JUNOT DIAZ How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl, or Halfie Wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment. You've Iready told them that you're feeling too sick to go to Union City to visit that al who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He's gotten big, she'll say.) And even hough your moms knows you ain't sick you stuck to your story until finally he said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado. Clear the government cheese from the refrigerator. If the girl's from the errace stack the boxes behind the milk. If she's from the Park or Society Hill ide the cheese in the cabinet above the oven, way up where she'll never ee. Leave yourself a reminder to get it out before morning or your moms will ick your ass. Take down any embarrassing photos of your family in the ampo, especially the one with the half-naked kids dragging a goat on a rope ash. The kids are your cousins and by now they're old enough to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Hide the pictures of yourself with n Afro. Make sure the bathroom is presentable. Put the basket with all the rapped-on toilet paper under the sink. Spray the bucket with Lysol, then lose the cabinet. Shower, comb, dress. Sit on the couch and watch TV. If she's an outsider er father will be bringing her, maybe her mother. Neither of them want her weing any boys from the Terrace - people get stabbed in the Terrace - but he's strong-headed and this time will get her way. If she's a whitegirl you now you'll at least get a hand job. The directions were in your best handwriting, so her parents won't think ou're an idiot. Get up from the couch and check the parking lot. Nothing. If he girl's local, don't sweat it. She'll flow over when she's good and ready. sometimes she'll run into her other friends and a whole crowd will show up at our apartment and even though that means you ain't getting shit it will be un anyway and you'll wish these people would come over more often. Some- imes the girl won't flow over at all and the next day in school she'll say sorry, mile and you'll be stupid enough to believe her and ask her out again. Wait and after an hour go out to your corner. The neighborhood is full of raffic. Give one of your boys a shout and when he says, Are you still waiting on that bitch? say, Hell yeah. Get back inside. Call her house and when her father picks up ask if she's here. He'll ask, Who is this? Hang up. He sounds like a principal or a police hief, the sort of dude with a big neck, who never has to watch his back. Sit and wait. By the time your stomach's ready to give out on you, a Honda or maybe a Jeep pulls in and out she comes
