Mat Johnson - Drop

‘You need to eat something,’ Alex told me. ‘Get a cheesesteak in you, a hoagie, a couple of Tastykakes, maybe take a goodie bag with you for when you get homesick.’ We turned right, along the exit into Washington Lane, up the hill and under the train bridge and another right at the abandoned gas station on Pulaski, turn left and park in front of the Stop ’n’ Go, turn the key and listen to the car cough a bit before letting go. Finally motionless, for the first time since we left my campus two hours before, Alex stared at me.

‘I’m not eating. They serve food on the plane,’ I told her.

‘Plane food.’

‘That’s right, plain old food. That’s all I need.’ Stop ‘n’ Go on Chelten Avenue. When I was a kid this was the only place that would sell me beer. Forties of Red Bull I could barely pull down.

‘You coming in?’ Alex asked me, but she knew I wasn’t. She just didn’t comprehend why. She didn’t understand that if I put a foot down on the sidewalk it would turn the rubber of my sneakers to concrete as well, fuse me to the ground and force me to live the life I was originally destined. The city wanted to keep me here even though it had no use for me.

‘Fine. You sit there.’

‘Please hurry. I need to check in. It’s an international flight, you know? You’re supposed to check in early for those,’ I reminded her. Al slammed the door on me.

The car stunk like forgotten garbage. She’d parked in the sun, probably on purpose, and it was getting hotter, like Philly could. Outside was home, and I wasn’t going to open the door. Home was too many niggers. Too many guts, too many sweaty brows. Too many hand towels held on shoulders as if it was a symbol of elegance. Too many radios on different stations, each one blaring songs about boning or blasting someone away, every noise fighting to take control of the air. Too many pop-pop gun shots peppering the night, divulging neither location nor story, only the knowledge that eventually it would come for you. Too many damn kids yelling for their moms, yelling at one another, some just crying to themselves as they walked alone down the sidewalk. Why are poor people so fucking loud? Why can’t they all just shut up and go home? Why are the same guys who were here when I left three years ago still standing in front of Stop ’n’ Go like anti-security guards, drinking septic beer and speaking some language that sounds as if their mouths are half closed? What is the point of home if this is the way it makes you feel?

‘Dukey-head.’ I turned around, and Al, crouching, with her Canon 35mm in hand, clicked at me until I put my face down.

‘Stop with the pictures. You ready?’ I asked. Alex held up a white paper bag.

‘Eats,’ she said.

The ticket David sent me was in my hand. I had to get on a plane, go to London, get out while I had my chance, and Alex was taking pictures.

‘Come on, smile. Pretend you’re selling teeth whitener. I don’t have any shots of you.’

‘You have tons of pictures of me, you have more than I have.’

‘You’ve hardly been back all year. Get out of the car,’ Al said. I looked outside my window at the concrete, the litter glitter of broken bottle glass on cracked beige asphalt. A lump of dog crap harder than life. No step outside for Christopher. Christopher was not stepping outside till he got to the airport. Chris’s quitting this place for good.

‘I don’t want to,’ I said. The malt-liquor boys were looking over at us, taking a rest from lying. I recognized the big one from summer camp. He was looking at me, pointing, saying something while laughing to the degenerate who leaned against the wall next to him. Look, there’s Christopher. They were both laughing now. Wasn’t it funny? I was a joke: I was not a thug, I was not a bailer, I was not a mack, I was not paid. I was not a comedian, even though I inspired great mirth. All I was was clever and creative, and unless you had a ball in your hand or your mouth in front of a microphone, this place had no respect for either one of those things. I hated them because they were violent and ignorant-and arrogant about both of those deficiencies. They hated me because I was not.

‘When you coming back to Philly?’ Alex asked me. So we were going to play our game again. The one where Alex tried to get me to love this place and I tried to get her to hate it. Bring it on.

‘I’m not coming back. I hate this place.’

‘See, that’s wrong. This is the community that helped raise you.’

‘And made me have to sneak home, terrified, every day growing up so as not to get my ass kicked. The community that broke in my mom’s house, taking everything she had that they didn’t, three times. I don’t owe these people nothing. I’m gone.’

‘See, you’ve become a sellout.’

‘Shit, I would love to sell out, but who the hell would buy any of this crap?’

Alex shrugged me off, deciding it was in jest, and took more pictures, her narrow elbows jutting out on both sides as she aimed.

‘Get your camera,’ she told me.

‘I know what this place looks like. I grew up here.’

‘Then what the hell are you so scared of?’ she asked, dismissive and annoyed. Beyond us, invisible, pop-pop-pop went the niggers. Someone was discovering lead. Alex didn’t even notice, didn’t even hear this answer to her question. That sound: that was my fear. I was scared of becoming them or becoming their victim. I was scared they were all life would allow me to be. Alex took the roll of film out of her camera and then made me move my knees as she reached to the glove compartment for a fresh one. She’d put two ice packs in there, but it still looked too hot.

‘Your film’s going to go bad. You should buy a cooler.’

‘Buy me one. So what happened? You just quit taking pictures?’

‘No, I still shoot. Or at least I’ll be art directing some shoots. That’s part of what I do, Alex. That’s part of my job. I have a job now. I have a career. That’s why I have to be at the airport, remember?’ Suddenly exhausted that I wouldn’t reinforce her Philly delusions, Alex got back in the car.

This was my last time seeing this place, so I looked around. Most of the stores I’d grown up with had closed, or changed names, or gotten tackier, just like the people. But those weren’t changes: they were continuations. The laundromat still had video games in the back where grown men dealt drugs while their children shot gigabit punks. The bar across the street from the Superfresh still smelled like a whore’s hangover, door always open in hope that its patrons would get off their stools and go. Across Pulaski, pushing a stolen shopping cart filled with junk, that same crazy man: skin orange and hot like the pulp of a sweet-potato yam, hair rust-red and dusty and shaped like the top of a mushroom cloud, muscled body taut with the steam of madness, his smell walking twelve feet before him. He was staring at me, both hands pushing that wreck my way. I felt sorry that Alex had to stay in this place. ‘You know, after I get settled, you could move out to London, too.’

‘Wouldn’t that be sweet? Maybe, if this photography thing ever starts happening for me, maybe I could swing through for a little visit. That would be so nice.’

‘When your shit drops, you need to just move out by me for good.’

‘Move? Chris, why would I want to move?’ Alex looked over her shoulder for traffic. Outside my window the yam-skinned man was getting close, smelling like he wore shit for clothes. Next to the car, he stopped pushing his cart and kept staring. All that fire-flesh focusing its rage on me, angry because I was getting out, that I wouldn’t be forced to negotiate his existence. Yam-skinned man staring at me angry because I wasn’t letting him climb on my back while I pushed his shopping cart up the road. The yam-skinned man, standing there, eyes wide as if I was the abomination, vibrating like he was going to go Osage on me, end my life because I was smiling back at him, daring to yell out, ‘Niggawhat? I’m gone!’