Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“Sorry,” I said.

“Aren’t we friends?” he asked.

I studied his face and saw nothing but face. “No,” I said.

“But you stood up for me.”

“My mistake. Then I didn’t know you well enough to like you or not like you. Now I know you well enough. I’m glad you made it into the fraternity. You belong there.”

“So, you won’t take me.”

“No, I won’t take you.”

“You’re not Omega material. I can see that now.”

I nodded.

“You’re just a white man’s toy,” he said. As he said it he reached over to pick up a plastic bottle that had been left on a table and slip it into his book bag. “You’re not black enough to be an Omega.”

I nodded. “I’ll see you around, Eugene.” I wrapped my sandwich in a napkin and walked away wondering if I might have any virtuous feeling from my show of restraint. I can’t say that I was completely unaffected by his attack. An attack always feels like an attack, and I had to wonder if he was uttering some truth besides my not being Omega material.

Everett talked on and on about a thing being self-identical, but failed at any turn to make a drop of sense. He laughed over his assertion that contingency was necessary for the existence of necessary truth and laughed harder as he blabbed on about truth as a “pliable vacuum of manipulated fragments of no whole entity.” The Spelman student who had said Everett might be attractive if not for his extra weight was staring devotedly at him. I watched her follow him with her eyes around the room. As always, in an attempt to understand something, I raised my hand.

“Yes?” he said. “Mr. Poitier.”

“I’m sorry, but are you saying that a thing cannot exist without its opposite also existing?”

“I don’t know,” he said and looked truly puzzled. “Am I?”

“Is there an opposite to existence?” My question felt unbelievably stupid in my mouth.

“Precisely,” he said. “Dismissed.” Even though we were only halfway through the period.

As we walked out, the woman whom I had been watching walked after me. “Mr. Poitier,” she said.

“Hello, Ms. Larkin,” I said. That was all I knew of her name as Everett always called us Ms. and Mr.

“I liked your question,” she said.

“I’m glad you did. I don’t know what I asked him and I certainly don’t know what was ‘precisely’ about it. Tell me, do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Not a word. Isn’t he fabulous?”

“I guess.” I looked at Ms. Larkin’s soft features. Her red hair was pulled back tight. I noticed for the first time that she looked white, but that was true of many black people. I assumed she was black because she was attending Spelman. I felt stupid even wondering about it.

We walked toward the student center, not talking. I was thinking about class and then I realized I was thinking about class, though I was hard pressed to know what I was thinking about the class. I did know that somehow I felt as if I had been tricked into thinking that existence was a thing instead of an attribute, and then I wondered why I was thinking like that.

“Well,” Ms. Larkin said as we reached the doors of the center. She said “well” as if we’d actually had a conversation.

“What is your first name?” I asked.

“Maggie.”

“I’m Not Sidney.”

“I know,” she said. “Everyone knows.” She pulled open the door. “See you Thursday morning.”

That everyone knows was deadly. It cut through me. Yet I was not sure that she meant any harm by saying it. I had the sense, or at least wanted to think, that she was merely stating a fact, albeit a disheartening, if not disturbing fact.

I came across Professor Everett having coffee in the commons. He invited me to sit down and so I did.

“You’re distressed,” he said.

“I don’t know if I’d say distressed.”

“You don’t have to. I can see that you’re in a deep distression.”

“Is that a word?”

“Doesn’t matter. You know what I mean. That’s all I require of language.”

I was about to disagree, perhaps strongly, when I caught him staring outside through the window.

I looked to see Maurice and other frat guys dressed in black jackets, combat boots, and dark glasses stomping their way along the sidewalk. They would stomp with the left foot twice, once with the right, slide the left toe, and fall onto the right, and bark all the while like dogs. And every few steps, one would dash out of line to collect a discarded can or bottle.

“That’s strange,” Everett said.

“What part?” I asked.

“All of it.”

When I returned to my room I found it filled waist-high with plastic bags filled with bottles and cans. Morris was arguing with the brute Maurice. Since I had not given Morris the suggestion to act civilly toward me, he did not.

“What are you looking at, maggot?” he said.

It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t attempt an answer. I waded through the containers to my desk.

“What are we going to do with all of this shit?” Maurice said.

“You tell me,” Morris said.

“You’re the one who started this. ‘Let’s recycle, let’s be green,’ you said. Well, the clubhouse is filled with bottles too and so is my room.”

“Let me think,” I said.

That notion struck me as funny in some way that made me feel bad about myself, and so a self-pitying laugh sneaked out before I could catch it.

“What about you, Poitier?” Morris said. “You got any ideas?”

“Yeah, keep your things on your side of the room.”

“We should have left all these motherfuckers in the garbage cans where we found them,” Maurice said. “Crazy fucking idea. Recycling, my ass. We don’t even have a truck. You got us driving these cans to the recycling place in two cars. Man, that’s crazy.”

I opened my book bag and pulled out a bottle of juice I’d started earlier, swallowed the last couple of ounces, and tossed it into the waste bin. Morris walked over and retrieved it, put it on his pile.

Maurice watched him. “Dude, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you. I’m getting out of here. I’m going to my room and throw every motherfucking can I got back in the trash.”

I surveyed the room and realized that my stupid suggestion was compromising the quality of my own living situation. I Fesmerized poor Morris once again and instructed him to end the collecting madness and to drive the cans and bottles to the nearest recycling center.

And that’s what he did. Nonstop for two days, back and forth in his Corvette. I have to say that I felt a little bad, but only a little. I discovered that I too had a bit of a mean streak — a realization that left me both saddened and relieved.

It came as most dreams, while I was asleep:

My mother encouraged me to buy bubble gum at the convenience store and sell it at school. I was in fifth grade. I bought the balls for a penny apiece and sold them for a nickel. My transactions were conducted behind the cafeteria before school, and all went smoothly until a teacher got in line. She took me to the principal, who in turn called my mother. He was quite surprised to find out that my mother was upset only because I had been interrupted during the conducting of my business.

“Is there a rule against a child selling candy on school grounds?” she asked.