Jonathan Lethem - The Fortress of Solitude

The record includes among others a passage mocking Superman, the rapper calling himself Big Hank mock-wooing Lois Lane with boasting couplets. He may be able to fly all through the night, but can he rock a party ’til the early light? An excellent question for Superman or any other flying personage, really.

That’s if flying wasn’t the last thing on your mind.

Now the three begin quoting favorite lines, trying to mimic the rappers’ inflection while keeping straight faces. “ I understand about the food ,” says one, nearly weeping with pleasure. “ hey, but bubba, we’re still friends! ”

Two of these harmless, pink-cheeked punks are Manhattan-born, were privately schooled until the year they switched to Stuyvesant to spare their parents the expense. For all they know this record might have been cut specifically for their private anthropological enjoyment, and they hear it with detachment suitable for an artifact fallen from the moon. They’ve never heard anyone rap before, anymore than they’ve met Fat Albert or Sanford & Son walking down the street. Consensus might be that what makes “Rapper’s Delight” and black people in general so criminally funny is their supreme lack of irony . Hey, it’s not racist to find blacks earnest as hippies, broad and embarrassing as a comic book. These boys is punks, and punks sneer. That’s what they do, deal with it.

Lack of irony’s scarcely a problem for the third in the room, the punk from Gowanus.

Tied in splendid baroque knots, that’s him. Ready to pass any and all litmus tests for self-partitioning. But hey, if standing in your Converse All Star high-tops on the couch cushions rotating hips in awkward parody you recall Marilla’s curbside hula-hoop instruction a million years ago, recall too your disappointment Marilla wasn’t a blond Solver, your guilt at this disappointment, your shame at your body’s inexpressiveness, its unfunky failings- so what ? Laughing at “Rapper’s Delight”’s no revenge, and anyway it wasn’t your idea, and anyway it’s funny . Dean Street’s another story, a realm of knowledge inapplicable here.

You’ve just about finished leaving Dean Street, and Aeroman, behind.

If this means avoiding the one who protected your ass all through junior high, the one you once ached to emulate, the one whose orbit you were happy just to swing in-if it means leaving the million-dollar kid’s regular phone messages in Abraham’s precise handwriting unreturned-that’s a small price to pay for growing up, isn’t it?

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around.

It’s the end, the end of the seventies.

Though Barrett Rude Junior had it in mind all along, grist for his own heart’s musing, the evening’s theme was kept a mystery to those in attendance. That hadn’t slowed them delving into the spread, the sliced meats and cheese and olives and egg bread and rye and cherry cheesecake he’d dialed in from Junior’s, the Seagram’s, the dope. This posse of freaks, Horatio, Crowell Desmond, the three girls, they never needed an excuse to party. When finally he made the announcement he got only a faint echo back, most of the crowd already too wasted by then to do more than nod sweetly and spacily, raise a glass with ice if they held one. Barry’s hyped about something, Whose birthday? Whatever, that’s cool. But the one girl, whose name he’d forgotten, said:

“How old?”

She’d given him a shy smile when she came in, one of three numbers on Horatio’s arm, all jingling earrings and Egyptian eyelashes, tan skintight slip-sheer dress to her pumps, nearly fifty buttons on one side, ankle to armpit, bottom dozen undone. Prime Horatio specimen, but new and unfamiliar. Picture her answering the phone, Horatio saying, Wanna meet Barrett Rude? Singer from the Distinctions? Wear something nice, baby. Standing at a mirror counting how many buttons up from the floor to undo, nothing’s accidental.

It talks without talking.

Brother, it sings if you listen.

Right through the door she’d started fussing, dimming the overheads digging in his drawers looking for candles, until he told her there weren’t any. Then she’d thrown her shawl on his lamp, made a web of shadow that stretched across the ceiling like a groaning mouth with tassel teeth.

“You down with some Fleetwood Mac gypsy type of thing there, girl?”

Again she’d smiled without speaking, then gone and sucked up a line Horatio had laid out on the kitchen counter.

All elegance, one nail-painted finger pressed aside a nostril.

Pinky high like she was sipping Earl Grey.

He ignored her, slipped something mellow on the turntable, Little Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants . Then got to sampling Horatio’s product himself, did a line while waiting for the base to get cooked for the pipe. One of the other girls asked him about the gold records on the mantel and he told her there ought to be four more up there, if the truth be known. He didn’t even get angry, it was just a story now. While he told it he kept half an eye on the quiet girl, as she watched and pretended not to, the usual game. No hurry, the quiet ones always came around. Like a timer going off. Now she showed some curiosity about his having a son, the procreational instinct.

Fine, girl, we can work with that. That’d be a direction we could definitely explore. He said: “Seventeen, you believe that shit? I’m an old man, damn.”

Barrett Rude Junior sat in his butterfly chair, arms flung behind his head, spread open to the air the way he preferred, not caring if the girls on the rug were seeing up his gym shorts. Exhibit A, help yourselves. Y’all came here to see me, make sure I’m real.

“Well, if it’s his birthday, where is he?” Her voice was girlish, purring, porny.

He lifted his eyes to the door to the basement apartment. “Why don’t you call him up here? Name’s Mingus.”

Outside a thunderstorm had eased the June night, a tide of cool coming through the parlor windows, flapping the curtains.

Night the kid was born it was raining too, 1963.

The girl glanced at the door, surprised, like he was keeping some damn prisoner. “Whole downstairs to himself,” he said in defense. “I called him before but he was out doing his own thing. Motherfucker lives for the street. Storm likely blew him home, though. Or it will.” He shut his eyes and sang in falsetto, tonguing his palate for an Al Green lisp, “ I can’t stand the rain-against my window-bringing back sweet memories-hey windowpane- ”

Taking the dare, she went to the basement door and called the name, tentative, like she didn’t believe it. A minute later the birthday boy arrived, was suddenly in their midst like a dog on the carpet in his stained fatigues and napped hair, his proto-dreadlock nubbins. The girls all looked him over as if on cue, went mm mm , vamping for the sake of the grown men.

“What?” said Mingus.

“Hey, Gustopher, man, how you doin’ ?” said Crowell Desmond, leaning over the counter and sticking out his palm for a slap Mingus gave half-willingly. “How come I never see you, man?”

“Gus only come upstairs steal my records and the dope out my freezer,” said Barry. “He don’t deign to hang with us no more.”

“You father said it’s your birthday,” said the gypsy-looking girl, still skeptical.

Mingus nodded.

“You looked stoned, boy. You asleep? Intro duce yourself to the woman.”

She held his hand. “Yolanda.”

“Yo. Mingus.”

“Yolanda, Yomingus ,” said Barry. “Y’all a couple of twins.”