“Ow! Stop that!”
“I’m just trying to wash away the little bit of blood. You have a little cut.”
“That fuck. That was a hate crime, you know. I’m a victim of a hate crime! Shit, I’ve been living here all my my life! And I fucking never!”
“Calm down. You’re gonna have quite an egg on your head, you know. But I don’t think there’s gonna be too much damage.”
“People hate Asians. Especially these days.”
“I love you. Besides, try being Haitian. Sit still. Did you report it to the cops?”
“Half the cops in South Brooklyn are these same thugs. You know that. You walk around at night.”
“Yeah, but you’re not as used to it as I am. I guess.” Philipe laughs. “Yeah, I hate it too. You know I come from that ‘Shithole,’ at least my parents did.”
“I never called it that.”
“You didn’t have to. I’m not blaming you, Alex. I’m being ironic. And I’m trying to keep processing it as a whole, in the context of all other things, and from a distance. I’m a Buddhist, ya know.”
“A Buddhist with a PhD in comparative lit. I still don’t know how you managed that.”
“I told you. I got a 1560 on the SAT, and nobody from my school was expected to do that. We were the poor, dumb kids from the shitholes. And for the Ivies, it was like sending missionaries out. They’d spend any money to look like nice white folks, cleaning up the natives, ya know.”
“Ow! Stop that! I don’t know how you put up with it.”
“You’re about to find out. Anyway, please promise me you’ll stay in? You’re supposed to, you know.”
“But we ran out of tequila.”
“Yeah, that’s a thing.”