Life

It was a 6:45 a.m flight. I was famished and barely awake. Kyle, whom I had hired to be my assistant for this choreography gig in Dallas, whisked the air around with his sprite energy. He is an ego boost for sure. He is ten years my junior only a better version complete with introspection and access to his intuition. He pooh-poohs my assessment: "I am not a better version. We are all individuals and we matter..." he usually says. I chuckle warmly (he's right of course). He even looks a little like me as he elucidates. Environmental responsibility, alternative spiritual contemplation and an abundance of love-creating stuff tops Kyle's priority list.

He had already justified my bringing him, succeeding somehow in getting us into the correct line to avoid the three thousand other people in the check-in area who would see to it that we miss the flight otherwise. We made it past security in time to deal with getting some food.

“What are you doing?” he asked as I got in line.

“Getting breakfast.”

“At McDonald's? You can't. Jamal do you know what they put in the food?”

“Yes, baby but there is no other option and I don't do this all the time.”

“One time is too many. I'm sorry I have to say something. I can't just let you ingest that garbage. It's toxic. You could die.”

The negative space between the line at McDonald's and the line at Dunkin' Donuts was all that separated us. A few people conscious enough at this hour wondered if we knew each other. They missed the parts of the conversation that contained familiarity.

“It's not going to kill me. And besides, you're in the line at Dunkin' Donuts.”

“I'm only having coffee.”

“Flirting with hypocrisy are we?”

“I choose life! You should choose life too," he said.

I laughed at my younger self staring at me with Joan of Arc commitment.

“You should all choose life,” he said louder, so that the folks at the counter could hear and perhaps change their minds.

They were not deterred. Neither was I. When we made it to the plane I uncovered my morning entree and buttered the pancakes.

“I'm judging you,” he said.

“I know.”

His arms were folded in the seat next to me. He's so cute I want to squeeze him.

“You just go ahead and drink your – what is that anyway?”

“It's hot chocolate mixed with french vanilla latte.”

“And how much artificial sugar is in that concoction you're drinking? And you know you're going to starve on this flight.”

“It's not nearly as bad as what you're having.”

It was too early in the morning to recall the information pertinent to the battle with my intrepid young colleague, something about McDonald's Happy Meals containing no more than 600 calories, only 35% of that coming from fat. Granted, those are for kids and I wasn't having one right then, but this would have been the best I could do. Meanwhile, some lattes have enough sugar for 12 Dunkin Donuts. And I did mention that the caffeine in that styrofoam cup was enough to strip his muscles of all the water they need and make him tight and ineffective at rehearsal.

“Whatever. “I'll be at your funeral if that artificial gook you're eating does you in.”

“Thanks.”

And then we laughed. And after he finished cursing me to the cornfield of diet hell, he succumbed to the sleep (on me) that the chocolate/vanilla mix did nothing to prevent.

Just
Jan 6, 2010

It was supposed to be just a routine minor lecture demonstration and I only assigned this mental cataloging because I wanted to make it more meaningful than Christie suggested it would be. Really it could have happened in a studio with kids sitting on the marley poised to ask questions after someone walked over to the boom box to stop the CD after the minor dance.

In the UK the word “just” is flung with the kind of casual ease that shrinks the importance of even things that contain lots.

“Oh yeah, you're still fine with the little performance thing we're going to have you do on Wednesday for the kids right? It's just so that they can see you dance. You can do anything really, it doesn't matter.”

But when the better portion of a lunch talk was devoted to details like the feasibility of the stage surface with no marley, the lighting design__

“I'm sorry the lighting design?” I asked. “This won't be a houselights only situation?”

“Oh, well, we'll still throw some lights on you, something simple. What are you wearing?”

I wondered if the appropriate answer was full hair and make-up and a $2,000 costume. But instead I told Christie I could just throw on a pair of white linen pants and call it a day.

When Kyle (my assistant and adopted little brother) and I made it to what ended up a tech rehearsal, the degree of dupe tracked better. Still it wasn't until the actual performance, when I noticed that nestled cozy in the auditorium was the entire population of high school girls, along with a healthy number of faculty members, it rose to full-scale bamboozlement.

For sure though, it was picking up the microphone and asking the very quiet crowd of mostly young ladies at this exclusive all-girls academy if there were questions__this is when my facial features got shuffled. I'd just danced a solo to an a capella sound byte of Barack Obama discussing the treatment of war veterans in this country. Yet no arms flew upward.

“No questions?”

“Jammaal__” And at this point one of the teachers directed my focus to the aisles that split the middle section of kids. Standing on either side of it was a microphone with its own cue.

This was a symposium, screw a small lec-dem.

I would be whupping my friend's behind when this was over.

The young ladies proceeded to ask questions as if someone had trained them in the art of interview. Was there anyone who pushed you to dance? Do you plan to eventually start your own company? What are the difficulties you find in dancing to spoken word? How did this piece with Obama's voice get created? What is your book about? What do you think about when you're dancing?

This last question caught me on the soft part of my skull. I explained to her that the objective is to get as far away from the cognitive part as possible and engage in the practice of transcending, that the thinking part happens in the rehearsal. The young lady wasn't satisfied with this answer.

“What makes you want to dance?”

It invited a more personal answer rooted in spirituality. They weren't done with me.

Someone asked where have I always wanted to dance and why. Someone else asked the name of my favorite piece to perform and favorite location.

Spain and Italy for sure. It occurred to me to do the prudent thing and ask if anyone had been to Europe. When I did, 90% of the people in the room raised their hands. I had forgotten where I was.

After it was over and I waited backstage, Christie came in and offered in the same casual tone with which she downplayed the entire event, “Good job. I think that went over really well, huh?”

Before I could say anything, another gentleman, probably the director of the high school walked in. He said this:

“I have a compliment. Robbie George, director of the philosophical law from Princeton came and spoke to them and this was better. You blew it out of the water.”

I was relieved, both to have not known sooner the act I was to follow, and that I stood up to that standard, let alone surpassed it.

But it got even better. After I'd changed clothes and Kyle reiterated (as only a little brother can) how proud he is to know me and how tear-jerking the entire hour was for him, we ran into a stately, coiffed blonde with a bubbly spirit. Christie introduced her as the person who funded my being here.

“Hi! It's so nice to meet you. I missed the performance but I heard the talk-back. Great job. My daughter has been enjoying your classes so much.”

I had been debriefed before the week began that the mother of one of the kids put up the ten grand personally. I ended up using her as one of the featured girls in the piece not because she was the best, but because she looked woeful and innocent in what ended up a romp of social commentary about what happens when the mainstream overtake the unique.

“Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed it.”

“I want you to know I have always been such a firm believer that art is the connective tissue that transcends race, creed, gender differences. Of course my daughter is a huge Obama fan so when I walked in she looked over at me as if to say, 'See, this is what it's about!'”

“You sound like you're very involved in the arts. As a patron?”

“Well that too. I was the ambassador for the arts in France under President Bush.”

Blood exited my whole cranium.

Later I would be told that there are copious pictures of her with the Bushes. Did Alanis not include this in “Ironic,” the part about dancing to Obama in the big-haired Texas South where the other side still reigns and just pays your salary? Hm.

I had to thank God in stereo for not letting this be disastrous.

Yes I thanked Christie too. Eventually.

Rectification

I had no illusions about how difficult it was going to be to not eat for a whole day. Extreme measures were taken. There was the assortment of movies I watched with a good friend, who decided that there was no better time to sit me down and twist my hair since I’d be grounded like a punishable child.

“It might take you three or four hours given the number of times I’ll have to run to the bathroom,” I advised.

When I called a nurse about this colonoscopy, she was anxious to tell me about the sour preparation. And somewhere during “The September Issue,” I had finished the second bottle of laxative-spiked Gatorade. Lord knows that because the instructions I half read forbade red and orange liquids, those bottles would have to sit comfy in the fridge next to the egg-nog that tortured me with its sumptuousness.

And really, the egg nog would have done the same thing as this questionable ectoplasmic looking concoction.

But that’s why you have friends. To give you mordant looks of shade when you think you’re gonna do wrong and ruin this one and only opportunity you have to get the procedure that you desperately need.

Of course leave it to the supervising friend to decide you’re going to have the equivalent of major surgery. I had to get cursed out in technicolor for not mentioning it earlier, for not discussing the trips I made to the doctor before, for considering it an imposition to ask him to play chauffeur on his day off (he wanted to be there just in case). The admonishing was on behalf of anyone who echoes his resentment of information neglect (feel free to feel represented). Another friend warned that I would have to work my way up slowly to solid food instead of have the much desired full meal I craved.

"I'm sorry as soon as I get out of the rectum clinic I'm going to stuff my face."

“The gas could kill you.”

“I’ll die a happy death then.”

When we got to the center, I filled out paperwork and then got in my gown. A nurse grabbed the plastic bag with my clothes, sat me in a cushy chair and asked me questions. Soon a woman with district attorney age and demeanor came in and gathered a few needles.

“This is Phyllis, and she’ll be doing your anesthesia," the seated woman said.

“Oh cool. Fentanyl or ativan?”

“Propophyl,” Phyllis said.

Wasn’t this the Michael Jackson drug of choice? I was excited and nervous at once. After the nurse gave me a needle prep for the anesthesia, and then preset the plastic U-tubing for the breathing apparatus, she rolled me into another area. The journey on the gurney felt surreal. Is this what it’s like when the gun shot wound in the ribcage goes to numb and your eyes concentrate on the people pushing your horizontal body? Hm.

Anyway, I hoped that this is was as close as I would get to finding out.

When I got into the procedure room, Dr. Kwok was quite personable. He talked to me asked how the show has been going. I didn’t remember this guy at all, a stretch from the remote curmudgeon I met in the consultation.

“Turn over on your left.”

I did so, for sure it was to make my insides more accessible to the instrument that wold soon violate me. The expensive monitors and other fancy equipment let me know for sure.

Then I realized they were playing music.

“Yeah, we like Pandora in here,” Phyllis said, plugging the propophyl needle into the holster taped to my arm.

“Me too. I love it.” But I was confused about them pushing the gurney out of the room. “Wait, I thought this was going to happen in the room where Dr. Kwok and the monitors were a moment ago. There’s a third room?”

“No it’s over, sweetie.”

“I’m sorry?”

Yes the entire forty minute procedure, complete with a biopsy was complete. I didn’t remember the coma. And then I didn't want to get up out of the gurney. I wanted to pay rent or something so that they could leave me there to get what would surely be the best sleep of my entire 2009. With grudge-ment, I dragged out of the comfy arrangement the propophyl put me in and ambled to what I thought would be the getaway car.

Since sleep wasn't an option, I had two breakfasts.

And no, nothing is wrong. Thankfully, I did not die from gas behind solid foods consumed same day. Nor did the biopsy reveal anything. No cancer, no pollops, no hemmorhoids, nothing. Dr. Kwok (that name still gets me every time) could not explain why there were symptoms in the first place so I simply walk alongside the gift horse instead of look in its mouth. Amen.

I do have a better understanding of Michael Jackson's plight.

Red Need


Sheer impulse. When women get it they do sensible things like go to Sephora or get their nails done.

But you know with us there has to be much more opportunity for disaster.

And I succumbed to ambition.

I would paint my bathroom.

Yes, yes, I ran to the Home Depot before fears of skillessness, laziness, or maybe common sense could distract me. The wall needed to be all the stereotypes - bold, brave, daring , red.

It became even more clear over eggs and bacon. Yes, of course. I would switch out the decor of the master bathroom with the hallway half-bath, this because two weeks home was insufficient to knock down the dividing wall and combine them into one huge masterpiece of slate-surrounded tub/shower to match the floating sink...

Maybe I should just paint. So the black and white sketch of the brickhouse sister in leather pants could join the Egyptian aluminum piece framed in red and maybe sit on the wall across from the scroll I bought in Zurick that has black Mandarin characters that spelled over red some wonderful verse of wisdom I can't remember the translation for. This was exciting!

By the time I got the last plate in the dishwasher the Tuscan burnt sienna wall with orange undertones and melted butter door frames needed consideration. To look beyond that and see a red bathroom could be jarring. Dismal. Disastrous. I would have to seek therapy.

I only have fragments of my homosexual card left (I've had too many typical male moments deny me access and limit my swipes). Realizing my HGTV limitations, I phoned a friend.

"You want to paint the bathroom red?" my Niecy Nash friend suggested.

"Well just one wall. What I figure is, I can paint directly opposite the hallway. This way you won't see the red unless you're in the bathroom with the door closed."

"Still, do you know how hard it is to paint red? You have to do a lot of coats. Maybe you should go with..."

And from this point on I humored him. Why lie? He was not giving me what I was after. I needed him to corroborate the madness, not discourage it. What kind of friend was he anyway?

So I went on ahead and bought the red semi-gloss from Home Depot. Yeah-yeah, the other walls visible from the dining room had to be some other neutral (boring) color but I needed the paint the red for my very soul.

Behr makes a paint/primer in one, and even though I didn't even know how to pronounce primer (wtf??), I stretched tight upper body muscles to their max to get my palm to my back in self-congratulation.

Then another friend, this one a bona fide interior designer whom I'd called before my lunacy gained momentum, called back. He's the real deal, remembered my house from when he'd stayed there in '08 and could visualize details.

"You know you'll be able to see the red reflected in the vanity over the sink," he said.

"If you're walking by the bathroom?"

"No, if you're sitting down at the table."

Womp, womp, womp. He might be right. I'd have to sit down at the table and see.

He suggested I try to get a gray that would match the gray on the floor (which I despise) and be sure to "add more light in the end if you go with a darker gray because it will suck up what's in there."

So supportive. So reasonable. Such a good friend. With great, free advice.

"So, a half gallon of semi-gloss?" I asked.

"Eggshell. Semi-gloss will be too shiny in the bathroom. But you can still wipe dirt off of eggshell."

Oops. I couldn't bring myself to tell him that I'd already bought red semi-gloss. I could not get my money back. we are in a recession. In New York extra closet space to store paint doesn't exist. Enough reason for me to gloss the bathroom.

Then I cheated a little. I dispatched my little brother Kyle to engage his paint sensibilities after I'd blue-taped the borders. He finished the first coat minutes before midnight, at which point we went to the club to celebrate.

The next day I threw on a house CD, tipped around the apartment, did a step or two down my hallway and shook my behind, all in preamble for the painting I was about to undertake. I went to town on the second coat of red, tipping, stepping and shaking in between on breaks.

When I finished, I had a stroke of genius: rather than busy myself with other activity while the red got comfortable, why not begin work on the opposite wall? I obviously couldn't deal with the adjacent side walls because of the tape demands, but I could certainly get busy on the other side.

Great plan. So I got going and for about twenty minutes I was fine. Some no-doubt heavy woman was screaming gospel remixed into a fierce bass line. But then I started to feel a little light headed. My breathing suffered. Legs and booty were moving just a tad too far behind the downbeat hurling from my speakers in the front room.

Dummy, I told myself, perhaps you need to get out of the tiny space consumed with paint fumes.

Later that night, pleased with myself for having saved my loved ones the trauma of a "Final Destination" occasion, I walked in to see the work. The red was brilliant but a little too bright. That supportive, good, no-charging friend was beyond right. Fortunately, I'd had the good sense to run back to Home Depot to buy a quart of red eggshell to do the third coat!

By the next morning I was ready to pull the blue tape off so that I could see my red wall in all its glory. Like professional bikini waxers in slow mo, I unrolled the only thing standing between me and my design genius (???).

But to my horror, the tape would not let go of some of the paint. The gorgeous border, sectioned off with painstaking effort at the top of this HGTV excursion, turned into the jagged edge before my eyes, exposing bites of white that looked crazy. I would deploy little brother Kyle later, with a wave of hand and hurried words, to fix it.

In the meantime, I had painted the other two walls as well, relocated the red, black and white accoutrements into the newly painted bathroom.

After errands in the city, I came home and needed to pee. I went in and closed the door (none of which is really necessary when you are the only person in the house), I turned to face the red ecstacy and noticed that there was a two-inch margin of space between the door frame and the wall that could be seen reflected in the vanity mirror. A saunter down the hallway would still reveal the scarlet shock designed to take your breath away or fill it with fire, passion, etc. And I couldn't stand the haphazard lengthwise strokes of the brush that didn't match the even roller action I'd perfected.

So I pulled out the gray paint and the tape and I got to fixing. Because at the very least, I needed to be able to tell my decor advisor that I did succeed in making sure that the red did not jump into the dining room as he suspected it would.

Then there was the issue of the wooden toilet seat that was now in the back bathroom but got split in the center as if to harmonize with booty cracks that visit. I'd exhausted resources so running all over creation to find a replacement wouldn't work.

This is when the around-the-corner hardware store comes in handy, you know, the place where people will charge ten dollars and do it while you wait. I squeezed the sides of the toilet seat together and the handyman screwed in a thin metal bar. A blemish. And Dana would boycott the bathroom for fears that an alloy-specific form of rust-flavored salmonella would besiege her behind should she sit close to the quick fix.

Whatever, I got my Sephora fix. In RED.

Awards Show Promo

The beaming hellos and hugs of relief should have told us we are old. Through the excited greetings, Ronnie and I were indeed commiserating over a basic truth about this audition: neither of us wanted to be the oldest one there.

Not by ourselves anyway. We could share the platform and empathize while our young competition got their chipper on. I was already bothered by the fact that my adopted little brother Kyle was there at all. Years ago when I discovered my 10-years-younger ringer, I told him we needed to sort out auditions for type-casting purposes. He could do auditions on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I got all other week days (seniority). This joke was even funnier because the truth of the matter is that I didn’t really go on auditions. Neither does Ronnie.

Ronnie is one of those beautiful A-list, first tier dancers whose career has cartwheeled from hard core concert dance (company work) to Broadway to some commercial dabbling, while still never annexing his technique to a far corner of memory lane. I’d like to think I’m the same way, that no matter how lackluster or artistically truant choreography might be in a gig, I hold on to the monickers of the work I’ve done. After a certain point dancers like Ronnie and me are fortunate enough to be asked to do jobs, called in for a replacement job or maybe invited to take class or work with a choreographer privately. But we don’t really audition a lot. We are often exempt.

But as Edna Mode said in one of my favorite movie (The Incredibles), “So am I, darling, yet here we are!”

We tried to warm up, aware that the small space they’d crammed us in, the “holding room,” was insufficient. Really ten o’clock was too early to dance because how could one take a class to prepare for this?

A brief survey of the room revealed that Kyle’s age bracket dominated. In fact, Ronnie and I were indeed the oldest people in the room. Then, like Meryl Lynch accountants having the fifth after-merger drink, we started confessing.

“I’ve never taken a hip hop class.”

“Is that what this choreography is going to be? I thought they said something about technical dancers who can do hip hop. Although what does that really mean?”

“I’ve never worn tennis shoes to an audition.”

“I’m not warm at all. I hope my body doesn’t hurt.”

But it did hurt. We learned the rather inspired, well-constructed combination and started to ask questions you don’t ask in your early twenties, questions like “if the audition feels like this, do I really want to do this GIG? Do I want to rehearse these steps over and over again?” Isn’t this a long combination? Can’t they get the idea from a much shorter collection of movement? Where was our “A Chorus Line” soundtrack in our inner monologue, the one that went “I really hope I get it. I hope I get it. How many people does he need?”

And just for added irony, Ronnie and I got to be in the same group, doing the combination once without the improvisation and once with it. I don’t know which incarnation of the phrase did it, but right before we were told to hang around for the callback, Ronnie grabbed his lower back as if someone had caned him in it. The choreographer didn’t register this but when Ronnie and I made it outside he felt the throngs. I implemented my bootleg triage, laying him on the floor of the hallways while the first round auditioning continued.

We went back in and they asked us to show the combination again. Take a breath. One more time. Conversation. One more time with the freestyle. Really? Hadn’t they seen it already.

I called our agent and explained that as much as I wanted to be a beacon of bookings, I probably missed the mark this time. I recounted to her my and Ronnie’s horrors. She laughed at us and told us the next day that we both booked it.

The first day of rehearsal meant lots of stretching, rolling around on tennis balls, deep breathing exercises. Survival of the second day infused our spines with hope.

But the day of the shoot was bound to be career-changing if the MTV crewman driving the van was any indication. The kids in the back asked for more decibel on the gangster rap while Ronnie and I sat petrified as our driver did van-nastics all up and down Canal Street, the Manhattan Bridge and 4th Avenue in BK, complete with passings on the left against opposing traffic and honking at police officers. I had to ask, “Why are the stake so high?”

This turned out to be the theme of the whole day. When we got there, the eager 2nd Assistant Director (why did there need to be a second assistant anything?) introduced himself and started to make himself useful.

“Is this a new studio?”

“Yes, this one is pretty new,” he said.

A production assistant did not shift from the task of loading the cooler with more canned drinks when she indirectly annihilated the 2nd AD.

“No this is not a new studio,” she said. “In the late 1800’s it was a theater before a fire damaged most of it. But it was repaired and turned into a film studio in the 1900’s for silent pictures before it was closed again and reopened when Al Pacino, who is from Brooklyn, wanted to use it for a few films he made in the 90’s...”

And let’s be clear, the justification of the mortified 2nd AD’s paycheck later on was substantial, as the only thing he directed was his voice out into the set to alert us (after we were at places) that we would be doing another take.

But before that, we were escorted from the Kraft Services table to the dressing rooms and waiting area. Downstairs was sort of a vast holding area that resembled the sets of movies made about concentration camps. There was an entire side of the space that was useless because there was no light and a thin layer of dirt over the concrete. A few chairs here and there that they advised us to put our things on in lieu of the floor. Support beams built to survive anything and dressed with paint old enough to have an opinion.

“This is it.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You guys will hang out down here until we’re ready for you.”

“Dressing rooms?”

“Back over behind there you’ll see some rooms.”

Where they rolled stained elevator carpet over concrete.

But this was good preparation for the actual set upstairs authentic busted car, discarded sofa, rickety table, windowless truck skeleton, authentic uneven concrete with small potholes filled with water...

“So are you guys okay with this?” the choreographer asked, not sure he was fine with it himself.

We didn’t know how to answer. I mean it was wet, uneven concrete, the kind you snatch your five-year-old away from so that he/she won’t run, slip and die.

We were good sports. We activated our positive thinking so that neither of us ripped apart the entire collection of muscles around the crotch in an effort to make it through the long shoot day and the artist rehearsals.

Of course the artist was a concern. Dancers always prepare for the likelihood that he/she won’t be able to remember the steps, the blocking, which camera to look at, etc. In this case, with a three camera situation the artist had a lot to think about as he moved from one frame to another lip syncing the revised version of the West Side Story song.

He was fast, professional, laid back, cool. Things were moving right along.

Until we got to the second round of shooting, when a hairy couch-potato looking crew guy (who had fun jumping in to the edge of the set between takes pretending he was in the video) put a water tank on his back. A hose attached to it with a coil cord made it easy to aim as he walked around the set spraying the concrete with water. My face dropped. I looked around to see if people were as flabbergasted at this PA with the Ghostbusters gear on his back.

By the ninth hour we were loopy, disoriented, exhausted and tired of the 2nd AD who insisted on yelling “From the top” as if to lead the chorus of unnecessary echoes from everyone else on the crew. At one point one of the replacement dancers explained he the thin scar that ran down his spinal column. “I got into a really bad car accident. They had to go in and screw a lot of my vertebrae together. I had to learn how to walk again.” The rest of us shared a collective wow over this testimony.

Then I asked one of the other dancers if she’d been around. I could tell by the way she worked, the way she prepared her body that she was no ordinary b-girl. She pulled me aside and told me she was only a year younger than me. Relief.

We had a slight reprieve from the exhausting West Side Story combination when the choreographer was asked to put together a short paseo-like segment for camera, along with another where we just stood beyond the artist while he executed the lip sync.

And wouldn’t you know, that segment (not the grueling dancing we did for two days of rehearsal and nine or ten hours of shooting) is all that you see of our gang in the VMA Promo.

I’m trying not to be salty...

Say the Right Thing

Enjoying a sunny day and I had just finished meeting my sister/wife Krisha for a sojourn through Central Park. She left sooner than I was ready to which opened the door for some peace of mind.

The phone rang.

“Hey sweetie.” It was Hollie. L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time” (famous book from childhood) has a character in it who learns how to communicate without words in a way that seems telepathic but doesn’t require that skill from the receiving party. It’s called kything. Hollie must have learned this shit because she asked:

“Did I catch you at a bad time, what are you doing?”

“No, no. I’m just in the park by myself.”

As usual, the conversation moved with velocity from one subject to the next and I mentioned that Krisha thinks she’s a fatty.

“She’s not. But I understand the feeling.”

Here we go. I was too relaxed to be ready to say find the right things to say in this conversation and still be honest, a task that a good night sleep and lots of concentration is required for.

“What’s wrong? What are you thinking? It’s taking you too long,” she scolded.

“No, nothing’s wrong I was just waiting for you to finish.”

“I’m fine. Really I’m fine. I’ve been busy doing yoga and taking ballet classes and now I can feel the difference in my body. It’s much longer. I’m also losing weight this way too.”

“Oh cool,” I said. Crisis gone.

“I think it’s a good thing. Dana thinks I might be doing too much though. Do you think I should continue doing what I’m doing or change it up?”

Unfair. Absolutely unfair. This kind of question makes men want to scream. It’s loaded with damnation traps long lasting and Houdini proof. If I say no, I’m suggesting that she discontinue something that will improve her dancing, her career, her hire-ability (as far as the bullshit aesthetics that govern our industry). I would not be her friend to go the dishonest approach.


But if I tell answer yes, my goodness. I’m saying she is a useless, untalented sloppy fat dancer who belongs on “The Biggest Loser” and will never have another gig should she not eliminate her fat right away. She will ask me a new question infused with woes that besiege the femme condition: “So you think I’m fat?” or - since I’m her good friend and not her man - “So you do think I need to lose weight.” This might as well slump to rhetorical status since rather than listen to my answer she will tune me out and concentrate on figuring out why I have been lying to her about her weight all this time. Maybe even accuse me of bullshitting her. This is when strategy matters.

“Well, if you think that the combination of yoga and class is lengthening you out and improving your center then I say do it, if that’s what you find is really working for you.”

There was a moment of silence where I got to listen to Central Park while she sent my response to her cerebral lab for analysis.

“Good answer. Very good,” she said, clear on her lack of fairness. “You thought that through didn’t you?”

“Further than you did when you asked me that fucked up shit” Uproarious laughter. “I know how you operate. I know all about the chasms and you didn’t even consider the trick bag did you?”

By now she barely talk, let alone defend herself.

“No! I wouldn’t have thought you were saying__yes I would have.”

“Exactly. Do you realize how much tiptoeing is necessary for questions like that when you have a penis?”

“I’m sorry. Do I do that all the time?”

In the movie “Eagle Eye,” the supercomputer ARIIA was fashioned with the ability to intercept any electronic form of communication and send information to large groups of people at once. I needed that option now so that I could yell YESSSS to women all over the planet who torture men in this way and don’t realize it.

Let me be clear. What makes this frustrating is that architects of these traps are usually women whose concerns sit somewhere in the make-believe. Hollie went to level one of Super Mario Brothers to find something shiny with a reflection to show the extra fat that makes her feel fat. Dana who is uber-svelte and weight 10 pounds goes to the same world. Neither of them is fat. They remind me that as someone who understands this insanity so well (Dana pointed out that I wrote and directed an entire choreopoem about it), I should do fine with handling it. And I do. But it’s still awful to have your close girlfriend cast you in a state of jeopardy on a beautiful day in Central Park. Let’s face it, husbands across the country have endured spells of blue privates behind not knowing how to escape these situations without saying the wrong thing.

Or maybe they are more savvy than I think.

“You sure do fine with saying the right thing though because you don’t piss me off that way.”

“Practice.”

“No, you’re really straight, I just wish you would go ahead and admit it.”

“You’re deflecting. And since you bring up straight men, ask your man if you do this a lot.”

Meanwhile, I’m going to see if I can find out if ARIIA will do me a favor on behalf of all tortured men...

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?

Memphis


Downtown Memphis at 1:45 in the morning and Brian Brooks was hungry. Denny’s was the only option and Darius and I had just gotten in from the festivities at B.B. King’s, where the cast of “The Color Purple” had just received our second after party this trip.

We sat there in the Denny’s, meals consumed. A long, thin black woman with ochre skin and matching weave approached the table, a pack of Newports in her hand, tight but not inappropriate jeans on.

“We spoke earlier tonight?” she said to me.

“Did we?”

“Yes, you’re the bass player right?”

I considered that after the show, I’d signed posters for a group of kids on the bus parked outside the stage door and accepted congratulations from a few audience members. She must have been one of them.

“No, dancer/ensemble. The Color Purple right?”

“Yes, I was wearing violet.”

This is when we knew we were in trouble.

“Oh you guys aren’t from here are you?”

The three of us gave our varying concise versions of no, we’re not.

“Well I’m from Eerie, Pennsylvania and I just moved here last year to be with my family over there, my kids. I have a son who’s 23 years old and he’s in the air force and a daughter who’s grown too. Where are you guys from?”

“New York,” I said.

“What part of New York?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Oh yeah, that’s not far from me, that’s just 45 minutes from me. Yeah, because Rochester…”

Here she took a long pause. “Yeah, 45 minutes because Eerie. Then Canada.”

She was a 70’s cigarette commercial Tweet with Sarah Palin accoutrements. At this point I decided that the constant digging into my salad in an effort not to laugh was not going to cut it. I couldn’t at all look at Darius, who sat to my right and shook. Brian managed to maintain composure throughout, working very hard to show the woman his lack of interest in her story.

I motioned for the waiter.

“Excuse me, could I have another cappuccino?”

She obliged as the Tweet Palin woman continued talking throughout. Until the waitress brought the cap and set it on the table.

“Here you go,” she said.

“Thank you.”

And these small moments of talking were very important, loud even. The effort to introduce anything to sever this woman’s train of thought was clear.

To everyone except her.

“Okay I want to get back on track with you. I hope you’re having a good time here in Memphis. The black people here are, well it’s not that they’re…illiterate per se. They just don’t have a lot in their brains.”

“Yes, uh hmm,” Brian offered.

“It’s really bad. And I’ve never seen homeless people in the street…”

At this point, the tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. I struggled not to laugh at this woman’s journey. “I’m sorry I’m just leaning all over your drink,” she said, then spread her fingers like spider legs over the top of Brian’s hot chocolate mug as if to pick it up, “do you want me to buy you another one?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Oh okay.” When she pulled her fingers up, the whipped cream was foaming on them.

Somewhere over the next few sentences, Darius turned away, shifted his body, something (I was determined still not to actually look at him). She reacted instantly.

“Oh, I’m sorry did I interrupt you guys? I don’t want to disturb you. What is your name?”

Darius and Brian gave up their names. Real ones at that.

Before she could move on with the very important conversation she had for us, a rotund but confident woman in a striped mu-mu shirt yelled from across the Denny's floor, “Denise, what the fuck do you want to drink?”

“Coffee,” Denise yelled back.

“You want some of the blue stuff in it right?”

“Yeah, I want a hot toddy.” She turned to us. By this point, one of the other family members had made it to Denise's side.

"This is my other cousin. She's a real sweet woman and she's a good person. She's the big cousin."

“I am not the big cousin,” the woman said. She rolled her eyes and left the table.

“Well you guys enjoy your time here in Memphis and try to be careful.”

“Okay, you too."

“I have my family here in Memphis and over there I have my cousin and my nephew…” Had she not left? What was happening?

Brian was through by this point and began an under-the-table assault on my foot. I’m not sure what he expected me to do but I started the mental rummage. The woman rambled on.

“So listen those are your family members over there?” I asked.

Brian looked me square in the face with horror etched around his eyes. With no concern about the audibility of the action, he massacred my shin with his shoe. Repeatedly. I understood what was going on. He anticipated that I would do something vile like this, invite this insane, drunk Sarah Tweet to involve herself further in our table goings-on because I was intrigued with her character, found some kind of literary value in it. He knows me well enough to know that Denise would make it to the page somehow and Brian was livid that he and Darius would have to suffer as casualties.

He didn’t give me enough credit. I had a plan to remove her from the general space.

But the woman took that question as her opportunity to sit down. Beside Brian.

“Yeah because see my sister, excuse me baby,” she said, making herself comfortable.

Brian was undone.

“No, no, I was hoping you would take me over to meet them,” I said, ushering Darius out of the booth.

“Oh yes. Here I’ll take you over there right now.”

The journey to the other table, across the Denny’s floor, felt very much like the trek to the edge of the plank into the ocean at swordpoint.

I tried to lead the entire affair, introducing myself to the rotund cousin first.

“You said your name is Jamal? You look just like that guy on television.”

“Who, Gary Dourdan?” I said.

“No, no, Lenny Kravitz.”

“Yeah you could be his son because you’re not as wide and your face isn’t as big,” Denise said. She continued talking and since the introduction to the cousin was not complete, I continued to hold the woman’s hand.

“You still got my hand,” she remarked. “You maybe shouldn’t do that.” She then moved my hand to her breast.

Now, you have to understand that her breasts began at her neck and traveled down the length of the space between the booth back and the table, sloping underneath the edge of it and into the negative space above the floor. They seemed endless in volume. They engulfed the striped garment over them. I was instantly nervous.

I moved the introduction along.

“Now this is my nephew Johnnie and he plays drums. He’s good at what he does.”

“Yeah he is.”

The youngster, gave me his hand, thoroughly embarrassed and utterly sober amidst his finished family members.

“Now, I know you were on television last week and you know Puff…P. Puff Diddy? You can call him.”

“No I don’t know him actually.”

“You’re the bass player right?”

“No, but I’m sure I know somebody.”

“Yeah I know you know. Because I know P. Diddy.”

By this point, the teenager was laughing, the menu held over his face in a flimsy effort to conceal it.

“Now when do you leave?” Denise asked.

“Tomorrow.”

I felt throngs of wrong for the lie.

“Sometime before you leave you have to hear him play.”

“Well, I…”

“No, no you have to hear him.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, as soon as I get done over there I’ll come back and talk to you guys.”

When I escaped the table, Brian reviewed the steady list of things he was prepared to do in the event that Denise had lost more of the mind that was missing parts. He could grab her by the healthier portion of her weave and yank her into the table. Or throw her across the empty one in the center of the space. Just beyond it was another party of three, except these were drunk white boys too incapacitated to stay awake. One had his head on the table. The other two were vaguely coherent. They looked as if they were conducting a séance.

The cousin with breasts in lieu of a torso made her way to their table and sat.

“How are you?” one of the boys asked.

“I’m fucked up,” she said.

This is when we realized we had to make an exit. Right away.

Loss

When my step-sister decided to leave her husband of fifteen years she never expected that he would call her down to the basement one morning at 7:30, handcuff her to the pool table and hold her hostage for five hours. Or that he would fire random shots at the door to keep the oldest two of their four boys from trying to intervene. Or that he would eventually shoot her in the palm, then in the hip and the ribcage before finally snatching her from life with a bullet through her left eye.

As I re-packed my DC luggage for the trip to Chicago for the funeral forty-eight hours later, I worried about the cold. I wondered if I would be a resource of strength outside at a burial site scathed by the infamous Illinois winds. If I had any doubts, having waited until the Wednesday night upon return to my house to even check for airfare, the outrageously low costs ($168 round trip to leave that Friday), and abundance of rental car opportunity ($17 a day for a Camry) was as loud as God gets.

Dad sounded better than he should have over the phone when he gave me directions to his mother’s house. But when I made it there I could see the evidence of grief. It sort of stole his ability to sleep at night so that now he sat over a plate of collards and fried chicken dozing upright. We woke him several times to finish eating. He remarked that even though this situation was painful he was so happy to see the family come together. And to be sure I had met everyone, including folks I hadn’t seen in years. The cousins I know were busy pouring Ketel One for the cousin I didn’t to celebrate her 21st birthday. There was even a cake.

So I thought I’d be prepared for the funeral, which had been pushed back from the horrible murder to accommodate the oldest son’s return to school for a minute to register for the Spring semester, which is what his mother would have insisted on. But when I got to the church with cousin and uncle in tow, we had no option but the multi-purpose room downstairs, which had been converted into an overflow room with a large television simulcasting the service in the temple. Five minutes after we sat down, it was standing room only.

Then I got to go through it. I had only known this woman peripherally growing up, Dad’s frequent mention of her enough to keep her real. But now I got to hear about the prominence of her smile every time she engaged in anything. I got to hear about her work with the youth ministry, her overwhelming presence at church. I got to listen to teachers of her kids come to the microphone with praises about how good a mother she must have been given the exceptional behavior of her boys. Her boss was invited to the pulpit to talk about how good she was at her job and how much it jolted him to hear that she wasn’t coming in one day, so seldom was she out. Then her brother stood up at the pulpit and said he wasn’t sure he wanted to come up there because he didn’t know what to say. So for an excruciating minute of quiet, he just stared out, his face the intersection of pain and contempt.

“Take your time,” someone offered from the pews.

“It’s not about time. I don’t know what to say. I love my sister.”

But I lost it altogether when Dad got to the microphone, his voice aquiver.

“I know parents don’t normally bury their kids so this is hard. I can say that I’ve messed up a whole lot in my life, made a lot of mistakes. But she was the one thing I can say I did right. She was the one good thing I made and I miss her. Like I always tell you, I love you many.”

To listen to him and know, to know about the shortcuts and law line crosses and missteps of his life and see him lament the loss of the person who made him most proud in it broke my heart.

The pastor had to step away from the pulpit several times over the course of his recounting of the events. He let us know in testimony so personal that he did not escape the devastation either, that he was one of the many outside the house during the crisis. He brought her one-year-old up to speak. He beckoned the church to be there for the other four kids, 20, 18, 15 and 14. He stood them up each and outlined their new roles in the household. To the third born, he offered a reminder that his identity there is no shame in his name (same as his father’s). This highlighted the horror, dragged it to the front of the frame in this scary movie we were watching.

There was only enough distance left for me to question the pastor’s intent when he made a choice that seemed self-referential. In mentioning his commitment to good counsel and advice to all in his congregation, he anticipated judgment from us and tried to swipe the incrimination in advance.

“I know you’re wondering, ‘If his counsel is so good then why are we all here? Why did this happen?’ All I can say, and you may interpret this however you feel, I can give you a cup of water but I can’t make you swallow.”

This bothered me.

He went on to invite non-members and mourners with no church home to please join his congregation because if we wanted to commit to the life of good will and Christian faith that Latonya subscribed to, we should all want to be members of her church. My friends told me later that this is normal. But in light of the way things had gone thus far with the pastor, I questioned intent.

The ride to the burial site was about forty minutes long, so it seemed. When we made it there, we ended up parked so far behind the caravan of cars, we only walked up in time to watch the coffin be interred into a wall with several other who'd passed. I had worried earlier about the adversity of the cold, despite what the inauguration effort prepared me for. I wondered if I would stand there outside, my hands shoved into jacket pockets, my release petrified on my face, unable to help. These concerns were for naught - there was no time. I gave Dad a hug and he told me, "Thank you for coming."

One thing the pastor said stayed with me. He said that sometimes it's only necessary to be there, that the very presence of a person is enough. I'm glad I was there.

P.S.

Okay I can't leave you there, because I have two friends that didn't leave me there. Urban Therapy, two very dear friends, my IT homey and my brilliant sister. They helped. They didn't clean up. They didn't clear out a space on the floor in the front room where I would be sleeping. They didn't go grocery shopping. They opened up their home and said, "Welcome. Here are some towels because we shower every day here."

They mapquested my trip from the airport to my Dad's mother's house, hung out on the phone with me when I ended up almost in Indiana. Sported chocolate-chip-infused biscuits. They listened as I complained about my sucky parking karma in their area. They supported me when I had the macabre observation that the sketchy dental situations of many Chicagoans gave an interesting spin to remarks about LaTonya's beautiful smile; they didn't damn me to hell. They suffered my invented words, listened to accounts of my wayward dates as well as my fence hop last year with the baby's (not mine) mama. They read me at times I desperately needed to be read, and with succinct three- or four-word sentences no less.

E and Troy also enlightened me with a show and tell clip from the movie "Hustle and Flow." During the second viewing (I had to see this scene again), they practically re-enacted "Whoop that Trick" careful to give the "Get em!" tag of the chant its full value each time. They tortured me with scenes from Nina Simone's live concert in Montreux where she danced a random dance, read the audience, confessed to her half-high state of being and then interrupted herself to tell a woman to sit down. I laughed. And then I laughed. And then I would have fallen out on the floor laughing but I was already there. It was a must see, and E was going to make sure that I had not shirked my cultural responsibility to know about this. Troy educated me on the happenings in our the lives of some of our lesser thought about classmates from high school.

They made this cold madness easier. And it wasn't just about the fact that their boiler worked. If ever I'm unclear about the definition of friendship, UrbanTherapy has haze-repellant. Thank God.

Tundra Trek

"They said it would be a cold day in hell before we got a black president." - Many.

I was amidst thousands of people whose common goal to witness the broad hug of change via historic presidential appointment smothered any tendencies for petty irritations. The lack of signs left us to our own devices. Officials were lackluster in making it clear which massive clumps of lines were for the parade and which were for the ceremony. At one point we waited at an intersection between Starbucks and Hotel Monaco for twenty minutes before finding out we were in the wrong place. You see, to get “close” on the lawn meant to leave at six o’clock in the morning and hope that your strategy, which maybe involved a train station that was open and closest, proved better than machinations of others. Amusement parks and Lollapalooza had nothing on this. Yet on the journey, people were affable, courteous, helpful. Jokes were passed over the crowd like a jolly good fellow. The benefit of the doubt trumped impatience every time. During the trek random shouts of the president elect’s name echoed against the tunnel walls in stereo. I was in the deeper throes of miracle.

Of course, Rosalyn wasn’t convinced I felt this way. I gave her Devil’s Advocate, or Regine, or Sofia Petrillo, or Simon Chipmunk the entire time. After all, I could not resist noting as we walked in a tunnel (think a fraction of the Holland Tunnel or the car chase tunnel from “Bourne Identity”) that this was a very mighty journey to see change.

“Where is the rest area?”

“My neck. My back. My… my neck and my back.”

“Is Harriett Tubman leading this expedition?”

Rosalyn, who finally looked closer to her age in that antique beautiful fur coat, appreciated the humor, but would have none of my complaint about the logistical nightmare of walking around and under the Capitol Building so that we could then traverse the Southeast quadrant of DC before making it to the SW side to make a right to 14th and end up on the lawn near the Washington Monument miles from the Capitol. Mind you, on 11th street, about a mile and a half in (and only three blocks from our destination), we passed the L’Enfant Plaza train stop. Turns out that a cousin of ours working the event had said yesterday this one would be open. I was too cold to get heated that neglecting this shred of info meant 90 minutes of unnecessary Arctic journey, but I tried. It was too cold to scowl at me but Rosalyn tried. My other two cousins, peers who had better sense than me, opted for perfect behavior and refused complaint. So I tried to make like them until we made it to freedom. When we did, four jumbo trons, large flatscreens pushed high into the air, stood between us and the end of the overflow. The end of the OVERFLOW.

I had by this point done a stretch, released my lateral thigh muscles, dug out the tension in my psoas so that I could stand up without lower back issues. And for one brief oasis, the air did not seem as cold at 8:30 as it did when we beat the sun into this January 20th. But when we ventured further South, past the coffee stand whose attendance was packed hopping dance floor tight, the temperature dove like Fu Mingxia off the platform. I knew my minutes were numbered but I would hang tight for a little longer.

“You know Jamal, if you want to go back you can, it’s really okay,” Rosalyn told me, appeasing my usual consideration of others’ feelings.

“I know. I might just.” She too forgets at times that 31 is a far cry from the 19-year-old resistance to disappoint.

“And actually I would prefer it if you did because you’re very unhappy right now.”

“I’m very unhappy?” I was stunned. “No, no, I’m not unhappy. Groggy, exhausted, freezing cold. Unhappy, that’s a stretch.”

But beneath Rosalyn’s titanium resolve to witness the fruition of marches, struggles, deaths and freedom-fighting that we youngsters did not suffer and took for granted, a shred of Jamal-geared insight was at work. She detected my bitter-sweetness about enjoying this incipient national truth while my performance in it was cancelled.

In fact, a 10.0 dive from Fu has nothing on the speedy change in level of my participation status. At one point, it got sweeter now that Dana would be dancing the piece as well. Then singing in another segment of the show. But when the choreographer visited on the 7th and saw that the stage was pool-table small and felt like an ice skating rink, he had to pull the piece. He nailed them down about tickets, arguing that at this point they had to honor an Amtrak round-trip for each of us just to be fair. The day after I got my ticket confirmation email, the entire event was cancelled due to low ticket sales.

The residual high alone from this performance might have warmed me for the remaining two hours we would have to wait in the esplanade of dead grass and cold people. I could at least tell random people that I performed in the festivities. Sort of.

“No Rosalyn I’m not unhappy. But not to worry, I will definitely leave before too long since it’s just 9:30.”

She was only being considerate, not wanting to watch me ice while she shimmered in this black journalist fantasy day. Writers, I thought hypocritically. Besides, wasn't this about the point when the Nazi's (idiots) froze to death trying to fight the Soviets in WWII?

I began my exit with a trip back to the train station that took about forty minutes. Three blocks. As an escapee I was not alone; the traffic to get down the escalators to the train platform was so long that event staffers had to siphon roughly ten people at a time so avoid overcrowding. This was another half hour.

Still I made it in time to watch the momentous occasion on television with the other family members who did not survive downtown.

And thaw out.

Whorish?

In Best Buy in the middle of my day enjoying the temporary reprieve from the icy cold of New York in January and this time the errand was to Best Buy. I was waiting for the sales guy to help me pick out the best DVD for my bedroom when I saw a familiar good-looking guy. Fortunately it didn’t take my mind too long to figure out that I knew him indeed.

“Hey man whassup?”

“Hey, Happy New Year. I haven’t seen you in years,” I told him. We had a pleasant hug.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Man, I’m just__” He stopped, and the expression on his face said more than he could. “I’m just trying to make it through.”

“Oh no, I can tell it’s been very rough whatever it is.”

I felt instant throngs of faux pas guilt. Who told me it was okay to be running into Best Buy so sanguine just because I had a gift card and wouldn’t have to spend money I didn’t have? We are in a recession after all.

“Yeah, it’s been very rough,” he said.

“Well at least you’re in good company. We all seem to be struggling with money these days.”

“That’s not even the half of it.”

Between the freckles and the smile, I could see he’d suffered an ordeal.

At a loss for what to say next, I decided to change the subject.

“Do you still live in the same place?”

“Yes.” He paused for a minute, gave me a look children get when their caretakers realize there is fishing going on. “Do you remember where?”

“Brooklyn right?”

“Yes. You’ve been there.”

“No, no you came to my house, I’ve never been to yours.”

“No, it was at my house.”

I smiled, moved my head out of the way of my neck. “You sure it was this dancer?”

“Yes, at my house.”

Now understand that I did recall sexing this guy and I was clear about it because in all my years of being black, I’ve only slept with one person with complete alopesia. I remember he was sexy as hell and on the Whooopi Golldberg forehead not an eyelash to be found. Anita Hill would never have been able to leverage a case about the coke can if my friend here had been the accused. In fact, I tortured Krisha with this when, the next morning after we’d warmed my bed, I woke my piece du jour up and made him go with me to load her awkward glass desk into the U-Haul and she never quite forgave me for not warning her about the lack of eye brows and lashes so that she could keep hers steady when shaking his smooth hand (I was all kinds of bitches and hos and asses via text immediately thereafter). So I had to help him see that I was not crazy. And he was original, right up there with Joe the Plumber who was never a plumber going to the Middle East as a news correspondent.

“Where do you live?”

“Jefferson between Nostrand and Bedford.”

I pictured the street. “Oh over there with the apartment structure they were building.”

“And still are building.”

There is an occasion when the truth washes right into the picture after you shake it, Polaroid style. It dawned on me that my hot hairless lover had no freckles. But the guy who lived over on Jefferson did. And no he never made it to my house, or even to a second date, because he subjected me to Guantanamo level sufferings. After the first hour, I could no longer evade my career, which involved a tour with a music icon/legend, which was fantastic to him and required a full-scale listening session, which meant enduring the hodge-podge of compositions that he bothered to get professionally mixed even though they belonged on different albums in entirely different sections of a record store (if at all). At times when he got really into the songs vocally, he sounded like a velociraptor, at better times a macaw in heat.

My discomfort only ebbed when he explained that his producer fought with him all the time to get him to embellish less and sing more so that he could do his songs justice instead of running notes as if to the toilet after laxatives. At that point I could feel fine about not telling him that he wasn’t good – someone had already done this and the fool chose not to listen – I was ready to leave. But I was weak and touch is a dangerous thing in those cases. Something good had to come out of that visit after all.

Anyway, that was not this guy standing before me. I was very wrong and for sure wrinkled sheets with them both years ago. Oops.

“Yeah,” I said in mental recovery, “I’m still in the same place too, right around the corner.”

“Oh cool, so what are you buying here?”

I looked into the man’s face and then it occurred to me as I struggled not to laugh at myself, my error, my whorishness, Krisha’s face that day, I still hadn’t resolved the issues of his lack of hair –

Oh no. Could it be cancer? Chemotherapy perhaps. Something like that.

Now not only had I reinforced that I was a mess between tour dates, I was also going to hell for completely missing that the man had some grave issues.

I’d pray for him for sure. And then ask my friends to pray for me.

Meanwhile, the gift card covered the entire DVD player so it could wait until I got home. Maybe I needed to go get a meditation video…