How Would Cool Steve Handle This?
by Jeffrey Rubin, PhD
Welcome to From Insults To Respect.
Today, I present a brief story that asks the question, How would someone people respect handle the challenging situation of racial discrimination? The story is an abbreviated section from my novel, Fights In The Streets, Tears In The Sand. The story’s setting, 1965, Brooklyn’s lower middle class section of Brighton Beach. Jeff Star, one of the two major character’s of the novel and its narrator has begun his first day at Lincoln High, and he begins to hear about a classmate some students refer to as “Cool Steve.”
The Story
After English, I’m heading to Biology and some guy behind me says to someone next to him, “Hey, Cool Steve’s in my health class!”
“Wow, Cool Steve! Really!?”
“Yeah! He sat right next to me.”
“Damn! Hey, tell him I say hi.”
There’s an excitement that accompanies this dialogue that somehow has me going, hmmm.
I go to Math and as I’m entering the room, I spot an old friend from Brighton Beach—Leroy Wilson. We recently had lost touch with each other because my family, when I was twelve, had moved from Brighton to Bensonhurst when my mom remarried. Leroy and I got together a few times after that, but after a bloody incident at a car repair shop that involved a close friend of mine, his mother wouldn’t let him have anything to do with me. I didn’t expect to run into Leroy at Lincoln. He and a few of the other kids my age who I knew from Brighton had always gone to either a Catholic school or a Yeshiva.
It was Leroy who had taught me to play the guitar. Man, we were really driven back when we were twelve and thirteen with this dream of becoming the greatest rock ‘n’ rollers ever. And when we would get a song down just right it was a wild thrill beyond compare—lightning and sparks everywhere. So, when I first see Leroy, I smile. But then it hits me. Leroy is black. In Boody Junior High, if any white kid was to be nice to a black kid, he would have been taunted.
How would the white kids at Lincoln react if they learn I have a black friend? Over ninety percent of the guys at Lincoln are white. I should be siding with whites, the more powerful group, the majority. Crap, he’s gonna blow my cover.
“Jeff! How’s ya old self doin’?” cries Leroy as he spots me.
I look up into Leroy’s eyes and then down at the wood classroom floor—my heart racing. Quickly, I move to an available seat that’s surrounded by seats other students are already sitting in. I avoid looking at Leroy, but I can feel him looking at me. All through class my eyes avoid his, but my heart grapples with his presence. When the period ends, I race out of class.
One more class to get through before I can head home for the day. In the hall, with hundreds of students racing by, and a couple of guys bumping into me, I check my program card—Social Studies, Room 316. I have to go up a flight of stairs. I look around for a stairwell. There’s one, down the hall. How could I treat Leroy like that? Leroy’s dark confused eyes flash before me.
“I’m Mr. Lofton,” announces a heavy-set, fortyish-aged teacher. “Welcome. Today we’re going to review some of the major news events of the summer. Then, later in the school year, we will be connecting our social studies lessons with these and other current events. I have some newspaper clippings here. As I read them, I want to get your reactions.
“Crime at highest level ever,” cries Mr. Lofton. “Latest statistics indicate 13 percent increase. When I was a boy, we used to camp out in Central Park. Now you’d be crazy to go there at night.”
I think about the newspaper story I read last week of Coney Island boys who were stabbed.
“Ignoring Nazi pickets and bomb threats, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King moved into Washington’s ghettoes and told crowds of his admirers that economic freedom is the new cry of the civil rights movement. A dozen brown shirted American Nazis picketed with signs saying, ‘America for whites, Africa for blacks.’”
Man, how I treated Leroy. Am I turning into a Nazi? Leroy’s dark confused eyes. An image of an exhilarating scene of us playing “Johnny B. Goode.” Am I turning into a jerk to be respected?
After school, I walk to Rocco’s Pizzeria over on Brighton Beach Avenue. Rocco is shoveling a new pie out of his large steel oven. I take in deeply the familiar aroma of baking dough, oregano, cheese, and Rocco’s underarms.
With a slice and Coke in hand, I discover none of the tables are empty. At one of them is this guy Brainy George Beck sitting by himself with his blond hair looking like it hadn’t been combed in months. I had noticed him earlier in the day in my gym class and he sat at my lunch table. “How come they call him Brainy George?” I had asked one of the guys in gym.
“Da guy’s a freakin’ genius,” came the reply.
With nowhere else to sit, I ask if he’d mind if I sit across from him. He looks up with these large thick glasses and nods his okay. “You were in gym today and at our lunch table,” he says as I sit down.
“Yeah.”
“I hate gym.”
“You do?”
“Can’t stand it—all the retards trying to prove they’re Mr. Atlas.”
“Hmmmm.” Personally, gym is a whole lot better than the rest of the garbage we gotta take at school. “What junior high did you go to?” I ask.
“Cunningham.”
“That’s the same junior high as this kid some are calling Cool Steve. I guess ya don’t think much of him since he’s inta sports.”
Oh, you mean Steve Marino? Steve’s different than the guys I’m talking about.”
“Izzat so?”
“Yeah. I respect Steve because, well, first of all, he’s not one of those idiots who picks on me because I can’t run as fast as the other guys. And I like the way he’s gutsy. He’s not afraid to stand up for what he believes in. And it’s the way he carries himself… the way he moves. I… I just have a lot of respect for Steve.”
Hmmm. Well, being gutsy shouldn’t be too hard, I think to myself. Hell, I was gutsy enough to get in lots of fights in my old school. But I don’t quite know what to make of this stuff about the way Steve moves.
When I get home, I go into my bedroom, sit on my bed, pick up my guitar and start to slide my fingers across the strings. Then I find my fingers playing a little piece that my former black friend, Leroy had taught me. It begins with a sort of angry, rough part, but closes with a gentle refrain. As I play, I imagine Leroy playing along, just like the old days. We start to kick it up, jamming up a storm, reelin’ and rockin’ all night long! And then that image of his dark eyes returns to me—how they looked in class—confused, hurt. I wonder, How would this Cool Steve handle this?
* * *
Good Question. The search for the answer is a story for another day. For now, I’m asking my readers who have the courage to propose their answers.
My Best,
Jeff
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Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.
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