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December 1, 2001 alone together Young sullen men with velvet black skin walked single-file into the Lake Charles-Boston gym.  The players from B.T. Washington and G.W. Carver glided past me with quiet, liquid grace.  Head-phones on, DiscMen cradled like communion wafers in large, cream-colored hands, the combatants moved as though they were under water.  They found their places and draped themselves over bleachers on opposite sides of the gym and waited their turns.  Young dark gladiators in sneakers. During warm-up, I wrestled a barbequed pork chop sandwich into submission.  It was on white bread and my fingers still reek of the vinegar-based sauce that seeped through the bread pores onto my hands.  Almost everyone present was black except for me.  I was white-bread eating white bread wishing I was one of them. If I were one of them, I could shave my head or grow an Afro.  I could sport corn-rows.  If I were a black man in the crowd, I could wear a knit cap perched high atop my noggin; or I could wrap my pate tightly with black panty-hose. I thought I recognized some of my fellow spectators, but I couldn't be sure.  It isn't that they all look alike; on the contrary, they look nothing alike, especially in South Louisiana where so many have French Catholic backgrounds.  African-Americans with names like Pappillion, Chretien and Dellafosse.  No, I wasn't sure if I'd seen any of them before because I couldn't be sure if any of them had ever seen me. When I am sufficiently fascinated by things I see, I cannot seem to hear anything.  It's as though all my energy is routed to my eyes and to that part of the brain that lets me see.  My auditory system shuts down and I go deaf.  So I watched the game like I would watch a ballet that's lost its orchestra.  And the beauty of the silent darkness made me remember that we are all alone together.

©  2001 by the beastmaster