Chris McCormick - Desert Boys

DK:So, the media attention during that time shaped your career, inadvertently, in a productive way?

JS:Let’s just say I learned how to pick a fight — I’ll never pick one I don’t intend to fight forever. And now, that fight is for Oakland, so can we talk about that?

THE SHOOT

When we arrived at Joshua’s apartment, the photographer was already there, dragging a reclining chair from one side of the room to the other.

“You’re going to sit here,” she told Joshua, “and you get to choose six books to stack on this radiator next to you. Not five, not seven. Six.”

Jenna King was an old friend of Joshua’s from his days in the Black Student Union at Stanford. Some of the curls in her short hair were painted blue, and a yellow ring hung from her right nostril. When I asked if she’d been given a spare key to Joshua’s apartment, she said, “Man, Josh has a spare key to my apartment.” I figured out the two of them lived there together. Nina Simone’s Black Gold was spinning on an actual record player while Jenna set up the lights and probes. To get out of the way, I stayed in the kitchenette overlooking the living room and—“Is it cool if I…?”—brewed some coffee. Jenna King and Joshua Stilt danced lightly near the bookshelves, deciding which six books to include in the photograph.

“I love Nina,” I said.

“Who’s Nina?” Jenna asked.

“Nina Simone,” I said, pointing to the record player.

“Oh, okay. Just wanted to make sure you called her by her first name like you knew her.” She laughed, and Joshua laughed, too.

At one point while Joshua browsed the spines along his shelves, Jenna came over to pour herself a cup of coffee. Without saying anything, she reached around me to grab the pot. I moved and said, “Sorry. I know my one job here is to stay out of the way, and I’ve failed.” I was hoping she’d laugh, but when it became clear she wasn’t going to, I started toward Joshua to see which books he’d selected to be photographed with.

“Why couldn’t you get an Oakland writer to do this,” Jenna asked Joshua. “I don’t know. Maybe a black writer, even.”

“We go back,” Joshua said. “He’s from my hometown.”

“Oh, good,” Jenna said. “So his article that’s supposed to be about you and the City of Oakland is actually going to be about him and Nazi Valley.” She looked at me. “You seem uncomfortable.”

I was. My discomfort was the result, I think, of simultaneously wanting (a) to engage in the discourse on race and the unavoidable white frame of my article, and (b) to pretend that because I had acknowledged said frame, I’d earned the right to ignore it altogether. The fact was, Jenna was right: I was finding myself less interested in Joshua’s political career, and increasingly drawn to the ways in which our histories had collided, the odd angles at which they’d spun out after the collision.

“You know we need all kinds of folks behind us,” Joshua said.

“Folks,” Jenna laughed.

“The truth is,” I said, “I’m not putting anything about myself in the story. My editor won’t let it happen, and I’m boring anyway.”

She studied the tiny alligator on my polo shirt, the pleats in my skinny-legged khakis. “You don’t say.” Then: “Why do you need to be here — Daley, right? I mean, here here. In this room. Do you want to be in the picture, too?”

“I’m doing a day-in-the-life kind of thing—”

“Jenna,” Joshua said. “Come take my picture.”

“Look,” she said. “I’m not mad. But hear me out. I’m from Oakland. I think you’d be a great mayor, Josh, because you’re my friend, and you’re brilliant, and I know you’ve got your heart in the right place. But you should’ve got a local writer to do this story! Dude, he’s from your hometown. I get that. But if you want this kid around your campaign, maybe you should go run for mayor out there.” She let out a harsh laugh and turned her attention to me. “Shit, you guys should go run together in the city. It’s a long, vibrant tradition in San Francisco for white people to take credit for everything good Oakland’s ever done.”

For a minute no one said anything. Joshua flipped open one of the books he’d chosen and leafed through it. “Jenna’s not entirely right,” he said into the pages, “but I would appreciate it, Daley, if you stopped asking me about the mascot thing, or the Antelope Valley in general.” He looked up from the book, first at Jenna and then at me. “Let’s focus on Oakland, and we should all be good to go. Yes?”

Jenna took another mug from the cupboard, filled it with coffee, and handed it to me. “That mascot shit means a lot of things to a lot of people,” she said, “so I understand why you’re interested in it. But for me, the mascot means someone else told him their version of his own story, and he bought it. He dressed up in their version of his story. You know? The difference between having the power to tell your own story and allowing other people that power is the difference between scuba diving and having your head held under water. Put that in your notes.”

“I will,” I said.

“And don’t use me as some vehicle for a different point of view. If I show up in your piece, remember that I’m a whole thing. That most of my time is spent with my camera weighing me down, looking for an interesting shot. That I care enough to pay attention and love this man over here, who isn’t just a representative, you know, and neither am I.”

THE EVENT

A stage had been set up in a park at the western edge of Lake Merritt, and the three of us made our way through the swelling crowd and dozens of organizers’ booths to a man who pinned a microphone on the lapel of Joshua’s suede jacket. Jenna, camera at her eye, stayed busy recording every detail. I remembered this was my job, too, to record, so I began to pay more attention.

Joshua couldn’t take five steps without an attendee at the event approaching him to shake his hand. I took note of his remarkable ability to remember names, faces, occupations, and situations specific to each voter. At one point, he asked an older black woman in a wheelchair how her granddaughter was adjusting to college life at Mills, and even this woman seemed stunned by Stilt’s memory. I looked to Jenna, who didn’t miss shooting a single embrace, to see if she was as impressed as everyone else seemed to be, but she only pulled her camera down from her face long enough to check the lighting in the previous photograph.

I had fifteen minutes before Joshua Stilt was scheduled to speak, so I took a walk around the park. Lining the perimeter were tables manned by volunteers of various city organizations and businesses. Food and beverage booths, including a vegetarian soul food restaurant called Souley Vegan, sent into the world the thick smells of fried polenta, tempeh burgers, and Ethiopian coffee. Every plate, cup, and utensil used for the event was compostable, and marked green bins had been arranged in neat rows throughout the park for that purpose. I bought an ear of barbecued corn, still in its husk, and found an open seat on one of the park’s benches. The whole setup reminded me of a more sophisticated version of a vaguely political rally I’d attended in my hometown, years ago. This was why my article wasn’t going to work, I thought. My central question — how had Joshua transitioned so seamlessly and successfully to life outside the Antelope Valley? — interested neither Joshua nor my editor. I realized this was why I’d never been interested in politics: I wanted to understand the past while everyone else wanted to talk about the future. I felt tired. Nearby, children tossed bread crumbs to the geese at the edge of the lake, and, behind them, a white kid — a high schooler probably — pulled up, one by one, his baggy pant legs.