Unforgettable cruise

Chapter 11 - (actual chapter 5 continues…)

Rebecca momentarily snort-chuckled. “We’re New Yorkers, we talk fast, so we run it together as one word. We never had time for row… houses. Come to think of it I’m surprised it’s not already smash-contracted to rohos. What?” she asked with a smile, regarding his latest look.

“Nothing” he weak-voice responded.

“Yeah nothing right” she couldn’t help affectionately smiling back, unconsciously aping his expression.

“Feeling strong feelings toward you. Tender, affectionate ones.”

Brief, fluttery, mutually-frightened passions swelled within each of them at different exact moments, quickly scampering at least a bit away in each case.

“I admit I used to be bigoted against New Yorkers. Irrationally, based upon likely-unfounded stereotypes and select personal interactions with a very few individuals, like *two*.”

She dared to tentatively lightly rest her hand atop his, “What you needed all along was an encounter like this with a nice Jewish girl from the City.”

“Careful: San Francisco also considers itself the capital-C City. Is Judaism important to you?” he asked in earnest.

“Nah. It’s my heritage and ancestry, but not my religion. This nice Jewish girl’s all secular.”

“Secular humanist? Atheist?”

“Jayzo, Clark; I’m *me!* I’m not into the labels. Don’t believe in God, nor any other divine power of that ilk. Gaia/Mother Nature almost, but not really as a matter of fact and science. But I’m **not** a scientist, nor a doctor, lawyer, indigenous chief, nor an engineer” she briefly squeezed his hand. “None of that. Just trying to be rational and smart and open-minded as I go through life, learning every day.”


This was only the start of a very long discussion roaming over many topics. They became so absorbed in each other’s stories—and each other’s immediate presence!—nothing and no one distracted them… not even a cute guy who’d several times caught Rebecca’s eye and passed right by them, nor several BBW on Clark’s radar who’d already visibly thickened up a little in his mere days on this cruise.


* *
“I didn’t mind growing up as a White Jewish girl in a heavily-Black neighborhood, nor did my parents mind, that I’ve ever known. What?”

“Nothing.”

“Stop it with the ‘nothing’, bae.” Rebecca couldn’t help smiling despite her annoyance, feeling so many positive things for this handsome, alluring man so obviously over-the-top for her—and for once, not just her top. “You’ve already ‘nothing’ed me over half a dozen times already this conversation, and every single time it’s something important, and usually something I’m glad you finally shared.” Needing to stretch, she unintentionally distracted him of necessity sticking out her chest(s). “Out with it.”

“I don’t consider this”—he pointed towards his then her skin—“to be anything near white in color, the way this piece of paper” which he quickly pulled from his pocket “is. Nor are the many wonderful and usually beautiful shades of brown on people who get called Black all that close to the true color black… not even some of the real dark brown-skinned people I’ve sometimes seen in photos, more often in Africa though elsewhere too.”

“Brown is its own other thing, m’ friend: mixed race.”

“Which makes no sense.”

“It makes *total* sense!” she stridently countered (still with a smile). “There’s only so much time in a day, NYC’s a busy place with busy people who have places to go and things to do. We’ve already established *and you’ve agreed* that the tendency in our society and at least in American English is to go for the fewest number of syllables, so we can speak faster and get on with life.”

They had indeed agreed on that, so he had to nod to confirm his ongoing agreement with her point.

“White, Black, and Brown are each one syllable—monosyllabic, but that’s 5 syllables and one syllable is 4, hence the way I first said it. Caucasian is 3, or maybe to some people 4. Euro-Caucasian is even worse at 5 or 6, so White wins. African-American is a whopping 7 syllables, and not all our dark-skinned peeps are recently out of Africa anyway. Black avoids pissing people off by getting their ancestry wrong, and is one syllable, so it’s a double winner. Not only is Brown the syllabic winner compared to mixed race or that strange phrase mulatto, but the former of those two makes it sound like we’re putting people in a blender or mixing them like a cocktail with a swizzle stick or that they’re mixed up or something, and the latter sounds like some kind of mule lottery. *Play Mule Lotto and win the mule of your dreams!*” she suddenly loudly exclaimed like an excited advertising announcer, with an equally exuberant zesty playful (and a touch impish) expression.

Clark’s explosive all-out laughter got Rebecca laughing to the point of tears too.


Several elsewhere around and passing through the lobby clearly heard her sudden dramatic explanation. Some smiled and/or laughed. Others looked on quizzically.


“Oyee. So where were we?”

“You were describing what it was like to grow up as what you prefer to call a White girl in a Black neighborhood.”

“Yeah right yeah. It wasn’t all Black, with others besides us in the Davidson household, but mostly it was. Stayed that way from my birth through my youth and is still kinda like that, less so with the gentrification in recent years.”

“How long did you live in that house?”

“*Looooonnnng* time. All the way ’til I moved to L.A. 20 years ago. Went to college super duper locally at Pratt Institute, literally within walking distance 9 blocks away, right there in the ’hood.

“So anyway, my experience of race is different. Everyone around us was Black, or some Browns now that I think about it. Whatever. Point is it was normal and how it always was to me. Wouldn’t say I’m a bleached-out Black girl or anything, but I could hold my own doing the dozens and bustin’ the occasional rhyme on time on the line, boyeee. It was intercultural exchange from birth, so normal I would have thought that term weird, had I understood it as a young child.”

“When was that?”

“Ohhh, *sneaky*, Mister Barr! Trying to entice my age outta me!”

“A general decade will satisfy my curiosity.”

“I’m a child of the ’60s. And if you suggest 1860s, I’m layin’ a beatin’ on ya.”

He suddenly pulled back.

“*Kidding!*” she assured him, rapidly repeatedly rub-caressing his hand. “By ‘child’ I mean born then. Not like the 40s-50s-born Hippie children of the ’60s.”

“Yeah, I’m end of the decade before, so we’re not that far apart.”

“*Whew!* I thought you might be younger, and I’d be too old for you.”

“Too old to be friends?”

Tellingly, Rebecca suddenly and sharply turned away. “Moving on…” she started once she turned back, “’60s and ’70s it was normal and natural for Mrs. Franklin next door to be showing my mom how to prep and cook collard greens, and other times Mom would show her how to make Latkes. Nowadays everyone prob’ly looks on the Internet rather than be sociable and visit their neighbors, but that’s how we rolled back in the day. We learned to make what weirdly gets called soul food and other Black culture cuisine*s* plural specialties; they learned how to make Jewish staples. I remember my first boyfriend Jamal from 3 houses down and I would sit on the front stoop of either of our houses and share matzos with an onion-okra-corn meal spread that was pretty rad, as you westies say… or at least I see and hear that since moving to this coast.”

“I’ve heard that first loves are memorable. Mine was, but not necessarily in a great way.”

“Nah nah: this was high school puppy love—training wheels training bra love. Not that I’d ever worn a training bra, having grown right into an adult woman’s 36C in under a month from when the hormones turned on and I first started developing. Two weeks later 36D, then on up from there.”

“I’ll not ask you what age that was.”

“Eleven. Start of 5th. grade.”

“Oh” he winced.

“Yeah, it was rough. But I was and am a tough cookie, and boobs are power. So far no breast cancer knock wood”—*Knock knock* she did on the couch’s wood frame—“so apart from social issues, it’s all good.”

“No back pain?”

“Everyone always asks that” she wanly smiled. “Yes back pain, but not debilitating. There are moments on occasional days where my back hurts and demanding privileged asshats may be dogging me more than usual when I ask myself why the hell I’m carrying these huge flesh torpedoes around. But the same thing’s true other times or once in awhile the same time carrying around all this belly fat, butt fat, hip fat, and so on. It’s how I’m made—all of it I just mentioned. Surgeries can be dangerous as well as expensive, with no promises that things removed won’t grow back.”


Lost in thought listening to what she was sharing, Clark’s eyes had drifted down on her breasts and had been there longer than he knew. Even though he’d not been focusing there (nor anywhere), he quickly snapped them back up to hers.


“Y’know, here’s the thing—and I don’t wanna confuse you: I’m not good with strangers staring at my boobs. Yeah they’re huge, yeah they’re eye magnets, yeah you’re all programmed to go for them—you men into women plus some women into women. It’s not that I don’t like having them most of the time, because if I didn’t, I’d more proactively do something about it. They’re awesome and I love ’em myself.

“The problem is Privilege: too many men—and sorry hun, but it’s so far all men—freely staring as long as they want as though it’s their innate right, regardless of how I whose body parts they are may feel about that kind of attention. Worse are the ones feeling so entitled that they go for a grope, though those idiots get the hardest, fastest kick or punch to the groin I can give them—no holding back, going for permanent damage so they won’t reproduce and make more of themselves.”