White liberal in the locker-room
By Tim Morris
I’m eavesdropping on a locker room conversation, one guy showing another his girlfriend’s picture on a cell phone, a younger man talking about how he struggles to find reliable help for his restaurant, another talking about his nephew playing in a big all-star game in Las Vegas, three others piping about woman trouble, an older man cautioning against contradicting an officer of the law.
And I’m lost. Everybody in the locker room in this YMCA is speaking English, and, at times, I feel as if I can’t understand them.
“I’m telling ya, bruh, both y’all’s messed up.”
“Turn up the radio, yo!”
“Was’ up, G?”
“Hooo, she ALL ‘o that!” There is much laughter, and teasing, and dramatic exchange.
I stand there like a lump of vanilla with a locker.I am, for starters, the only identifiably white guy in the room, and I suddenly feel as if I have Wonder Bread stuffed in my ears, as if I have mayonnaise for brains.
My skin, of course, is not just white, but thin. I am plucking out these words and phrases by tweezer; nearly everything else they say to each other has no ethnic flavor.
Still, I feel pathetically and unforgivably white.