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131 pages 4 hours read

Junot Díaz

Drown

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1995

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How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or HalfieChapter Summaries & Analyses

Story Summary: “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie”

This story is told in second-person by Yunior, who is now an adolescent. It is a set of instructions for dating. The “you” of the second-person narration is simultaneously an “I”. In the story, Yunior alternates between several scenarios, some seeming to be memories and some seeming to be imagined. They each revolve around having girls over to his house after he has conned his family into letting him stay home alone. He categorizes the girls according to their race, and runs through the different things that may happen with each girl. At this point in Yunior’s life, his father has left the family.

Yunior opens the story by coaching himself to wait for his brother and mother to leave the apartment. He’s given the excuse that he is too sick to go to Union City to visit “that tía who likes to squeeze [his] nuts” (143). Although his mother knows it’s a lie, she has allowed him to stay. This is one scenario that he can engineer in order to be left in the house alone.

He coaches himself to remove the boxes of government-issued food supplies (which he calls “government cheese”) from the refrigerator. He specifies: If the girl he has invited over is from the Park or Society Hill, he will hide the boxes in the cabinet or the oven, where she will never see them. He tells himself to leave a note reminding himself to replace the food in its original place before morning, or his “moms will kick [his] ass” (143). He also reminds himself to remove any pictures of himself and his family in the Dominican countryside, “especially the one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope leash” (143). He soothes himself, saying, “The kids are your cousins and by now they’re old enough to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing” (143). He also counsels himself to hide pictures of himself with an Afro, and to put the basket with soiled toilet paper under the sink.

He tells himself to shower, comb, and dress, and then to sit on the couch and watch TV. He observes that, if the girl is an outsider, her father or mother will be bringing her over. He knows that neither of her parents will want her seeing someone in the Terrace—his neighborhood. They’ll say that people get stabbed in the Terrace. He muses, though, that any outside girl who makes it to his house will be a strong-headed type. He guarantees himself that, if she’s a white girl, he will at least get a hand job from her.

Yunior muses that he will have written directions for this outsider girl in his best handwriting, “so her parents won’t think [he’s] an idiot” (144). He coaches himself to get up from the couch and check the parking lot. He reminds himself that if the girl is local she will “flow over when she’s good and ready” (144). He muses that sometimes a local girl will show up with a bunch of her friends, meaning that there will be no sex. However, he tells himself, “it will be fun anyway and you’ll wish these people would come over more often” (144). He remarks that, sometimes the local girl will totally stand him up, and then act casual at school, and that he’ll be stupid enough to invite her over again.

He tells himself to wait only an hour for the local girl, and then to go out to his corner. He says, “Give one of your boys a shout and when he says, Are you still waiting on that bitch? Say, Hell yeah” (144). Then he tells himself to get back into the house and call the girl’s house. Her father will pick up, sounding like a principal or a police chief. He counsels himself that, once the waiting becomes unbearable, the girl will show up.

At this point, the hypothetical girl morphs into a girl who is not from the Terrace. He imagines what she will say that her mother, who is dropping her off, and will want to meet him: “Don’t panic. Say, Hey, no problem. Run a hand through your hair like the whiteboys do even though the only thing that runs easily through your hair is Africa” (145). He tells himself that the girl will look good, and that, although the white girls are the ones he wants most, most of the out-of-town girls will be affluent Black girls “who grew up with ballet and Girl Scouts, who have three cars in their driveways” (145). He reminds himself, that if the girl is a “halfie,” he shouldn’t be surprised if her mother is white. He counsels himself to say hi to the girl’s mother, and to see that she isn’t truly scared of him. He knows that the mother will ask for better directions out of the neighborhood, and that, even though he has already given her the best directions, he should give her different ones in order to appease her.

Yunior tells himself that if the girl is local, he should take her to a restaurant named El Cibao for dinner. He should order in his mangled Spanish, in order to either impress the girl if she’s Black, or allow her to correct him if she’s Latina. He counsels himself that, if the girl is not local, Wendy’s will do for dinner. He tells himself to talk about school on the way to the restaurant. A local girl obviously won’t need neighborhood stories, but an out-of-towner might. He tells himself, “Supply the story about the loco [English: crazy guy] who’d been storing canisters of tear gas in his basement for years, how one day the canisters cracked and the whole neighborhood got a dose of the military-strength stuff” (145-146). He reminds himself not to tell the girl that his mother knew exactly what the smell was, because she recognized it from the year the United States invaded the Dominican Republic.

He tells himself to hope that he doesn’t run into Howie, his nemesis—“the Puerto Rican kid with two killer mutts” (146). He recounts that Howie walks the dogs all over the neighborhood, and that, every now and then, the dogs corner a cat and tear it to pieces, “Howie laughing as the cat flips up in the air, its neck twisted around like an owl, red meat showing through the soft fur” (146). If that hasn’t happened, then Howie will surely walk behind the narrator and taunt him, asking, “Hey, Yunior, is that your new fuckbuddy?” (146). He tells himself to let Howie run his mouth, since Howie “weighs about two hundred pounds and could eat [him] if he wanted” (146). He predicts that Howie will turn away from following them at the field—“He has new sneakers, and doesn’t want them muddy” (146). If the girl is not from the neighborhood, she’ll call Howie an asshole. A local girl will be yelling back at Howie the whole time, unless she’s shy. He tells himself that, either way, he shouldn’t feel bad when he doesn’t do anything—he should never lose a fight on the first date, or that will be the end of it.

Yunior tells himself that dinner will be tense, because he’s not good at talking to people that he doesn’t know. A girl who is half black and half white will tell him that her parents met in “the Movement,” back when people thought interracial dating was radical. Although her phrasing will sound inauthentic and rehearsed, and his brother has called such remarks “Uncle Tomming,” he counsels himself to feign sincerity by putting down his hamburger and saying, “It must have been hard” (147). He tells himself that the girl will appreciate the feigned interest. She’ll tell him that black people treat her badly, which is why she doesn’t like them. He will then wonder how she feels about Dominicans, but reminds himself not to ask her.

He tells himself to walk her back into the neighborhood after dinner. He tells himself: “The skies will be magnificent. Pollutants have made the Jersey sunsets one of the wonders of the world” (147). He tells himself to point out the beautiful sky and to touch her shoulder and say, “That’s nice, right?” (147).

Once they are back home, he tells himself that he will need to get serious. He tells himself to watch TV but stay alert. He tells himself to sip some of the Bermúdez rum that his father has left in the cabinet, which nobody touches. He says that “a local girl might have hips and a thick ass, but she won’t be quick about letting [him] touch. She has to live in the same neighborhood as [he does], has to deal with [him] being all up in her business” (147). However, she might let him kiss her, or, if she’s reckless, she might have sex with him, but that will be rare. On the other hand, a white girl is more likely to “give it up right then” (147). He tells himself not to stop her, and imagines that she’ll take the gum out of her mouth, stick it to the plastic sofa covers, then move close to him and tell him he has nice eyes. He counsels himself: “Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own” (147). He tells himself that she will say that she loves Spanish guys and counsels himself not to correct her.

He tells himself that he will be with the girl until about eight-thirty, and then she will want to clean herself up. He imagines that the girl will hum a song from the radio in the bathroom, her waist keeping the beat against the lip of the sink. He tells himself, “Imagine her old lady coming to get her, what she would say if she knew her daughter had just lain under you and blown your name, pronounced with her eighth-grade Spanish, into your ear” (148). He tells himself to call one of his boys while she is in the bathroom and tell him that he just had sex, or to just to sit back on the couch and smile.

However, he reminds himself that most dates will not go this way. Often, the girl will not want to kiss him. She might complain about her body. He tells himself: “Stroke her hair but she will pull away. I don’t like anybody touching my hair, she will say. She will act like somebody you don’t know. In school she is known for her attention-grabbing laugh, as high and far-ranging as a gull, but here she will worry you. You will not know what to say” (148). She will tell him that he and “the blackboys” are the only ones who ask her out. (148). He imagines that, by this time, the neighbors will “start their hyena calls, now that the alcohol is in them” (148). He counsels himself to say nothing, and to let her button her shirt, and to comb her hair, “the sound of it stretching like a sheet of fire between [them]” (148). He tells himself that when her father pulls in and beeps, he should let her go without too much of a goodbye—she won’t want one anyway.

He tells himself that during the next hour, the phone will ring, and that he will be tempted to pick it up. He tells himself not to. He tells himself to watch the shows he wants to, without his family around to fight him. He tells himself not to go downstairs or to fall asleep, because it won’t help. He tells himself to put the government cheese back where it belongs, before his mom kills him.

“How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie” Analysis

In this story, an older Yunior is markedly different from the younger version of himself, although he does retain his emotional sensitivity and insecurity. However, here, those things are masked by adolescent male bravado, whereas the younger version of himself was much more nakedly vulnerable and emotional. Whereas the versions of Yunior that appear in “Ysrael” and “Fiesta, 1980” are both children who are struggling with hypermasculinity, and who see the hyper masculine figures in their lives as decidedly antagonistic, the Yunior of this story has clearly accepted hypermasculinity as masculine identity. In this story, this older version of Yunior is attempting to integrate hypermasculinity into his own personality rather than struggling against it. He is counseling himself to effectively perform hypermasculinity satisfactorily.

It is interesting to note, though, that this hyper masculine performance is just that—a performance. It is not something that comes naturally or subconsciously to Yunior. He must consciously coach himself through all dating contingencies, carefully planning ahead and thinking of all of the ways he must battle to keep his masculinity intact in different dating scenarios. For example, he tells himself that he must never pick a fight that he will lose on the first date, as that is an assault against his own masculinity from which he will not recover. Therefore, we see that, in this older version of Yunior, the discomfort with hyper masclinity as a masculine identity has morphed from being discomfort with something that others impose on him into being discomfort and insecurity with his own expectations of himself. He has thus internalized the expectations that he quietly struggled against as a child.

In a sense, Yunior has become his own antagonist. The voices of his father and Rafa, as they bullied him and pushed him around, have become his own voice as he counsels himself in all of the ways to perform manhood correctly. By doing this, Díaz forms an analysis of the ways that hypermasculinity assaults and usurps the psyches of young men. By purposely formatting this story as a series of instructions, Díaz acutely draws attention to the constructed and performed nature of masculine identity.

Importantly, too, we see evidence of Yunior’s vulnerability and his emotional sensitivity peek through at various points throughout the narrative. For one, the judicious instructions that he issues to himself are evidence of his own unsteadiness and sense of insecurity. While on the surface the story issues a set of instructions on how to get laid and secure various sexual favors from various girls, Yunior continues to be an observant, emotionally-sensitive young man who doesn’t actually only want sex from girls: he admits that it is fun when girls end up bringing their friends over, and hints at loneliness when he says he wishes they would do so more often—even if it means they won’t be having sex. When he observes the local girl, he notices her “high-ranging laugh” and the subtle beauty of what it will sound like when she hums in the bathroom. These highly-emotional details starkly contrast with a macho sensibility that is only interested in sex, but Yunior self-consciously represses those aspects of his personality, in favor of coaching himself to perform the macho sexual objectification of females.

This story also has marked elements of racial and class commentary. Yunior repeatedly counsels himself to hide his racial, ethnic, and class heritage throughout the story. He tells himself to hide pictures of himself with an Afro. He even implicitly admits that he feels guilty about hiding pictures of himself and his cousins in the Dominican countryside, soothingly assuring himself that his cousins would understand why he is essentially ashamed of them. He hides any evidence of government aid in his house. He allows girls to call him Spanish, even though he is Dominican. He reminds himself to never other himself to girls by revealing that his mother recognized the smell of tear gas from when the United States invaded the Dominican Republic.

The subtext here is that he must never criticize America or reveal his own family’s history of being victimized by American imperialism—neither of these things will help him to land a girl in the States. Crucially, too, he reveals that white girls are the most highly-coveted ones, and counsels himself to act Anglo at several points in the story. The subtext here is that the richer and whiter a man is, the more masculine and more desirable he is. Likewise, the richer and whiter a girl is, the more desirable she is. As a young man, Yunior has internalized this racist and classist belief that emerges from the society around him, and is doing his best to groom himself in the image of the ideal male, who, in this society, is rich and white. Crucially, this grooming necessitates the repression and veiling of his actual identities and personal histories.

An interesting subtlety emerges from Yunior’s parsing of racial contexts as well. He notes that white girls, who are driven in and out of his neighborhood by their parents, are more likely to have sex with him because they do not live in the same neighborhood as him. Essentially, he is articulating that they are tourists: they have no investment in his community, and can go into his neighborhood, get their kicks, and leave. Although on the surface, Yunior is exploiting this aspect of their personality and contexts for his own sexual gain, this fact complicates the notion of unidirectional exploitation.

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