Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

When I walked these streets alone, before anyone knew anything about me, I was afforded the respect reserved for large dark men: Other dark men would nod gravely; dark women would roll their eyes up and smile or just ignore; the cops would slow down but pass on, somehow discriminating between me and those men in the van, whom they would stop and question. The white people scattered — not the ones who’d been here — the old Italians and their children and the pre-crack whites to whom this neighborhood belonged. They didn’t flinch. It was the neopioneers — a strange breed of professional liberal whites, bankers and lawyers and midlevel media folk who’d first rejected their suburban origins then rejected Manhattan’s crush and bustle. Things changed — a restaurant, a shop, a gut renovation. Then they were in, cramming into the old butcher, the green grocer, the coffee roaster, perturbed by the lack of service. Playgrounds were suddenly clean. Trash cans appeared on corners and young white girls scurried about, pretending the Arab and Latino boys who drank soda, leaned on mailboxes, and called each other nigger weren’t there.

“I used to be king here,” I said to Claire once after coming home from shopping. “Now I get eyeballed like I don’t belong.”

She shook her head and smiled. “People look at you like that because they like what they see.” She rubbed my cheeks. “My husband.”

I pointed to my scar — two inches long, raised and jagged. “Some people stare at this,” I rubbed my forehead. “But most people stare at this — and when they aren’t, they’re staring hard away.”

“I just think you’re handsome.”

“Well, you’re not them.”

It changed when I was with her. I changed — to them — seen through the lens of my wife. I was no longer frightening, perhaps intimidating but in an exotic kind of way, for the women at least. The men reacted with a timid acceptance, tolerating their wives’ open curiosity when they passed on the street.

Then the children came. “They” had always considered Claire as one of their own, and perhaps, after I became a father, they considered me that, too. Somehow they let us in — they let me in. And although I don’t think that I changed a bit, we became a part of the “us,” that seemingly abstract and arbitrary grouping that is able to specifically manifest itself: the right school, the right playground, the right stores and eateries, the right strollers, the right books and movies, the right politics, and the right jobs to bankroll all the rightness and distance them from asking whether it was perhaps all wrong. And yes, there were subdivisions of the us, but the only relevant divide was those who could afford to pay and those who could not — an us and a them. Somehow that became a measure of “good.” I heard it in quick snatches — on line getting coffee — those quick, small judgments: They had to pull their kid out. I think they defaulted. He hasn’t worked in over a year. And this one knows the best real estate broker. And that one’s a trustee. And his father owns the western world. And if you’re good, you can be a part.

I’ve met many people who think that what they believe in, just because of the fact they believe it, is good. And so those who are of a different credo are bad — or, at least, difficult — and any kind of proximity to “them” requires some act of goodness on their part, conforming their moral superiority in their minds. And perhaps I’m no different. I look at them, their strange conformities, and I judge. So, for a moment, it seems fair — equal assumptions — but I look around and I don’t see an us. And they never lived in a world where their notions of good aren’t constantly validated. Even this strip is like a shrine to the local, the mundane. The good. Liberal, spending, complacent, in ever growing numbers — the us.

Now they don’t stare, they avoid. Somehow, it changed. I don’t know exactly how or when. Maybe I criticized a film or didn’t like a book, refused too many cocktails and stayed quiet in a corner — watching. Maybe it was all those things. I don’t think it was purely race (although I know most of them are racists: they believe they’re good; they believe they’re better). There were other dark people who became a part of the us, people who, strangely enough, arrived on the scene at the tail end of the gentrification. But I never considered myself a part of them, either. Shake had a conspiracy theory about the reason we were thrown together when we were kids: They put budding alphas in a pack, hedging that we’d either kill each other or waste too much time trying to figure out how to live. And if we made it out, it wouldn’t matter: “The creation of the lone wolf — can’t do shit flying solo except make the settlers afraid.” Maybe that was it — they were just afraid. Strange, they have me outnumbered and outgunned, but they’re still so afraid. It’s amazing the amount of cowardice privilege can afford.

Them. I spit-chide myself for using the word — how I let that woman become a them. I wonder what the emu — Cynthia — sees, if she has any inkling of an us. I wonder if she wanders around feeling misplaced and alone. I wish I could do as Claire would’ve. I would do well to exhibit some of her kindness — even now — her charity, not to confront, even internally, any of these matters. I know that I’m not better. I know that drunks, madmen, and corpses make for lousy dinner guests. But I also believe that there’s a them and they believe that they are good, and I know that if I had what they have — privilege, money, and numbers — I’d tear this fucking place down.

But I don’t and it’s late and someone kicks the paddy wagon wall from inside. I walk extra blocks east so I can avoid the commuters on the main drag. I finally turn south on Third Ave. and walk all the way down it to the little plank bridge that spans the Gowanus Canal. I can smell the water. It’s extra poisonous from two months of cooking in the Brooklyn heat. I’ve always liked this spot, though. I like the sound car tires make on the old wood. I like the promise of the open ocean to the south and the hint of the past centuries’ barges bringing in their truck. The oyster men. It seems like New England, a little patch of it, here between the sprawl of failed industry — more empty warehouses, the auto shops, the chop shops — where the desirable neighborhood ends. Gowanus: There have been reports of a one-eyed seal living in the oily waters. I’ve even heard some say that he likes it there — happy to make the muck banks and rusted car chassis his rookery should he ever coax a mate up the man-made black water.

I lean against the railing and contemplate the promise and the plan for the day. No romping, at least not until I’ve earned it. But I have time, so I wait a moment for the seal. A harbor seal? A spotted seal? “What kind?” X would like to know that specific information. Boogums the harbor seal. I saw him on my first walk along the Irish coast. I spent a sober week in Dingle. I had made enough money doing odd summer jobs and taken off. I remember saving the specific dollar amount, racing against the countdown of days. I did it and then wandered along the coast looking for my family. No one took me seriously. “Do you know how many Murpheys there are in the Dingle, lad?” And finally I had a couple of pints, which degenerated into a couple of days waiting for some cousin or that fucking seal to come walking out of the water.

I close my eyes in the strong sun and try to focus on the money it took to get there — the exchange, cash for the ticket, cash for the room. I was only eighteen, but at least I got the transaction right. The image is erased by light. I cover my lids with my hands. They go cool, but I’m left with the paths, temporarily burned into my retina, of the beams returning to the sun.