Paul Beatty - The White Boy Shuffle

Nicholas could never explain any of his talents. If anyone asked about his hardwood perfection, he said that he’d hurt his elbow falling out of a tree when he was little, and that when he cocked his arm he heard a little click telling him when to release the ball. Then he’d snap his arm for effect. His elbow cracked loudly, popping just as he said. But his weak explanation didn’t account for distance or the various shots I had seen him make right-handed.

“Nicholas, why don’t you just quit?”

“Do what you do best. That’s what I’ve heard my whole life. First it was hopscotch and now it’s basketball.”

“Hopscotch?” Coach and I asked in unison.

“Yeah, when I first moved out here from Chicago I didn’t know nobody, so me and the other outcasts — the ESL kids, the deaf kids — played hopscotch to pass the time. I really liked the game. The sound of your keys sliding into the box, trying to lean from nines to pick up your marker in fours. Jumping from two to eights and clicking over sixes. Shit was a challenge. Anyway, the untraumatized boys chased me home every day. Since I used my house keys as a hopscotch marker, I always had trouble opening the lock. Usually I got the door open moments before the boys hunted me down. One day the key was so worn the lock wouldn’t open, and these niggers waxed my shit right on my front porch. When my mother got home she made me wash the dried blood off the stairs and explain what happened. Then she yanked me over to the basketball courts.”

“Don’t tell me you had to fight every boy who beat you up?” I asked, anticipating a common parental method used to turn squeamish young boys into men.

“No, she made every kid who beat me up play hopscotch with me. They had a good time, too. We was friends after that. Once I was accepted by the cool pack, I started playing basketball and stopped playing hopscotch with the retards.”

“What happened to the hopscotch kids?”

“They sit in the stands and scream like everybody else whenever I shoot the basketball.”

When the lunch bell rang, Scoby was feeling better. He smiled as if he had had a revelation and told Coach he’d be at practice.

After a light practice, Coach Shimimoto divided the team into two squads for a scrimmage. Usually he divided us using some arbitrary criterion. White sneakers vs. black sneakers, kids who’d never been to the dentist vs. those who had. That day it was dark lips vs. red lips. My upper lip is dark and the bottom one is cranberry red, so I was a bit confused and asked Coach which team I should play for. Coach Shimimoto said that it was a blessing to be able to play for both sides and made me substitute for whoever was tired. It was strange playing for both teams, scoring for one squad, then reversing my jersey and doing the same thing with the other.

I was standing on the sidelines catching my breath when Coach blew a jet of sweat from his brownish upper lip and said, “Gunnar, you know in Japan they play tie baseball games.”

“Coach, I could give a fuck if I win or lose as long as both sides have a fair chance to play as hard as they want to play. Do the Japanese have tie basketball games?”

“No. Go in for Adrianna, smartass.”

Nicholas didn’t shoot much during that scrimmage or for the rest of the year. For us to win basketball games, I had to play like hell. Gradually, I realized that the decision Nicholas had made was to remove the burden of success temporarily from his shoulders and place it solely on mine. The classroom, locker room, and bathroom acclaim fell on me. I’d thrust my hips at a urinal and two cats on either side would glance up from their drippy glans and gleefully let out the interminable catcall, “Guuunnnnnarr Kaaawwwfffmaaaan.” When kids discussed the team’s prospects in the city playoffs, washing down mouthfuls of doughy burritos with fruit punch, it was “Gunnar has held every all-city ballplayer we’ve played to fewer than four points. Gunnar is averaging twenty-six points, nine rebounds, and twelve assists a game.” When Scoby’s name came up, they all said, “Oh yeah, that fool can shoot, but Gunnar has to carry us.” Nicholas loved the shift in fame and willingly played his part in the role reversal, calling me “the Deity” and asking me to forgive him for his sins.

There are certain demands on a star athlete that I didn’t anticipate or enjoy. The most arduous of which was having to participate in the social scene. Every weekend Scoby and Psycho Loco pressured me to use my star status to get them retinue privileges at the Paradise, the Rojo Cebolla, or the Black Lagoon. When a club manager balked at admitting the volatile Psycho Loco into the establishment, I had to agree to take complete responsibility for his actions, which was like asking a dog collar to be responsible for a rottweiler. Wringing their hands like mad scientists, he and Scoby’d thank me for my kindness, ignoring the fact that I suffered from what the American Psychiatric Association Manual of Mental Disorders lists as social arrhythmia and courtship paralysis, meaning I couldn’t dance and was deathly afraid of women.

I wasn’t completely lacking in social skills. With practice I learned to serpentine cool as hell through a crowded dance floor with the best of the high school snakes. I could hiss at the young women, but not much else. When the opening strains of the latest jam crescendoed through the house, I would shout a perfunctory “Heeeyyy!” showing the clubgoers that I was up for the downstroke and that at any moment there might be a “partay ovah heah.” Scoby and Psycho Loco would soon abandon my hepster front for the chase, melding into the swirling mass of bodies and leaving me to fend for myself. I’d watch Nicholas gyrate with Gwen Cummings or Tyesa Hammonds, sometimes both, their bodies one large ball-and-socket joint floating in the same soul sonic waves. Even Psycho Loco could dance. He did this little gangster jig where he leaned back into the cushy rhythms like he was reclining in an easy chair, kicking one foot into the air, then the other, sipping from a bottle of contraband gin and lemonade during the funky breakdown.

Girls interested in dancing with me propped themselves in front of me, a little closer than necessary, swayed to the music, and tried to catch my eye. I stared off in the opposite direction, pretending to be engrossed in an intricately woven bar napkin and praying the girl wouldn’t be bold enough to ask for a dance. As an athlete, I had a ready-made excuse for the nervy women who did ask: “I can’t, baby. Twisted my ankle dunking on the Rogers brothers in last night’s game.” I’d get a funny look in return, and the rebuffed coed would return to her circle of friends. The whispers and over-the-shoulder looks followed by phony smiles set off my social paranoia. My auditory hallucinations cleared their throats. “Something wrong with that nigger, he don’t never dance. Maybe he just shy. Maybe he’s shy? He ain’t shy with Coach Shimimoto. I think he fucking Coach Shimimoto. That’s why Coach be sweating so much. Boy got some big ol’ feets and hands, that’s a waste of some good young nigger dick. Fucking an old man.”

Soon Scoby and Psycho Loco would interrupt my neurotic musings. “Why you ain’t dancing, homes? Crazy honeys is checking you out.”

“I don’t feel like dancing.”

“Are you crazy? There some fine ladies in here. You just scared of women. Scared of pussy.”

On cue, Betty and Veronica would march over and demand the next dance, their tresses interlocked in a geodesic dome hairstyle that roofed their heads like an I. M. Pei nightmare. I would mumble yes and they’d lead me onto the crowded dance floor. I’d stand still for a few seconds, vainly snapping my fingers with as much hope of catching the beat as a quadriplegic hobo latching on to a moving boxcar. “Do what we do,” Betty and Veronica would say reassuringly. I’d try to mirror my partners’ undulating moves, but my body would fail to respond. I was stiffer than a mummified Gumby left out in the sun too long. Instead of bones, my skeletal structure was high-tension wire, and I plodded from side to side with all the mobility of a rusted tin man.