the only time I ever heard drugs being discussed in my Mother’s salon was when Geoff Morris from my hockey team got addicted to weed. After the divide set in I only read Sartre’s preface to Wretched of the Earth and didn’t bother with Fanon’s book. But don’t fret! The divide came to a wonderful end one day when I met the lovely Bethany. Bethany was from Queens, New York and reminded me of Pam Grier. She was cool like Pam, dressed well and I wanted to marry her! To make a stupid story short, we went camping and while we were hiking I told Bethany a secret. It came off like a racist remark. Shit! However the history of Black people bifurcates and entangles itself with the history of crackers so much so that I found peaceable common ground. Hiking to our favorite spot at a beach in Tobermory I told Bethany “You are my second Black experience” to which she gave a very uncomfortable and shocked silence. I was sort of freaking out because we really didn’t know each other that well and I may have fucked up the next four days that I had with Bethany. On the purlieu of my existence came a rare moment that was exactly like beating an opponent in a rap battle. You come up with something astonishingly witty, a numinous quip and a powerful negation to a desolate lacuna. In one bar I ended all our suffering, it was very much like Whitney Houston singing Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You. The racial harmony we had so much sought for came to be. I told Bethany “Jimmy Hendrix was my first” and she laughed and we swam and drank beer in the hot summer sun and I got sun burnt and she did also but just a little bit! P.S. Can’t Wait to see Bethany next summer!
