Q: What do you call a black multimillionaire Industrialist?
A: A nigger.
—Old Joke
It was a quarter to midnight as I sat in the sports bar with my buddies drinking shots of Irish whiskey. Jameson. I love Jameson. It’s so smooth, it goes down like water. Well, it goes down like water until the burn hits your chest and then it feels like you’ve just ingested hydrochloric acid. I felt like I could handle a few more burns though. It was early yet and it was a special occasion. My wife had given me a kitchen pass. She’d watch our children while I celebrated.
Fifteen minutes to go until my birthday. Thirty-five. I would be thirty-five and still here in good old San Leandro. I’d hit my mid-thirties. How the hell had I reached my mid-thirties? I was just trying to buy beer with a fake ID the day before yesterday.
The ID worked, too Well, I should say that it worked in most places. I picked it up from a place on University Avenue in Berkeley that had, shall we say, “relaxed” standards for the documentation they required to process your identification card. Mine read that I was Dr. Copeland from Canton, Ohio. It worked like a charm and was only questioned once.
Senior year in high school, I flashed it to a security guard at Harvey’s Casino in Lake Tahoe. He’d been watching me nervously put quarters into a slot machine for a half hour. It was my first time in a casino and I was terrified of getting caught gambling. My hands were shaking so much that I was actually dropping the quarters on the floor as I aimed for the coin slot. The guard watched me like a hawk, smiling. He even waved at me once.
“This is cool,” I thought.
Right up until the moment that I hit a hundred-dollar jackpot. Then the story changed.
“May I see some identification?” The guard asked, having bolted to my side, making sure to catch me before I started putting coins in my pocket.
It was a good feeling to be asked that question by a white man in a uniform and actually be able to comply for once, as precarious as the compliance may have been.
I flashed him my fake ID card. He took it and held it up to the light, studying it. I don’t think they scrutinize IDs like this today in post-9/11, high-security situations. At the airport, they’ll make me take off my shoes and wand my laptop, but my ID could have bin Laden’s picture and still get through most checkpoints.
Finally the guard smirked and said, “Dr. Copeland, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“You look a little young to be a doctor.”
“Child prodigy,” I blurted out. It sounded logical. To me anyhow. Seventeen-year-old “logic.”
The friendly, waving guard was gone. He had morphed into a hard-ass guard.
“We see these up here all the time,” he grunted.
“Look, that is a legal identification card,” I protested.
Good, Brian. Argue with him, you knucklehead. You’re a black kid in ski country. Black teenagers who ski, now there’s a short list.
Hey, I just realized: I don’t ski. That’s black!
The guard stroked his chin.
“I’ll tell you what.”
“What?” I said anxiously. I wanted my hundred bucks.
“You have two choices. I can call the police and have them come down here to verify this card, and when they determine that it’s a fake, you can go to jail . . . ”
“Or?” I asked, choice one not sounding too appealing. “You can walk out of here right now without the card and without the money.”
Without missing a beat I said, “You have a nice day, sir,” as I calmly strolled out the door.
I can make good decisions when I want to.
Now, I’m in my mid-thirties. Nobody cards me anymore. Twenty-year-olds accidentally bump into me and say, “Excuse me, sir.”
Sir. When did I become a “Sir”? Who the fuck am I, Sidney Poitier?
My friends in my age range all began to lament the drag of not being twenty-one anymore. It was one of those drunken conversations that guys have when boozy saturation gives way to melancholic reflection. These conversations get deep and philosophical. They progress to hugs and “I love you man’s” until somebody has to run to the bathroom and puke. Sometimes it’s me. The one good thing about hair like mine is that your friends don’t have to hold it back for you when you’re heaving your guts out into the toilet. There are pluses.
My buddy Mark always gets the most sentimental at these times.
Mark is a year older than me and has been my big brother since he took me under his wing when we were in high school. Back then, Mark was the good-looking white guy who got all of the hot girls. I was “Mark’s friend.” This meant that I was responsible for awkwardly keeping his dates’ friends occupied while he “occupied” his date. That was my role on double dates. Julie your Cruise Director. It had been Mark who took me to Berkeley for my liquor-store M.D.
“When,” Mark asked, “did you first realize that you were an adult?”
The guys go around the table.
“When I graduated high school,” one said.
“When I got married,” came another reply.
“When I first got my own place.”
“When I filed my first tax return.”
“When my first kid was born.”
After everybody had spoken, they all looked at me.
“How about you, Brian? When did you first realize that you were all grown up?”
I didn’t want to go there. I can’t go there. I won’t.
“Speaking of childhood, I have to go to the bathroom before I do a very childish thing,” I said, forever the joker.
The guys all laughed as I excused myself from the table and headed into the restroom.
I walked into the men’s room and went into one of the stalls. I hate public bathrooms. I’m like Howard Hughes about that kind of stuff. I don’t touch the door to the bathroom because guys pee without washing their hands and then use the door knob. I won’t touch the handle to the stall with my bare hands. When I have to sit (which I try to avoid at all costs) I quadruple paper the seat and the floor in front of me. I think I finally understand that “hover” thing that my sister says women have to do in situations like this. It keeps them germ-free and builds strong quads.
After going through my usual motions to make the conditions around me as sanitary as possible under the circumstances, I heard the door open, followed by the voices of two guys, apparently just as boozy as my little entourage. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear every word.
“Your team sucks, man.”
“Only because our regular pitcher is out. Otherwise we’d have kicked your asses all over the field. Don’t get cocky.”
“You’re still buying the beers. I don’t give a rat’s ass what your excuse is. You lost and I want Coronas.”
“You’ll get your fucking Coronas.”
“With lime, asshole.”
“Yeah, yeah. With lime. Beer with lime in it. You pussy.”
“I am what I eat.”
Charming fellows. They prattled on. “Hey, did you see who’s here?”
“Who?”
“Brian Copeland.”
“Really? Where?”
“He’s sitting at a table in the corner with a bunch of guys. You went to school with him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“He seems to be doing okay for himself. I see him on TV. Me and Carrie saw him open for Earth Wind & Fire in Vegas at Caesar’s.”
“Yeah.”
“It looks like he’s doing really well.”
“So?”
“So? That’s all you got to say is ‘so’?”
“What else is there to say? He’s still a nigger.”
I heard the guys laugh. They finished their business and went out the door. I didn’t hear water running. More justification for not touching the doorknob on the way out.
Their words reverberated in my head.
“He’s still a nigger.”
I’d worked my ass off, built a life and a family, I was thirty-five years old and I was “still a nigger.”
I pasted on my fake, TV smile and rejoined my party. Someone yelled that it was one minute after midnight. The guys lined up three and a half shots of Jameson for me, one for each decade of my life, with half a shot for the last five years. I downed them as the guys sang “Happy Birthday.” What’s so damned happy about it?
As I finished, the waitress brought me another whiskey.
“This is from the gentleman at the bar,” she said, gesturing.
I looked over to see two guys sitting on bar stools, including a guy I knew from grade school. A guy I hadn’t seen in years. A guy who’s voice was still in my head.
“He’s still a nigger.”
He raised his glass in my direction in a toast. “Happy Birthday,” he shouted from across the room.
I didn’t say a word. I simply raised my drink in his direction returning the toast. Then, I drained the glass. I’m gonna hate myself in the morning. I can tell, because I hate myself now.