Whitey recognized this even before Papa Porter did. So Whitey flipped a coin—heads: give him a gun, take it away, send him to jail, throw away the key; tails: educate him, send him to college, keep a sharp eye on him, if he gets that gun elsewhere, send him to jail and throw away the key. It came up tails. G-for-George Pullman Porter integrated—or maybe infiltrated—-Harnell University.
By his second year there, sophomore G. P. Porter had assimilated just enough to know two facts of Ivy life. One, assimilation wasn’t possible. Two, even if it had been possible, he didn’t want to assimilate. It was harder being black, and the way this man-child saw it, the harder the better. The white boys—Greeks and grinds, jocks and rebels—all seemed to have this identity crisis centered around the groin. Black was harder; black was better; black was rooty-full!
And black was in demand with Betty Boop Co-ed, she of the Harnell bleached skin. Black fit into her color scheme. If she was red (or even pinko) and she was white, then she was usually blue about the problem—and black and blue go so well together! So G. P. Porter — feeling guilty sometimes, feeling like he was maybe somehow selling out—obliged.
It was while he was obliging one night that he happend to glance out the window of Minerva Kaufman’s room and saw the Angel Gabriel. Like there he was, one and a half times as large as life, shining black in the moonlight. Yes, man, there he was, big and black and naked, with his wide iron nostrils sniffing at the stars, and his metal-kinky hair lending darkness to the night. Oh yes, he was there, the Angel Gabriel, nude sinews rippling like polished ebony, tree-trunk legs spread wide and inky against a background of white stucco provided by the Administration Building a little ways off in the distance. Unh-hunh, there stood the Angel Gabriel—with nothing at all but neutral white stucco between those massive thighs. There he stood—sans manhood!
“What’s the matter?” Minerva Kaufman’s white skin wriggled impatiently over Minerva Kaufman’s white sheets. “Why did you stop?”
“Hell! They castrated him!” G. P. was sitting up on the edge of the bed now, peering out the window.
“Who castrated who?” Minerva sat up. Pert red nipples nuzzled the muscles of G. P.’s arm. She pressed closer and firm young breast flesh flattened against him. Her delicate white hand floated down his naked belly and twined around the strong, sure threat of his Negritude. It was never quite as big as she expected it to be. But then she’d cut her teeth on Portnoy’s folklore, the side issue of his complaint, which spelled out the following rule: expectations vis-a-vis the black male organ are in inverse proportion to Jewish-mother-sponsored lack of faith in Hebrew he-ness; the Jewish son often reacts negatively to this hard-won black upmanship, but the Jewish daughter may consider it positively.
Now Minerva considered it positively. Way down deep, at some unspecified Freudian level, there was the perception of an escape hatch from the Jewish bag which allowed her to hold on to the advantages of being persecuted while shucking some psychological Semitic excess baggage. The black lever to that escape hatch was in the delicate grasp of her white fist.
“For a minute there, you had me worried,” she told G. P.
“The mother!” G. P. was still looking out the window, still brooding.
“Hey? Remember me?” Minerva’s long blond hair swept ticklingly over his thighs as her mouth descended to prod his memory.
The maneuver blocked G. P.’s view of the Angel Gabriel. The Way Minerva was kneeling, her haunches were raised and they filled his eyes, plump ivory globes quivering in the moonlight. Absentmindedly, he reached out to stroke them. Then, gently, he shifted her to one side so he could view the Angel Gabriel again.
“Hey! Pay attention!” Minerva raised her head momentarily and looked at him with mischievous green eyes. When he continued to stare, she lowered it again and gently used her small, sharp teeth.
“Ouch!” G. P. was successfully distracted. One of his hands closed firmly over a creamy breast and he rolled Minerva over on her back. Her slender thighs parted to accommodate him as he sprawled over her.
“Oh! Yes-yes-yes! All the way! All of it!” Her long legs straightened and the ankles locked around his neck.
“Now . . . now . . . now!”
“Yeah! Now!” G. P. lunged mightily. “NOW-OW- OW! . . .”
The naked Angel Gabriel, organless, continued to stare uncaringly at the night sky.
When it was over, G. P. got out of bed to fish a cigarette out of his pants pocket. On his feet, he looked down at Minerva admiringly. She was all female lying there, sated and a little weary now, content for the time being, the nipples of her breasts no longer quite so hard, but rather spreading pinkly like just opening rosebuds, one hip curving as she rested her weight on the other, long legs demurely crossed, but the mound of her womanhood still pulsating slightly, impudently. Her green eyes returned his gaze lazily and her pink tongue peeped out from between her lips as if it was about to lick his body. But she sighed and her mouth relaxed.
Returning with the lit cigarette, G. P. glanced out the window again. The naked Angel Gabriel still stood in sexless concentration. “That is one helluva thing—with no thing!” G. P. said aloud.
“Hmmm?” Minerva lackadaisically pulled herself up on the pillows and followed his gaze. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter? Just look! He’s naked and he’s castrated. That’s What!”
“He’s not castrated. He’s an angel. Angels are asexual. They don’t have any you-know-what.”
“Minerva, sometimes you’re so damn white you’re hopeless! He’s a black angel! Dig? If he was a white angel, you het your flesh-colored Band-Aid he wouldn’t be asexual. lt‘s bad enough they do it to the black man. But this is just plain bragging about it, advertising it. It’s an insult to every black student on this buttermilk campus!”
“Oh, come on now, G. P. That statue’s been standing there for over a hundred years. Nobody ever took offense at it before.”
“Maybe that’s because for ninety-five of those hundred years this joint was so lily-white they wouldn’t let in an ofay with a sunburn!”
“Ancient history. Just like the statue. That’s probably why he hasn’t got any whatsis.” Minerva giggled. “He’s so old it probably fell off; he’s so old if he did have one it would be useless.”
“You know what?” G. P. stared down at her coldly. When he spoke, it was not as her lover, but as the head of the Harnell Afro-American Student Society. “You are the whitest, most insensitive bitch I ever was stupid enough to let use me.” G. P. reached for his pants and started to pull them over his legs. “That’s what you are, Minerva!”
Her eyes filled with tears. “G. P., please. I didn’t mean—- Oh, you’re right. I am insensitive! I’m sorry! Really I am. I should have realized— Please, don’t go like this. Not afer—”
“All right. Cool it.” G. P. sat down on the edge of the bed. “You’re going to make me feel all guilty about enjoying watching a white girl cry,” he teased her.
“Then I’d have to feel guilty about making you feel guilty.” Minerva smiled through her tears. “Kiss me.” She flung her arms around his neck.
G. P. kissed her. It was a long kiss of probing tongues and clinging lips. Their bodies took up where the kiss left off. It was a lazy, slow-building rewooing.
“How long did you say that statue’s been up?” G. P. asked as his fingers dipped into the valley between her breasts.
“Over a hundred years. I don’t know exactly.” Minerva nibbled his earlobe. “It was a gift from the founder. Old Rutherford Wallace Harnell himself.”
“It figures.” G. P. strummed one of her nipples.
“Why?” She dug her nails into the muscles of his shoulder.