Every one’s heard by now that the tower known as “Vibe” has caved within itself, leaving a mass of cocky hip hop rubble and R&B dust. Most of us starry eyed writers have a Vibe story we have burning inside of us and I’ve read some great ones from my friends, namely Kenji Japser’s “Flight of the Phoenix” (http://theabandonedship.blogspot.com/2009/07/babel.html). My own story isn’t so great and plentiful as Kenji’s but it still left one of those scars on my writing that I should probably swallow and get over (cause that’s what successful people do) but I’m still working on that.

It was college - duh - and I had a friend (at the time) who was an intern at the newly royal rap magazine. I trudged through the Park Avenue 30’s to get to the infamous office. I carefully selected my outfit - Domsey’s of Brooklyn second hand specials so I could look VERY original - and entered through the elevators. I expected rhymes hanging off the ceiling, Biggie to be cussing somebody out in the lobby, Faith getting her hair done in an office, laughs, undocumented moments of historical black precedence only witnessed by me. That didn’t happen.

I did sit in an office with Kevin Powell, some other editor and my friend (at the time) hearing Kevin wax poetic about, oh, everything. Not a word in edgewise did anyone else get. I did manage to ask him advice on writing. And it was one sentence just that plain because, unbeknownst to most people, I am shy and the shyiest of shy when it comes to people who are doing what I want to do. This has probably hindered my “career” and rendered to be, well, right here but it is who I am and I accept and wish it to be something else too.  Back to Kevin. What was his response? “Write whatever you can.”  Say what? “Write technical manuals if you can, just write.” Beg your pardon? “Just write.”

Wow. Genius. Hardly the first time anyone has ever let me down with a thump. And rightfully speaking, why should he expound monumental words of wisdom or even wonder what kind of writer I am. It was a perfect answer. Noncommittal, just enough distance to not be villified later. But maybe that’s the problem. I always read stuff other writers send me if they ask me to. Always. My opinion is small and tiny but it’s mine and maybe it will help in the long run. I am possibly too involved. Sometimes I think I were really successful, I wouldn’t have time to do this. And that makes me sad. I don’t want to be that.

Back to “Vibe” or whatever it really was. I always put it in the highchair of my mind. It was always special. I read it. And I didn’t read it. I was envious. I sometimes was a hater. I relished bad stories about the behind scenes of it. I was proud of it when it made history. When the writers left to go to other magazines, I followedly them proudly and unabashedly. Anywhere but there.

This is what happens when the train decides it can run without the passengers. It becomes art for art’s sake and well, that art started to blow hot air into itself. “Vibe” let itself become the content of its magazine rather than the content be the content. We all wanted our own “Rolling Stone” but then “Rolling Stone” couldn’t avoid us marginalized folks anymore as soon as we exploded in the suburban headphones of kids we’d never meet on the street.

In the immortal words of 2LiveCrew we screamed to “Vibe”: “It’s the world biggest dick!” And they responded “It don’t matter, just don’t bite it.”

This is my friend/web designer’s lovely portfolio. She was doing me a favor and I decided to keep this here because it’s very nice and the world needs more nice.

Ironic that my earlier post about Father’s Day would lead us to a California day winding down with the news of one of the greatest pop legends ever had gone home and, of course, my memories of Michael Jackson are linked to my dad. As a lovesick grade school girl dreaming of MJ babies in glitter diapers, I know I had my dad concerned. As a debating teenager, he and I would go back and forth on the sadness of popstardom happening to someone so young and, I reasoned, that would lead most people to carry a monkey around like a child. Forget even about crowding around the television set for the MTV debuts of Thriller and the Bad video (the Making of included), depleted and revived at the same time when both were finished playing. Let’s not even go to the joy I had watching the local dance show (”The Scennnnnnnnne” - which I’ve posted about here before) kids getting together in the apartment parking lots in the neighborhood, dressed in all their glory doing the EXACT “Thriller” choreography to the t.  There was also the time that I literally almost punched a girl in front of school for getting the lyrics to “Beat It” wrong even though she believed in her heart that he was singing “No one wants to feel the beat of it” instead of the correct “No one wants to be defeated.”  My heart was ablaze.

In high school, I was thrilled whenever a group of girls I was friends with, the B Phi Sweeties I think they called themselves, would line up and do the “Black or White” video, each different complexioned girl jumping up and then fading back so the next darker skinned girl could pop up.

As a summer latch key kid when my parents didn’t have money or resource to send me somewhere to occupy me better, I stayed home and listened to records. This is how I discovered “Off The Wall” (I was a bit young when it originally came out) and Diana Ross’s “Mahogany” in all their splendor. Even to this day, my favorite Michael Jackson song is “I Can’t Help It (If I Wanted To)” and I’ve spent many California afternoons/New York city nights blaring it out of my iPod, instantly lifted up.

Michael was a stranger to us all in the last decade or so, plagued with a deep rooted celebrity that went back to being so young, so early, so famous, so fast that none of us except for some recent starlets can even imagine. None of us will ever know what was going on in his head but all of us can probably understand the desire to change one’s self from what you were when it was all too much. I am not so lost on the concept of trying to become anyone other than the fame magnet but wanting to keep your talent and original message. Of course your body will give out when you stretch so far from such a bright star.

I Can’t Help It”[1st Verse]
Looking In My Mirror
Took Me By Surprise
I Can’t Help But See You
Running Often Through My Mind[2nd Verse]
Helpless Like A Baby
Sensual Disguise
I Can’t Help But Love You
It’s Getting Better All The Time

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[3rd Verse]
Love To Run My Fingers
Softly While You Sigh
Love Came And Possessed You
Bringing Sparkles To Your Eyes

[4th Verse]
Like A Trip To Heaven
Heaven Is The Prize
And I’m So Glad I Found You Girl
You’re An Angel In Disguise

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

And I’m So Glad I Found You Girl
You’re An Angel In Disguise

[Chorus]
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It Even If I Could
I Can’t Help It If I Wanted To
I Wouldn’t Help It, No

[Repeat To Fade]

 

Normally I pour my tears out on a Father’s Day post but this year it’s simple. Yes, I miss my father. Yes, I feel him with me. I struggle with holding tight to images, smells, memories, songs. I still cry spontaneously over little triggers that remind me.  I do have some miracles that have come out of this. My life has changed in two years in many ways, for the better for me (it isn’t really a question about if my life change has been better for others though I do think about that sometimes).

I still find injustice in the most obscure news related stories that have to do with fathers. For example, I do feel bad for the South Carolina Governor Sanford’s boys. They didn’t even hear from their dad on Father’s Day because he was in Argentina, unbeknownst to anyone but him and his paramour.

Yvie sent me a Sekou Sundiata video today and my link to my dad in that way is that Sekou met my dad at graduation and I could see some similarities in kindness and temperment that always make me ache. They’re both gone, Sekou and my dad. I hope they’re able to speak wherever they are.

Sekou Sundiata on Def Poetry Jam

 

There’s a father/daughter annual dance that happens in some parts of this country that makes me jealous. But then I still check myself that I did dance with my father at my brother’s wedding and I savor it in my head like a last meal. I am happy that I was able to appreciate that dance at the time.  Fuck Hallmark.

Is it called getting old if you really only listen to songs from your youth? I might have just overdosed on The Winans…which usually only my Detroit players understand.

I’m not so artsy that I can’t enjoy an escapist movie. I have no problem turning off the graduate degree and the Morrison-esqueness of my own writing to sit down and pretend for two hours that I’m in an action movie. I promise you I, for the most part, will not intellectualize, politicize or moralize an action movie as there was no election in my brain that made action movies the epitome of my BAU.

That said, I admit I was excited for this spring and all its delicious action promises. So far, my “Matrix” heart has been broken. Terminator left me crabby. Angels & Demons left me talked to death (and amazed that throughout the whole damn movie in Italy, not one shot made me hungry as mostly anything Italian does).  And now Transformers.

Luckily we have a group of friends who ride hard for the midnight show. Even if we didn’t, we’d go ourselves. This time we all ganged up at The Grove to hit one of many midnight shows, joyously turning into eight year olds with with cereal milk breath and tattered Saturday morning pajamas when we sat in our seats. Even if you didn’t watch the cartoon regularly (I admittedly did not as I had a full TV agenda back then and couldn’t commit regularly to anything other than Smurfs or Warner Brothers with a little Kids Incorporated) everyone knows the theme song thereby knowing all the major players. I hear you singing it in your head now. I do!

We’re all bigger now. We’ve got more fun gadgets. Our ADD is larger than our concentration. Things affect how stories are told. I get it. Except there’s a line you can cross where all the kaboom and the mechanical switchery can look like one big pot of hot diesel fuel mess. That’s what happened here. On the big screen, it’s very difficult to determine who was an Autobot and who was Decepticon, especially during the Matrix-like fight scenes. There’s no need to do suspended air acrobatics when you’re a car that’s a machine. That’s when you get too far with the dramatics. While some of the transformations are very cool (especially all the little Decepticon bugs that turn into one razor sharp insect that can extract ANYTHING humans put together), most are so grandiose and done in a tailspin of parts and dust that there’s no way to appreciate the painting as it gets put on the canvas.

Notice I’ve not mentioned the story. Because it’s secondary. Not for me but obviously for the moviemakers. It really doesn’t matter why Sam (Shia) has got to get these transformers together to save the world. He just does. Just liked last time. Only this one takes place within different environments like college, Egypt and New York. Yes, there will be sappy moments of “I am so lucky to have this incredibly hot toothy girl run around the world with me as we risk life and limb for the world” but then that’s action movies so you expect that. Lest your eyes get too tired trying decipher which transformer is which, you have your comic relief moments galore in John Tuturro (I mean he gets a break for doing this given he’s one of the vertebrae of the early indie film market - cash your check, John!) and a new squealing college roommate. And, as if young boys and grown men (some chicks) couldn’t get enough of the walking sex bot, Megan Fox, there’s another bot in the form of a collegiate “femme fatale” (the quotes are mine because, well, she ain’t) that’s so into Sam, he should get a restraining order. Seriously.

Don’t go to the movie to try and connect dots. That’s a waste of your time. Just go and ride it and wince when you see them destroy thousand year old ruins and appreciate the military coming in and saving the day along with the car men with the radio dj voices. I mean that’s what it is.

Oh and we got a “bonus” at our screening. One of the “stars” of the movie showed up to thank us for coming out. We probably should have thanked him since we saw more of him standing there for five minutes than we did in the movie. But what are you gonna do. Cars gotta shine too.

Once my mom and I watched “Terms of Endearment” together. That was probably not a good idea on a couple of fronts, namely putting ourselves in the position of discovering each other’s mortality on top of the contentious mother/daughter relationship. My mother insisted she would go bananas if I was suffering in a hospital and a member of the staff waited two seconds longer than they should have to give me my medicine. That brought a tear to my eye and not for the usual reasons a daughter would feel moved by her mother’s expression of love. More because I realized that she had no idea how some of the other things she did actually did feel like being two seconds late for my medicine. I won’t go into detail here but I am guarded in certain areas for reasons that stem back to childhood (um, like I have the only membership card to that club, right?). Part of me has always wanted to do a either my very own “Taxi Driver” monologue in the mirror (”You talkin to me? ARE YOU talkin to ME?”) or slap my own face for not getting over it. Shit happens. Parents make mistakes. Blah blah.

At some point though both get old and you are still left with what the hell are you supposed to do. Parents are people and when the Joe on the corner does something to piss you off, why wouldn’t you let them know? Who wrote the rule that we are supposed to do ballet tip toes around our parents for fear of hurting their feelings when our feelings are hurt? I attempted this tough love trip down memory lane once and my mom flipped out. I mean FLIPPED THE EFF OUT over the phone. When she does this, there’s this very scary Exorcist sound in her otherwise sing songy stepford wife voice. It sounds like an ocean of gravel is pulling up from the depths of the sea and it, along with Captain Jack, is going to do a water karate number on you like you wouldn’t believe. You can just hear the hurt tears and spit and saliva coming out of her face and well, that’s not fun. That’s the not the point of trying to get your parent to remember some crazy shit they did when you were kid that still has you sort of messed up in the head a little. And the trip I took her on was not one of the worst ones we could’ve traveled yet and still, she couldn’t handle it.

What brings me to this? Well, I’ve been thinking about this whole Sarah Palin/David Letterman thing and while the depth of my soul wants this opportunistic woman to go away and govern her state before they kick her in the tush for her backwards mouth, the other part of me wants to put this on the table they way I can’t do with my mom. Willow, Branch, Tree and Shrub or whatever her kids names are, should basically just let her know to stop talking about them. This morning she referenced Obama being able to lay the hammer down on the media talking about his family and how that was a double standard because he got what he wanted and she didn’t. There’s lots of crazy flaw in this argument. One, your teenage girl had a baby with a kid you brought along on the campaign trail and endured the long suffering rhetoric of your family values, twisting and turning all the while, condescending to those who weren’t middle class vanilla salt of the earth. Two, you never asked the media to stop talking about your family. You couldn’t do that because they would have promptly reminded you that you were talking about your family. Three, your family is on the cover of every tabloid and non tabloid magazine whether it’s the poor baby dady insisting your Moose Mafia is preventing him from seeing his kid or its your daughter who’s trying to become her own woman and turn her slip up around. Four, you talk too much about things that have nothing to do with you and you’re not smart about some of them so there goes your credibility. Every time you open your mouth to criticize in a specific way, that way is then slammed dunked (Dwight Howard style) by regular media that sheds light on the holes of your theories.

I get kind of embarrassed for her kids because not only are the enduring this kind of crazy opportunistic woman but they also have to figure out how to deal with this later on, their Mom none the wiser. There’s nothing like feeling like your Mom is using you, even if she doesn’t realize it and she is, it sucks. So that’s why I put two and two together and got Terms of Endearment. That two seconds past medication time is always hard to digest.

Hey there, kids. Wrote this little ditty when I read about the scandalous affair of Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll on the set of “Paris Blues.” Short story: they fell in love, were supposed to leave spouses. She left, he didn’t. The end.  In the spirit of Sidney and his 82 years, we have the following by me! Forgive some of this weird formatting business. And don’t snatch! If you want to reprint/publish/read aloud/ longhand, just ask.

 Summer Soft by Stevie Wonder

 

Lucky Star

By t.tara turk

            I jut act.  I come to the set, I say hello to the crew, I do my work and I wait.  I said once before that the real drama is real life and so far it probably doesn’t seem like that’s the case here but I’m getting to that.  Right now, the drama is underneath the surface.  It’s unspoken.  It’s this crazy intangible beat that’s circles the set.  All he and I have to do is look at each other and it becomes a spark, some kind of eclipse in the making.  Two “celebrities” standing in front of each other, not saying anything but this thing happening.

But anyone who says that acting is this intense life altering experience is full of shit.  It’s the things that happen because you act that change your life.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s hard as fuck.  But it’s not brain surgery.  Nobody ever got saved because they saw me play some lost love of a rapper-turned media mogul, raising the kid he never knew we had.  Or the hooker with the heart of gold, hustling because her kids come first.  Or intelligent black girl best friend, schooling Suzie Creamcheese on the ways of the world, yet never seeming to end up with anything cool in the end.  For thirteen bucks, you can see me do a show for ninety eight minutes.  But I guarantee you that the cameras never fully capture the real action.  Not even “reality” television comes close. 

            Right now I’m thinking all of this up in my head as I sit my trailer, waiting.  I could run lines but I’m too far into my career to feel as though that’s necessary.  I stopped drinking four years ago, think coke is a waste of money, will indulge in the occasional spliff, don’t really pretend to be a hyphenate (actor/producer/director/writer/diva/hotass/clothing designer/whateverthehellelsesomebodydecidesisgoodatthetime).  I am just waiting for my cue to be near him.   

Aside from a couple of lame ass parties in the Hills, he and I never really met.  Parties like that are usually like somebody’s thirteenth birthday party with chaperones anyway.  We all stand around looking at each other, pretending to be interested in the other’s project or new home design/rap record/producing efforts, secretly trying to see if we can snatch our chance to be involved (if said project has “potential”) or if we can side hustle out of being asked to lend our name (if said project as “stinker potential”).  All in all, nobody ever stays longer than two hours, never long enough to find out anything at all. At least not from my southern/Midwestern point of view.  I have seen him at these parties not even attempt to talk to anybody for real.  His wife does all of the talking.  I tell my girls that’s because she doesn’t really do anything else for a living.  She has the energy for small talk.  If you do it for a living, you’re not about to do it for free.

            Not that I even noticed him really at these adolescent adult gatherings.  I don’t really notice anything beyond my own minimal effort.  I’m in my head a lot.  I stare at other people’s clothes.  I smile at dumb shit.  I have rep for being a real weirdo and I actually kind of like it except for weirdo in this business can mean a bit shallow, which I know I’m not anyways.

            The other places I’ve seen him before kind of don’t count because they are places where one would see others in the profession, and there are usually a billion other people under the same roof.  It only occurs to me here, now, while I’m waiting, that he and I were at those places at the same time.  I can only wonder what kind of energy was floating around then.  If it was when I was dating the A&R executive, then I wouldn’t have noticed because his drama kept me occupied with thoughts of how not to shoot him.  Or how to shoot him and get away with it.  I don’t have a lot of luck with men.  He worked my sanity.  Maybe that’s why I’m thinking the way I am now.  And why Dre is under my radar right now, I’ll never know.  Why I even promised I might marry Dre, I’ll never know. Maybe it’s okay that I don’t marry for love.  That way I don’t break my pact with God. I just gotta steer clear of the children route.  Wow…I haven’t called Dre in two days.

            Anyway, this other actor, the one I’m about to do the most mundane scene with, while a crew of thirty five make sure it comes out looking “real,” this dude is something different.  I’m not sure how we never worked together before.  He’s known for only doing the indie, mainstream, indie, mainstream routine while I actually could give a shit what it is so long as I like the part and I can pay my property tax for the year (okay at least part of it—or pay my housekeeper for a few months).  We’ve barely said two words to each other but I know me as well as I know anyone and I feel something is about to happen—wait’s over. They’re calling me on set for our first scene together.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

The program won’t connect with other mainline systems. Somebody’s rewired it.

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

Lisa, we’ve got to tell somebody.  That virus could take over the northern region in days.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

Who can we tell, Calvin?  They all think that you and I are in on it.

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

We’re being set up.  We have to go over their heads. I know just what to do. Follow me.

 

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

I’m not going anywhere until you tell me how you knew to search this sector.  What are you not telling me, Calvin?

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

I don’t know if I can trust you, Lisa.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

Then leave without me, Calvin.  It’s you and me against them.  I don’t have it in me to fight you too.

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

I would never do anything to jeopardize you, Lisa. You know that.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.  Prove it.

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

Lisa, the alarm is going off. They’ll be here soon!

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

Then you’d better make it fast!

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

You want to know? I’ll tell you.  I’ve had the virus for five years.  Dr. Adams used me as a guinea pig for a cure. They knew when they hired me that I was a carrier.  But they don’t know why I haven’t died.  And neither do I.  I need your help, Lisa.  They only reason you’re here is because they know you were the one who cured the HC virus, even though you thought you were anonymous.  They knew you wouldn’t let virus go uncured.  Everyone knows.  Problem is, now they are making money off of the temporary medicine that quiets what I have.  Now they don’t want a cure.  Lisa…I need you.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

Let’s go.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear M’Dear,

Today I fell in love with someone using somebody else’s dumb ass words.  It was like we were speaking a different language.  When I was young you told me to search for the purple clouds because that’s where the real men were.  You told me there were no such things as princes and horses and glass slippers. I am grateful.  I listened even if mama didn’t.  I never knew what you meant by purple clouds but I feel like you meant to look for the most unlikely place.

            You always said I was “touched” and that I could see things that nobody else could.  I never believed that. I always thought you saw that because you liked to drink too much and your reality was a bit altered.  But maybe you were on to something anyways.  I was ten, what did I know?

            I can sense that he’s unsure of what the hell happened between us just now, in between those lines about nothing in particular.  He looked at me sideways.  I know that you saw it.  You remember I made this pact with God that I would stay unmarried so that I wouldn’t be the one to spread our family’s ill emotional dramas. Either that or I would not ever marry for love, that way I would make sure not to have children.  Hence Dre.  And Lucy can’t have babies so we don’t have to worry about her and Deron being responsible for more craze in this world.  I know, she’s my sister and I shouldn’t say that.  But she’s crazy. And married.  What is it with men who really love women who show up at their jobs, cussing them out over a phone number?  They say they don’t love crazy women but they do.  By the way, that little act out Lucy did looked really good in The Enquirer the next morning.  Did you see the headline up there?  “Siren’s sister’s own emergency: cheating husband!”  She could’ve at least closed her mouth for one minute while the paparazzi snapped away.

            Don’t worry, M’Dear, I will keep my end of the bargain with God. Even if he didn’t bring you back after I promised to keep my end up.  I don’t usually make deals expecting things to go my way.  I make deals because I never had a problem doing it before.

 

Love you,

Your Lucky Star

 

 

            I’m away from home.  We’re shooting this movie (the execs call it “blockbuster” but people have said that about tons of other good intentioned but stinky bomb movies—“Gigli”, “Alex & Emma” , “Mothman Prophecies”—all movies I like by the way—point is, you never know until the big screen sees it) in Italy.  Good for me and Home Dude because Italians consistently show love to black people, whereas most other countries consider us a fad.  There are exceptions. Italy is beautiful.  But it isn’t home.   Where is the fried chicken?  Where are the barbecues? Lawn mowers in the morning?  Jay Z coming out of a bumping system while some fine dude washes his ride?  I’m in a hotel.  A phat ass hotel.  But a hotel nonetheless.  My bed is made when I come home.  Nothing stays messy because some phantom comes in and cleans it.  Dre isn’t around to leave his track suit pants all over the house so the maid can pick them up, or leave his beer bottles on my glass table or smoke his trees near my cashmere sweaters.  I like hotels.  There are flowers from him though…big and gaudy.  Calla lilies, roses, baby’s breath, orchids….a messy garden.  He should’ve have just called my assistant.  He could’ve pointed him in the right direction at least on what to send your kinda fiancé who sort of loves in you in that way that doesn’t involve the heart.

My assistant is good at his job but we aren’t really friends so we don’t speak outside of business.  That works well on home turf.  He can at least laugh during me and Dre’s fights.  And our make ups.  Dre can kiss his ass off.  Humph…here, alone, it’s tough.  I called my sister Lucy but she was on her way to the club with Deron.  I told her they were like modern day Fitzgeralds.  She didn’t get it.  I said F. Scott and his wife, Zelda.  The one who wrote The Great Gatsby.  She doesn’t read very much.   She said I was the smart one and, by the way, could they borrow a couple hundred dollars until her payday because Deron said her brakes weren’t working right.  (So many questions could follow: Lucy, why is your husband driving the car I gave you if he has his own Escalade that he never lets you drive?  Lucy, you get sent money every month, what are you doing with it?  Lucy, did you even want to ask how I’m doing?  Lucy, do you ever get scared of something that you don’t even know really exists?)  I tell her it’s late and I have to go to the cast dinner.

            There is a dinner tonight. First night’s dinner or something. Director is a bit strange as he likes us to operate like a theatre company even though we’re making a blockbuster.  I wish I had a ship full of food for starving people every time I’ve heard a director say that.  Tonight is a chore for me.  People tend to just look at me strangely, some kind of fear in their eyes.  Home Dude doesn’t. I have trouble saying his name.  I have trouble saying my name.  So many people say both of our names so carelessly every day, separately.  Our names are mentioned over the silliest and dumbest things.  What product I use in my hair. What designer gives me free shit.  The last rapper/R&B singer/basketball/football player/DJ I dated.  What food he likes.  How he and his wife spend their vacations.  What food I don’t eat because of which diet I’m on.  Where I was seen last. Where he was seen last.  Who used to date me. Who is having an affair with him…

            That last part just came out.  I’m putting lipstick on and looking in the mirror tracing the laugh lines that are starting to show while my assistant sneaks a line of coke in his bathroom, forcing me to be responsible for myself just this once.  As if I could ever fully become what everyone thinks I am.  Only a few people know my checks and balances.  I am superficial enough to wonder what J. Lo thinks of Seven jeans and deep enough to know that that is superficial.  At least my Crème De La Mer is working and my advanced copy of Erykah’s new joint is in the player.  Small things keep me together.

            Half the people at the dinner think I’m shallow.  Somebody in somebody’s office told somebody and these somebodies believe it so I’ll be on the spot for dinner.  I wonder where they will seat me.  Every chair is a point of power.   Close to the director means he cares about your work and what you think.  Or he’s afraid of you and wants to please you.  I don’t really pretend to know what any other seat means.  That’s the important one to me.  Temporarily important.  I wonder where Home Dude will sit.

            That’s the phone ringing. The car must be ready downstairs.  My hair is good.  I smell good.  Lipstick is perfect.  Jeans fit just enough to not eat too much because I do love Italian food (from Italy-Italian, not Joey Pizzachain Italian).  My assistant appears in time to wish me a good night and to have fun and that he will call somebody to get the money to Lucy while I’m gone.  Is there anything else I need?  I want to tell him I need to run away but he’s on coke and might take me seriously.

 

 

Dinner. Things are ordered for us. I don’t eat red meat and I’m on Atkins. Great.  I’m staring carefully at the food to see what the ingredients are.  White people are generally vegetarians or hot animal eaters.  No in between like black people and our “I eat chicken on Sundays and fish when I can afford it maybe even a beef hot dog but never pork” routine.  The director catches me staring.  He has no choice.  I’m sitting next to him. And Home Dude is next to me. Director is at the head.  On the other side is Suzie Creamcheese.  Next to her is her McGyver-like co-star who’s never been in a “blockbuster” before.  Not an unusual lay out. 

            Home Dude is trying to talk to the other person next to him most of the night. It’s like that Dorothy Parker short story where she feels like she’s the only one not being talked to and has a bunch of imaginary conversations with the other dinner guests out of her own insignificant complex.  That’s me. Right now. Only I’m this conversation with…me, I guess. But now that the salad is done and the bread is being served, he’s turning to me.  Reluctantly but he can’t help himself.  We are the only black people at the table but it’s more than that.  More than our racial connection because God knows what our social backgrounds are like.  He could be an Alpha or a Q or a Kappa and I, well, I liked college enough to graduate and land an agent.  I am turning from my minimal yet decent conversation from Director to see Home Dude staring at my plate.  Picked apart food.

 

Him: Are you not hungry?

Me: Oh, yes but…well, I don’t really know what I’m eating and I can’t afford to gamble right now.

Him: Why not? You look dope.

Me: Maintenance.  You were hungry though?

Him: I love food. 

 

Pause

 

Him: I was wondering how it was that we never got to work together before.

Me: I was just thinking that.

Him: Your last film was some really powerful craftsmanship.

Me: Craftswomanship and thank you.  Do you talk like that all the time?  Powerful craftblahblah?

Him: Um…yeah.

Me: Good cause that’s a good way of telling someone you like their stuff rather than kissing their ass or whatever.

Him: Thanks.  So the last time we were in the same place had to be Kevah and Charles’s babyshower over in Studio City, right?

Me: Is it wrong if I say all the places and themes run together?

 

He laughs…a real laugh.  Me too.

 

Him: I say that all the time.  Kevah just happens to be producing the next film I’m working on.

Me: She’s good to work with.  Charles is strange but that’s okay.  It works.  I’m all for Black Hollywood couples making it work.

Him: And you?

Me: Me what?

Him: Do you make it work?

Me: No, I’m not part of any couple. I seem to only get a commitment from others folks when I’m acting with them.

 

He turns red (since his skin is like chocolate, it’s more of a chocolate cherry color) and looks at his wine.  He doesn’t need to know about my situation just yet.  I mean because that’s what Dre is, a situation.

 

Him: Where did you study?

Me: Why?

Him: Because even though the lines today were…well, you know they weren’t like some kind of deal breaker…I don’t know…I hadn’t felt that energy with anybody I’ve acted with probably since Yale.

Me: Interesting. I didn’t go to Yale.

Him: Not about the school really, I guess. 

Me: I did a bunch of theater out of college. 

Him: That explains it.  Rare now.

Me: You can’t eat now if you stay there.

Him: Kevah says your doing a play in New York next fall.

Me: Yeah. Scared don’t want to talk about it or I might throw up.

Him: Can I just ask which play?

Me: Aisha Rahman piece.  Off Broadway.  That’s all I have to say before I loose my shit.

           

He looks impressed.  People are interrupting us to do the obligatory small talk. He gets a call on his cell.  Goes to take it on the balcony.  Hands flailing.  Street language floats through the open doors but only I understand it.  Other people don’t recognize it and ignore it. Must be talking to his “people” they think.  But I know it’s his wife.  He flips the phone and comes back.  But walking under the archway of the balcony, I see him preparing himself for this role at this table and then I understand him.  He frowns out there.  He puts a sly grin on as he walks to the table.  Nobody could possibly know what that takes, aside from me.  I have done that.  He is looking directly at me.

 

Him: Aisha Rahman, huh?

Me: What? Oh, yeah right. 

Him: I would like to do a play again. It’s been years.  My wife—I’ve been told that it doesn’t do anything for my career and that I don’t have the time.

Me: Well, you do a lot of indie films and that’s good.  They crossover too so you’re not pigeon-holed either.  People respect that.

Him: Thank you for meaning that.  I would like to do stage again.  What would you recommend?

Me: Some new playwright.  Give some other folks a chance.  I’m on the board of a company I founded back in New York

Him: You are?? I really didn’t know that.

Me: Hmm. Okay. Forgivable, I guess.  My business isn’t in the street.  I let people think I’m a one dimensional starlet but really—

Him: I didn’t mean to insult you by being surprised. It’s just…half the stuff you’ve said tonight I haven’t heard in years.  I just don’t get to meet people like you often.

Me:  I don’t have anything to say back to that. Sorry. I don’t get to talk much to many people, real people, not like fake people.  I just stay to myself.  This is the perfect city for that though. Have you been in Florence before?

Him: The airport only.  My wife likes to vacation in the islands usually.

Me: It is beautiful at night.  The streets.  On a Vespa.  Unreal.

Him: Show me.

 

It starts like that.  It starts right there.  And then the cast starts to taper off.  We are mingled amongst them but staring at each other.  I am laughing with someone who plays my evil boss in the movie.  He is laughing with the person who kills his character in the end.  A group of us laugh at him as he tells of his fascinations with the movie “Cooley High.” And then suddenly it is just us in the shadows of some voices calling to see if anybody needs a ride back to the hotel.  I see him asking the maitre’d, in Italian, if we can rent two Vespas for the night.  Two busboys appear and hand over their keys and he gives them lire.

The night is delicious on our faces as he follows me along the Duomos and the weirdly named, illogical streets.  My sense of direction is pointless at night and I’m not worried.  He pulls up next to me, bopping his head like there are sounds in his non-existent system.  I laugh for no reason and start to do the same.   For a minute, we are both speed racing in Ford Probes down Outer Drive in the Detroit of my teenage years only this place has a longer history.  We don’t want to stop covering it in our way.  Both of us are too afraid to stop and talk so we go back to the hotel after riding for hours in circles around Florence.  He leaves copies of his last blockbuster in the baskets of the Vespas for the busboys.

 

Kiss my face and tell me you like chili cheese fries at four in the morning with a big bottle of Boone’s to wash them down

Tell me how familiar you are

Then show me again

You remind me of my daddy, for the five years I held tight to his image

After he died

Tall, fine, eyes shining

Almost extinct

I find you in the most peculiar places

Like my heart or on my lips at night

Separate hotel room walls tight on preventing what’s not supposed happen

Trying to keep us away from our own truth

How good are we at ignoring the inevitable

Method act your way into the impossible

Use what you can to be real

Leave your chocolate kisses on my skin so I can know what love is for my next role

Sense my memory and give me cause to act accordingly

Three weeks go by and you are part of my fiber

Use you to recall life ideals I long since abandoned

People watch us whisper everywhere

Even when not together

Why is it the most craziest thing in my life is the most sane?

 

—three weeks after we kissed…on set…in character

 

 

 

 

 

Baby Lady,

 

Just a token of my affection for you.  Thank you for injecting me with whatever it was that I was missing.  These weeks have been otherworldly.  I don’t want them to end…Ever.  Give me all your seasons.  Let’s get rid of our situations so we can have all the seasons…

 

Your Cochise who won’t die at the end of Cooley High

 

 

            Pictures start to appear.  Smudgy out of focus ones of me in sunglasses and diva hats covering the diamond studs he gave me, strolling across the Ponte de Vecchio with him behind me in Jordans and cargo pants.  Telephoto lenses reach far out for us but we are still in a blurry crowd of Italians and German tourists.  Our blackness blends into activity on the busy bridge.  Gold everywhere. People who cannot recognize us everywhere.  People who want to expose us out there hunting. I make him walk behind me.  He must be the one there “by accident” if ever discovered.  He must fade out into a deserted street if I run into someone I know.

            We haven’t done anything physical that would shame our loved ones, the ones who barely know us.  Our emotions are another story altogether.  It is difficult pretending not to love when the very idea of looking at him brings tears to my eyes.  Joy.  I have not seen joy in such a long time.  How tricky of it to appear this way.

            The pictures are in tabloids now.  Altered, they now show him nearer to me in the streets than he is.  Celebrities know which tabloids are real.  Dre is not a celebrity.  Neither is Home Dude’s wife.  Maybe they don’t know.  Please believe that it was not a paved golden road to get him near me, even if he is behind me right now looking at gold with no history behind it.  Gold maybe for his wife.  Leather gloves…for her.  It isn’t as if he doesn’t love her.  But there is something…there is an elephant standing near us when we are together that nobody can deny. 

            Back and forth in my trailer.  First no, then yes.  Then a “what are we doing/we can’t do this/it’s not fair to her.”  I say what about Dre and he says, “Dre is your situation not part of your life…she is part of me.  And you are too.”  There were tears and silences. Thrown pillows.  Swigs of Hennessy and Chianti.  Burning holes into Sade CDs.  Hugs with nothing but a deep emotion attached to them. What to do?

            Dre gets more stuff from me the deeper I fall in love with someone else.  Guilt.  I send him shoes, gloves, jewelry.  Nothing outrageous but nothing big enough to make me feel bad for being in love.  He thinks things are great.  You see, if he knew me, he’d know they weren’t.  You know when things are and when they aren’t, generally.  I am looking at bag he might like while Home Dude buys his wife a bracelet.  Another bracelet.  I tell him to be careful because women aren’t stupid like men.  He tells me that he hasn’t even sent half the stuff he buys for her.  It sits in his room.

            We duck into a restaurant. Our feet touch. It is as intimate a feeling as last night when we slept in the same bed and did nothing but hold each other and kiss.  I can’t fuck him unless he’s mine.  And I don’t fuck to make someone mine. He carves something in the wooden table:

 

Me and You Forever 2003

 

            This is the first time I think of vows.  Everybody’s vows.  Implied or stated.  He’s stopped putting his wedding ring back on after we wrap everyday.   Says there is no need.  Dre’s engagement ring is on the way, he says.  There is a perfect one, he says.  Not just any one will do for me, he says.

            An Italian man, sexy in a never-gonna-go-there-buddy way, is smiling at me as I try on some pearl white shearling gloves for a winter shoot yet to be determined (I can find a rationale for every odd thing in my wardrobe).  His thick eyebrow goes up as he casually licks his bubble gum pink thin lips, concentrating heavily as he writes out my receipt.  I give him my Euros and he smiles broadly, like an 8^th grader with a crush.  I know he recognizes me.  When I take my gloves, he leans on the counter about to say something equivalent to a pinch on my ass.  But before he can do that, Home Dude appears behind me.  Closer now than ever before in public.  He looks at the Italian like he’s about to tell him to “raise up, mothafucka.”  Your past is always with you no matter where you go. With his hand on my waist, we walk out of the store.  I think to myself, Dre would have never even noticed a wrong pinch or a look.

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

I’m sorry I got you into this, Lisa.  I never thought it would come to this.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

You’re going to make it, Fisher.  Stop talking like that. I’m not going to let you go without a fight.

 

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

Lisa, I’ve been fighting all my life.  Fighting first impressions. Fighting to be the best.  Fighting to stay real.  Fighting.

 

Dr. Lisa Jones:

You aren’t the only one, Fisher.  We all fight.  Some more than others but that’s the way the game is played.  If you’ve been fighting all your life, you’ve been preparing for this fight in front of us.  Now, I want you to get up and keep walking with me.  We only have four more sectors to go before we reach the transporting pod.  Now that we know the cure is on Star 80, we’re almost there.  Are you listening?

Dr. Calvin Fisher:

Thank you, Lisa.  Let’s go.

 

 

 

 

Today he says the reason I am beautiful is because my inner comes through my pours to the outer.  Then he says Lucy and I just need one incident as adults to make us the sisters we were meant.  And that it will happen.  I will be surprised.  He loves me like I’ve needed for so long.

 

M’Dear,

The words.  The words. The words, M’Dear! So melodramatic in nature!  Nobody is as desperate as our characters and yet the action playing out is real.  There is desperation now.  We are looking at each other as the last day comes closer and we are desperate.

He has asked me to marry him.  He says he will leave his wife.  He emailed her that they have something important to talk about. I saw the email. I saw him send it. It is her email address. Were are the loop holes?  Normally, I am given a way out before I test my own limitations. I have never met someone so willing to go as far as I am.  Where is the out before I have to deal with my pact with God?

Emotions are high. We argue sometimes and then hold each other in a silent sadness knowing the argument has nothing to do with what the real conflict is.  I caught him staring at me last night when I woke up from sleeping harder than I ever have in my life.  It’s a security I’ve never really known.  His eyes staring into my skin.  The Aisha Rahman book between us.  He is almost finished with the whole book.  He says he is happy not sleeping because he has slept all of his life it seems.

            There is a comfort, M’Dear in waking up to somebody who means it when they say “Good Morning, Baby” or hearing music you are familiar with while you do other things around the house—hotel.  Dre doesn’t listen to music much which was fine since me and the A&R guy broke up and I didn’t want to hear any music ever again.  But I like Home Dude’s music.  It’s familiar.

            M’Dear, I haven’t once fought with Lucy or Deron and have actually come out of my moody shade to call my friends from here, which, as you know, I never do.  People are starting to know.  Lucy read me the tabloid story on us and laughed.  She thinks it’s fake.  That I would never go out with a married man.  Oh Lucy. 

            M’Dear, mama of my mama, I’m waiting for you to show me what to do.  But I am enjoying this and don’t feel bad at all.  And you know something?  You once said there had to be a connection between black women and the Whartons, Brontes and Plaths and I’m here to tell you there is.  Suffering and happy. 

 

Your Lucky Star loves you

 

 

            The director looks at us with a look that says he is trying to ignore what’s happening in front of him. The closer we get to wrapping, the more the look gets bolder and more obvious.  And when I look around, I realize everyone is looking that way.  And no one is surprised because these things happen I guess all the time. But here’s my challenge: appreciating something rare in an environment where rare happens all the time.  It’s a Sade song.

 

You make me hold my own against a world with no arms but is  stronger than me

You make something in me move that I didn’t know was in me

What more is there that I don’t know?

What more can you teach me?

 

            He’s not the best poet but his intentions are good.  And these masterpieces are written on napkins and left for me in my trailer, at make up, in the hotel and my car.  You name it and his words are there when he is not. Sometimes I get both.  Dre has asked if he can visit.

 

Don’t make me tell you things that you have no ears for

Show you things you cannot watch

I have asked the world to give me a heart that could comfort the both of us

But it replies I am too big for that request

All around me there are signs of me and then you but never us

How can I wear your ring?

 

            I am waiting, as usual, to be called to the set.  My knitting is getting faster, trying to catch up to my heart.  A whole line of hip hop knit, Home Dude says.  Hip Knit Hop, he says.  Corny, I say.  Two days before we are wrapping.  Waiting for the change to happen.  The I-changed-my-mind-baby-I-can’t-do-this but he hasn’t shown any backing down.  Not even a stronger-than-ever so that I can assume he’s over compensating before that boot drops.  Consistency.  Foreign to me.   I am not just waiting for my call on set. 

 

Baby,

I am stupid enough to write this down!  Here’s what I was thinking: We get back to the states and then we go home and tell them what’s happened between us.  We talked about this a million times so I’m not going to tell you what to say but you know the deal. Deal with the situation! Sike.  He’s alright for a corny herb that ain’t for you.  I’m gonna tell her about how things ain’t been right for a while and she knows it.  Then leave that shit.  I’m gonna get us a place in the Hills or Silverlake.  Something nice and cozy.  I got my assistant there looking at a few addresses and she should email me which one she pick out tomorrow morning. Don’t spend the night in that house!  He’s gonna try and make you stay.  We will meet at our new place the night we get back.  Keep the faith, Baby!

Your favorite MC (Mad Cochise)

 

            Why he is addicted to the movie “Cooley High” I will never know. It’s a quirk.  Like how he puts ketchup on everything.  Like how he doesn’t replace toothpaste caps.  Like how he kisses my eyelids good night.  Like how his leg is shaking all of the time when he is nervous.  Why don’t I just make plaid curtains and search for apple pie recipes?  Why don’t I just make pot roast (what is that really) and wear an apron all day?  Why are those my ideas of settling into love? I have no clue what any of this means.  And there is no one to ask.  What is it like to have girlfriends who won’t sell your story to the highest bidder, men who won’t steal your underwear like a trophy?  What is like when your life would echo were it not for you being there?

 

At the airport:

 

Me:  If your last meal was tonight, what would you have?

Him: Mr. Foo Foo’s in Detroit.  The biggest everything you can imagine.  Food for giants.  What about you?

Me: Fried chicken, French fries and milk toast.

Him: What the fuck is milk toast?

Me: You make toast, you put it in  hot milk and let it cook, add butter. Eat.

Him: I’m gonna be sick.

Me: You would still love me after I ate it.

Him: But I wouldn’t want you throwin’ up in my face if I went to kiss you after that milk shit.

Me: You would still love me though…

Him: It doesn’t sound like you are asking me but I know you are so YES I would still love you after.  Before.  During.

 

Pause.  Plane is getting ready.  Our sitting together is not obvious.  We are on a commercial flight and there are others around us.  Europe has an oblivious air to it.  When we land, the whirlwind happens.  Telephoto lens still capturing our casual conversation at this moment. I feel lit.

 

Him: It’s going to be fine.

Me: Mmm.  Okay.  Butterflies aren’t listening to you.  They say you’re too cute to listen to.

Him: That is how they treat me after I done made out with everyone of them?

Me: I am the loyal one.  Not them.

Him: Good to know.  I can’t wait to buy furniture with you.  And go food shopping and read the papers in the morning and buy you presents and…

Me: We’ve done all of that for two months, except for the furniture.

Him: I want to do it all the time.  Everything.  All the time.  Maybe this is newness talking but love won’t die.

Me: Of course.

Him: Of course.  Behave yourself on the plane.  No copping feels on my leg while I’m sleep.

Me: You nervous about people watching?

Him: I’m nervous I might take you in front of everybody and get arrested when we land.

 

His knee is shaking.  Neither one of us call our situations before we board.  We settle into our seats.  We take out scripts and read.  We make sure not to say anything as the rest of the passengers board in front of us.  They stare.  A few ask for autographs.  We smile.  We try to maintain some sort of distance that doesn’t exist.  When you are performing in real life, it doesn’t matter how good of an actor you are, you still may fail.  We tell them we’ve just wrapped a film and they nod.  Soon it is quiet and we are back in our familiar territory, semi-seclusion.  Sometime during the night, he kisses me deeply and goes to sleep himself.

 

 

Affair Shocker: Stars Caught in Love Tryst While Shooting Blockbuster

 

            I wait days.  He doesn’t come.  Dre’s nasty words still hanging on my body like a ho outfit.  Days in this little bungalow with curtains I made and scripts I’m supposed to read, fielding calls from my publicist, my manager and my agent.  Lucy drives over and sits in silence with me.  My assistant appears when I need him.  We all wait. 

            There is no furniture. That waits too.  I sleep, much to everyone’s dismay, on the floor in blankets.  My things from Dre’s arrive sporadically.  I have the pool cleaned.  He doesn’t answer any phones.  He doesn’t reply to emails.  When I drive by, I can’t see if his car is there because of the gates.  I have the garden taken care of.  I wait.

            Two days later, I am watching talk shows and he is on.  I stop waiting and feel myself collapsing.

 

                                                              Him

            I have been with my wife for about twelve years and you know you aren’t

always in love but you always love, you know?   She understands the

business and she’s pretty strong to withstand rumors.  Heaven and I are good friends and she was a great tour guide in Italy.  She’s like ‘Alessandro you haven’t been here???” I hadn’t been and you know I couldn’t show anybody anything except for around Detroit so I admire her talents, all of them.  Amazing actress.  Funny.  Smart.  But no, there is no truth to us having an affair.  The media is far too kind to believe she would’ve even go for me.  I’m lucky to have my wife so I’m not pushing my luck! She tells me everyday, ‘Alessandro, you are so lucky to have me.  Just so lucky.’

 

 

 

            Laughs.  Smiles.  Giggles. He is charming.  But he did it.  He said our names like they all say our names.  Carelessly.  The wind leaves my body.  Lucy goes to turn the television off but I say don’t.  She sits down again.  Arrows darting from her eyes to his charming laughable charade on the screen.  All this while Dre leaves nasty voicemails on my cellphone.  Two-ways me begging me to come back.  Suffering and happy, I imagine. There is more.

                                                Host

            Now, your wife is expecting I hear!

 

                                                Him

            Yes! Our first child.  She just past her first trimester.  She wanted to tell me

when I got back from shooting.  Alessandro, she says, we have a new project, baby!  Hell of a damn secret for a long time!  Nobody but her and the doctor knew but she’s healthy and that’s what counts.  Our first baby, man…

 

 

 

 

 Wind completely gone.  I chastise myself. The stage was set and I knew how the action was going to go down but all great drama twists you into falling into the trap of not-knowing-what-happens next.  A bungalow for two but there’s only me and my retention team.  Lucy, my great sister who I never really saw before, has stepped in with her maternal silence and soothes me some how. The tears, absent until now, have burst out of my body and if they whole neighborhood couldn’t hear then they are deaf.  I scream loud.  My assistant rubs my back and hands me a package that comes.

            It is the deed to the house and the property.  From him.  No letters.  No words.  Nothing.  Lucy tells me, calmly, to cut him a check and be on my way.  In response, I lock myself in the bathroom. I cry.  Hours. Hours.  And hours.  They wait for me out in the hallway. I smell my assistant’s many cigarettes and hear Lucy call Deron, who threatens to beat Home Dude’s ass if I want.

            I look at my body in the mirror in the bathroom, realizing that this the first time I am alone.  Really alone.  Happily alone.  Satisfied with my station in life.  Happy there are none of his memories attached here.  If he had touched this sink, or the toilet or the jacuzzi, I don’t think I could’ve stood there.   At least I can leave this house without more tragedy.  We are gone from the house in less than 12 hours.  A suite at the Marmont is my cave and I love it.

 

 

The Premiere!!!!

 

            One year later.  He has a baby.  I have memories, some good wounds and some bad.  We do separate junkets.  People are instructed quietly to not let us cross paths, though they believe it is because we never got along.  I smoke cigarettes again but I’ not worried about this minor set back.  I smoke one in this limo as we pull up to the red carpet.  The limo driver is making a face but says nothing.  Lucy, Deron and my assistant are in the limo.  My publicist is on the carpet already.  I get out.

            The flashes, the screams, my name everywhere, demands.  If I can survive this, I can do anything.  I see him up front.  He turns to me.  She is beside him.  They look happy.  He’s an actor like I am because I look happy too.  We are “on.”  I slink down the carpet, smiling, waving, posing, conjuring up this woman who is not me.  She is very handsome, this woman and how she deals with the shit.  I am somewhere else, quivering like a cold crying baby.   This year I worked on this woman I’ve conjured who can fool everyone now.  Even him.  I wave to them and shout congratulations on their little boy.  She beams.  His face is painfully smiling. 

            Lucy and Deron watch carefully, clutching each other as if the disease of infidelity is contagious.  But soon they are too caught up in the magic world of photographers and fans.  They forget about me in a way.  I am glad.  Two less people focused on me.  I turn to the left.  To the right.  Wave.  Blow kisses.  Watch out of the corner of my eye as he goes in with his wife.  The archway doesn’t change him.  His face is still painfully smiling. He is clumsily stealing glances of me and she doesn’t notice.  Or doesn’t care.  Hats off to her for playing the game to win.

            We near the archway inside.  I pretend to laugh at something funny a photographer or reporter or fan says.  My, that’s some funny shit. It’s easy.  My publicist pulls me away after forty-five seconds of being anywhere on the carpet.  Everyone asks me if there’s something new about me. I look fabulous. Is my hair different? Lipo?  Implants?  New diet? New man?  What could it be that I’ve done to myself.  I would tell them on the forty-seventh second but I never get that far.

            The entrance.  Before us.  Tall proud.  It’s a passage way, I feel like. I won’t be the same when I pass underneath it.  This handsome woman who is confident and fierce is going to take over from now on.  She’s going to laugh at all the right jokes and say all the right things.  Gone is the weirdo extra sensitive girl who got her wires crossed.  One foot closer.  Another.  Another. Another.  Under the archway, no more waiting. 

 

God, I kept my pact with you.  Even if you didn’t keep your end of the bargain. I’m still a lucky star.

 

Everytime some dope puts an athlete (or anyone in the public eye for that matter) on a soapbox simply because they can be seen, I cringe. Sometimes my cringe is premature and the words that come off the soapbox seem to be put together well, even if I don’t agree all the time. But this shit right here makes me want to go back and time and grab this fools ancestors.

from Livesteez.com:

 

The jist is that he doesn’t feel it necessary to go to the White House to meet the President (in this case I would reference President anybody because the President Who is only a smidge more significant given the historical milestone we just reached.  But really President Anybody would suffice at this point) because he feels like they invite all the winners. Not just his dumb team. Guess what? You’re right, genius. You won a game through trial and error and the nation’s leader would like to holler at you. Why would he want to holler at you if you had the Detroit Lions’ record? To coach you? As an athlete you should understand the focus on the winner of the competition. Hell, the President just won a competition. You could compare notes! But alas, your ignorance put you in the loser barrell. You don’t even have a sound argument. This is when I know for a fact player salaries are wasted on the foolish. I hope your kids gave you a talking to. You decided not to me the nation’s leader because you had something better to do? What would that be, buddy? Knee icing? I hope your whole team has fun without you and clown you until your early retirement. I hope your great grandparents who probably couldn’t vote, visit you from the grave and haunt you like a fresh switch they made you grab for your beating.  Pittsburgh, I’ll take his place if he’s too busy to make more history.

Steelers’ Star Linebacker Passes on Meeting With President

Posted 3 hours, 35 minutes ago, 0 replies

It may very well be that I’ve hit that age that my parents kept telling me about when I was young. When I would do the latest dance that I peeped from from RapCity (back when BET played videos), my father swore up and down I was having an attack. When I insisted I needed the following: big black boots, a pair of coveralls from my dad’s job at Ford, several 40 Acres T Shirts, jeans that would slide down without a belt and a man’s jogging suit (not to mention all the t-shirts that mysteriously disappeared from my dad’s closet and the big gold hoop earrings my mom swore she just bought), my parents were concerned. Why didn’t I wear dresses? Why didn’t I wear my size? How come all my sleeves got pulled down past my fingers? I wrote them off as not being in style. They realized that they had crossed the line of fashion. Under no circumstances were they going to dress like TLC (not the channel, kids, the group) or Father MC. I think that’s when they realized they were grown.

And here I am at the crossroads. I’ve just been reading all of my fashion magazines and, for the first time in ages, my nose stayed wrinkled up the whole time. Why is I think all these models look like 1980 suburban housewives - except in stick versions? Because they do. And that’s the style. Except not for me. Sure we’ve all experienced a time when the “season” wasn’t for us. We find ways to tie us over. We make sure our bootleg jeans are in good condition. We make sure the t-shirts stay soft and layered and you ride it out. Except I just saw a plethora of MC Hammer pants and I fear that I may not be able to ride this one out.

It could be that, pre-rap 1980s was not a good time for me. I didn’t like neon anything. I was not a fan of jewel tones (in fact, my dad insisted that I didn’t own one bit of color in my all black wardrobe - and for a few years, he was right!). I don’t want to look like I fell out of a Wham! video. Boy George could wear enough color for me and him. I would hold it down on the neutral side. That was the beauty of Madonna. She wore outlandish things but mostly in monotones. White. Black. Naked. Whatever. The Lego colors have got to stop. We are grown people! Casual 80s prom is not a fashion style - it’s a distant memory. A time when you can laugh about spiking the punch ball or lamented with Molly Ringwald about how unfair life was (even though she had a more exciting life than any parent).  Dressing like teenagers will not give us our youth back. If anything, it will make us like the Michael Jordan that came back from retirement - sad and forgettable.

I implore you to rebel, people. Write your local fashion editor. Send Twitters to Anna Wintour. Tell Lady Gaga to put her teacup down. Stop encouraging these people! If you choose not to listen to me, go ahead with your ugly pumps and short frump dresses. See if I care. I’ll just be that out of style chick insisting you guys are having an attack.