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drinking martinis. Especially by yourself.” I didn’t have the will to remind him that I thought I had been with friends.
    He continued.… “You draw people to you; then you push them away.”
    I sure didn’t have to push the journalists away.
    â€œYou give that big smile and act like you’re just waiting for a man to take you in his arms, but then you freeze up like an iceberg.… People don’t know how to take you.” Well, they must not. I hadn’t been taken.
    We arrived at my apartment, and I gave my attendant the sweetest, briefest smile I had in me and stepped inside and closed the door.
    I entered into a long concentration which lasted until and even after I sobered myself.
    At the end of my meditation I came to understand that I had been looking for love, but only under specific conditions. I was looking for a mate, but he had to be acertain color, he had to have a certain intellect. I had standards. It was just likely that my standards eliminated a number of possibilities.
    I had married a Greek in my green youth, and the marriage had ended poorly, so I had not consciously thought of accepting any more advances from outside my own race. The real reason, or I think another reason, for not including non—African Americans in my target area was that I knew that if it was difficult to sustain a love affair between people who had grown up next door and who looked alike and whose parents had attended church together, how much more so between people from different races who had so few things in common.
    However, during that afternoon and evening I arrived at the conclusion that if a man came along who seemed to me to be honest and sincere, who wanted to make me laugh and succeeded in doing so, a man who had a lilting spirit—if such a man came along who had a respect for other human beings, then if he was Swedish, African, or a Japanese sumo wrestler, I would certainly give him my attention, and I would not struggle too hard if he caught me in a web of charm.

Brutality Is Definitely Not Acceptable

    Certain phrases excite and alarm me. That is, when I hear them, I respond as if I have smelled gas escaping in a closed room. Without having to think of my next move, if I am not hemmed in, I make my way toward the handiest exit. If I cannot escape, however, I react defensively.
    â€œDon’t mind me, I’m brutally frank.” That is always a summons to arms.
    I recognize the timid sadist who would like to throw a stone and hide her hand or, better, who would like not only to wound but to be forgiven by the soon-to-be-injured even before the injury.
    Well, I do mind brutality in any of its guises, and I will not be lured into accepting it merely because the brute asks me to do so.
    â€œI hope you won’t take this the wrong way …” is another bell ringer for me.
    I sense the mealymouthed attacker approaching so if I cannot flee, I explain in no uncertain voice if there is even the slightest chance that I might take a statement the wrong way, be assured that I will do so. I advise the speaker that it would be better to remain silent than to try to collect the speaker’s bruised feelings, which I intend to leave in pieces scattered on the floor.
    I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves to be ready and able to come to our own self-defense.

Our Boys

    The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.
    Here is a dark little tale which exposes the general pain of racism. I wrote ten one-hour television programs called
Blacks, Blues, Blacks
, which highlighted Africanisms still current in American life. The work was produced in San Francisco at KQED.
    The program “African Art’s Impact in Western Art” was fourth in the series. In it I