back in my head, and I didn’t quite know what to do with my hands. Much to my shame, I would soon figure that out. I let the thought of him wash over me night after sticky night. I wanted to hold Alex. I wanted Alex, with his chocolate brown eyes and coal black hair, to love me. I didn’t even mind his occasional pimples. I thought they were charming. I wanted him to save me and take me away into his television world. I would stare at him openly at school and make a fool of myself by awkwardly trying to talk to someone who was talking to him so I could somehow make my way into his field of vision.
He was the exact opposite of the Black boys who gave me hell every day. He was sensitive. I wanted Alex and I wanted to be Alex.
I fought my demons every night and prayed that the Good Lord would take these desires away from me. The Good Lord never did. In fact, He only made them worse. I abandoned all hope. I couldn’t stop and decided that hell was where I should end up. But I wanted to take Alex with me.
Onanism became habitual. When I was ‘done,’ I would imagine myself in Alex’s mother’s class and her repeatedly smashing my penis with the manual typewriter on my desk, over and over again, with pure hatred in her eyes for what I’d just done to her son. I had to look this woman in the face every day, knowing that just a few hours before, she had lost her son to me and my wicked imagination. She would come by my desk sometimes to reposition my fingers on the keyboard, and I would seethe with jealousy that she got to see so much of him, but I would also thrill to the thought that maybe she’d recently touched his hair and was using the same hand to correct my hand positioning. I smiled and hoped that she didn’t catch a whiff of the lust that might have stubbornly stuck to my recalcitrant fingers despite all of my scrubbing. All of my praying and scrubbing. It was only a matter of time until someone locked me up.
They used to like to watch me dance, the white kids, and I would dance for them. The levels of coonery to which I sank were unfathomable. There were Al Jolson–style minstrel shows given in our high school gymnasium, starring yours truly. A real live Negro. I shucked and jived my way into their hearts every day in the gym after they’d had their lunch. They may as well have thrown watermelon slices as payment. The Black kids from my neighborhood would look on from the other side of the gym, shaking their heads in disapproval. But I didn’t care. They were doomed to be Black their whole lives. Plus, they had all called me ‘faggot’ enough to earn my hatred forever. I had found acceptance. That’s all I ever wanted. Someone would bring a little cassette deck, and I would dance for all I was worth while they smiled and clapped me on the back and congratulated me for having rhythm. Alex was impressed as well, smiling broadly at me and clapping along goofily to the music. He noticed me in this capacity only and I danced even harder and faster under his gaze until all the others disappeared and I was dancing for him alone. And then, one day, it happened.
‘You should tooootally come with us to The Red Caboose on Saturday!’
The Red Caboose – Warren, Ohio’s hottest dance spot for the high school set for everyone who was anyone. Actually, it wasn’t in Warren proper. It was much further away in the super-white neighborhood of Cortland. The invitation to tooootally come was squealed out by one of the many white girls with whom I kept company during school hours. They liked when I would tell them how pretty they were, and I made them laugh. I went out of my way to show them that I wasn’t a threat.
I danced even harder and faster under his gaze until all the others disappeared and I was dancing for him alone.
‘Oh my God, I’m soooo serious! You should totally come to The Red Caboose on Saturday!’
The rest of the white girls agreed that my dance moves were being wasted in this high school gym and that I would be better served to show them off in public. Even the white boys agreed, and the smile on my face could not have been blown away with dynamite. This was the exclamation that was going to start it all for me. After school, I ran home to ask my mother if she would give me a ride to the club on Saturday night. Her reaction was about what I’d expected.
‘You got “Red Caboose” money?’
She complained about gas money. She complained about the five dollars it was going to cost to get into the place. She complained that she would be too tired to pick my ass up at midnight when the club closed. I told her that my father would have given it to me, careful not to raise my voice so much that it completely pushed her over the edge.
‘Go ask him, then! See if he got it!’ I already knew he didn’t.
She shut her eyes tight and balled up her fists in frustration when she reminded me that it was in part due to my father’s profligacy that we were in so much debt. I hated him for being useless. But I held my most vehement contempt for my mother because she was the one telling me a million different times, in a million different ways, that we could never afford anything. That people like us didn’t do things like this. There was no way for me to impress upon her what a misery my life was, that this was my only chance to break out of the dull, fetid dishwater that was our home life. There was no color between the walls of our home. There was no beauty in my life. It was all pea green, gray, boxed in, and all she could tell me, over and over again, was that we didn’t have the money. I hated her. Our whole lives were a Black embarrassment.
My parents didn’t even make me a ‘good’ Black. Not honey colored or caramel. They made me the color of a turned-off TV screen and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Pitch Black.
I no longer attempted to seek validation from my family. I began to look for it everywhere else. I prayed to God to let me die and be reborn the right way. I didn’t care what it took. I would lie, cheat, scheme, and steal to go to The Red Caboose with my friends. I was going to make it happen despite my family. I would find the money. I would find a ride. I was determined to be free. If only for one night, I was going to be somebody else. And the very next week, I had achieved my goals.
The Red Caboose was everything I dreamed it would be: loud music and strobe lights and a sense of camaraderie I’d never felt before in my life. Kids chanted ‘The roof is on fire!’ and the DJ played the latest tunes from Duran Duran and Culture Club. I had gotten there through some fancy footwork wherein I got a ride with one of my white friends who had a brother with a car. I borrowed the five dollars from a white friend as well. The music was loud. The dance floor was in the very middle of the room and it was surrounded by comfy couches with tables and chairs. The lights flashed all around the room in reds and blues and yellows and there was a concession stand that offered the promise of cold pop for those who had exhausted themselves dancing. Most of the crowd was there trying to get to second base, but I had come to dance. Every once in a while, the DJ would shine a spotlight on the best dancer on the floor and I was determined to be inside of it.
When a song came on that I liked, I showed off. I showed off so hard that it was almost obscene. I could finally let loose with my dancing skills and really show everyone how cool I was. I did the Robot, the Running Man, and the Cabbage Patch, and took it from the top all over again. I used my hips and my feet to stake a claim for myself on that dance floor and believe me when I tell you that they noticed. The spotlight followed me like a hungry dog and a circle was made around me on the dance floor more than once. I commanded attention. I held court in the disco-lit corners when the DJ played a song I didn’t particularly like. I sat down and crossed my legs and leaned back on the wall with a friend on either side of me telling me how I moved like a rhythmic tornado. I was in my element.
I used my hips and my feet to stake a claim for myself on that dance floor and believe me when I tell you that they noticed.
I saw Alex and, oddly, I did not care. He was still beautiful, but he danced badly, and I couldn’t risk my reputation being seen with him. His moves were awkward and white boy clunky, and as he danced, he had a goofy smile on his face that I just found untenable. I ignored him. I was asked to dance over and over again, and by the end of the night, I was covered in sweat and friends, and I knew I had arrived. I felt … white. I paid no mind to the fact that with every undulation and every song and every request to dance and every utterance of the word cool, the night was drawing to a close, and when the lights came on, I was barely aware that I was the only Black person left in the room.
When the last song played by Donna Summer and the club let out, I found myself at a loose end. The friend whose brother had a car was not coming back and I had no money. I had just figured that one of my friends would give me a ride home, perhaps the friend whose brother dropped me off. I waited for her to exit the club, but it was as if someone turned off her enthusiasm for me right when they turned off the music. She seemed nervous when I asked if her dad could give me a ride home. She said, ‘Sure,’ but there was something foreboding just behind her eyes. When he pulled up and I went to get in on the rear passenger side of his car, he just looked straight ahead. He looked straight ahead and shook his head no. Wordless. No excuse. Just no. I was not permitted. Not allowed. He wanted no one to see me get into a car with his daughter. When they pulled away leaving me standing there, I was absolutely sure that she was going to be read the riot act for having invited me in the first place.
This scenario repeated itself over and over again in the parking lot that night. I ran from car to car like a fireman collecting donations at a stoplight, and each parent looked straight ahead while their children, my friends, who had loved me just ten minutes before, climbed into the back seats and passenger sides of cars my parents could never afford. The white kids all gave me the same look, which was a combination of I’m sorry and You should have known better. They all drove away, leaving me alone in the parking lot in the middle of nowhere. I was fifteen, broke, and all out of dance moves. I could see the lights of their vehicles driving off in the distance until they reached the highway, where they just turned into fireflies. I breathed into the cold night air and pressed my tongue to the top of my mouth as hard as I could. I had no idea what to do.
A flier which read ‘the red caboose! teen disco!’ skittered across the pavement in the wind. There was no other word for it, I thought, except ‘skittered.’ I liked that word. I said it out loud to myself as I watched the flier scrape across the concrete. It was the only sound I could hear apart from the distant cars on the highway. I watched the wind carry the flier across the parking lot. I looked down at my feet. The very feet that I thought would save me that night, dancing around like a clown. I zipped up my coat until the collar was just below my chin. I don’t know how long I stood there silently panicking. I know my fingertips eventually went numb. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was utterly alone.
I don’t know exactly when I started to cry. But when I did, it was as if I had been saving it up since birth. There was a river of snot that ran down my lips and seemingly endless tears that I could not turn off and my chest heaved sobs built of pure fear and embarrassment. Mostly embarrassment. I stood there breathing in the cold reality that no one in the world really cared what happened to me.
In a stroke of luck, the refreshment stand man from The Red Caboose came out to throw away a giant sack of trash and I begged him to allow me to use the phone. He grudgingly agreed and when I called my house, no one picked up for several rings, and then my mother’s sleepy voice finally answered. She did not ask if I was hurt. The only thing I heard in her voice was deep annoyance and white-hot anger. She swore at me as if she hated my guts. I knew the ride home would be a chilly one; I would just have to endure it. I sat alone at the entrance of the club under the lit-up Red Caboose sign, waiting. The refreshment stand guy didn’t offer to stay with me. When he left, he turned the sign off, walked out the side door, got in his car, and drove away without a word. I wondered if he’d have done that to any of my white friends. I sat in the dark hugging myself against the cold, pulling my collar up over and over again and pushing my wool hat down.
When our enormous hooptie finally clunked into the parking lot an hour and a half later, I could feel the anger coming from my mother before I even got in, which I did without a single word. She was still wearing a headscarf on her head, her pajamas under her bathrobe and her house shoes. And for the first several minutes, we were silent. She kept her eyes on the road, jaw tight. Stewing. But the silence didn’t last. She finally let loose with a question that I could not answer.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’
Over the next thirty minutes of driving, my mother told me what a fuck-up I was. She told me how stupidly I’d behaved. She blamed me for my predicament. Apoplectic, she was. She told me that anything could have happened to me out there in the middle of the night. She shouted and seethed all at once. She was angry at having been woken up in the middle of the night to come deal with my stupidity. She would whup my ass if I hadn’t gotten so big. Her anger was the only thing holding that car together as it rattled down the highway. She didn’t look at me once, but I could see her face contorted in the traffic lights we passed. I felt like she hated me. I felt like a fool.
She finally let loose with a question that I could not answer. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’
Her tirade continued unabated. It rose and fell and got silent and then started all over again, from shrieking to mumbling under her breath. It was only when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore that we arrived home and she put the car in park. My muscles tensed as I got ready to leap out of the car and rush to my bed to cry some more. But my mother grabbed my wrist firmly and spoke words I will never ever forget.
‘Boy, don’tchu ever trust white folks again.’
I turned and looked out the window in an effort to ignore her words and to stave off shame.
‘White people didn’t care if you lived or died out there tonight, you understand? Anything cudda happened to you! You gonna get enough of trusting these white people, you hear me?’
I didn’t really hear her. I only knew that I had done something wrong in making her get up in the middle of the night. I got out of the car and walked into the house. She, for some reason, remained seated and stayed in the car for a long while before I heard her come inside.
My mother made me pancakes the next day, something that never happened. My parents’ apologies always seemed to take the shape of food. Never words. She told me I didn’t have to go to church because I’d been out so late. She didn’t go either. She told people on the phone what a fool I had been the previous night. They commiserated about white people.
When Monday came, I was armed with new knowledge. It was just the white people in this small town who were the problem. I just had to go to a bigger place is all. Bless my colonized mind, I stood outside the front door of my high school, and I knew what I had to do. I didn’t know what internalized racism was and it would take me far too long to learn. The first period bell rang like an alarm clock, and I took my first steps forward knowing only that I had to get far away from this town.
This is an extract from Punch Me Up to the Gods by Brian Broome (UQP), available now at your local independent bookseller.
