Flyy Girl
Page 43
“So where do you live out there?” I asked her. I almost forgot about my poetry reading.
“Carson. It’s right next to Compton, and right above Long Beach.”
“So you’re right in the midst of the music makers.”
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you something else too. All that crazy stuff they talk about in their music, they’re not even lying. Some of these people out here are downright foul, and they use the N-word, the MF-word and B-word in regular conversation.
“On the East Coast, at least we know when to change it up,” she said. “Well, they don’t change anything out here, and then they want to complain about a lack of jobs. Well, who wants to hire you walking around with plaits in your hair, your pants hanging down, underwear showing, no education, and a filthy mouth with no shame to it?”
I didn’t realize that Kendra was so fiery. I didn’t know what else to say, but I realized that I was running late.
“So, when are you planning to come out here?” she asked me, right on cue. I had to go.
“I guess in mid July or early August,” I told her. “I still have to buy plane tickets. Will you still be there this summer?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here. I have plane tickets to fly home to Baltimore next week. I’ll spend the last week of June back at home, and fly right back out to LAX. The weather and the terrain is beautiful out here. Wait until you see it.
“We didn’t have any palm trees in Baltimore,” she joked.
I told her that I was running late for my poetry reading and got her number.
“Yeah, you did write poetry,” she remembered. “You think you might want to write screenplays or something out here? I have connections if you do. I know a woman who works with the screenwriters guild.”
Man, talk about things moving fast! I began to wonder what took me so long to try that big move to the West Coast myself.
“Well, we’ll sit down and talk about all of that when I get out there,” I promised her.
I left for my poetry reading with the biggest head in the word. I just knew that I would put my thing down once I got out to California. I was cruising in my black Toyota Camry on Lincoln Drive and heading toward downtown on air. You couldn’t tell me anything!
When I arrived at the Philadelphia Arts Bank Cafe on Broad Street, I was still smiling. It was a typical cafe with tables, chairs, coffee, tea, and pastries that opened up for nighttime events with a small front area that they used as a performance stage. You could look right inside from the busy traffic on Broad Street.
Lil’ Lez’ said, “Damn, Tracy, was it that good?” She was referring to sex. Leslie Pina, a half-pint of a sister with the cute looks that made guys love to call her their shorty, could sound as horny as three women. When she wasn’t doing a poetic rap thing, she usually wrote about love and fucking, and not necessarily in that order.
I said, “This has nothing to do with sex. I’m just feeling good tonight.”
She smiled at me and asked, “Are you sure?”
I just shook my head at her and grinned. I found a table with an open chair, which was hard to do, because the place was packed that night. I took a seat right as Stephanie Renee was taking the stage, a poet/performer/ writer/singer/actor/events coordinator and publisher of a newsletter called Creative Child.
Stephanie’s style was part everything, like mine. Humor. Frankness. Love. Community. Dialogue. Human politics. Theatrical, and many times she was very spiritual. Her poems were much more spiritual than mine. She could sing too. I couldn’t hold a note to save my life.
I sat there and listened to Stephanie do her thing, and my smile faded away. I thought, What makes my writing any better than hers? Stephanie had more range, more performance experience, and had been pushing her creativity for years, but she was more or less local. I wanted to be bigger than that with everything that I did.
Next up was Jill Scott. Jill could be as sexual as Lil’ Lez’ sometimes, but Jill’s shit got raw and real deep on you. In fact, if I had to pick one sister to represent in a national poetry contest from Philly, Jill Scott would be very hard to deny. She cleared your ears and mind out whenever she performed, and filled you back up from head to toe with whatever the hell she was talking about. However, her style could be mundane, because you already knew what you would get with her.
I sat there and listened to everyone’s poetry before I did my three pieces. I didn’t even feel like reading them anymore. Everyone there would have loved to take their art to the next level, and I was sure that screenwriting and acting would have ten times as many talented and driven people out in California.
I did my first two pieces with little energy, then I introduced my new poem.
“I just wrote this one on Monday, but this is how I’ve been feeling lately, because I realize that all of us would love to shine on a major stage one day. I mean, that’s just the American way. Chase your dream, right?
“Anyway, here it is:
“Recognition: I had a big date yesterday/with King Kong / on top of the World Trade Center. / Helicopters swung in, / news cameras taped it, / and reporters took notes with flashing light bulbs / all around me.
“But my King Kong got pissed off, y’all, / with all of the noisy cock blockers. / So somebody shot him. / And he fell waaay/down. / BOOM!
“Then I cried / while the whole world watched me / in silence. / But when I awoke, / I realized that my King Kong / was only a little brown Teddy Bear / that my momma gave me. / And nobody knew me. / Even worse, / nobody cared / to know.”
Simply put, my poem was a short fuse that night that fizzled into nothing. At first the audience just sat there, as if they were waiting for more. I received a slow and steady applause, but they were clapping just to send me the hell off of the stage. I could tell. I guess “Recognition” was too short and melodramatic for them, and I didn’t really care what they thought because poems serve as references to your life, and they are meaningful whether an audience is into it or not.
A silly-ass brother then decided to be a comedian.
“I wanna know you!” he yelled at me as I walked off from the stage.
Lil’ Lez’ spoke to me again before I left that night.
She said, “I felt you, Tracy. That shit was real. We all feel that way sometimes. I know I do. Some people just don’t want to admit it. And that’s why they didn’t get it. It went right over their heads.”
$ $ $
I left Broad Street in my car, and was disappointed. I had to pump myself up as I drove back home close to midnight.
“I can do this shit!” I yelled. “Just put my mind to it like my girl Raheema said. She knows I can do it, and she’s smart. She’s the smartest person I know. And she’s right too. I’m the most driven person that she knows. I can do anything I put my mind to.”
I found myself cutting down everyone else while pumping up myself. I was taller than her, prettier than her, better than him, smarter than her, and I was going to show them all that I was the shit!
“You just wait,” I told myself.
Another bag of sugar filled up my veins. I was hyped again, and I had no idea how I would fall asleep that night before my last day as a teacher at East Germantown Middle School. I just had too many battles going on in my mind that night, but there was one thing that I did know.
I screamed, “HOLLYWOOD, HERE I FUCKIN’ COME!”
I was still defiant, just like I was when I was a teenager.
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SCRIBNER PAPERBACK FICTION
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993, 1996 by Omar Tyree
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Excerpt reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from For the Love of Money by Omar Tyree. Copyright © 2000 by Omar Tyree
First Scribner Paperback Fiction edition 1997
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ISBN-10: 0-7432-1974-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1974-7