It was Christmas time and the streets around the once grand theatre just off
Broadway rang with the bells of Salvation Army Santa’s and swirled with
turbulent crowds of last minute shoppers. My display of city savvy was to be a
Peacock fan of irresistible sophistication for my date. Although I, like her,
was a white bread and clueless virgin from a bedroom community of New York
city. Our town was mostly populated by white Presbyterian and Episcopalian
families proudly fathered by professional white men whose job it was to commute
into NYC every day to practice law, or work on Wall Street, or whatever. Each
morning men girded for battle in their suits and ties presented freshly shaven
cheeks for their maiden’s peck of approval as they jumped from the family station
wagons that circled the train station parking lot. Individuals became groups
and groups became a throng as they joined the long lines of husbands waiting
for the train. The men smelled of Old Spice and self-confidence.
But this
time I had ridden the train myself, at night, with a date whom I had repeatedly
assured that the commute into the city was no big deal. I was all of 15 years
old and determined to act like I had made the same trek 1,000 times myself.
Weeks before, with my Dad’s newspaper in hand, I had circled a theatre that was
showing West Side Story and had, on a school bus ride home after school,
offhandedly asked my date if she would like me to take her to see it. I told
her that I had been to this particular theatre dozens of times. The fact was, I
had never even seen it before. But my calculated attitude of “Stick with me
honey, I’ll show you around” was designed to impress.
We arrived late and barely managed to squeeze into the only two available seats I could make out in the darkened theatre. All went well until three quarters of the way through the movie as George Chakiris led the Jets in a frantic dance scene, a commotion broke out in the back of the theatre. Hundreds of heads turned as one to see Santa Claus himself running down the center aisle, chased by one of NYC’s finest. Showing great agility for a big guy, Santa jumped up on the stage and immediately joined the Sharks in their hot Latin dance. With the projector still running, Santa almost blended into the scene. The cop ran up and down in front of the stage frantically yelling at Santa to get down but Santa was obviously very drunk and just like the rest of us when we’ve had too many toddies, he believed himself to be king of all dance. But this was New York City and the cop wasn’t about to take any crap, Christmas or not, even from Santa. With much difficulty, the portly officer managed to hike himself up onto the stage and immediately started to run at Santa, back and forth, nightstick in hand, doing an excellent imitation of Moe chasing Larry. Only Curly was missing from the chaos, but that was the farthest thing from my mind when the projectionist finally stopped the film and turned the house lights up.
There, on stage, in front of a packed audience with all eyes glued to the scene, the very white cop used his nightstick to beat the shit out of the drunken, and very black, Santa. Merry motherf**ing Christmas y’all! Oh yea, one other thing, (and it’s an important detail) ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE F***ING THEATRE WAS BLACK TOO. Except of course for yours truly and my date, young Mr. & Miss White bread milk toast from the ‘burbs. Other than lots of black and very little white in that now brightly lit theatre, the red of the blood coming from the white cop’s nightstick wounds to Santa’s black head was starting to stain Santa’s beard to match his outfit and add a nice Christmas-y touch of crimson that didn’t go unappreciated by the crowd.
With all eyes facing front, nasty emotions shot through the audience like electricity. Malcolm X would have had a field day fanning the flames of that hot anger. Here we go again with a story that is hundreds of years old. White man beats black man. But this time it was happening with an all-black audience. The white cop paused, nightstick held high over Santa’s head, and suddenly looked out into that sea of very angry black faces. He immediately woke up and seemed to share the very same epiphany I myself was having at that very moment. It went something like this: OH SHIT…
Pockets of the black audience started to get loud and shout aggressively, beginning to mobilize their outrage. I knew it was time to leave, fast. Clutching the hand of my girl, I stood up hoping that we would at least be able to scramble our way out to the street before the crowd chased us down and killed us for being the spawn of the repressive dogs we’d all been bred to be. Although I tried my best to blend in by looking black and hip and street wise, my baby blue V-neck sweater and Pat Boone white bucks screamed the opposite as the good folks in our immediate vicinity began to pay very close attention to prey that was considerably more accessible than a white cop way down on stage. He certainly needed a lesson in proper behavior but could also prove to be hard to get to. A large man to my right smiled up at me as he blocked our exit by putting his feet up onto the seat in front of him. I thought “Oh shit...here we go, we’re going to die now”. I took a deep breath and leaned over to him and whispered to him in a quiet, conspiratorial way: “Hey, I just want to get this girl home.” Meanwhile, back at the stage, back-up white cops streamed in to surround their brother officer as the crowd of angry brothers from other mothers began to rush the stage in protest of the Santa beating, and, I suspect, in protest of more than 100 years of bad treatment in general. The crowd was still all juiced up with Sharks vs. Jets fervor and appeared to be eager to rumble.
All of my many years spent in the church choir singing praises to God must have paid off as our exit blocking nemesis looked deeply into my eyes and dropped his feet to the floor to let us pass. His face took on the sour expression of a fisherman forced to release his prize catch of the day due to size limitations. (I think actually his girlfriend sitting next to him made him drop his feet; he didn’t really want to.) We stepped gingerly past him and rushed a few feet to the nearest fire door, blasting through its NO EXIT, EMERGENCY ONLY sign and out into the dimly lit, trash littered alley. My heart was jumping violently in my chest as if a doctor with electric paddles was running next to me and zapping me with every step. Without pausing, I pulled my date out onto the main street and quickly melted into the safety of the crowd of Christmas celebrants. One block away from the theatre, flooded with a sense of relief and happy to be invisible among the people all around us, I turned to my first-time date with an adrenaline fueled exhilaration that only follows on the heels of a narrow escape from a potentially life changing disaster and giddily croaked: “Merry Christmas!” as I boldly pulled her to me and kissed her hard on the lips. I mean what-the –hell we almost got killed in there!
She didn’t really respond to the kiss and her puzzled expression made me realize that she hadn’t shared my fears in that theatre at all. She may have thought that seeing a drunken Santa hauled off a movie stage made make a funny story, but she didn’t see beyond that. I saw that she questioned my insistence on running out of the movie at all. My head was screaming: “WE ALMOST GOT KILLED IN THERE! YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT? I SAVED YOUR WHITE BREAD ASS! (AND MINE)…” Her eyes told me that no, she didn’t see it at all.
Our uneventful ride back home was heralded by the reassuring hissing of sprinklers on manicured lawns. And that was our first, and last, date. In fact, I don’t believe we ever spoke again.
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