May 9, 2019: Carlton

I received my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1976. I was fortunate enough to secure an instructorship in the English Department of Auburn University, my alma mater, for the next fall quarter.

After I graduated from UNC-G and started teaching at Auburn, though, I still drove up I-85 to Greensboro to visit, for, to paraphrase an old song, I had fallen in with evil companions, and I had a wonderful time.

Their priorities were drink, girls, basketball, pot, and barbeque. And most important of all, UNC basketball. One night we had gathered to watch a Carolina basketball game. These were all of my fun-mentor Brian’s friends, people he knew from selling ads at a Greensboro newspaper. I wonder how this media shop could afford so many ad sellers.

But, of course, the kids weren’t paid much, I suppose. They called their boss “Breadline”.

We all leaped up, cursed, jeered, and for instance yelled “Pea!” whenever Walter Davis scored. There was enough beer to satisfy Brett Kavanaugh, Skeeter, AND P.J. I’d be drunkenly imagining myself just about asleep, and Brian would call to me, “Rach, while you’re up?” and wave his empty beer can. I don’t know why he called me Rach, which was short for Rachmaninoff.

There was a new fellow there, Carlton; I was duly introduced, we shook hands, and I took a chair. Eventually the game ended, so we relaxed and chattered, until suddenly three of the fellows pulled me up by the armpits and said we were leaving. “Wha?” I asked. Before I knew it, I was outside and driving and pretty drunkenly at that. “What happened?” I asked.

“You really pissed off Carlton,” someone said. “He was going to beat the shit out of you. We had to go.”

“What?” I asked. “What did I do?” I was squinting to find the yellow line.

“You just really pissed him off. He was insane. He was going to beat you to a pulp.” Incongruously someone slapped my shoulder.

I absorbed this, and, I was used to being intimidated, I just accepted it. I drove silently for a minute; “Where are we going?”

“Just away,” they said. “Man, you really pissed off Carlton.” They laughed.

“But what did I do?”

“Turn left here.”

I never found out. I thought carefully through the conversation while the game had progressed: I didn’t recall speaking to any one individual and certainly not Carlton. What could I have said?

There’s a mystery to this incident that I can’t dissolve; maybe I was just drunk? We were all white—Brian, of course, funny and unselfconsciously selfish; Scott, an earnest blond dummy; Collier, a quiet little fellow whose ankle I sprained for him once on a rebound; Demi, a few others—except this one guy I hadn’t met before, this black guy, Carlton.

He was tall with short hair and looked just like them except for the being black part, so I assumed that he sold ads with them. He was quieter than the others, possibly because he was just quiet? Because he was the only black guy? Because he was a black guy in North Carolina?

Brian and his friends were southerners: they were racists as far as the race was concerned, but, according to what may simply be a southern myth, they liked certain individuals.

Why didn’t I see the fire in Carlton’s eyes? Was there, after all, some racial element? Were they secretly annoyed by Carlton and took it out on me? I don’t recall even speaking to Carlton. Why was everyone else in the car so clued in while I had no idea that anything had even happened? Why didn’t Brian read me in?

To be fair to him, Brian had taught me how to have fun. He refused to go to the grocery without cigars, beer, and marijuana. Once there, he would ask random women what they were having for dinner and how would they fix it. Though an undoubtedly creepy practice now, in 1978 or so, we learned an excellent chicken and broccoli dish out of it. OK, dammit, this was before America learned to cook. I think some kind of sauce was implicated. I hope it didn’t come from a can of cream of mushroom soup, but it’s unfortunately possible. OK, it probably was. Back in the days before two clicks finds you a great recipe for anything, young stupid guys were adrift in the kitchen.

We were energetic and ironic and thought we were smart. One day playing basketball on a slippery, outdoor concrete court, a thunderstorm dashed up and thundered and poured, but we kept playing till the game was over. Then we dashed to a fellow’s house for shots of vodka to ward off pneumonia.

The fellow whose house it was had generally been too messed up to have sex with his girlfriend--Catholic guilt, perhaps. His mother used to come over before he got home from work to open up his house to let it air. Probably the mother bit didn’t help with the non-sex having. Otherwise, really, there wasn't anything remarkable about any of these fellows.

Yet I’ve never again felt such warmth, such a sense of camaraderie, of acceptance, of genuine bonhomie than with these guys. They gave me the only nickname I’ve ever had: Dorito, because I ate an entire bag once while we all drove back stoned from Chapel Hill.

Then, after we had driven away from the threat of Carlton and were finding our way—where? that escapes me, and though I recall that the sign pointed to High Point, that’s utterly improbable—we had pulled up in the left-hand turn lane at a stop light.

The others suddenly yelled “Fuck you!” out the window at the car to our right and then ducked down so that I was the only visible occupant. I only flicked my head to the right and caught a glimpse of a large, furry head, and, turning away from his face, scared to death, I waited for him to jump out and scurry around to pull me out of the car and punch my face, nose nose nose, eyes, chin, nose again just for fun. When the arrow turned green, I whipped away, checking in my rearview mirror to be sure that he wasn’t following.

Even in the moment, I thought it a pretty harsh joke to pull.

Later it occurred it me: given their shouting at the other car, was it possible that they were they kidding me about Carlton? Wouldn’t that have been pretty mean-spirited? When they were supposed to be my friends? With whom I felt such a sense of camaraderie? I mean, we shot hoops in a rainstorm and then did shots of vodka. So why this? Was it funny in a way I didn’t understand?

I left the next day to drive back to Auburn, and no one ever mentioned the incident again.

So what does it mean? It happened over 40 years ago—40 years! How can something in my life have happened 40 years ago, and I was an adult already then. But I didn’t get it then, don’t get now, and I never will.

That sort of mess is what this blog is about.