“I’ll figure it out,” he says.
He turns another knob.
“And now we’re in four-wheel drive,” I say, pulling over briefly to put the car back into two-wheel drive. As I ease onto the road, he touches a few more controls.
“You hot there, pal? You just flipped on the AC.”
Kent exhales heavily out of his nose. “Mallory, will you please turn on the radio for me?”
I hit the switch and music begins to play. “I have satellite radio. You scan up or down using these buttons,” I say, and then I give him a quick tutorial on the various functionalities, concluding with, “...and this one controls the volume.”
He monkeys around with the stereo, jumping from station to station until he finds what he’s looking for. Suddenly, the car’s reverberating with the sounds of old, terrible gangster rap.
“All of that effort for this?” I ask, wrinkling my nose in distaste.
“What have you got against classic hip-hop?” he asks.
“What do you have for it?” I counter.
“Let’s see...um, everything?”
“It’s just noise. Everyone swearing and throwing around the n-word.”
“Oh, you could not be more wrong, Mallory,” he says, so disgusted that he curls his lip. Curls his lip! At me! I invented the lip curl. I made the lip curl happen, not him.
“Then educate me.”
“Okay, take this band, for example? Public Enemy is arguably one of the most important musical acts of all time. Chuck D., the lead singer? He’s not swearing and ‘throwing the n-word around.’” His expression is that of total disdain. I think I’ve offended him and, for some reason, that kind of bothers me.
He continues his explanation. “He’s as much a philosopher as he is an artist. His music spoke to a generation and a group of people who’d never had their struggles represented before. His words brought the disenfranchised together, let ’em know their stories deserved to be heard. And he encouraged activism—not through violence, but through social change.”
“Huh.” I’m unsure how to respond to that, less because I can’t negate his point, and more because I can’t recall the last time someone challenged me. “What’s this song called?”
“‘Fight the Power.’”
I snicker. “‘Fight the Power’? Um, I hate to break it to you, pal, but you’re a white male from North Shore on his way to the Ivy League. You are the power.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he replies. “Like that thought never occurred to me?”
“Seems pretty hypocritical is all.”
He clucks his tongue at me. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Okay, present your argument, like we learned in Mr. Canterbury’s debate class. Hit me with your best case for why you’re not all hypocritical for listening to this music, I would really like to know.”
His expression is...smug?
He says, “Easy. What I connect with, what I understand, what moves me so much about this particular song is Chuck D.’s anger. He is pissed off at how the world is. But he’s not all enraged and unfocused. He channels his feelings into a message. That’s why it’s so powerful. See, it’s his intention to educate everyone about what’s going wrong and what’s unfair and unjust to make positive change.”
“I don’t know his music, but I’m guessing you’re not the one being targeted by what’s unfair. You do watch the news on occasion, yes? Catch the Daily Show? Do you even read Twitter hashtags?”
“Listen, Mallory, I can’t claim to know what it’s like to be hassled for the ‘crime’ of walking down the street in a hoodie.” He plucks at his own hoodie beneath his jacket for emphasis. “For those who are hassled? That’s bullshit. Their lives matter. And, yeah, I do watch the news and it’s enraging. The comments sections everywhere are even worse, makes you wanna weep for humanity sometimes. I’m not trying to co-opt what Chuck D’s audience is going through, to be something I’m not, acting all, ‘Me, too, my brother,’ from the comfort of my parent’s six-bedroom, three-car-garage home.”
I reply, “Then I give you an A-plus for checking your privilege. Still, don’t you feel like kind of a poseur, hearing these guys rap about how hard life is on the streets? When you live here?”
I point out the ten thousand-square-foot Georgian manor we’re driving past, where fifteen landscapers in cherry pickers are putting the finishing touches on the tall trees’ holiday lighting scheme.
I add, “How do you relate to all that old Bloods and Crips stuff when the biggest beef up here is Brooks Brothers versus Vineyard Vines? Where the neighborhood planning associations send out letters stating No coloreds, meaning white holiday lights only, without any clue exactly how offensive, like, how tone-deaf this directive comes across?”
“Then strip away the specific actions and words—just examine the feelings.”
I look over at him. “I don’t follow.”
“Break down not what Chuck D.’s saying, but why he’s saying it and what’s behind it. Like, I understand the feeling of being trapped by circumstances. Granted, my circumstances are way different up here in North Shore, but feeling like I don’t control my own destiny rings true. Look at how we live right now, all the bullshit hoops we jump through daily —how much of that’s by choice? Have you ever been mad about how things are? Felt desperate? Needed to escape to a place where things are different? Wanted to make the world better? I get it. Don’t you? Aren’t these feelings what ultimately consumed our friends? Aren’t we in the Gatekeepers to address them?”
I nod and he continues. “When things are bad, when it’s all too much—and it’s been way too fucking much lately—I put on my headphones and I listen to my music so loud that it makes my teeth vibrate. I’m talking about a baseline that rattles my vertebrae. And then I feel better. Like a little bit of that pressure escapes and my lid’s not gonna blow anymore. Because someone else has been here before. Not here here,” he points to another mansion, “but metaphorical here.” He points to his chest.
Okay, so I get it now. I fight the urge to not ruffle Kent’s hair, so instead I say, “You just won your debate.”
“Not surprised. I’m a really smart guy. Got in to Princeton, you know.”
All conversation stops when we think we’ve spotted Simone going down Arbor Cove Lane, but it’s a false alarm.
“Stairs,” I say.
He cocks his head. “What? Stairs? Is this a word game? Am I supposed to say something random? How about—potato. Index card. Juicy Fruit. Galoshes.”
“When it’s too much for me, I run the stairs in the stadium. Over and over, until I’m ready to drop.”
“Do you like doing that?”
No one’s ever asked me that before. So I answer him honestly. “Not particularly.”
Kent sits with this information for a moment. “Tom Skilling’s predicting snow later this week. You can’t run the stairs in the snow. I’ll put a playlist for you on Spotify, if you want to try something different, something that won’t give you shin splints. Who knows? Ice Cube may work better for you than cardio.”