This story is part of a collection of creative nonfiction narratives centered on the author's encounters with Black people, which is titled Encounters in Black. Some of the stories, like this one, come from memories of incidents in childhood. Some take place while living overseas and as an adult. This flash fiction tries to recall a halfway house for drug addicts that the author was a resident at in his childhood in Boston. There will be about 50 stories total in the collection.
Johnny was new to the program. He sat in the encounter group to listen to a bunch of white teenagers scream and holler at each other at the top of their lungs, as the program seemed to require. Johnny was an African American. Johnny was Black. Johnny was slouching on the 3-seat couch; one of the boys, Bobby, had to scrunch a little to make room for Johnny's spread. He made a face toward Kelly, the group leader, who had come over from the juvenile detention center to get away from the violence and squalor and indifference. This halfway house for drug addicts, and this encounter session, had him believing he was doing something good for the wider community of Boston, which had seen dozens of youths die of overdoses and hepatitis in the previous couple of years. Kelly noted the kid's expression, glanced at Johnny but did nothing, mostly because Matty was at full throttle screaming letting Michael know what he thought of him. "Come on," said Kelly, "Let him know how it made you feel when he commented on your look when you came back in." There was a pause, then a burst of rage: "You make me so angry, so angry, it's unreal." Kelly was referring to how the program required some newbies to get their long hair shaved off and were forced in the first couple of days to wear a sign around their neck and walk around the neighborhood for a half hour or so. Matty's sign read: "I AM A DINGBAT, PLEASE HELP ME." Michael thought that was the funniest thing he had ever seen. "Shiiit," he had said to Matty, "You let them walk you round like that?" "f*ck you," Matty had said, which was overheard by one of the counselors and reported to the directors. That night, after dinner, around a long table facing the backyard garden, and a pleasant simple dinner of spaghetti and homemade sausage featuring fennel seed prepared by Ma Fama, who'd come over from juvie, and who grew her own tomatoes, and who just "loved" her boys, they called Matty into the office for a "haircut." Basically, the three directors screamed and yelled at him and told him how little control he had and where he was heading and that he was a "dope fiend" who said he wanted help, and that kind of thing, and Matty had to stand there and take it like he was being dressed down by drill sergeants. Matty had red hair, and yelling rouged up his face, and he had sleepy dope addict eyes that made him look like a cartoon figure, at least to Donny, the expeditor (the white glove guy who checked to see the druggies did their daily chores properly and got yelled at if the job wasn't spick-and-span). Donny wasn't a druggie. He was just a kid who somehow got recruited to the program from juvie in the earliest days of the house set-up and was staying on as a role model. He was like a junior counselor. He sat there like Tom Sawyer smoking a pipe made of painted wood and shaped like Mao Zedong, smoke coming out of the top of Mao's head, and dropping down his 17th cup of coffee of the day. Bobby was making a face again. Michael looked unfazed by the rage directed his way, not just by Matty but some of the others who were showing support for Matty's righteousness. "Way to tell him, Matty," and that kind of thing. But Johnny saw something amusing in the way Matty's face lit up red and sniggered. His legs were spread wide, encroaching on Bobby's space. Like he was the most comfortable man in the world. Kelly looked at him, and goes, "Hey, man, why don't you dig yourself." Donny had just lifted the coffee mug to his mouth, when Johnny retorted, "Why don't choo come on ovah here and suck on my big black dick." Donny immediately started cracking up, coffee came pouring out his nose, he had tears in his eyes. Like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He had coffee all over his clothing and he couldn't stop laughing and got up and left the meeting to get his sh*t in order, as they say. He could hear Johnny giving back for what they gave, with his deep baritone voice, then it got quiet. Donny went upstairs to his room and changed his pants and shirt, still cracking the f*ck up. They say a lot of humor is the surprise element on delivery of a line, and Johnny had hit a homerun as far as Donny was concerned. Although, he had noted that no one else had seemed to find it funny. sh*t, he thought, he might end up getting a haircut for his outburst. He stayed up there to make sure he was calm when he returned to the group. Then there was a commotion downstairs, which wiped away Donny's crazed face. It was like he's just heard the punchline for the futility of human condition in an indifferent universe, some false god addressing the wrong guy at the wrong time and being told what he could do with egotism. Donny stepped slowly down the stairs. The group was outside now. Johnny had taken off. The counselor had some calls to make to the police and to the director and so the group was adjourned. The residents went off to their spots in the house and out in the backyard to have a smoke and maybe retire, as it was after 9 pm. The next day the house had another Black guy sitting in the recruitment chair facing the wall to think about his predicament and what a dingbat he was. His name was quickly forgotten, as he ran his ass off by lunchtime. You could see he was skeptical about being amidst a bunch of young drug addicted white people. Donny had seen the look on his face when he sat out in the hall while they had their morning meeting, the boys and counselor going around talking about how they felt and what they were going to do that day to effect change (presumably engrossed in thoughts about being a dingbat whose parents had thrown up their hands, and now had to change or get sent to the Shirley School for Boys, where they might meet up with a new form of comeuppance; he knew the Black guy wouldn't last). In fact, after the latest young Black man did a runner, they stopped trying to recruit them.
It was a concept house. Based on Synanon values. Maybe a little Odyssey House. Run by defrocked priests and misfits of the system. People hugged and said they loved each other. Screamed their detestation at each other. Nobody was allowed to listen to the Rolling Stones or any druggie music. One counselor named Paul played the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" on the upright piano that had been donated to the cause -- way beyond the tolerance level of most residents. We got edgy, Paul. Haircuts were rife. There were posters on the wall: one depicted a turtle and the slogan that said: Behold the tortoise who only makes progress when he sticks his neck out. Someone had put a cigarette out in his eye. Hardly anyone stayed very long; almost everyone ran eventually. Even the girls, when they were introduced to the program after about a year. No way it was a concept everyone wanted to introject. Donny had liked Susan, and didn't care if she was a druggie, and wondered if his trying to hit on her had contributed to her continued delinquency. She had looked at him like he was a dingbat if he thought he was getting some of her. She was there for two weeks. He probably would have run away with her. Donny stayed until they found a foster home for him. He had seen it all at the concept house. Suicide, psychodrama, marathon screaming sessions set on a remote Maine island where he ran naked through the woods and wished Susan were with him, cracked open and buttered his first lobsters, smoked like a chimney. He went to school each day; Catholic: nuns and then brothers. Was confirmed a Catholic. Graduated from the program, coming back from his foster home, to be feted at a VFW lodge where folks said nice things about him and he drank too much wine. And he got a pair of buffalo nickel cufflinks from the Governor's wife that he eventually had reconverted to coins and sold and bought the latest Moody Blues album with. But the halfway house never had another Black resident after Johnny. He was a oner. And he just didn't give a sh*t.
Other Stories Published in the Collection so far:
