Sister Ray Seeks Salvation Bell Hooks (bio) It was all pretense. She knew it. He knew it. She could feel he knew it by the deep unhappy look of utter withdrawal she would catch in his eye, just at the moment when he would begin a hearty laughter-filled conversation with someone. It was high school all over again. Ray went to the party because she knew he would be there. He would be there because the party was for him celebrating [End Page 41] his birthday. It was at their house because they welcomed any excuse to have a party. Although she wanted him to notice her, she had not bothered to dress up. She wore a faded purple sweatshirt over a long sleeved pink T-shirt and another lavender colored T-shirt could be seen sticking out from the top. She wore her glasses, old blue jeans. She wanted him to notice her but she wanted not to care at the same time. Anyhow, she told herself, “wasn’t she out hunting, wasn’t she stalking prey, and didn’t that demand disguises.” She was wearing the perfect disguise. He paid her no attention. He was always surrounded by people congratulating him, drinking. She saw in him then all the things she did not like. The pretending to be happy with people you were not happy with—that he was even having this party hosted by someone who hated his guts. She watched the women who hung about him, noticed their white flesh, one so white she reminded her of bleached bright cotton sheets hanging on the line—the kind she had to spend hours hanging on the line as a child. She had hated those sheets, the cold that burnt her fingers, the wet melted snow seeping through her cheap shoes. The memory of that whiteness was tinged with hatred. Ray brushed it aside not wanting to think about it, not wanting to allow her feelings to get involved and cloud her judgment. She was here to observe, to record the facts. She was here to be the hunter who can shoot straight. So she noticed that the really white woman, with the long dark hair, the husky voice, a foreign accent but she could not tell from where, carrying around with her a smell that reminded Ray of sheep; that made her crave for the smell of fresh-cut grass, was trying too hard, making too much of an effort to be looked at, remembered. Ray was making a note in her imaginary workbook. “Fucks women, probably prefers fucking white women, especially those that come back for more, that beg for more, even though what they had was not [End Page 42] sufficient, was not enough.” After making these notes she then looked around the room counting the women, not she decided whom he had fucked but who had fucked him. There were about six. They were all white. They were all trying too hard. “Wait,” Ray told herself. One was not trying very hard and she wasn’t even sure that he had ever had sex with her. She seemed to be asking him to give her a chance—to try her. They stood in the kitchen talking with two other people, talking about women’s issues, something about whether women had the right to do the same kinds of things men do. Ray liked this woman. She too was white, dark-haired and spoke with a thick foreign accent. Ray heard her name Zvia but found it difficult to say. She practiced it over and over again in her mind but she could never get it to come out right, so she gave up, assuring herself that she would never see this woman again or any of these people—except him. Still she liked her and liked watching her, captivated by this discussion that was all about feminism, women asserting political rights when Zvia’s body politic was saying just the opposite. It was having a conversation about seduction. It was saying to him I desire you. I bring you all my fantasies about the black man who fucks so good, who gives it...