Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“Do you think it’s a good idea?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t it a little soon? You seem a little nervous.”

“You’re nervous,” she said.

“I’m scared to death. Aren’t you a tiny bit nervous?”

She nodded. “My family is slightly class conscious,” she said. “A lot class conscious. Hell, they’re snobs.”

“I see.”

“They expect me to be with someone whom they consider to have a pedigree. It’s not enough for them that he be a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO, his parents have to be as well.”

“I see. I have no parents.”

“Oh, but Not Sidney, I don’t think like that. Honestly, I don’t know how they’ll be. I just want you to be aware that they might, I emphasize might, try to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“Then why should I go?” I asked.

“Because I want you to.”

That, I found to be the most interesting and persuasive argument she could have offered.

That night Maggie and I had awkward but sweet and finally probably unsatisfying sex, but we held each other afterward, feeling closer than we’d felt before we’d started. I considered that a very good thing and found myself more relaxed, all the more for the absence of oral sex; even then the thought of it conjured disturbing recall of Beatrice Hancock’s incisors and canines. We lay there, her head was on my chest, a campus lamp was burning outside her second-floor dorm room. There were voices in the hall, Friday-night joking and chortling. I felt suddenly a part of the college world, and then I laughed at myself, knowing how untrue that was.

The phone rang, and Maggie turned over to answer it. “Oh, hi.” She pulled the sheet to her chest. “It’s late. I know. I’ll be in DC for Thanksgiving. You too? I guess I’ll see you then. I can’t talk now. It’s late.” She hung up the phone.

I didn’t ask any questions, just let her head fall back onto my chest. I breathed in the fragrance of her hair.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

I said nothing.

“That was Robert. He’s like my brother. We used to go out.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s at Dartmouth.” She dragged her nails along my shoulder. “He’ll be in DC over break. You’ll get to meet him.”

“That’ll be nice.”

In a fine example of returning to the well, Gladys Feet called and arranged a lunch with me downtown. She didn’t look the part of the corporate porn star that day, but a regular porn star. She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and high heels, and if not for the absence of knee socks and her being black instead of white, she could have been Beatrice Hancock. At least I felt the same vibe. We sat not far from the bar in a hotel restaurant.

“How are classes, Mr. Poitier?”

“How much do you need and what for?” I asked.

“No foreplay or anything?”

I have to admit that her sexually charged attempt at a joke gave me pause, and as I paused I imagined that that was the desired effect. She wasn’t trying to put me at ease with a bit of humor, but to put me on notice, to cast up a flare, to warn me that there was a fellatio somewhere looking for me.

“Is Dudley Feet your husband?” I asked. A pail of icy cold water on her fire, I thought.

“Yes, he is.” Her eyes did not move away from mine. “Why do you ask? He’s not a good husband. He’s inattentive and he cheats. The latter I could live with. Why do you ask?”

“Feet is not a common name,” I said.

“Tell me about it. My maiden name is Birdsong.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

She shot me a look that for the first time let me see her as an interesting person. She then turned her attention to the menu.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not that he’s an awful man.” She was weeping now. “But my life is awful. I’m just so lonely.”

“Ms. Feet, please, don’t cry.”

“Gladys,” she said.

“Gladys. I’m sure your husband loves you.”

“Who gives a fuck whether that little-footed monkey loves me or not. I’m not thinking about him. I’m thinking about me. I have needs.”

Her voice carried. I looked around to find a few pairs of eyes on us. As was my custom, I was embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I said, again, like the imbecile I was. “I’m sure everything will be okay.”

“Oh, what do you know? You’re just a boy.”

“I’m not quite a boy,” I said, feeling oddly defensive. She was probably correct, but I bristled.

“Just because you’re rich doesn’t give you license to speak.”

“That’s true.”

“Just because you’re extremely handsome and look like Sidney Poitier, who most women would pay good money to sleep with, doesn’t give you the right to say anything.”

“That’s true, I guess.”

“You are very handsome,” she said, her tone shifting.

I looked around for our waiter.

“I apologize about this. I’m sure you’re every bit a man.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s only that when I’m around you, I have these … these feelings. I feel all tingly on my arms and thighs. Do you know what I mean?” Her voice was low now; one might say sultry, one might say crazy. If cigarettes had been allowed inside and if she had had one, she would have lit it. “Do you like older women? I mean, women my age? Not old, but older than you?”

“I suppose. My mother was an older woman and I liked her.”

“No, I mean, are you attracted to older women?”

“You’re very … ” I stopped, thinking that I might have flattered myself into a corner or worse. “Can you just tell me how much money the college needs?” I was sweating. My shirt felt sticky.

“What about my needs?”

“All I have is money, Ms. Feet.”

“Gladys.”

“Gladys. Really, all I have to offer is money.”

“I don’t want money.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Whereas at one point in our relationship, back when everything was about money, I had felt, if not in control then on equal footing, I was now lost, confused, in over my head.

“Would you come upstairs with me and rub my temples?” she asked.

“Upstairs?”

“I got us a room.”

I wish I could say that I said something clever, pulled back her chair, and escorted her up to the room where I left her alone at the door. I wish that I could say that I said something cool and aloof and excused myself gracefully from the table and hailed a taxi as the sky began to drizzle. But I can say neither. I knocked my chair over as I stood too quickly and sprinted suspectlike from the restaurant as if I was on fire, like a seven-year-old little boy confronted with his first kiss, like the coward I was. Gladys Feet would have to go up to her room alone and imagine me or Sidney Poitier; it apparently didn’t matter which.

“And here I was going to invite you over to my place for Thanksgiving,” Everett said.

“Really?”

“No.”

We were sitting in the student center. He picked at a muffin.

“I’m sure you’ll have a fine and memorable time in Washington. Young Ms. Larkin seems very nice. I think she’s quite bright, though I’m not a good judge of such things.”

“Her old boyfriend will be there,” I said.

“He has to be someplace. Why does that make you nervous? He’s the old boyfriend.”

“What if she still has feelings for him?”

“Better to find out sooner than later.”

Of course he was correct, but I was finding little comfort in that fact. “It’s just that I like her so much.”