Black Guy and Bald Guy are buddies.
Which means nothing more than that.
Couple of guys.
Hot-shot Hollywood actors hanging out being guys.
Batman and the Green Hornet. Lone Ranger and J. Edgar Hoover. Black Guy and Bald Guy.
Just a couple of guys watching each other’s back.
Buddies.
Except that when someone thinks it necessary to make that claim, that same someone suggests in the process something very different to someone else. The second someone, the someone else, receiver of the anxious claim, which hangs in the air like the slowest, fattest curve in baseball history, smiles and says Oh, Really?
Where, the second someone says, did the sidekicks go?
Sidekicks?
Robin, Cato. Tonto. Clyde Tolson.
No sidekicks allowed here. Black Guy and Bald Guy are all about equality. They’re buddies. A couple of guys hanging out in the open air of America, cutting the social profit right down the middle.
Hanging what out of what exactly?
Huh? Oh.
Yes.
Buddies can’t be buddies?
Buddies can be buddies if buddies understand what’s at stake.
Even buddies who kick the whole sidekick idea to the curb?
Especially those who kick it to the curb because they think the kicking away of the younger partner, the soft boy, gets rid of the ambiguity at the heart of the buddy thing.
Soft boy?
Suckling. Sassy. Coming into his own someday, but for now second banana.
Banana?
Second.
Therefore smaller.
Without saying.
Less potent.
Without having to say.
Oh, man.
Exactly.
Point being?
The point.
Ah, as in pointer, I suppose.
Without saying.
Pointing?
Without having to say.
But you’re saying it.
Because you don’t seem to be seeing it.
All buddy stories are tales of displaced desire?
All stories are tales of displaced desire. What’s wrong with you?
