The Big Dream by Rebecca Rosenblum

“Racist? I’m racist? Wayne is practically my best friend and he’s black and I’m racist?”
    Wayne looked down at Martin as if from on top of a mountain, but Danvir jumped in first. “Not like that, not like . . . skin, just skin . . .” He was pacing, furious, his tear-away basketball pants rasping as he walked. “Wayne’s as Canadian as you are, so what’s the difference? That’s what you think, you think, right, you two are the insiders with no accent, no immigration papers.”
    Wayne swallowed hard on a ball of pizza and looked like he was thinking about standing up too. “My great-gramma came from Jamaica in 1942.”

    â€œYou are – you think I’m not out a job, same as you, ’cause my ma’s got a sari in the back of her closet?”
    â€œIt isn’t about hating on you, or your ma. It’s just about, you know, why they gotta take the jobs outta Canada and – ”
    â€œThat’s where your thinking is totally fucked. I mean, fucked.” Danvir suddenly crouched down to look in the two-four beside his chair, like there were a bunch of different options in there and he was choosing very carefully. “Like them Indian call-centre jerks – like they come with guns and make Dream Inc. shift the inbound call operations to India.”
    Wayne nodded slowly. “He’s right, the fucker. They ain’t taking what Mark and Sanjeet doan wanna give.”
    â€œHey, Sanjeet . . . doesn’t sound like a name of someone who wants Canadians – ”
    â€œOh, shut up, Martin. Who’da thought you’d be the racist one?” Danvir kinda cackled and popped his beer.
    â€œI ain’t the racist one.” Martin chewed.
    Danvir slurped then chewed.
    I noticed a guy who looked like the WWF come through the kitchen behind the couch where everybody else was eating and drinking and yelling.
    â€œWhy wouldn’t I be the racist one, anyway? What kind of thing is that to say?”
    It was, seriously, the muscliest guy I’d ever seen. His shirt wasn’t even that tight and there wasn’t much light in the kitchen, but I could see bulges in his shoulders, bulges in his chest, and his hair was shaved off so his head was like one giant shiny bulge.
    â€œI dunno – ” Danvir was being all fake, like he does when he knows he’s right on trivia night “ – you bein’ a homosexual, I though you mighta learned a little tolerance.”
    The guy in the kitchen put his hands on his waist and I saw it was really narrow, his top half actually triangling down into his pants. I thought about how I ought to join a gym a second before I remembered that I was unemployed.

    Some food fell out of Wayne’s mouth. I was only just now realizing how bad the light was in there as I tried to see if it was Jos Louis or pizza and I couldn’t. Wayne turned and looked at Martin for a good long second, food still sitting on his shirt like a Remembrance Day poppy. “Yer a fag?”
    Danvir hooted like he’d just bowled a strike. “ Practically best friends, huh?”
    The guy took a step into the living-room light, and I could see that he wasn’t black, though he wasn’t exactly white, either.
    Martin flopped along the back of the couch until he was all the way lying down and Wayne had to squirm around to look at him, which knocked the pizza box to the floor. The pizza mainly stayed in even though the box didn’t shut all the way.
    â€œYou are a faggot ?”
    The kitchen guy took another step.
    â€œYou knew that.” Martin tossed his hands in the air and then flopped them back on his belly. “Everybody knows that. How could you not know that?”
    Wayne was twisting around to kneel backwards on the couch, no easy game for a guy his size. “ I didn’t know cuz you din’t tell me. You don’t say, Wayne, I am a homosexual, you don’t try to