B-Sides and Remixes, page 2
This time I do roll my eyes. Although I know she can’t see my facial expression, there’s a part of me that thinks my mother might still reach through the phone and pop me anyway.
Mama wants me to get married and have children—in that order—and I don’t see any of that happening in the foreseeable future. Sometimes I wish that she and my father had had another child so some of the burden could have been shifted, but as fate would have it, I am the chosen one.
“And your father’s not too happy that you didn’t use your government name,” she adds.
“People know me as Cool, not as Chauncy Carter Brown, III. I can’t even fit all of that on a business card.”
Mama sighs. “Don’t let your daddy hear you say that. He’s still holding out hope for a Chauncey Carter Brown, IV.”
I laugh. My mother does not.
“So when are you going to come up here to Harlem to check out the store?” I ask.
“You guys are online now, aren’t you? I can just check out everything there.”
Now that my mother has a tablet computer, she’s joined the demographic referred to affectionately as “the silver surfers,” older people who spend a lot of their retirement time roaming the Internet.
“It’s not the same as seeing it up close and in person,” I offer.
“I don’t know. I’m a Southern lady. I don’t know if I could get around in a city that big,” she says.
“It’s easier than you think. Plus, I’ll be here to take you around.”
“Well, I’ll have to check our schedule and see if we can fit it in.”
Both of my parents are retired, never having left Mississippi, and their schedules are about as loose as a belt after a good meal, but they are forever allowing themselves to be scared by the news about New York on CNN. When September 11th happened, that gave Mama an eternal license to scratch the city off of her list of places to go and visit. I know they’ll never come to see me now, but I can’t bring myself to stop inviting them—just in case they do decide to change their minds.
“Well, just know it’s a standing invitation,” I say.
“Okay. Well, I have to run, but do you want me to give your number to Edith?”
“Mama, I can tell you right now that I can’t do a long distance relationship.”
“Chauncey, from the looks of it, you can’t do a short distance one either.”
Touché.
3
By the time I make it to the store, I see Ray-Ray is already moving around aimlessly, tidying things up and trying to look busy.
“Cool, you got a message on the counter. Some woman from Soul Sista called and left a number,” he said, refolding a shirt he had already folded.
“A’ight,” I respond. “Is J in the back?”
“He had to run an errand. He should be back in a few.”
I walk into the back room and put a mug of water in the microwave. I pull out a green tea bag and grab a seat at the table pushed against the wall. Boxes of merchandise fill the room, and I feel a hollow pit in my stomach. I’m not sure we could sell all of this stuff—even on a good day. In fact, some days it feels like J, Ray-Ray, and I are the only ones wearing these things. It’s our store uniform, so I have a stack of them in different colors in my closet at home.
When the microwaves goes off, I drop in my tea bag and head back to the main store room and cop a squat on one of the stools behind the counter. Ray-Ray’s chicken scratch is barely legible, but I can make out the phone number and the name with a little effort. I pick up the phone by the register and dial the number.
“May I speak to Denise Mallory?” I say, dipping the tea bag in the hot water a few times.
“May I ask who’s calling?” a low, raspy voice answers. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman.
“This is Cool Brown. I got a message from her this morning.”
“Hold please. I’ll see if she’s available.”
A few seconds later another voice comes on the line, this one softer and more feminine.
“Hey, Mr. Brown. This is Denise Mallory.”
“You can just call me Cool. Mr. Brown’s my father,” I say to lighten the mood.
“All right, Cool,” she responds, my name fitting in her mouth awkwardly. “Can I ask you why they call you that?”
“I picked it up when I pledged back in college. My big brothers said I didn’t get fazed easily. Like Big Boi said, ‘Cooler than a polar bear’s toenails,’ you know?”
“Well, all righty then,” she responds, and I can’t tell if she’s amused or if she could care less.
She continues, “The reason I’m calling you is because we have been getting a lot of letters and e-mails for you in behind that bachelor spread we ran in the last issue. We’ve been forwarding them to your work address. Have you been getting them?”
I chuckle. “Yeah. I got them.”
“So I guess you already know how popular you are with our readers.”
“I figured the other guys were getting the same type of mail, like it came with the territory.”
“Well, I can assure you that’s not the case,” Denise answers. “The funny part is that there are even more e-mails that we’ve gotten that simply ask about you. No personal notes or anything. Just people who are curious.”
I take a sip of my tea. “I guess I should be flattered then.”
“I would, if I were you. We keep getting women who say that your profile was witty, that you are nice looking, and that you have a really relaxed persona. That seems to be a winning combination for many women.”
“They could get all of that from a blurb and a picture?” I ask.
“Women are perceptive like that.”
I can see Ray-Ray watching me out the corner of his eye while he cuts open a box of CDs.
“So you were calling for my e-mail address then?”
“Not exactly,” she says. “I have a proposition for you.”
I am incredulous as I lower the phone. By now, Ray-Ray is looking directly at me. I lift the receiver to my mouth again and ask, “Are you serious?”
“Very much so,” she responds.
Now I wish J would hurry up and get back here, because if he thought being profiled in the magazine in the first place was major, he will turn back flips up and down 125th Street when he hears this.
“How would this work?” I ask.
“We would give you a column on the website’s homepage that you would update weekly. All you’d have to do is go on three dates with women selected by our readers.”
I can sense the complications already, but the exposure would do wonders for C&J’s Rare Grooves. It’s not like she’s pulling a Fear Factor and asking me to eat a one hundred-year-old ostrich egg. This is just three little dates.
“Does the magazine foot the bill?” I ask.
“Up to one hundred for each of the first three dates,” she responds.
“But this is New York. I’m gonna need more.”
“Be creative. You can make it work.”
I sigh as I consider this. “Well, would I write all of the details down on the blog, kind of like the tell-all thing they do on The Dating Game?”
“I would say yes. The editor-in-chief wants you to do something like a reality show, except as an online column.”
“Like Flavor of Love,” I say.
She laughs. “You don’t look anything like Flavor Flav, but I guess you could say that.”
“Are these women from the area or will they be flown in, and if so, how am I supposed to deal with that?”
“The readers will ultimately decide, but I suspect that most, if not all, of the women will be from the New York City area, simply because our demographics in this area are pretty strong, especially with the website.”
I already know that I’m going to say yes, but I tell her that I’ll think on it and call her back after lunch today.
When J finally strolls into the store a half hour later, I tell him, “Guess what, dude?”
He looks at me curiously.
“I get to be Boris Kodjoe for longer than a month.”
After I replay the conversation in its entirety, J sits down, a huge smile on his face. “You do know what this means, right?” he says.
I have a feeling I know, but I ask him anyway.
“We get repeat advertising through their site. Hell, every time they run your column, the words ‘C&J’s Rare Grooves’ will appear beneath your name. Do you realize the number of baby t-shirts we could sell if you play your cards right? Cool, just imagine,” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder, “if that box in the back actually went empty and we had to reorder!”
My heart starts to race. We can do this, I tell myself. We can turn this sinking ship around.
“You’ve got to be the quintessential gentleman, though. Women aren’t gonna want to buy shirts from a dude who has the rep of some playboy,” he says, unable to catch his breath. “Oh yeah, and you’ve gotta wear one of our shirts in the profile picture. Maybe throw a blazer over it. We’ve gotta get you a haircut, too.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” I ask.
“Nothing—if you don’t mind that the back of your neck looks like ground beef. We need you looking like Steve Harvey’s old barber hooked you up. From here forward I command you to wear a doo-rag. Gotta get those waves goin’.”
“Well, dude, tell me how you really feel!” I say, shaking my head.
Ray-Ray walks over and leans against the counter. “You know people are gonna expect you to find a soulmate out of this or something.”
Leave it to Ray-Ray to piss on our parade, but I know he’s right.
We won’t get any of this publicity for free. It will only cost me one thing: my personal life.
4
I met Rhonda, the woman who drove a stake through my heart like I was a vampire, during the summer before my senior year at Morehouse. She was a rising junior at Spelman, where she majored in English. She was spending her summer working at an indie bookstore downtown called Maggie’s Nook, and although we’d probably crossed paths a few hundred times going back and forth between our two campuses, it took me randomly walking into the bookstore on a June afternoon for us to officially meet.
She was working the customer service kiosk, which, in a store that small, looked like it could have been a coat-check closet at a restaurant. The atmosphere was warm and cozy, the way I imagined some small English bookseller’s shop to be. Still Rhonda looked too fine to be tucked away back there. Part of my reason for speaking to her in the first place was because I was checking to see if they carried a photography coffee table book by Marc Baptiste. It turned out that they didn’t, but she was aware of the photographer, and our little banter about his work led to her telling me about her own interest in photography. She was an art major, but she had just gotten her hands on a DSLR camera and was hoping to do a lot of shooting that summer.
If it had not been for the connection we made while talking about photography, I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask for her phone number, but I’m glad that I did. That turned out to be one of the best summers of my life.
It started casually with late night conversations on the phone, us whispering to each other until the early hours of the morning, cell phone batteries running low, and our having to camp out next to outlets so we could keep the conversation going while we recharged. She talked about growing up in Oakton, Virginia, secretly crushing on Shel Silverstein when she was younger, and being addicted to Roald Dahl’s children stories. I told her about growing up in Mississippi, just across the Tennessee state line in Corinth, and about how I had always wanted to own my own business. Eventually I pushed the envelope one evening after we’d been on the phone for over three hours.
“You know, we could be having this conversation face-to-face,” I said, lying on my bed in only my boxers.
“I guess you’re right,” she responded, playing along.
“Would you like to come over?”
“Are you serious? It’s almost midnight.”
“What time do you go in to work tomorrow?”
“I’m off tomorrow,” she said.
“So you have nothing to lose then.”
As she pondered my offer, I added, “I don’t bite. We could even leave here and grab something to eat at Waffle House or IHOP.”
“I’m not even dressed right now. It would take me at least thirty minutes to get myself together,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere. I can even stay on the phone with you while you drive or if you want, I can pick you up.”
She finally asked where I lived.
“Just off of Cascade, not too far from the school.”
“I’ll come over there. I just don’t like to be without my car. It’s not you or anything. Just the way I do things.”
“I understand.”
Within the hour, her car pulled up to my first floor apartment, and I met her in the doorway. It was the first time that I had ever touched her. After hours of talking to her, I felt like I knew her, so when I lowered my head to kiss her lips, it felt as natural as breathing. She responded to my kiss warmly, her arms wrapped around my bare shoulders.
Right then I knew there was no turning back. She had me.
Over the course of that summer there were many firsts: our first kiss, our first date, our first road trip, our first time making love. It seemed as if everything around us was poetry in the making. There wasn’t a love song in the world that I wouldn’t have dedicated to her. Some nights we would just hop in my car, pop Jill Scott in the CD player, and drive up Interstate 85, just so we could turn around and drive back towards the city, catching the brilliant lights of the downtown skyline.
Shortly before school started back, we were lying in my bed after making love, the candles still flickering softly around us, and I told her that I loved her. She looked at me for what seemed like the longest moment in my life before finally responding, “I love you, too.”
I wanted to ask her what took her so long to respond, but I was just so happy to hear the words at all. The fact that she took the time to consider her feelings before responding was a good thing, I reasoned. That way it was more genuine.
Replaying everything that happened later on, I question whether I could’ve figured things out much earlier. In my mind, our relationship was perfect. I had opened a romantic vein and bled poetry, flowers, and compliments on a daily basis. I did everything that I had ever dreamed of doing for the woman I would marry. And on her end, there weren’t any signs that I could’ve picked up on. Our sex life was regular, exciting, and, as far as I knew, monogamous. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, I don’t think she would’ve ever told me the truth about the other guy.
When she revealed to me that she was pregnant, I immediately assumed it was mine. Why wouldn’t I? And even though I knew having a child would alter our futures, I loved her enough to accept that. I went to embrace her when she stepped back away from me.
“It’s not yours,” she said.
“What?”
I collapsed onto my couch, my head buried in my hands, unable to look at her while she paced back and forth in front of me telling me about this other guy, about how she was confused, about how he was her ex-boyfriend and how they were on “break” when I had met her.
“You were doing it raw with him the whole time?” I asked. I don’t know why I fixed myself to even ask that question, especially with the answer being so obvious, but I guess at that moment in time I just had to hear it from her own lips.
“He was my first.”
It wasn’t really an answer, but I guess in a strange way, it was.
It took me much longer than I’d ever care to admit to officially put Rhonda in my rearview mirror, but even with her floating aimlessly in my past, I learned a valuable lesson: even on my absolute best behavior, a woman would still cheat on me. I figured if both men and women could cheat on their significant others, then what was the point in making a serious commitment? You can only really get hurt if you put yourself out there.
I picked Rhonda, and she ripped my heart in two like a voided check. Now the readers of Soul Sista magazine will pick three women for me, in hopes of my finding a soulmate in one of their choices. It’s almost comical when you think about it.
I’ll take it a date at a time, but I’m not expecting my world to do a 180-degree flip any time soon.
5
“I can’t believe you’re gonna let them pimp you like that,” Angie says between bites of her panini.
“It’s not really pimping. I’m just writing a column. Plus, I get to keep my business in front of potential customers without coming out of pocket,” I respond.
“Call it what you want, but you’re being sent out there like a prostitute on the strip to go on dates with women that you don’t know.” She laughs. “And you’re getting paid to do it.”
“Come on! They’re giving me a per diem, not a paycheck.”
“Next thing you know, the people over at Soul Sista will be telling you to walk between the raindrops to get them their stories.” She holds her head back so that she doesn’t spray food in my face from her laughter.
I shake my head. I don’t know what I expected Angie to tell me. She has always been my sounding board, and being that she’s my cousin, I can talk to her without complication. I look at her, and she lowers her head, eyeing me as if to say, “You know I’m right.”
“But what if, hypothetically speaking, I meet a woman who winds up being the one? Would you still think I’m being pimped?”
“You have about as much of a chance of finding the one as I have of going back to dick,” she says, cackling again.
“That’s fucked up, you know,” I say, trying to conceal my smile.
I pick at my salad, mixing the romaine and spinach into patterns of dark and light greens.
“Don’t look so sad, Cool. I’m just messing with you. Who knows? This might be what you need to shake things up in your life,” she offers in the way of sarcastic consolation.
