Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“Okay. When? Now?”

“Tomorrow night. There’s an acoustic concert, downtown. At Acousticism. It’s every first Thursday, a lot of us go, from Mélange. Mostly the so-called Oreos, but some of the sunflowers too. Even One Drop’s crew. We’ll get something to eat first. Ethiopian.”

“Yeah. Sure. Fine. Good,” I say, my humorless, declarative tone matching her own. I don’t say, I was just going inside to get condoms . I have no defenses against Catwoman-related seduction. “The restaurant is called Almaz. Elijah will be there too; it’s his favorite place. Then we can see what this is. We all can.”

—

“You know that crazy bitch invited me out on a date with her boyfriend?” I ask Spider. We’re in the back of the faculty meeting the next day. I still can’t believe it. I can’t. I start thinking it’s a test, that I’ll show up and it will just be Sunita, that if I go I prove that I don’t care and I still want to be with her. Or, it’s a test to see if I’m a big enough eunuch to put up with something like this. Then I think of Sun’s face when she said it, the utter lack of humor.

“Don’t use that word. The b -word. Bitch . It’s misogynistic and too easy and loses your argument before you even start. Also, ‘crazy.’ Mental illness is a serious thing. It’s an illness . And it’s also misogynistic: guys are always saying women are crazy. Why not try describing her as a ‘deluded asshole’ instead?”

“Thank you, Spider. Thank you so much. Can you believe what that deluded asshole asked me to do?”

“Yes, I can. It’s foul, but yes. She has a boyfriend, man. She told you that. That means: mess. And this is messy.” Spider sticks his tongue out, twinkles his fingers like everything’s falling to the floor.

“But I thought she would get some of my good stuff and then she’d like it so much that eventually she’d leave him and Tal would have a new mommy and we would all live happily ever after.” I say it, and I start laughing, at myself, because that’s exactly what I believed.

“So Warren, I hear you’re going to join us tonight at Acousticism? That’s wonderful. You’re really engaging in our little community, aren’t you? What about you, Spider? Are you coming this time?” Roslyn is standing there, behind us. Her posture implies no movement, as sturdy as a tree in spring. She may have been standing there the whole time.

“Oh no. This one I might have to sit out.” He looks over at me, his eyes smiling so big the lids should be curved.

My mind slides down a run-on sentence: Roslyn couldn’t have overheard that I was going to this music thing, because I didn’t say the name of the place I was going, because I just said “a date” and that’s all, which means Sun told her about us all going out, which means Sun probably tells her everything, which is why Roslyn smiles at me now like she not only knows everything I’ve been up to but has the pictures to prove it.

“You should come with me! We should go, as a date, together,” I say to Roslyn, to see what will happen. I long to see Roslyn unnerved. And if she comes undone, maybe Sunita Habersham will be off balance because of it. That’s what I want. I want to see someone else uncomfortable. It works. The tree sways a bit. I follow with, “Sun said there’s a great Ethiopian place, we’re going to meet up there first.”

“Almaz,” Roslyn shoots back. And there is no sway there. There is only rigidity. “You know what? I think that’s a fantastic idea.”

As Roslyn walks away, we both stare after her.

“You know what, man? You’re a wild boy,” Spider says when she’s out of range.

“Don’t use that word. That b -word,” I tell him, at which he frowns with a total lack of amusement.

ELIJAH. I say his name for hours. I say it and I spit. Literally. Even when I’m indoors. Eel. Lie. Junk. I fucking hate him. I hate him when Roslyn picks me up in the center’s school bus. I hate him enough to fill every empty seat gaping behind us as we drive downtown. I fucking hate him. And I’m sure he’s a nice guy. I’m sure he’s a great guy. I’m sure he had the strongest of college recommendations, that there are old ladies who just think of his horrible name and start to cry because humanity has a hope after all. I forgive Sun for being his captive. For being seduced by his lies. Because they must be lies, because he must actually be a horrible person, because how else could I hate him?

Roslyn knows where the restaurant is, and insists on guiding me from the school bus by my hand. They’re sitting on the floor, on pillows. Elijah’s white. This is fine, I prepared a special hatred program in case he was a white guy, and it’s ready to roll out. I’ll have to delete the black Elijah, Asian Elijah, and mulatto Elijah mental files, but this just gives me more room to focus. He’s probably one of those white guys who think they’re enlightened just because they’ve realized the obvious fact that black women are beautiful. He’s probably one of those white guys who think poking their pink members in black women will somehow cure racism. I don’t trust interracial couples. I don’t even trust the one that made me: I think of who my father was, who my mother was, and I have no idea why they first hooked up, let alone fell in love. I don’t know if I’m the by-product of a racialized eroticism or a romantic rebellion of societal norms. I’m fine with mixed-race unions that just happen , are formed when two people randomly connect. But there are other kinds of interracial couplings with suspect motivation, with connections based on fetishizing of black sexuality, or internalized white supremacy — those kinds exist too. Yes, I was in an interracial relationship myself, but I distrust my own initial motivation.

I can dislike interracial couples while acknowledging I’m the product of one. Every misogynist came out of a woman.

Elijah’s got a ponytail. It’s braided. This is a bonus, because I can hate this more and do. It’s red and he says his last name and I refuse to register it but it’s Scottish so I feel relieved in hating him without too much Celtic overlap. He’s skinny, and he wears two gold chains that shine through his open collar, and this is fantastic for hatred. It’s so good that I look over at Sun and find that my disdain is becoming so voluminous that some of my hatred for Eel-Lie-Jah is spilling over to her. I look at Sun, who looks at the menu as if bored. But I don’t think she can be bored because we’ve been having sex several times a week for months and now we’re having dinner with her boyfriend.

“Do you know what you want?” she asks me. Then she winks. Only I can see it. For the length of the time it takes for her lids to shutter down and up again, we are in the Beetle, and she is naked, on me, facing me, kissing me like she wants my tongue at the bottom of her stomach. And I blush and look down at my menu and say, “I’m just here for the pancakes.”

“Their injera is pure love. A lot of places, they use an electric oven, but they use a traditional clay oven here. You can taste the authenticity.”

Elijah says all this, and he’s very warm about it too, his eyebrows pop up excitedly with the word love , and I look back at him and smile and wonder for the first time, Does he know me and his girlfriend are fucking?

“For Elijah, everything has to be authentic,” Roslyn says. So she knows him well, clearly. Well enough for there to be a slight disapproval in her statement.

“What is something worth if it’s not real? I just prefer truth. Some people choose otherwise,” Elijah says back.

Roslyn does that laugh, as though a child has said something inappropriate, and drinks, and I don’t know what the hell they’re really talking about. I hold the menu. I hold it up to my face, releasing my facial muscles from the strain of hiding disdain. I don’t read the words. I want to hold it like this all night. I could do that here, and at the concert next. Who’s that? Oh, that’s Warren. He’s very serious about what he’s going to order tonight.