by John Ridley
A little hesitation; then Frances traded the money for a kiss on the cheek.
“I love you, Jackie,” she said.
I watched Frances hop a Checker for Williamsburg.
I spent forty minutes underground waiting for the uptown local.
TIME. PLACE. DIDN'T MATTER. New York. The modern age. Didn't matter. Didn't, but maybe it did. Maybe it mattered more. New York City, 1956; eight million people. You are one in eight million. So, maybe the instinct to not be alone, the need for tribalism, mattered more even among the millions, even—especially—in New York. A voice by itself is nothing. A voice timesed and timesed and timesed again is a shout not to be ignored. The city was a collection of tribes trying to be heard. The Chinese had Chinatown pressing right against Little Italy for the Italians. The blacks took Harlem. The Puerto Ricans were left the crumbling west side of Hell's Kitchen. The rich had Park Avenue. The rich had the Upper West Side. They had the Upper Es and Wall Street to work on, and Fifth Avenue and all of Fifty-seventh to shop along. The establishment had established itself all over the borough.
There wasn't much Manhattan left for the rest looking for their tribe: the headstrong, the independent. The not-like-yous. Young, disillusioned America that wasn't buying into suburbia and Father Knows Best, or tail-finned automobiles and Automats and automa-toning on commuter rails—nameless, faceless, soulless—to do the corporate job for the corporate pay somewhere waaaaay down the corporate ladder. They didn't go for duck and cover. They positively didn't think much of Norman Vincent Peale. They did believe television rotted the brain, all commies weren't bad, and if they were, they weren't as bad as Pat Boone stealing from the Negroes. They were the new tribe migrating from all points of Bohemia. They staked their claim south of Fourteenth Street, north of Houston and between Fourth Ave. and the Hudson River. Greenwich Village. Ground zero for the East Coast cultural revolution. The Village cribbed every fresh artist, every new musician, and every cat and kitten who desired to be one. Poets, actors, writers, painters. The Beats. The Beat boys, turtlenecked and goateed. The Beat girls, sporting sloppy Joe sweaters and drainpipes that ran a few inches short of their flat Capezios. The uniform of non-conformity. All in black. Always in black. Black was the color of the middle-class rebellion, an uprising waged by finger snapping to free verse in the cellars, the coffeehouses and jazz joints that choked MacDougal Street. They came to the Village wide-eyed and truly believing that theirs was the poem, or painting, or performance piece that was going to make the status quo sit down, shut up, and take notice. And if not, at the very least maybe they could score some good drugs, have some loose sex, and just generally be hep.
In that scene, in that craaazy scene, Fran and I could pal around stare-free. Down there a black kid and a white Jewish girl were routine. Down there men and men were routine, same with women and women, and men and men who dressed like women, and any other combo you could dream up. Down there everything was cool, so every once in a while down there was where Fran and I would hang in the clubs: The Village Vanguard, Upstairs at the Duplex, The Bitter End, Bon Soir. Dark little dives and slightly upscale cabarets that featured talent both famous and fresh. None featured more of each than The Blue Angel. The Angel it was called. A night at The Angel was a night of digging Eartha Kitt, or Julie Wilson, or the ever-sultry Lena Horne. Nichols and May were around doing their comedy bits. Mort Sahl was breaking in his act, toting a newspaper and V-neck sweater like he was Charlie Harvard. You worked The Angel you had real talent. You worked The Angel you had more than just a dreamer's chance of hitting it big.
I didn't work The Angel.
I felt queer about that joint, felt about it the same as you'd feel about a woman you dug but knew in your heart you could never have. Catching a show there was a harsh reminder of how far away success was, the distance from my seat in the audience to the stage.Nothing in my life ever seemed any farther. And the irony of the agony: As much as I hoped one day The Angel would figure into my future, I never figured doing nothing more than watching a show would kick my life in a whole new direction. But it's when you're not expecting things that you step off a curb and get yourself side-swiped. I got hit hard.
Frances and I were at The Angel catching acts—a few singers, a few comics—me having a good time despite washing each performance down with a straight shot of jealous envy. It was a good way through the show when the emcee stepped to the mike, did a preamble, and brought out the next performer.
She took the stage.
I can say this: I can say at no time in my life previously had I ever seen anyone—anything—so beautiful that they actually caused me pain. Pain from the fear that the desire I instantly felt would never be fulfilled.
She was easily, in my mind, the loveliest woman I'd ever seen: black but light in tone, coffee with cream. An unbroken mile of perfect flesh. Her face and features were smooth and rounded, small and delicate—childlike, which made her wide eyes look all the wider. Just above her lip on the left side was a tiny mole. A beauty mark. It was the only thing about her that even came close to being a blemish.
I can't say what I was feeling when I saw her was love. Still more kid than man, I didn't really know what love was. My mother had showed me some. Grandma Mae. Pop had taught me everything it wasn't. But what this woman made me feel was all brand-new. She was everything my heart had ever dreamed of.
I didn't know her name, hadn't been paying any attention when the emcee'd brought her up. I sat and listened to her set and longed in ignorance. Her voice was high in pitch but rich, stopping way shy of being shrill. In range it was full and captivating, the last sound sailors heard before a Siren lulled them to eternity.
Fran's elbow poking at my ribs got me down off my cloud.
“ Pick up your tongue, buddy.”
I shut my gaping mouth and went back to staring at the woman onstage.
The second she finished her set, I was first up out of my seat clapping like I was trying to slap my hands off my wrists.
As she left the stage she gave a thankful smile to no one in particular, to the audience in general, but I claimed it for my own.
Fran tugged me down into my seat. The emcee took back the mike.
He said, and I listened real careful: “The kitten's a canary. She something, isn't she? Clap the hands, snap the fingers. Thomasina Montgomery!”
I was back up on my feet, back to beating my hands. Yeah. She was something.
OUTSIDE THE BLUE ANGEL, outside the entrance. I was waiting. It was getting late. I was getting tired. I didn't care. I was waiting for Thomasina, and I would keep on waiting even if the end of time rolled around before she came out of the club. Fran, trouper that she was, kept watch with me though we'd been standing out in the getting-cooler-by-the-minute air for a good long while. I would've thought that we'd missed her, that Thomasina might've already left and headed home, but the instant she quit the stage I paid up and dragged Fran outside just so there was no chance of her getting by me.
Unless … was there a back way out of The Blue Angel?
“What are you going to say to her?” Frances yelled over to me. She stood a little ways away, giving me all the space I'd need to try whatever I was going to try with Thomasina … Miss Montgomery….
“I'm going to … I'll tell her … I've got a line for her.”
“A line?” Fran found that funny. “Okay, Mr. Poitier, you give her a line.”
Truth is I didn't know what to say. I wanted to sound cool, not cuckoo. Complimentary, not off the cob. But what do you say to a woman who's probably been tossed lines by every Charlie who'd ever caught her act, every guy who's seen her walking down the street? In my head I tested all my best bits: Excuse me, miss. I'm a little offended, were you going to pass right by me without even flirting a little? Are your feet tired, darlin', 'cause you've been running through my mind. Your mama must've been a bee, 'cause you've got a voice like honey.
Your mama must've been a bee … ? Oh, that's good. I wouldn't
even talk to myself after hearing that. How about I really get her to think I'm a joker? How about: Your daddy must've been a camel 'cause I love your humps.
The door opened.
She walked out.
Her good looks got multiplied at short range. She was younger looking, too. A lot. Eighteen if a day.
I started to say hello to her. She looked in my direction and I got caught up in those doe eyes. All my lines got aborted down to “Hi.”
“Hello,” she said. One word riding that soft, high voice of hers. One word. In an instant I heard it over and over a thousand sweet times. After that I was no good for anything but standing where I was and watching the girl hail a cab, get in, and be gone from my life.
Gradually Fran's voice started to reach me—a light working its way through the all-encompassing shroud of Thomasina.
“You didn't do anything,” Fran said.
“What do you mean I didn't—”
“You didn't do anything, that's what I mean. Except for standing there and looking goofy, you did nothing.”
“I said hello.”
“You said hi, and soft as you did I'd have figured you were trying to keep it a secret.” A big, bright smile. Frances was having the time of her life.
“I'm moving slow.” I tried to make it seem me letting Thomasina disappear into the city was all part of some genius plan. “I'm not trying to scare the girl off, you know? Let her get familiar with me first. Take things gradual.”
“You take things any more gradually, you'll get in your first date around nineteen seventy-five.”
“That's not funny.”
“I just hope you're still young enough to give her a show, and I'm not talking about your comedy act.”
Sarcastic: “You're a good friend, Fran. Really. You really are.”
She took me by the arm. “C'mon, Sidney,” pulling me toward one of the endless number of Village coffeehouses, “let's go float your hopes in some Joe.”
As we walked I looked back up the avenue and made a promise to the vanished taxicab: One day I would be with her. One day I would be famous and successful, and I would be with Thomasina.
“YOU'VE GOT PERSONALITY, you know how to tell a joke … You've got talent.”
SID WASN'T A SHORT MAN, but being five foot six didn't qualify him as tall. He was hunched slightly, lacking a good amount of hair, had glasses that didn't seem to help his vision, and he didn't look his age—which is to say you couldn't figure if he was older or younger than he appeared. What Sid Kindler also didn't look like was the guy who'd help yank me out of the Fourteenth Street Theater and set me on the road to becoming one of the most popular young black comedians—one of the most popular comics, period—at the close of the 1950s.
First time I met Sid he was hanging around backstage at the theater. Saw him. Didn't give him much thought. There were always people hanging around backstage—other acts, friends of other acts, friends of the house who got snuck in so they could get a better look at the strippers as they came bouncing offstage. I was sitting on a stool in a corner, slightly turned toward the wall—back to the circus of people around me so I could run through my set. Regulars in the theater knew when an act was rehearsing; they faced a wall or a mirror, body gestures got exaggerated, and their lips moved but in silence. And when an act was trying to get themselves together, you left them alone. Everyone left me alone. Sid was the exception. He circled around me, swimming a bit closer with each sweep, giving me a good looking-over same as you'd give a museum piece you dug but didn't quite get. Finally he stopped and stood and stared. Not knowing who he was, not feeling like talking, I let him have his gawk. He took it. Going on a couple of minutes, he took it until, a fly doing a slow crawl over my flesh, he became unignorable.
“Is there something you wanted?” I asked but not too harshly. He was working on my last good nerve, but he was a white man working on my last good nerve. My black self had been conditioned to offer white people, in all circumstance, every nicety.
“You talk too fast.”
I started again, slower: “Is there something—”
Shaking his head: “Onstage. You've gotten in this habit of talking fast, racing through your routine to get to the next joke 'cause you're not getting a laugh. Half the reason you're not getting a laugh is 'cause you're talking too fast for the schmucks out there to hear what you're saying.”
What struck me out of all that, beside the immediate sense that he, whoever he was, was right, I had been rushing my act, was something he'd thrown into the mix but thrown in casually. He'd said I'd gotten in the habit. He'd said it like he'd caught my act before. Not once or twice, but a bunch of times. He said it like he'd been studying me.
He said: “And you change up your routine when it's not working, throw out one of your closers. But then you got nowhere to go, no jokes to top it with. That's why it's called a closer; you close with it. Changing up might buy you a quick chuckle, but it won't help much in the long run.”
“Anything else?” I was sarcastic with that.
He missed it. “A couple of new bits wouldn't kill you. A couple of new bits that aren't somebody else's. That thing about going shopping with your girl, holding her purse while she's looking around—heard that on Steve Allen three weeks ago.”
“I know. I wasn't … I borrow jokes sometimes. It's only … when the act is a little slow.”
“It's a crutch is what it is, okay for when you're first starting out. How long you been doing stand-up?”
“A year. A little more.”
“Too long to be doing other comics' bits. You've got to have your own jokes, your own voice. You do if you ever want to get out of here.” To that he added humbly: “Hope you don't mind …”
“No.” A lie. His comments were needles no matter they were on the mark. Maybe more so because of it. The fact that I was still at the Fourteenth Street Theater told me loud and clear my act had problems. I didn't need to hear it from some Charlie off the street. But he wasn't poking me to poke me. He was laying things out to be helpful, not harsh—your favorite uncle giving you tips with your Little League swing. You couldn't hardly get hot about that.
He stuck out his hand. “Sid Kindler.”
“Jackie Mann,” though I was pretty sure he knew exactly who I was. We shook. Forget how he looked, Sid had just about the most solid grip I'd felt since I was at that logging camp.
Without at all working his way into things: “You have any representation?”
“Representation? You mean like an agent?”
“Agent. Manager.”
“There was a guy once I paid twenty bucks up front to rep me.”
“Did he get you anything?”
“He got my twenty bucks.”
A bit of a smile, then: “I'd only take ten percent, and that's after I start getting you work.”
“Thought there was so much wrong with my act.”
“You've got minuses, but you've got pluses. You're a good-looking kid, comfortable onstage … sorta.”
“I'm well spoken,” I said with a beam of a smile. My one honed skill. I was excited to offer it up as a sales pitch.
Sid shrugged, about as impressed by that as if I'd said I'd mastered the art of making ice cubes. Getting back to what he'd seen of my act: “You've got personality, you know how to tell a joke … You've got talent.”
In all the times I'd been trying to get laughs, from when I was a kid in school until my Fourteenth Street days, no one had ever once told me that: You have talent. Somebody might've said I was funny, or good with bits, but so's the office drunk at the company Christmas party. I'd always thought I was talented. Told myself I was. But when you're the only one saying so—especially when you're the only person saying so after you've just finished a set for six bodies at the crack of dawn—you have a way of sounding like Charlie Denial trying to make yourself believe the not-true. For the first time it wasn't just me trying to convince myself of things. With those couple of words, “you ha
ve talent,” I wasn't alone in my belief anymore. At the very least, I wasn't alone in my delusion.
“Listen, Jackie, I handle some acts, nobody too big. Nobody big at all to be honest. But I think … I can do something with you. Definitely get you some road work, get you time on some real stages. And when you're ready, I've got a few favors I could call in, a couple of city rooms that'll give you a look. When you're ready,” Sid stressed. “You don't have to say anything now, but give it some th—”
“Yes!” What was there to think about? Go with Sid, or go with another of the hundreds of agents who never came my way? “Yes, sir. I'd be honored to work with you.”
“Honored's a little thick, but I'll take the yes.”
From his pocket a business card got produced and handed over. Nothing special about the card. Nothing fancy. Flat black lettering giving Sid's name and office address. Just a card. To this day, yellowed, worn, I still have that card.
Sid said: “Come around tomorrow and we'll talk about things. After ten and before five and not between noon and one. Thanks, Jackie.”
He was thanking me?
Sid got going for the stage door.
As he started away I got a hinky feeling that shoved aside all my excitement as if Sid was the last lifeboat on a sinking ship and he was about to sail off, leaving the unlucky to drown. A little bit of boldness crept into my stomach.
Boldness.
I barely knew what to do with the feeling other than make sure Sid didn't take another step.
“Mr. Kindler,” I called at him.
He stopped, turned back.
“Could you wait one second, sir?”
“Wait for—”
“Just one second. Please.”
A stripper came offstage, clothes bundled in her arms. The path she took to the dressing rooms swept her right past Sid. He gave her no notice.
“All right.”
I juked my way around backstage, running an obstacle course of milling acts and half-naked women, my head jerking around looking … looking … looking for … “Fran!” Like I'd been doing with my jokes, she was in a corner, singing quietly to herself. “C'mon.”
