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Is This the End of the Dap?
Even as we begin to re-enter the world together, a small — but crucial — element of male friendship will be missing. And we may never get it back.
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Big Blue was her name. An ’81 Impala, stock save for the Pioneer tape deck Norm had thrown in the dash. That tape deck held just about the entirety of the early ’90s while we drove through the Indiana night doing nothing. MC Breed, Cube, Tribe, Pac, Redman, X-Clan. Sometimes nothing would turn into something — wood-tip Swishers stuffed with what passed for weed back then, off-campus parties that didn’t mind a couple of high school kids — but always, ultimately, the night would end the same way it began. Big Blue idling outside my house, or my shitty Prelude idling outside Norm’s. And inside, two boys, one Black, one White, dapping each other up.
No fist bumps or snaps, just ritual pared down to its two-step essence. Hands clasping. Fingers curling. Two fists staying like that for a moment, yin-yanged together, a period at the end of the night’s sentence.
I don’t remember when my hands made those shapes for the first time, or who prompted it. Neither do you. Might have…
