The friends sipped on beers and were watching a sporting event on ESPN. It was the Fourth of the July, and both happened to be in town, where they'd grown up. It was the summer after they had graduated college, and the two hadn't caught up in some time.
"You know how the Ivy League is," Andrew was drawling, taking an unassuming swig of his beer, "the pomp and circumstance of graduation takes forEVER. After awhile I was like 'let's be DONE with this already.'"
He had laughed unctuously, in quick nasal spurts.
Marcus rolled his eyes. He had long forgiven Andrew for his narcissism. It had been awhile since he had hung out with his childhood friend, though, and this sudden burst of prepossession caught him slightly off guard.
Digging into the Pringles can, Marcus took a moment to watch some pointless play in the baseball game they were watching.
"When does work start for you," he asked politely.
Andrew screwed up his eyes in mock concentration, and then threw back his shoulders in complete resignation, as though the effort of remembering was utterly draining.
"It's at the end of the summer, or something, I really don't know. Sometimes I wonder why I even bothered applying to a job in finance, because it is all so marvelously quotidian. Last year when I was a summer associate, I think I stared at spread sheets for like 15 hours a day everyday. I didn't do jack shit. It was really stupid. Dumb Dumb Dumb."
Marcus knew that his friend was trying to sound exasperated about the prospect of making nearly 6 figures a year in his first job out of college, but he wasn't buying it. This was thinly veiled bragging.
Suddenly, Andrew got up and walked across the room. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out another Corona, popped it open with a bottle opener built into the wall, and and resumed his seat on his couch. He stared at the television, and yawned.
Marcus looked at his empty bottle. He supposed that he would refresh his own drink.
"Hey," Andrew called in his pretentious manner while Marcus was at the refrigerator, "would you get me a lime? They're in the lower bin." Before Marcus could even respond, his friend said "Thanks so much."
Cradling his beer and the sliced limes in his hand, Marcus gingerly returned to his seat.
"Say," called Andrew, "what was it that you were doing again? teaching?"
Marcus smiled. He could see that Yale had made his friend more of a douchebag than he had ever been, but it had not completely wiped out his manners. Asking your company what he or she did was what propriety dictated.
"Well, not quite. I'm going to be working for an organization in Newark that works with at-risk teens, trying to help them get their GED. The goal is to eventually expand and help send people to college."
Andrew sighed. He knew everything, and could be surprised by nothing.
"That's really nice," he said vacantly, though his tone said that he found everything Marcus was doing to be beyond meaningless.
"I don't think I could ever do that," he added, having changed the channel to a stupid show on FX that featured a man eating piles of the spiciest wings on the planet.
"You don't think you could do what?" Marcus inquired, hopeful that they might have a conversation. He remembered that they used to talk deeply about things.
Andrew stretched phlegmatically, his scrawny arms thrown high above his head.
"I don't know, serve as an educator for the underprivileged. I find it hard enough to ACKNOWLEDGE their complete destitution. How the fuck could I presume to FIX it?" He stroked his obnoxiously large forehead, "It's too much work."
Marcus, could not contain himself. He began laughing.
"You're such a dick!" he cried.
Andrew shrugged and took a long drink of his beer.
"I think I'm just more honest than most. People are just too afraid to call things what they are. I don't think crazy activism is going to solve the education problem that we have in America. And frankly, there are some people who are just not meant to go to school at all. Let's be honest Marcus, there are people in this country who just aren't cut out for THINKING."
Marcus snapped back.
"So, people who were born with less, in communities with terrible schools, should just sorta stay there, huh? They're inability to perform well on state and national tests is a function of their own ineptitude, not the severely biased system they were inculcated in? Andrew, are you HEARING yourself?"
"I didn't SAY that-"
"You DID! By your thinking, black folk and latinos in poor places everywhere are just plain DUMB."
Marcus stopped abruptly and stared at his friend. Andrew's eyes were glued to the tv. Finally, with a sigh, he turned to face his friend.
"Marcus, you're getting emotional and twisting all my words. And anyway, I obviously don't think YOU'RE dumb."
With that, he had wiped his hands clean of the conversation.
Marcus brooded over his beer, and kept silent. The charge of being "too emotional" had been one that had constantly been launched at him in high school. Whenever he ventured his opinion, particularly when it came to race or socio-economics, he was told that he was being irrational. Even at Hamilton College, where he had had many enlightening classes and conversations, that line had once or twice been hurled at him.
Marcus understood what he was being accused of. He was being told that he was appealing to the animalistic nature that his people were naturally prone to. He was being reminded that he was regressing to the ape mentality he was born of, and he was being warned that if he wanted to speak to civilized (read: white) folk, he'd have to be "objective" and "unbiased."
The hypocrisy of this way of thinking made Marcus want to shout in rage. Indeed, one would have to be utterly inhuman to be "unbiased."
Andrew was lording his whiteness over him now, and Marcus knew it. He was, in a few stinging words, reminding him that the country still found the thoughts and ambitions, motivations and challenges of black America to be "foreign" and distinctly "other." Andrew was forcing him to remember that despite having a black man in the White House, power still rested in white hands. The mere narrative of conventional American life still regarded black and brown brothers and sisters as animals.
Marcus chugged down his beer, and stood up. He was going to drink this house dry, and become the beast he was already presumed to be.
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