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Yeah, he had kissed me. But what did that mean? It wasn’t like he was into me, right? And even if, by some miracle, he was into me, I couldn’t let my mind go there. I couldn’t handle being wrong about that too.
“It’s Florida. You’ve heard of the Florida Man, right?”
Claude swept his hand in front of him like a newspaper headline.
“You mean like, ‘Florida man robs gas station with alligator’?”
“Right.”
“Or, ‘Florida man throws alligator through Wendy’s drive-thru window’?”
“Yeah.”
“Or, ‘Florida man gets eaten alive while attempting to rob a gas station at a Wendy’s drive-thru with an alligator’?”
“You’re familiar with it,” I confirmed. “Now imagine those people wearing their shirt while they do those things, and that’s Pensacola.”
“Got it. And I assume they’re also not a fan of black people.”
“Oh, that part’s a given,” I said, attempting to be funny.
“Got it,” Claude said, not finding it as humorous as I had hoped.
“Honestly, I don’t know how they treat black people there. It’s probably as bad as anywhere else. There are good and bad people everywhere, right?”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured,” Claude said, withdrawing a little.
I looked out the plane’s window trying to recover from being an insensitive prick.
“How bad was it being black in Oregon?” I asked, turning back to him.
Claude thought about it.
“It could have been worse. It helps that we were in a university town. But I try not to look for the things I don’t want to see.”
“So, things were cool there?”
“I mean, I did get a few people asking to touch my hair.”
“Seriously?” I asked, cringing.
“There were a few.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, apologizing for all white people everywhere.
“Listen, if that was the worst thing that happened to me while I was there, I would have been fine with it,” he said with a sarcastic smile.
“What was the worst thing?” I asked, nervously.
He just stared at me.
“Fuck!” I said, realizing that what I had said had been it. “I’m so sorry, man.”
“I get it.”
“It’s just that, in all of the time I knew you, I really wanted to touch your hair. I didn’t know how to ask…” I shrugged longingly.
Claude looked at me for a moment and then burst into laughter.
