tellhimfred.com

Let me preface this post by saying this: this world is full of people of all different colors. Some of them are white people.  Some of them are black people.  Some people are asian people.  Some are latin. Some are a whole mix of different stuff. Those words don’t mean anything to me beyond the literal descriptors they are.

I was brought up to believe that nobody is any better or worse than anyone else, and I believe it.  You better, too.

So let me tell you a story.

Mrs. Hoffa and I hit Slade’s for the first time on a Friday.

We had dinner at the bar at Jae’s, a local sushi-pan-asian-whatever place, and ended up having an amazing 80s and 90s music conversation with three young women, (whose names we learned but forgot) one Hawaiian-latin, one white, and one black, who told us they were there for dinner, then they were on their way to Slade’s…the club in our neighborhood that we walk past every day, to which we’ve never been in the two and a half years we’ve lived there.  It’s always just been a loud nightclub full of dance music, rap and hip-hop that lets out at 2 am on weekends with people yelling and honking and generally acting like people who’ve just been at a bar all night.

(Mrs. Hoffa and Hoffa’s private convo):

Mrs. Hoffa: “what the hell, wanna go? we’ve never been to Slade’s”.
Hoffa: “alright. ALRIIGHT. Let’s do it!”

So after the necessary wardrobe changes, we went. Paid 10 bucks each to get in, and started to have an awesome time.  What I haven’t mentioned up to now, is that Slade’s is, and always has been, a “black” night club.  There’s some sort of unspoken rule that people of color are fine to go in, but neither of us has ever seen a white man even looking remotely like he was about to go into or had just come out of Slade’s.  So after we entered, we were very obviously the only white people there till we met back up with the three women from Jae’s, but whatever. We danced, did shots, danced some more, and felt honestly really damn comfortable.  It just felt like being in any other club.  We were having fun, so Mrs. Hoffa and I decided to hit the lit up dance floor for reals yo, because it was time to throw that shit down…

…which was when the awkward moment hit out of nowhere.  Mrs. Hoffa and I are on the fringes of the lit up dance floor when the black girl who had been part of the original Jae’s triumvirate came up to us, took our elbows gently, looked us in the eye, and shook her head “no”.  Now, we didn’t ask why, we just assumed there was a reason for it…but still.

So we left the dance floor. Feeling a little ashamed, and more than a little confused, we went to the bar, and ordered another drink. But at this point, we felt weird, like unwelcome white folk, and we left soon after. We said goodbye to the three women, who were totally nice and friendly in their good-byes, but we never even got a hint of an explanation as to why the one woman had encouraged us off the dance floor.

So I say this: Screw the racial nonsense, people. We all share the same world.

And that’s all I have to say about that.