QUOTE : Tension stretches across my back like a wire hanger. “What does that mean?” “It’s just an awkward time to be talking black and sleeping white.” He shrugs the linebacker shoulders rebelling against his tweed sports jacket with patches on the elbows. “To be dating someone outside your community when you’re emerging as such a voice for it.” The smartest man I know just said some dumb shit. “You see those two things as somehow incongruous?” My question is laced with dread as I brace myself for the man I saw as a hero to show his feet of clay.