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at the foot of the stairs. Shenge jumped in and pushed the television out of the way. Jean ran down and tore off my sunglasses to see my eyes. He was furious that I was drunk and high. He had never been this violent with me before. He hated it that I would get high without him. He somehow felt responsible for this. It was okay if he gave me drugs because he felt that he was there to take care of me.
    “Who were you with?” he yelled.
    I crouched down on the floor and held on to his ankles. I was too scared to tell him what had just happened to me.
    Jean said, “I don’t want to know what happened. I can’t deal with this now. I’m dope-sick. Go upstairs and get some sleep.”
    I was sobbing and I couldn’t get up off the floor where I was crouching. So he carried me upstairs and put me in his bed. He said he was going to go out and get some dope and that he would bring me some so that I could sleep.
    While he was gone, Shenge came up and asked me what had happened. When I told him he said, “Don’t tell Jean. He would kill T., he would go crazy. No, girl, you did the right thing, girl, um, hum, hum, um, hum.” (Shenge would say um, hum, hum, um um very fast all the time. It was a habit. It was somehow comforting to hear.)
    Then he said, “Don’t worry, girl” with his beautiful singsong Barbados accent. “He is going to get you something so you can sleep. Don’t worry, we will take care of you. You are where you should be, you are home, um, hum, hum, um, hum.”
    Shenge was not gay, but he had this very feminine maternal side to him. He was like our mother or something. He looked after us. He was so gentle.

MOTHER COMES TO VISIT
    Jean-Michel doesn’t like Suzanne’s mother. He met her for the first time when Suzanne ran away to Canada to get away from him and he went there to bring her back. He hates Suzanne’s mother’s English accent. He said that just the way she speaks shows she is patronizing and a racist.
    Jean-Michel’s friends think Suzanne’s mother is marvelous and charming. She meets Fab 5 Freddy and Rammellzee. She says she understands Rammellzee and that what everybody thinks is gibberish in his talk is accurate.
    Jean-Michel keeps saying over and over again, “Stay away from my pile of drawings.” Suzanne’s mother becomes so fed up with hearing this that she steals one of the drawings.
    Later Jean-Michel pretends that Suzanne’s mother is invisible. He paints
Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari
. He tells Suzanne that these paintings are inspired by her mother’s visit.
    A few days after Suzanne’s mother has left, Jean-Michel wakes up Suzanne in the middle of the night to show her a painting he has just finished.
    “It’s called
Self Portrait as a Heel
,” he says.

DINING OUT
    Jean-Michel likes to take Suzanne to fancy restaurants. One night at one expensive Italian restaurant there is a long table with twenty white businessmen having dinner. Jean-Michel says, “They are the kind who have their own private jets.”
    The businessmen stare, whisper racist remarks and drunkenly laugh at Jean-Michel. They think he is a pimp because he is black and has dreadlocks and is wearing messy clothes. They think that Suzanne is a prostitute. She is heavily made up and has her hair teased up in a beehive.
    Jean-Michel tells the maître d’ that he is going to pay for the businessmen’s dinner. It costs him three thousand dollars. This is how Jean-Michel laughs back. He does this to fuck with them. Most of Jean-Michel’s outlandish behavior has to do with a desire to fuck with people’s racism.
    I was sound asleep in the Crosby loft one night and Jean-Michel was out clubbing. It was about five in the morning when I woke up because I heard people talking in the living room. There was Jean sitting on the couch with the most gorgeous, blonde, young, svelte woman. I was livid—how dare he stay out all night and come back with a beautiful woman. I called him into the