In Short – Issue 3 (Spring 2025)

May 31, 2025

The Telstar, 1980, by Clifford Thompson

The Telstar

By Clifford Thompson

Spring of 1980, I seventeen, clop-clopping past squat gray buildings in Northwest DC in my hard black shoes, trench coat, tie, Afro. My stomach danced with excitement, nerves; my black portfolio contained my comics, my very own superhero: The brown-skinned, blue-and-gray-suited Telstar was super-strong and could fly, and—best, or worst, of all—could throw the telepunch, swinging his arm and knocking out a villain from across the room. I was about to meet a man who distributed comic strips to newspapers. In my head I went over what I would say; in my head—

WOP! Something hit me. I ran forward, hearing myself whimper, reaching up to touch my forehead, finding something red. Yes, I thought so too, but it was too thick to be blood. I came to understand, as well as I ever would, when I saw the red stuff was jelly—confirmed by remains of a powdered jelly doughnut on the pavement. I heard a “Yeah!” and saw the shouter, his rags and angry face. He looked like a man who had struck a blow for justice. Maybe, in his mind, he had. Maybe, for him, I stood for all that was wrong. I was the villain.

Later, I wondered: Is that what the telepunch feels like?

Clifford Thompson’s books include What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (2019) and the graphic novel Big Man and the Little Men (2022). He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Best American Essays, The Times Literary Supplement, Commonweal, and The Threepenny Review, among other places, and his essay “La Bohème” was selected for the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Thompson’s book Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2025. Additionally, his novels Miles from Home and Let Us Go Then, You and I are forthcoming from Running Wild Press. A painter, he is a member of Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City.