B-Sides and Remixes, page 3
To change the subject, I offer, “The website relaunched. We have more t-shirts and other merchandise. And of course music.”
“I’m gonna have to head Uptown to check you guys out. It’s just been so busy with Tracy and the baby. I’m still trying to match my sleep patterns with Aaron’s, ‘cause if I don’t, I won’t get any sleep at all.”
“How is my little cousin doing?” I ask.
“If I can get him to stop pissing in my face every time I change his diapers, I’d be doing something major.”
“Well, maybe you should’ve been the one to have the baby then,” I say.
“Hell, no,” she responds, slapping the table and laughing. “Tracy handles pain a lot better than me. I don’t mind a little piss in the face anyway. I hear that shit clears up the skin.”
I raise my hands up and down imitating a scale. “Piss in the face versus being pimped,” I say. “We must be the pride and joy of our family.”
“Hey, it is what it is, right?” she says, pushing her braids away from her round face.
I nod.
Her smile disappears, and for the first time since we sat down to eat, she looks serious. “Cool, I know I don’t say this too often, but I’m glad you came to New York.” She puts what’s left of her sandwich back onto her plate. “I just feel so out of touch with everyone in the family, you know. It’s good seeing a face that looks like mine.”
I reach for her hand and hold it. “I got you, cuz.”
I don’t ask her when was the last time that she went home to Alabama. I don’t even ask her when was the last time she talked to Aunt Jonetta. Some things are just best left alone.
As we leave the restaurant, I give her a big hug, then turn to walk back to the subway station. Her voice calls out loudly from behind me.
“Cool?”
“Yeah,” I respond, turning my head.
“Everything will work out.”
I don’t know what she’s referring to specifically, but the advice seems to hit nearly everything in my life all at once.
I nod.
“Love you, cuz,” I say, waving goodbye.
She smiles. “Love you, too, Chauncey.”
My face twists up at hearing my name, but my cousin is already laughing as she walks back across the street to work.
When I make it back Uptown to the store, the first thing I do is break out my laptop and check Soul Sista’s website. I am curious to see if they have already started the voting process. Sure enough, on the homepage of the website on the right sidebar is a small photograph of me with the words “Soul Sista’s Own Bachelor.” I know it is a reference to the television show, but the words by themselves remind me of Angie’s words: they are pimping you. There I am smiling like a happy little ho. Beneath my picture is the name “Cool Brown” and no mention of “C&J’s Rare Grooves, Harlem” anywhere. My heart sinks, and I find myself reaching blindly for the phone.
“Cool Brown calling for Denise Mallory, please,” I say, before I am put on hold.
When she answers, I try to maintain my professionalism, but I’m simmering beneath the surface. After our customary greetings, I immediately cut to the chase. “I thought we agreed that my business would be listed under my name.”
“It’s not on there?” she asks. “I sent the information over to our webmaster.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. At least it doesn’t appear to be deliberate. “I just checked the site, and it’s not there.”
“I tell you what. Let me check on that right quick, and I’ll give you a call back in a minute.”
As I hang up the phone, I try to relax to the sounds of Anthony David playing in the background. I can hear J in the back room typing away on his laptop, working on our marketing plan. Ray-Ray has already left for the day, and only a handful of people are standing around, combing through our music racks.
“If you need any help or recommendations, just holler,” I offer.
The brother with the dredlocks turns my way and nods. “Respect,” he says, turning back to the CDs. “Hey, mon, this Electric Conversation nice?”
“Definitely,” I respond. “Lyrics in English and French. Dilla influence. Definitely good stuff.”
He and his lady friend approach the register with the CD.
“Mon, dis no good, me comes back,” he says, laughing.
“You’ll like it. Trust me,” I say smiling.
“Hey, you’re that guy from Soul Sista,” his lady friend says, her accent sounding like she could have grown up somewhere down South, near me.
I nod while ringing up the CD.
“See, I told you that was him,” she says, nudging the guy.
I put the CD in a bag along with the receipt.
“Mon, dey come for you now,” the guy says.
“Who?”
“De sharks,” he says, laughing. “De women, dey smell blood in da water.”
“Dexter, leave that man alone,” the woman says. Then she turns to me. “But if you’re looking, I have a girlfriend who’s about five-seven. She’s cute, too. Great smile.”
Dexter gently tugs her arm and leads her toward the door. “He have his hands full,” he says, tickled.
When they leave, I hear J rise from his laptop and stretch his tall, lanky frame. He runs his fingers through his low haircut and walks into the main room, copping a squat next to me. “Did I hear you say that Soul Sista is tripping about putting our name on the website?”
“It was just a mistake. Denise is checking on everything right now and is supposed to call me back in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Don’t get my heart rate up, Cool. I thought I was going have to hop in a cab and go down there to see what’s up,” J says, his eyes still a little glazed over from typing on his laptop for the past hour.
“So how is the new and improved marketing plan coming?” I ask.
“I’m thinking we should have an open-mic poetry event here once a month.”
I look around the room and imagine people standing all over the store. I try to visualize where our stage area would be. No matter how I turn the idea around in my head, the room just feels too small to cram a bunch of people in here. People would have to stand, if this thing actually caught on.
“Can we even fit enough people in here to make it worth our while?” I ask.
“That’s the beauty of it. We market it so that people know that everything will be going down in a small, intimate space.”
“What are you gonna call it? Poetry in the Closet?”
J shakes his head, his expression serious. “I actually thought about that, but I didn’t want to offend any gay people.”
“What?”
“In the closet.”
It takes me a moment to realize what he’s talking about. “Jesus, dude! Well, what about Poetry Out of the Closet?” I say, laughing. “Okay, you just tell me what else you came up with.”
“The Poetry Vault,” J says, but he doesn’t seem confident.
“Sounds kind of confining. Like we’re all trapped in a bank vault or something. People might start to feel claustrophobic in here,” I say.
“Well, shit. Do you at least think the idea for the open mic would work?”
“I’m definitely willing to give it a shot,” I respond. “Hey, what about ‘C&J’s Rare Poetry’?”
J pauses as he considers this. “It beats the names I came up with, but I still want to do some more brainstorming.”
Just as J finishes his statement, the phone rings.
“I hope this is Denise,” I say, picking up the phone. “C&J’s Rare Grooves,” I answer.
“May I speak to Cool Brown?”
“This is he.”
“Cool, this is Denise. I just finished meeting with our editor-in-chief, and I think we have a slight problem.”
I swallow hard.
“They left the name of your business off the website on purpose.”
6
Not two seconds after I hang up the phone, J asks, “So are you gonna handle this, or do I need to?”
The question makes little sense, since ultimately all of this is on me. I tell him that Denise agreed to meet with me at her office downtown to discuss my concerns in person.
I hop the A train and take it to Midtown. As I glance at the scrap of paper that I wrote the address on, I try to steel myself.
Inhale. Exhale.
I wander through the mazes of skyscrapers, trying not to come to a complete stop while taking in the beautiful, majestic structures. It’s one thing to see the skyline while driving from Jersey into the Lincoln Tunnel, but walking in the actual skyline itself is incredible. Each street has its own character, so the walk is never boring. And after being here as long as I have, I am constantly surprised at the fact that I can always find something that I haven’t seen before. It’s as if the city simply evolves around you.
As I turn off of Broadway and its bustling scene of tourists and locals, I spot Denise’s building with no problem. When I walk in, I let the meaty redheaded guy behind the desk know that I am there to see Denise Mallory. He hands me a visitor sticker and has me sign in.
“Take the elevator to the fifth floor,” he says, before returning to his magazine.
As I walk around the corner to the elevator, I muse at the irony of Soul Sista being on the fifth floor of the building. Where I am from, the “fifth floor” is our down-home way of saying the mental ward. I wonder for a moment if these people will be crazy, and I have to remind myself that I am there to clear up something that should have been resolved from our initial conversation. So maybe I am walking into a mental ward after all.
I step off the elevator on the fifth floor, and the foyer is swanked out with graphite colored walls and a large brushed steel Soul Sista logo illuminated from behind with red light. Two long leather couches are positioned, facing each other with a coffee table between them. The table is covered with several copies of the last few issues. A tall, thin receptionist is positioned in the corner, and there is a large door off to her side, the entrance to the actual office space, I presume.
“My name is Cool Brown, and I’m here to see Denise Mallory,” I say.
She nods. “You are one of the bachelors, right?” Her raspy voice sounds like she sings bass for a barbershop quartet. I immediately recognize it from when I called earlier.
“Yes, I’m one of the bachelors,” I say, unsure I will still be one when I leave this office.
“Have a seat over there,” she says, pointing at the couches, “and she will be with you in a moment.”
I sit down and settle into the cushions, the seat rising up around my legs. The leather is still warm, as if some big guy had been sitting there just before I arrived.
The door opens and a brown skin woman with an Afro puff pulled back walks into the reception area. She’s wearing a pair of thin, cat-eyed glasses and has the look of a soul singer merged with an old librarian. The ‘frohemian librarian, I muse, as she introduces herself.
“I’m Denise,” she says, shaking my hand. “I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding this place.”
“Not at all.”
She is very friendly as she ushers me through the door and around a maze of cubicles. We step into her office, a small white box with a window that only has a view of the same floor of the building across the street.
“Not to be too direct,” I start, “but I don’t understand what happened in the time between when you asked me to do this and now.”
She closes the door and takes a seat at her desk. I sit down across from her.
“The editor-in-chief is taking the position that you’re trying to occupy a prime advertising space. She even wanted us to airbrush the logo off of the t-shirt you were wearing in the picture,” she says, her voice low and hushed.
“I can’t believe this is even an issue,” I say, not attempting to match her volume. “You have our permission to use our logo in the picture, and you’re not even paying me for writing the column. As for the byline, it’s like this, if we can’t agree to keep all of the information in, then you’ll just have to use another one of your bachelors.”
“But we’ve already finished the voting process for you,” she says, her eyes clearly pained at having to get the horse back into the barn.
“All you guys have to do is hold up your end of the deal and everything goes back to normal. I mean we’re only talking about two words, two letters, and an ampersand. How much are you guys really losing in advertising. You can even leave the ‘Harlem’ part off, although I’m guessing that part actually works to your advantage.”
Denise lowers her head, staring at a pencil that she’s twirling between her thin fingers. She’s quiet for a moment before she lifts her eyes to meet mine. “Cool, I’m on your side,” she finally admits, her voice still hushed and controlled. “You’re right. We had a deal. The editor-in-chief is reneging, if I can be honest.”
“Yeah,” I whisper conspiratorially. “I hate renegers.” It sounds comical and almost racist when I hear the word fall from my lips.
When she smiles, I realize two things: (1) I have an ally, and (2) her smile is absolutely gorgeous.
She leans forward, “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to go back and convince Rachel that we need to move forward with our original agreement—since the website is already set up—and I’ll make sure that you get your byline the way you want it. You know what this means, though?”
“I guess it means I have to have some pretty interesting dates, or at least write them that way.”
There goes that smile again, and for a moment I nearly forget about all of the grief that brought me to this office in the first place.
“Are you curious to see who the readers have selected for you to go out with?”
“I guess,” I say, my stomach already anxious. “Can I see the picture and the bio for my first date?”
“Sure.” She opens one of the three filing folders on her desk. “The first one is a sister named Sarah.” She slides the folder across to me.
The first thing that strikes me about the photograph is how bold the woman is standing in the photograph, her back erect, hands on her hips, legs spaced slightly wider than her shoulders. She looks like a model. Her dark complexion and low twists create a striking image when viewed within the profile of her compact and athletic frame. She’s clearly a woman far too stylish and beautiful to be plucked from a random group of women who simply wrote in. I turn my head a little. “Do I know her from somewhere?”
“She’s a principal with the Dance Theater of Harlem.”
“And she wants to go out with me? This sista looks like she could have any man she wants.”
Denise nods. “They all do.”
“I guess I should thank all of those people who voted then.”
I consider asking to see the information on the other women, but I decide against it. I’ll play it straight using the rules that the magazine came up with. I won’t even bother to Facebook these women. I figure what I learn about them will either come from the Soul Sista files or from the dates themselves. It would be a lot more interesting that way.
Denise chuckles softly. “Maybe you’ll find that special someone.” Her voice is not all that convincing.
“Do you really believe I’ll find someone out of this collection of random women?” I ask, sarcasm dripping from my voice. I figure I can be honest now that it feels like we are on the same team.
“Hey, what do I know?” she responds, her eyes dancing behind her glasses. “This is New York City. Anything can happen.”
7
Date One
Sarah
I called ahead to Charli’s, a swanky restaurant on the Upper West Side, and made a reservation. I wanted to start out strong, although I knew I had run the risk of using up my entire one hundred dollar per diem. Denise had come through in flying colors, getting the website updated with my business info, so I was in great spirits. I even figured if the date went well enough, I could come out of my pocket a little, if need be. I’m sure J would figure out a tax deduction from the receipts.
After the cab pulls up to the curb in front of the restaurant, I get my first complete front, back, and side views of Sarah. She is about five-foot-six in her heels. The simple, yet elegant, black dress she is wearing falls on her frame in such a way that it’s impossible not to know that she’s a professional dancer. The twists in her hair form an ornate crown, and with her posture, I feel as though I’m escorting a queen.
Prior to getting my notes on Sarah, I had posed a question to Denise.
“Am I just supposed to go on three dates and pick someone to start a relationship with? If so, that sounds like Hoopz standing there with that silly ass grill in her mouth waiting for her five minute relationship with Flav to end.”
Denise responded, “If a date goes well, see where it goes. Just make sure you go on each one at least once.”
There were at least two major things wrong with what she said. First, I couldn’t figure how I was supposed to get to know any of these women with the others waiting in the wings. Second, the whole thing felt like I was herding them through a process that wasn’t fair to anyone. Meanwhile, I was supposed to write a blog entry every week about how things were going with each of them. One thing was for damned sure: the idea sounded much better on paper than it did when you had to go and execute it.
Now I’m sitting across from Sarah Landfair who is dressed to impress and clearly ready for a real date, not some Hollywood set-up. She wasn’t sent here from central casting, and she doesn’t seem to be here for any other reason than to see if we have anything in common. I immediately feel like a fraud and ask to be excused from the table.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“I just have to use the restroom. I’ll be right back.” My delivery is stilted and awkward, but she nods as if she understands.
