I kept racking my damaged brain, trying to think of someone I knew named Teddy, but I couldn’t come up with a single face. I thought maybe I was losing even more of my memory, so I stayed quiet.
Finally, Sue said that Teddy was waiting outside and was going to join us for coffee right then. That made my heart beat faster, because I didn’t want to see someone I had forgotten. That would have been fucking awkward, especially since this man was going to marry my unofficial daughter.
But then “Teddy” walked into the coffee shop with that swagger of his, and I knew exactly who he was.
Big T.
I didn’t know him as Teddy, because none of his gym homeboys called him that, and he went by Theodore in the banking world.
Teddy doesn’t really sound like a black dude’s name until you remember Teddy Pendergrass, who was one smooth brother. “Turn Off the Lights” is a track that can get you laid instantly with the right sort of woman.
On the basketball court Sue’s Teddy was known as Big T, so I used that moniker as I stood up and did the secret brother handshake with him. At the end of this particular handshake you pull each other closer with your fists locked together between your chests, which keeps you at least four inches apart so it doesn’t become a homo handshake, and then you pound your other fist on your brother’s back three times before you let go. I performed it flawlessly. Big T gave me a huge grin.
We all sat down, and Big T told me he loved Sue with all his heart even before he found out that she had an American hero for a father figure, and so I told him that Alan was the true hero, bringing Sue to America and raising her the right way, which was what you should always look for when shopping for a wife, and that bit made Sue a little mad, which is when I remembered that it wasn’t just me and Big T, but a woman was also present.
Then Big T made a big deal about my putting a good word in for him at PNC Bank, where he currently works as an executive, making big-time coin, which is another reason why I approve of him for Sue. Big T was a true moneymaker, and he was also appreciative and, even better, loyal. He kept saying the phone call I had made changed his life, and I kept telling him it was living his life the right way—working hard and locking down many smart, opportunistic plays—that made making the phone call a pleasure. Long-term success usually comes from consistently hitting singles and doubles, not from hitting the occasional home run every so many games. Big T got that and therefore was a real man by anyone’s standards—always willing to do the little necessary things to help the team win rather than swinging selfishly for the fences.
“Why exactly did you make that call?” asked Sue.
I told her all of the above and then added this: Big T was also the first brother at the health club who ever let me run ball. He vouched for me with his people, so I returned the favor.
Big T—who was dressed in an expensive suit, by the way, looking pro and classy—went on to say that when he found out about my relationship with Sue, he was worried that I wouldn’t approve.
I told him I wasn’t a fucking racist, which made both him and Sue laugh.
“No, G.I. Joe,” he said, using his brother rhymes. “I thought maybe you’d think I put my hand in your cookie jar too many times. And so I wanted to prove myself worthy first.”
This is when he told me about the huge promotion he had received at PNC Bank, letting me know that he was now one of the highest-ranking bankers in the building, thanking me for the help. I told him that my phone call was just a door opener. “They don’t promote idiots,” I said. “You did all the work yourself.”
I had a thought right then that mixed-race babies are often the cutest babies, and a lot of beautiful people are mixed race. And so I knew that Sue and Big T were going to make gorgeous children, all of whom I hoped would call me Pop Pop. And I had a hard time holding the tears back for a second time.
Sue spent the night at my home, making sure I wasn’t a danger to myself or others and admiring my large gun collection, and then I went out with Big T the next night.
He took me to the Capital Grille for steak, because he knows how to eat right, and he went over his finances and his ten-year plan with me. He had a pretty good portfolio for a man his age and had managed to even buy some properties at the right time in neighborhoods that were up-and-coming, so I told him about Gay Johnny, for two reasons.
One, if Teddy was going to be my unofficial son-in-law, I wanted only the top players in Philly to be handling his business.
Two, I knew that the brothers were sometimes too hard on the gays, and I wanted to make sure he was not against them.
Big T didn’t blink. Instead he said, “I’m down for a meet-and-greet,” rhyming again, and proving to me that he wouldn’t have a problem with Johnny and Timmy.
As we were eating huge pieces of chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, he said that he was going to take me to his “crib” because it was his turn to “keep me out of trouble,” as he put it, and if it was okay, he wanted to introduce me to his family in the morning.
That was fine with me.
When the bill came, we both reached for it, but the little black waitress’s hand was headed toward Big T, so I said, “I’ll take that. This is my new son.”
Big T smiled at the waitress, and she smiled back in a bitchy sort of way. Then she asked me how one gets a new son, so I told her that Big T was marrying my daughter.
The waitress gave Big T a really dirty look as she handed me the bill, and so I asked him why.
He explained that she probably thought my daughter was white, and that black women don’t like it when “their men marry blond-haired blue-eyed Barbie.”
So I reminded him that my daughter was yellow, with eyes that were so brown they looked black, and he said a lot of black women don’t like that either, because they want their men, especially their successful men, to stay black.
I could see the logic in that from the point of view of the black women. And so I asked Big T to explain all of this to my dumb liberal son when they met, because Hank didn’t have the first clue when it came to how racism really worked, and had stupidly ended up marrying into one of the worst races imaginable: the Dutch.
Big T laughed and then asked, “What do you have against the Dutch?”
His challenge forced me to admit that I had only really ever gotten to know three Dutch people, none of whom I liked.
And that’s when Big T said I was racist against my own people, but joking around in a philosophical sort of way.
I told him I wasn’t Dutch.