Appreciation

Call it impulse, but I decided an hour before leaving the hotel for the show that I would drive to Los Angeles immediately after. Initially I rused over whether celebrating our Trekkie habit of seeing every movie featuring the Starship Enterprise was reason enough to make the four-hour drive with only one day off. When I found out that the epicenter of the earthquake in Los Angeles was a few miles away from Mom's house, it sealed the deal: I was going.

In accordance with the rules of typical maternal insanity, she called me to ask how I was doing.

"Mom, the earthquake didn't happen here in Vegas," I said, twenty minutes into the drive.

"Oh I guess the better question is how am I doing right?"

And she was doing fine. The mug I painted at the ColorMeMine place Chherr took us to on the last tour fell and broke, to my utter devastation. And she bumped her knee into something on the way to the doorway. It swelled a little.

"Did you ice it?"

"No I don't wanna do that, ice is cold uh unh."

The regression into childhood, along with the reminder that I am now at an age where children start raising their parents, where amnesia sets in and parents seem to have forgotten not only what they taught you, but that they taught it to you at all.

"Mom you're going to ice your knee. I'll be there in a few hours."

She wasn't even surprised, a clue that she is now accustomed to my lack of notice, which is a function of my foiling her tendency to tell the entire LA basin when I'm home so that people can be slighted when I don't call.

When I did make it home, I watched episodes of O she DVRed, shared choice moments from "the Boondocks," discussed revelations about my emotional impenetrability (and found she could have saved me a whole lot of investigation) and iced.

After we went to her neurologist for a follow up appointment about her leg (everything was fine said the sketchy old man), we made a stop at the post office. I accidentally tore the wrong copy out of the Express Mail label window I affixed to the package I was sending, so she insisted that we wait in line instead of do the self-service thing I was planning. The woman at the window asked if I needed anything else, like stamps, and I told her no. Then I thought about it.

"Do you need anything else?" I asked Mom.

"I like those stamps she has up there because they're cute. I like the pretty ones," utters the woman who hates baby showers, weddings, flowers, candy, anything appropriate to send for special events like Mother's Day or her birthday.

"Are you out of stamps?"

"No, I have some at home."

"You are going to use them right?" She fell out laughing. I mean was she kidding? She was boycotting the paid-for book of stamps at her house because they weren't cute? "It's not like they're going on stationery that is coming to your house. I mean if you don't want them give me the ugly stamps we get home. I don't discriminate." Of course I bought her the cutesy stamps.

The madness continued on at our favorite art shop in the Carson Mall. Anwar, the owner, has been framing things for us since I was a kid. His penchant for interesting, articulate matting has pushed us to covet our art even more than people who don't need the excuse that "it appreciates with time" to buy what we want. He pointed out this time that Ernie Barnes just died days ago. A few days ago in fact. Mom and I each lamented right away. We had Joysmith, Bibbs, Lee, Poncho, but no Ernie Barnes.

And of course we lamented that he passed too.

"His prints went up 200% overnight," Anwar said, "and with his three sons fighting over the company, the printer might close down and you won't be able to get a new one."

There were two to choose from. My mother loved the basketball painting, convinced that aside from the appeal of brilliant colors, it would prosper alongside interest in the sport. But I saw another piece that looked familiar and pulled my focus, a painting of a pool shark with long lines and a cue that looked like an extension of his back elbow, ciggie hanging from his mouth. Then I remembered that we had that painting at my grandmother's.

"No we don't. It's a fake. A replica," Mom advised.

"Really?"

"I brought it here and Anwar told me it was somebody's rendition of it."

After a lot of conversation about which of these pieces was worth buying, given the circumstances - Mom musing over the basketball piece while I considered the other - Mom pulled out her credit card.

"I know," she said. "Tube the ballers. Happy birthday, baby. This can be an early present."

I thanked her first. Then I looked at her long and hard to see if she thought I would fall for this. She did.

"I would not be your son if I didn't point out that while I appreciate this early birthday present, I have to note that the last two pieces of art you bought me for my birthday ended up at your house on your walls."

Anwar cosigned. "Hey he's right. I framed the Poncho piece for you Mama."

"And I only recently got the Bev Doolittle."

"It was only because you didn't have space on your walls in New York," she reasoned. Before that it was because I didn't have my own place yet. She is so not slick. To return the favor of shock value, I pulled out my credit card (note that despite her retirement and my tax return we are both filing for unemployment) to purchase the other Barnes.

"You know if you want to get this instead, you can always just switch it out and get what you want."

"No, no, I plan to keep the one you bought me. This other one is an investment."

"But that's not as nice to look at. Actually the colors in the duplication are more vivid than in this one."

She was right. But what donned on me during the whole episode is that Mom and I are not willing to part with any of the art we'd spent years collecting, art whose appreciation was our justification for buying it when liking it wasn't enough. Anwar pointed out that a Bibbs piece Mom has in her bedroom is worth three grand. She only spent 300 on it.

"But are you willing to part with your Bibbs if he drops dead tomorrow and the price doubles?"

"Absolutely not."

"Exactly. All these years we've been buying pieces that we love, not understanding that we will sit poverty stricken with our art before we part with it."

I can part with my pool shark if necessary. Of course, if I'm not careful the basketball players will be beautifully framed, waiting for me to get back to Los Angeles so my mother can ask me to hang it somewhere in her house just until I...oh, buy another apartment.

Chauncey
April 17 , 08

A beautiful day clear enough to see the Hollywood sign from the Beverly Center God was so busy showing off. My straight boyfriend Chauncey fine enough to pull focus from the random folks on the Walk of Fame, which I’d agreed to take him to. His dimples popping out with the occasional smile though he wears the plain face of stoic observation most of the time. Then a business call that I had to take.

While I took it, I saw coming toward us the thuggish rickety-walking Negro with a Shamu-sized white t-shirt that hung low enough to obscure the ass I know was hard-pressed to hold up his beltless shorts. The war he had with holding his boom-box (it couldn’t get more stereotypical) and maintaining his stride sent him a little too close in proximity to Chauncey. He screamed.

“Damn, man!”

“Yo, man, yo I’m sorry, yeah. You alright player? My bad,” the thug said back as he backed away.

“These are brand new,” Chauncey said, bending down to inspect his white sneakers.

“And they tight man, they’re right,” the thug said. “Yo man you alright?”

And despite my conversation on the phone I could still detect the swell of empathy, the momentum of compassion. I could hear the music drop out of our soundtrack. The two of them moved in slow motion the way loved characters in tender tragedies fall to death in film. No, I’m not clear enough. Chauncey and this thug hyperbole were lamenting with the same intensity as witnesses of a mindless murder.

I set aside my small-mindedness and stopped wondering if compassion is possible for a dumbass, which is what I can’t help but assume about a person who finds it cool to have to negotiate simple shit like walking because of a self-imposed fashion inconvenience. I looked at Chauncey's shoes. There were no stains, scuffs, marks. It was all fine.

Chauncey examined them closely, his eyes zeroing in on patches of disaster.

“Whatever man,” Chauncey said as the boom box and its owner backed away from the scene of the crime.

My conversation took about three more minutes of our walk down the boulevard. The Pyrex smooth skin was bunched together over Chauncey's nose in clear dismay the whole time. When I hung up, I asked him what was wrong.

“These are limited edition Air Force Ones! Now I can’t wear them, in fact I need to take them off right now.”

“I’m sorry, one more time?”

“J he messed up my shoes. You see this scuff mark?”

We stopped walking so that he could point it out. I squinted.

“That’s not coming out,” he said.

There on Hollywood Boulevard I knelt down, more nervous about what I might not find than what the action looked like. With the illumination provided by the perfect day, I saw a very narrow line, the color of the lightest grays found only in black and white films.

"But Chauncey, there's nothing there. That little mark can be erased, literally. As in, with an eraser."

"That won't come out, J. I'm telling you," he said.

"Okay enlighten me. What happens if it can't come out? Who sees it? If I had to bend down like that to see it then how would anybody know?"

"I know. Man that's some shit. I walk all over New York where people are crowded together in trains and on the sidewalks and nobody ever scuffed up my Ones. Here I am in Los Angeles and it happens just like that."

I decided this moment would pass. He was, after all, in Hollywood and this was only the first stop of many we would make for him to get a quick survey of Los Angeles, which he'd never seen in person. His head cast downward (to look at the stars on the Walk, right?), we pressed on to the other side of the street where we would eventually detour for iced drinks. I think I had just noticed the name of a star who excited me but was from a period in cinema too old for Chauncey to know. I was considering whether gleefully shout the name and risk a repeat of the feeling I had in my living room earlier this year when after joking, "Marcus, I don't have any panties on," Chauncey stared at me blankly and then explained he'd never seen "Boomerang" because he was too young to have permission when it came out...

"Look maybe we should go in and see if they have them in there," he said.

"Have what?"

"Ones," he said. He pointed to the gigantic shoe store on Hollywood Boulevard.

I still had not gotten used to the usage of "ones" as an abbreviation for Air Force Ones.

"Um, I really want to get to the bottom of this," I said. "Are we having an OCD moment? Is it that you feel violated? Help me out hon."

He jutted his head toward me with surprise. "J, you don't get it. Everybody knows that you don't mark up a man's Ones. It's just...wrong."

You have to understand that he said "wrong" with the conviction of Mrs. Edwards discussing the affair her husband had during her cancer complications. And Chauncey was right, I didn't get it.

"But nobody will know about that little blemish that you're determined to upgrade to scar."

"I know."

The fact that he was so sincere, and so cute and so pathetic helped me to understand that I needed to return it. I mustered every ounce of sympathy I could find without laughter.

"I'm sorry hon."

He didn't really buy it but he was too ver klempt to address it. Upon further investigation (I'd taken him downtown to meet Desmond at a rehearsal and then driven him to Venice to hang out with his friend), I found that this kind of shoe-status-whiteness thing is prevalent. Chauncey is actually more the rule than the exception in his shoe lament. Which is why the other guy was so apologetic. Fights have been had behind this. Attempted murders. There is actually an episode in the first season of "The Boondocks" that deals with it head on. It's a mind-boggling phenomenon that causes me concern.

But I decided that when I make my third big check from producing something, I'll donate a fraction of the proceeds to replacement Air Force Ones for Chauncey. They will be zip-locked in the kind of clear plastic that people used to keep on sofas in the living room...

Rights
4/10
As cast members of one of the few successful and running black Broadway shows in the country at this moment, we owed it to ourselves to take advantage of our placement in Memphis around the anniversary of King’s death and visit the Civil Rights Museum. The day was beautiful enough to make the trip by foot, which gave us ample opportunity to re-enact last night’s dinner with Denise and argue briefly about the best path to take off of Main Street to get to the museum. Whatever choice we made was the right one; we ended up on the corner of Mulberry St. taking pictures of the sign.

On the opposite corner were homemade signs with screaming block letters of protest. Anchored to the street lamp-post was a collection of items that looked as if they belonged to a homeless person. Behind the adjacent tarp-flanked table sat a small woman with a thin, black hoody and sunglasses that left only the perfect, dark skin on her cheeks and nose to smack the day. She was calm behind what turned out to be reading material situated for perusal. Nothing about this scene seemed blythe.

“Oh, you have to come over and meet Jacqueline!” Latrisa said, beaming, her attitude merry. Of course, this is Latrisa’s way, to celebrate life even when the gravity of it deepens our breath. “Come on you guys.”

Without waiting, she led us over to the reposed woman. With her typical magna cum laude graduate smile, she greeted the woman.

“Hi Jacqueline, I want you to meet my friends.”

“Oh hi. Okay.”

“I don’t know if you remember me but I came earlier this week.”

Jacqueline paused the length of time it takes a moth to land. “Yes, I remember, Latrisa.”

“Wow. Okay great. These are my friends from the show and I was hoping you could tell them a little bit about what you’re doing here.”

I still was not beyond the fact that this woman remembered Latrisa’s name. So I missed a little of the dialogue thereafter. When I caught up Jacqueline was busy explaining that she was forced to vacate her apartment in the Lorraine Hotel upon the decision to transform it into the museum. When she refused to leave, they broke into her apartment and forcibly moved her.

“I wouldn’t stand up because it would have been easier for them that way,” she said. “It cost eight million dollars to convert the Lorraine Motel into a museum. I just think Dr. King would want that money to be put to different use.”

She overviewed several literature she had lying there before us. “Here is an article about my arrest. This one talks about how Coretta opposed the museum. This is a packet of pictures that show a party they had outside the museum.”

The last one was most poignant. On the front of the laminated portion were four quandrants of murderous atrocity, one of them a photo of the plane entering the tower. Above it, the question “Would you have a party at any of these places?” On the back, there was a series of shots of people dancing, drinking beer and making merry outside of what is now the Civil Rights Museum. The caption on top: “So then why would you have one here?”

In smooth, even-toned sentences, she let us know that a great portion of the funding was spent on turning a second building spitting distance away into fact symphony about the assassins life and times. Other things were there too, some material on more current happenings in civil rights. But what impressed me is the way this woman spoke, with the calm conviction of someone amidst crusaders too familiar with waterhoses and let-loose dogs to need much more than easy delivery to make their statements. She was resolute and absolutely sane.

Yet the day we met Jacqueline Smith was the 69th of the 21st year she’s protested the museum. Regardless of how we individually processed her perspective, we owed it to ourselves to take pictures with anybody this steadfast.

We pulled out our cameras and graduated from tourists to downright fans. When we were finished, and she understood we were all members of the cast of Purple, she said, “You guys are all so beautiful. You look like a shiny tree.”

For sure, she’s as strong as one.

And who knew there was a googlable Jacqueline Smith who did not star in all three seasons of Charlie’s Angels or billboard the ladies sections of K-Mart aisles?