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checked out black blanc beur (which is now how i will identify myself: gay beur, or buttery, male) on my last night in paris. ordered my last vodka et pomplemousse, wallflowered for an hour, then danced mightily once they started playing some good ole hip-hop. dashed for the closing metro doors, red-faced, red-shirted (i need to scan a picture of my lansing firefighters t-shirt), sit down across from a woman reading the same issue of the economist that i purchased yesterday, take out my new yorker in some feeble, passive attempt at emoting "hey, we speak english together," and read to myself this quote by oliver sacks in "ghosts: the dazzling mystery of de kooning's last paintings," by peter schjeldahl:
style, neurologically, is the deepest part of one's being, and may be preserved, almost to the last, in a dementia.
the sticker from the coat check (flourescent yellow, number 477, scotch tape wrapped around it lengthwise) is still on my backpack (black, compact, north face, current contents include postcards from le depot and open cafe, expired metropass, muslim knit cap, notebook, economist may 4th and 18th, bbb flyer proclaiming "beur is beautiful!", e.m@le no.81 jeudi 10 mai 2001, cinnamon altoids). i wonder what this sweaty, tipsy, flagrantly non-french-looking man/boy looks like to the rest of the quiet, dignified passengers on the train. speedwalk back to the hotel, rush upstairs to order room service (club sandwich, cafe creme) before it closes in ten minutes, hop in the shower, throw on pink polo shirt and olive drab cargo shorts, and oh yeah, i'd read this earlier in the day:
for the j. sutters of the republic, the prophetic thunders and righteous wrath of frederick douglass and w. e. b. du bois and richard wright and james baldwin have dwindled to the mumbling ambivalences of freedom in a money-driven, publicity-mad consumer society. a metropolitan book party throngs into j.'s memory, and its panorama of up-to-date types includes this vignette: "the biracial who adopted a superficial militancy to overcompensate for light skin discussed the perfidy of ice people with the gangster rapper ashamed of a placid upbringing in a middle-class suburb."i agree with the vignette (it sure painfully sums up a lot of my college years), but not completely with the preceding statement. i'm only 24, but even i remember hearing my barber say the "n" word nonchalantly when he saw black people on the television (no way were they coming in his barber shop), people speaking to me in broken english or yelling epithets as i walked home from school, and middle and high school teachers even-voicedly telling us which classes, schools, majors didn't have black students. agreed, a lot has changed, but i'm not convinced that virulent, nasty racism is unpracticed by metropolitan, middle class, consumer society types in american culture (or cultures? damn this postmodern liberal arts education).
- john updike reviews colson whitehead's john henry days, the new yorker may 7, 2001