If hip-hop gave me an identity during those years, it also provided repeated reminders that it wasn’t intended for people like me. People, that is, with no experiential knowledge of the crack epidemic, or Section 8 housing, or mistreatment at the hands of trigger-happy police. People, that is, with no experiential knowledge of the racial injustice that, I gathered, was a defining component of many American lives. Even before being schooled at college in the language of political correctness, I understood my status as a cultural voyeur.
But while friends like Ricky found themselves reflected in, say, Phish’s maple syrup funk, part of hip-hop’s appeal was that it wasn’t a mirror, but a window into a foreign world. Which is to say: I loved hip-hop both in spite of and because of the fact that it wasn’t mine to love.
And then there he was, with his bleached hair and Kmart wardrobe, his pill-popping mom and lower-middle-class angst. I identified with Eminem so strongly it scared me, given his homophobia, misogyny, and nihilistic rage. I told myself that this was only a persona used for pushing boundaries, and that all that really mattered was Em’s level of skill. But even the latter was a controversial topic. To proselytize too hard for a white rapper’s talent was to risk promoting Caucasian exceptionalism. I worried that I’d have to face these questions if I ever wrote my book.
“So how does Carrie Bradshaw fit into your theory?” I asked Donnell.
“How doesn’t she fit, is what you should be asking.”
“Okay, how doesn’t she?”
“In no way doesn’t she.”
“I’m confused.”
“You’ll get it when you read the piece. That is, if I ever find time to write again. Jackie’s home on winter break, the other doorman’s on two-week vacation, and Verizon has a sick day policy to rival the Führer’s.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That sounds hard.”
Donnell released a puff of air in a manner that told me I couldn’t understand. It said that I, with my food grubbing and demand for banter, only added to his woes. I knew about Donnell’s money troubles from his blog: bank-breaking debt, a shitty mortgage on a money pit apartment. Our situations, I understood, were fundamentally different. For a moment, I wondered if he actually liked me, or whether I was just another asshole with whom he was forced to interact. Perhaps it’s testament to the triumph of self-deception, but I refused to accept that the latter was the case.
Wendy
Lillian’s email wasn’t urgent: a reminder to arrive promptly for the 10 a.m. pitch. I had a mostly sleepless night spent scratching my scabs and fighting the cat.
Monday morning—on what would be the day of Ricky’s murder—I missed both my alarm and my train. Michael was already gone. I hurried out the door, hoping I’d have time to stop by a boutique near my office that opened at nine. I’d practically run out of the few clothes I’d saved from quarantine, and my online purchases had yet to arrive. I was wearing a shirt of Michael’s that I’d found in his closet protected by a plastic membrane. In our old Manhattan apartment, I used to admonish him for refusing, out of laziness, to remove the plastic from his shirts when he brought them home from the dry cleaner’s. We shared a small closet. It rankled me to open it and see stray plastic sticking out. The plastic created static and took up space. We had our own closets in Brooklyn, and he did as he pleased.
I sometimes wonder about the relationship between violence and space. There is a reason that urban areas have high murder rates. People are packed too tightly; boundaries blur. The closest I ever came to homicide was as an undergraduate. I did not like having a roommate. My roommate did not like wearing headphones while she listened to music. She did not like taking the phone into the hallway to talk to her boyfriend. She did not like staying on her side of the room. She did not like waiting until I was out of the room or asleep to engage in sexual activity. Instead of peace and quiet I got pillow-muted panting. Bedsprings scolded like aggravated ghosts. I pictured her body as a punctured balloon, air slowly escaping until she was small enough to be flushed down the toilet without clogging the pipes.
I was running low on time, so I asked the clerk to bag various items. I would try on the outfits later and return what didn’t work. I picked out underwear, socks, a bra, a knee-length charcoal skirt, three T-shirts, tights, a pair of flats, and a lightweight cardigan to keep me warm in the air-conditioned office. I chose a black pencil skirt for that morning’s pitch and paired it with a simple Oxford shirt. I did not select any of the parkas and scarves displayed on the mannequins. Designers had taken a stand against climate change. They would not bend. They would not break. They would not relinquish their seasonal collections. Fashionistas nobly suffered, sweating through wool sweaters on eighty-degree days. It was a sign of commitment, and stupid.
I gave the clerk my American Express card. After a brief interlude, she handed it back. She whispered the word declined the way my uncle Alan whispered words like gay or black. I regretted not choosing a chain store manned by telepresence bots. The boutiques still hired humans. Only a particular breed of female can produce the specific sneers essential to these boutiques’ elitist mystiques. These women had made themselves indispensable by force of attitude.
I said, “There must be some mistake. Could you please run it again?”
The clerk did as she was told. The card was declined again. It’s an awful feeling to have a card declined. You want some other proof to present, evidence that you’re still entrenched among the world’s earners and savers.
I gave the clerk my ATM card, which was also declined. I had a feeling it would be. Our balance had been dangerously low. Michael had said he was waiting for something to come in. He’d said liquidity in a tone that meant I shouldn’t ask. When my most recent paycheck disappeared from our statement, he’d said he was moving things around. I knew something was wrong, but not the extent. I didn’t want to know.
The machine declined my Visa as well. The clerk looked so smug as she told me, forearms crossed in an X over her torso, the outline of her rib cage showing through her T-shirt. I was wasting her time. The store was otherwise empty. I had no cash on me. I had no other cards. I tried Michael’s cellphone again. It rang.
By the time I arrived at my office—an open-plan studio that makes it impossible to go unnoticed in absentia—it was after ten o’clock. Our staff and a lone member of the client’s team were seated around a projector screen. Greg was up front with a laser pointer tracing the outline of a Venn diagram. Greg has broad shoulders. His cheeks are covered in cultivated stubble. He wears a college ring from a second-tier East Coast university (Tufts), jeans and sport coats (both stylish), no tie, and shoes that aren’t quite sneakers or boots, but give an extra lift to his five-six frame. Favorite adjective: kick-ass. Once, in a pitch meeting, he’d suggested the tagline Hennessy: Latinos welcome, after the company’s head of marketing had expressed a desire to expand their demographic.