Even sitting perfectly still in the family room with a cold one within hand’s reach, and the TV blasting ESPN at its usual comfort volume, his mind still raced.  Rick had that effect on him, dating back to when they played together.

“Well, tell her I need her to play the gig.  She has to be there, OK?”

“Why wouldn’t she be there, Rick?”

“You tell me.  She’s changed.  She’s sullen and just isn’t with it like she used to be.”

“Have you asked her why?”

He heard Rick’s patented petulant sigh clear over the phone, even with it cupped against his ear while closing his stuffed briefcase.  In the old days, that meant the start of an argument or a full-on fight.  This time it meant that he didn’t want to take the time to explain the problem, “just fix it, alright?  Make it better.”  That’s what he was really saying, beneath the repeated sighs and stuttered words.  He was a hell of a musician, despite his hang-ups, but still Lionel didn’t understand why the school put up with him.  There had to be other, more qualified folks they could hire.

“Look, Rick, you know you don’t use her as much as you should,” Lionel finally said, exasperated.  “Maybe if you engaged her more, she wouldn’t feel so lackluster.”

Another petulant sigh.

“Alright, look, I know I said she couldn’t play with her friend.  Alright, I admit it, I was the bad guy.  But like I said, the program is filled and it just isn’t fair to the enrolled kids to have someone no longer part of the group taking up stage time.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

“Leticia,” he said as if Lionel should have known.  “She left the group, right?  So she shouldn’t be in the program.  Look, Lionel, just talk to her, alright?  Tell her I’ll make it up to her.  She can solo on one of the pieces we’re playing, alright?  Does that make it better?”

How generous, he thought.

He wanted to sit in the family room and chill, but it wasn’t happening.  His mind couldn’t leave the phone call alone, the way his fingers couldn’t stop twiddling a pencil during a long meeting.  Rick said things he didn’t realize he was saying, but Lionel could hear them loud and clear.

He had to go face the situation, so he went up to Sonja’s room.  She was blowing up a storm.

“Hey,” he said, poking his head in.  The door knocking wasn’t working.  “Sorry to bother you, honey.”

“That’s OK.  Everything alright?”

“Yeah, fine, sweetie.  You sound good.”

“Thanks.”

“You mind if I come in for a sec?”

“No.”

He grabbed the desk chair and swung it around.  She sat on her bed, her sax still hanging from her neck.

“Rick called me.  He said that you don’t want to be in the performance this weekend.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Why not?”

“Because I have another gig I want to play instead,” she said.

“Really?  You didn’t tell me that.”

“I was going to.”

Lionel looked into her face.  She avoided eye contact.

“You won’t get class credit if you miss performances.  What’s this other gig?  Where’s it at?”

“The Cushy Café.”

“Really?  Well that’s all good.  But why are you skipping the school concert to play there?”

“Daddy, you know how Rick is.  The concert isn’t about us.  It’s about him and his boys, and making himself look good.  I’m the only girl left in that band, and he won’t give me anything to do.  I can do so much more, but he won’t give me a chance.  I’m tired of it.  And now I have a chance to play with some folks I really connect musically.  I’d rather do that than waste time in his class.”

“But sweetheart, you won’t get a passing grade in his class if you miss the performance.  Now it’s too late to drop the class, so you have to stick it out for the semester.  You can drop it in the spring if you want, but you have to stick it out.”

“It’s a waste of time!  The only reason he’s afraid of losing me is ‘cause I am the last girl and he know that it looks bad.”

“He told me that you wanted to do a duet with Leticia.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that who you’re playing with at the Cushy Café?”

“Yeah.  She has a group that plays there on Saturdays.  I’ve been rehearsing with them.”

Lionel sat up.  “Well that’s great.  That’s fantastic.  You didn’t tell me all this.  I didn’t realize that you two have been playing together that much.”

So much she wanted to say, but a 405-sized traffic jam clogged her words on their way from her head to her mouth.  And echoes of her father’s cackling laugh made it all the worse.

“Daddy, I have to ask you something,” she finally said.

“Sure, baby, what is it?”

“Daddy, I need to know.  Did you tie the pink ribbon on Mickey’s sax?”

He closed his eyes.  He had hoped they wouldn’t go there, his heart moaned.

“He told you that story?”

“Yes.  I kept asking him about it, ‘cause he has it framed and hanging on his wall.  He keeps it over a picture of his late partner.  And then Leticia told me that he was called the Pink Ribbon Man, so I asked him again and he told me.  Everyone laughed at him when he saw it tied to his horn.  You were part of everyone, so you must have laughed to!”

“Baby, are you alright?”

Her chin trembled.

“I just need to know if you tied it on his sax, Dad.  And did you laugh at him?  I need to know!”

He unclipped her sax and put it aside on the bed.  Then he got on the bed on the other side of her and cradled her with both arms.

“Shhh, I’d alright, baby.  It’s alright.  Daddy loves you, baby.”

Many times when he cradled her as a baby he felt like he was protecting her from all the harms the world had to offer.  His muscles alone would deflect every weapon, every savage leer, every groping hand, every mean word, so that she would not have to endure them.  And he squeezed her tightly, thinking of what was out there, beyond his ability to reach in space or time.  Just hold her tightly, he thought, so that the feeling would carry her for the rest of her days.

The sting of karma coming back to bite him in the ass made him squeeze her tightly again.

“I am not the person I was back then, baby.  Not at all.”

She relaxed in his arms.  The tears stopped flowing.  Senses engaged again.

“Did Mickey talk about his father?”  She nodded against his chest.  “When we played the gig, where he had the bow on his horn, his father sat there in the front row.  Right there,” he pointed, “front row center.  He had his arms folded and he was staring at us, each one of us, one by one.  Then when Mickey played his solo, he closed his eyes.  His head sort of shook a bit, like a vibration.  He was just all the way in the zone.  In fact, Mickey was supposed to play two choruses, and we gave him a third one.  And when he finished, his father opened up his eyes and clapped long and hard for his boy.”  Now Lionel almost felt something, but he choked it back.  “Then he stared at us again, Sonja.  That’s when I knew that he was trying to figure out which one of us had done it.  I think we all felt it.  You could say that it scared us all straight.”  Sonja giggled.  That felt so good to Lionel, to feel her giggle against his chest.  “We never bothered Mickey liked that again.  Never.  Old Man Washington was a force of nature.  You didn’t cross him or his.  That’s the lesson we learned that day.  He let us off easy.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, baby.”  He kissed her on the head and released her.  She sat up.

“Listen, sweetheart.  I’m not going to pressure you about the performance.  You do what you think is best.  But wherever you end up playing this weekend, you know I’ll be there in the front row.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

She kissed him on the cheek.

After patting her on the head, he walked out the room and closed the door.  Sonja put her horn back on and was about to blow again, when she heard something.  She rolled her eyes.

“Come on in, Reggie,” she called out.  The door crept open.

“You and Daddy had a fight?” he asked.

“No, we didn’t have a fight, Mr. Nosy-body.”

“It’s all good?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.

Reggie smiled, too.  “Told you!”  Then he dashed from the door, leaving it ajar.  Sonja smiled, then started blowing again.

~~~

Rick called her name along with all the other soloists, as the crowd clapped, cheered, and whistled.  All the players stood together and accepted the accolades.  But then Sonja booked.  She couldn’t pack up fast enough or get to the door soon enough.  Rick looked at her as she hit the exit.  Their eyes met briefly.  Rick’s almost looked apologetic.  Sonja turned quickly and was out of there.

Her father drove her, her mother, and Reggie up to the Cushy Café.  He let them out at the corner while he went on the hunt for parking.  The first face she saw was Leticia’s.  They exchanged warm glances.  The other members of the band, Audrey, Barry, and Maureen, started to clap.  They gave her a star entrance.

“Go get ‘em!”

She turned and saw Mickey seated comfortably on a sofa.  She gave him a hug.  Her mother and Reggie sat down next to him.

“Alright, ladies and gentlemen,” Leticia called out, “now we have our special guest star, Ms. Sonja Cliff, joining us for the rest of the set, so we’ll let her get all set up and then we’ll continue.”

Leticia wasn’t about tripping.  She wasn’t about guilt or pressure.  “Look,” she said over the phone, “just come straight over, honey-girl.  We’ll have your place all ready for you.”  The absolute last thing she wanted was for Sonja to get a failing grade from Rick the Dick.  “I would not give that man the satisfaction,” she insisted.  Sonja was grateful.

The stage never felt so magical for Sonja nor had it ever been so filled with smiles and good vibes.  She and her comrades exchanges winks and giggles, knowing they were in charge of the world from their cramped stage in the crowded café.  And in front of her on the sofa and comfy chairs sat her whole family and her friend Mickey.

“Alright!” Leticia said.  “We’ll start the next set with an original by our special guest star and it’s called ‘The Pink Ribbon Blues.’”

One last grin, then the blowing began.  She slipped into a long, sassy statement and received much hooting and hollering from the packed house.  Then Leticia joined in with the rhythm section backing them up.   They dragged their blues in sweet harmony, acknowledging the burden and triumph of their triple threat status, and daring everyone to rejoice in it.

Lionel couldn’t stop shaking his head to the treat his ears could taste.  He recognized the tune as one Sonja’s been doodling with for the past couple of weeks.  Mickey nodded his head, with his eyes closed.

Rick appeared in the door, just as Sonja blew her final statement, a solo of runs and honks, her head tilting back and her sax raised high.  Closure brought everyone to their feet and a boisterous crash from Maureen’s drums.

“Sonja Cliff!” Leticia called out proudly.  “Sonja Cliff, ladies and gentlemen!”

Rick saw Mickey next to Lionel, both on their feet.  Mickey whistled through his fingers.  He looked like his father, Old Man Washington.  Rick brought his hands together, too, and clapped for the star of the show, before turning around and leaving again.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

She told her these things on purpose, to see if it really was what it really was, about Leticia, about her and Leticia.  Though in the end, the test was superfluous.  Their meeting eyes and touching hands told her everything she needed to know.  Still, it felt good to be able to talk about Mickey’s life with someone else.

“When you left the band,” Sonja said, “it was like . . . it just became another class, where before it had been fun.”

“Aw, what a sweet thing to say!”

They watched a DVD together that Mickey had lent to her, about women in jazz.  He got it from a friend at Jazz 91 in San Mateo.  Their fingers knitted into each other’s as they sat on Sonja’s bed with the lights off, the black and white picture glowing on their faces and the swinging sounds of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm rocking their ears.

“Do you have any of their stuff?” Sonja asked.

“On 78s, girl, from my great aunt!  She knew one of them.  That one there, playing the baritone.”

“Seriously?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I always wanted to try baritone.”

“You should!  Then we can do ‘Saxhouse.’”

“They’re expensive.  I can’t afford another horn.”

“Oh, just borrow Stan’s.  I could sweet talk him into anything.”

I bet you could, Sonja thought.

Heads touched shoulders.

Sonja clicked with one or two of the guys, but too many of them were Rick clones.  Leticia acted as their equal.  They couldn’t touch her.  And when she was still in class, she put Rick in his place in front of everyone, the worst sin possible.

How quickly Sonja tried to write Leticia out of her life after she left the band.  She told everyone that Leticia disappeared or that she didn’t know how to reach her.  All lies.  They came too easily, the lies.

“That’s you!” Sonja said, pointing to the soloing trumpeter on the screen.

“I do not have hair like that,” Leticia said.

Sonja sucked her teeth.  “But you play like that.”

“Nah.  I wish I played like that.”

“Yes, you do.”

During the last visit, after he told the pink ribbon story, they went out to see the sunset again from Venice Beach.  She watched it as intently as he did, no longer distracted by passersby or wondering why were they there.  Then Mickey said suddenly, as the final limb of the sun ducked beneath the waterline, “A self-imposed lie can out shine the truth and make it disappear.”   She didn’t know exactly what he meant at first, but asked no questions.  Instead, she focused on the colors that lingered as the sun’s glare waned.  In time, she understood.

“Mickey said his father told him that he had a double threat to live with,” Sonja said.  “I guess we have a triple threat.”

“That’s right, sister.  And that’s why we’ve gotta work five times as hard, and make it fierce.”

“Yes,” Sonja said.  She snuggled closer.

~~~

A large, shady tree stood in a patch of grass next to one of the low-rising buildings on the far end of campus.  That’s where they hung out with their horns.  They stood next to each other, against the trunk of the tree, and started blowing.  It took a minute to find each other and the notes they wanted.  After a few tentative moments, they looked into each other’s eyes and went for it:  Lee Morgan’s “The Gigolo” blew hard from both of their horns, sans rhythm section.  Both maintained the harmonies set by Lee and Wayne Shorter.  Then they backed each other up for a few choruses of solos.

As Leticia played, Sonja couldn’t take her eyes off of her.  Her green tank top revealed the muscles in her sexy arms flexing and flowing as she held her trumpet.  And when Sonja soloed, Leticia shouted “yeah, girl!” between the notes of the ride.  When they finished, a group of hands clapped for them.  They had no idea they had attracted such a crowd, so lost they had become in their own playing and each other.  The tree’s shade and the tuffs of grass created an ideal setting for lunch-goers to hang out and listen to the sisters jam.

Sonja’s sax stayed in its case for the length of time it took to get from the shady spot to band class.  She took it out and started fiddling with the mouthpiece unaware that Rick stood right behind her.

“When did you learn ‘Gigolo’?” he asked.

She turned around.  “Oh, you know, I just like to play along with it at home.”

“Nice playing,” he said as he walked away.

Though his stiff body language stood at odds with what he said, Sonja took it as a compliment anyway.  She couldn’t remember the last time he paid much attention to her playing.  But the glow faded as class droned on.  She fell back into her usual supporting role.  How she missed Leticia.  She would have given Rick some lip for ignoring her during class after telling her how nice she played at lunchtime.  Sonja couldn’t think of anything, though.  It wasn’t in her nature.  Instead, she went up to Rick after class to ask a serious question.

“How about letting me and Leticia play at the show together?”

“Why?”

“Because, you said we sounded good.”

“Yeah, but the problem is Leticia isn’t in the band anymore, is she?”

“Mr. Lawson, we’ve had other guys come back for our shows when we needed them.”

“Right, to augment a part we needed.  If you want to do a duet with a trumpet player, we got three others.  Go play with one of them, and then we can talk, alright?  I’m sorry, Sonja.  I know you like Leticia, but the program is full enough as it is.  I can barely fit in the enrolled students.  There’s no need to add someone to the show who’s no longer in the class, is there?”

He always ended with his pronouncements with a question, the final flourish to demonstrate how logical he was and how stupid you were.  Sonja turned her glare from Rick as he walked out of the room to the guys with their trumpets.  She walked over to them.

“Heard you playing with Leticia at lunch,” Michael said.

“Yeah, sounded good,” Leon said.

“Thanks.  Do any of you guys know ‘Gigolo’?”

“Naw,” Leon said, “I don’t do Lee Morgan.”

The conversation steered back towards something else, something else other than music, something else other than Sonja.  She walked back to her case and packed her horn up.  She left the room alone.

To be continued. . .

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

Mr. Mehserle, as you may recall, is the former BART officer who feared Oscar Grant as a big scary black man and shot him at point blank range.  Mr. Grant was in custody, lying flat on the platform floor of the Fruitvale BART station at the time.  Mr. Mehserle claimed that he was reaching for his taser, but grabbed his firearm instead, killing Mr. Grant.  A subsequent trial found Mr. Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter for which he was sentenced to two years in jail.  The is all old history.  Mr. Mehserle is long out of jail, having served only 11 months before being paroled, and is living a subdued life somewhere in Northern California.  At least, until now.

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin has created much reflection and dialog about race, gun laws, vigilantism, and the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, from the police to the courts, to render justice equally and impartially.  These discussions were further informed by reflections of the Rodney King uprising in LA which saw its 20th anniversary recently.  It should not take tragic acts to stimulate reflection, but reflection is always a good thing.

Well, someone isn’t being reflective at all.  Whatever would possess Johannes Mehserle to seek a new trial to throw out his pittance of a conviction?  Well, apparently the ex-cop wants to become an officer again.  Oy. Vey.

Let’s leave aside the whole question of Oscar Grant’s killing and talk about how he responded to it.  Here’s what happened.  On January 6, 2009, six days after the Oscar Grant shooting, Johannes Mehserle was to appear before BART police internal affairs investigators to answer questions about the incident.  Instead, he resigned.  What’s more after he resigned, he made himself very unavailable.  A week later, January 14, he was found and arrested in Nevada, near Lake Tahoe.  His attorney said that he didn’t feel safe in the Bay Area due to death threats and that he went to Tahoe “to clear his mind.”

So rather than face questioning about the shooting, something expected of any police officer involved in a shooting, he fled.  The going got tough, and he got going.  Be seeing you.  Ta-ta.  Does this sound like someone who has the judgement or the temperament to be a police officer? Hell no.  But apparently, he wants to be a police man again and the only way this can happen is if his criminal conviction is overturned.  Such cluelessness beggars the imagination.

It all comes down to an enlarged sense of entitlement.  George Zimmerman shrouded himself with the flag of self-defense.  He believed that his need for self-defense gave him the right to take someone else’s life, no questions asked.  It took a while, but the criminal justice system finally caught up with him, and now he must answer for what he did.  Similarly, Johannes Mehserle believed that he did not have to answer for what he did, having skipped town to avoid appearing before superiors.  And again, it took the criminal justice system to make him answer for what he did.  Nonetheless, his attorney now argues,

“Police officers are fallible,” attorney Dylan Schaffer told the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. “We cannot put them at the risk of prosecution for just making policing errors.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/09/BA2M1OFLI9.DTL#ixzz1ugirHIYn

Police officers have high risk jobs.  Society has also endowed them with many rights to help them do their job, including a license to use deadly force if necessary.  With these rights come a very high level of responsibility, and this is the part Mr. Mehserle and his attorneys seem not to get.  He is not entitled to his job.  He made a mistake and paid, quite frankly, a very small price for it.  He needs to count his blessings and move on.

It would be a sad statement on society if this man is allowed to wear a badge and carry a gun again.  For it would mean that one could perform the job with no accountability and no consequences for poor performance or behavior.  And that would be criminal indeed.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

And shortly thereafter, his words on the subject appeared on Yes on 8 mailers in California, thus memorializing his and then-candidate Senator Obama’s opposition to marriage equality for all time by people they both fundamentally disagreed with.  Neither President Obama nor Vice President Biden were in favor of Proposition 8, even as they both said at the time that they did not believe in “redefining” marriage.

Herein lies the problem with nuance in matters concerning civil rights.  One’s words can come back to bite one in the backside.  History has demonstrated that in the cause of civil rights and equality, one cannot equivocate.  One must be direct and firm, unwavering and steadfast.  Only then will true progress be achieved.  Because true progress requires direct leadership.

During President Obama’s historic interview, where he became the first sitting president to support marriage equality, he stated that his own daughters helped to lead him to his current thinking.  He said that they have friends in school with same-sex parents, and it would never occur to them that those parents would be or should be treated differently from their own.  Good one, Mr. President!  He’s right, of course, as poll after poll has demonstrated.  Young folks find this such a non-issue.  In time, this type of natural evolution is what will bring about change in terms of marriage equality and LGBT rights in general.  The old ideas will simply fade away into the dustbin of history where they belong.

Until that day, though, it is important that those who know that this is a matter of civil rights continue to say so directly, frequently, and unequivocally.  Civil rights are only advanced when good folks stand up for them in the face of fear, prejudice, and opposition.

Good ones, Messrs. President & Vice President!  Keep it up.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

“It’s blowing,” she replied with a smile that Leticia could hear over the phone.

“It’s good to hear from you, Sonja.”

As Mickey rounded out the ballad he cooed from his tenor sax, Sonja opened her eyes.  She reclined on his too comfortable sofa.  He put Duke on the stereo, the famous Diminuendo in Blue and Crescendo in Blue from Newport featuring Paul Gonsalves’ solo for the ages.

“Leticia and I started hanging out,” Sonja said.

He took the comfy chair across from the sofa.  “Hey, that’s great!”

Reggie led her to Sonja’s room, using the backstairs from the kitchen.  He knocked too hard, as usual.  Upon opening the door, he announced detachedly, “You have company,” and then gave a look that relayed both his displeasure at having his solitude disturbed by having to answer the door, and a ‘what’s up with this, she never visits’ leer that demanded more information.  Sonja ignored all of the above.  Little brothers can be such a pain.  He did have the decency to close the door behind him when he finally stopped putting on a show.  It could be, though, that he saw what he needed to see.  Both of their faces, Leticia’s and his sister’s, lit up like the Fourth of July.

“What’s she been up to?” Mickey asked.

“Gigging, like you said she would be.”

“Sweet!  Where at?”

“It’s called the Cushy Café.”

“Oh yeah, I know where that is.  It’s on Robinson, isn’t it?  It’s just like half a mile up from Hamilton, right?”

“Uh-huh.  I didn’t know they did live music.  Well, I guess they started doing live music after Leticia talked them into it.  They do spoken-word events, and Leticia said she played behind a friend of hers at a slam.  Afterwards, she talked to the owner about having her band play there, and the owner was like, ‘sure.’”

“Uh-huh.  See?  She’s hustling.  That’s good.  That’s good.”

“No, girl,” Leticia said, “I didn’t leave the band to stop playing.  I left the band to start playing.  Rick has his little hang ups and his little problems, but that’s got nothing to do with me, OK?”

“Uh-huh,” Sonja said, a shy smile on her face.  She liked hearing her voice.  She liked the way it lingered on certain words for emphasis.

“Shit, I practice two to three hours a day, and for what?  For him to tell me during my solos to ‘keep it short, honey’?  I swear to god, Sonja, if I heard him say that one more time.  I wanted to shout back at him, ‘yeah, honey, let’s ask your wife how short it is!’”

Sonja started laughing.  She liked how she didn’t hold back.

“You know it is, honey!  You know it!” Sonja shouted.

They both couldn’t stop laughing.

“Who’s playing with her?”

“Audrey on piano, this girl that graduated last year.  She’s at USC now.  And this guy she knows named Barry, he plays bass.  And this other girl that used to go to Hamilton named Maureen on drums.”

“She needs a sax player,” he said without blinking.

“Yeah, that’s what she said to me.”

“And?” he insisted.

They harmonized just like they had been rehearsing for weeks, just like Leticia hadn’t left the band.  Just like they did when they traded glances while warming up before Rick showed up to lead the band through practice.  It all felt very natural and right when they played together.  Their notes synced up so well.

When they didn’t play, they listened.  Leticia played some tracks on her iPod of stuff she’s been woodshedding to.  Sonja did the same.

“Oh my god!” Leticia exclaimed.  “Girl, I’ve been looking for them since forever!  Those chicks are hot!”

“You know them?”

“Know them?  Honey, everyone should know the Billy Tipton Memorial Sax Quartet!  Those sisters can bring it.  Where did you get this?”

“This friend of my father’s.  He’s been showing me some stuff.  His name’s Mickey.”

“Wait, not Mickey Washington?”

“You know him?”

“Sonja, honey, baby, he’s like one of the top tenors in the country!  Or at least he is to those in the know, but you know, girl.  He’s got the LA jazz curse.  Seriously, though, he’s played with everyone, and everywhere.  All the big festivals, girl.  Wow!  Your father played with him?  That’s sick!”

Pride for her father being associated with someone so All That helped to erase her embarrassment at not knowing more about Mickey in the first place.  Leticia made everything sound grand and wonderful, though.  She made the room sparkle.

“She said she snuck into one of your shows, at a club once.”

“Really?  She did?  Aw, a girl after my own heart.  Here in LA?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well that’s alright, then.  Next time, let me know and I’ll get you both in through the stage door.”

She sipped her water, staring at the wall hanging.

“She said you played with a big pink ribbon on your horn.”

Ah, that gig, he thought.  Now he had a clearer picture of Leticia and a better understanding of Sonja’s almost-smiles as she talked about her.  It’s the almost-smile that runs deepest.  How much did Lionel really know?  How much did he allow himself to know?

“She said that you were called the Pink Ribbon Man.”

“Yeah, that’s what they called me.  I guess they still do, though I don’t always put it on anymore.  Only on special occasions.”

Gonsalves finished his 27 choruses and pandemonium set in.  Ellington soothed the crowd by bringing on Johnny Hodges.

“She saw me play at a benefit for AIDS Project LA, in Hollywood.  That’s my guess.  That’s the last time I played with the pink ribbon on, in LA anyway.”  He sighed, then stood up.  On the stereo cabinet, just underneath the big framed bow, sat a small framed photo.  He took it and walked it over to Sonja.  He stood behind her while she looked at it.  She saw a younger man standing next to another, both touched by almost-smiles and arms embracing.

“That’s Steve,” he said.

Sonja put two and two together instantly.

“Is the ribbon in memory of Steve?”

“Partly.”

She handed the photo back and Mickey returned it to its perch.  He returned to his chair.

“How long has he been gone?”

“12 years.  The concert happened to fall on the anniversary.  Playing an AIDS benefit concert on the day he died seemed like the right time to drag the ribbon out.  Steve always liked it when I played with it on.  That is how we met, after all.”  Long agos took him for a brief flight.  He returned from his mental sojourn to see Sonja very still, staring at him.  “I guess I have to tell you the story behind it.  I didn’t just put it on at AIDS events.  Naw, it’s much older than that.”

He saw his father approach the garage through the door frame, clutching his belt buckle.  That walk usually meant it was ass-whipping time for the one waiting silently among the ancient, cluttered articles.  He made you go out there and wait for him, and then made an entrance most grand before closing the door and getting down to business.  That’s what it felt like, even though Mickey was well passed that age, and he wasn’t out in the garage specifically awaiting his father, though he wasn’t surprised to see him.  No, he was out there woodshedding with his sax, playing riffs like crazy.  “I wanted to out Coltrane Coltrane,” he told Sonja.  He wanted to pour every ounce he had inside of him out so that he would become an empty vessel, a colorless, odorless being with no substance, impervious to hurt and pain.  His father stood in the door frame as he hacked and hacked away at a riff.  Sweat dripped from his forehead and hands.  His notes slurred without coaxing.  Control became secondary to the need to purge.

And his father just waited patiently.  He was in no hurry.  No longer clutching his belt buckle, he folded his arms over his chest.  Then, slowly, he eased his hands behind him into his back pockets, a less combative stance.  He knew the moment would arrive, and it did arrive.  Slowly, Mickey just blew himself out, until the sax came away from his mouth, and he huffed and puffed.  That’s when his father allowed himself to enter.  He closed the door behind him and sat next to his son.

“I knew he wasn’t gonna give me a whipping with his belt,” Mickey said.  “But I was afraid of his tongue.”

“Mickey,” his father started, “if you were on your way to being a doctor or a dentist or a fireman or a policeman, my advice would be what any black father should tell his son.  Watch your back.  But you ain’t going into one of those fields.  You’re a jazzman.  Can’t say you didn’t get it honest, what with your uncles and your mother being such fine musicians.  There are limitations, and there are challenges, of course, as any of them can tell you.  But you’ll be entering a profession where it ain’t unheard of for black folks to be in, you understand what I’m saying?  You won’t be the only one in the room, in other words.  And that’s different than if you were gonna go to law school or medical school or whatnot.  Alright?

“But you got yourself another situation.  And it’s one that most of us just don’t take to.  But you got chops.  You earned them.  You studied hard.  You practice hard.  You’ve earned everything you got, hear?  So I’m here to tell you that you still gotta watch your back, not just from them, but from us, too.  ‘Cause some of us won’t take to who you are, even if you don’t have a problem with it.  Even if your mother don’t have a problem with it.  Even if I don’t have a problem with it.  Some folks will.  So you keep standing proud, hear?  And watch your back.  And you make sure you got someone who can watch it for you after I’m gone, you hear?”

Mickey hadn’t purged himself sufficiently.  What remained gushed out in spades as he embraced his father, clutching him tightly.  His father patted him on the head with tears of his own flowing softly.

“I had been at a rehearsal,” Mickey continued, the stereo now silent and Sonja’s rapt attention filling the room, “and we took a break.  I sat my horn down and went to the restroom or something like that.  Anyway, the point is that when I got back they were all snickering and stuff.”  Rick and Lionel were among those snickering, ill fitting hands over their shit grinning mouths.  “And I turned to look at my horn and someone had tied this big fat pink ribbon around it.  Made it into a big bow.  The more my jaw dropped, the louder they got.”

Sonja loved her father’s cackle.  It rang through the house, turning it into a giant bell.  It sounded at family get-togethers, where old stories were retold.  It sounded during bad plays made by the opposing team.  It rang and rang and rang, and Sonja smiled each time.  She heard it clearly now, and her face grew pale.

“I packed my horn up and was out of there.  I didn’t even bother to take the ribbon off.  I’m checking out, goom bye, like Strayhorn wrote.  But the deed wasn’t over.  Not by a long shot.  Someone called home.  Someone told my folks that their son was a swish with a ribbon on his horn, then hung up before questions could be asked.  So that’s what I came home to, my momma disturbed and my daddy cross-armed.”  He read their faces and knew.  He flew out to the garage, ripped off the bow and started playing, just as his father had found him.

“That’s awful,” Sonja said, barely above a whisper.

“But it got better.  After my father came out and talked to me, I took the ribbon and washed it up, got it all sparkling clean again, and tied it back to my horn.  The next rehearsal came and I was there again.  They were still snickering, until I took the horn out of my case, with the ribbon still tied to it.”

Stand proud, his father had said to him.  And that’s what he aimed to do.  He set himself up while the room got stiller.  He started to warm up.  Everyone stared at him playing with this big pink bow tied to the end of his sax.  Finally Earl complained, “This is too much!”  Cue Rick, who marched over to him.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”  He kept blowing.

“Look, we’re a band, alright?  A unit.  A unit works like a baseball team, right?  Our instruments are like our uniforms.  And right now, you ain’t in uniform.”

Mickey played another couple of licks and then stopped.

“Well, I guess I’m in someone’s uniform, ain’t I?” he said.  “I mean, I didn’t put this thing on my horn.  Someone else in this room did.  So someone seems to think that it’s my uniform, and if that’s the case, then I’m gonna wear it.”

“Well I ain’t playing with no one with a fucking big pink bow on his horn,” Earl declared.

“Me neither,” Rick said.

The others began to crowd around, arms folded.  Mickey looked at each of them.  Earl, Rick, Lionel, Harold, and Terrance.  In a few of their faces he saw me-too eyes.  Tagalongs.  Their convictions weren’t as resolute as those of the loud mouths.  He smiled to himself and brought his horn back to his mouth.

“Then I guess I’m playing alone.”  And he began to play his horn again, without a care in the world.

“At every rehearsal, I had it on.  The night of the performance, they begged me to take it off, and I refused.  We couldn’t back out of the gig, and I knew we couldn’t.  So there I was, playing with a big pink bow on my horn in front of the whole audience.  I don’t think we ever sounded better than we did at that gig.”

He started to laugh.  Sonja laughed, too, though she still wondered about her father’s cackle.

To be continued…

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

On April 29, the Los Angeles Times published an article which chronicles then-Governor Mitt Romney’s history with Massachusetts’ gay marriage law.  It makes for very interesting reading.

While campaigning for the governorship in 2002, he proclaimed he supported the rights of gay and lesbian citizens in Massachusetts, while at the same time stating that he was not in favor of gay marriage.  When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in November 2003, Governor Romney began a two-tiered campaign.  On the one hand, he vowed to fulfill the court’s mandate.  Other the other, he worked hard to undermine it.  First he sought same-sex civil unions as a compromise, even though the SCJ said specifically that civil unions were not good enough.  Then he tried to get the gay marriage issue on the ballot to be overturned by a constitutional amendment.  Fortunately for Massachusetts, unlike California, it takes more than just a bunch of signed petitions to get something on the ballot.  Constitutional amendments have to first be approved by two sessions of the legislature over a two year period before they can go on the ballot.  With such a high bar, the Governor capitulated, allowing the marriages to go forward starting in May 2004.  Then he continued to work for the constitutional amendment.

Not willing to leave well enough alone, Governor Romney invoked a hitherto ignored law from 1913 which declared that non-residents cannot come to Massachusetts to get married if the marriage is not recognized in the couple’s home state.  The 1913 law was a throwback to the days of miscegenation.  Massachusetts allowed the matrimonial mingling of the races in 1843, but with the 1913 law it confined its liberal ways within its own borders.  So Governor Romney used a law meant to enable racism in other states to help contain gay marriage as much as possible.  What a guy.

Ultimately, his maneuvers and machinations failed.  In January 2007, when the gay marriage out/civil unions in amendment came up for a vote in the state legislature, it failed to garner the necessary 50 votes needed to put the matter on the ballot.  And in 2008, the legislature passed a bill striking down the 1913 law, a bill which the new governor, Duval Patrick, signed into law.  Still, Mitt Romney has used his anti-gay marriage creds to good purpose on the campaign trail.  From the Times article:

“Massachusetts should not become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage,” he told the New York Times, a line he has repeated frequently on the campaign trail this year as he touts his efforts to stop gay marriage. “We do not intend to export our marriage confusion to the entire nation.”

Yep.  That’s right, Mr. Romney.  You prevented queer folks from all over the country from flocking, say, to Provincetown — where my partner and I have vacationed for years — to have wonderful marriage ceremonies at the quaint Town Hall or on Race Point Beach or at any of the other picturesque locations P-town has to offer.  By doing so, you also prevented businesses in P-town and all over Massachusetts, from florists to clothiers to chapels to restaurants and hotels, from potentially reaping millions of dollars of revenue.  How pro-business is that?

Well, not very.  But never mind that.  Mr. Romney’s need to maintain his anti-gay creds with the far right clearly trumps his desire to help businesses gain more revenue.

Which is why the whole debacle surrounding Richard Grenell really is not that surprising at all.  Mr. Grenell was appointed as a spokesman on national security issues for the Romney campaign on April 19.  Headlines quickly appeared declaring that the appointment showed a change for the Romney campaign.  Since the protracted nomination campaign was all but over — the Gingrich campaign had yet to suspend, but its doom was nigh — Mr. Romney could safely shake his Etch-a-Sketch and began redrawing himself more in the center, or so folks thought.

But the new attitude did not last long.  On May 2, three days after the LA Times’ chronicle and 13 days after his appointment, Mr. Grenell resigned amid what he called a “hyper-partisan discussion of personal issues.”  Mr. Romney accepted Mr. Grenell’s resignation, apparently without trying to talk him out of it personally or trying to calm the waters that caused it in the first place.  In other words, he allowed Mr. Grenell to throw himself under the bus to appease the far right partisans that disapproved of his appointment in the first place.  These are, of course, the same far right partisans Mr. Romney had been courting with his “look at me, I kept the gays from coming to Massachusetts to marry” shtick many years earlier.

There was no flip-flopping in this case.  He didn’t need to shake his Etch-a-Sketch.  Mr. Romney behaved as Mr. Romney has always behaved, with hostility towards LGBT folks.  Same as he ever was.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

“Good,” he said, “that’s good.”  He walked around into the kitchen area of his great room.  “Let’s go for a walk, OK?  It’s cooled off enough.  Should be nice.”  Sonja looked lost.  “Just leave you horn on the sofa.  It’ll be alright.”

He tossed his can in the recycling bin and went to the door.  Sonja soon joined him.  They exited.

She had taken the Blue Bus into Venice, and then walked the narrow side streets to Mickey’s address.  A white duplex, he said, with a carport to the left of the walkway.  Now she was leaving again, only without her ax.  They crossed a busy street and continued down a narrow alley.  The beach and boardwalk loomed ahead.

“This is why I live here,” he said.  “The sunsets.”

When they reached the boardwalk, its bustling activity gave way to the nightly sky show brought on by the colors of the setting sun over the waves of the Pacific.  They stood behind a little wall that separated the boardwalk from the bike path.  Boarders and bikers whizzed by while strollers held hands, their faces turned westward.

“I never miss it,” Mickey said.

Sonja had skated Venice before with friends.  She had never been there during twilight, though.  Frisky tongues and hands came out at that hour.  Besides, she and her girlfriends usually went up to Santa Monica for dinner.  Somehow the sunsets just sort of happened, a backdrop to their activities, never the main event.  Even now, she seemed more interested in looking at Mickey’s reaction.  Then he said, “That’s the real music, that out there.  We’re just imitating what nature does for a living.”  That caused her to turn her head and watch as the colors mingled and deepened with the close of the day.

They walked down the boardwalk for a bit, taking in the last of the late summer color.  Friday evening and the day’s heat brought out the bodies and characters, as colorful as the sky show.  They stopped to watch a man dressed in silver loins, jewelry, and bells around his ankles play hard on the violin.  Even the roller-skating guitar player stopped his troubadouring and lingered at the edge of the crowd.

Sonja couldn’t take her eyes off of his outfit, or lack there of, but Mickey nodded his head with the pulsation of the music.  When the violinist stopped, the whole crowd erupted.  Some poured money into his case.  Mickey went up to him.  Sonja stared as he embraced the man.

“You know him?” she asked as they walked away from the crowd.

“Oh yeah, we played together in Central Park once.  If you want a challenge, try keeping up with his playing.”

She turned her head.  The violinist started playing another piece, just as wild as the one before.  She stopped for a second.  It was the ballad she had played for Mickey earlier.

“You want something to drink?” he asked as they reentered his place.  He went straight to the fridge to get another Diet Coke.

“Just water, please,” she said.

“So you got Rick as a music teacher, huh?”

“He runs the jazz band at Hamilton.”

“And he don’t let you solo, huh?”

“Yeah.”

She sat on one side of his counter and he on the other.

“Does he say why?”

Sonja sort of rolled her eyes and her lip curled a bit.  “He just likes the boys better, that’s all,” her voice trailing off at the end.

“Uh-huh.”  Mickey made a slurp and put his can down.  “Are you the only girl in the band?”

“I’m the only one left.  The only other one was Leticia, but she quit this year.”

“Uh-huh.  What does she play?”

“Trumpet.”

“You ever play with her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know if she’s still playing.  She sort of disappeared.”

“Call her.  Get her to play with you.  You two need to support each other.  And you both can’t be the only girls in the school who play.  Find each other, and start playing.”

“That’s why my dad said.  But I told him I don’t want to be in a girl’s band.  I don’t want to be segregated like that.  Why should I?”

“So you can play.  So you all can play.  Look, I’m gonna tell you like it is.  There are lots of Ricks out there, but you can’t let them stop you from playing.  If you wanna play, play.”  He got up and walked around the counter into the living room area.  “He has his way of looking at things, but if ain’t what you’re about, then you need to move on.  I’m not saying get out of the band.  I’m just saying that you shouldn’t limit yourself because of his bullshit.”  He put on a CD.  Soon a baritone sax pumped out a hook.  Then drums and more saxes joined in.  The whole room pulsated with the sound.  He brought the CD cover to her:  women, all women.

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“They’re from Seattle.  She’s a friend of mine,” he said, pointing to one of them.

Sonja’s head and feet got into it, tapping the air.  Next thing she knew, she was putting down the cover and going to the sofa to grab her horn.  She played along.  Mickey nodded his head.  When the track finished, and the next one started, she returned to the counter to drink more water, beads on her forehead.

“I liked that!” she said.

“I’ll rip it for you.”

“Thanks.

“Real musicians just play.  That’s all there is to it.  Either you jive or you play.  Those ladies know how to play.”

“And Rick jives?” she said, giggling at the antiquated slang she’s heard from her father so many times.

“He knows how to jive, yes.  But if you get together with your friends, you guys can start something.  Start busking like Sutekh does, maybe on campus or something.”

“Su-who?”

“The violin player.”

Her eyes hit a spot on the other wall, near the stereo.  She walked over with her water.  It was what she thought it was, a big pink bow and ribbon framed and behind glass.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Can’t you see?  It’s a pink ribbon.”

“I mean, why is it framed?”

Mickey paused, even as the horns growled and moved over the stereo.  His mind returned to the phone call with her father.  Lionel beat around the bush.  Their conversation, though rather short, seemed longer due to its numerous pregnant pauses.  Mickey heard everything he wasn’t saying, every apology that wasn’t, every excuse that wasn’t.  And when it came time to sign off, Lionel back-peddled.  “At the end of the day, though, it ain’t about us, Mickey.  It’s just…it’s about Sonja, alright?  I just want to help Sonja see her full potential.  Alright?”

Then whatchu call me for, you fool! he wanted to say, but didn’t.  If it wasn’t for the past, our past, then why would you be calling me and begging me to see her?  Instead, Mickey just yeah-uh-huh’ed him and hung up, rolling his eyes in the process. Lionel didn’t know that the ribbon sat so prominently in Mickey’s place.  He never visited.  Mickey knew Sonja would find it sooner or later.

“I’ll tell you about it some time,” he said.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

After a while I couldn’t watch the video of Rodney King’s beating anymore.  Though I grew up in South Central LA, in my 26 years I had not witnessed such naked aggression against a black person by a group of white people before.  Such images had hitherto been confined to footage from the Civil Rights era in grainy black and white.  My dad, who lived through the Depression and the Civil Rights era, as well as served in the Second World War, studied the King beating video with Holmesian precision.  He once counted the number of baton swings as we watched it together.  I think my mother was more like me, not able to study the images in such detail.

Not long after Rodney King was beaten senseless by a group of out-of-control police officers, Latasha Harlins, an unarmed African American woman, was shot and killed by Korean shopkeeper Soon Ja Du after an altercation at her convenience store near Westchester High School.  The story went that Ms. Du thought Latasha was trying to leave the store without paying for some orange juice.  A scuffle ensued.  When Latasha tried to leave again, having dropped the orange juice on the floor,  Ms. Du pulled out a gun and shot her in the back of the head.

Even by itself, this event would have raised community ire.  But in the shadow of the King beating, which took place less then two weeks before, it merely added more kindling to an already stuffed tinderbox.  Ms. Du’s trial, in November 1991, resulted in a verdict of involuntary manslaughter and she was initially sentence to 16 years in prison.  However, Joyce Karlin, the presiding judge of the case,  added gasoline to the kindling when she reduced the sentence to five years probation, community service, and a $500 fine.

The Latasha Harlins shooting death and trial exposed a schism between LA’s African American and Korean American communities.  I felt quite sad about that.  At UCLA, I used to wear a t-shirt that read Gwangju in Korean script printed over a simulated blood stain.  It was a reminder of the popular uprising against a corrupt government that occurred in Gwangju, South Korea in 1980.  Korean students who saw me wearing the t-shirt gave me a thumbs up.  Similarly, many Asian students took part in the anti-apartheid protests on campus.  We all supported each others’ struggles and causes at that time.  That’s how I liked to roll.

After my friend called with the verdict news, I called home to check on everyone.  Mom and I talked, as we did so often in those days.  She sounded as tense as I felt.  We were all waiting.  ”Your father is still outside painting the house,” she said.  ”He’s perched on a tall ladder, painting the high gable.”  She hated when he went on the tall ladder.  By the second day of the King Uprising, though, he finally stopped going on the ladder and postponed the house painting for several months.

Latasha remained in the back of my head while the acquitted, baton-swinging cops obsessed my thoughts as I rode my motorcycle home from work.  When I got to the little one-bedroom apartment in Oakland where I lived alone, I snapped on the TV.  One of the first things I saw was a replay of the verdict announcement.  In the audience sat the Reverend Cecil “Chip” Murray, legendary leader of the powerful First AME Church near Western and Adams.  A symbol of stoicism and struggle, a closeup betrayed a single tear creeping down the side of his face.  I think I turned off the TV soon after seeing that and went off to make dinner or play tabla or do something.  I had to do something while we waited.

I come from a family of nerds and geeks.  My credentials are well established.  My brothers loved walkie-talkies.  They tweaked and tinkered their handhelds to get as much range out of them as possible.  So one day, as they were in the neighborhood testing the range of their tinkered units, some LAPD officers spotted them.  The officers didn’t see harmless, nerdy geeks playing with walkie-talkies.  They saw two young African American males doing something weird and in their minds suspicious.  They detained them and forced them to sit on the curb somewhere not too far from the house.  One threatened to shove his flashlight down one of their throats, for some unspoken transgression.  Ultimately, though, they were not arrested.  Just terrorized.  Such actions, taken against blacks all over LA, established the lining for the tinderbox.  Other bad encounters would happen later on with other family members, including my sister, including my aged, widowed father who had served in World War II.

Mom called again.  The kindling erupted at Florence and Normandie, a few miles south of my family’s house.  How was everything, I asked.  Very tense, she said.  We hung up.  I turned the TV back on.  Helicopters showed footage of folks in the streets.  I missed the live coverage of Reginald Denny, a white trucker who was near Florence and Normandie, being dragged from his truck and beaten by six black men.  Next time I called the house, my dad answered the phone.  He said that the Denny beating badly shook Mom up and she needed to collect herself.  I closed my eyes and thought of a line from the movie “Gandhi”:  An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.  My mother cried, too, when Gandhi was assassinated.  It think it restored her faith when at least one of the people who rescued Mr. Denny was black.

Darkness better revealed the spreading firestorm.  Every channel showed different perspectives from all over town.  Even C-SPAN, which showed a fire destroying the indoor swap meet on Vermont Ave. near Martin Luther King Blvd.  My oldest brother had bought a boombox from that location a few months before.  Now its flames cast Manual Arts High School, which stood across the street, in an eery red and orange glow.  I touched my first computer at Manual Arts during a summer class I took there.  I watched it in awe on my little 13″ TV, with the phone in my hand.

It rang again.  This time it was my sister.  She was stuck in Hollywood, where anger had also hit the streets.  The media kept reporting that the rioting took place in South Central LA, but as the night wore on, everywhere became South Central.  That night, its boundaries extended as north as Hollywood and as west as Beverly Hills.  My sister could not call the house — as in all crises, local phone communication became impossible because of jammed lines.  And in any case, cell phones were still pretty new and the infrastructure nascent.  So I had to do the triangulating phone call thing.  I called my former roommate again, who lived in West Hollywood.  ”Can my sister stay the night there?  She can’t get home.”  ”Of course,” my friend said.  I called my sister and she was able to get to West Hollywood safely.  Then I called home to tell my folks.  Mom answered.  She was OK again and relieved to hear that I was able to reach my sister and guide her to safety.  ”Can you call Grandmother?” she asked.  They couldn’t reach her either.  Two years later, I would do the same thing after the Northridge earthquake.  On both occasions, my dad’s mother was fine, unfazed by the chaos that reigned around her.

Over the phone and the television I heard sirens.  It gave me chills.  Sirens screamed all over in Oakland after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989.  They freaked me out, seeing as I was still new to the Bay Area and lived alone.  The sirens from LA brought back that anxiety.  Though Oakland, my adapted hometown, remained tranquil.

Many miles away in Berlin, a group of folks gathered on what was left of the Berlin Wall with a large, handmade banner that read “Los Angeles, we stand with you.”  That image was so precious to me.  I needed that confirmation, that the whole world was indeed  watching, and just as angry.  Just a few years prior, I had celebrated in spirit, if not in person, the fall of the wall.  Years later, on our first trip to Berlin, my partner and I found a park named for LA not far from our hotel.  As we walked by it, I said quietly, “Danke,” a thank you to the ancient capital who stood with the city of my birth in one of its darkest hours.

I wrote very little about the Rodney King Uprising in my journal, a fact I recently rediscovered as I poured through the back volumes.  I suppose I was too busy living it, even from afar.  Really, I think I was just too stunned to find the words to express all that I saw and felt.  I only realized just how deeply affected I was by the King Uprising quite recently.  As journalists reported the verdict of the Oscar Grant shooting case — another bad verdict, another black man dissed by the judicial system — a passing siren wailed in the background.  I experienced a short, sharp panic attack.  Not Again! my soul screamed.  But there was no need for alarm.  There was no rerun of 1992.  I understand the events of 1992 and the reasons behind it, but that doesn’t mean I want to experience it all over again.

I was four months old when the Watts Riots happened in 1965.  A bullet found its way to my grandmother’s house — my mother’s mother — where my family lived at the time.  The hole sat in the siding for many years.  My parents told me that they couldn’t get baby formula for me because deliveries to local groceries and supermarkets ceased during the disturbance.  They had no car at that time.  I don’t recall any coverage of the 20th anniversary of that event in 1985.  If there had been any, it was quite miniscule.

In contrast, there has been much coverage and reflection of the King Uprising on its 20th.  I’d say that was progress.  Actively remembering such events, and the reasons behind them, I hope will obviate the need for their repetition.  Though I fear new tinderboxes potentially wait in the wings.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

Yeah, there was a store on the corner.  Not a fancy store, but just a corner grocery in a plain brick building.  Folks bought things and hung out.  Old men sat at the corner, in front of the store.  They may have gone places in their youth, but now they just sat in front and watched the world go by.  They eyed the ladies and said hi to familiars.  Or they ignored the passersby entirely, enveloped as they were in their own yesterdays.

In the early days, bigwigs even traipsed through the corner.  They were easy to spot.  They always had an entourage of fans or hangers-on or other bigwigs.  (Bigwigs liked to travel in packs.)  Usually the bigwigs did their bigwigging in some other part of town. This trip, I’m playing at this hotel or that hotel, they’d say.  But they always stayed and ate and hung out in the vicinity of the corner.  That’s just the way it was at that time.

But eventually, the bigwigs stopped coming to the corner.  Indeed, over a period of time, the corner saw less and less traffic in general.  Moving vans passed by on weekends full of stuff and the people that owned it.  They did not return.  The old men still hung out on the corner, in front of the store, but they, too, began to disappear.  They began to talk a lot about funerals.

Dirt began to accumulate on and around the corner.  The storekeeper used to sweep regularly, but he was getting older and didn’t do it as often.  The young ones didn’t seem to keen to help.  Nor did the city.

Around this time, or a little after, was when the Big Change happened.  The corner heard talk about the police and how they mistreated folks.  Then something went down on another, similar corner that got people hopping mad.  Finally, like a fire smoldering in the dark, it erupted.

Chaos.  Burning.  Shouting.  Shooting.  Running.  Smashing.  Police cars.  Fire trucks.  Tanks with armed soldiers.  The corner store where the old men hung out was gutted.  Lost forever.  The storekeeper never came to that corner again.

For days it lasted, until finally calm returned.  At first, the corner saw a flurry of activity.  Folks cleaned up, cleared the debris, swept the curb.  The shell of the old brick building, where the little store had been, was taken down.  The lot was leveled and fenced in.  Folks talked about rebuilding, a new store or a group of stores to replace the original.  Kids flocked to the corner in the early hours, sometimes before the sun woke, to catch a bus.  Their parents spoke to each other about something called Transport-A-Child, which allowed their kids to go to schools way on the other side of town, to places that did not experience the Big Change.  The program lasted for a little while, but then the kids graduated, and new ones did not take their place.  Only the nannies and cleaning ladies continued gathering at the corner, waiting for a bus to take them to the big houses across town.  The bus ran one way in the morning and the other way at night, to bring them back to the corner again.

In the end, after the Big Change, the corner wasn’t the same.  Everything it ever knew was gone.  First it lost the bigwigs.  Then many of the people.  Then the old men.  Finally, it lost the little store and the building that housed it.  The vacant lot festered, its chain-linked fence often drooping from neglect and abuse.  Sometimes kids played in the vacant lot, until a stronger fence was built around it to keep them out.  Weeds grew, nesting places for rats.  Talk of replacing the store with a new store or with a group of little stores faded away.

For years the corner remained in this state.  New events large and small washed over the corner, though none as big as the Big Change.  Until that one time.

Twenty-seven years later, the same things started up again.  The corner witnessed loud talking again about the police and injustice.  It heard about how a King had been wronged, a different King than before.  Eventually, one night in late April it exploded again, only this time seemed worse than the last.  More fires.  More shouting.  More broken windows.  More shooting.  More and more engulfed all over town.  The corner sat in dark silence during much of the tumult.  It had nothing to offer this time, other than weeds.  Though even those eventually caught fire.

When it ended, just as before, folks came out and began to clean away the debris.  The corner saw its curb swept and its burnt weeds cleared.  Folks talked about rebuilding again, but that talk was not foreign to the corner.  It had been spoken before, with little consequence.

But then something happened.  Folks kept talking.  News vans came to the corner and reported from its vacant lot.  Bigwigs returned.  It was hard to tell that they were bigwigs, seeing as they wore street clothes and helped with the clean up along side everyone else.  But they still had fans seeking autographs, the telltale sign of bigwigness.  One day a group set up a small podium with a seal in the middle of the vacant lot.  Then a huge entourage came to the corner, car after car.  They all got out and huddled around someone who stepped out of a black limo.  Did someone say the president?  He spoke about the need to rid the corner of the vacant lot and make it a community once again.  Then he hurried back into his limo and sped away.  His entourage followed.  Never before had a president visited the corner.  A candidate for president once walked by the corner, a few years after the original Big Event.  But then later that day, the corner heard talk about him having been shot dead across town.

Well, the corner had heard promises before only to have nothing come of them.  But this time was different.  This time, the fence came down for good.  Tractors and bulldozers ripped up the vacant lot.  Construction began on a new building built around a small parking lot which hugged the sidewalks of the corner.  They landscaped the corner with trees and flowering shrubs.  They built a new bus shelter, stylish and chic.  Newspaper racks returned.  The corner was rebranded:  ”Central” fell off the name of its area, leaving only “South.”

When the new little shopping center was completed, it’s little parking lot was decorated with helium balloons arched on a string.  Bigwigs came and gave speeches.  Folks came out and celebrated.  The little corner was in the house!

After many years, the flowers faded and the shrubs died.  The trees were uprooted.  Filth claimed the curb again.  The corner saw tenants in the little stores come and go.  Indeed, recently it seemed that at least two of the four little stores were vacant most of the time.  The parking lot saw more business at night than during the day, business that had nothing to do with the stores.

Eventually, the corner heard the same talk again, about the police and injustice.  It didn’t hear about a King, but a Martin, a different Martin than before.

From the edge of the corner, another corner appeared within eyeshot.  A building once came close to its sidewalk, one that housed a warehouse, then a gym, then an indoor swap meet.  But it was gone now.  Instead, over its sidewalk drooped a familiar chain link fence which apparently had been there for the past twenty years.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.

Reggie sat on one of the stools at the breakfast counter doing his math homework.  He did not look up as his father passed.

“Have you seen your sister?”

“She’s in her room,” he said.

He went up the back stairs from the kitchen.  Her room was on the left at the top of the landing.

Large knuckles rapped the door three times.

“Yeah?” a voice called out.

Lionel pushed the door open and walked in, shirt still untucked, her axe in one hand and his beer in the other.

Sonja looked up at him, then back at her magazine.

“You wanna talk about it?”  Lionel said.

“Is Momma home yet?”

“No.”

She looked up again.  “Can I have a sip?”

“It’s not your favorite.”

“That’s OK.”

He closed his eyes and sighed, the usual signal of surrender then walked over to her, making sure the door closed behind him.

“Just a sip,” he ordered.

She took the can from him and made the liquid linger on her tongue as long as possible before returning it.  “Thanks.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

“No.”

He rolled over the chair from the desk.  The sax rested on his lap.

“It’s not fair, Daddy.  I practice.  I know the material.  He knows I’m good, but he doesn’t ever give me a chance to play.”

He took another swig and leaned forward.

“If I’m lucky, I’ll get one bar, everyone else gets three or four.”

“Have you called him on it?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should.”

“That’s what Leticia did, and then he rode her until she quit.”

“What’s Leticia doing now?  She still playing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Uh-uh.  You should connect with her.  Start your own group.”

“Dad, I don’t want to be known as the ‘girl’ player and just play with girls.  I wanna play in the band like everyone else.”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry, baby.  Like I said when you joined, Rick can be a jerk.”

“Rick the Dick.”

“You’re not the first one to call him that.  But honey, the last thing you want to do is lose your chops, ‘cause then you’re just giving him ammunition.  He’ll know that you haven’t been practicing.  Take out your anger on your axe.  That’s what I did.  You’ll be surprised how good you sound when you’re pissed off.”

She cracked a small smile, then reached out for the can again.

“Just a sip,” he said.  She took a portion then passed it back.

“Thanks, Daddy.”

“You gotta pay for the beer, now.  I wanna hear some serious woodshedding tonight, hear?”

“I will.  You can leave it on the bed.”

Lionel rose from the chair and pushed it back to the desk.  He left her door ajar to make sure he could hear any noise that emerged.

Sonja didn’t touch the sax right away.  She kept the magazine in her lap for a few minutes longer, before finally looking over at her instrument.  Her brow crinkled.  Dust.  She picked it up and began rubbing it clean against her t-shirt.

Lionel, back in the family room, located the remote and turned on the system.  ESPN blared.

Dah-dah-dah, Dah-dah-dah.

He took his cell from his shirt pocket and found himself staring at it in his hand for a length of time.

“Fuck, just call the man,” he told himself.  But instead, he tossed it on the coffee table.  It slid across and nearly fell off the other end.

Lionel, Rick, and Mickey.  Three egos, three big dreams, three different paths traveled.  In the end, he and Rick took the safer route:  day jobs.  Rick’s been teaching music at Hamilton High for nearly 25 years.  And Lionel made partner at his firm almost a decade ago.  He still played on the weekend occasionally, as did Rick, but their big dreams of playing at the Blue Note or at Monterey or recording in Van Gelder’s studios in Englewood Cliffs were just yeah-right chuckle moments now, remembered over another round of pints at the bar.

But Mickey stayed with it.  He still lived the dream.  His name still appeared in folks’ Rolodexes, meaning it also appeared in liner notes and program bills.  He doesn’t headline much, but if he’s on stage, you knew it.  Ben Webster was still a touchstone, but Mickey had his own style, a hybrid of several, and he made it his own.  His chops had aged like the finest Napa had to offer, honed and sharp.

The bitch of it all was that Mickey had it the worst of all them back in the woodshedding, dreaming/scheming days, yet he was the one who ended up going the farthest.  They all gave him a hard time, including Lionel, an uncomfortable truth he relived whenever he saw his own going through her paces.  Rick liked to say that all the shit they gave Mickey just make him stronger, a bullshit, face-saving way of taking credit for the man’s success.  “That’s why he stuck with it,” he’d say.

Yeah, well, maybe.  Or maybe he really was just better than all of us, a better player, a better writer, and a better arranger.  And that fact didn’t sit well with us or our fragile male egos.  Mickey didn’t need us.  He could’ve struck out on his own and done just fine if he didn’t have to deal with what he’s had to deal with, just like Strayhorn could’ve for the same reasons.

If anyone could help his little girl through her personal crisis, Mickey the survivor could.  He stared at the phone again, perched on the far edge of the coffee table, still deciding whether to fall to the floor or not.

Then he heard something.  The TV went mute and he cocked his head to listen.  A smile appeared.  Sweet blues oozed down the stairway.  Play that horn, baby, play it!

He grabbed the phone from its precipice and started dialing Mickey’s number.

“Karma ain’t always instant, but it’s still a bitch,” he muttered.

© 2012, gar. All rights reserved.