Honey(35)

Yrsa turns to the person next to her and, over the music, says, “Hey, isn’t that guy famous? Isn’t that Sam Mack?”



* * *





The flash of phones. People are filming.

“Mate, can you just get up.”

The security guard still present.

“Yeah, yeah, I know we’ve got an Uber. Why don’t you do your job and get them to stop fucking filming.”

People are laughing.

@sofía_martinez isn’t happy. It’s not good for her brand. She’s talking with the other woman, putting on her blazer.

“Didn’t you hear? We’re going.”

Yrsa follows them out, grabbing a baseball hat off someone’s head as she goes.



* * *





It’s just the two men outside. Mack is sitting on the street corner.

The first Uber wouldn’t take him. Nor the second. Now a row with a taxi driver who says he doesn’t drive drunks.

@therealman is waving around an Amex and the streets are cobbled below them.

The taxi driver drives off.

“I told you it was too much to take.”

@therealman is stressed, too drunk for responsibility.

Yrsa watches from the opposite corner in shadow. @therealman is pacing as Mack starts to sway. @therealman tries to stand Mack up.

“What did you take? What was it?”

Mack is sweating through his T-shirt. She shouldn’t be watching, she knows she needs to leave but—Mack is making a low moaning sound. She switches on her phone, pretending to be getting an Uber. Mack can’t stand, he sways, falls, and his head nearly hits the pavement. She wants to be near him.

“Fuck, fuck.” @therealman trying to rouse him. “Fuck.” @therealman on his phone. “An ambulance, I said a fucking ambulance.”

Not an ambulance. She watches @therealman pacing. He’s not meant to get an ambulance.

“Tower Bridge, I fucking told you I don’t know what he took.”

She has to leave, she’s been here too long. She turns to go but she—starts walking toward them. Mack on the ground, @therealman shouting into his phone. If she could just get the friend to leave, maybe if she could just—there’s blue lights on the bridge, @therealman looks at her, there’s Mack on the ground. If she could just— “Is he okay?” Another man running to the scene.

“Oh my god.” A woman following behind.

“Sam, Sam.”

Sirens, far off.





II


BECAUSE MY MAN HAS GONE





I


An alert goes off on her phone.

“I mean the music video is violent, graphically violent.”

It’s the alert set for Mack.

“And why did Glover choose to depict violence?” Yrsa asks, feeling the vibration in her back pocket.

“Um, well the whole video is about being black in America and that’s a violent existence, I guess.”

A lecture on visual culture in a room with broken radiators.

“But is that his only point: the ‘violence of the black existence’?” She slides her phone out of her pocket, puts it on the table next her.

The boy shrugs.

“What do others think?”

“I think it’s a perfect example of what Stuart Hall talks about: using stereotypes against themselves to ‘make strange’ and ‘de-familiarize the gaze,’?” says Martha. Always impeccably dressed and sitting at the back.

“Good. Can you explain this?” She can’t quite read the notification.

“Yeah, Hall says that the black body suffers stereotypes, it’s unavoidable. And the body is often associated with violence; but if you use the body as a site of ‘representational struggle’ then you can highlight the stereotypes. Like, turn the gaze back on itself. So in “This is America” he goes from school kids dancing with him to gunning down the choir because that’s the point. You take one stereotype and you immediately flip it. You make it ‘strange.’?”

Yrsa nods. “Exactly.” It looks like it’s an article posted by The Sun. “Can you give me other examples of Hall’s theory?”

“Yep.” She nods at May—with a tight-cut ’fro and double denim.

“I mean Beyoncé’s Lemonade is all about this, no? Like, she explores her own marriage and Jay-Z’s cheating, but she does it through the legacy of enslavement—and she plays up to the stereotypes of the crazy, angry black woman.”

Yrsa clicks the notification, but the Wi-Fi in the room is slow. “And why do you think she wants to play with this stereotype in particular?” She’s not looking at her students.

“Because being ‘angry’ or ‘aggressive’ is always used to shut down women of color. It delegitimizes all the anger we’re justified in feeling and—”

“Yeah, but—” Flo, whose nose piercing hasn’t gone to plan, interrupts. “I wouldn’t say that Beyoncé is necessarily being radical. She’s still super commercial. I also think there’s a lot of this where popular culture just loves black pain. It’s still like, the only thing we’re allowed to talk about, or show, is how terrible it is to be black.”