Free Slumberland by Paul Beatty Page B

a bewildered child looking at a disfigured passerby. The brunette’s gaze was one of an unrepentant sinner simultaneously demanding from her lord both satisfaction and salvation. I was about to choose the brunette—at least she wasn’t licking her lips—when Doris grabbed me by the elbow.
    â€œYou okay?”
    â€œYeah, why?”
    â€œFor the past ten minutes you’ve been standing here in the middle of the room like a statue. Everyone’s looking at you like you’re crazy.”
    Gently, like a psychiatric orderly leading a patient back to the dayroom, Doris returned me back to the bar and sat me down.
    A jaunty Afro-pop song fluttered her deep-set eyes and pursed her whisper-thin lips with appreciation. Fela Kuti will do that to you. Now it was my turn to stare. Her eyes were the same soft macadamia nut brown as her hair. The laugh lines in her face accented the high cheekbones and the square, almost brutish jaw.
    â€œWhat’s your favorite band?” she asked by way of readjusting me to my surroundings.
    â€œWhen People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water,” I said. “Well, they’re not my favorite band. They’re my favorite name for a band.”
    â€œThat is a good name, but did you ever notice that nine out ten times, bands with good names suck?”
    I liked Doris from the moment her tongue touched the roof of her mouth. She was very pleasant sounding. Her slight lisp gave her sibilant fricatives a nice breathiness, so that her S’s and zeds sounded like the breeze wafting over the Venice Beach sand.
    â€œWhat’s your favorite band name?” I asked.
    â€œThe Dead Kennedys,” she shot back, and for the next few minutes we volleyed excellent band names back and forth.
    â€œThe Soul Stirrers?”
    â€œ10,000 Maniacs.”
    â€œUltramagnetic MCs.”
    â€œDereliction of Duty.”
    â€œThe Stray Cats.”
    â€œThe Main Ingredient.”
    â€œThe Mean Uncles.”
    â€œLittle Anthony and the Imperials.”
    â€œThe Nattering Nabobs of Negativity.”
    â€œThe Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama.”
    â€œThe Butthole Surfers.”
    â€œPeep Show Mop Men.”
    â€œSturm und Drang.”
    â€œThe Big Red Machine.”
    â€œReady for the World.”
    â€œThe Cure.”
    â€œOne of the great mysteries of the universe is why bands with really good names rarely make it.”
    Doris took off her apron and took the seat next to me, abruptly ending her shift. I ordered something called a Neger off the drink menu. My German at this point was limited to a few insults and numbers under a thousand, but
Neger
looked suspiciously like
nigger
, and when the waitress delivered a murky concoction of wheat beer and Coca-Cola, two shades darker than me, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
    I loved the blatancy of the German racial effrontery of the late eighties. Black German cabaret singers, with names like Roberto Blanco and Susanne Snow, sang on late-night variety shows accompanied by blackface pianists. The highway billboardsfeatured dark-skinned women teasingly licking chocolate confections. The wall clocks in the popular blues joint Café Harlem read:

    Berlin Sao Paulo Tokyo Harlem
    My Neger was cold and surprisingly tasty, but I had to know.
    â€œSo what exactly does
Neger
mean in German?”
    â€œIt means ‘black person,’ ” said a woman eavesdropping in to our conversation.
    â€œNo, it doesn’t, it means ‘nigger,’ ” corrected Doris. “Don’t try to sugarcover it.”
    The conversation turned to my reasons for coming to Germany. Doris listened patiently, and without a hint of shame explained to me that she either “knew bible-ly” or knew someone who “knew bible-ly” every black man who’d set foot in the Slumberland in the past two years, and that she had never heard of or met any Charles Stone.
    A customer dropped a