Under the Skin

The first three nights of the run had gone well enough, with the house being a bit more than half full and a good review—at least of Alfred’s performance—promising to put more bums on seats. Neither of us could act on a full stomach, so we were going to various restaurants around the theater after the performance in search for a satisfactory balance of food quality, quantity, and inexpense. As we sat in a booth, menus in hand, waiting for service, we fell into going over the lines of one of our troublesome scenes.

“It isn’t whether you are black or white but who you are under the skin that makes you a man.” Alfred was bellowing out one of his lines.

Only then did we realize that not only were the other patrons in the restaurant nervously eyeballing us, but that we had landed in one of those still-existent establishments where, even in 1988 and in New York City, favor was not shown on a black man sitting with a white man and sharing a meal. Especially appalling to the type comfortable in this restaurant was that, through our stage play lines, the black man was making mincemeat of the white man’s prejudicial statements. No one had taken our order. We’d been so engrossed in going over our lines that we’d been there for a half hour and no one had taken our order—and everyone had been angrily staring at us—at Alfred.

Alfred saw it before I did. He slammed down his menu, rose majestically from the booth, and made an exit from the restaurant that, if done on stage, would have gotten him a standing ovation. That is, from some other crowd than those who were in this restaurant. A waiter picked that moment to smirk, saunter over to the booth, and demonstrate an interest in taking my dinner order. He was full of sympathy for me for what I had to endure from what he called “that darkie.”