T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

As Charlie’s arrival neared, regret plagued Daron. Charlie and his beau — D’aron preferred beau over boyfriend — would sleep in the living room, making D’aron a detainee, and indeed the first night of Charlie’s visit D’aron remained trapped in the bedroom, a political prisoner in his own home, thirsty and anxious to piss, mourning the wee-wee hours of the morning but afraid to walk in on, as Maylene’s boyfriend described a scene in vo-tech, Two wet bears in a wrestling match.

Surprisingly, though, he mostly liked Frederick. The only thing gay about him — and it took Daron far more than a gander to gather even this — was that he smelled nice, as D’aron imagined French cologne would smell. (Don’t worry. Candice lectured him about that.) Frederick was half-Tunisian, half-Vietnamese, wore a Bruno Mars pompadour, and donned a blazer daily. His open face and wide-set cow eyes provoked and projected sympathy. Freddie— that’s I and E, please — as he liked to be called, was slimmer than Charlie, but also graced with enviable athletic definition. That’s not why Daron liked him, though. Frederick’s parents had guessed his sexuality when he was young (The now legendary King Holiday fifth-grade dress-up day fiasco, was all he would say), and enrolled him immediately in karate classes, Not to change you, to protect you, and he’d gone on to earn a black belt. That’s not why D’aron didn’t like him, though. He had an intense stare, more intense than Louis’s had been, and he played cards, drank everything that could be poured, complained the moment too much air invaded his glass, cursed, and talked about growing up in a rough Bronx neighborhood where fathering a kid in high school was a badge of honor and where men tossed about Faggot! like confetti (some, he added, more like dollars to fire up skank strippers), where he had to fight every day, and did so successfully and not entirely regretfully. By the time he was fifteen, his roundhouse kick kept the teasing to side talk, and those who didn’t know him would back off once he quietly issued the standard warning: Your sorry tail is about to slither home and confess that RuPaul kicked your ass. That’s not why Daron liked him, though.

Why was Charlie with a mixed guy instead of a black dude; who was the man in the relationship? He could draw no conclusions based on observation. They shared duties as he and Candice did, still Daron found it hard to picture himself one-half of a two-pants partnership. Quelle différence?

Charlie sat the same, erect, but an air of relaxation had settled over him. He ran each morning at a pace that accommodated Candice and Frederick, and his legs no longer bounced as he laced his shoes, and when waiting for his nuked burritos, he didn’t pace. A few days into his visit, they ran out of vodka (okay, really it was day two, more specifically the first morning — but it was Nola, prudence be damned) and Candice dragged Frederick along to the store to buy more, leaving Charlie and Daron alone. On Charlie’s first visit, whenever Candice had announced an errand, Daron offered to go, or suggested that all three travel together and treat it like a tourist excursion, which was not hard: even making groceries was an adventure in Nola. Candice had always relented. This time, though — Operation Vodka — she and Frederick tweeted their departure from the parking lot, leaving Daron flush with sympathy for his mom, who threw a fit blacker than a striped hat if she received an electronic message from anyone within shouting range: No texting in shouting distance. Birds are real! Tweets are real! Twitters are not! had echoed through the house often enough that he couldn’t be angry at Candice, even though he suspected she’d planned it.

Nice apartment. Charlie looked around.

Thanks. That was nice of him, because it wasn’t all that great an apartment, another tenement in the undergrad ghetto, Daron first thought. Actually, that’s weird, Daron second thought. Is this what they would do now? Should he compliment Charlie’s new skids — custom double-tongue Converse with a black cap — or would that be a snide swipe, a cat slap?

I like that you have a picture of Louis up. I do, too. Freddie was jealous. Jay-lous! He laughed. Do you love Candice?

Uh… I don’t know. I think so, but I don’t know. The sporadic insomnia he’d suffered following the visit to the morgue, which worsened something awful after the inquest and went downright feral after the trial, had abated since they’d moved in together, but he didn’t know if that meant they were in full-on love finer than frog’s hair. Do you love Freddie?

I think so, shifting in his seat, letting his hand flop over his knee like a rag.

They compared notes, for the hundred-and-seventh time, on the differences between their new schools and Berzerkeley. They were loath to admit as much, but the latter won out. Diversity, weather, alien technology: chillation nation. All the while, Daron found himself studying Charlie. Had his carriage, his facial expressions changed? As D’aron watched, Daron was aware of the observer’s paradox. Daron was aware that Charlie might be monitoring his behavior because he was aware that D’aron was watching him. Daron was aware that he might see only what he was looking for. To top that pyramid of gothic cheerleaders, D’aron was hyperaware that, as Maylene’s boyfriend did say, Those theories and shit can zap your bug, scramble your egg real bad, make it hard for you to connect to people.

They reminisced about Louis. Charlie had assured Daron that his mother did not hate Daron. Daron had assured Charlie that his mom did not hate Charlie. Neither could assure the other of anything regarding the Changs. In the twelve months since Louis’s death, he and Candice had mentioned Louis only seldom, but for the first few days of this trip, talking about the absent was easier than talking about the present. At least for Daron.

Again, he was curious. When the skin of masculinity was shed, as one professor put it, the psychic constrictor evaded, as another professor put it, the full humanity of all beings embraced, as another professor put it, what was left but equality? Daron had cracked his walnut on that idea. He knew it meant that somewhere out there existed a freestanding entity, an island called Equality that was obscured by a fog of prejudice that was slowly burning off, being licked clean by light, being evaporated — as it were — by the rising sun of enlightenment and social justice, as one professor put it. As Daron thought of it, though, it was as if someone cut an East Coast massive fart, and until it cleared no one could smell the roses. Or, maybe it was like eating a hamburger in a bus station bathroom. By his reckoning, if there was that much damn fog, how did anyone know that the fog wasn’t real and that the island wasn’t an illusion, that the fog wouldn’t burn off to reveal yet more fog? (No one liked Mondays!)

How do people treat you now?

Now what?

You know.

I do? An uncertain smile bit Charlie’s lips. How do people treat Charlie? Or how do people treat Charlie the Gay Man?

Charlie.

The same.

And the other?

The other?

A bubble of lunch belched. When they find out you’re gay, said Daron.

Thank you for finally saying it, Daron. The same but different. Used to be blacks weren’t bothered when I was around; everyone else was more likely to be. It’s reversed.

(What could he say to that? That he understood because it was how he would have described his feelings about Braggsville, his family, the Gulls? But where was one to go after claiming that kind of kinship? Would Charlie even accept it? Maybe it wasn’t that bad because Charlie had acceded to a seat in high society and Daron to fringe authority, at least not bad for Charlie. There were an awful lot more whites than blacks. There were also an awful lot more people who weren’t from Braggsville. He hoped Charlie thought he’d made the right decision. To his own mind, Daron never had a choice. On a third, unrelated hand, was that why Charlie seemed blacker? Didn’t he? Sported his own rock-in-the-flip-flop walk? Daron once asked why Charlie didn’t swagger or dip with the choreographed stride of theyselves. Charlie said he had. One time. And his mother threw her shoe at him, which he caught just in time to be unable to deflect the smack that followed. He’d shared several similar stories: Crouching Mother, Hidden Dragon.)