Friends: A Love Story

by Angela Bassett

  Academically Yale was difficult. I never needed a tutor or anything but I remember having a lot of self-talks in the mirror.

  “Are you gonna quit? Are you gonna drop out?”

  “If you drop out you can say that you came and you stayed for a year.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Are you gonna stay up all night? Then stay up!”

  “Well, go on and cry if you want to cry. But then what’s that gonna help?”

  “Okay, now get up and wipe your face.”

  But then I got my first A or did an all-nighter and got a B. Then I felt okay.

  Socially I was popular, but dating was pretty hard. There were certain girls the guys liked. We’d call them the “stars.” They’d usually be fair-skinned with long pretty hair. I didn’t look like that. After the “stars” were taken, the boys might look over our way a bit. But when you were a lowly freshman, you couldn’t get nobody. When I was a sophomore, I dated a freshman. Then he broke up with me. It just seemed that for some reason the black girls and guys couldn’t get together. The boys were up and down the road going to different schools. We girls had to scheme to get kisses from them.

  “You like him? All right, let’s see how we can help you get into a romantic situation.” I guess none of us seemed as provocative as the girls somewhere else.

  I remember one time I was talking to Mama about some guy whose attention I was trying to win or keep. She was just not impressed.

  “Shit, you the prize!” she told me. “He ain’t shit, he ain’t all that. You the prize.”

  I hadn’t thought about that before, but it stuck—it resounded. It resounded. I’m the prize! I recall thinking, “Oh, that’s a good way to think of myself”—not that I was better than anyone else, but that I was worthy of being respected and treated nicely and loved and thought highly of and taken care of. Since my father hadn’t been around to tell me I was his beautiful little girl, his princess, or to model how a good and proper man should look and behave, I hadn’t had an example—well, at least nothing that felt warm and familiar. So when I went out into the world I hadn’t already seen a good man or known what he looked and felt like. Still, I wasn’t out there looking for it, trying to make up for it. I didn’t have a brother, uncle—nothing. Just my great-grandfather, Slater Stokes—and Granddad Leroy, whose girlfriend lived right across the street, but that was a bit of a mixed message. Then there was my mother’s uncle who ran the beer garden, but I was young and couldn’t go up in there to see him running his business. The other men in my family who were good and up to something lived someplace else. On a daily basis, I saw my teachers, the principal, the pastor of my church, my best girlfriend’s daddy—one of them had a daddy.

  The idea that I was a prize was very new to me. I practiced it to varying degrees. I remember one boy asked me not to be mad at him for something he had done. I recall thinking, You poor nothing, you unintelligent person. You’re not worthy of my time. Don’t even think of me—don’t think of me at all. Don’t even look my way! I was definitely overreacting but that’s how I interpreted valuing myself, being the “prize.” Plus, I was proud that I had come so far with fewer resources than the average person; at one time I hadn’t had anything and now here I was at Yale—not that I was consciously trying to be more than I was. My male friends called me on my stuff, though, which wasn’t too hard to do. It was like I was wearing a miniskirt but my judgment “slip” was showing all the way down to my ankles.

  But in spite of my academic challenges and lack of a love life, I have to admit I partied in college. We partied—literally—from Wednesday to Sunday, whether playing bid whist (I was a lousy fourth hand for someone desperate), going to a house party where one student’s brother was the DJ or hopping the train to New York City. My roommates and I would go to the latest and hottest clubs. We could dance all night long in our four-inch heels. Then we’d nearly fall asleep in Grand Central Station waiting for the train home and get back with our feet hurting and back all out of alignment. Our counselors wondered how we were going to graduate. We burned the midnight oil—both ends of the candle and the middle, too.

  Once I got to college I started to perform in a lot of plays. There are twelve different colleges at Yale. Each had its own drama society and would put on different productions. Then there was the University Theater, which was beautiful and reserved for the biggest plays. I was doing plays every semester—myself and one other black girl, Cheryl Rogers. Our friends would come see us in Hedda Gabler, Uncommon Women and other plays they ordinarily wouldn’t have come to see, and enjoy them. I also performed at antiapartheid demonstrations to pressure Yale into divesting from South Africa, which were going on all the time. I didn’t know a lot about the politics. I couldn’t run down the statistics. But I could find poems that would relate and get up and perform them in the Commons area of campus. It would go over very well and when I was performing, I was in my element!

  At one point Auntie Golden advised me not to waste a Yale education on a theater degree. By then I was aware that it was the graduate drama school, not the undergraduate theater program, that was the best in the world. Still, I thought, I’m here and the drama school is right up the street! Thank you, Lord! And I’d walk down the street and—Hey, that looks like James Earl Jones! and it was. He was performing at the Yale Rep in A Lesson from Aloes. So for the first three years I tried not to major in theater. Instead, I studied administrative science—business. That seemed to be more practical. But I was just not into statistics and trigonometry and math that looked like artwork—squiggle, squiggle, triangle, equals sign. At one point I told myself I needed to put my priorities in order and focus on my studies. I didn’t do any plays that semester, but I found myself still doing all-nighters. I thought, Well, I might as well do my plays if I’m going to do all-nighters anyway.

  Eventually I went down the list in the Yale course directory: classical studies, women’s studies, history, molecular biophysics…None of those seemed to be much more practical than theater, and it seemed like a B.A. or B.S. didn’t get you too far and that everyone would need an advanced degree. Otherwise, what were you going to do with political science or economics? I wondered. I had heard that you could get into business school with a degree in any major, so I decided to throw myself into theater. If it didn’t work out at least I’d tried, then perhaps I’d apply to Wharton, a prestigious business school.

  By the time I figured all this out, it was too late to change my major to theater. So I majored in African-American studies/ theater, which caused my appreciation of black people, our culture, achievements and struggles—some of the most dramatic of which had unfolded during my childhood—to deepen. My knowledge of our history and culture would shape my attitudes and beliefs about the opportunities I would later seek and accept. I also squeezed in a lot of drama courses and did a performance thesis in addition to my regular thesis on the history of the Negro Ensemble Company, down in New York, the first major theater company to focus on black life, and offer black writers, directors, producers, actors, playwrights and craftspeople the opportunity to produce works that reflected their cultural values and determine their own destiny. Lloyd Richards, one of its founding members, had just come to Yale to become the dean of the drama school. I got to meet him and asked him to get me an introduction to Douglas Turner Ward, head of the Negro Ensemble Company. The folks at NEC opened their files to me.

  I didn’t get the chance to come to New York often; however, as I traveled in and out of the city during my college years, I did get to spend a little time with my father. He lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Several times I spent the weekend with him and his longtime, live-in girlfriend. We’d usually travel over to Teaneck, New Jersey, where Uncle Jerry lived, and we’d all hang out. They’d put on music, drink Crown Royal and we’d laugh and shoot the breeze. The first time we got together, Dad tried to suss out where I was and act cool.

  “What do young folk
do today?” he asked me. “Want some reefer?”

  “I don’t smoke reefer! I don’t do drugs.”

  I noticed he didn’t offer D’nette reefer when she came to visit—he’d had a velvet picture painted of her; he didn’t have one drawn of me. I remember feeling closer to Uncle Jerry than my dad.

  As one such weekend was drawing to a close and I was about to return to campus, I remember having a conversation with my father about our relationship.

  “Yes, you are my father,” I told him, “but I haven’t spent time with you. Getting to know each other is a process. After nineteen years I can’t just run and jump on Daddy’s lap.”

  Well, that did not sit right with him. He said, “No, I am your father! I’m your dad.” To me, his response felt like “Bullshit! No, it doesn’t take time. I’m the father, you’re my daughter. Daddy, daughter—we are close!”

  “Yeah, you’re my father and I love you and you’re half of why I’m here. But to have a relationship, it takes time to get to know each other.”

  He said, “No, it doesn’t.”

  He was drinking and it wasn’t going so well, so I figured I’d let it go.

  “All right, Dad, I’m leaving,” I told him. “Give me a kiss.”

  When I went to kiss him, he put his tongue in my mouth. I pulled back—I shot back! I was shocked! I was mortified! I was FUCKING MORTIFIED! My father had kissed me like a woman—that crossed the line! Your boyfriends put their tongue in your mouth, I assume my father put his tongue in his woman’s mouth, but—drunk or otherwise—a father shouldn’t put his tongue in his daughter’s mouth—EVER. If I had known what was going to happen I would have had the presence of mind to slap the shit out of him. I would have slapped him sober! But I was shocked. I didn’t say anything. I just got out of there as fast as I could.

  On my trip back to New Haven, I began to process what had happened. I was furious! That was fucked up! I couldn’t believe it. Then again, he was drunk—he had drunk a lot. I didn’t know if he thought that was okay to do or whether maybe in his drunken state he was confused about who I was. It really didn’t matter though. My rule about drinking is: you control it; it doesn’t control you. And drunk or not, in my mind that was just more evidence to me of the lack of the relationship between my father and me. His relationships had never been father/daughter; they’d always been man/woman. Perhaps in his very inebriated state he reverted to what he knew. Whatever was going on with him, it was some kind of interesting human nature something or other. I wasn’t going to let it fuck with my head for too long. Life with my dad was just what it was. I came to the conclusion that this was just part of what happens when a family isn’t at its best—the way God designed it to be: a mother, a father, the children. Some men just don’t know how to be fathers. My dad was one of them. He didn’t have a clue. I never brought the incident up—we never talked about it. But I paid a price for my silence. Between not having a father figure and having so many men try to take advantage of me, it definitely colored the landscape of my relationships. I don’t think I was as strong as I could have been in saying no to men whose behavior didn’t measure up to the standards I had in mind. Thank goodness I had acting to channel all these emotions into.

  As for my dad, I didn’t ask for another kiss until he was on his deathbed.

  For my performance thesis during my senior year I directed and acted in Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. I was The Lady in Red. I applied to perform the show at the University Theater on what would have been parents’ weekend. They didn’t pick us for the main show that ran on weekends—probably because we weren’t doing South Pacific. But they did give us the Monday through Thursday before the big parents’ day show. We figured that they felt we weren’t good enough to be the stand-alone show for parents’ weekend. But now I understand that it was incredible validation of our talent that Yale University—where the white sons and daughters of privilege prepared for the world—permitted us to perform on their main stage. Still, we put on the play and featured all these wonderful women who were strong, passionate, talented and had an artistic flair. The show was so moving and engaging that the university asked us to extend it for another four days. On top of that a black church and a community organization wanted us to do it for them. After a while it seemed like the play kept going on and on, but it was very well received. Auntie Golden came up to see it. “Wow, you’re really good!” she told me. That was very affirming, since she once thought pursuing theater would be a waste.

  So during my senior year I was acting and directing on campus, in and out of New York researching my thesis, and talking to theater greats like Lloyd Richards and Douglas Turner Ward. I also made friends with some of the graduate drama students, like David Allan Grier, Reg E. Cathey and Izzy Monk, who were actors (David’s also a comedian); Jim Simpson, a director, who went on to marry Sigourney Weaver; and OyamO, who wrote The Resurrection of Lady Lester. I performed in The Resurrection with some of the grad students at the Yale Cabaret that students put on. That year I decided to apply to both Yale and NYU drama schools, but when I went to NYU to visit, I realized I wouldn’t apply in time to get financial aid. So I had to put all my eggs in one basket. Jim Simpson agreed to critique my monologues. I did two—Lady Anne from Richard III, and Frankie from Ladies in Waiting. Then I auditioned for and applied to the prestigious Yale Drama School—and got in!

  Unfortunately, my mother was never able to afford to come to Yale to see me act. But she did make it up for graduation. She was so proud of me and I was grateful she had encouraged me to attend. My dad also came. I was a little reserved. “Oh, hello…” Still, it was cool to have them both there together, along with Auntie Golden, who definitely wouldn’t miss it. It was cool, it was definitely cool.

  I started drama school at Yale that fall of 1980. There were about seventeen students in my class—about ten men and seven women. Of those, there were two black guys and two black girls: Charles Dutton, Roger Guenveur Smith, Sabrina Le Beauf and me. Two brown skins, two light skins. Our class was like the little orphan class. We didn’t have any big stars or any pretty, pretty, pretty girls or any handsome, handsome, handsome guys. By industry standards we were just a hodgepodge of regular-looking interesting/character people—you know: tall, skinny, bald, comely, black; no one voluptuous or blond. At twenty-one or twenty-two I was about the youngest in our class; the median age was around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Most of the students had been out in the world. When someone would tell them, “You go from this class to that class, then take a test, then break down the set, then go to rehearsal and you will go from morning ’til night,” they thought, “Oh, please! I’m fully grown. I don’t feel like doing that. I’m sleeping in.” Or they had opinions and would challenge the teachers. “I don’t particularly like voice class and don’t see why it’s all that important. I’m tired, I’m going to miss class today. I’ll go next week.” They upset the traditional dominant-subordinate roles of professor and teacher. I think that after our class the program was composed of mostly younger students.

  By and large, acting school is a really exciting time. You’re breaking a script down, you’re chatting about the characters and good and bad performances, you’re doing a play, you’re sitting around at the “gypsy” bar where all the grad students hung out. You’re into something you love and want to dedicate your life to. You aren’t out trying to find yourself; you didn’t say, “Let me try to do something practical instead of what I love to do.” You’ve found it—and it didn’t take thirty years! Everyone is training so they can hopefully survive in this impractical profession where people are always telling you that only five percent or ten percent of Screen Actors Guild (SAG) actors actually make a living, and the other ninety percent are doing other jobs.

  Even though it’s very exciting, drama school is very hard work. Everyone loses weight the first year because you don’t have time to sit down and eat. I existed on coffee, Snick
ers and bagels. Academically, we had classes, scene study, the history of theater, voice class, singing class, movement, fencing. When I was not in class I was at my work-study job. After first semester, on top of academics, you have to do things like put on a Shakespeare production in ten days—build the set, sew the costumes, learn your lines, rehearse with your classmates, everything. When I think back on it, what we accomplished was amazing. It was so awesome—I was in love with it. And there were so many talented students, like Sabrina, Roger, Charles, John Turturro, Jane Kaczmarek and Kate Burton, daughter of the famous actor, Richard Burton.

  Unlike out in the real world, race in drama school was, for the most part, a non-issue. You were supposed to grow up and be a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, those kinds of jobs. We were already different—young, artsy, ain’t none of us gonna make no money right off the bat. Race didn’t make that much difference. We might deal with it in the context of a scene, like if we were performing something of Athol Fugard’s, the great South African playwright. But for the most part we would deal with race later, in the real world, the marketplace. While we were in school any conflict we experienced was mostly interpersonal. We rarely allowed race to restrain our feelings, our intuition, our delving into the psyche and human emotions. I’m the mama, the white girl’s the daughter and you’re the audience. We believe it and we say it is, so you believe it, too. And no one was talking about, “Okay, when you graduate, some of you are not going to work. It’s not because you’re not talented, it’s because you’re black or Latino.” Or whatever the 109 other reasons are why people don’t work, like you’re too tall or too short. For the time we convinced ourselves, “It’s going to come down to talent, right?”