Damon Young - What Doesnt Kill You Makes You Blacker

E very New Years Day, hundreds of people gather together on the banks of the Monongahela, a 130-mile-long river that begins in Fairmont, West Virginia; runs along a stretch of factories, steel mills, and power plants through the Mon Valley; and flows to Pittsburgh, where it converges with the Allegheny River at Point State Park to form the Ohio River. Once there, these people strip and dive in. New Years Day, as you probably know, occurs in January, and the average temperature in Pittsburgh then hovers somewhere between hold my beer and fuck this shit. Which means that theyre usually splashing butt-ass naked in an Appalachian Slush Puppie. They call themselves the Polar Bear Club (and their annual dive the Polar Bear Plunge).

Perhaps, while reading that paragraph, an image of a Polar Bear Plunger plopped into your head. Without knowing anything about you, I knowI am certainthat the bare-chested, shivering, and possibly inebriated person you envisioned happened to be white. And not just because whiteness is such the American default that it has even colonized our imaginations, but because willingly exposing yourself to frostbite, hypothermia, and the trillion-year-half-life Mon Valley isotopes floating downstream is about as thats some white-people shit as thats some white-people shit gets. Only someone so comfortably ensconced in privilege that they need to find ways to fabricate closeness to death to feel alive would leave their bed and blankets and house and clothes and city and the tens of thousands of years of civilization devoted to finding more efficient ways to protect us from the elements in the dead of winter to belly flop into a billion gallons of toxic ice. Its so white that if you happen to be a nonwhite member of the Polar Bear Cluband it doesnt matter if youre Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Chaka Khan, or Shaka Zuluyou become, from the time you remove your clothes to the time you climb back out of the water, white by osmosis.

Ive always been captivated by this peripheral effect of whiteness. Where the cushion of pervasive and metaphysical consequencelessness is so soft and thick that adversity must be conjured for neurons to fire and fight-or-flight to engage. This characteristic is so embedded in what weve come to know of what it means to be white that whitenesss unyielding affinity for artificial kamikaze is the standard for what falls beneath the thats some white-people shit umbrella. Im especially enthralled by extreme sports, where white boys from Montana and Arizona and West Virginia perform athletic feats in competitions whose only purpose for existing is to bring participants close enough to death to give it an Eskimo kiss. The contests themselves dont excite me that much. I just love hearing these niggas talk when theyre done, because they speak in quotes that sound like the names of embargoed Axe body sprays.

Bro, that CLIFF DIVE was a FREAKIN BLAST. It was such a RUSH to GATOR PUNCH that NASTY CREVICE and that FURIOUS CREEK, even after I was SWARMED by a batch of CAVE CRICKETS and that MOUNTAIN LION. But I took a GENEROUS SWIG from my ENERGY PACK, felt the BRAIN FREEZE, rode THE WAVE of my ADRENALINE, and ignored my EYEBALL SWEAT and RUPTURED SPLEEN and pulled through.

Having to go to such extreme lengths to feel a rush is an alien concept for me, since living while black has provided me with enough thrills to make Wes Craven scream. Whenever I am followed by a police officer while driving, for instance, the theme song from Mission: Impossible plays on a loop in my head, and the mental checklist I run through reminds me of Ethan Hunt attempting to defuse a nuclear warhead.

Okay, people. Relax. Stay calm, and do exactly what I tell you. Make a sharp right at this light to see if hes following us or just happens to be behind us.

(Completes right turn. Cop follows.)

Okay, okay, okay, thats fine. Stay calm. We will be all right. Listen to me, people. We will be all right.

(A person named Kay gets hysterical.)

STAY WITH ME, KAY! STAY FOCUSED, KAY! WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER!

(Splashes some kombucha in Kays face. Kay regains her composure.)

Okay. Now slowly and deliberately turn the music down. The volume is at eighty-nine and the bass is on a hundred, and were going to need those numbers to be thirteen and seven. We can do this. Weve been trained to do this. Lets go!

(The volume knob is gently and steadily turned to the left. A single bead of sweat drips on the dashboard.)

Whats the status, Frank?

(Someone named Frank replies.) The volume situation has been neutralized. The volume situation has been neutralized.

Okay, great. Were not out of the woods yet, though. Kay, whats taking so long with the music? Why are we still listening to Rick Ross?

I... I just cant find... there are just too many... songs... on this Spotify playlist to choose from. These choices are overwhelming! I dont know what to do, Damon!!! I dont know what to do!!! Also, Im pregnant.

(Kay collapses in a ball of tears. I make a face communicating both abject shock and abject joy. Its a really ugly face. I put my arm around Kay.)

Were going to have a baby? Why didnt you tell me before?

There... there was just no time. I didnt know how to tell you. I remember how you treated that cat your ex asked you to sit for a month, and I thought you didnt want kids.

I hate cats. But I love kids. And I love you.

(We kiss.)

Now, Kay, we need you, babe. Can you do this?

Yes, Damon. Yes I can.

Okay. Find us a new song.

(Kay grabs the iPhone and furiously scrolls through it.)

I found one!

What is it?

Taylor Swifts Shake It Off.

Perfect! I dont even remember adding that to my playlistand cant think of a reason why I would havebut perfect!

You downloaded it for that spin class you attended in May, and just never deleted it because its a really fun song with a solid chorus. Taylor is aggravating, but you cant deny her songwriting talent.

Oh yeah, I remember now. Frank, does Shake It Off work?

(Frank types on a really fancy iPad.)

It does! It does! The numbers add up!

Lets do it!

(Shake It Off is selected on the playlist. And then I notice something.)

Team, is that what I think it is?

(I motion toward the rearview mirror. Both Kay and Frank look and cant conceal their excitement.)

Holy shit!

(The cop who has been following us has his turn signal on.)

(The cop turns at the next intersection.)

Crisis averted! Crisis averted! Crisis averted!

(Kay jumps into my arms, and we embrace. Frank smirks and pumps his fist, because an embrace from him too would make the drivers seat too crowded.)

This hypercognizance of both my blackness and what the possession of blackness in America is supposed to mean has created a nigga neurosisa state of being where Did that happen because Im black? and If this is happening because Im black, how am I supposed to react as a Professional Black Person? are never not pertinent questions. This neurosis can be amusing, as when Im playing pickup basketball at a park Ive never been to before and the guys therewhove never seen me playstill make me one of their top picks. Did this happen because Im black... and tall-ish...and wearing appropriate athletic gear? Probably. Mostly, however, its unnerving and annoying. But it is also exciting as fuck. I never feel more alive and closer to death than when I am pondering ways for whiteness to ruin my life. If Im walking down my street at night, I envision what would happen if I were coming from the gym and wearing a hoodie and one of my white neighbors didnt recognize me and this also happened to be the day that said neighbor decided to start carrying a handgun. When I go to the park with my daughter and sit on the bench while shes on the swing, I wonder whether the white moms there will reach into their fanny packs and pull out their pepper sprays if I happen to wave or smile at one of their kids. But then I also wonder if me