B-Sides and Remixes, page 15
I’m so happy to see her smile, and I want to be relieved along with her, but we’re both adults and know that smiling doesn’t make your problems magically disappear.
“Well, you sounded cool earlier, and you look okay now.”
“I tell you what,” she says. “When you drive twenty hours only to make a u-turn on a dime, you can look at it only one of two ways: either you say this is just some pure-dee bullshit or you use it to say at least you did your best so you can move on. I think I’m ready to move on. I did my part. I tried, you know? I was respectful, and I stood there and listened to my mother dog me and my family to our faces. But you know what? I’m gonna be okay. I’m at peace with that. If she wants to reach out to me, the lines of communication are there. But I’m not going back to The Ham. Not unless I have to go back, if you catch my drift. Funny thing is that I don’t think Mama’s gonna change. She might, and that would surprise the hell out of me, but I’m not holding my breath.”
I nod. “I feel you.” I look at my glass again. “Are you sure you don’t want another drink?”
She smiles at me. “Well, I’ll fix it, because if I let you make these bad boys you’ll put too much orange juice in them.” Then as a side note she adds, “You remember that scene from Harlem Nights? ‘Who drunk up all the orange juice and left just a swallow in the container?’ See, what Della didn’t know is that I could take that swallow and make a hell of a gin and juice, know what I’m saying?”
We laugh, and it feels good to release.
She walks into the kitchen, and while she makes the drinks, I look around her apartment. It’s actually a nice spot in a nice neighborhood. You can tell that both she and Tracy work hard to make a good home for Aaron. Even the artwork on the walls reflects some degree of consideration. There’s nothing in this apartment that looks like it was thrown together as an afterthought. But Aunt Jonetta will never see any of this. She will never know how well her daughter did for herself, and while I know Angie will have to make peace with that, I want so badly to reach into myself and pull out something that could make everything better. I realize that sometimes you just have to let things be as they are and be okay with that. As this realization dawns on me, I understand now that I just have to make peace with my own situations. In fact, I feel strange even thinking about my little hurt feelings in light of the pain my cousin is going through.
When Angie returns with the drinks, she immediately apologizes for not keeping up with my blog. “Did you ever decide which of the women you were going to pick for your blog?”
I feel funny even going into any of this after all that she’s told me, but then I remember that my love life is the entertainment for thousands of black women. Why shouldn’t my cousin be any different? In fact, I am actually glad that I can help take her mind off of her own problems.
“I did pick someone, but it wasn’t anyone that I went on a date with,” I say.
“Word? Who did you pick?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I picked this sister named Denise. She’s an editor at the magazine.”
“Soul Sista magazine?” Angie asks, her eyes as large as basketballs.
“Yes,” I say, laughing at her expression.
“Talking about flipping the damn script, cousin! Can you even do that?”
“Well, that’s what I did, whether they wanted me to or not.”
“Does this Denise girl know that you’re about to put y’all’s business out on Front Street?” Angie asks.
“You want to hear something funny? I just came from seeing her, and when I told her I was feeling her after our last date and that I chose her for this whole deal, she straight shut me down.”
Angie takes a sip of her drink, a giant smile on her face. “Please fill me in. Don’t leave a sista hanging like this.”
As I tell her about the date—or what I am now officially referring to as a date—I walk her through my thought process from beginning to end. “I figure she’s the only logical choice. But I suspect she doesn’t want to be my choice. I already sent her my entry, so she can do with it whatever she wants to do.”
“Just like a man,” Angie says.
“What do you mean?”
“You just did all of this stuff without any regard to how she would feel about any of it. You just up and said, ‘Me Tarzan. Me like you. Me gon’ make you my girl. Unga-bunga.’”
“Unga-bunga?” I say, laughing.
“You know what I mean. See, a woman wants to feel that she has some say-so in things. You kind of made up her mind for her, whether you meant to or not. From what you told me about your date, I know she’s feeling you, but you have to be careful when stuff is still brand new. You gotta take it slow.”
I consider Angie’s words as I take a long swig of my drink. Maybe she’s right. Maybe I did treat her like a guy who’s become complacent with having women lined up to go out with him. Now I’m feeling like I might have tried too hard to push her into that spot. “What do I do now?”
Angie rubs her sock-covered feet together as she takes another swig. She places her drink down and looks at me squarely. “Let her know that you respect her in all of this and just give her some space. If she wants to have anything to do with you, she knows how to get at you.”
“Well, what about my blog entry?” I ask.
“I can’t tell you what to do on that one, Cool. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own—but I would suggest that whatever you do, you take her out of it. She doesn’t need to be a part of this circus masquerading as your love life. You owe her at least that much.”
I finish my drink. I can feel a million thoughts swirling around my head, and I know that whatever I decide to do, I need to do it tomorrow and just live with the consequences.
“I guess I should be getting back Uptown,” I say, rising from the couch.
“Are we still on for lunch next week?” she asks.
“Most definitely,” I respond. “And Angie?”
“Yeah.”
“You know that if you and Tracy and Aaron ever need anything, I’m here for you. You guys are my family, and you don’t have to drive south of the Mason-Dixon to get at me.”
Angie smiles and wraps me in one of her bear hugs, but I can feel every ounce of love in her body coming out through her thick arms. “Love you, cousin,” she says.
“I love you, too, Angie. And trust me, I am not the only one who does.”
28
When I wake, I sense immediately that this will be a long day. But there’s no point in worrying about things outside of my control.
Shortly after I got back home last night, I wrote a new blog entry and saved it before I went to sleep. Now, as I dress for work, I peruse what I wrote and decide to send it to Denise’s work e-mail address before I lose my nerve. Once I click send, I close my laptop and go to my closet to pull out one of our store t-shirts, but something stops me. I have a mountain of folded C&J Rare Grooves t-shirts on the top shelf of my closet, but beneath that shelf on hangers that have been barely used in the last few months are my other clothes. Today I reach for those hangers instead and pick out a linen long sleeve button-up shirt and cuff the sleeves to my elbows. I toss on my favorite pair of beat-up jeans and a pair of brown leather business casual shoes that I rarely wear these days, since I tend to favor sleek and colorful sneakers on most weekdays. I wouldn’t say that I am dressing outside of my comfort zone today, but I can sense that today is definitely a day for change, and changing my shirt and shoes are the least I can do to sync with my mind.
I arrive at the store a half hour before J comes in. I spend that extra time dusting the shelves and doing last minute tweaks to make sure the furniture is angled properly to accommodate the chairs that we’ll put down later this evening. I walk into the back of the store and check the folding chairs that we borrowed from the church down the street and am pleased that everything is in order. I still don’t know how many people we will have tonight, but I’m hopeful that the word gets around about the event and that we’ll at least get a few of our regular customers to turn out.
By noon I become concerned about the e-mail I sent Denise. I don’t know if I really expected to hear back from her about the blog entry, but since I haven’t, I’m starting to wonder if she hated my revised entry, too. I stayed up well past midnight writing about how the process of doing these dates has probably taken a toll on everyone. I talked about my failure to make a connection with any of the women selected by the readers, but that I remained optimistic about love. I didn’t mention Denise anywhere in the entry, nor did I pass judgment on any of the women I dated. I didn’t lament my past relationships or blame anyone for anything. I just wrote my honest feelings and thanked the readers and Soul Sista magazine for allowing me the opportunity to reawaken this sense of possibility for my romantic life. The article was not designed to be hot air or fluff, but the honest musings of a brotha turning a certain corner in his life. But all the same, what I wrote was not what Soul Sista asked me to write or what Denise spent her time and energy fighting for my right to write. It was simply the truth, not ugly or glamorized.
When Ray-Ray arrives for his afternoon shift, I ask to have a word with him.
“What do you plan on doing with your life?” I ask him.
“Like wife and kids? Crib? That whatchu mean?”
“No. I mean professionally. What do you want to be when you grow up,” I say, placing air quotes around the last two words.
“I don’t know,” he responds. “This is the best job I ever had, and you guys are the coolest people I’ve ever worked for.”
“Are you serious?” I say. “I ride your case every other day.”
“I know that you and J ride me ‘cause you guys actually give a damn. I’m even thinking about taking some classes at a community college. I mean, and I ain’t trying to sound all soft or nothing, but I look up to you guys. You guys went to college and worked on Wall Street and now you all are doing your thing. That’s some serious shit, and I got mad respect for you guys. I’m just glad you guys let me even come up in this piece and be a part of all of this.”
Now I feel guilty for even telling J several weeks ago about my desire to fire Ray-Ray. “So your dream is to keep working for us?”
“I don’t know. Lately I’ve been thinking about launching a record label or some shit. Maybe drop the kind of music we sell up in here. Before I came to work here, all I listened to was rap, but now I get down with a lot other stuff. Yeah, I still like my Wu-Tang and shit, but now that I done got that J. Dilla transition into that smoothed-out shit, it’s hard to turn my back on it,” he says.
I smile. “Well, whatever you decide to do, you have our support. I suspect that you’ll be successful at whatever you set your mind to.”
“Thanks,” he says. Almost as if my words have gotten too personal to him, he changes the topic. “Word on the streets is that we should have a pretty decent turnout tonight.”
“Well, that’s good news,” I say. “You haven’t heard anything else about the Soul Sista thing, have you?”
“Nah. People are talking about Kanye and that new chick now. Hate to say it, but they done moved on.”
“Thank God,” I say, wiping imaginary sweat from my brow.
“Yo, it was like that?”
“It’s just good to be able to focus on the stuff that really matters. You don’t miss normal until everything around you turns crazy.”
“I feel you.”
By five o’clock, I still haven’t heard from Denise, and it starts to dawn on me that things will just be that way and that I should just own my role in it and move on.
J eases up next to me while I’m putting a sign on the door that we will re-open for the open mic in an hour. “I think it’s about time to start putting those chairs out.”
“Okay,” I say, following him to the back of the store and grabbing two chairs under each arm and returning to the front of the store.
“So have you heard from your girl?” J asks.
“Not today. I think that I might’ve been too extra for her.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he says. “In the end it probably has more to do with a lot of other stuff. You’ve been putting out your true self to people a lot lately, and most people don’t operate like that. That’s why most new relationships only last about three months. Trust me. I should know. I’m the king of those.”
I shake my head, chuckling. “So you’re saying I by-passed the ‘three month’ rule?”
J nods. “You want me to really break this down for you, Cool?”
“Please, my enlightened brother. Break it down so that it will henceforth and forevermore be broke,” I joke.
We walk into the back of the store and grab more chairs.
“It all boils down to my theory of B-sides and remixes,” he says.
“Oh shit. That again?”
“Just give me a sec to explain.”
“Oh, please do, old wise sage,” I say sarcastically, although I have been applying his theory since he told me about it nine years ago.
“Imagine admitting on a first date that you’re lactose intolerant and that a teaspoon of milk will make you fart your brains out. Or better yet, imagine telling a woman that your supply of Internet porn would put to shame anything that your father ever hid around the house. No, these things are the parts we cover up with gentleman-like gestures, candlelight dinners, poetry, and love song dedications on radio stations. It would be a turn-off for her to know that you actually spent your Saturday mornings lounging around your apartment in old beat-up boxers eating cereal from a mixing bowl or that the dried skin on your heels could qualify as a lethal weapon in five states.
“But it’s not just guys faking the funk. Women have their own dirt, too. Is that really her hair length? Are her breasts really that size? Is she really a fan of my favorite football team? Add to that the real stuff that women would rather keep locked away, and what you have is two people who claim to be getting to know each other without really getting to know each other. Know what I mean?”
“Kind of,” I respond. “But what in the hell does any of that have to do with B-sides and remixes?”
“I’m just getting to that part,” J says, continuing. “So around that third month, we start to see the B-sides. This is the side that the deejays don’t play on the radio. This is the side that is not common knowledge, the side that you don’t see from a woman when she passes you on the street or flirts with you at the club. This is the real person starting to come through. The question is whether that B-side is like ‘Ode to a Koala Bear,’ that forgettable B-side of Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s ‘Say Say Say,’ or if the B-Side is an ‘Erotic City’ to Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ or a ‘La-Di-Da-Di’ to Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s ‘The Show’? In other words, do you like the other side of who she is, that part she doesn’t project to the world?
“Add to that the remix component, since people are constantly evolving. Since no two people are static, when you get into a relationship, the relationship can’t be static either. So the real question with any relationship is whether the two of you can grow together once you see who the other person really is.”
I stare at J for a moment. “Dude, sounds like your theory has evolved a little bit.”
J laughs. “Naw, it’s the same as it was before. I just didn’t give you the whole thing at the time. That would’ve been like giving candy to a guy who just had three cavities pulled. I had to ration that shit out for you.”
“Shiiiiit,” I say, laughing.
J shrugs. “All I’m saying is that on these Soul Sista dates, you’ve been skipping over a lot of that A-Side stuff you would’ve normally rode out back in the day. So now when a woman reacts to you, she’s reacting to the post-three month you up front, and for some women, that’s a bit much to digest.”
“Well,” I respond, “I’ll have to keep all of this stuff in mind the next time I decide to go and put myself out there again.”
By 6:30 we start admitting people, and by seven o’clock the entire store is packed. The microphones on our impromptu stage are hot and ready for action. Even Angie, Tracy, and Aaron are seated near the stage, all of them wearing our store t-shirts.
A list goes around the room and people start signing up in the twenty-five spots we have on the page. Within minutes, the roster is full of poets ready to get up and do their thing.
J gets up and gives an intro for the event, before handing the microphone off to Ray-Ray who agreed at the last minute to emcee for us, when we realized that we hadn’t considered how we would handle that part of things. I stand near the back of the store admiring the beautiful throng of people assembled under our roof, and I realize that C&J’s Rare Grooves is going to survive after all.
As I watch Ray-Ray turn over the microphone to the first poet, I see a pink shirt out the corner of my eyes. I turn to see Denise walking through the door wearing the shirt I gave her. We make eye contact, and she walks around the crowd toward me.
“You look amazing in that t-shirt,” I offer.
“Yeah, I kind of like it—although I’m not really a pink kind of girl,” she says, flashing that smile that I love.
I immediately begin to apologize for last night.
“I’m not gonna lie. You put me in a funny space,” she says.
“Yeah, I realized that later. I’m sorry about that. I hope my last blog entry didn’t get you into too much trouble.”
“Actually, my editor-in-chief liked it and wants to run it as-is.”
“But what do you think?” I ask.
“I think it was, well, you.”
I shrug. “Is that a good thing or bad thing?”
“Well, I imagine it’s not a bad thing, but you see, I don’t really know a lot about you.”
“Would you like to get to know me?” I ask.
“Possibly.”
