Punch Me Up To The Gods: A Memoir

by Brian Broome

We Real Cool THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. —GWENDOLYN BROOKS

As I watch the boy sitting on the sidewalk, I try to remember what real crying feels like. I can’t. I can only remember the tactics I employed to try to suppress it.

As Tuan’s father publicly chastises him for his tears, I remember how my own tears were seen as an affront. I remember how my own father looked at me as if I was leaking gasoline and about to set the whole concept of Black manhood on fire.

Black boys have to be tough but, in doing so, we must also sacrifice our sensitivity, our humanity.

White boys could just do whatever. But Black boys had to show through our behavior that we were undeniably, incontrovertibly the most male. The toughest.

The list of “girl things” included: studying, listening, being “pussy-whipped,” and curiosity.

telling me that I needed a thicker skin and how he’d rather kill me himself than see white people do it. I

Any Black boy who did not signify how manly he was at all times deserved to be punched back up to God to be remade, reshaped. Sometimes I would look up into his face after my ass-whuppin’ and I could feel the apology radiating off of him. But he would never apologize because he wanted to teach me that the world wouldn’t.

can only tell myself that it has already begun for this Black boy. I am witnessing it. I am watching the whole world ready itself to tell him about all the things that he cannot be.

She accuses me of cheating all the time and tells me that I have a “smart mouth” and that I use words that I shouldn’t know. She took me out in the hallway once to ask me who writes my English homework for me and when I told her that I write it myself, I couldn’t tell if she was looking into my eyes or over my head when she called me a liar. Sometimes, she makes me wonder myself if I am cheating.

I don’t think she likes Black people because Black kids give her a hard time. Black boys are always a disruption in class and the Black girls are too loud and bossy, so I try not to be like them and blend into the background. But she doesn’t treat me any better.

corny. I never know what not to do. It’s like they have a Black boy rule book that they won’t show me, and I always end up doing the wrong

know that it’s the eighties and everything, but I don’t think that white people should be dating Black people. It’s not what God wants. He made white people and Black people and meant for us to stick to our own kind. My school knows this rule. The whites and the Blacks are kept separate to stop the mixing. Nobody really says that out loud, but we do everything pretty much separately except when we are in classes together. The way it looks to me, white girls and Black girls are allowed to be friends but they never are. Black boys and white boys are allowed to be friends if they play sports together. White boys and Black girls ignore each other unless they are fighting. Black boys and white girls are not allowed to be friends for any reason.

mostly because of the fact that they get to leave now. But, part of that applause, I know, is because they don’t think I deserved to win. I wonder why I am always trying to be something that I’m not. Mr. Nye runs up onto the stage and holds Jodie Henderson’s hand like she’s some sort of prizefighter. He says some stuff into the microphone as I sit in my chair never wanting to move again. My shoes are untied. This feels like a practical joke. Black boys weren’t meant for schooling and everybody knows that.

She is chuckling at him and waving her fingers the same way the first woman did, but her fawning has caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end. I want to get up to block her view and tell Tuan that, when it comes to white people, he has a shockingly short time to be cute before he becomes threatening. Black boys don’t get a long boyhood. It ends where white fear begins, brought on by deepening voices, broadening backs, and coarsening hair in new places beneath our clothing.

Because my life up until then had shown me that white wasn’t just a race, it was a goal.

They seemed to tolerate each other well enough when my father had a job. But once he lost it, there were chasms of silence between them filled only with duty and avoidance. I didn’t quite understand what was going on between them, but they seemed to view

my siblings and me as an inconvenience at best. But the white people? They had it all figured out. They always had money. Their problems were fixable within thirty minutes if you added in the commercials for things we couldn’t afford. I watched them through the looking glass of the Magnavox with my mouth hanging open, wanting so badly to be a part of their world.

My family didn’t talk about things like this. The expression of feelings was discouraged. Dismissed as sentimental foolishness.

When I was a kid, I thought that the key to being a Black man was to learn how to properly lean on things to look cool. What I didn’t know at the time is that what Black men lean on the most, whether we want to admit it or not, is Black women.

Growing up, it didn’t take me long to learn that my gayness detracted from my Blackness. Black, gay men are punch lines to the Black community. An anomaly to be ridiculed. Relegated to the role of church choir directors. We are a nationwide family secret, courtesy of masculinity and religion.

I stare at my suitcase on the seat next to me and think about why I am often afraid of my own people. Afraid all the time that I’m not “Black enough.” Not Black enough because I am not man enough. Not man enough because I like men.

The Arena Health Club no longer exists. It burned to the ground under what some consider mysterious circumstances. One young man died in the fire. But I can show you exactly where it was. I can show you the exact geographical spot that sparked the end of my innocence and when the lights in my life slowly began to dim.

We learn that white boys are people and Asian boys are exotic and Hispanic boys are luxurious and Black boys are for sex.

Sometimes the life you had laid out for yourself ain’t the life that was intended for you to have.

even say “colored” on my birth certificate. That word always struck me strange like we was supposed to be white, but somebody took a big crayon and colored us in, bein’ real careful to stay inside the lines.

Seem to me that men only happy with the female sex when we just girls. They want us to stay girls because they don’t like grown women. They don’t like us at all.

I love to hear my Brian sing. But you won’t catch me fawning all over my children. White folks got plenty time to tell they children how wonderful and special they is, but that’s not how I was raised. A Black child need to learn discipline in this world because if they don’t learn it, they end up dashed up on the rocks. In jail or dead or worse. Ma and Daddy showed us they loved us by takin’ care of us. Makin’ sure we went to church and stayed outta trouble. I ain’t never heard “I love you” not one time from my mother and father and that’s just how it was. You take care of ’em and you make sure they do right is all. Junior was raised the same. His Daddy was the meanest man I ever did meet. He beat his kids. I whup my kids when they misbehave but he beat his. Knocked ’em clean across the room bloody. You don’t get coddled in a Black family.