Trigger Warning: This story, written by a Black author, uses the N-word racial slur, as well as profanities. Using the conventions of recent books such as Give My Love to the Savages, the PEN/ Bingham-finalist story collection by Black author Chris Stuck, and other examples from literary publishing, the slurs and profanities have been published as is (without asterisk or abbreviation). Please note that this practice honors the author’s choice and intention, and for additional consideration of when and whether these words should ever be published, or used, please consider this essay by Black author Ta-Nehisi Coates, “In Defense of a Loaded Word,” which can be accessed here.

It was like being Taylor Swift onstage at the VMAs, a Moonman in your hand but not the microphone, as Kanye West announces to the world that your win is invalid.

Or so Brendan believed. He didn’t say this, though, because he knew Jason—even though Jason also was white—would consider it racist. He just continued to read with Jason, off Jason’s phone, the angry tweets about the store. Meanwhile, in the quiet of their living room, he suppressed an urge to yell.

Almost 24 hours before, a news story about Jason, Brendan, Wyatt, and their cannabis store Rainbow High had aired on the 10 o’clock p.m. broadcast of Denver’s Channel 8 News. Onscreen, Jason and Brendan were dressed in skinny jeans and short-sleeve polos as they told the reporter how Rainbow High began. Wyatt, who was the store’s funder and marijuana grower but had zero interest in being its public face—since he was a straight white guy and recognized that two gay men at the forefront of a marijuana shop was more unique branding—didn’t make an appearance.

“Brendan and I are former actors and love the musical Evita,” said Jason. “One night, we were listening to the song ‘Rainbow High’ and thought about how that would be a hilarious name for a cannabis store. A year later, we were in business.”

When the story appeared on Channel 8 News’ website an hour after it aired, Jason and Brendan posted the video on Rainbow High’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, as well as on their own profiles. They watched as, even at one a.m., their number of likes, shares, retweets, and congratulatory comments quickly increased.

But now it was almost 10 o’clock p.m. again, and their online supporters were outnumbered. Hundreds of black Twitter users thought it was abhorrent that three white men were being praised for their marijuana store when, daily, many black people in the U.S. were receiving decades-long prison sentences for selling weed. “#whiteprivilege,” @BeingMaryPain posted when she retweeted the news story, her post receiving 2,000 likes.

“We need to apologize,” said Jason after he and Brendan read several tweets matching @BeingMaryPain’s sentiment. He exited the Twitter app and dialed Wyatt.

As Jason waited for Wyatt to answer, he remembered his college days—when he and Brendan had yet to move to the Mile-High City, where they would meet Wyatt; when they were theatre students at Sarah Lawrence and the most popular weed dealers on campus. In retrospect, Jason wasn’t proud of this distinction since he knew they probably would have gotten caught and punished by the school if they were black. He recalled the Nigerian guy in their class who was expelled after the director of residence life ordered a search of his room and his resident heads found his stash.

But the staff appeared to never have suspected Jason and Brendan. And the only students who cared about their business were the ones who wanted Saran-wrapped buds in time for the weekend.

“Hey,” said Wyatt when he answered the phone. “What’s up?”

Jason put Wyatt on speakerphone and explained.

By noon the following day, the store owners had posted their apology on social media, their statement receiving more than 200 likes and several shares on Facebook.

“Rainbow High is a progressive establishment intent on being an advocate for public good,” the statement read. “We have attended #BlackLivesMatter marches and spoken publicly about the U.S. government’s despicable hunt of African-Americans through the guise of a decades-long ‘war on drugs.’ We apologize that, in the Denver 8 News story about Rainbow High, we spoke of our store’s success without mentioning the hypocrisy that no news stations in Denver have covered the success of local African-American-owned marijuana stores, let alone reported the struggles of African-Americans sentenced for drug crimes. In the future, we will work harder to pursue equal rights for anyone who lacks them. Once again, we apologize for any harm we caused. Signed, Jason Lynch, Brendan Bennett, and Wyatt Henderson.”

“You guys do so much activism and are so aware of your privilege, everyone in Denver knows that,” Kevin Thomas, one of Brendan and Jason’s best friends, commented on Facebook. “It’s a shame you had to write this, but I guess that’s the world we live in.”

“What do you mean ‘the world we live in’?” DeShaun Howard replied three minutes later. His profile picture was a still from Black Panther of M’Baku sitting on his throne.

“Who is DeShaun Howard?!” asked Brendan, tilting his phone in Jason’s direction to show DeShaun’s comment. They were standing behind Rainbow High’s counter, the store empty of customers. “I don’t know,” said Jason. “I’ve never heard of him.

“Goddamnit, Kevin,” said Brendan, “you should have kept your mouth shut!”

Jason looked at Brendan, surprised by his anger.

When Jason’s gaze returned to Brendan’s phone, he and Brendan saw at the same time that DeShaun had posted as an additional reply to Kevin’s comment a link to an article.

“Oh my God,” said Jason, reading the URL. “The New Republic is writing about us?!”

Brendan’s eyes were wide as he tapped the article. When it loaded—with the headline, “For Colored People Who Are Fed Up When the Rainbow Is Not Enuf,” and the readout, “Why the cannabis store Rainbow High is #PeakWhitePrivilege”—he realized he was right to be afraid.

Moses Pittman, the article’s author, was one of Jason and Brendan’s favorite writers, more the James Baldwin of the 21st century than Ta-Nehisi Coates because he was, one, a native son of Harlem, and, two, gay. Moses was the New Republic’s most popular staff writer and a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary: “For his poetic and critical articles on intersectionality in America,” the Pulitzer board’s citation read. He was also a 2017 National Book Award for Poetry finalist for his debut collection, You’re All Gonna Die and Die Like Flies, which Jason and Brendan—already fanboys of his journalism—each had bought a copy of at a reading he gave at the University of Denver. After the reading, they stood in line for almost an hour to get their book signed and babbled to Moses about how much they appreciated his work. Nervous to meet one of his heroes, Brendan mistakenly used the word “enjoy” to describe his appreciation, which made Jason and Moses’s eyebrows rise.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Brendan. “I know the work is dark. Not ‘dark,’ I mean serious. It’s really helped me become aware of my privilege.”

“I’m glad,” said Moses.

He finished signing Brendan’s book, handed it to him, and smiled.

“‘Enjoy’,” he said.

A group of young black people standing behind Jason and Brendan laughed. Brendan stared open-mouthed at Moses, who smirked.

“I’m sorry,” said Brendan. “I didn’t mean it that way.” Beginning to hyperventilate, he rushed away from the signing table.

“Brendan,” Jason called as he followed him.

Brendan sped down a hallway, then another hallway, trying to remember where he and Jason entered the building. When he went around a corner and found a different exit, he pushed the double doors open, sat on the steps, and gulped air.

“Are you okay?” Jason asked when he reached him.

Brendan nodded, waiting for the anxiety attack to end, as Jason kneeled beside him and rubbed his back. A few minutes later, Brendan spoke again.

“Fuck.”

He looked down at the copy of You’re All Gonna Die and Die Like Flies, the paperback curled from him clutching it. The cover was a photo of a strip of flypaper hanging in front of a black backdrop, several flies stuck to the paper. The bold, beige letters of the book’s title matched the paper’s hue.

“It’s okay,” said Jason. “It was a mistake.”

“Why am I like this?” said Brendan, his voice cracking, his eyes watery from more than his inability to breathe a moment before.

More than a year after that night, the article was everything he expected it would be, another knockout Moses could add to his record: “We don’t admit this because public opinion on white homosexual males has shifted in this country and we don’t want to seem as though we’re on the wrong side of things, but it’s true. White gay men embody this country’s two most foundational prejudices: racism and misogyny. Even feminine white gay men smack women’s butts without permission. Even marginalized white gay men say on Grindr and in queer bars, ‘No blacks, no Asians, no Latinos.’ We look away from these acts because these men are our favorites, the beauties who can do no wrong, but it’s time for us to wake up. They are sleeper cells in our social justice-minded communities, perhaps the most dangerous men in America.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Brendan. “We can’t win.”

Sitting on the recliner in his living room, logged onto Facebook on his cell phone, Wyatt liked Kevin’s comment. Just because Wyatt wasn’t a public face of Rainbow High didn’t mean he would be silent while people slandered his store.

“You don’t even live in Denver,” Wyatt replied to DeShaun Howard’s latest comment. Wyatt had clicked over to DeShaun’s Facebook page and saw that he was studying Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of Chicago and that his hometown was Baltimore. “You don’t know what we do for the community.”

“Whoopty fucking doo,” DeShaun responded two minutes later. “Did you do anything before the Women’s March?”

“Is it homework for you to go on Facebook and make an ass of yourself?” commented Wyatt. “The shit you’re doing now is exactly why Donald Trump is in office.”

“No,” posted DeShaun, “Adolf Twitler is in office because you and your fellow white people miss the old days when black people tilled your land and cooked your food.”

“I’m not going to argue with you,” Wyatt wrote, avoiding the trap DeShaun had prepped for him by mentioning slavery. “Go back to class.”

“You’re so fixated on my identity as a student,” said DeShaun. “Are you jealous? Did you have to drop out of school to run your family’s plantation?”

Wyatt was shaking. He hadn’t been this mad at anyone since the months that followed his grandparents’ car wreck, when he sued a highway guardrail manufacturing company over how their product, instead of saving Wyatt’s grandparents’ lives when they crashed into it, leapt from the road, pierced the front windshield of his grandfather’s truck, and fatally impaled them. Wyatt’s anger, persistence, and attorney won him a settlement of $2 million, a large portion of which he was using to fund Rainbow High. Wyatt had completed high school, but it was a sad fact of the Henderson family’s history that his grandparents didn’t make it to ninth grade. Wyatt’s grandfather worked from age 14 onward to help his father keep their family financially stable, and Wyatt’s grandmother took up woman-of-the-house and mother duties when she was 13, caring for her father and sisters after her mother died of pneumonia. Wyatt’s farmhouse, inherited from his grandparents, was a home of productive citizens, people who didn’t have a lot of education but were smart in other ways and knew how to raise animals, grow crops, and take care of each other. Wyatt wasn’t going to let DeShaun get away with insinuating that rural people like him and his grandparents were stupid and racist.

“You’re scum,” posted Wyatt, “nothing but a smart-ass prick.”

“‘Scum?’” replied DeShaun. “You want to say nigger so badly, don’t you?”

“That’s what you want me to say,” Wyatt posted with a winky face emoji. “But I won’t give you that satisfaction.”

His words and emoji, though, gave DeShaun and his Twitter followers all the satisfaction they needed. When DeShaun tweeted screenshots of his and Wyatt’s back-and-forth and captioned them with a reference to Cyndi Lauper’s song “True Colors,” the response was as though Wyatt went to Sears, did a photoshoot while wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, and made one of the photos his Facebook profile pic.

“True colors, indeed,” tweeted @Janet_the_Bandit.

“Yassssssssssss,” tweeted @bitchgetthefuckoutmyface10. “You went BLACKkKlansman on his ass!!!!!”

But the biggest response came from @AndreThePittman, who retweeted DeShaun’s tweet with the words, “@DeShaunHoward, our work here is done.”

Minutes later, DeShaun replied to Moses’s tweet with 10 crying face emojis in a row. “Mr. Pittman, I am honored to be in your virtual presence,” he posted. “I am not worthy!”

“No!” said Jason, staring at his phone. He and Brendan were still standing behind Rainbow High’s counter. His outburst startled Brendan and a customer who was exiting the store. “He used a winky face emoji!” he said. “Why would he do that?!”

Brendan read Wyatt’s comments off Jason’s phone and shook his head. “I’m done,” he said. “I can’t do this.”

Jason’s phone began to vibrate in Jason’s hand. The producer at 8 News who had arranged their interview was calling.

“He must have seen the article,” said Jason. “I’m not going to answer.” He declined the call. Three minutes later, he received a text.

“Hey Jason, this is Luke from 8 News. We’re reporting tonight on the criticism the store has received. I know you, Brendan, and Wyatt released a statement earlier today, but can the three of you provide us a comment? What are your thoughts on the negative responses, especially Moses Pittman’s article?”

Jason stared at the text, wondering whether anything could be done to salvage Rainbow High’s reputation. “Maybe we should say something,” he said, “to pivot from—”

“Wyatt is funder, grower, and co-owner,” said Brendan. “We can’t escape what he said.”

Jason was taken aback by the bite in Brendan’s words, and how resolutely they were spoken, but despite how much he wanted the statements to be false, they were true. There really wasn’t anything that could be done.

He locked his phone and slid it in a front pocket of his jeans.

“Two nights ago,” said anchor Meredith Westberg on 8 News’ 10 o’clock p.m. broadcast, “we aired an interview with Brendan Bennett and Jason Lynch, co-owners of the cannabis store Rainbow High. Since then, the interview has gone viral, but not all the feedback has been positive. Criticism is swirling around Bennett, Lynch, and their fellow co-owner Wyatt Henderson concerning their identity as Caucasian men who have been praised for selling marijuana while, yearly, many African Americans nationwide are arrested and sentenced for drug charges. African-American writer Moses Pittman, in an article he wrote about Bennett and Lynch that was published by the New Republic, called all Caucasian gay men ‘sleeper cells in ... social justice-minded communities’ and ‘perhaps the most dangerous men in America,’ statements he is now facing backlash for. Over the past 48 hours, this has become a massive situation. For more on its development, we turn to Taj Reddy. Taj?”

An editor and journalist whose beats include the arts, LGBTQIA issues, race, and U.S. politics, Da’Shawn Mosley is also a fiction writer, poet, essayist, and critic. Da’Shawn earned a B.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago, studied creative writing at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, and was featured in the PBS documentary Becoming an Artist. His fiction earned him the 2019 A Suite of One’s Own: A Writer’s Residency, awarded by Kiese Laymon, and his nonfiction and poetry have been exhibited in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and published in Sojourners, America magazine, and The Adroit Journal. Da’Shawn lives in Silver Spring, Md., with his husband Jordan and their cat Esme.