ABSTRACT
“Andy Gibb? ‘Shadow Dancing’? You listen to that shit?” So I was finally exposed. The little nappy-headed Negro boy from the projects had been outed. In the privacy of my own bedroom, I could live out my Top 40 crossover fantasies with Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram, Chuck Leonard, and the rest of the jocks on WABC while sitting on the floor playing Strat-O-Matic and enjoying the music of Seals and Croft, Elton John, and Neil Sedaka. It’s not so much that I desired to be white. Rather, I desired to be normal. Brady Bunch normal. At age twelve I had experienced too many “Come Sunday” mornings of chitlins, grits, and the Mighty Clouds of Joy. The Brady Bunch kids never had to eat ham hocks and collard greens or listen to gospel music, and they were normal, so what exactly was wrong with my desiring to be like Greg or Peter? But in my Bronx neighborhood, such desires had to be controlled in public, lest your “ghetto pass” get revoked. Luckily, my friends were cool and allowed me to keep my pass, at least for another day. But that was not the end of having to “represent.” I spent my high school years deflecting charges that I was an “oreo” and a “wannabe”—fitting charges, I guess, against someone who had eschewed the more ghetto-fabulous styles of Adidas hard shells, colored Lee jeans, Le Tigre knit shirts (that ghetto fabulous stand-in for Izod Lacoste), and, of course, the 176requisite Kangol headgear. I favored Sperry Topsiders, patched and faded jeans, and pink crewneck sweaters.
