.from Crocodile Words.

A novel by Dex Quire

Joffrey Simpson ODay sat at his desk in his room at Dayfresh House and
wrote out the following letter in longhand:
To: Snowden Branch, President of Sunbreak City University:
Last Thursday various dialectized selections of The Koran that I
wrote up for my graduate-level writing course appeared in our
student paper, The Sunbreak City University Daily as part of a
literary insert. I took sections of The Koran and passed them through
an online dialectizer which stamped the passages into speech
patterns or dialects of Valley Girl, Pig Latin, Barney Frank (or Elmer
Fudd), and the Pornolizer.
I am aware that my writing project greatly offended many. I have
been charged with hate speech by the faculty senate and the student
government; a portion of the faculty, in fact, formed a Group of 88
under a manifesto that would keep all students free from spiritual
assault; it looks like my Pamela Prefontaine Scholarship will be
revoked.
The editors of The Daily printed an apology issue the next day,
four pages of the Koran, properly translated. They also saw fit to
print my email and home address, hate mail and death threats now
abounding. The university board of trustees, the provost, the deans
of all the colleges and the coaches association (you have informed
me) believe my enrollment at SCU an ongoing affront to the
institution. Finally, SCU alumnus, Prince Saleh Hashim (Class of 96)
of Abu Dhabi, has cancelled his support for construction of the
Ghalib Friendship Pavilion and frozen funds that represent a
hundred million dollar endowment to the university.
On Monday you told me that a written apology would go far
towards making all of this go away. You urged me to deliver said
apology to the students, faculty and community members attending
the upcoming Candlelight Festival of Affirmation. You also suggested
I present myself before the mosque closest to the university to
apologize to everyone including all Muslims all over the world.
I really did not anticipate this overwhelming reactiona reaction,
I believe, far out of proportion to anything I actually did. I was
having a bit of fun while carrying out a writing assignment on my
way towards picking up a few humanities credits.

Please receive my apology then; apology from the Ancient Greek,

, as in: a defense of ones actions, beliefs or of a cause.
Most Sincerely,
Joffrey Simpson ODay
Student Number: 48730912
p.s. As follows:
My name is Joffrey Simpson ODay!
The young man introduced himself like that everywhereat Sunbreak
City University, at Clearhaeuser Timber Company and at Dayfresh House.
He announced himself like that to the Famous Writing Professor and her
class at Theodore Roethke Writers House. He presented himself thusly to
Fontina Mayeux, the woman he wanted as a girlfriend. He hoped others saw
him as he saw himself: cheerful, tallish, broad-shouldered, long-haired,
mono-browed, smiling, chipped-toothed, bobbing slightlyhappy to be
living in Sunbreak City. If they didnt, oh well; Joffrey couldnt worry about
them. You came to the big city to do big things, to do what you wanted; to
see if living and dreaming really had anything to do with each other.
Joffrey arrived in Sunbreak City last summer. He often recalled those
first days:
He had just discovered Market Park downtown by Pike Place Market
with its wide-open view of Elliott Bay and the Sunbreak City waterfront.
Beyond the bay the Olympic Mountains hovered in blue like a row of stoned
uncles waiting to criticize your latest girlfriend. One July evening Joffrey
found a bench on a grassy knoll at Market Park and took it all in:
A bold sun pressed down at seven p.m. as at noon and continued to glare
until nine thirty p.m. when the light began to fade languidly, like a taffystretched, fourth movement of Mahler. The final rays banked off the
mountains brightening, for a moment, the tops of the skyscrapers that rose
at Joffreys back like monuments to Jimi Hendrixs guitar solos. Hectoring
seagulls, clacking pigeons, police seaplanes, commercial aircraft and TV
helicopters dispersed slowly until some kind of quiet reigned. In the bay
speedboats sprayed immense rooster tails while car-carrying ferries and
diesel-motored yachts left great unzipping wakes of foam. Sailboats like so
much paper wafting over a schoolyard drifted back and forth. Tugboats
nosed international freighters (bearing hay bound for Japans cows) and
darkened the watery rails that earlier shimmered like freshly cracked
cymbals.
In the park a breeze smelling of creosote, shellfish brain, drying kelp
and Ivars frying grease flowed into Joffrey. He observed tourist families
from flat states waiting by irate fathers twisting Sunbreak City maps as
though wrestling king crabs. Joffrey decided local Sunbreak Cityites were

easy to pick out: they resembled newly-minted Egyptian hieroglyphs,

walking along with a stiff forearm clutching a Starbucks mug. Joffrey
remained at his downtown park bench until darkness nibbled away the
bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich sunset.
How Joffrey loved Sunbreak City! Thousands of rooms in all these fierce
buildings, thousands of florescent lights shining, he imagined, on men and
women doing intricate things. Churning, flowing, churning enterprise
Joffrey felt the city percolating through him. He didnt miss Eastern
Washingtons long views of wavy, rolling rock at all.
:

Yes, Joffrey, until now, life had been getting better.

Last week Joffreys dialectized versions of The Koran appeared in the
high-circulation student newspaper, The Sunbreak City University Daily.
He should have known. Joffrey, you should have known, he told himself,
sitting at his desk, looking at a blank piece of paper in front of him.
At least he was living in Sunbreak City.
:

Joffreys writing professor, The Famous Writing Professor (the FWP) sat
in her office crying into the sweater-padded elbow of her right arm while
laying down a few blind, left-hand piano chords until her fingers came upon
a wad of Kleenex. Weeping! She hadnt cried since she was that victim, so
long ago, that battered young wife running through the night, rain-nicked,
hysterical, pounding on the door of the First Hill Womens Shelter.
She dried her face with the tissues. Why had she chosen the theme
Gods and Monsters? A religious theme? Why? Why didnt she see this
coming? Why had she told her students she would refrain from reviewing
their final stories? And, Dear God, why had she arranged for those stories to
appeara literary insertin the student newspaper? Vanity? She wanted
the students to love her. To trust her just as she was endowing them with so
much trust. I wanted to be loved, trusted. Revered! The FWP moaned. She
checked her tears and looked at her face in a hand mirror. She imagined
thousands of students, local businessmen or businesswomen by the
thousands clutching her writing class literary insert as it fell from this
mornings Sunbreak City University Daily. God, what was the circulation?
25,000? 30,000? The readers would glance at Joffrey Simpson ODays
Barney Frank Koran or Valley Girl Koran and they would laugh. Would they
notice the FWPs name across the literary insert? Would they notice that it
was her class? Sponsored by Theodore Roethke Writers House? Would they
laugh and then look around themselves furtively? Ease the insert back into
The Daily?
The FWP glanced at the literary insert now spread out on her desk. She
looked away quickly but she couldn't unsee the title: The Koran: Four
Translations by Joffrey Simpson O'Day. The rare winter light coming
through her office window drew her eyes back to the print and she read:

The Valley Girl Koran:

Surely, like, Allah, who is totally awesum duuuuude! does not do,
like, injustice to thuh weight of an atom, and if it is like, ya know, a
totally grody deed that, duuuude, multiplies it and gives from
Himself a totally awesum reward.
She couldn't read on. She was afraid she might begin to laugh. There
was more: there was the Barney Frank Koran. There was the Pig Latin
Koran. And worse, there was the Pornolizer Koran. Why did that kidhe
was a kid, after all, full of earnest muscle and mischiefwhy did he have to
write up four versions? Her eyes snagged on a section of the Pornolizer
Koran and she swallowed a laugh:
If you shun the great gangbangs of which you are forbidden,
We will do away with your small titty fucks and cause you to enter an
honorable place of charvering, and ask Allah of His grace; surely
Allah ballbusts all balls.
And to everyone We have appointed gamahuches of what
parents and near relatives leave; and as to those with whom your
finger-shafts have aardvarked and gamahuched, give them their
portion; surely Allah is a witness over all bangs.
The official boardrooms would not be laughing. They would be howling.
Perhaps they were howling now. The Muslim Student Association, the
faculty senate, the advertisers and professional organizations that
supported The Daily, the corporations and local government agencies that
sponsored Roethke Writers House. They would howl and they would
demand a head.
Hers.
The FWP had, after all, enabled a mocking racist tract to issue forth into
the sensitive student collective. She had cleared the way for further
unsavory outburst against a vulnerable campus minority. Worse, she had
probably jinxed the one hundred million dollar endowment to Sunbreak City
University from Prince Saleh Hashim, a devoted Sunbreak City alum who
had The Sunbreak City University Daily specially delivered via airmail to his
twentieth floor office tower in Abu Dhabi. He could afford it. The prince had
graduated from Sunbreak City University in the 1970s. He learned to tie his
shoes for the first time and pick up girls on his own while he drove around
the U District in his black Pontiac Firebird. The university president would
have to answer for her; or she would have to answer to him.
And Joffrey Simpson ODay? Did he write his Pornolizer Koran to spite
me? Who knows? Who cares? She remembered his brash self-introduction
that first night of class. My name is Joffrey Simpson ODay! He made the

FWP laugh. The other students, four others, laughed too. Standing in front
of the class, bobbing with good cheer and fibrous confidence, Joffrey himself
laughed. Why not? He didnt seem like a malevolent jerk at the time. If
anything, he came off as Class Star. He sheathed a daring chipped-tooth
smile, like a concealed weapon, inside long, parted, black, shoulder-length
Indian (make that Native American) hair. He was tall with muscle-bumped
arms and (presumably) a wedge torso, nicely chiseled and filed. He damn
near ungayed me she remembered joking to her lover arriving home that
night after class.
O God, how things change.
:

Joffrey Simpson O'Day was determined to see Sunbreak City as if for the
first time. Outside culture; you did this by focusing on what is unique in any
time or place, anywhere in history. Tall men are always special. Amazed at
tall men. Or what must the Lewis and Clark caravan thought upon entering
Indian Villages for the first time? They would have admired the cleverness
and craftsmanship of the Indians, their carvings and pipes and dress and
houses and dried food. But they would have been shocked by the diseases,
especially the dripping running eyesores of the elderly. It would have
dawned on them that none of what the Indians created was in any way
separated from the immediate motions of the human hand. No forge, no
steam engine, no pulley, no crank. Everything produced came directly by
hand.
Joffrey lived in Sunbreak Citys southwest neighborhood, Rainier City.
Teachers, social workers and local politicians liked to extol: 98118 the most
diverse zip code in the nation! They wanted the word diverse to mean
people of varied skin tone and global extraction living together in loving,
hippy, communal splendor. True, many spear ends warmed their points at
this campfire. But it also had one of the highest murder rates in the country.
Sunbreak City was made up of neighborhood clusters called Cities:
University City, Capitol Hill City, Queen Anne City, Ballard City, Roosevelt
City, Freemont City, Rainier City.
What was the thrill in living in Rainier City, a mostly black
neighborhood? Did the whites want to get closer to glamour? Did Joffrey?
Yes, he did. He saw himself as from a great height. He sees a little boy
playing in the dirt. He is one of millions. His sister is on the porch crying.
She is ten. Wouldnt glamour be that world in contrast to everything around
him?
For Joffrey, the pictures of black men on his uncles jazz records from
the early 1960s embodied glamour. They showed black men in suits and
sharp sport jackets or white shirts and thin ties. They wore a very cool
variety of hats, always angled perfectly. Sometimes they were short-sleeved
and smoking a cigarette. It made Joffrey want to smoke, handling those
album covers at age nine. Their sense of style was unmistakable and spoke
strongly to a poor kid living in the irrigated desert valleys of Washington

State. He wouldnt have known how to express it as a child but he felt, yes,
black men embodied glamour. Even working class black dudes, the field
guys he had actually observed, had a certain style, the way they arranged
their collar or wore a nifty hat, they gave off style. Without knowing any
black men he imagined them strained through the harshest mesh of
American experiencefrom prison to academia and running onwards
through the executive political and business gauntlets. They had permeated
America and they were Americas greatest experiencers. A 21st century
black American man would have traveled through the criminal justice
troughs and eaten the extreme slops; traversed academia or local politics
and on into businessanother set of slops but, again, an extreme range of
exposure to everything American, its sexual extremities and crannies and
multiple personality disorders; all that would have been tasted by an
American black man.
(In the city you could see that beauty was available to the race but if
men climbed up out of animal brutality how did you account for the delicacy
of Asian women? Women so designed for the pleasure of the eye. The pencil
sketch of Asian women, so exquisite. But then, like a beginning novelist, you
see Him, God, getting the hang of His craft. The blond is more than OK but
she shines only for a season, an intense flash-flowering but short-lived
beauty so that you have to look carefully, for the call to blondness that the
human eye finds so kinetic, so inviting, deceives. Many blondes are fakes,
the eye, again, so easily taken in. Then you come to black women; Allah, or
the Great Spirit, was just sharpening his pencils before he created black
women. Then, with black women, He really got down to it. Oil painting. You
see her ass and you believe that God modeled the planets and spheres of
space on the black womans ass. Yes the black female ass cleared away
objectionsracial objections, historical prejudice, biological hypothesis,
eugenic theory, social explanationNo! It cleared away thought itself!like
a heedless drunk blowing foam off a glass of beer. In its reflexive see-saw of
commanding languor it declared itself an unmentionable and let itself be
seen as something coveted that would annihilate cautionnotes from mom
and dad (best not to get mixed up with a black girl, Skip)the black female
ass moved through society like overly confident moons or skidding planets
on their own trajectory gathering admirers while building latent
avalanches)
And Muslims: This was unexpected. But let me hang on this a minute,
thought Joffrey. How did I not hear about this? Im not uninformed, am I?
Why is the country so silent about this? A major religious group marked
conspicuously by dress, moves into secular American cities, very much in,
very much apart and I dont hear about it?
At first Joffrey didnt know what he was seeing. He thought the bundled
and clad women were Catholic sisters or some kind of strict Christian sect.
But they were Muslim women, deeply wrapped and religiously spoken for.
He had news for Allah: the scarves, the hijabs the burkasall the wraps, the
show biz of religionnone of it really worked if the goal was to prevent men

from getting turned on by the female form. There seemed to be many kinds
of female covering. Some gowns were heavy and some were sheer. When a
tall dark striking Muslim woman stood at a bus stop while Allahs own wind
tore at her, she appeared, essentially, in near nakedness with light colorful
silks clinging to her shapely body. Jesus had a better grasp of the male mind
when he said men, you gobble women down in your heart. Male lust in
imagination goes all the way down to the root. Clothing is no barrier to the
male mind. Sitting in the coffee shop you might notice a Muslim woman
enter, covered except for a small net at eye level. But her ankles are bare
and her brisk steps waft open the floor of her skirt. You notice she has
smooth brown skin. You then extrapolate: beautiful skin all the way up to
her neck. Beautiful skin everywhere, it must be. And more, there are two
generous bumps at chest level; for those bumps to show through all that
cloth they must be extraordinary.
Tell Allah its not working
The Muslims of south Sunbreak City were mostly from Somalia and they
lived mostly in Humphrey Court Homes, the revamped public housing
section near Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. These were new town houses
painted in understated primary colors and available for rent or purchase. So
many beautiful Ayaan Hirsi Ali knockoffs. In the mornings moms stood with
their children on mainline street corners waiting for school buses. A scene,
Joffrey reflected, right out of the Dick and Jane readers of his childhood
except in this, our new tableau, the mom is gowned in full hijab, the little
sister headscarf wrapped and the boy, a little man really, is free and running
circles around his sister.
:

At the Starbucks drive-thru Joffrey sat in his 65 Falcon (he loved the
bench seats, the dash ashtray, dash clock, dash AM radio) waiting to place
his order. He was about eight cars back and he observed a very black, very
graceful arm handling customer coffee cups and money at the service
window. It was a female arm, he could tell, and its dark motions stood out
tremendously from the world around it. A white arm would not, he believed,
set off the same visual ambush. Surely the other waiting drivers had been
struck by this black, sensual, folding-unfolding arm. From shoulder to elbow
to fingers, the whole assembly was nimble and sure, with the hand
confidently accepting coins and passing hot drinks, spilling neither. Was she
one armed? Who cares? Joffrey had to meet her, the whole her. The shapely
arm and expressive fingers suggested an ample sensuality like a Japanese
watercolor of a single cherry sprig hinting at a tree under full blossom.
For the next three mornings Joffrey waited in his Falcon at the Starbucks
drive-thru, entranced by the motions of the lithe and fluid black arm. But
when he pulled up to the drive-thru window with his chip-toothed smile,
ready to offer his beams of adoration, the arm, and its somatic owner, were
nowhere in sight. Was she real? Was he just imagining her? A different
barista, a guy, took his order.

He refused to enter the shop and ask some white barista hey where is
the black barista? You know, the one with skin so dark, so black. Black
really is beautiful. Tacky. No, you dont talk about color like that in big city
America.
The next morning Joffrey broke routine and parked his car in the
Starbucks parking lot and walked into the coffee shop. The loaded smell of
fresh ground coffee made him pause for a moment; it carried a hint of
jungle green. The walls, abstract beige, textured, were understated; the
customers, sitting or waiting, newspaper ensnared, were understated. The
black arm barista would stand out bewitchingly here but, as with his
previous luck, she was nowhere to be seen.
Back in his car Joffrey swerved around and entered the drive-thru lane.
Six cars idled in front of him. Then he saw the black arm. In the Falcon
rearview mirror he watched a car angle up behind him, he swiveled and,
hand signaling, begged the car to let him back out of the line. Free of the
drive-thru he surged into a parking space and ran back into the coffee shop.
He saw her. The open counter of Starbucks let you observe the baristas
at work. She was busy tending to her customers at the drive thru window
and, yes, as her single arm indicated, she was dark and beautiful, possessed
of the flammable sexuality he had imagined: small forehead, regal nose,
syrup-brown eyes, the African neck, commanding cheek bones, fluorescent
smileeven under her headscarf you could tell.
Note to self: Tell Allah its not working.
She was a declared Muslim but whatever male attentions her headscarf
or hijabwarded off were diverted to her butt which was spectacularly
rounded and perfection itself. Outlined, three-dimensional in super-tight
black waitress slacks, it offered itself as object of blissful contemplation. A
miracle butt as round as twin Jupiter moons but never fear, shes got her
headscarf on. Faithful daughter of Allah. A butt like that probably served as
Allahs inspiration for the creation of universal orbs: suns, moons, planets.
Never mind that her butt was so sensational that men forgot what they were
going to order standing in line. Never mind that her butt made men
recalibrate their entire sexual histories and present married lives: Should I
throw it all away? Would I if I could? Wife, kids, barbeque, Lexus? To clasp a
butt like that every night? She induced thought-guilt infarctions in men.
Arranging or rearranging their souls furniture. Many, many must have
contemplated converting to Islam.
Alas...alas...Joffrey did manage to talk to her.
Her name was Abdyia. Her teeth were blasting white as though still
reflecting sun off the agate sands of an Indian Ocean beach. He ordered a
tall late and when she let fall the four pennies change into his hand Joffrey
felt her palm and fingers for a few seconds. Whats the word for this
intimate touchingsmall flesh-feelsthat strangers do every day, many
times a day, in fact, and mostly involving coins? We dont have a word for it
in English, do we? The glancing contact with her soft palm spoke to Joffrey

of her vulnerable warmth and the bliss that awaited her blessed future
naked enfolder.
For Joffrey had a secret project. Hehe wanted a black girlfriend.
Joffrey wasnt going to let Sunbreak City pass him by. He wasnt going to
meet black women in Eastern Washington. No way he was going to come to
Sunbreak City, after life in the outback where there were no black women
and not seek out a black girlfriend. Black women were the model he felt
that all other females strove towards. They had heft and durability and
seemed built for rugged ocean-going, long-range, uphill, locomotive-style
sex. Thats pretty much the only way to put it and he was going to go for it.
Abdiya and Joffrey talked but the conversation didnt much go Joffreys
way.
Abdiya said:
Sure she was Muslim but she didnt make a big deal of it
big brothers...Yeah
And mom, a strict Muslim...
And a dad, owner of a halal butcher shop in Auburn
She lived with them.
Had she ever dated any non-Muslim guys?
No?
OhJoffreylike a Coyote slinking away from a meal of newborn
porcupines (after getting a whiff of nearby Mama Porcupine), Joffrey slinked
(slank, slunk?) away, thinking, feeling defeated: the project must go on
butunder God's heaventell Allah its not working
:

Joffrey had a studio apartment free at Dayfresh House, in exchange for

helping out with revolving population of recovering drug addicts. He
answered to the house director, Ben Marble, who everyone called the
Commander because he was a retired navy commander and because he
carried still the airs of a man used to having hundreds of young people obey
his every wish. He wore a small ponytail. The talkative drug addicts reached
consensus that the Commander missed out on ponytails when he fought in
Vietnam and that now he was catching up. He had thick forearms and while
he didnt talk much about the war rumor had it he worked the swift boats
and liked to ambush and gut his prey with a commando knife. True or not,
the Dayfresh residents seemed to approve a presiding spirit who was once
slathered up to his elbows in human guts and organs.
Walking into Dayfresh House for the first time Joffrey smiled and
whispered the phrase to himself, Shabby gentility. Now he knew what it
meant: a brass umbrella stand by the entrance door, a smoky chandelier
with blotchy light reflecting slices of himself in mirror strips along the walls,
a sloe gin red carpet with high-grade, oak flooring cracking underneath,
cabriole-legged wing chairs and coffee tables screwed to the carpet with
metal tabs and next to the wide staircase, a large oil painting of a peasant
woman crossing the Pont Neuf at dusk.

Joffrey had a studio apartment with a bay window that overlooked

Rainier Avenue. He thought about Fontina Mayeux, a woman he met
recently. Joffrey didnt think he should share with her every single thing that
struck him as unusual; she might think him a backcountry hick. Dayfresh
residents looked as varied as any group of adults walking to and fro in a
grocery parking lot but at least half of them came from jail or parole
programs. Each had committed to a minimum three month stay that
included therapy sessions, one-on-one counseling, spot drug testing and
group outings. Joffrey felt like a hick: it took him so long to figure out why
all the residents walked the halls carrying tea in tiny paper cups.
:

Jamus Delano was Dayfresh Houses only black resident. Im a first,

Jamus said to Joffrey one evening. He was blocking the doorway to the
kitchen on his way to the bathroom with a towel over an arm, a purple
toothbrush in one hand and an I Sunbreak City mug in the other. Joffrey
found it easy to fall into his loud, unrestrained aura. My mom was the first
black Registered Nurse in Sunbreak City. My dad was the first black bank
president. My sister the first black Nordstrom Headstone executive and Im
the familys first drug addict! Jamus then let out a blast of shouting
laughter so laden with psychological buckshotinsecurity, shame, defiance,
bluster, self immolation, jollity, resentment, hilarity,that Joffrey could only
stand there, a poor frozen headlight facing a family of prancing mule deer.
Jamus turbine-geyser-laugh washed away every social nub and tenet,
leaving you feeling mentally slicked down and prepped for his next
conversational bizrrit. You were always embarrassed for Jamus but
somehow you always felt the joke was on you.
And look at me! Jamus screamed, laughing. How come Im the only
addict to gain weight on heroin, huh? Everyone else trims down but look at
meI get fat! Joffrey backed up slightly, caught in the shrapnel hysteria of
Jamus laughter.
Business is really my thing, Jamus said. I think, he paused with his
signature dramatic caesura, I think I must have gotten hooked on drugs to
escape the continual blast of business ideas that runs through my mind.
They dont give me any rest. Im not bragging. They just dont. The ideas
just pour in. Take the 900 number. Phone sex lines mostly, right? The big
phone companies rake in millions every year off 900 numbersall that
heavy-breathing sex blather. Last year I tried to take out a 900 number. Not
for phone sex but for philosophical conversation. A Philosophy Chat Line.
Ive got a pretty good grasp of Philosophy 101 and so I thought: Who
wouldnt want to talk philosophy at lunchtime? Or so I thought. If a caller
got real technical Id have a copy of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Philosophy on hand. And if a caller got really pushy I could always get out of
any conundrum with a philosophical question like, Well, what do you think?
Anyway, I went downtown, to the phone company, down to corporate, to
enquire about getting a 900 number for a Philosophy Line. Just pure

philosophical phone chat. The girls at the reception desk didnt have a clue
what I was after. Im sure they thought I was the usual 900 line perv. And
the names I was tossing aroundKierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
KantIm sure they thought I was talking about strange sexual practices
theyd never heard of. So there I was downtown, in their mind a black guys
going on about weird sex positions and a new approach to 900 calls. The
more I tried to explain to the girls about the Philosophy Line the more
nervous they got. Soon enough, Ive got a security guardone on each arm
floating me towards the door. They gave me an extra shove to make sure I
landed on the cement stairs. I never did get the 900 Philosophy Line. I still
think theres got to be a market for it. Men and women who would like to
talk about Kant, Plato, Hegel and Descartes and Nietzsche at lunchtime or
stuck in commuter traffic
Another high-pressure burst of Jamus laughter made Joffrey take a step
back. Jamus moved forward laughing, shouting down the hallway.
:

My name is Joffrey Simpson ODay!

Thats how Joffrey introduced himself to Fontina Mayeux this afternoon
and now he lay on his fold-out Murphy bed replaying the encounter: The
striking black woman who worked as a Safeway cashier at the MLK store in
south Sunbreak City. he caught her on smoke break, outside the store,
standing next to the train of enmeshed shopping carts when Joffrey
introduced himself.
He first spotted her a couple weeks ago passing through the 15-or-Less
line and he liked what he saw. She had a slender, compact frame that she
maneuvered with confidence that made her seem taller than she was. She
usually wore an accessory that made her seem interesting as well as
beautiful: a bright scarf, a silk blouse or a pair of Robin-Hoodish ankle
boots. She wore her hair shortish but parted and teased out like ramen
noodles; it highlighted her narrow, darkly carved face. She had all the
goods. The serious frontage and all the rest. She had all the deliverables.
When it came time for Joffrey to stand across from her to pay he noticed the
cigarettes in her pocket. This was good, Joffrey thought. That meant that
she would take a smoke break outside.
And so the day came and Joffrey approached.
Now he replayed it in his mind: After introducing himself outside the
Safeway entrance he just stood beside her. She had recognized him from
the line and greeted introduction with a smile. My name is Fontina, she
said. Joffrey asked her for a cigarette; He got a close-in view. She had an
interesting line under an eye, not a wrinkle but a line.
Well, maybe it was a wrinkle, he thought, OK, so shes older than I am,
big deal.
May I read your palm? Joffrey asked. She held out her palm goodnaturedly. He flipped her hand over. I was trained in a different tradition.
Actually, we read the backs of hands. She held it steady. It was wonderfully

swirled, wonderful that a common happenstance of creationfingers

would contain so many load-bearing messages. He became absorbed in her
knuckle swirls. Her nails were done, had been done, recently. Lacquered,
nicely finished in a snow leopard pattern, white on yellow with no chips. He
couldnt get over that dark skin made finger swirls and wrinkles stand out
so. Maybe he held her hand too long; she withdrew it and asked, "What did
you see?"
Joffrey said, A handsome young stranger will come into your life. Soon.
She smiled, easy in conversational and social manner. She liked people.
Joffrey fell in love with her earlier, when standing in the checkout line he
saw her patience with an elderly Somali woman who was fumbling with her
welfare card. The line for her register was usually long and mostly men.
They liked looking at her and especially when she kept pulling her smock
back over her big uncontainable left boob. The men in her line turned into
happy bees, heavy-laden with pollen just treading midair, not wanting to
leave. Her smile, all-shattering and bright, was like the approval of a
beloved teacher. I better get in there fast, Joffrey thought.
Joffrey picked a daytodayand waited in his car forty minutes until
she took her smoke break.
Beautiful fingers, shes got tiny interesting lines under her eyes. If she
was this good in the small stuff she would be magnificent in the big stuff, of
which she has plenty.
Ill take up smoking if youll have coffee with me, Joffrey said.
What are you? she laughed.
An interested party.
You know what I mean. Asian? Interested in what?
So far so good, Joffrey told himself. Steady as she goes. Shes asking me
questions and she hasnt mentioned the hated word: boyfriend. The ugliest
word in the language, boyfriend. Fuck. He wanted to kill all boyfriends.
Unless you were the boyfriend, that was different.
Interested? Interested in you, Joffrey said.
Seriously.
Me? Well, some Injun. A little.
Fontina made a small humming noise and said, Irish and Native
American. Thats a doozy. You dont smoke?
Right. Joffrey coughed. Can I see you outside Safeway?
We are outside Safeway.
You know what I mean. How about Starbucks?
What do you do?
Student. Worker. Writer.
Writer huh?
I take a class anyway. At the Roethke House. Heard of it?
Not really.
Coffee?
OK.

Joffrey, on his bed, gathered what facts came to him: He had secured a
date with Fontina, cashier at Safeway at the local Safeway off Martin Luther
King, Jr. Way. Her full name was Fontina Mayeux, friendly, ssparky, so alert.
She had a beautiful line under one eye, a charming age wrinkle. (Men are
portrayed as cavemen, tit-ogling boors in the movies but they are more
subtle than that. They like small discrepancies in women. Didnt she
Fontinahave a bit of fat around the hips? That was OK.) Her beauty was
centrifugal, whacking and stunning at first and then centripetal, drawing in
customers in line. Partly, it was her dark skin, just dark enough to remind
everyone that Nature was a jolly, joyous, mischievous Creator-Imp. Blacker
than the bombazine stripe in a pair of tuxedo pants.
Now Joffrey summoned his mind to haul in more detail: Her nostrils are
so well carved, like two teardrops on their sides, pointing at each other.
Symmetry so perfect, it looks planned. Now if that is not an Argument from
Design I dont know what is. You might counter: What about Tamburlaine
and his pyramid of skulls outside the city wall? There is perfect symmetry
for you and geometric perfection to boot. Would something like that be God
inspired? What kind of God would design such monstrosities? Well, it is a
battle after all, Good vs. Evil, in the universe. I would say that one pair of
teardrop nostrils equals one pyramid of skulls outside the city wall, but lets
move on. The Artist then dabs in a few imperfections (if you can call them
that): that super cute narrow space between her two front teeth and one of
her boobs is bigger than the other. Her fingers, so black and textured, held
so much character. They seemed to talk to him as they handed Joffrey his
change (in bills, the coins spun down around a machine into a metal cup.
Detail, Joffrey detail: Her arms were super black and encircling; they
were sculptures of sensuality. Because of her blackness perhaps, her teeth
were a white beacon; her earsall black earswere beautiful. The saying
from the 1960s, Black is Beautiful would have been more true to life if it
were amended to, Black Ears are Beautiful. Try to find a pair of ugly black
ears: you cant. Fontina had come hither ears. And more: her breasts held
the promise of Eden. Didnt the Bible say, let her breasts satisfy you at
all times; and be ravished always with her love? Ill have to think about
them later. Set them aside for now, or Ill be overwhelmed. They were big
enough so that her smock could not fully contain them both; one of them,
the bigger, kept slipping out from behind the apron which she had to adjust
every minute or so.
Gays had it so easy. They could cry out to politicians that their love (for
male cock and ass) was legitimate and they could found hiking groups and
bowling teams and male choirs and even Christian fellowship based on this
love. But what about the Joffrey Simpson ODays of the world? Could he
start a club or a movement based on his worshipful adoration of Black
Women? No. Joffrey couldnt come out of the closet and say, I belong to
that minority of men who worship Black Women. What reporter or
womens club would sympathize with his love for Black Women? Heavily

upholstered, bountifully put together, Black Women. Youre a fetishist!

they would cry. A pervert! Fie fie!
The whole concept of coming out of the closet bothered him. Why must a
declaration of preference give way to identity? Is identity only preference?
Isnt preference meaningless? Joffrey was always amazed that powerful men
in positions of being able to do anything they wantedrock stars, rich men
passed over marrying Black Women. They settled, these free and potent
men, for the Parent Pleaser: the Cindy or the Becky or the Cathy. The
worlds secret, Black Women, passed them by. Fontina, except for a few but
very interesting lines, had no wrinkles. This is where glamour and media fell
down flat about men and interpreting male desire. They didnt understand
that men like individuality and quirks in a woman. Only dumbshits thought
women reached their peaks at age nineteen. Women strive for perfection
but men dont care all that much for perfection in women. They dont mind
the gap tooth or funny nose if a woman has warmth and character; if she
thinks for herself.