Up until two yeas ago, I was still called “boy” by the ascendant members of the master race—small case, don’t you know.

Last night Bob and Deb and I viewed The Long Game, an uplifting and wholesome movie about a Mexican-American high school golf team in 1956. There is a key scene when the Mexicans are refused service at a diner. The movie was based on a true story and the fates of the characters where related in text at the end. But, this scene seemed lifted from a Rock Hudson/James Dean movie filmed in the 1950s, Giant, I think. And with a James Dean mention in the film, we wondered.

Bob said, “James, I’ve never seen such a thing. But then again we rarely had money to eat out in those times. The Mexicans and the Indians never got treated any different then the rest of us, Tongans either. Of course the first time I met a black person I was spit on.”

I said, “I have been refused food at three locations in Baltimore,” and then began to brood, and hence this article, which I should place in Work, the most desultory memoir ever written.

This should include all refusal of service, and it will. [0]

Between 1992 and 2017 I took the bus to work, multiple buses a night and by day, numbering from 2 to 6 busses boarded per 24 hour period. However, due to being hunted by PIGz and Yoz, I walked a lot rather than waited. There was another reason I walked a lot, sometimes passing numerous bus stops and even walking to the next bus line—because, about once a month until 2006, a black bus driver with a handful of black riders would look at me and keep going. They never did this on those rare occasions when a white was on board. Some times they glared, sometimes smiled, sometimes shook their head, ‘No, whiteboy, walk’ and rolled by. I would then walk to a bus stop that was busier, at a big intersection, and when the bus, sometimes driven by the same driver an hour later, would stop for the master race, this lille Whiteboy would get on.

This did also happen from 2007 to 2015, with less frequency, about once a year, as I took far fewer busses, and walked more. From 2015 to 2017 I was never refused service by bus drivers as the blacks riding the bus were hunted out by the blacks in cars. This almost got me fired for tardiness numerous times. If not for me doing the work of two men, I would have been fired over this.

1992-2005: estimated 140, rounded down to 100, halved for misunderstanding, to 50.

The rest I shall forgive except for the day I spent 3 hours standing in wet boots in Middle River, waiting for the only bus to come. After the third time the same black bus driver pulled up, he took pity on me and let me board, not even making me pay—let’s just forgive that.

Bus service refused by blacks for the crime of being born white = 50

Cab drivers would not pick me up until I got fat in 2016. Dozens of times forgiven as they refused to pick up blacks too. I was moving up in the world.

2001, Dundalk Village, Baltimore County

Chinese restaurant owner refused me service, because I ate to much and he had seen me wolf down food at his buffet for three weeks running. I waited 1 hour for a bus transfer at this spot, and since my wife did not cook and was about to kick me out in 2002, I ate with relish, until he shut the door in my face, with good cause and no racial animus. Leaving the house at 8 PM, working from 11 at night until 7 in the morning, then training at Riverside Park with Chuck until 9 AM, walking to the Inner Harbor and boarding the #10, I had quite the appetite while awaiting the #4 bus.

2013: Rosedale Library, Baltimore County

After being invited to attend a writing group in person by the organizer, I sent in a link to my site and a copy of Buzz Bunny. I was promptly dis-invited, although I would have been the only member of the group to have been published in print. I suppose that this rejection was due to the content of my character.

2014: Highlandtown, Baltimore, Eastern Avenue

Mescaline Franklin and I were granted service by a Honduran waitress, who did not charge us for our drinks, because the Salvadoran woman cook refused to cook our meal outright. We tipped the cutie and walked after an hour.

2014: Ibis Bar, Harford Road, Baltimore City

After the pretty black barmaid eagerly served me beer, knowing that she would finally earn a tip at the all black bar, the black Jamaican man who owned it refused to cook my goat curry lunch and told her, and me, with his glaring eyes alone, to stop serving me. 1 beer and out.

2019: Epic Pharmacy, Joppa Road, Baltimore County, Liberal White owner [who it seems had read my website] gave me my medicine, refused to accept payment after 2 years of doing business there, and told me not to return.

“You’re good! Go!”

2023, June 7, 5 PM, Brennens Pub, Harford Road, Baltimore

After being cursed by ageless black Haitian midget, Juju Quartermaine at the corner of Harford and Hamilton, which did happen as I bought water from him and double paid him, thus angering the hoodoomaan, I entered Brennens’s bar. The GQ Mugging Inquest had been written at this bar! Of Lions and Men had been researched at this bar, which was essentially my living room while renting a room from Sensie Steve from 2010 thru 2017. Both black barmaids looked at me like the bus drivers of the 1990s and refused me service with a silent glare, twice, each. I count this as a single business decision.

2024, April, Safeway Pharmacy, Joppa Road and Satyr Hill at North Plaza Mall, Baltimore County.

The young gay man taking orders pretended to type in the information for the gabapentin transfer, gave it back to me, told me it would take days [when all other Safeway clerks do it the same or next day], barely suppressed a gate keeping grin, and did not enter the order or call in the transfer. Figuring he had off the next day, since that had been Wednesday, I returned, and the lovely black girl tech and the Chinese pharmacist worked together, giggling, so happy they had a visitor from Portland, to make the transfer and refill happen in ten minutes! The Pharmacy clerk at the Portland Safeway is an angel, and recalls your name on sight.

Like the black barmaids and the bus drivers, the gay man let me know I was being denied service with his eyes, voice tone and body language, something that most Americans do not believe is actual communication, when it means more than words in most violent survival and gate keeper situations.

So, how man times, over what span and for what reason has this low down cracker whiteboy been denied for:

Transportation X-50, based on race

Social gathering X-1, based on writing

Medication X-2, based on writing [1]

Food X-1, based on eating too much the previous weeks

Food/Drink X-3, based on race

It never occurred to me to complain to them or their bosses—that’s what they do.

…

Notes

-0. In the case of the writing group, it had been promoted to me, by the organizer, as a networking service, to improve chances of publisher acceptance, book sales, etc. I had been approached based on my use of the Iuniverse self publishing service to evaluate my fiction anthology Darkly.

-1. Both of these gay, white pharmacy men, one an actual pharmacist the younger a tech, had access to all of my information and had previously been effusively helpful. I think the knowledge that I traveled, indicated by strange pharmacy transfer locations, made them curious and they searched my name and discovered that the shadow of deepest evil had passed their counter top.

-2. The narrative of Work will be posted on substack, the sidebars like this at jameslafond.com.