Welcome to Braggsville (2 page)

When he returned home for Thanksgiving, Quint squinted, You got AIDS? D'aron gave a lick and checked his reflection in his spoon, as if he hadn't only hours before, and every morning for that matter, paraded at length before the bathroom mirror in his skivvies. I can see your fucking ribs. You need a one-eight-hundred number. D'aron smiled. Without grits and waffles and hash browns and toast all at the same breakfast, and with walking everywhere, the famous freshman fifteen had gone the other way, but it looked and felt like fifty. Without the extra weight, he could finally confirm that his relatives weren't lying when they insisted he'd inherited his father's shoulders and forehead, and his mother's eyes and nose, and from them both a decent height.

And when he went home for Christmas, his aunt Boo teased,
So you do have cheekbones. What are they feeding you, grass? You spent that money I sent you on crack?

Hey, hey, c'mon Auntie B.! Don't essentialize. All crackheads aren't skinny.

Is that a joke, Dookie? I got one for you. Hay is for horses!

He loved his family, but God was he glad they now lived so far away. Quint was at least right about that.

During those three years in special ed, I only missed the food. Quint paused. And tits. And of course my mom, she's mom, you know. And you, number one cuz. Exclamation point by way of a punch. But sure didn't miss all the yappity yip-yappity yap. And hunting. I missed hunting.

At least Jo-Jo, D'aron's best friend from high school, was happy for him. Jo-Jo patted his belly, I oughta go to college. That was a lot from him.

C
HRISTMAS BREAK DIDN'T END SOON ENOUGH.
The morning the dorms opened, D'aron was on the ground in Cali three time zones away. It wasn't even the same country. By then he understood the geo-lingo. San Francisco was
The City,
Oakland was
O-town,
to be avoided at night—that was where the blacks lived—and the city of Berkeley was
Berzerkeley,
while Berkeley the school was
Cal
. The East Bay, where Berzerkeley was located, supposedly suburban, felt plenty busy. Collectively, it was the Bay Area, a megalopolis—oh how that word polished his tongue—where the elsewhere unimaginable was mere mundanity.

Across the bay, The City convened in costume to race from bay to breakers. Happy meal toys and plastic bags were long outlawed and voters threatened circumcision and goldfish with the same fate. They'd once had a mayoral candidate named Jello. A roving band of Rollerbladers performed the
Thriller
zombie dance—that pop nativity—Friday nights in Union Square. And fuck, it was China
in the airport. Yet The City thought Berzerkeley was weird. D'aron thought it beautiful, never mind the nag champa, never mind the crusty hippies and gutter punks in greasy jackets stiff as shells lined up on Telegraph Ave hawking tie-dye and patchouli and palming for change. On clear days, a pageantry of wind and water under sun, the bay a sea of gently wriggling silver ribbons, and the Golden Gate hovering in the distance like a mystical portal. East of campus lazed tawny hills. On foggy days blinding bales of cotton candy strolled the avenues dandy while in the distance the tips of the bridge towers peeked through the mist like shy, gossamered nipples. The Bay Area was a beautiful woman who looked good in everything she wore.

What had intimidated him those early weeks of his freshman fall semester felt like home during his second semester—freshman spring. The clock tower known as the Campanile rose from the center of campus with the confidence of the Washington Monument, marking time in style, and on the hour, music students sounded melodies on the carillon. He often lunched alone at the base of that monolith, on the cool stone steps, facing the water due west, attention drifting with the lazing waves and the steady stream of Asian students moving—no, migrating—between the library and the engineering buildings. As he worked up the courage to wander farther from Sather Gate, the symbolic campus border, he discovered Indian, Vietnamese, Mexican, Thai: tastes luring him deeper and deeper into a town of Priuses and pedalers, both of which yielded patiently to pedestrians. Laid back, liberal, loose. The locals' mantra, No worries; the transplants' motto, It looks like a peninsula but feels like an island.

H
is second semester, freshman spring, also brought a life-altering move to a new dorm. His first-semester six-man suite had been too rowdy, excepting D'aron, of course, so the RA dispersed them across campus like parolees. D'aron's new roommate wanted to be the next Lenny Bruce Lee, kung fu comedian. Asked who the first one was, he answered, See?

Chang,
aka
Louis Chang,
aka
Loose Chang,
was none too pleased to have a D'aron Davenport aboard. After Louis's former roommate dropped out midway through the first semester, he'd grown accustomed to living single in a double. The room was barely fifteen by fifteen, with a bed, desk, and chair on each side, and on the wall opposite the door a window overlooking the courtyard. The day D'aron arrived clothes smothered both beds and books tottered on both chairs: chemistry, botany, zoology on one side; George Carlin, Steve Martin, Paul Mooney on the other; and atop each pile several well-worn
National Geographic
s. Had Res Life double-booked the room?

Chang crossed his arms, Which side do you want?

He was slight, dark-skinned, narrow of eye, and like so many other California Asians, he spoke with no accent, a phenomenon to which D'aron was still growing accustomed. At home, all the Chinese people (seven) had thick, nearly impenetrable accents,
incomprehensible unless pronouncing dinner items; numbers and directions were plain fudruckers. Shrimp-fry-rice. Yes. Fie-dolrah-fitty. Huh?

Well? Chang repeated his question.

The right side?

Chang nodded, Good, we'll get along.

They did. Not only because Louis was possibly the only Asian male who hadn't mastered that damned twirling trick—pen mawashi—and not only because they had, surprisingly, so many common interests—porn, the Premier League, Arcade Fire, Tyler the Creator, Kanye, Kreayshawn—but because Louis was hilarious and possessed of an enviable irreverence. Strolling along Telegraph Ave, Chang responded to the gutter punks' outstretched palms with, No, it's
Chang
. . .
Chang
. And once to a black bum in People's Park he shrugged, You got Obama, what more do you want? Then he gave him a dollar.

Louis also didn't flinch when D'aron slept with his head to the window the night before tests so that he would wake up on the right side of the bed. Pointing at the little mirrors—which D'aron hadn't before noticed—Louis admitted, Mom's feng shui–zee crazy.

Loose Chang was a refreshing antidote to the somber, tense mood sweeping campus. Old folks gathered year-round at the West Gate hoisting nuclear disarmament signs with surprising gusto, and young folks huddled on Sproul Plaza extolling the virtues of the tree people—Ewoks, according to Chang—who had lived like monkeys for more than a year, occupying old oaks to prevent the university from cutting the trees down, all of which D'aron found odd, being from a town where they flew flags high, carried guns with pride (no matter how much they cost, they're cheaper than dirt), and everyone worked for the same hot air factory (though they called it a mill). As of late, though, there were also rumors about tuition hikes and budget cuts and the threat that the school would accept more out-of-state fart sniffers to collect more out-of-state tuition. Those out-of-
staters who protested that they'd earned their scholarships, as D'aron felt he surely had, were eyed with even greater disdain. By the middle of his freshman spring semester, helicopters were hovering over campus more days than not, buildings were regularly occupied by designer-sneaker Zapatistas—rappers for some—and students were on hunger strikes. Five days couldn't get together without his mother calling to remind him that he was there to learn, not cause disorder, and that he was to study and be respectful and mindful of the professors. And always say please and thank you, and sir and ma'am. You'll be amazed.

Louis routinely received the same directives in person. His family lived in the Richmond district of The City and thought nothing of showing up unannounced and en masse—parents, twin little brothers, and two great-uncles—to deliver healthy snacks, inspect living quarters, and shoot D'aron the hairy eyeball. We were in the neighborhood, they'd say, though according to Chang, before his acceptance to Cal his parents hadn't driven farther east than the downtown San Francisco Embarcadero for fifteen years. Sometimes they'd offer no greeting, just sit on D'aron's bed and wag their mysterious tongue. (Was this what Prof. Kensmith meant by cultural relativity? Louis's grandmother insisting that D'aron sample her homemade candied fruit under her watchful cloudy eye, tapping the bottom of his chin with two fingers to assist mastication. He knew a hex when he tasted one, and packed the sour green resin away with the deft touch of one long accustomed to surreptitiously enjoying Bandits only feet from the chalkboard. Later, he would slip into the bathroom and send the waxy balls to the bay, but not before his tongue grew numb and resentful.) After his family left, Chang would apologize for the stares. They're just old-fashioned, just old-fashioned, just old-fashioned, he chanted for weeks before admitting that his parents thought the messy half of the room was D'aron's.

The real disappointment, though, was that Chang did not know
Kaya, and so couldn't broker an introduction. D'aron was certain that if an Asian introduced him to Kaya, or she saw him with an Asian, she would be more likely to consider him datable. This wasn't mercenary but pragmatic. At home, whites identified the blacks who would date them by watching who their friends were, and vice versa. He went everywhere with Louis, but the campus was quite large.

The perfect opportunity arose only a couple weeks into the semester. Some students in his old dorm were hosting a dot party, and Kaya would certainly be there. Per the tweet, one rule: Wear a dot where you want to be touched. Chang affirmed his attendance before being asked.

U
nder black lights installed in the basement commons for the occasion, Day-Glo stickers radiated warmth from cheeks left and right, aft and fore, knees and elbows for the shy, and hearts for many, though more than one person complained vigorously that they meant breast not heart. Golden Bears milled, glowing smiles, drinking sodas, though some clearly had other substances. Golden Bears clotted in pairs and groups of three, laughing too loudly, though some were obviously looking for a better conversation. Golden Bears kicked it in dark corners, though some wore poses of cool disaffection that were indistinguishable from anxiety. Four people wore dots in the middle of their foreheads, which, oddly, some found offensive. D'aron meant only that he wanted to provoke, in the words of his lit professor, A raging storm of violent thoughts, an explosive torrent that demands channeling lest it destroy you by driving you mad, making you whom the gods would have. Whatever that meant. That was often his answer when asked, but really he thought it subtle reverse psychology. No one seemed to believe that either, unfortunately, and about an hour into the party, he found himself in the sunken courtyard with Louis and the two other dot heads, as he thought of them: a blond female with weepy eyes and a black guy with pig-iron arms, obviously an athlete, like most of theyselves at Cal.

Louis looked at each of them and made a show of counting on his fingers, One little, two little, three little Indians.

The blonde groaned with understanding. Shit!

The black guy shrugged. Fuck them if they can't take a joke. He pointed to Louis's forehead. Make that four. Or are you really Indian?

This happened to Louis on occasion, him being Malaysian. He also caught hell at the airport from the devil in the blue uniform. Yes, he told them in his best Bollywood accent. I am Indian, naturally, not through adhesive like you. How feel would you if I wear Afro wig and gold teeth, and carry pit bull puppy naming Takesha?

The black guy laughed. You're funny, dude.

Hella funny, thank you. And you, he turned to the blonde, you, madam, how would you like when you come to my country and I wear a blond wig like valley girl, speak, you know, you know, you know, it was like. He paused to suck his teeth. You are not liking very much that?

The blonde went crimson and pursed her lips, clutching her neck as though cut, slashed, hacked even, spewing tearful, spittled apologies through the air.

Louis reached for her shoulder, which surprised D'aron because it seemed an apologetic overture when Louis himself always insisted that the comic's job was to wake people up—with a full five-finger slap when necessary. She jerked away, her ponytail splitting the night. It was too late. The tears were in full-court press. She hadn't meant anything by the dot, only that she wanted a good conversation, and she was from Iowa, and even if she had meant something by it, no one in Iowa would have gotten so upset about it. What is it with Berkeley that you can't make any kind of joke, even accidentally?

D'aron hadn't really noticed her until she began crying. (Louis would argue, The reptilian brain is like a Japanese tourist armed with a digital camera with infinite memory; therefore D'aron had noticed her, but hadn't yet noticed that he had noticed her.) Now he looked
again. She was average height for a woman, her chin at his shoulder, and average build, at least for D'aron, because her physique was not that of the desiccated, squirrely girls who foraged at the co-op, standing in the center of the aisle as still as Lady Justice with a container in each hand while deliberating the benefits of garbanzo miso versus soy miso. No. Hers was a figure forged in the same furnace as the girls he'd grown up with, with full legs and arms, and long straight hair, past the neck, that at night glowed like butter on burned toast. She sniffled and her cheek twitched, tickled by a tear, and he felt compelled to protect her.