Run, Mourner, Run

At first, I wasn’t completely sure how to answer the question about this story. I had to think a while and formulate my ideas of what I considered to be a valid answer. I think Kenan’s story speaks against racism and stereotypes of same-sex relationships and lives. In the story, the main character, Dean, is portrayed very poor and doesn’t have the best home life. He secretly sneaks off to have trysts with random men who pick him up on the side of the road since homosexuality is kept on a need to know basis. If anyone knows about it they keep to themselves and shun that person. Once he is propositioned by Terrell, a local who owns a lot of land and business in the town, to have a fling with a man of color, Ray, he thinks on it until he is offered money to do so and a new position at work with raise. Immediately, he decides, it doesn’t hurt him to go through with this plan of seducing this man until he get to really know him. Dean starts to flirt and eventually bed Ray, who is a married man, and soon realizes what he has done. He starts to feel guilty but also flip-flops between necessity and, maybe not love, but feeling cared for as a person. A profound moment for me that showed Dean breaking the natural order of racism was when he was found out and Ray didn’t say anything besides get out and never come back. Dean didn’t curse him out or spew hate, he genuinely felt awful for what he did. He immediately regretted not coming forth with the truth. A quote from this story that stood out to me was, “As Dean stood and pulled his clothes on, he wanted desperately to hate Ray,… he wanted to relearn to hate, fiery, blunt, brutal;…”. The part where it says “he wanted to relearn hate” was very insightful on how Dean’s mindset had changed. He saw Ray as a person not a colored man. His equal, his partner, someone he cared for. The only thing that he felt made this pass with a bit more ease was the promise of his money, which he was skeptical of to being with and for good reason. Terrell had tricked him into helping him get what he wanted then pretended he never made a deal with Dean in the first place. Why? Because he was poor, gay, and had no one to corroborate his story. It was futile. Not only did he have no money, but Terrell also fired him shortly after to spite him.