“‘Beer, beer, beer! All you think about is beer! So go get yourself one of them girls what’s satisfied with a hot dog and a bottle of beer. I do not call that going out myself, so I am going in. I will thank you to take me home.’

“‘Start walking then,’ I said.

“‘Taxi!’ she screamed no sooner than she got to the curb, and she wrapped her stole around her. So, daddy-o, I am broke this morning, broke this week, in fact, broke the rest of the month, just from one date. If I didn’t love that girl, I would be mad.

“If I had kissed her before we started out, she might of said, ‘Let’s just stay home and play records.’ Then I wouldn’t of had to worry about the high cost of love. Love don’t cost a thing in private. It’s just when it’s on display. When women get out they want Beergindy. I do not care nothing about love in public anyhow. I’m a house man, myself.”

“Then it’s about time you got married again and made a home.”

“It is,” said Simple, “because love is too high anywhere else. I should of kissed Joyce on the way to her house in that taxi. Now it will take a week to get her back to normal.”

Present for Joyce

Present for Joyce

“Rowdy, now that’s a nice word. Sometimes I likes to be rowdy myself, but don’t like to run with rowdies. Why is that? I like to drink, but I don’t like drunks. I don’t have the education to mingle myself with educated folks. I don’t have a white-walled Cadillac to keep up with sports, numbers writers, and doctors. And not smoking reefers, I can’t pal around with hep cats. So who are my buddies? You—and a couple of bartenders.”

“The point of such a dissertation at this moment being what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Simple, “except to offer you a small beer. And to tell you I am tired of working like a Negro all week in order to live like white folks on Saturday night. What I want is a part-time job with full-time pay, or else a position where you take a vacation all summer and rest all winter. But I am colored, so I know nothing like that is going to happen to me.”

“Color, color, color!” I said. “It is so easy to blame all one’s failures and difficulties on color. To whine I can’t do this, I can’t do that because I’m colored—which is one bad habit you have, friend—always bringing up race.”