I can’t remember exactly where we were. It was some kind of gathering, where Alissa and I had got caught up in conversations on different sides of the room. I found myself talking to a couple guys who knew just enough English for us to carry on the kind of conversations you have at cocktail parties. It went like this.
Guy: “So what kind of music do you listen to?”
Me: “Ah, all kinds, really.”
Guy: “Do you like this [name of someone I hadn’t heard of]?”
Me: Hmm. I’m not sure about that. What kind of music is it?”
Guy: “Black music! Do you like black music?”
Huh. Do we have a strange racist person on our hands? I didn’t see that coming. Maybe it was a problem of vocabulary.
Me: “Oh, like rap?”
Guy: “Black music!”
Me: “Sure I do!”
A few days later, while wandering around in the music section, I ran into this.
Oh.