Rating
The Pequod Review:
Glenn Loury's memoir Late Admissions has impressive moments of candor -- including his extensive history of drug use, womanizing, and family betrayals -- but unfortunately he frequently has very little interesting or original to say about these moments. Nonetheless, Loury's relatively strong connections to inner city black communities (which were sometimes the result of his numerous girlfriends) made him better able than most to spot the hypocrisies of the wealthy liberal Black students he came across at Northwestern and elsewhere:
This blasé little rich kid means to tell me what black people do and what they don't? Funny, I've never seen him or his ilk in any of the black pool halls or black barber shops or black bars or black churches or black neighborhoods on the South Side where I've spent my entire life. I can't detect in his speech any of the familiar intonations and idioms that I've heard spoken by black men and women my entire life. And I sure as hell can't imagine him clocking into the third shift and then heading off to the library and then to class, as I've been doing for years, putting in the kind of work I learned how to do from watching my father and Uncle Moonie make a life out of nothing...
To him and his cadre, I imagine, a degree from Northwestern is just another rubber stamp on their path to respectability, a good job, and a nice house in the suburbs. Nothing wrong with it. But the thought that someday they'll all sit around in their well-appointed living rooms and reminisce about their time in "the struggle" makes me ill. This brother wouldn't know struggle if it pinned him down and sat on his head.
I also liked his detailed explanation of how to cook crack cocaine:
After a while, I realized that I could get more drugs for my dollar if I simply processed the powdered cocaine into crack myself. It's a simple procedure. All you need, besides the cocaine, is a lighter, water, baking soda, some Q-Tip high-proof alcohol, a ceramic mug, and a piece of cheesecloth or an old T-shirt. Mix equal parts cocaine and baking soda in the mug (more baking soda than coke is fine but not vice versa) and pour a little water in to dissolve them completely. Then dip a Q-Tip or two into the high-proof alcohol, light it, and hold it under the mug. After a few moments, the water will boil. Quickly pour more room-temperature water over the boiling water. This will cause the baking soda-cocaine compound to crystallize and precipitate to the bottom of the mug. Take the piece of T-shirt, hold it tight over the top of the mug, then filter the water through it. You'll be left with a small, wet pile of crystals. Once the crack dries, it can be smoked. The key for me was always to make sure I had all the cooking supplies stocked up before I bought the coke. Once I had the drugs in hand, I would itch to start the process and get smoking as quickly as possible. I also didn't want to have to walk into a grocery store and see the look on the cashier's face as she rang up baking soda, tin foil, and a jug of water.
I had the process down, but I found I would need better cocaine than what I could buy on the street. Cooking crack filters out any impurities in the product. When I tried it with coke from the street, often there would be almost nothing left to smoke.
And I imagine a lot of men (and maybe a few women) will identify with Loury's flirtatiousness:
Over drinks, we do discuss politics and her career. And as we talk, I'm also working out a game theory puzzle in my mind. I desperately want to get this woman up to my hotel room. I hypothesize that she also wants to come up to my hotel room, but she does not want to appear cheap or overeager. If I proposition her too early, too directly, she'll believe I think she is cheap and overeager, and she'll say no on general principles. Game over.
My solution to the problem is not to state my intent outright but to reveal it progressively in such a way that I can plausibly disavow my true intent at any point without receiving an explicit rejection. The rule is this: so long as there is no rejection, the revelation of intent can progress. Once I cross a certain threshold in this progressive revelation of intent without receiving a no, I can make the proposition explicit with a sufficient degree of confidence that I'll receive a yes.
So a dance begins in which I advance and retreat. We talk about politics. I answer her questions and ask some in response. I ask about her professors at Smith, about her classes, slowly getting a little more personal. I make a joke that is maybe a little bit serious. I ask about her romantic partners, and I watch her eyes. Is she avoiding eye contact? I hope not. That's the last stop before no. But she is holding eye contact. She is smiling and laughing. I deploy a double entendre, and she laughs again, and I ask her what's so funny. "Nothing," she says, and smiles. I note that I am advancing more than I am retreating. I let her catch me looking at her legs, and she does not try to cover herself up.
At some point, I believe the threshold has been crossed. I don't really know if it has, but I decide that even if I get a no, it's okay, because I find that I really do like Pamela. The worst-case scenario is that I've made a new friend. So I suggest that we continue the conversation up in my room. And she says yes.
When we enter the room, she excuses herself to the bathroom and takes her purse with her. I sit and wait and wonder what's taking her so long. Finally, she emerges wearing nothing but a bra and a slip with no panties. In working through the many permutations of the seduction problem, I had not considered the scenario in which the intent to seduce was mutual.
Recommended.