Even If You Blink You Won’t Miss It Part I

Papa & Eugene

“Dessert? Nah, I don’t want dessert. You should skip it too. You’re getting a little, getting a little paunch. Maybe you should stop drivin that fancy car of yours around, that luxury chariot you got and get this bike out your living room. You should put that tart down too before you look like one of those people who look like they love dessert. My dessert, your dessert, and everybody else’s. Shit.”
“So… that’s a ‘no’ for dessert then?”
“I’ll take some more of that wine. You got anything else for me to munch on?”
“Yeah?! There’s more stew, more salad, more bread. I can make you another, you want another plate?”
“Nah, then I’m good. Just more wine then.”
“If you’re hungry you can have more of what I made. I was gonna make a doggy bag for you. There’s plenty. I can’t eat all this anyway.”
“You can’t eat it? I can’t eat it either, shit.”
“Heh? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Forget it. How bout the wine?”
“Yeah sure. Here. I can get you something else if you want.”
“That uh, that stew, that’s like something your mother used to make?”
“Yeah. It is, why?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay… what’s up?”
“Man… I asked you… no, no. Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
“Why you bring me up here?”
“I… wanted to see you. I wanted to spend some time with you.”
“Then why didn’t you do like I ask and take me to Inzia. Why the, ‘Let me call you an Uber’, why the Ima come pick you up? If you weren’t gonna meet me at a restaurant, like I asked, why did you want to bring me here?”
“I… phew… we could’ve met at a restaurant but… I looked at Inzia, and it looks really good but the buffet is only open on the weekend. Friday night and Saturday night.”
“Okay, so you meet me then.”
“I can’t meet you this weekend because Michou is coming from Antwerp and he would be cool with, actually he, he wants to meet you but…”
“Everything gotta be your way.”
“That’s not how it is.”
“That’s exactly how it is. You gotta pick me up in your new ride, take me to your bougie house, and serve me food your mama used to cook, then tell me you wanna see me but you can’t see me because you have… you have something more important to do.”
“I didn’t say I had something more important to do. You said that! I said that the restaurant wasn’t open. I thought I would cook for you here, not to ‘show off’ my ‘bougie’ home, like you said. I thought that when you make a homemade meal, that you put some, some love in and it tastes like that because you made it yourself for someone else.”
“Where did you learn this shit? And why, why did you make something that your mama used to cook all the time and…”
“So I can’t make anything that mama makes?”
“No you can’t.”
“I don’t unde… I really don’t get it papa. You gotta help me, you gotta help me out here. It’s, it’s like everytime we meet, we gotta fight. I swear I, I wasn’t thinking that you would be… I don’t know, disturbed or whatever by me making something, and, and yeah, something mama makes? Why? Why would I, why would I ev, even thinking about not making something that she cooks? And picking you up, that was so it was easier for you to get here. So you didn’t have to, to change trains and, you could just come here and eat. I made the stew last night so it would taste better, and so I could, I could get you and come here and heat it up. That’s it!”
“That’s the thing. Nobody asked you for that and you didn’t do the think I asked you for!”
“Because it was closed. It was closed. I couldn…”
You say you want to see me but you want to see me like you wanna see me. This ain’t for me. I told you what I wanted. I wanted the buffet. You brought me all the way out here where I have to eat your mother’s food, where I have to see pictures of you and her, and Jerome and Nicole everywhere I look… I have to take a tour of this place…”
“This place? Papa… I, the reason why I wanted to send a car or to come get you was cos, sometimes you, you, you know, you cancel. Sometimes. You do!”
“Oh fuck, not this shit again, here we go. The ole absentee father montage.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what you want? I am desperate man, I am thinking… and overthinking, and pulling my hair out. I am… I want to meet you halfway, I want to…. stay away if that’s what you want. If that, means that I stay away and we meet up when you want, like you want… I would carry you on back if I had to… what… I do everything that I can. I’m constantly thinking about how I can do things like you want. How to please you. I’m, I’m trying to do everything to make you feel comfortable.”
“Well aren’t you the hero of your own sad little story and I gotta be the villain so you can be this big man with all these problems. You too old to be actin like this.”
“I never said that. Never!”
“You don’t have to. It’s what’s between the lines. It’s how you operate. You, Jerome, and Nicole you can act like, like I’m the cause of your great sufferin but sooner or later you’re gonna have to stand up for yourself. You’re gonna have to stop leaning on me as a crutch for your… for your own, for what you do with your own lives.”
“Papa, no one is uh, no ones, no ones doin that. We all, everybody tried with you. I’m still trying.”
“Ha ha ha!”
“I’m trying here.”
“Trying! You’re trying! Nigga you don’t know the first thing about ‘trying’. I stayed here. I didn’t have to do it, but I stayed here, I gave up everything to be, to be a father to you. All of you, and you all so good at that wounded act that you got goin, your mama’s a great teacher by th…”
“Don’t! Don’t bring her up. Don’t bring her into this. Not anymore. It’s not about her. You gotta stop with that.”
“Oh ‘I gotta stop? I gotta stop’? See that’s the thing with you. It gotta be your way. I don’t like the stew. You overcooked the fish just like she did. Can I say that? Can I, teacher, teacher, can I teach you something true? The fish was overcooked, you put too much salt in the stew, and that apple tartin look burnt. But you don’t wanna hear that no? You don’t want the truth. You want your truth and it ain’t even your truth. It’s somebody else’s, mostly your mama’s.”
“Sometimes papa, I wonder if even you know… what you’re talking about?”
“Oh I know what I’m talking about. Do you? Do you know? Cos I know, but I don’t think you do.”
“The thing is… sigh…”
“What is it son? Tell me now? You tried to rip me a new one and wash my face in all of yesterday’s sorrow. Tell me, what exactly is the ‘thing’? What is it? You a big man now. Speak!”
“It always ends up like this. It’s like you want me to be a little kid again.”
“No! No. That ain’t it! It’s like you want to be treated like a little child. You want me to act like you think a father is supposed to act. You still believe that I am this perfect, or at least supposed to be, this, this god. Nobody’s father is god. My father sure as hell weren’t no god, and anybody that tells you that there father was god excused all the bullshit their father… shoveled away when they, that they were knee deep in when they weren’t lookin. They didn’t see that a father is supposed to fail. He has to do it, but you gotta, you gotta see that your father is someone who did not exist to be your father. That is not, that can’t be his sole purpose. He was not born to be your father point blank. And that’s what’s wrong with you, and you are, all of you, now in your thirties, nothin but children… that’s what’s wrong with you. You’re underdeveloped. You’re not fully grown. You’re not adults. That’s what all of this is. This is theater. You comin down there to pick me up from my little shit hole in your mercedes, blastin Miles Davis. You bringing me into this, how many bedrooms you got, apartment that you gave me what was this, today was what, the third tour or fourth tour of the house? You want daddy to see that you’re doin such a good job… that, and, you also want daddy to see that you did it all like you tell yourself, without him. Without his help. This is your way of…”
“No, no, no…”
“Well what is it then? What do you… what do you tell yourself is going on here? Please don’t tell me what your mama thinks or what she’s coached you to say. I don’t wanna hear one of Jerome’s sermons, but I might respect you just a little bit more if you cussed me out on the voice box like Nicole every now and then. She the realest one in this family.”
“I’m trying to… phew… to…”
“To what Eugene? You can’t even say it, even if you know what ‘it’ is. You just can’t say it, can you?”

Michou & Eugene 

“Ja… it was, it was nice.”
“It was ‘nice’... oof. Tell me how you really feel.”
“Yeah… it was nice. Like I said. The food was really good. I thought it was gonna be more… more, actually I don’t know what I thought but it was, it was okay actually. Not too spicy.”
“Ha! Not too spicy. You didn’t like it.”
“No, actually I enjoyed it.”
“So…”
“Ja, so, it was good but I didn’t feel particularly like I was supposed to be there, I guess. Like people wanted me to be there. That’s all. I felt like I had something, I don’t know. It felt like a, like an interview a little bit.”
“Really? An interview for what?”
“I don’t know, kind of like a job interview.”
“You felt like that was a job interview? It was, it was kind of like a small, I guess dinner party. Not a job, professional vibe at all.”
“Ja, but that’s what it felt like… that’s my opinion of it. It felt like I had to be, to be alert and I had to make people like me and… I had to be smart. I had to know what to say, and to really choose my words, very, very carefully. That’s what I mean. Just like a interview. I just couldn’t, I didn’t feel like I could relax. And… I came here to relax and to spend some days with you because you won’t move to Antwerp.”
“No. I’m moving to Antwerp. I just got back here. But let’s go back and talk about Adimchi’s.”
“Ja okay…”
“No, I’m just, I’m just curious what, what you mean or what it feels… what makes it like you think it’s an interview?”
“I already told you. I know that I… I have to, to be very aware. But it’s a lot or maybe I’m not used to doing this. With my friends it’s, it’s different. That’s why I like when you come to Antwerp. Well, that’s not the only reason why.”
“Ha. Yeah, I guess we both like that. But it’s… it’s not so different from when I see or, when we go over to your friends or go have a drink. I also sometimes… I don’t know. I don’t have to watch what I say bu… yeah, sometimes I, sometimes I do.”
“No! It’s not like that at all. If you, if you do that, you do that because you want to. We don’t, no one makes you feel different or treats you like you’re… somehow different. Everyone treats you the same. With my friends it’s just ‘Oh there’s Eugene’, and that’s it. With your friends it’s very different. Like tonight I was on the terrace and I was talking to one of Ademechi’s… his friends and I was talking about all of the, because it’s so much color, it’s so colorful and he, he has so many photos and paintings, and I do know what else you call it, in every room. And I thought I was being just, making an observation, and I told uh… that, that girl… agh, I can’t remember her name, the one with the dreadlocks, that girl! I told her that I never went to a house where there were only pictures of Black people. It was really, yeah, not strange but different. That’s it! I didn’t say anything else. It was, I wasn’t trying to, to insult Ademechi…”
“It’s Adimchi. His name is Adimchi…”
“Oh, okay… well, when I said this afterwards she made a face like, ‘Uh’, and then she acted like she was so offended and, and she said something like, ‘You probably have no problem when you go to a place where there are only pictures of white people on the walls’, and I didn’t understand what she meant. I said it wasn’t about ‘race’, I mean she made it about that…”
“Who are you talking about? Cos, cos you said that girl and there were like three. I don’t know if we should call them girls… but, but women.”
“Ja okay, she was a woman. I’m not saying she’s not, I just, ja I do that with every, everybody, every woman… I guess, because a woman is someone, that’s like what you say for an old woman not someone in their like twenties or thirties. I thought but she was so unfriendly and so impolite and so offended. I, I tried to be clear and then I said that uh, for example, Ademcee, that he had a lot pictures of his family and that I didn’t, I didn’t know at first if they were his family because he had some really, really old pictures and I thought they were too old to be from his family.”
“What? What does that mean ‘too old to be from his family’?”
“I just meant that, I didn’t think anyone from Africa, yeah but maybe this is naive, but do most people from Africa have photos of their, I don’t know, of their gran gran parents that are that old? Then she just, she just walked away and she didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night. She didn’t even say anything she just walked away and when I looked at her, in her direction I could tell she was, she was ignoring me. And before that Ademechie, he didn’t… he barely looked at me. He said hello and that was… I felt like I was unwelcome and I was the only white person there.”
“Okay so that’s a lot. First, well, working back, working backwards you were welcome to the, to the dinner thing. Adimchi said so, and he invited you when he invited me. And also, yeah, you gotta be careful, you gotta think about what you’re saying and not just think… but think about what it means. What it could mean.”
“So I have to think all the time!”
“Not all the time. Sigh… but yeah some of the time, some of the time you do.”
“Because it’s too much. It’s too much when I have to do it like that, when it feels like everything’s on my shoulders.”
“It doesn’t… it feels like that to you? One dinner? Just a small thing, not so many people and that’s how you feel?”
“Yeah, I feel like, like, you’re not gonna like it if I tell you, but you and these people, you give so much space to the racism that everyone that you meet is a racist. That’s not possible. Everything is not racist. I’m not racist because I’m white. I didn’t ask to be white just like you didn’t ask to be Black. It’s, it’s a lot of me thinking about every little thing that I do and it’s so unfair because I’m the only one here who has to do this. When you are in Antwerp or with my friends here, you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to think can I say this or not. But I come here, and if I smile, it’s too much. If I ask a question about the food, it’s rude, it’s racist. If I make an observation about the deco, it’s racist. Everything is racist, but everything is not racist. That’s not, that’s not real. Sometimes I… I think that this thinking about and talking about ‘Black this and Black that’, when are we gonna talk about what to do about it? That’s the conversation! If you can’t, If I can’t eat with you and then have a polite conversation, and it doesn’t have to be uh, it doesn’t have to be about teaching all the time… That’s another thing… Your friends, they act like I don’t know anything and they know everything, but I know about this already. She got it totally in her head that I was racist because I said that I didn’t see something before. That’s all I meant. I didn’t see so many pictures of Black people in one house before. What did I do wrong?”
“I think you… I think you, maybe the word is ‘assume’ a lot. I think you assume a lot about how I am when I’m with your friends but… uh, sigh… I don’t know if this is the right time for me to really get into that. I’m not sure. Sigh… We are not always talking about racism, but we do talk about sometimes cos we need to.”
“Ja, but everytime? When I meet your friends that’s what it is everytime.”
“Well, that’s also something cos they feel comfortable talking about it. In front of you. I don’t know if that means something, sigh.... We have to talk about, whatever, and sometimes it’s racism and if w'e’re having dinner then it might come up.”
“Then maybe when I come here, maybe it should just, maybe it should just be me and you time then?”
“Uh… I mean, it can be that, but… when you tell me that, it sounds like my friends are some sort of, I don’t know, pro, problem. I don’t want to not go to a dinner or a party, or a, an event because of, because of, I don’t know…”
“And I don’t want to go anymore to something that I’m not supposed to be at. I think… you think that people are okay with me but they aren’t. You need to stop pushing us together. We don’t fit and maybe these two worlds, they’re, they’re not gonna, gonna intersect. It’s like your intersectionality, but it doesn’t work, it just crash, it’s just a crash. I don’t have anything in common with them, and they don’t have anything in common with me. I think you’re the one that’s trying to, to bring us together for your own self. But they don’t want that. So how about when we meet, it’s time that’s just for us and then during the week when I’m not here, and you’re not in Antwerp, that’s your time for them. Then it’s clear, then it’s separate. It doesn’t have to go together, especially if it doesn’t anyway. It’s like chemistry.”
“Yeah but I don’t want that to be the solution. That’s n… that’s not an answer. Not for me. There are things that are, they’re just things for, for Black people but that’s different. I only invite you, I only bring you to the things that are open where you’re welcome, but this is also my life. This is my work. I work with you know… I, I, I work and do this, and I’m also Black.”
“Ja I know you’re Black. I never said you weren’t. Did I say that you weren’t? I said you’re Black and I’m white.”
“If… you could just let me finish please. You keep cutting me off and then, then I forget, I, I lose my train of thought. My Blackness, it’s important to me. It’s a part of me and… I want you to, to support that.”
“Ja, I’m starting to feel like I don’t know how to do this. Maybe I never did.”
“Do you still wanna try though? I’m with you because I thought you were trying. You are trying?”
“Ja… we spend a lot of time talking about this. I know that it’s, it’s so hard for you because you are a Black person here but I don’t understand your way of doing things and, it’s not just this. It’s also that we don’t have, we don’t have sex. Ja okay we don’t have to have sex everytime, but when I want it, when I want to, you always have an excuse.”
“Ex… and excuse?!”
“There’s always some reason why you don’t want to do it and I feel like I have to beg for it. Then we come here, and it’s all these things about your work about the racism, and I didn’t do this right and I said this wrong… but when do you have time for me? When do you make me feel important? All you do is tell me how to, how to act and what to do. I’m putting a lot of time into this, and I don’t know what I’m getting. Remember I don’t believe in this, this monogamous relationship thing. I’m doing it because that’s what you want even if it doesn’t make sense, because you won’t move to be closer to me, but you want me to be only for you. The last time, you weren’t even being super passive for me, you just weren’t there. You’re not, I guess you say, fulfilling my needs but you expect me to be the perfect person, the perfect white guy. But you always make so I can’t be that. There’s no way to do it like that, to be the one.”
“So, wait, I have a question about what you said. If you… if you knew I wasn’t into it, then why did you, then why did you keep doing it? Why didn’t you stop?”

Written by Isaiah Lopaz, Anthology / Appendix 2021