Perhaps, if more people were willing to become swingers and experience its many delights, there would be less road rage, greater world peace, and increased human tolerance. People could also learn more about themselves, realize their limitations and figure out what they find satisfying. Although it may be an unspoken rule that swinging is not socially acceptable, and many think swingers are morally adrift, I have not been one to necessarily follow rules. Moreover, swinging seems to come naturally for me, I feel called to it.

People who think they cannot swing or who are more comfortable watching completely miss out, because being a swinger releases all inhibitions (which should not be underestimated and can not be achieved simply be watching). By swinging, one becomes ever increasingly fearless, reconnects with God, and enjoys a feeling of supreme and total euphoria that only an art like this can produce. The bliss, the high, the excitement is, to quote a fellow swinger, “ the ultimate orgasmic experience.”

I have heard some people – particularly Black men – say they are not swingers. I recall one time proudly explaining my secret to a brother and witnessed his total change of character as he stood in judgment and sharp disapproval. But the more I proselytized, and brothers being brothers, ever the sucker for new, pleasurable experiences, the more he came around. He soon agreed to join a friends and I for a romp. The date was set, and our little novice rendezvous fulfilled. When we finished, he was all smiles, (I have the pictures to prove it!) and is now considered a closeted lifetime member of the Swingers Club.

Many reading this may think this article is too revelatory or risqué. But before jumping to conclusions, it is important to recognize that at one time—even in footloose-and-fancy-free Atlanta—there used to be two predominate definitions of swinging, not just the one associated with swapping sex partners. To some people’s dismay and other’s relief, I am talking about the type of swinging that allows one to feel the air blow through their tresses while moving closer and closer towards the sky. I’m referring to the swinging that sets imaginations free and toes touching treetops.

I recall falling in love with swinging when I was five years old and still living on Marlowe Street in Detroit, Michigan. One spring day my dad surprised me with a fully loaded jungle gym: slide, monkey bars, “see-saw,” and swings. Our backyard was transformed into the local hangout and guaranteed fun palace. A child’s heaven filled the backyard: hoola hoops, jacks, marbles, remote control cars, badminton rackets, croquet balls, and what would quickly and forevermore become my favorite, swings.

At one time, swinging also became my saving grace. Leroy and Ewing—the neighborhood thugs— “wanted to get to know me,” with an infamous game of ‘Boy(s) Chase the Girl.’ I resisted; they persisted. I ran through the park, and with seven-year old ***** hounds (forty-nine in dog years) fast on my trail, I prayed for freedom. To the north, in the distance, I saw my out: a swing set. I darted to the vacant seat and started pumping fast. I went faster and faster, getting higher. The adrenaline rushed through my veins and I thought if they got too close I would kick them, hard! Fortunately, the speed and determination of my movement distracted them long enough to do what most boys want to do: compete. We ended up making up games long enough for them to lose interest in me.

As an adult, being a swinger brings on a different set of adventures. First, you have to figure out how to make a child relinquish their swing. One must survey the terrain to see what other little cherubs are vying for space, and somehow maneuver one’s self into position, unobtrusively, and discreetly; trust me, not an easy task in a playground full of children, parents, nannies and bird feeders.

Once, alas, seated and into swinging position, children always seem confused and concerned when an adult is in the midst. They watch, hoping the steel nuts and bolts will withstand the adult pressure weighted into a child’s playground apparatus. Rarely do they seem to comprehend said “adult’s” fascination with swinging. The surrounding grownups, closeted, inhibited and repressed, also don’t get it. It never registers that swinging is equivalent to boarding a time machine where one is transformed to that innocent age of purity, that fountain of youth they seek but never find; covet but never embrace. They never take their own children’s cues and board, swing, jump off at pendulum’s peak and fly, soar, become free, a child again. If only for a second.

Sincere gratitude to Isoul Harris, Tamera Hill, and Nina Martin for inspiring this article.

Rhea L. Combs is a doctoral student at Emory University, concentrating on Film History and Visual Culture, African American Cultural Production and Gender Studies. Read more of her writing at http://www.rheality.com

BY DIRK JOSEPH
Suddenly, a great blow sent a crack in the shape of a lightening bolt down the middle of the wooden door. Startled, Piggy jumped out of his recliner, spilling chips and soda, but still clutching the remote. “Little Pig, Little Pig, Let me in!” said a voice from the other side of the door. Piggy’s eyes widened, and his jaw dropped, and artificially flavored sourcream and onion potato chip crumbs cascaded down his chinny chin chin.

“Oh god. No!” Piggy said in a trembling voice “Please go away!”

Piggy heard huffing and puffing coming from the other side of the door. He threw the remote at the door and ran to the window screaming like a small child who on their first bike ride rode over the edge of a cliff. The door crashed open sending pieces of wood bouncing into the room. Piggy had the window open and was about to climb out to the fire escape when he dared a glance back. What appeared to him to be an ominous figure strode in obscured by an entourage of black smoke that spread out like tentacles.

Faster than Piggy had ever been inspired to move, he scrambled onto the fire escape seeking the safety of his sister’s apartment one floor up. “Piggier will know what to do!” he thought as he became the first four legged creature in history to ever fall UP a set of stairs.

Piggier had just come back from the mall and was playing the new number 1 hit by “The Singing Swinging Swine Sisters” titled “Shake My Curly Tail.” She was also on the phone in a conference call with three of her girlfriends, so she didn’t hear when Piggy rapped a hoofed appendage on her window. “Listen girl, call his bluff, if it’ s not true we’ll make bacon bits out of his ass.” Piggier was talking near the top of her voice as usual. “All men are swine! Honey just come over and relax, we’ll prepare a new batch of mud.” Piggier was so loud that Piggy’s squeals remained un-noticed until he finally kicked in the window, cutting his leg.

Out of the corner of her eye Piggier saw Piggy tumble into her apartment. She dropped the phone and whirled around ready to fight. “Oh, its you.” she said. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Something is after me!” Piggy shouted, pointing to the window.
“What? Who?” Piggier ran to the window.
“I don’t know.” Piggy squealed. ” It was scary! That’ s all I can say.”

Piggier shot him a disgusted glance before looking out of the window. “That’s all you can tell me?! It was scary?” She scanned the empty fire escape, then looked again at Piggy, “There’ s nothing out there Piggy.” Piggier noticed that Piggy’s leg was bleeding. Then she saw Piggy’s face. His expression was frozen in fright. He was looking and pointing down the hallway at her front door.

Black smoke was slowly creeping in from around the doorframe.

“It’s here!” Piggy cried.

Piggier couldn’t believe her eyes “What the…”

There were three resounding bangs at the door. And the voice, “Little pigs! Little pigs! Let me in!”
“Don’t worry.” said Piggier, “That door is 5 inches of solid…”

“Wham!” the blow did not crack the door, but did knock it off one of its hinges. It leaned slightly, and the dark nimbus rushed in. Piggier had Piggy on his feet and hurried him back through the window. Two more knocks sent the door crashing to the floor, but by then the two pigs were on their way up the fire escape to their brother’s penthouse apartment.

Piggiest sat contented at the computer in his home office. At arms reach was everything he needed – wine, a tray of caviar, a display monitor to keep track of his stock, and the remotes to all of the high-tech gadgets and devices of his excessively lavish home. He was wearing a virtual reality helmet and was playing “Pigs on Top: The Game of World Domination.”

All at once, a proximity warning cut off the game. Piggiest calmly removed the helmet and retrieved his revolver. The fire-escape security cameras displayed his sister and brother climbing up toward him. He activated a remote and the high-security windows opened electronically, and he beckoned them in. They related their story to their older brother, who put away his pistol in favor of a larger one. They made their way to his front door. Piggiest raised the gun and activated the security remote. The door opened to the hallway, revealing Piggiest’s private elevator, which was empty, a metal door to the roof, which was electronically sealed, and the emergency exit to the stairwell which was also electronically sealed. Piggiest lowered the gun.

“We are safe here my siblings.” said Piggiest. Then the Proximity alarm sounded again.
From speakers hidden in every room of the penthouse, an electronic voice stated “Intruder in stairwell!”

A knocking at the stairwell door made the two younger pigs take a step back. Piggiest raised the gun again. Piggy ran, limping back into the apartment saying “Oh dear, it’ s the end for us!” Piggier said, “Don’t open it yet. I’m gonna get that other gun!” and ran back into the apartment. However, Piggiest did not wait for her to come back. He activated the remote, unlocking the stairwell door.

The door to the stairwell slid open and smoke wafted into the room like a cloud of octopus ink. Piggiest heard a huffing and puffing sound. Something moved in the smoke and a solid figure dashed towards Piggiest. Piggiest waited until the figure of the wolf took shape and shouted “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” He aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. The impact sent the wolf stumbling backwards to disappear in the darkness of the smoke. The sound of a body rolling down the steps could be heard. Piggy and Piggier peered into the hallway to see Piggiest standing in a triumphant posture. He nodded to them and blew smoke from the barrel of his gun. The pigs all gave victorious squeals. Piggy started dancing on his bleeding legs as the hallway continued to fill with smoke. They all jubilantly sang, “Not by the hairs of our chinny chin chin!” Until they were engulfed in flames and got roasted alive as the floor crumbled below them.

The wolf woke in an ambulance, fire fighters and a cheering crowd cheering him as a hero. When the alarm system malfunctioned the wolf had managed to warn everybody in the building except for three pigs. He was battered and unconscious when he rolled out of the stairwell into the lobby, but that was good, because the fire fighters saw him and pulled him out just before the building collapsed. He had a few broken bones, and they couldn’t explain what seemed like a bullet hole in his arm, but assured him he would be just fine.

Candace Morgan laid her hand over her husband Theo’s hand on the stick shift as they drove along I-10. She looked over and saw him again as if for the first time. For some reason she pictured her husband today as he was 28 years ago. Four times less flesh than what sat beside her now. Yet he seemed bigger than life then. Bigger than love even. He was strong like armor. Bold like the sun that broke through the windshield and threatened to expose all the time that had been lived in this Minted 1958 Ford Thunderbird red convertible. Age ain’t really profound unless it shows. Mama, as Theo affectionately called his metal and leather bride, did show her age, but you had to look really close.

The beige leather interior still bore its passengers well but there were two cracks in the leather on the center left front edge of the back seat. They weren’t massive cuts and fortunately Mama hadn’t seen her usual visitors lately to add their sweaty salt to her wounds. While the grandkids were at camp for the summer Theo figured he would just let the cuts heal by themselves. Scars is what he called them, Mama’s little battle scars.

Candace could see those wounds now as she focused on the visor mirror to make her face up for today’s journey. She chose a happy palate from her vanity this morning. A bright red lipstick she now stroked gently over her bold pregnant lips. They were as full now as they were 28 years ago although she chose to disregard how the corners had fallen. The oldies but goodies station ringing out with the easy sunny rhythms of Day 0h, the Banana Boat Song, seemed to endorse the choice of lipstick for the morning. Candy was blithe, as she was effectively armed against Father Time. Nothing, like the right choice of music and a strategic cosmetic to at least trip up Time’s steady strides.

“Candy, I don’t why you cover them lips with that stuff,” Theo offered his impotent objection through a peripheral driver’s glance. “They just as red without the paint.”
“I’m just tryin’ to make them feel warm, honey, give ‘em some affection.”

He quickly removed his glance and raised the indicator with the hook of his pinky to switch lanes as he lifted his right arm to gently adjust the rubber edge to the rearview mirror. He snapped his head quickly to the right and made the switch into the middle lane.

“Theo” she called to him with both eyes focused ahead on her cover up. “When you gonna fix those cracks on that back seat. His silence was her answer. His silence was always her answer. After all these years she had so many questions. She lifted her chin and made that make up frown-the one that temporarily makes every woman in the world into a clown- as she opened the foundation compact and dipped the pad into the magic formula.

“Whatcha doin’ now Candy?”

“I’m makin believe we the happiest newleds in the world,” she replied.

“Why what you doin, honey?” she asked.

“Drivin’,” he replied

“Well, why don’t you just pay attention to the signs and stop askin’ me stupid questions!”

Six han’ seven han’ eight han’ bunch
Daylight come – “You didn’t put on all that stuff when we was newleds honey.”

“Sometimes you gotta make changes to get what you want,” Candy evenly replied. His mockery did make her remember though, how she had always avoided foundation or even make up period for that matter, when she was in her prime. Yep, spurned it just like these kids nowadays despise books and good music. Being clean and being seen is the maxim her girlfriends lived by. They let every pore sing its song for freedom and each fleshly acre they could morally bare was sure to be nurtured and tilled by the hard working Arizona sun.

“Didn’t I have a swimsuit on when we met honey, we were at the beach weren’t we?” Candy asked

“What beach Candace, there ain’t no goddamn beach in Arizona. We met at the pool party at Gary Blake’s. God bless his soul.”

“Gary didn’t have no pool” Candy replied

“Gary didn’t have no soul either,” Theo teased

“It was at his father’s house Candy”

“Well alright there Theo, at least you ain’t lost your memory yet, thank God somethin’s still left” she muttered as she finished laying the foundation over the worn earth covering her brow and she saved some rouge to highlight the cheekbones she could barely find amidst the faintly wrinkled field.

“What else I ain’t lost yet, honey. We ain’t gone yet is we?”

“No honey, we right here this Monday mornin’ like we been every Monday mornin’ since.

“You know honey, they make make-up for men now”

“Men don’t wear make-up,” his grip tightened on the steering wheel.

“Sure they do, why even Harry Belafonte wears make up honey”

Day oh, Day oh Daylight come. . .

“No he doesn’t honey, Little Richard wears make-up, Michael Jackson wears make-up, your son wears make-up”

Unseen she seethed beneath the foundation. “I ain’t never made no child without you Theo!”

“Well Candace, I ain’t wearing no make-up, if that’s what you’re getting at and that’s that!

“I don’t want you to wear make up fool, I’m just makin’ conversation.”

Well, what ain’t broke ain’t worth fixin’, that’s all I’m saying!” he howled a little flustered.

“Just like the cracks in the backs seat” she replied evenly

“Just – like – the – cracks – in – the – back -seat,” he uttered through clenched teeth as he held the steering wheel even tighter now looking directly at her and back at the road after each word.

“Just like this marriage, huh” Candace muttered almost inaudibly

He held his breath and his rage blistered under the pressure.

“What did you say?”

She answered him with her silence, as she reached up to shut the visor mirror and turned her head away from him to watch the road go by in a blur.

“What did you say, woman?”

Come Mister tally man tally me banana. . .

Some ideas, she learned long ago, were better left at home to fantasize and to dance alone.

Her silence now boiled him over, and the traffic thickened around them like cholesterol, as they reached the 6th Avenue exit. “Please hurry, Theo, I’m late for my class now,” she pleaded. Theo lifted his chin, looked in the rearview mirror and glanced over to the right to make sure the way was clear as he eased into the exit lane. All he felt now was rage. His entire head constricted from the throat up. His teeth ground like bad brakes and his nostrils stretched from east to west to try and make room for the animal inside. The steering wheel held him now. He adored this woman. But even love felt like rage now. He hated himself for raising his voice at her and his heart flooded with contempt and fury and it hurt like hell.

She saw the yellow light winking its admonition.

“Theo slow down for God’s sake,” she uttered as her right hand grabbed the door handle and her left reflexed against the dashboard.

“Dammit, just let me drive Candy, he thought to retort, as a grievous pain pounded through his left shoulder. He saw the light now too, it was so white, so pure, so inviting.

She looked over to him and saw that his head had fallen and his right hand clenched his shoulder. With all the strength he had left he turned his heavy head and blueing lips toward her as a supplication. His silence was a cry for help. To her he looked so angry, so defiant. “Theo answer me goddamn it, what are you doing, slow down, “she begged. “Slow down!

It didn’t matter what color the light was now they were on top of it. They had passed through its admonition and she twisted back to her right to see their judgement coming.

He saw her now, as if for the first time and found that there was so much he wanted to say. She wrenched back and threw herself against him for salvation. But judgement had now come.

Daylight come…

“Theo!,” she shrieked.

And I wanna go home.

But this time his silence was deadly.

AN EXCERPT THEREOF
BY FEDERICO ANDERSON

“Kenyatta really is writing his myth.” Khalid nodded. “I was just talking shit.” He turned to me. “I told you I read his book right?” I shook my head. He hadn’t told me and I was surprised. “Yeah I read it, I read the whole thing. I got to admit, it’s deep. He really says some shit. And it’s all on that like C. S. Lewis type of logical connections, building a long complicated argument. It’s well done!”

“C.S. Lewis who wrote children’s books?” Keith asked.

“Yes sweetheart,” Khalid talked down, to redeem himself.

“But he was also a philosopher, like a practical theologian, real interesting stuff. Brilliant really! Too Christian centered for me, but anyway, Ken’s book reminded me of The Abolition of Man. You read that Rick, right? Remember how he starts off with a little green grammar book and from it, he started a series of arguments that lead to the like, the decay of the western world and shit?”

“How does he do that?”

“He starts by describing some aspects of the book, and in describing these aspects, he divines the assumptions that the editors must have made in order to have composed the book in that way. Then from that, he draws another argument about certain new ideas and blah, blah, blah. Before you know it, this grammar book represents everything that’s wrong in the world.

“Anyway, That’s what Ken’s book was like. It starts with the assertion that ‘candy is junk,’ that we all teach our kids and ends in human hypocrisy and white supremacy.” He giggled and shook his head. “It’s a wild ride! The way he does it is interesting.” He broke off laughing then sat quietly smiling to himself.

One of Khalid’s most annoying gimmicks was to introduce a subject he wanted to discuss, then get quiet and wait for you to ask him to continue. Usually, he did it when he wanted to share some obscure bit of knowledge, probably only slightly relevant, that would impress you with the extent of his learning. He needed you to ask for it so that he wouldn’t have to recognize that the entire point of it all was to feed his vanity.

“Well *****, are you telling us a story, or not?” I said, though I’d read most of Ken’s book and knew exactly what Khalid meant. I did however, want to hear his opinion and discuss the book with someone else who’d read it.

“Oh yeah, well,” He sat back in his seat, knowing he would have the attention for a while. “He starts off talking about a child learning the lessons of hypocrisy early, from his own parents, who are only trying to offer what’s best. They tell him that ‘candy is junk,’ they encourage him to repeat it. He does repeat it, every time he hears the word ‘candy’. He is later however, allowed, or even rewarded with candy, which he of course, craves and appreciates. Harmless enough it would seem.” Khalid raised a dramatic finger. “He understands that it is no good for you, that we shouldn’t endorse its consumption, but so long as we indulge moderately, we may indulge.
This is it!” He smacked his hands together. “This is the beginning, the first lesson in hypocrisy! The first idea that what we say, doesn’t necessarily have to be consistent with what we do- and that what we say should be the more righteous. He learns that quickly, that it’s more important that we defend the right idea than it is to behave properly.

“As he grows older, he will transfer this approach to the other facets of his life. And religion is where it will show itself the ugliest. (Yo, Ken has no ***** use for religion!) Anyway, the child has learned already to espouse without necessarily complying: to partially mean what he says and also make a habit of saying it often. It is a very short hop in personal philosophy to proclaiming all of humanity to be the children of God, then unmercifully persecuting those who do not believe as you do.” Khalid started laughing. “You have to love connections like that!”

“That’s a long way to go from ‘candy is junk.’” Jamie giggled. I could tell though that she wasn’t looking forward to the argument’s conclusions. She knew that it would probably just provide fodder for the rest of us to bash religion.

“He gives a bunch of other examples of those kinds of things,” Khalid continued, ignoring Jamie’s statement, relegating it to a pause in his delivery. “You know, platitudes that employ the same logic. The ‘creeds of hypocrisy’, he calls them. Culminating, of course, in the grand daddy of all black indignations- proclaiming that all men are created equal, while subjugating an entire race of people and setting a system in motion that would keep them subjugated for centuries. ‘But you sleep easy.’ He says. ‘You have no fear of karmic debt, because you believe-in and espouse all of the right things, so you are not a bad person, if a little powerless in the face of all of the world’s evil.’”

“I like where this argument is going!” Sarah interrupted. There was always sarcasm in Sarah’s voice and it was impossible to tell whether she meant something, or not. I think I said it before, but everything about her was ambiguous, layered and subject to interpretation. I was looking at her face and her smile yielded nothing. That fact made me nervous for some reason. Sarah was the only one who hadn’t gone to school with the rest of us. At one point I assumed that it was because of that, that I found her so difficult to read. I hadn’t known her for ten years like I had everyone else in the room. She wasn’t rooted in a tradition from which any variation indicated her intent. But I know now that it was more than that. It wasn’t that she was not ‘rooted’ in tradition, but more that she seemed rootless. All I ever found in her were those ‘variations’, no sense of the theme, the core substance that they should have modified. Even in memory I couldn’t get a decent impression of her. I tried to imagine her, fix a solid, legible image in my mind, but none would hold. She was all change and shift and from thought to memory her character and characteristics remained fluid. It got so I had to wonder if a photograph of her could hold a consistent image between glances. Though it was a risk, I took the interest she expressed in the book seriously.

“Oh, it’s just getting good.” I said. “I actually told you about this part before.” I was still wary of the glinting irony of her green eyes, or were they Hazel?

“Yeah, this is my favorite part!” Khalid continued “He talks about how it’s a very subtle gift, oppressing is. Especially, actively oppressing without taking any personal responsibility; again, without incurring any Karmic debt.”

“Hell yeah it’s hard!” Maritza refilled the glass of wine she’d just emptied. “That’s why I keep all my subjects liquored-up.”

“No, wait.” Khalid put up his hand excitedly. “This is so good! Then he says that, we must stay aware that so much learning goes on before the age of five, and that we must teach the important lessons early, lest our children fail to develop an aptitude. We have to learn about subtlety of meaning, technical and semantic variations that allow us to support actions that appear to contradict what we have stated. These abilities are not for the simple minded, or the developmentally challenged you understand?” This was Khalid’s long-windedness, not Kenyatta’s.

“They require a life long commitment to an ideal, a standard of perfection in duplicity.”

“Get to his point!” I said, trying to focus him before he took a three-hour detour through a thousand other topics.

“Calm down! I’m getting to it.” He shot me a dirty look. “Anyway, that’s when he arrives at his philosophy. These are our children, and if we want them to overcome, we must provide them with the proper tools, the map and compass that are necessary to navigate the American social landscape. We have to learn and teach, to give as good as we get. We have to begin training our children how to get-over, how to take advantage of their only birthright as black folks- ‘fear’.”

“Fear is their, . . .our only birthright?” Francine asked in confusion.

“Yes, ‘fear’.” He smiled at Francine. “Not any deep-seeded fear of our genetics or any of that ‘black man is god’ shit, but everyday fear of our poverty and thuggery. He gets into this whole analysis of the ‘Invisible Man’ theory, and argues that the rise of black on white violence, and the militant struggles of the sixties, have turned that theory upside down and now, rather than ‘invisible’, the black man is ‘hyper-visible’. On the street he is a target for every wary eye, and every zealous cop, and in the boardroom he stands out even more for his rarity and his cosmetic usefulness. He may not have any power concentrated in his community, but as an individual, he represents one huge, unstable ball of potential. Either he can help you meet your quota, sue you for discrimination, or rob your house- either way you can’t ignore any of his potential and are therefor hyper-aware of his presence. Forced to acknowledge him wherever he may occur. So, while you can continue to disregard and marginalize the community, you have to reckon with the individual. We are the proverbial sore-thumb. ‘Hyper-visibility! It’s the next shit. Yo- he breaks on Ellison too.”

“Yeah,” I said remembering some of the things Kenyatta had said over the years. “He never did like Ellison’s essays. Who he loves is Harold Cruse.”

“I noticed that. I have to agree with him about those Ellison essays.” Khalid nodded. “They are way too ‘rational’ for the fifties and sixties- way to distant, meditative and practical. Wright, Baldwin- even the coldly intellectual Duboise, managed to get some anger into their essays.”

“You’re being polite.” Sarah put in. “They’re worse than too rational. Shit, they’re more accommodationalist than Booker T., eighty years later.” We all laughed. “I loose all affection for him when I read his essays about the community. Anyway, hyper-visibility?” She turned to me. “Doesn’t that have something to do with what you were telling me, about ‘executive privilege’, or whatever?”

“Yes,” I answered. “And I believe Khalid is getting there, in his terse, entirely too detailed way.”

“My account was structured to give the maximum amount of information in the shortest amount of time and I accomplished that masterfully, even if my audience could benefit from generous doses of Ridilin.” Khalid put on his professor’s voice. “I just broke-down hundreds of pages of prose, in five minutes without omitting a relevant detail.”

“Without omitting any detail.” I teased. “And including irrelevant details besides. Anyway, so the point the book comes to is that, the community is entirely devoid of power, but the individual is charged with it. And since we’ve gotten no reparations, no concrete effort to narrow the historical deficit, doesn’t it become incumbent upon the individual to extract the advantage? That is to say, isn’t the intimidation we inspire, the fear of our immediate presences, speaking of the black man specifically, the only inherent advantage that we have over everyone else.”

“Of course! That’s not a new argument.” Keith said, growing bored with the conversation.

“Of course not,” Sarah jumped in suddenly. “It’s the Crime and Punishment argument in another context- it is also the Invisible Man argument, only the flip side. Remember at the end of the book, he begins to use his invisibility to get-over, to live parasitically off of the system that marginalizes him? The oppression itself, provides him with the advantage. It’s really the same thing, but depending on how he breaks the argument down, it could be kind of hot. Definitely relevant! Think about it! Think about that theory and then think about someone like Suge Knight- or from another perspective, someone like Al Sharpton. People downgrade them all day and night for being a thug, or a ‘racial opportunist,’ but working their advantages the way they do is a most ‘American’ way of doing things.” Sarah had caught on quickly. “It is interesting!” Sarah said, turning to Khalid. She was apparently considering some possibilities. “What do you think? You think it could possibly be published?”

“No, . . .” Khalid said hesitantly. “Maybe as a succinct paper, but not this book. I mean, you should definitely look at it. I wouldn’t want to be the person that ruined Ken’s chance, but, it’s not like it’s been researched or has any statistical or factual foundations. You know what I mean? It’s full of interesting ideas, elegantly written, but he doesn’t write like a scholar or essayist. He writes like someone who is starting a religion!” Khalid and I giggled. “It’s like some, way too grand, spiritual manifesto on which the future of the world hinges. It reads like Nostradamus, . . . no, no- more like some of that later Tolstoy- you know that mystic shit. I mean, he’s a brilliant cat, but he has definitely lost touch.”

Though his hesitancy and disappointment at not being able to recommend Kenyatta for publication were sincere (And I completely agreed with what he said), I knew that Khalid was thrilled at having legitimately come to this conclusion. I was surprised that he’d read the book when he’d introduced it earlier, because that book sat in his room for more than a year. I left it for him after I had finished reading it. Khalid would not pick it up. The reason, was fear of finding it to be really good. Fear that, perhaps Ken might be the next brilliant cat that everyone would be talking about. Khalid of course, believed himself destined to be that guy. As though there could only be one such person at a time, he lived in a peculiar fear of finding that someone had more ability than he did. With a pettiness that he hated about himself, he avoided any exposure to really good work done by anyone in his age-range. I’m sure it was residual insecurity from all those years of inactivity, when every name on the horizon seemed to add another nail to the coffin of his career. That doesn’t mean that he never read our contemporaries, what there were of them, he only didn’t read them when it was possible that they were any good. That was rare though, that he would give anyone the credit of possibly producing something worth his jealousy.

Ken though, he had known for years, and even somewhat admired for his need for no-one, for his quiet and reflective personality that didn’t need constant validation from a group of admirers. Ken was about the knowledge, not about the attention. He never felt the need to show off everything he knew and was content to let people believe what they wanted about him. This made Khalid feel ashamed of that need to perform, to show off, to never let anyone leave him without remarking. Ken made him feel inauthentic and shallow. Khalid respected that restraint, that modesty that always eluded him. He worried that next to Ken he would be exposed as a shit-talker.

“He’s a serious thinker.” Khalid continued, nodding his head sadly. “It’s really a shame that he wasn’t even able to finish school.”