On Racism 1

I went to high school for a year in a scenic town in the hill country.  It was my freshman year; I was very impressionable, especially by cute, athletic, fun, and popular girls.  One such girl was Holly (for privacy's sake, I have replaced her true name; that is the only fiction in this account).  She was a freshman cheerleader; leader of the flock of aforementioned cute, athletic, fun, and popular girls; all-around athlete herself; and exclusively dated the senior varsity jock, testosterone-laden dating pool.  We shared several classes and walked the halls as friends.  I was something of a funny mascot for her and her group, always offering jokes and attention and further confirming her supreme popularity and desirability.  I guess I got something out of it too:  her presence as "my friend" conferred some mild elevation of my otherwise rather mediocre status.  But, more importantly for me, I clung to the idea that by fostering a close relationship with her I could eventually learn the way to her heart purely through psychological and emotional intimacy.  I figured that the older, stronger, wealthier, more popular jocks may have a lot on me, but I was idealistic enough to believe that I could still attain her despite it all.  We spoke on the phone every night; we studied together; she had me over for dinners; we watched each other's sporting events -- but I was always just the friend.

Holly's whole immediate family went to Texas Tech -- dad, mom, and older sister.  Never once did I see her dad smile, but I often heard him yell.  He hid his lips behind a burly grey beard, and he always looked at you with a piercing, bone-baring gaze.  No one was comfortable around him; everyone was wrong, and nothing was good enough.  He loved to watch Texas Tech football.  Other than the countryside and farm equipment (his job was to oversee a ranch), I cannot think of anything he loved more than Texas Tech football, if he loved anything else at all -- including his family.  If the house was quiet and Texas Tech were playing, you knew they had to be winning and playing well.  Everyone else in the house was constantly bracing themselves for a Texas Tech mistake (even if up 45-0) -- Texas Tech must win so daddy doesn't erupt!!  He would never actually let excitement or joy leave his lips, for his dense, protective gray beard would have to part and spring open for him to do that.  He would never give anyone that.  However, if a pass was dropped, tackle broken, or field goal missed, you heard nothing but cursing, racial epithets, and general rage shaking the house.  He would use the n-word any chance he got; the black players always received the blame.  As the average D1 college football team roster is comprised of roughly 70% African Americans (and surely the starting lineup must be an even higher percentage), he had plenty of chances.  I ate many a plate of spaghetti and meat sauce ruing the irony of this Texas Tech alumnus wanting his unified team to have the best chance of winning (hence he would implicitly support the admission of talented black student-athletes, who would do the bulk of the work on the team) but not showing it, while he relished every opportunity he got to isolate and lambaste particular black players for whatever perceived error he could somehow chalk up to their doing.  I knew he was a terrible man, but back then I never saw any semblance of him in Holly.  She always acted out against her father's gruff coldness and heavy, ignorant hand.  I always thought she was rejecting everything about him that a reasonable, educated person would disdain and then some.  I thought she would strive mightily to represent the inverse of her father in those ways of his I hated most.

During that year and several years that followed (as I moved to different high schools and we both went off to different colleges -- yes, she went to Texas Tech), I heard all about her cheating, abusive, demanding, and drug-using boyfriends; she cried to me; I advised, and I was always repudiated for yet another cycle at an ever-increasing level of dysfunctionality.  Even at 14 she would do anything for these guys:  she snuck out of her parents' house, she quit the very activities she once enjoyed with such a youthful vigor, she did drugs, she had sex, she drove high and drunk, she cut off friends and family.  I adamantly believed that none of these guys knew the true Holly. I abhorred her boyfriends just like I despised her dad.  As she became less and less of the person I was initially attracted to, my desire to attain and help her only grew at an even higher level.  I thought I was everything she needed but didn't quite realize; I pictured her as a lost, innocent, and pure blank slate despite her recent travails.  She sat perched atop a lofty pedestal in faraway galaxies that was in my best interest to never reach.  I kept reaching.

We lost track of each other mid-way through college after a weekend I visited her in Lubbock.  One should never drive more than 30 minutes to Lubbock for a questionable girl -- that's a general rule I feel very strongly about!  On the first night of my weekend, Holly got drunk, snorted cocaine, and slept with another guy in his car.  I made my way back to her apartment and left for my parents' house the following morning, never looking back.  When I heard from her earlier this year, it had been approximately 9 years since we last spoke.  She now lives in Dallas.  She's had a drug problem, but says she's cleaned up (her parents paid for several trips to rehab, set her up with her current job and house, and bought her vaunted Mercedes at issue below).  She's also had an eating disorder, but now she eats, well, kind of.  She's had two abortions, yet she proclaims that abortion should be outlawed as, in her words, "it's taking a life."  She's never bothered to explain the chasm between her actions and her words.  Based on other things she's said, I also suspect that at least one of the abortions was due to the father's identity as a black man.  She's single.  She said she misses me and wanted to hang out.  She said she didn't treat me right and that she always looked up to me.  We hung out a few times this year, as I have now always kept her at arms length and seen her as an entirely different person -- that is, probably the person she's almost always been since I've known her.  She has the pursed lips and gaunt cheeks of a combined smoker and cocaine user/anorexic.  She shakes a lot.  She has really never left Texas.  It doesn't appear that she opened many books during her time at Tech or subsequently.  I didn't like her at all, and I knew this within my first five minutes back together with her after those 9 years.  I committed myself to hanging out with her some if she made a big enough effort and fuss, and if she drove.  I figured there was something to be said for keeping people from various stages of your past in your present, as long as they weren't doing too much harm to you and you could get away again at any moment.  Besides, she provided a lot of interesting thought fodder (although at the time I had not envisioned its use in this blog).

Then she blithely told me a story about a recent drunken experience of hers:  She had valeted her new Mercedes at a Dallas bar.  Apparently, the valets were black.  When she walked out of the bar several hours later and handed the valet person her ticket, they brought her out the wrong Mercedes.  Rather than simply pointing out the error, she cursed the valet man with every insult she knew (those same ones I had heard from her dad while eating spaghetti) including vitriolic use of the n-word.  The valet men ultimately fixed the simple mishap by bringing Holly the correct Mercedes, and bar management informed her that she could never come back to the bar again.  Holly proudly recounted all these events, even boasting as her actions became more and more outrageous. The subtext is that she thinks the valet men were stupid, and that she made fools out of them.  Moreover, it is quite evident that she thinks the valet men deserved her excoriation due to what they had done.  I told Holly that in no way should she be proud of what she had said or what she had done.  I told her that I never wanted to hear stories like that from her.  She laughed for a bit, and once she gathered that I was serious she told me that I needed to get off my "high horse" and that indeed her life experiences have confirmed that black people are dumber than white people, that black people are also lazier, and that she would do the same thing if similar circumstances were to arise.  Every example and educated argument I gave was met with ignorance and venom.  I have several close black friends; I look up to numerous black individuals; I am reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography in awe.  How can this girl remain my friend?  Should I have kept her on board but tried to avoid any discussion on all the topics that would ignite my reproach?  Should I have hoped to rehabilitate her?  Should I have hoped to somehow bring back the past and erase the ravages of time and ignorance on her?  Ultimately, I gave up on her completely and told her that I would not be her friend anymore.  We are, in fact, no longer friends.

I removed her on facebook and denied her follow-up friend request.  It must be final.