Late Night Whitey

Originally Posted Tuesday, December 10, 2013

I have suffered through my back pain for months now, since summer, but I have resisted taking pain medicine opting rather for exercise of all sorts.  It seems to be working, and my back is feeling better these past few days than it has for many months.   Which. . . makes me cocky.  I will run.  I will climb. I will fight.  I'm a Ready Teddy, as they say.

Tonight, after a quart of Cinq Cent (immediately following my workout at the gym), dinner, and two big scotches, I realized I needed milk for the morning, so I headed up to the Magic Mart (or whatever it is called).  It is a ghetto place with bars on the windows and a shitty parking lot.  I don't know why.  It is in the center of Glamorville, my own home town, but it borders on the historically black neighborhood (which is undergoing a gentrification) and traditionally this is the store where the locals congregate.  It is an anomaly.  It is owned by Indians (East, not West) who overcharge like motherfuckers.  The 7-11 only three blocks away is cheaper than this shit hole.  But that is where I go sometimes when I need milk late at night.

As I walked in, there was a black guy and a latino yelling at each other in a way that was not provocative like they were arguing about music--but the tone was definitely not Anglo.  I mean you would never mistake them for Swedes or Norwegians.  I was taking pictures with my new little Nikon which I keep in the console (though I rarely take it out) of the outer misery of the place.  Then. . . there they were, blocking the front door, so I decided to put my camera away and walk in.  I would have to challenge myself to bump through, but it is something I do on a regular basis just to see who I (still) am. 

So I get to the door and make my move past and open the door to the sleazy market and turn then to face them and let them through before me.  The black guy, he with a full grill and a do (dew?) rag looks at me and says, "No, you first, man. . . you're white."  Oh. . . how I get a kick out of that, so I turn to him and say, "Fuck you, go through the fucking door," with a big grin on my face.  As I say, I'm feeling cocky because I can almost stand up straight for the first time in months having stepped from the car with no pain.  C-O-M-E- ON- M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-E-R!  He looks at me and I step close to move him around me, and he smiles and laughs saying he's just fucking with me and I give him a big hug saying no you're not, you're only half fucking with me, and he knows that is true.  And that is how it is when you are not prejudiced in mind but only deep down in your ancestral bones knowing that is how it is regardless.

So he's yelling in the store.  He wants some motherfucking eggnog.

"Where's the eggnog?" he is yelling, and the older Indian man behind the counter who is charging me nearly four dollars for a half gallon of antibiotic steroid milk is telling him in a soft voice and terrible accent, "We don't have that in here."  But Do-Rag wasn't hearing him, so I yelled out, "They don't have that here."

"What?  My grandmother wants eggnog."

I thought that was sweet, of course.  The Indian man was saying all kinds of shit now watching the Latino as he passed through the aisles.

"They don't got it, man," I said in my helpful Whitey way.  I had paid and was walking out the door.  Do-Rag looked at me and said something.  I turned around.

"Alright man, alright," he said with a big smile, and I smiled back, too.

It is a fucked up world.  He is right.  I am white.  That Indian fellow wasn't watching me as I walked around the store.  My boy was just trying to get something for his grandma.

I never did speak to the Puerto Rican.