B-Sides and Remixes, page 6
“So,” she says, as we clean our plates, “how was your first raw vegan meal?”
“I kind of dug it,” I respond. “But I won’t lie to you. I’ll probably be craving a steak later on though.”
“Fair enough,” she says, as we empty our plates into the recycle bin by the door.
After our meal, we walk around the Village and eventually wind up at Washington Square Park, where we grab a bench across the street from NYU.
Students walk back and forth, their backpacks and computer bags draped across their shoulders. A group of older guys, possibly veterans, huddle over a chessboard, and off to the side, a group of tourists are photographing the various activity around them. I look over at the arch where two statues of George Washington stand across from each other, framing the entrance. 5th Avenue dead-ends into the park, and across the street are some very expensive-looking row houses, nearly identical to the ones in Will Smith’s movie I Am Legend. I look back at Taylor who is also taking in our surroundings.
“Can I ask you a question?” I start.
“Sure.”
“Why did you agree to do this date?”
She watches the students moving aimlessly about the sidewalk. “Why not?”
“So is this like a bucket list item for you?”
“No,” she chuckles. “I don’t have a bucket list. I just do what I feel compelled to do. I saw your picture on the website, and I thought to myself, ‘He might be a fun person to hang out with.’”
“I see,” I say, looking at her crossed legs, one of her sandals falling away from her heel. “So you’re not really looking for anything serious then?”
“Serious is a matter of perception. Let’s just enjoy the moment for what it is. If it leads to more, we’ll follow it there.”
“Okay,” I offer, but I realize that I have no idea of what that would mean if she ended up being the woman I selected from this process.
She turns to face me, her smooth leg brushing against my khakis. “I know you had a good time on your last date. I can tell she struck a chord with you.”
Damn, I think to myself. That’s definitely one of the downsides of this entire thing being blogged about on the Soul Sista site. No telling what my third date will think of me by the time she reads through the accounts of my other two dates.
“We had a good time,” I offer, hoping to neutralize any further discussion of Sarah.
“So are you having a good time now?” she asks.
“Definitely. I don’t think I’ve felt healthier in my life.”
She laughs, and as her body bounces, her curly Afro jiggles. The gesture is very charming, and I want to reach over and touch her hand, but I don’t feel an opening just yet.
“So tell me a little bit about yourself,” she says.
“I’m from Mississippi, but I went to school in Atlanta. Fell in love. Got my heart broken. Moved to New York to work on Wall Street. Now I own half of a record store in Harlem.”
“God, Cool! You know how to suck the life out of a story, don’t you?” she jokes.
“Well, that’s pretty much been my life so far.”
“So you define yourself by what has happened to you, not by who you are?”
I know the question isn’t meant to be a heavy one, but it feels like it. I sense I’m getting judged on a level, and that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, as if I am not a complete person. The sad thing is that I start to wonder if she’s right.
“I think I have a good idea of who I am,” I say, careful to project confidence this time.
“So tell me.”
“I’m a good man who wants to do the right thing. I love music more than anything in the world. In fact, I believe there’s no ill that can’t be cured by Earth, Wind & Fire or Stevie Wonder. I believe in the possibility of love—even after all of the shit that I’ve been through. Someone once told me that there’s someone for everyone, and I guess I’ve always questioned if somehow I might’ve been the one exception to that rule. This experience is definitely a new one for me, so I’m just trying to see where it goes.” When I finish I do a fake wipe of my brow and ask, “What about you? Who are you?”
“Didn’t you read my t-shirt,” she says. “I’m a funky chick!”
“I see,” I say, admiring her dimples.
“I’m a simple girl who grew up in South Jersey. I don’t really care a lot for labels. I love music, and I think that Minnie Riperton and Nina Simone are the closest things to angels to ever walk the earth. I love art—I sketch and write poetry. I believe very much in love and in living in the now. I love smelling the roses, not just admiring them from a distance. I don’t know. I guess I’m just an open person like that.”
“Really?” I respond. “When you say that you don’t care for labels, what do you mean? Clothes? Titles?”
“All of it. To label someone is to confine them to being just that one thing. I don’t like labels in any area of my life.”
Now I am curious, so I ask, “So you don’t believe in labels like girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in commitment, but I have noticed that people behave differently when labels are involved. I like just being with someone because I want to, not because I feel obligated to.”
As I listen to her, the truth of her words has a calming effect over me.
“So,” I say. “What would you like to do next?”
“I’m good just being with you.”
She smiles, her lips curving upward sweetly. I find myself unable to do anything but smile along with her.
“I can dig that, Funky Chick.”
11
Writing about Taylor proves to be more difficult than I expected. I haven’t been around a woman in a long time who’s taught me so much in just an afternoon. I am so intrigued by her mind that it almost overpowers her beauty. When she speaks, she brings up things that force me to think differently. I don’t know how much of that is her being Buddhist, being vegan, or just being herself.
With Sarah, there was the playful banter, the flirting, the sexual energy. But with Taylor, our date was about the mind and the soul. They are definitely two very different women, and to compare the two dates would be like comparing night and day. I haven’t spoken to either of them since those first dates, and I’m trying to wait on doing so until after this third date with a woman named Roxanne.
Although it takes me a while to draft my blog entry, I finish shortly after ten in the evening and email it to Denise at Soul Sista.
At this point, I can honestly say that I have no clue how any of this will end up.
My very first girlfriend ever dumped me less than three hours after she checked the “yes” box. Her name was Brenda Williams, and she was a skinny third grader who wore thick glasses. Even back then I was scouting potential, trying to see what other guys couldn’t see. She was pretty much invisible to the other kids because she was always off to herself, reading books.
One day, while we were taking a spelling test, I saw her take off her glasses and wipe her eyes. In the seconds before she put them back on, I saw a girl who had it going on. She was smart and pretty, and immediately I knew that combination would work for me going forward.
I worked on my first love letter during recess, and I put so much time into printing each word clearly and neatly that my hand nearly cramped. I went after Brenda with everything in my arsenal. At the end of the letter I drew three boxes and asked her to check one: “YES,” “NO,” or “MAYBE SO.”
I dropped the letter onto her desk right before Social Studies that afternoon. Because I sat across the room from her, I had to sweat out the rest of the period to see if she would respond before we went to our Phys Ed class.
When the bell rang, I sat at my desk, fiddling with my things so that I could give her time to walk past me. She came up beside my desk and dropped the letter back onto my backpack and walked away. I waited until everyone had almost cleared out of Mrs. Jamison’s class before I stood and grabbed my things. I floated slowly behind my class as we headed toward the gym.
While we waited in a line outside the gym entrance, I opened the letter. It was the same one that I had written, but the YES box had been checked!
At that moment, I felt as though I would bust out of my skin and soar up into the sky. Even during Phys Ed, I watched her and would smile at her whenever our eyes met. I had my first girlfriend, and life couldn’t have been sweeter.
By the end of the school day, while I stood around with my boys waiting on the bus, one of them, Joe Lee, leaned over and said to me, “They say you liking Brenda now. Whatchu want with that four-eyed girl, man? Them glasses so thick they got x-ray vision.”
The insults caught me off guard. I had never thought about what other people would say about Brenda being my girl.
Then my friend Nate joined in. “Yeah, man. She got a kitchen on the back of her neck, too. If you go to run your fingers through them naps, you’ll get cut up.”
They began to laugh, and, to not feel so out of place, I laughed, too.
That’s when I heard a soft voice behind me. “Chauncey.” The voice was so weak and timid that I almost didn’t hear it over our laughter. In fact, it was only when I saw the expressions on Joe Lee’s and Nate’s faces that I knew who was standing behind me.
I turned around slowly, bracing myself.
“Chauncey,” Brenda said, her eyes moist, “I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”
And with that, she walked away and left me standing there with the two knuckleheads who had caused all of my problems.
For years I blamed Joe Lee and Nate, but it wasn’t until I got to high school that I realized I had fucked that situation up myself. I had not stood up for her, and even worse, I had put someone else’s opinions above my own. I liked her, and that was all that mattered, not anything that Joe Lee or Nate had to say about it.
Even now that I’m thirty, I swear that philosophy still holds true—but I can’t help seeing the irony in dating women selected for me by other people. I guess as long as I’m true to myself, then just maybe I can redeem myself for letting Brenda go so easily.
I decide not to read the blog entry I wrote on Taylor when it posts. Instead I try to stay focused on the sliver of information that Denise has spent money having delivered to the store. I know nothing about this next girl at all, except for the fact that she’s in “entertainment” (whatever that means) and that her name is Roxanne. Her picture is a black and white headshot, and while she looks dolled up and pretty, I learned from Taylor that pictures don’t always tell the whole story. There is definitely not enough information in the packet to justify Denise using a messenger to send it. If we were talking about top secret plans for nuclear warheads, that would be a different story. One thing is for sure: if J and I did any of this foolishness of using a messenger for little shit like this, we’d be out of business by the end of the month.
After J finishes ringing up a customer, he takes a seat on the stool next to mine.
“Cool, we might just make it into the black sooner than later.”
The comment is refreshing, since it feels like we have been losing money for so long that raw fear has set in.
“Yeah,” I say, acting as if all of this is by design. “I see even Ray-Ray is more motivated.”
We watch Ray-Ray over against the back wall telling a group of young ladies about the electronic soul band J*Davey. Even the way he describes the music is more enthusiastic than normal. “Oh my god, these two are so nice! The sista, Jack Davey, sounds like what you would have if Prince and T-Boz had an illegitimate star child from Saturn—but in a good way!” The girls laugh and pick up the CD and a few t-shirts.
When they make it to the register, one of them points at the other and says, “I told you that was him.”
They never speak to me directly, but they giggle about their experience in the store, and better still, they walk out having dropped about forty dollars apiece.
J turns to face me, as Ray-Ray joins us at the counter. “This Soul Sista thing is really good for us right now. You know how many online orders I had to fulfill this week? We’re gonna have to place another order for t-shirts pretty soon. I even got a call from a small business journal about doing an interview with us. Word is really getting around that we’re the spot to hit these days.”
“Dude, that’s crazy! Seems like all of this stuff just came out of left field. I just hope we can keep it up,” I say.
“Yo,” Ray-Ray says, “I heard some sistas on the subway talking about who you need to pick as your girl. One chick was like it was a no-brainer. You had to go with that Sarah girl. They said that dark skinned sistas don’t get enough love, and if you picked that yella girl over the darker sister, then you must be color struck.”
I shrug. “I guess a woman’s personality really doesn’t matter much anymore.” My comment is supposed to read as sarcastic, but Ray-Ray’s dumb ass is nodding as if I’ve just spoken some kind of truth.
J places a hand on my shoulder. “But the sistas out there will be checking to see who you pick, so just make sure you stay true to whatever rubric you’re using.”
“Rubric? This isn’t a formula or anything. These are real women, and this is real life.”
“Spoken like a true reality show star,” J says, laughing.
Ray-Ray says, “I’m just sayin’ you will have some haters out there if you go with Golden ‘Fro.”
“I’ll tell you what, everybody,” I start. “Let me handle the women, and you guys handle keeping us solvent in the meantime.”
J nods and returns to his laptop. Ray-Ray shrugs his shoulders and walks over to a stack of CDs and starts to organize them.
I swear these days I feel like everyone must think I’m just one-dimensional. For the first time since all of this started, I feel like I need a break.
12
“Don’t bounce him like that, Cool. He’ll spit up on you,” Angie says as she walks over to sit next to Aaron and me. “He just ate. Take this.” She hands me a towel to drape over my shoulder.
“Awww, doesn’t he looks so handsome with his big cousin!” Tracy says, leaning forward on the recliner across the room.
I pull Aaron closer so that he is right in the nook of my neck.
“There he goes,” Angie says, laughing.
I look at my shoulder and see white spit-up running down my t-shirt.
“Guess you should have put the rag on your other shoulder,” Angie volunteers.
“Obviously,” I respond, my face beginning to twitch involuntarily from the smell.
I hand Aaron back to Angie and start to wipe at the white cream-like substance with the rag.
“You might want to put some soap and water on that before it dries in there and you wind up smelling like breast milk for the rest of the day,” Tracy offers.
“Yeah, that definitely sounds like a plan.”
I dart to the bathroom down the hall and quickly remove my shirt, running soap and water over it, before ringing it out.
“Hey, Angie!” I call out. “You have one of those C&J t-shirts I gave you a while back?”
“Yeah, I’ll get it for you,” she responds from the den.
I’m so thankful my cousin wears her clothing oversized. In fact, sometimes I joke with her about how her wardrobe is better than my own. She laughs and just responds that she loves the feeling of being free in clothes that have room. She even made me promise that when she died I wouldn’t let Tracy or her mother put her in a dress before they put her in the ground.
“Here you go,” she says, tossing a navy blue t-shirt at me. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s actually been worn and washed.
“You’ve been out there reppin’ for us?” I ask.
“You know how we do it, cuz!” she says, walking back to the den.
“Hey, Angie, you know you’re the shit, right?” Just then I realize that Aaron is in the other room. “My bad! I mean you’re the bomb.”
I hear both Angie and Tracy laughing. Even with Aaron’s gurgling, he sounds like he’s in on the joke, too.
I walk back into the den. Tracy and Angie are curled up on the couch, and I have to admit that they complement each other well visually. Angie with her thick, short frame, her skin the color of bronze, and Tracy with the dreadlocks, slight frame, and reddish complexion. Aaron, with his light complexion, looks like a little light bulb between the two of them.
I laugh and poke fun at them. “How are the two of you gonna have a kid the color of Al B. Sure?”
“Cool,” Angie laughs, “We ain’t fooling nobody here. That kid ain’t supposed to look like me!”
“Yeah, but he looks like his daddy was of the Caucasian persuasion.”
“Unh unh,” Tracy says, “Aaron is one hundred percent Zulu-Masai stock.”
“Okay, Miss School Daze. Whatever you want to believe.”
Tracy pipes up. “You have to look at his ears. That’s the color he’s gonna change to.”
I look at Aaron. “You hear that little cuz? They think you’re Zartan from G.I. Joe. Just put you out in the sun and you’ll change colors.”
Aaron giggles when I say this, but I know he’s only responding to my facial expression.
“So,” Angie says, adjusting herself on the couch so that Aaron rests more comfortably against her arm, “I’ve been reading about your exploits online. Sounds like you have quite the decision to make.”
I lift my head and exhale. “This process is crazy. And I still have one more woman to go out with.”
“I’d hate to be you,” Angie says and then adds, “well maybe not.”
Tracy pops her on her leg, and Angie laughs.
“It’ll all work out,” I say, hoping to change subjects. “Ain’t that right, little cuz?” This time Aaron looks away from me to the Backyardigans playing in the background on the flatscreen. He has clearly lost interest in the grown folks’ conversation.
