bribed hansom. Paid for by my far flusher older brother. That was irritating. As is everything else Val does.
“As if I did that for
you
.” Val smirked, resting his elbows on the counter. “If a riper moll exists than that Mrs. Adams, I will eat an unsalted shoe.”
“She’s married,” I said with a scowl.
“Hasn’t troubled me before now. Oh, for God’s sake, dry up, I’m not going fishing in that lake.”
“Thank you. Wait,” I added. “Do you usually—not that I’d mind.”
“Mind?”
I never had minded, had been raised—so far as I’d been raised at all, which was a piss-poor joke—not to care in the smallest. About amalgamation, that is. Blacks and whites exchanging intimacies. Val and I hadn’t money enough to be snobbish toward any living beings save lice when I was a boy, and the Underhill patriarch who took us under his wing was a radical Protestant zealot. Anti-amalgamation sentiments are for people with embroidered cushions and lace antimacassars, or else the sort of low clods who insist Africans are a type of monkey.
“If she wasn’t married,” I explained, “I’d not care. If you—”
“Leave off your face before you make it even more of a smashed pudding.” Val slapped my hand away deftly.
“Don’t talk about my face.”
“Don’t tug it like a pervert with a gratis spy hole, then.”
“Sod off. But—I mean to say, do you?” I inquired none too clearly.
“Sleep with black women?” Val by now looked entirely baffled. “Last time was two or three months back, so far as I can recall. Why?”
And there we were. The only surprising thing about the conversation was that I’d bothered asking. Valentine can’t be arsed over the gender of his bed partners, as I’d learned to my shock the previous August. So the race could hardly give him pause. I considered adding amalgamation to Val’s list of scandalous acts and found I couldn’t be bothered. Narcotics, alcohol, bribery, violence, whoring, gambling, theft, cheating, extortion, and sodomy had all alarmed me at one point or another—amalgamation was a trip to the American Art-Union to survey the placider landscapes.
I’m supposed to mind, though. I’m supposed to mind, according to some, a very great deal.
In 1834, we hosted one of the most enthusiastic riots Manhattan has ever witnessed. As we’ve quite a collection, that’s saying something. One of our leading white abolitionists invited a black clergyman to church one gorgeous spring morning when the great blue bowl of the sky was cupped tenderly over our holy Sunday goings-on. And not only to hear the sermon, but to sit in the abolitionist’s very own pew. When the white congregants made to shuffle their guest into a colored pew, their minister made the mistake of protesting that Christ Himself must have been of a Syrian complexion.
The implication that Jesus our Lord might have been anything other than pale as a dogwood flower set off such a chaos of violence, arson, and general savagery that we got to the point where handbills with planned routes for havoc were distributed in public marketplaces. No police, of course, so the New York First Division cavalry finally quashed the uproar. And on every sneering rioter’s lips was the word
amalgamation
. I was sixteen years old, Valentine twenty-two, and I can still hear their voices—swollen thick with tar fumes and whiskey and spite.
Let the amalgamators have their way and no place will be safe for our women, not even our churches—
Blondes are particular susceptible, they say, it’s the very blackness as does it, how opposite they are, a blonde girl will turn fascinated and then—
Did you know that their lady parts can rip it right off a man, though if you ask me any amalgamator who suffered that would get what’s coming to—
It’s mainly Irish who’d sink so low, and just think of the brutes they’ll be breeding, between colored brains and Irish character I can’t bear to—
“Anyhow, it
“As if I did that for
you
.” Val smirked, resting his elbows on the counter. “If a riper moll exists than that Mrs. Adams, I will eat an unsalted shoe.”
“She’s married,” I said with a scowl.
“Hasn’t troubled me before now. Oh, for God’s sake, dry up, I’m not going fishing in that lake.”
“Thank you. Wait,” I added. “Do you usually—not that I’d mind.”
“Mind?”
I never had minded, had been raised—so far as I’d been raised at all, which was a piss-poor joke—not to care in the smallest. About amalgamation, that is. Blacks and whites exchanging intimacies. Val and I hadn’t money enough to be snobbish toward any living beings save lice when I was a boy, and the Underhill patriarch who took us under his wing was a radical Protestant zealot. Anti-amalgamation sentiments are for people with embroidered cushions and lace antimacassars, or else the sort of low clods who insist Africans are a type of monkey.
“If she wasn’t married,” I explained, “I’d not care. If you—”
“Leave off your face before you make it even more of a smashed pudding.” Val slapped my hand away deftly.
“Don’t talk about my face.”
“Don’t tug it like a pervert with a gratis spy hole, then.”
“Sod off. But—I mean to say, do you?” I inquired none too clearly.
“Sleep with black women?” Val by now looked entirely baffled. “Last time was two or three months back, so far as I can recall. Why?”
And there we were. The only surprising thing about the conversation was that I’d bothered asking. Valentine can’t be arsed over the gender of his bed partners, as I’d learned to my shock the previous August. So the race could hardly give him pause. I considered adding amalgamation to Val’s list of scandalous acts and found I couldn’t be bothered. Narcotics, alcohol, bribery, violence, whoring, gambling, theft, cheating, extortion, and sodomy had all alarmed me at one point or another—amalgamation was a trip to the American Art-Union to survey the placider landscapes.
I’m supposed to mind, though. I’m supposed to mind, according to some, a very great deal.
In 1834, we hosted one of the most enthusiastic riots Manhattan has ever witnessed. As we’ve quite a collection, that’s saying something. One of our leading white abolitionists invited a black clergyman to church one gorgeous spring morning when the great blue bowl of the sky was cupped tenderly over our holy Sunday goings-on. And not only to hear the sermon, but to sit in the abolitionist’s very own pew. When the white congregants made to shuffle their guest into a colored pew, their minister made the mistake of protesting that Christ Himself must have been of a Syrian complexion.
The implication that Jesus our Lord might have been anything other than pale as a dogwood flower set off such a chaos of violence, arson, and general savagery that we got to the point where handbills with planned routes for havoc were distributed in public marketplaces. No police, of course, so the New York First Division cavalry finally quashed the uproar. And on every sneering rioter’s lips was the word
amalgamation
. I was sixteen years old, Valentine twenty-two, and I can still hear their voices—swollen thick with tar fumes and whiskey and spite.
Let the amalgamators have their way and no place will be safe for our women, not even our churches—
Blondes are particular susceptible, they say, it’s the very blackness as does it, how opposite they are, a blonde girl will turn fascinated and then—
Did you know that their lady parts can rip it right off a man, though if you ask me any amalgamator who suffered that would get what’s coming to—
It’s mainly Irish who’d sink so low, and just think of the brutes they’ll be breeding, between colored brains and Irish character I can’t bear to—
“Anyhow, it
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