“Well, how do you feel about it?” Blanche asked.
“I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m not intolerant,” Margaret said. “Some people have this instinctive, physical aversion to other races, you know, and some just haven’t. I’ve talked to colored men for hours and felt very immersed in what they said, but I could never have spooned with them.”
“Well, I’m probably built the same way, but I’m not at all sure about it,” Blanche responded. “I’m not sure about anything, to-night. It’s all too new to me.”
A tall, jaunty, colored youth whisked Margaret away, and a portly, courtly man wearing shell-rimmed spectacles sat down beside Blanche and began to tell her all about an immortal play which he had written, but which the managers were hesitating over because it hadn’t strolled into the box-office. The playwright was garrulous, using his arms as a sweeping emphasis for his remarks, and Blanche wondered whether she was listening to a genius or an untalented boaster. Some day she’d meet a man who didn’t claim to be superb in his particular line ... some day snow would fall in July.
The gathering became slowly silent as Vanderin announced that a poet was about to recite. The poet, a young negro, Christopher Culbert, read some of his sonnets, in a liquid and at times almost shrill voice. He had a round, dark-brown face, and a body verging on chubbiness, and his verses were filled with adored colors and a sentimentality that flirted with morbidity for moments and then repented. He was effeminate and jovial in his manner, and after the reading he returned to his place on a couch beside another negro youth. Then another man, blackish brown and with the body of an athlete, sang spirituals, with a crazy, half-sobbing, swaying quaver in his voice. A curious blending and contrast of elation and austerity seemed to cling to him. As he intoned the words of one song: “Ho-ow d’yuh kno-ow, ho-ow d’yuh kno-o-ow, a-t the blo-od done si-ign mah na-a-me?”, Blanche felt shivers racing up and down her spine. These negroes certainly had something which white people couldn’t possibly imitate—something that made you feel wild, and sad, and swung you off your feet! It was hard to put your finger on it—perhaps it was a kind of insanity.
When the singer had finished, Vanderin announced that Miss Bee Rollins, of the Down South night club would do the Charleston dance. She stepped forward—a palely creamish-brown skinned young negress with a lissom body incongruously plump about the waist, and an oval face, infinitely impertinent and infinitely sensual in a loosely heavy way. She twisted and bobbed and jerked through the maniacal obliquely see-sawing and shuffling steps of the Charleston, with a tense leer on her face, and inhumanly flexible legs. She was madly applauded and forced to several encores. Then the party broke up into dancing and more steady drinking, with different negroes playing at the piano, and the assistance of a phonograph in between.
The dancers undulated and embraced in a way that surprised Blanche—even in the cheap dance halls which she had frequented, the floor-watchers always immediately ordered off all couples who tried to get away with such rough stuff. Well, anyway, it wasn’t the main part of these people’s lives—their only thrill and importance—as it was with the dance-hall men and women. The couples in this studio were only “cutting up” between their more serious, searching labors and expressions, and they were certainly more entitled to be frankly sexual, if they wanted to.
Blanche stepped over the floor with several negro and white men, and enjoyed the novelty of dancing as extremely as the other couples did, though she felt the least bit guilty about it—it certainly was “going the limit.” As she danced with the negroes she felt surprised at her lack of aversion to the closeness of their bodies. Somehow, they danced with a rhythmical, subtle, audacious fervor which her white partners could never quite duplicate, and she was swung into a happy harmony with their movements in spite of herself.
As she was catching her breath between dances, she watched some of the negroes around her. One of them, a short, slender girl in a dark red smock and a short black skirt, was conversing with a white youth in a dark suit, who looked like a solemnly tipsy mingling of clergyman and pagan. She had a pale brown skin, black curls of bobbed hair, thin lips, and a pug nose. She held his hand and gave him distrustfully tender looks.
Blanche caught fragments of their conversation.