T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

Hello, Braggsville! You don’t know me. I’m Chinese, but I had a typical American upbringing. I was also beaten by the Vietnamese. At that, a few people shared sympathetic chuckles. Only Charlie and Candice laughed heartily. Daron was disappointed. Louis was Malaysian, and claimed to be Chinese only when it was the easiest explanation. As he put it, It’s like saying you live in Unit 2 at Berkeley. No one knows that, so you go, San Fran, and people go, Oh.

I have the same relationship problems. Sometimes my girlfriend is like, Why don’t we go dancing? I’m thinking this is like if I opened the fridge and the steaks were like, Why don’t we go hunting? They liked that one. Louis stood a little straighter. The chair wobbled. Did he glance at Candice when he mentioned girlfriend? Daron hoped not.

See, this points to the differences between the sexes. I asked her, Seriously, do you think men really like to dance? If we could pay admission, give a chick the same amount of cash it would take to buy ten drinks, and take her home, we would. But that would be a brothel, or a sorority house.

When the crowd responded less than enthusiastically, Louis explained, See, we have this thing in some colleges known as sorostitution. It means rich girls… never mind. So then, my girl is like, But dancing is how you tell who’s good in bed. Maybe so, I told her, but that’s another difference between the sexes. You think we care about that.

She was like, All men care about is sex.

I was like, Yeah, that’s true, but not whether you’re good at it.

They liked that one. Uncle Roy pointed to Aunt Chester, who smacked his hand away.

Okay. My friend Charlie is here. Let’s hear it for Charlie. Chinese people and black people have a lot in common. Charlie clapped politely.

The Wu-Tang Clan. Quint spit out his drink laughing.

Tiger Woods? The black part was cheating, and the Chinese part was driving when he hit the tree. Charlie shook his head regretfully.

We each give our children funny names. There was silence, until he added, That white people can’t pronounce. It’s a conspiracy.

White people can’t cook our food, but they love to eat it. Though someone here makes good-ass ribs. He hiccuped. Excuse me. Good ribs. That was my black joke. I gotta represent. He gave Charlie a thumbs-up.

Oh yeah. Chinese people got some things in common with Southerners, too. You ready for this, Braggsville? I was at this store — he pointed over his shoulder, Lou’s Bait and Cash and Copy.

A few people in the crowd pointed in the other direction.

It’s in the other direction!

It’s called Lou Davis’s Cash-n-Carry Bait Shop and Copy Center!

Yeah! the stripper yelled.

The crowd all gestured toward town until Louis, too, was pointing in the right direction.

Yeah, so Chinese people are big into directions, too. He paused, collecting himself. But, I was at this store, Lou Davis’s, and it was like a Chinese store, you had everything: meat, bumper stickers, everything. In Chinatown, it’s like that. You can buy fruit and bread and get your teeth pulled in the back. Anyway, at Lou Davis’s I saw some strange stuff, like headcheese and all, and thought, hmmm, headcheese . Maybe these people are weird. Then I had an image of my grandma eating, guess what, chicken feet!

I thought, Okay, Southerners are like Chinese. We have pig’s feet and ears, and even the ovaries. A collective groan issued forth. Louis raised his hands. I don’t write the news. I just deliver the paper. Whole point is if we even got the ovaries, you know we don’t waste nothing. We eat everything but the oink or, sometimes in our case, the bark.

A hush fell over the crowd. That’s a joke, you all, Louis added, and the crowd went into an uproar, clapping and stomping their feet.

Louis paused, savoring the moment. He was much better than Daron expected.

Louis began speaking, but in the corner, Uncle Roy whispered in Aunt Chester’s ear, a mite too loudly, I think he mean they eat dogs. See! and the crowd went wild again.

Daron’s father was red in the face, as was his mother, who clapped both hands over her mouth as she often did when laughing against her will. His cousins held their sides as if in pain, and tears streamed down Quint’s face. After the crowd finally settled down, Louis continued.

And vegetarians? Who would willingly give up meat? I saw a menu in Cali with vegetarian beef stew. That’s going too far. If it’s vegetarian, why does it need a meat name? It just can’t be good. It’s got to be like sexing a blow-up doll. It’ll do the trick for a minute, but you won’t feel good about it afterwards, and you keep it to yourself, and you hide it when company comes over. He bowed to thunderous applause.

For the rest of the night, Louis was the star. Daron had wanted to invite Jo-Jo but knew he wouldn’t fit in. The last time he’d seen Jo-Jo was over winter break. They’d spent the afternoon on the hill above Old Man Donner’s land drinking Old Grand-Dad, sitting Indian-style on a ledge of rock that gun-sighted dead right over downtown, a meager allotment of buildings cupped in a gentle swale, Main Street stitching through like a scar. Once more, Jo-Jo had called him early, asked him to take a ride. Once more, they had ridden in silence.

The Rhiners, the Foldercaps, the Gull prom, some new shirtsleeves at the Hot Air factory, that Mr. Buchanan, the debate coach and eleventh- and twelfth-grade English teacher, had finally been fired, were topics of discussion, but all Jo-Jo had admitted that day was, Thinks she won’t find out. But he cain’t figure shit. Up at Dougy’s every night, tits riding the well with the rest of ’em, telling lies. He cain’t figure shit.

Sure can’t, Daron had said, after a moment during which, even after three semesters at Berkeley — including an Intro to Social Linguistics class where the professor spent hours lecturing them on prestige and speech communities and attuning them to class inflection in language — he could think of nothing else to say. He had wondered, for the amount of time it takes to crush a can, if school itself was making it hard for him to talk. The prof always said, Learning Spanish doesn’t mean forgetting English, but learning English often means forgetting Spanish. Think about that! Daron had laughed it off at the time. He and Louis spent hours in parodic paralysis: Eating pussy doesn’t mean cannibalism, but cannibalism means eating pussy. Tink about that, holmes. An oral exam isn’t a blowjob, but a blowjob is an oral exam. Tink about that, amigo. Daron had tinked about it a lot since, and knew what the professor meant by language is power because the more he learned at school, the more he understood, the less he understood. Maybe language was power, but not his to harness.

And not Jo-Jo’s either, not with all his comma-averse posts about the second coming, the first of which Daron had clicked on expecting anything but an animated video on the return of OUR LORD, and after which Daron had read every Facebook FAQ and forum to learn how to adjust his privacy settings to ensure that his two worlds remained just that.

Watching Louis’s routine made him wish it were otherwise. Jo-Jo would have found it funny, and they all would have gotten along. He had emailed Jo-Jo that he would be in town soon and would call once he arrived. But Daron hadn’t, he knew that Jo-Jo still thought Candice was his girl, and he couldn’t face him seeing that she wasn’t. Maybe if Jo-Jo saw them all together, if he met Louis and Charlie, he would understand. Daron doubted it. Not to mention Jo-Jo’s mullet. Even Iran knew to outlaw that hairstyle.

By the end of the night, Daron relaxed. Over the course of the evening several people asked Charlie if he was from the Gully or had folks there, but each time he said, No, they answered brightly, Well, welcome to Braggsville! And better yet, when Quint put on David Allen Coe’s You Never Even Call Me by My Name, Charlie and Louis knew the lyrics word for word, trilling operatic the verses about mama, trains, trucks, prisons, and getting drunk.