It was one of those incredible first dates, where the hours seem like minutes and the laughs flow like water and secrets are traded and hands are held and intimacy washes in over the two of you like the tide. Mojo Johnson and Sara Longlocks — Black and blonde — on a tour of Ofay City’s most romantic spots: drinks at Swoon, dinner at Rapture, dancing at Amour. They discovered they had the same favorite album of all time and her favorite movie of all time was his second favorite and her second favorite was his favorite. He was the smartest guy she’d ever met. She was more at peace than anyone he’d ever known. He loved her lips. She loved his hands. It was too early for promises, but promise was in the air. The initial construction of a true connection was under way. Then he suggested ice cream.
It was somewhere in the vicinty of two in the morning and the only place to get ice cream was Peppermint Frazier, the twenty-four-hour ice-cream and hot-wing spot at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm in downtown Soul City. Black and blonde together in Soul City? He knew better. He knew, as every boy who grows up in Soul City knows, that if you were in Soul City with a blonde after dark, the Love Dogma would get ya. They’d swoop in from the dark like ninjas and disappear you into the night. Sometimes you’d come back, sometimes you wouldn’t. What happened to the disappeared? No one ever told. Still, the craving for frozen and flavored sugar and cream can be a powerful master. They hopped in his Rover and cruised to Soul City.
When they pulled into Peppermint Frazier the loudspeakers outside were pumping a smooth Isaac Hayes beat, and Isaac sang, “Do Your Thang,” and a Black girl in red hot-pants roller-skated over and asked for their order. Two cones. Raspberry and rocky-road swirl for her, chocolate chocolate chip for him. The girl in red hot-pants looked him directly in the eye for a second too long, a bit of eye language, a look that said, Watch yaself, brother. Then she skated off.
It takes two minutes to skate back to the counter, lean into the fridge, and carve out a couple of scoops, but it only takes a moment for a concerned citizen to make a call, and by the time the Black girl in red hot-pants had brought their brown and pink icy cream, it was already too late. A pair of licks and a couple of laughs were all he could get in before his door swept open and he was vacuumed out of the driver’s seat by a quartet of black-gloved hands commanded by a pair of black masked heads, thrown into a black truck, and whisked off into the night.
When the blindfold was ripped off, Mojo found himself in a gray interrogation room, sitting across the table from two Black men in long white coats.
“Mr. Johnson,” one of them said, “my name is Dr. Ziggaboo and this is Dr. Furthermucker. You’re in the Love Dogma’s Reassignment Center, where we treat patients suffering from Blonde Obsession. You’ve been brought here for behavior dangerous to your self-esteem. You’ll be here as long as it takes to cure your psychosis. But your recovery cannot begin until you admit that you are powerless over blondes.”
“What?” Mojo said, incredulous.
Dr. Furthermucker took over. “Our studies have shown that the Black man’s obsession with the nonblond white woman is comparable to the relatively mild pull of marijuana — a mere light psychological addiction. But to a Black man blondes are like crack. One taste and he’s hooked. And some of our patients have really bad B.O. But what chance can a Black man have while living under the constant reign of propaganda that sustains white supremacy? Television, magazines, and movies continually bombard us with propaganda designed to educate us to feel that the white woman is the most beautiful woman in the world and the blonde is the queen of white women. It’s an insidious and not-all-that-subtle attack on the Black male’s psyche, a constant saturation bombing.”
“I don’t get it,” Mojo said. “I don’t have a problem. I had a couple white girls before, but don’t you think I might actually like her for who she is?”
“Son, we have a few questions that’ll help us determine how deep your B.O. runs,” Dr. Furthermucker said. He dug into a large black-leather handbag, rummaged inside it a moment, then pulled out a folder. “Mr. Johnson, please try to be as honest as possible in answering my questions. We are here for your recovery.”
“I don’t think I have anything to recover from.”
“Do you experience remorse, shame, or guilt about your sexual activities with blondes?”
“I’ve never slept with a blonde.”
“Have you tried to stop or reduce your sexual activity with blondes but found you could not?”
“I just said that I’ve never slept with a blonde.”
“They’re always in denial at first,” Dr. Ziggaboo said.
“Have you ever dreamt of a blonde ménage?” Dr. Further-mucker said.
“Of course.”
“Does life seem meaningless without a romantic or sexual relationship with a blonde?”
“Wait, are you listening to me at all?”
Dr. Furthermucker whispered to Dr. Ziggaboo, “This guy is going to be really tough.”
Dr. Ziggaboo said, “Let’s play a little game. I’ll name three women and you tell us which one you’d marry, which one you’d have sex with, and which one you’d kill. Kim Basinger, Erykah Badu, and —”
“Guys, it was just a date! Not an obsession! I liked the girl. I wanted to see if she liked me. It was just one little fucking date!”
“Mr. Johnson, there is no such thing as one little date,” Dr. Furthermucker said, banging the table. “Mountains of research have shown us there are lots of ways B.O. begins. Maybe with a harmless but lingering look at the blond coloring products in the store. Then it’s a fixation with Beverly Hills 90210. Then trips to the international Baywatch convention and trekking to Grace Kelly’s grave and stalking Sharon Stone. Then an otherwise sane Black man finds himself in the front row of a Britney Spears concert.”
“The Britney guys are so demoralizing!” Dr. Ziggaboo said. “She’s not even a natural blonde!”
“One of our patients rented ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ from Blockbuster,” Dr. Furthermucker said. “He was a wealthy investment banker with a wife and a three-year-old. He watched that movie over and over, day and night, until more than a year passed. He lost his job, he lost his wife, he grew a beard, and then the Blockbuster collection department came knocking on his door. His late fee had gotten so high they seized his Jaguar and emptied most of his savings account.”
“As they took his VCR,” Dr. Ziggaboo said, “he begged them to leave him the videotape.”
“The thing you’ve got to understand,” Dr. Furthermucker said, “is that it’s not your fault. The image of the beautiful blonde is so prevalent in society and media it’s a mass-scale Pavlovian training that’s happening. You are being taught, every minute of every day, that the blonde is the epitome of beauty. They probably seem to be following you like unstoppable movie monsters, as inescapable as the tell-tale heart, swarming like Hitchcockian birds. We understand.”
“Perhaps we should give Mr. Johnson a tour of the grounds,” Dr. Ziggaboo said.
“Excellent idea,” Dr. Furthermucker said.
The doctors led him through the highly modernized stark-white building with the starched cleanliness of a hospital. The walls were covered with photographs of Dorothy Dandridge, Janet Jackson, Judith Jamison, Florence Joyner, Josephine Baker, Angela Bassett, Lisa Bonet, Halle Berry, Veronica Webb, Vanessa Williams, Cree Summer, Serena Williams, Lauryn Hill, Jada Pinkett, Alec Wek, Pam Grier, Nia Long, Lena Horne, Naomi, Iman, Tyra, Sade, and black signs with red writing that said BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL AND I LOVE BLACK WOMEN AND FREE YOURSELF FROM MENTAL SLAVERY — NONE BUT OURSELVES CAN FREE OUR MINDS. Dr. Ziggaboo said, “There are all sorts of ways to cure B.O., but if the patient is not ready to accept help, then therapy won’t work.”
“Is there any consideration,” Mojo said, “of love?”
The doctors looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They came to a room where men were seated in a circle. One of the men stood and in a halting voice said, “Hello. My name is Malik and I have B.O.”
“Hello, Malik,” the group said in unison.
“Three years ago I saw a Heather Locklear commercial. You know that one where she says, ‘ And I’m worth it.’”
“We know, brother.”
“Ever since then it’s been all about blondes. For the past three years I’ve dated only blondes.”
“Bottle or natural?”
“I didn’t care. Then I started reading Town & Country. I started watching the Today show just for Katie Couric. That made me late to work so many times that I lost my job. I wandered the streets, lingering in front of hair salons just to see women becoming blondes. I once sat in front of Sarah Jessica Parker’s apartment overnight in the freezing cold. I wish someone had told me they don’t film Sex and the City there.”
“Join the club, bro,” someone said. There were understanding laughs around the room.
“I read Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde, Candace Bushnell’s Four Blondes, and Liz Smith’s Natural Blonde. I stood outside the gates of Spence and watched the parade of blond moms and daughters.” His eyes welled up. “I saw every movie Gwyneth Paltrow ever made.” He paused. “Even Bounce!”
The room answered with a chorus of oooohs as in, That’s gotta hurt.
“She wasn’t even blonde in that one,” one Black man said. “Yeah,” Malik said, as dejected as a fresh-dumped man. “I know.”
They moved on to a room the doctors called the Repro room. “Men who have accepted their B.O. and worked through group therapy come here to study Black women,” Dr. Furthermucker whispered. It was a large open room, a beehive of action, where small groups of Black men were clustered everywhere — learning to cook, watching a tape of a Delta Sigma Theta step show, reading Alice Walker, learning how to braid hair and massage feet. “Those are the ones that are the closest to recovery,” Dr. Ziggaboo said, pointing to the hair braiders and foot rubbers. “They’re doing what we call Friendship Training. They’re being taught how to successfully relate to Black women.”
“Now we’ll show you,” Dr. Furthermucker said, “how we deal with the more resistant strains of B.O.”
They walked down a long hall. “This is what we call the C.O. room,” Dr. Ziggaboo said. Inside there were four Black men strapped into chairs, their arms immobilized, their eyes held open by little metal fingers. They were struggling to turn away from Pam Grier’s Foxy Brown.
“C.O. stands for...?”
“Clockwork Orange.”
“You guys are sick.”
“We used to start by showing Fatal Attraction, Dr. Further-mucker said, “to get the image of the crazed blonde in their head. But B.O.s watch a film like that and don’t understand how a blonde could be a villain. Now we start by overdosing on Pam Grier films. After a while we’ll throw on For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf and take turns reading the Nikki Giovanni poem “Ego-Tripping.”
“And when that doesn’t work.. .” Dr. Ziggaboo said.
“Yes, when that doesn’t work there is one more step we can take to fight B.O. I warn you: what you are about to see is gruesome. We only use this as an absolute last attempt.”
They walked down another long, sterile hallway to an all-white padded cell outfitted only with a bed. There was a Black man lying on the bed in a thick robe. “This,” Dr. Ziggaboo said, “is the S.T.D. room.” A door on the far side of the room opened and in came a beautiful blonde with straight, sunlight-colored tresses cascading down her back. She was completely naked and smiling sweetly. The man sat up quickly. There were wires attached to his chest and head. The blonde walked right up to the Black man and began kissing him softly on the lips. Suddenly, he jerked a little. “The point today is the same as in Pavlov’s day. We get them to associate blonde sex with pain.”
“S.T.D. is.. .” Mojo said.
“Shock Therapy Deterrent.”
“What?!”
She pushed him down onto the bed and began writhing on top of him. He shook uncontrollably for a moment, then went back to kissing her. Finally she reached down between his legs and took him in her hand. She seemed to be lining him up with her center, but as she guided him toward her he began to convulse as if having an epileptic fit. For a long moment he seemed possessed — eyes lost back in his head, jaw loose, legs rigid. When he stopped shaking he breathed heavily and seemed worn out. The blonde got up and sauntered out of the room. He lay on the bed alone, trying to catch his breath. “I think he needs to go through that again,” Dr. Ziggaboo said, a touch out of breath. “Don’t you, Doctor?” But the Doctor wasn’t listening. He was hypnotized.
“Why am I here?!” Mojo yelled. “I’m just a guy on a fucking date. I just wanted to get to know her.”
“You’ve completely swallowed the propaganda of the beauty mafia!”
“What? I saw you looking at her! Are you guys paying attention to yourselves? Where do you get off acting like love is part of some political program? Why are you feeling you have jurisdiction over my love life?”
“Look at you. So typical. Ten minutes with a blonde and you’re already talking about love.”
“I’m not fucking saying I love her! I’m just saying I want to give her a chance. Why can’t I give her a chance?”
“God you’re lost.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s fucking lost!”
“You’re the one fighting over a woman you don’t even know!”
“I’m just interested in the chance to know her! Can’t I just get to know her before we condemn her? Why am I even talking to you? What I do with my heart is my business.”
He pulled away and began running through the corridors of insanity, running the long hallways at sprinter speed, running with the sound of rumbling footsteps behind him and the words, “You’ll damage your self-esteem!” in his ears, running without losing breath or energy, gaining speed as he went. His heart pumped as it never had before because his heart had felt the bars of the Love Dogma’s prison closing in and his was one of those hearts that needs to roam free, a wild horse of a heart that would not be politicized, controlled, or caged. He ran until the rumbling footsteps could not be heard and he found a window he could break and went through it and landed hard on the ground outside. He knew not what time it was or where exactly in Soul City he was, but he chose a road and ran, feeling the wind in his ears, feeling stronger with every step. He would run until he found a phone. He didn’t love her, but he wanted to know if he could.