Body and Soul

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Every time I meet B, a rising high school senior in my writing class at Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side, he makes me laugh. He delivers his jokes with a screwball exuberance that puts him in the tradition of zany black comics Chris Tucker, Chris Rock, and Dave Chappelle. At first, I couldn't return the warmth, and glanced at him awkwardly as he offered his hand for—I didn't know what. Perhaps I felt more at home thinking about sentence structures than pounding and slapping hands with street-smart New York City students out in the physical world. After I bungled the handshakes, I always felt cold and distant. But I wanted to get to know B better. From the start, I admired his unselfconscious enthusiasm.

In one-on-one writing sessions, I learned that B loves to think about psychology. Though his humor appears effortless, it is really the product of constant analysis. He makes hypotheses about what kinds of laughs might be associated with particular brain states. He keeps a running list of what people say about the mind as he watches television. He finds food for thought even in exercise competitions. "Harness your psychic powers to enhance your muscles and annihilate your opponent!" he remembered an overexcited host saying. B wondered why the show would portray the mind as so dominant over the body.

B's conception of the psyche is more complicated. As a child, he gained a reputation for his skill at untangling knots of wires. He thinks of his mind as another knot in need of continuous untangling. He aspires to help others achieve mental order by becoming a psychologist. Already, he is working to make people healthier. As a peer sex educator employed by Henry Street, he journeys around New York City to give workshops on HIV/AIDS. He takes his job seriously. When I remarked that his workshops might save a life, he replied quickly: "Probably more." (His message, he said, would spread fast.)

Yesterday, I saw B and his coworkers across from my office, at the entrance to a complex of red brick housing projects, joking after a long day of work. I was wearing glasses, and couldn't see very well. But B called to me just as I walked outside. He had been slowly teaching me about greetings, and he extended a pound. I flubbed on the first try—maybe my mind was tangled. Then I asked B and one of his friends about handshakes. I had always felt that the pounders were somehow excluding me, and was sure that B and his friends knew a few gestures that marked off cliquish social groups. B told me that I was wrong. Yes, hand etiquette changes every few years, and there are some conventions. But what the greetings are really about is the attention that two friends pay to one another. The idea is to follow your friend's hand carefully as you approach it, making sure that you meet in the same way—shake, snap, slap, or pound. I learned from B that hand manners are like jazz. They are not about exclusion—they are about sympathetic improvisation.


Alex M. McLeese ’11, a Crimson news writer, is a history concentrator in Cabot House.