The Pride

by Wallace Ford

  I also absolutely relished telling him that the only severance money he would ever get would be by counting the change in his pocket. After making him go to court and spend a fortune on attorney’s fees, I ultimately settled his lawsuit for peanuts, courtesy of Paul Taylor. Of course, this was an instance where the consequences were intended.

  CHAPTER 21

  Gordon

  More about me

  My father died in a car accident as we were coming home from a New York Giants football game. It’s a long story and one that I save for another time. All I will say is that it taught me a lesson for life—you had better always look out for yourself. I say that because after my father was killed it seemed to me that it was my mother and I against the world. And as far as I was concerned, even in high school, the world was never going to win.

  I got an academic scholarship to Columbia (so I could be close to home) and after graduating from the college, I immediately got an MBA at the same school. In the process of going to school and working part-time for six years, I learned, and then knew, that Wall Street was my destiny.

  I wanted to be in charge of my life and to have no one in charge of me. The only way that was going to happen was with M-O-N-E-Y, and I was going to get all that I needed, and then some. And that is exactly what I have done.

  At that is why I am the Chairman and CEO of G.S. Perkins. And that is why I was sitting at that dumb-ass memorial service for Winner Tomlinson. It’s part of what I do.

  Smart-ass Paul Taylor refers to “The Pride” to describe what he calls successful blacks who have prevailed in New York and elsewhere. If I buy into his theories on the subject, and I must confess that I do to a very limited extent, then I am the baddest lion in “The Pride.” And there was certainly no question after Winner kicked the bucket. So, like I said, I have to be at this service. But I don’t have to like it. And I don’t.

  First of all, since my father died, I have been to exactly one funeral. And that was for my mother. Second, I have a lot better things to do than to sit around and listen to people lie about someone who is dead and is going to stay dead. And finally, if the truth were told about the Winner Tomlinson that I know, half the people in Riverside Church would have run screaming into the frosty morning air.

  But I was not there to tell lies, or the truth, about Winner, I was just going to sit and listen to this endless stream of chicken-leg-shaking preachers and gladhanding politicians preach and preen and lie. I do this because I have to and only because I have to. I do a lot of things that I don’t particularly like. But, because I am Gordon Perkins, I do a lot more things that I do like.

  CHAPTER 22

  Paul

  Meanwhile, back at the church

  I am savoring this late night reverie as I reflect on the changes that took place that winter morning. I guess I should not be surprised that, at the time, none of us, Jerome, Gordon, Diedre, me—none of us realized that at that particular moment in time we were about to be a part of something so very important.

  What I remember most about that morning was that there was a strange and completely incomprehensible feeling that came over me as I sat next to Diedre. And like a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra, I could almost observe my feelings and emotions flowing around me like some strange river. But I could do absolutely nothing about it. It wasn’t until several months later that I had even the remotest clue as to what was going on in my heart and in my life.

  That January morning in Riverside Church was one of the most fascinating days of my professional life as you will undoubtedly agree as this story goes on. My life changed on that day. But it wasn’t because of Gordon and Jerome and all the bright ideas that surfaced that day. It turned out that it was Diedre who made the difference.

  In fact, it was all that I could do to try and pay attention to the names and faces that floated by in a very special universe that only included her and me. It was strange and confusing and wonderful and baffling, all at the same time.

  By way of some further explanation, you should understand that when Diedre and I had been a couple, we had had one of those miraculous, magical, mysterious relationships that you remember even when you forget your teeth in a glass somewhere that you can’t remember. The kind of white hot passion and crystal clear connection that stays with you even while sipping vodka martinis on a Caribbean beach in your sunset years.

  We loved, we fought, we hated and we charmed and enchanted each other for over a decade. At one point it was as if our beings had melded and PaulDiedre, or DiedrePaul, was our name.

  We lived in each other. We lived for each other. We loved each other with a passion and urgency that defied time, and, as it turned out, defied common sense as well.

  And then, it was over. And it had been over for over a decade. To this very day I can’t even remember the precise reason that we came apart at the seams. But we did.

  We did so with a spectacular vengeance that made most breakups seem like the Easter Parade on Fifth Avenue. I am pretty sure that the passion that brought us together also tore us apart. And, in what seemed like an instant of time, as close as we were, that’s how far apart we became.

  In the early years after we had parted ways, we quite sensibly took pains to avoid each other and to spare ourselves each other’s company. But we were members of The Pride and neither of us was going anywhere anytime soon.

  So we found a way to get along, and after a time, the bitterness and grief and pain that we had caused each other was no longer a part of our story. We were acquaintances, then colleagues, and then, in a manner of speaking, friends. After all, no one knew us better than we did.

  We had reached an accommodation of sorts by the time of Winner’s memorial service. We were long past the point of being uncomfortable around each other. Indeed, our past made us extraordinarily compatible and since, given the vaporizing dissolution of our marriage and earlier relationship, neither of us perceived the possibility of romance between us in our future. And so, we found ourselves in the position of actually being friends.

  And that is why I have no earthly idea why thoughts came to mind that day that had nothing to do with The Pride or Winner Tomlinson. My eye was drawn to the heavenly valley that began with that wonderful point on earth where her breasts made themselves known under the DKNY blouse that she wore.

  I could barely restrain myself from caressing the line of her jaw and my mind was helpless in recalling all of the times that she permitted the tips of my fingers to float along the almost perfect symmetry of her unforgettable face. Her legs, prominently in view and wonderfully poised on wonderfully stylish heels, formed the demarcation of a universe in which I lived and died a thousand lives of pleasure many millennia ago.

  We lived as boyfriend/girlfriend, man and woman, and husband and wife. In all of my experiences with women, before and after Diedre, I have never experienced such wondrous passion and sensuality and physical expression of love. And so, as I sat in church, all I could think of was kissing and licking and hugging and holding and sucking and loving—and how wonderful it had all been.

  I could literally feel my breaths shorten, my pulse quicken and I could feel myself getting hard—right there in the church, for goodness sake. I had been with Diedre too often during the ten plus years after our breakup to have these feelings now, I thought. I begged and pleaded with myself not to think the thoughts that had me wanting her in the worst way.

  To this very day, I believe that at that moment I only loved Samantha. And I cannot believe that there will ever be a time that I could forget Lisette and all of the sexual wonder that she introduced into my life. Yet, at that moment in time I truly wanted Diedre. It was the first time in a long time and, as it turned out to be, not for the last time.

  CHAPTER 23

  Paul

  Wading in the water

  My only escape was to try to somehow pay attention to the proceedings at hand and try to engage her in small talk. My only hope was to try not to think about how I wante
d to once again let my tongue and fingers explore that wondrous body under that so elegant St. John’s business suit. I struggled mightily and it was only by the grace of the barely subtle carnival that was Winner Tomlinson’s service that I was able to succeed.

  “Here comes the ringmaster,” it was almost as if Diedre was reading my mind. The carnival analogy was hard to miss, if you were paying attention.

  She was referring to the Reverend Quincy Holloway, the presiding cleric at the service. If there were no such thing as carnivals and circuses they would have had to invent them for Reverend Holloway. He was the prototypical Jesse Jackson wannabe, dozens of whom proliferate throughout the country, magically sprouting in the glow of television lights and under the penumbra of clustered microphones.

  Like any person who dares to reside in the public eye I am sure that Jesse Jackson deserves some of the criticism that has been leveled at him over the years. But few have ever doubted his intelligence, his vision, and his ability to transcend the opinion that others might hold. And, at the end of the day, Jesse Jackson can point to real, substantive accomplishments. He can say that he has helped many people as a part of his life’s story.

  Reverend Holloway was Jesse Jackson Lite. He simply aspired to be more than he could ever be. And though he was smart enough to know that, he didn’t let that hold him back for a nanosecond. He aspired to be more than a local celebrity. He aspired to be more than the national figure that he was. He wanted to be global, he wanted to be intergalactic. He wanted to walk the earth like Cane, the Kung fu icon.

  “He certainly doesn’t seem to be suffering this morning,” I whispered into Diedre’s ear. This caused her to gasp in an effort to hold back the paroxysm of laughter that she barely kept from dancing past her lips.

  “Perhaps he found a way to ease the pain,” was the response that she was barely able to whisper as she grappled with a gale of laughter that would have been slightly inappropriate, to say the least.

  We were both poking fun at one of the more bizarre aspects of the legend of Quincy Holloway. Reverend Holloway rose to prominence in the late sixties by claiming to have been hit in Memphis by one of the bullets intended for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  For years he ended his speeches with the tearful refrain, “If only I could have taken another bullet.” During speeches, sermons and even television talk show appearances, he would regularly and dramatically rip open his shirt and show the scar that still coursed across his magnificently rippled chest.

  It was a routine that was a guaranteed crowd killer. Men wept. Women swooned. And I had it on good information that it was more than a rumor that more than a few women, after recovering from their swoon, would be sure that the Right Reverend Holloway got a phone number and an appropriate invitation to “ease the pain” (another surefire line that he regularly used in his speeches). Quincy Holloway had had his pain eased all over the world.

  And then one day, about ten years after the death of Dr. King, Time Magazine printed a story, complete with hotel receipts, which proved that on April 4, 1968, Quincy Holloway was in Monterey, California, comfortably lodged at the Seven Gables Inn as the very private guest of the notoriously wild and sexy toy industry heiress, Rachel Steinberg.

  Most people would have been destroyed and obliterated. Most people would have been erased from the consciousness of the public for all time, except as the object of ridicule and scorn. Most people with a shred of decency or an ounce of self-respect would simply never show their face in public again.

  But Quincy Holloway was never like most people. And that explains why Quincy Holloway “kept on keeping on,” to borrow one of his pet phrases. I must admit he deserves some perverse credit for his ludicrous tenacity in the face of absolute adversity. Time Magazine simply did not understand the nature of their prey and the hunter wound up being captured by the game.

  First, Holloway denounced Time as being party to a racist plot. Then he tried to organize a nationwide boycott of the publication as punishment for its daring to doubt his veracity as well as its mortal sin of casting aspersions on his credibility.

  Then, demonstrating an almost supernatural, gravity-defying ability to confound his tormentors, he called a press conference and tearfully admitted that indeed he was in Monterey on that fateful day. He also “admitted” that the shock and trauma of Martin Luther King’s death had so profoundly affected and disturbed “his very soul” that in wishing that he could have been in Memphis he believed that he had been in Memphis.

  Amazingly, he managed to trot out two nationally renowned black psychiatrists who confirmed that his story was a classic manifestation of a phenomenon known as “Black Grief.” The scar was simply explained as an extraordinary psychosomatic reaction to trauma akin to the stigmata that some Catholics manifest on their bodies when visiting Lourdes or other holy sites. Clearly, all things were possible for Quincy Holloway.

  Even some of the most cynical members of the press bought this story. Actually, most black reporters covering this story could barely keep a straight face when Reverend Holloway stood before the cameras with this myth. However, some white writers relied upon the supposition that the mystique and unknowable mystery of black Americans could conceivably include the heretofore unknown malady of “black grief.”

  Holloway proved once more that, if you are going to tell a lie, make sure to tell a BIG lie. Many people liked his new and improved story better than the original one. From the day of his “confession,” Quincy Holloway was bigger than ever. And that’s not all.

  A few years later, a U.S. Army Ranger on a training mission off the coast of Brazil became disoriented during a parachute jump and landed in the middle of the Amazon jungle. After a few days it was learned that the hapless Ranger was being held captive by an aboriginal tribe that had yet to be “discovered” by Western civilization until this hapless pilot in full battle regalia happened upon their ancestral burial grounds. Understandably, the locals took some offense to this intrusion and were preparing to sacrifice the pilot in order to appease their understandably enraged ancestors.

  Up to this point the story was an ordinary twentieth century flight of fantasy. And then the story took on the stuff of which legends are made. The Lost Ranger was black. The Lost Ranger’s mother was black. And the Lost Ranger’s mother was still young and stunningly attractive.

  She was also one of the blessed people of this planet who believed absolutely in whatever it might be that the good Reverend Holloway might say. When it came to Quincy Holloway, she was an impassioned zealot.

  As soon as Reverend Holloway laid his eyes on the gorgeous and distraught mother of the Lost Ranger he knew he had found his new cause. He also sensed that he had found yet another way to ease his pain. After meeting privately with her in his suite at the Waldorf Astoria, he had the mother of the Lost Ranger join him in announcing to the hastily assembled press corps that thrived on Quincy Holloway stories that he would immediately fly to Brazil and negotiate the release of the Lost Ranger.

  For almost a week CBS, CNN, PBS, BET, NBC, and ABC and the entire world held its collective breath waiting for some word, any word, about the Right Reverend, Very Reverend Quincy Holloway. The last verified word about his rescue mission was that he had parachuted into the Amazon jungle armed only with a cellular telephone and an incredible amount of nerve.

  Somehow the cell phone broke during his landing and for one of the few times in the prior twenty years; there was an entire week without any news about Quincy Holloway. This occasioned innumerable prayer vigils and huge crowds staring at phalanxes of television sets in the picture windows of appliance stores throughout the country.

  But time did not stand still for Quincy Holloway. As the facts were revealed much later, Reverend Hol-loway’s parachute was blown off course and he wound up landing at a luxury resort in Salvador, in the Bahia province of Brazil, several hundred miles north of Rio de Janeiro. More importantly, he landed far, far away from the aboriginal tribe that was hostin
g and preparing to roast the Lost Ranger.

  I came to learn from some of my contacts at Ebony and the New York Times that the good reverend not only landed at this luxury resort, but that he rested there for several days. He spent his time having his pain eased and didn’t bother to call anyone, not even the grief-stricken and smitten mother of the Lost Ranger.

  Eventually he commandeered a jeep and headed toward the fringes of the Amazon jungle. That was when, by pure serendipitous accident, he occasioned upon the Lost Ranger on a dusty road. It turned out that the aboriginal tribal leaders decided that their ancestral gods could be appeased with an act of mercy and he had been released over a week earlier, unharmed and none the worse for wear.

  When news of the Quincy Holloway’s “rescue” of the Lost Ranger hit the wires it seemed like the entire planet erupted. The world rejoiced. Once again the Reverend Holloway was a true hero. He was now a hero of epic and mythical proportions.

  He had found the Lost Sheep. He was indeed the Good Shepherd. When the Reverend Holloway announced the Good News at a press conference at JFK Airport, no one had the nerve to question what had really happened. Of course it may have been that Reverend Holloway just never heard any questions on that subject.

  The mother of the Lost Ranger continued to be understandably appreciative. And her gratitude served as a useful explanation of her presence in the hotel room adjoining Reverend Holloway’s as he toured the country on his never-ending speaking tours. For years she could be counted on to be a part of the crowd on any podium where Holloway was speaking, leading the trademark Quincy Holloway chant of “Zoom, Quincy, Zoom!”

  I knew the real Holloway story. Part of how I have been able to get ahead and stay ahead has been by learning the real story, and it is not always an easy task.