Shudder

Memoir

Photo by Kaysha on Unsplash

If you’ve never been followed before on the street: You feel it before you know it empirically.

We were in East Harlem, where I, a white boy, was living in 2019. We being myself and a writer buddy. He’d come out from Staten Island (born and raised) to join me at the famous Apollo Theatre a ways down on 125^th. Ta-Nehisi Coates was being interviewed there about his first novel The Water Dancer which had just come out. Coates was of course already famous for nonfiction, particularly his essay The Case for Reparations in The Atlantic and of course his brilliant Between the World and Me, a short stylistic masterpiece I’d read several times penned as a warning love letter to his son about being Black in America.

Anyway, the rub was that the interviewer had not been known: The idea was to go to the venue and find out. No one coming to the show knew who was doing the interview. This was fairly exciting. The show was at 9pm.

It was already dark. My friend and I had met at the corner of Lenox and 125^th, about seven blocks from my apartment. Harlem had felt mildly rough to me since I first moved in around early August. But I’d lived all over Oakland, North Portland, Philly, rough Latino gang areas of Ventura and Santa Cruz so I was pretty used to rough edges. I’d never really had any problems. I’d chosen East Harlem for a very simple reason: Cheap rent. I was able to rent a spacious two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan for under $2,000/month. It was, as is said in The Godfather, an offer I couldn’t refuse. I had some passive rental income from my small house in California and I made money freelance book editing…but I was far from rich.

The Apollo—a very famous club for Jazz, comedy, etc—was packed. We waited a while in the darkness outside, behind myriad people of all stripes, shades, sizes, races, ethnicities, etc: The beauty of diversity in New York. Everyone comes here, from all over the world; the true American melting pot which is one of its best features.

At last we got inside and slowly clambered around the mass of chattering people and got our seats about halfway back hovering above the stage down below us.

Long story short: There was an introduction and then Ta-nehisi came out and he looked just like his book jacket photos and he wore a dark suit with a red tie and he came out smiling and waving his hands, the darling of the Left, the Reparations-Whisperer, one of the best Black literary nonfiction stylists since Baldwin, arguably. One of the best stylists in general. A literary Obama.

And then the bombed dropped: The interviewer.

Oprah Winfrey.

She came out and the crowd exploded with yells, stamping feet and maniac applause. The whole place felt as if it were shaking. A rumble of frazzled chaotic movement and screeches, shouts and whistles dominated the huge theatre for a solid two minutes. And down below, there on the brightly lit stage, were Oprah Winfrey and Ta-Nehisi Coates, beaming smiles, waving to the crowd, and it all felt hyper surreal. Here I was—a California kid, 36 years old, an unknown little published no-name writer—and I was sitting at The Apollo Theatre staring down at Oprah fucking Winfrey and Ta-Nehisi Coates. And I lived here.

Wild.

At last things settled down and the interview commenced. They discussed Coates’s life and work, his famous essays and nonfiction, his more recent work, the process of writing his first novel, the process for fiction versus nonfiction, etc. After that Coates took questions. Then it was over and everyone loudly started chattering and filing out of the theatre.

A memorable occasion, for sure.

~

I was followed a little later.

My writer friend had to walk back the way we’d come, further east, to the train station on 125^th and Lexington. This train station was, fair to say, in a sketchy area, especially at 11pm, which it now was, Harlem enveloped in the cold dark of a frigid late October. The streets were not busy, not even on 125^th, though cars did pass going east and west, and the occasional scream of a distant siren sliced through the air like a vanishing ghost screeching in the wind. The street lamps shone down with a sort of weak gold light, shimmering slightly against the darkness.

The closer we got to the station the more anxious I became. Two white boys—both carrying the brand-new Coates novel under our arms, a gift from the show which everyone received, part of your ticket price—walking further and further east along 125^th. What were nice white boys like us doing in this part of town at this hour, and with books under our arms? I had my book jammed under my right armpit, like an extra wad of flesh, padded by my thick dark coat which I had zipped up tight against the frigid cold.

Under the subway EL train bridge and into the shadows and then at last we reached the station. A train just then raced by underground and I heard the metallic screech and thunderous rumble; I pictured the sparks along the rails and then smelled and felt the warm fetid whoosh of air which rose up through the grates we stood by on the street. All familiar by now. I’d been in New York since March, staying in several Air BnBs until getting my Harlem apartment.

I shook my friend’s hand and we nodded at each other and said the event was fun and to be safe and have a good night and then he descended down the graffiti-tattooed, shadowy dark stairs, as if stepping down into the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno. He was gone.

This would be the most challenging part. I had about nine blocks to cross before arriving at my apartment. The streets were even more empty now. I stood in dark shadows. I felt a few eyes on me from some men standing at the adjacent street corner but I didn’t look. It was 11:30pm now.

Jamming my hands into my coat pockets—the novel still bulging under my right arm—I started walking back west along 125^th.

For a couple blocks I was fine but then I sensed it.

The hairs on my arms and neck stood up on end. I didn’t look. I faced straight ahead, moving in medium-paced strides. But I felt it. A presence like a banshee. My heart started beating a little harder. I felt the blood circulating. Adrenaline. I wanted to look, turn around and say something but every cell in my body told me to just keep walking.

Finally the shadowy figure appeared. A Black kid, late teens, maybe twenty, tall and sketchy, riding a bike very, very slowly first behind me and now right next to me on the sidewalk, to my left. I didn’t look. I saw out of my peripherals. We walked like that for a solid minute, then two. Multiple times I almost spoke up, almost turned, almost stopped walking. But I didn’t. I just kept going. Eyes ahead, strides medium. No change. Only movement.

“What’s the book about?” the kid said, his voice edgy and rusty.

I swallowed and remained silent.

“What kinda book is it?”

Silence.

A minute passed, this kid just following right beside me on the sidewalk. I was approaching 5^th Avenue, where I’d take a right and then it was five blocks north to 130^th where my apartment was.

“What are you doing here, White Boy?”

Silence. My hands were trembling inside my warm, thick coat pockets. I was sliding, beginning to panic. What would I do if he followed me up 5^th? I didn’t have anything on me, a knife, a gun, nothing. (Not that I owned either anyway.) The streets were empty. No cops were around. No taxis. No other people. Just this kid and me. Out of my peripherals I noticed the young man, who wore a thick white T-shirt despite the late fall cold, had bristling arm muscles. His feet were huge. He had that worn down street look on his face, that look that said he had nothing to lose.

It felt like a contest and I couldn’t’ fail. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t break the silence.

“Fuckin White Boy,” he said. He made a dismissive, angry sound with his lips: Pshhhhhhhhh. “White Boy comin around here at night with a fuckin book under his arm like he owns the place, like he’s better than us.”

He spat onto the ground ahead of us.

Suddenly I felt a wave of anger and violence rush through me. If he touches me, I told myself, I’ll fucking give him every ounce of violence I got inside me. Motherfucker. But I was scared. Bone scared. I felt my wallet thick against my left pocket. I hadn’t even thought of that until now. Money. Maybe he wants money. Well he ain’t getting any money. Not from this White Boy. Not tonight. I was ready. My whole body was coiled like a Rattler. Fucker lays one hand on me and I’m going to explode. This drove a wedge of fear deep into my solar plexus. The anxious feeling of anticipation—of not knowing what was to come in any moment—tore through me like flickering flames of fire singeing my feet.

Home. I just wanted to make it home.

I reached 5^th Avenue and, swallowing, heart thudding, my innards trembling like a wildfire, I crossed the street and took a right, heading north.

I didn’t look. But I didn’t see the kid. I remembered a night many years ago when I’d been lost in the woods in Yosemite, hiking alone up at 10,000 feet, in winter, how frightened I’d been, how panicked and desperate I’d felt, and how grateful I’d been when I’d at last found the trail again just before dark, in time to quickly set up a tent, eat and sleep safely; I’d woken up at dawn the next morning happy to be alive and on the trail, feeling enlivened and refreshed.

Finally I did look back, right before I reached 126^th. The kid was a ways behind, still following. He emerged into some shadows and disappeared for a moment before reemerging and coming at me slow on the bike. We locked eyes. I held my ground. I refused to run. I didn’t want to fight but I would if forced to.

The kid cycled slowly over to me, rode in a little semi-circle around me, no words, and then slowly, casually cycled off, back towards 125^th.

I stood there waiting, watching, until he headed west on 125^th and disappeared.

“Jesus Christ,” I said out loud.

I turned and walked hard and fast back home to my apartment.