A Conversation with the Mann

by John Ridley

  Barely over my own wailing, I could make out the sound of metal scraping metal. A knife opening. The touch of it to my groin I felt through my entire body—the blade cold and hot at the same time.

  I was in Florida. I could smell the humid air. I could feel the weathered wood of the gas-station wall trading its splinters for my blood.

  “I'm going to give you a choice. Jackie? Jackie, you listening to me!” A couple of slaps to the face to catch my focus. “You got a choice. I can either cut off your little black balls …”

  The tip of the blade slid over my testicles.

  “Or I can chop off your big coon dick. I take your balls, you're the last nigger in your family, but at least you can fuck. I lob off your dick—”

  “Please …”

  “I cut your dick off, no more catting around when you're T-Birded, but maybe they can get some juice out and you can have a kid one day. It's up to you, Jackie.”

  “Please don't. Don't le—”

  “Which is it going to be?”

  “I'll do anything.”

  My slobbering only made him more insistent: “Dick, or balls? Dick—or—balls?” The blade shifted between the two.

  I couldn't think. I could even begin to rationalize if one option was better than the other. Except for crying, I was useless. “I … mu-my …”

  “Which?”

  “Don't …”

  “Dick, or—”

  “Please don't!”

  “Which?”

  “I …”

  “Which?”

  I puked.

  “Which!”

  “My …”

  “Goddamm it, pick one, or I swear to God I'll cut 'em both!”

  “My balls!Oh, fuck, my balls”—slobbering and pathetic—” take them … take my …”

  I made myself ready, if there was such a thing, for the violence that was an instant away.

  The instant never came.

  I felt the knife move not into me but away from my body.

  Dom unhanded me.

  With nothing else holding me up, I took to the ground.

  “Can you hear me, Jackie?” Neely. Close. Whispering into my ear.

  I sniveled a yes.

  “You've got till morning, okay? I don't care who she is, I don't care where you find her, but you've got till morning to get yourself some little black monkey to marry, or I take your cock, your balls, and that's just for starters.”

  Neely didn't say any of that with anger or hate. He said it very calm, very cool, very matter-of-fact, and that made what he said all the more frightening.

  He stood up from me, but I could still hear him clearly. “It's Harry's town, Jackie. He built it. And in Harry's town, niggers don't fuck white women. Not the white women he owns.”

  Dom started to pick me up, but Neely stopped him with “Leave him. Let him walk back. Maybe he'll find a jig along the way to make a Mrs.”

  From the ground my bleary eyes watched an odd-angled Dom and Neely get in the Lincoln and then the Lincoln drive away.

  From the ground my bleary eyes looked up. The sign said: HOLLYWOOD.

  I LAY IN THE EARTH, in the dirt, my pants at my ankles but fully dressed in humiliation. I had been raped. My manhood, uncut, had been carved from me. I was a shameful sight. I was ashamed. I lay and I cried.

  When I was tearless, I got up, fastened my pants around me the best I could, and began a shuffle from the hills, my body stooped as if clenched around the lingering force of Neely's blow.

  Forty minutes worth of time got me to Franklin in Los Feliz. Traffic—cars and pedestrians—all passed me without thought. Torn clothes, dirt-caked, I was a bum.

  Worse.

  I was a black bum, and bum that I was, I decided I needed some gas in order to complete the next leg of my journey. Booze had been good to me the last time I'd been threatened. I'd give it a chance to be good again.

  I found a liquor store, the shopkeeper's face saying “you disgust me” all the while he was selling me my drink. The alcohol messed me up more and did nothing to even me out. Fear was an inhibitor. The phantom pain in my groin could not be drowned. Not by the first bottle. Not by bottle numero dos.

  More walking. A drunken sway along Hollywood Boulevard, south to Sunset.

  I must have been a sight by the time I somehow managed myself back to the Colonial. Rank, sweaty, drunk, and smelly. I must have been something like the missing link. A semblance of humanity but one step removed. I wanted only to hide in my room and welcome the new day by avoiding it. I felt my pocket for my room key. It wasn't there. Lost, probably, to the ground below the Hollywood sign. I could've just gone to the front desk, gotten a new key.

  Could've.

  But drunk from booze and a beating, I chose to have myself a little breakdown instead. I found a hidden chair in the back of the lobby and returned to my new pastime of bawling like a girl. I sat there in my own filthiness, my own foulness, in a dark corner that my own ego and lust had shoved me into: get married, or die. Where I was was a cell, and the feeling of being trapped with the walls closing in made me bawl all the harder.

  Hands.

  Hands on me. Gentle, loving black hands caressing me, holding me. And a voice as sweet and kind as the touch that went with it.

  Doary. Dear, beautiful Doary. Kind, beautiful Doary. I never realized how beautiful. Her forgiving eyes. Her spun-silk skin. Her mouth, her kissable mouth … Doary, always with the sympathetic word no matter how late the hour, no matter I gave her the brushoff time and again. Doary. I never realized … I never … I loved Doary. It wasn't just the drink working me. In her touch, in her grasp, there was an affection and longing—a matching loneliness of a girl who toiled so close to success and excess, fame, and the love of the masses but always denied love herself—that the lonely boy, still very much a part of me, could not reject.

  I took Doary in my arms, pulled her close, told her: “Doary, I love you.”

  She demurred, but I didn't allow her to protest. I kissed her quiet, I told her again and again how I needed her, how I had to be with her. I told her again “I love you.”

  Maybe she said something about me being a wreck, being drunk. I talked her past that. I convinced her of the absolute—we were meant to be together. We had to be together.

  Probably Doary was the one who drove us to Vegas. My state wouldn't've gotten us out of L.A. alive.

  Definitely what happened shouldn't have happened, but I kept myself drunk to get us a five-dollar license and a ten-dollar hitching.

  Maybe I'd stayed liquored so I could say it wasn't the fear of threat that drove me to a wedding. A mistake of a wedding, yeah, but a mistake I'd made without the help of a knife to my balls. I had to believe I was still my own man. My ego needed to claim at least that. However it was, the deed was done. Miss Doary White had become Mrs. Doary Mann. And that was the punch line: When it was all over, I'd still married a White girl.

  I CALLED TAMMI. By the time I'd figured out what I could possibly tell her, word was already on the street about my marriage, Harry's goons, no doubt, making sure that everyone knew the rumors of his starlet and Jackie Mann were just that.

  Tammi, probably expecting me, didn't pick up the phone. Not the fifth time I called, not the fifteenth or the twenty-eighth. I called over to Motown, asked for her. I got Lamont Pearl.

  “Let me talk to Tammi,” I barked at him.

  “I don't think—”

  “What you think don't matter. Is she there?”

  “It's not a—”

  “Is she there!”

  “Yes, she's he—”

  “Put her on the phone!”

  “Why? Why, Jackie? What are you going to tell her, huh? What the hell can you possibly say to her now?” With his voice, Lamont rode me calm. I swear, over the phone line, I could hear his thumb slipping across his fingers.

  Weakly, I came back with “The truth.”

  “The truth, a pack of lies; does it matter? Does it change anythi
ng? You're married. You married a chambermaid spur of the moment after holding off Tammi for years. You can't soften that blow after it's already been thrown.”

  No. No, I couldn't. And would the truth have been any kinder— I had to marry Doary because I was about to get sliced for having an affair with Liliah?

  “Just leave it alone,” Lamont told me. “If you ever cared about the girl, then just leave it alone.”

  Right then it sunk very deep into me that I was losing Tammi. Tammi was lost to me. I don't know what we even were to each other. Boyfriend and girlfriend, yes, but I don't know what we gave to each other as different as we were. Opposites attract. But opposites also fight and bicker and can't see eye to eye, can't so much as agree on whether it's pardy cloudy or mostly sunny. So, I don't know what it is that we brought to each other, but what Tammi took from me now that I was losing her was immense: a sense of purpose and a reason for being. She took with her the all that was decent in my life and left a space in me—a torn-out, wanting, needing, hurting hole, a self-inflicted wound—that would never conform itself to any other thing.

  I asked of Lamont: “Would … Tell her that … Would you tell her—”

  “No.”

  I NEVER TRIED TO CALL LILIAH. I was afraid. Not that she would be upset. I was terrified that she, in her disinterested way, wouldn't care that I was married. She would want to see me, I wouldn't be able to refuse her, and then my hunger would be paid for with a hillside castration. Rather than tempt that fate, I let myself just suddenly be out of her life.

  In reality, she most likely never even noticed I was gone.

  And then there was Doary. Doary, who probably had it worse than Tammi or Liliah. Doary was stuck with me. We made a go of things for a while, eight months or so, but there was no way it would stick. I think from the night we married, Doary knew I didn't love her. For whatever reason, she cared enough about me she was willing to take a gamble I'd learn to love her. What she got was me on the road every week so that every week I could avoid her—Doary, in my mind, having come to represent that which separated me from Tammi. I was never abusive to her, unless you count cold stares and distant silence. And I would never ask her for a divorce. No, not nice-guy Jackie Mann. I just drove her to beg one from me.

  I gave her money.

  She took less than I offered.

  What I think she wanted, what she hoped to get out of the whole pantomime, she wanted a baby. Something to call her own. Some sign of love in an otherwise loveless and perfunctory affair. She didn't get that, and as far as I know, she never remarried.

  Jack the Lady-killer, they should call me. Three with one blow.

  There was this one time I'd gone out to dinner with Sid. We were eating pasta. The waiter came 'round, asked if I'd like Parmesan cheese or ground pepper.

  I asked for the pepper.

  The waiter, not hearing me, put the cheese on my food.

  I didn't say anything about it, just let him put on the cheese and go.

  Sid gave a laugh. “What was that? Why didn't you say something? You didn't get what you wanted, you got what you didn't ask for.”

  Yeah.

  part VII

  No one thing changes everything else. No one person, no single occurrence alone makes for a world of difference. Black people didn't get civil rights just because Emmett Till was killed, or just because of the sit-ins and schoolkids in Little Rock. We didn't get out of Vietnam just because one soldier was killed or because one offensive went bad for our side.

  Things change because they're building for a change, because a momentum of events takes them to a place of no going back. Change is without emotion and sentimentality. It doesn't care what else you've got planned. It works on its own schedule.

  It's that way with history.

  That way with people, too.

  Want to kick your bad habits? A New Year's resolution might last you a couple of weeks, but it's when it builds up to it that real change happens.

  From where I am now, I don't look on any one thing in my life—my mother dying, my father whooping me, Fran, Tammi, or Liliah; the people who were close to me, Frank and Sammy; the giants in my life—I don't look on any one of those influences and say, yeah, that's why I did what I did.

  I did what I did because of every moment of every day that I lived, I did what I did because that's where my life took me.

  January of 1962 to June of 1963

  Philly, Kansas City, Chicago was good for two weeks. Up to Milwaukee, over to Kansas City, Kansas, this time …

  We were in Sid's office. We were going over my schedule.

  St. Louis, Seattle, San Diego—

  “Jesus, Sid.”

  “What? You don't want … ? San Diego's going to be good. It's this resort kind of—”

  “It's not San Diego. It's all of it.”

  For a second Sid didn't say anything, not quite digging my problem. By way of trying to figure it out, like groping in the dark, he offered: “You're headlining almost every club. And for top dollar. You've got room, meals … travel.”

  “Yeah, I know. I've got all that, headlining every club, meals at every club … I'm still working clubs.”

  Sid sort of laughed a little, probably hoping it would lighten the mood. “Best clubs in the country.”

  “Clubs, Sid. Smoked-up dinner rooms trying to buy laughs between the salad and the steak.”

  “And most times getting nearly a thousand a stand for it.” Sid was defensive with that. He caught himself, brought back the laugh, and added a smile. “You're all week at the Copa. Wasn't that long ago there was a kid who would've done anything for a grand at a joint like that.”

  “And it was too long ago I was opening for The Summit in Vegas. I'm back to clubs, Sid. I'm not going forward, I'm moving back.”

  The smile dropped from Sid. This time it stayed off. “What do you want, Jackie?”

  “If you've got to ask me what I want after all this time, that's not a good—”

  “Jackie, what do you want?”

  “Sullivan. You know I want Sullivan.”

  “And you don't think I'm working on that? In the meantime you're not hurting yourself any getting to be a better and better act. When you're ready—”

  “I've opened for Frank, for Sammy, for Dino, Tony, Mel, Buddy G. … How much more ready do I have to be?” Again, it was my voice, but it was Chet Rosen doing the talking.

  “I'm doing everything I can. It's not easy like you think.”

  “You got Fran on. You got her on a good long time ago”

  “She's different. You can't compare yourself to Fran.”

  “Why? Because she's white, and I'm Negro?”

  That threw Sid, truth or not, me bringing up race with him. Easing on: “It doesn't make things any simpler. And you sure didn't make fans at CBS, what happened with Fran's show.”

  Fran's show? Very nasty words nearly came hacking out of my mouth. Words about drunk Sid being on a bender when he should have been clean and dry and fighting my fights for me. But they were words that would hurt; and hurt Sid … ? Even in a hot moment they were words I could not bring myself to say. I bit them hard, gulped them whole. Instead, redirecting: “So it's all on me? It's my fault?”

  “No, Jackie, it's my fault. Same as always. Whatever I land, it's never big enough. Whatever I get isn't good enough. I'm as tired of hearing it as you are of …” Sid held up right there. He'd been rushing toward the edge of a cliff but managed to make a hard, clean stop.

  Outside the office, in the surrounding city, the people, the traffic, the noise of it all, was mostly beaten down by the sound of the labored, angry breathing that came from the two of us.

  Sid looked down at his hands. They clutched at his desk. He stared at them … stared at them … then looked up full of disbelief that he could have reached such a pitch with me, that the two of us could ever come to angry words with each other.

  He said haltingly, trying to find his verbal footing: “I guess I
need to try harder.”

  A feeling came and passed inside me very quickly, remaining just long enough for me to recognize: disappointment. For a very real moment I wanted Sid to toss my words in my face and then I wanted him to throw the bundle of us out the door.

  I wanted Sullivan, and I knew that Sid wasn't the man to get it for me. But the same as with Doary, I couldn't be the one to put him out of my life. The best I could do was try and get him to do the split for me. That weak maneuver I was well practiced in. But with Sid, my pushing didn't take. He was too much of a friend, and I was too much of a coward to do anything else but say, “So, you think San Diego's going to be good?”

  THE BRONX OF DETENTION. House. House was a funny thing to call it. A jail is what it was. A lockup for people awaiting trial. Not a homey thing about the joint, but … The Bronx House of Detention. The building was about as old as me, but it wore every year that had passed since its construction. The paint was faded where it wasn't chipped away altogether. Cracks raced each other along the plaster walls. The furniture in the waiting area was wood and cheap, and the chairs creaked in recognition of each and every shift of body weight. The tiles were broken, water leaked, there was a general mustiness from the lack of open windows and the warehoused men who sweat and stank together. The house lacked care. Of course it did. Four hundred ninety-six men locked up for one reason or another. Who cared about them? Maybe the few people who sat with me, marking time waiting for a husband or father or brother or lover to get cut loose for a few weeks before they went on trial, or a few months until they got pinched again and tossed back behind bars.

  A lock got thrown on a heavy steel door and it squealed away from its frame. Li'l Mo, Morris, stepped through. He was getting out of jail.

  “Goddamn it!” He wasn't happy about it. He took one look at me and got as hotheaded as a man could. “Goddamn it!”

  “Mo—”

  “You did this,” he accused.

  “Morris—”

  “You did this to me!”

  “Posted your bail? Yeah, I did that.”