Be-longing: Triumph In The Mirror 426b4t

BE-LONGING

TRIUMPH IN THE MIRROR A MEMOIR

by Julius Dion Bailey

BE-LONGING TRIUMPH IN THE MIRROR A MEMOIR

Copyright © 2017 by Julius Dion Bailey.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2685-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2686-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911666

iUniverse rev. date: 07/28/2017

To all men who suffer in silence.

Also To The Brothers in the Illinois and Ohio Department of Corrections each decision we make lays a foundation for our destiny

In Memory of Deborah Chinaza Lee And Marshonda Rhodie You both spent part of your (much too short) adult lives loving me unconditionally.

“Your spiritual health is the revelation of not just what you believe and know; it’s what you put into action and live.” Prophetess Lisa Jones, PLJ Ministries

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Mirror Moment

Chapter 2: In Search of a Dad

Chapter 3: Confessions of Puppy Love

Chapter 4: On Our Own

Chapter 5: From Strawberry Kisses to Suicidal Thoughts

Chapter 6 :Cast Out

Chapter 7: A Howard University Man

Chapter 8: Proving My Manhood

Chapter 9: Hanging Up on the Call from God

Chapter 10: Senior Year and Post-Graduation

Chapter 11: The Cornel West Effect

Chapter 12: Decatur, Illinois was like Selma

Chapter 13: She Had Me at Bacon and Raisin Toast

Chapter 14: Decatur, Illinois: The Fatal Return

Chapter 15: When the Bacon Wilts and Toast Dries

Chapter 16: A Handful of Russet Tulips

Chapter 17: Annette Let Me Eat Cake

Chapter 18: Michelle’s Way or Else

Chapter 19: The Dr. House in Me: A Turning Point

Chapter 20: Time to Seek Professional Help

Chapter 21: Chinaza’s Me

Author’s Note

FOREWORD

“I want to do it, but I am so afraid. I know how to do it, but fear won’t let me. And, when I feel the fear, I feel stupid, so, to avoid that, I just stop trying.” His words pierced my heart like a hot knife. This beautiful, powerful, strong, and loving man spoke with a depth of vulnerability that I have rarely experienced with Black men. At age forty, he was desperately seeking a way out of the conditions of his life, many caused by his bad behavior that had been labeled irresponsible. I knew better. I knew that he was not irresponsible or unemotional or disconnected. I knew that he was terrified—terrified of failing, of looking stupid, of being wrong, of being judged. Like so many others that I had coached, I knew that he was terrified of his own power and his authentic identity. However, it wasn’t until he spoke that I understood why. The answer was simple; in fact, it was so simple, I was tempted to dismiss it. I chose against the temptation. I realized that he, like so many others, was terrified because no one had ever taught him that he had the right, the capacity, and the power to know himself, be himself, and create his reality. He was suffering from arrested development. As the mother of a Black man and grandmother of six Black boys, I am continually amazed and dismayed each time I recognize the overt and covert ways Black men are devalued, diminished, dehumanized, criminalized, denied, and disrespected. It happens in their homes. It happens as a function of the education system. It happens in the socioeconomic and political systems that elevate some of them while ignoring most of them. It has become so normalized that it often goes unnoticed until one of them kills or is killed. What is even more disheartening for me is when I witness the ways they do this to themselves.

Long before Black men began to wear their pants below their waistlines, exposing their asses to the world, they internalized the distorted images and low expectations promulgated about them. Their mothers taught them how to do it. Their absent fathers demonstrated how to do it. The girls and women they slept with allowed them to believe it was acceptable, and no one seemed to have ever taught them to stand powerfully as themselves and create their own realties. For Black men in the world today, empowerment goes way beyond a good education and a successful career. While the process of self-awareness, selfrealization, and self-actualization is important for everyone, it is an absolute necessity for Black men in the twenty-first century. I knew this back in 1994 when I wrote The Spirit of a Man: A Vision of Transformation for Black Men and the Women Who Love Them (Harper, 1996). I wrote that book with the intention of sharing how spiritual development, spiritual discipline, and spiritual grounding were critical elements for the elevation and evolution of Black men. I shared everything I had been taught about the process of spiritual unfolding, adding to that knowledge that I had intuitively gleaned from my experiences of teaching and ministering to Black men. To date, the book has underperformed the other seventeen titles I have authored. Black women felt I was blaming them for the plight of Black men in the world. Black men just couldn’t understand or accept that a woman could tell them how to be better men. Neither of these was my intention or the purpose of the book. What I shared in The Spirit of a Man (Harper, 1996) was a process that men could employ to learn how to love, heal, and grow themselves beyond the false images promoted about them in the world. The real challenge was that the process I presented required work—deep, inner work that Black men have come to believe they cannot do, do not need to do, and/or do not have the capacity to do with or for themselves, within themselves. They would much rather achieve success by traditional or untraditional means, giving the appearance that they are accepting of a world that continues to perpetuate false expectations and images of them. After talking to my son and having my heart pierced by his words, I came to recognize, realize, and understand they are simply afraid to do the required work.

Dr. Julius Bailey has done in Be-Longing what I and many others have failed to do; he has told the painful truth about what it takes and what is required for a Black man to heal his mind, his heart, and his spirit. Like my son and so many others, Julius was suffering from arrested spiritual and emotional development caused by his childhood experiences, distorted social images, and a basic lack of self-love. Added to those things, he was overweight, which contributed to an even deeper level of devaluation. His weapon was his intellect. He could be dismissed, denied, and ignored like his brothers because he was a Black man; however, in certain circles his intellectual development demanded that he be respected. He also suffered from what so many human beings experience, regardless of their race or gender: Julius longed to be loved whereby opening the door of his heart and mind to the divine healing tool of relationships. Through that door walked a healing angel, my goddaughter, Rev. Chinaza Deborah Lee. She loved him. In the depths of her soul, she loved him. Not only did she like “big men,” but she loved the beautiful, brilliant essence of who he was (her words, not mine). She also knew that she could not have him until he learned he could love himself. My goddaughter was able to pierce through the veil of his terror with encouraging acts and words of love, giving him the courage to do the very thing he feared: to know himself as loved, loving, and lovable. Chinaza and Julius, across the many years and states, were a couple in love with the idea of being in love. I knew him for years before I ever laid eyes on him. I knew him through her memories and her tears. I spent much of the time I knew him being mad at him for not recognizing how he had and was hurting her. But then one summer evening in 2015, I saw him see her, and I just couldn’t be mad in the presence of their love. It was electric. It was electrifying. It was pure and sweet and so short-lived. In the weeks that followed, I waited for her to bring up the subject of him. I asked her if she had spoken to him. She said, “Please don’t! I can’t right now! I just can’t!” When she did bring him up, I listened carefully, asking nothing, waiting for her to ride out this new cycle of pain and confusion. The day she told me that she had finally accepted the reality that they would be friends forever but never together like “that” again, I felt sad but relieved. I wanted him for her because she wanted him so badly. She wanted to be-long to him. I wanted freedom for her because her longing was simply too painful to watch.

His story, their story, is one that represents many untold stories; however, the beauty and power of Be-Longing lie in what Dr. Bailey is courageous enough to share about himself and his process. It is no secret to anyone that Black men need to heal and be healed. The questions are, how? And, to what end? I believe they can and will be healed through their relationships, beginning with the one they have with their mother because she is the first teacher. This relationship begins in the womb. Who Black men are, who they become, and how they see themselves, begin with the energy they marinate in within the womb. This then gives rise to the need for their mothers to get clear, be clear, and stay clear about who they are as Black women. Should this happen, Black boys will become men who know who they are and how to be in relationships with Black women. This, however, is just the beginning. Black men will still need spiritual understanding and grounding to deal with and move through the issues of life that may confront them: poverty; abandonment by fathers; physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; distorted social images; economic disenfranchisement; and the normal issues associated with being human. It isn’t easy being a human being, and the work required to master one’s self and the issues of life is not easy work. For this reason, Be-Longing is an important work. Dr. Bailey’s story, struggles, questions, issues, and triumphs epitomize the challenges of personal empowerment that frighten many Black men. His writing is a personal testimony of how the work is done, why the work must be done, and what can happen when the work is not done. My hat and high heels are off to you, Dr. Julius Bailey. Your work is a gift to the world.

Rev. Dr. Iyanla EgunYe Vanzant, Author, Master Spiritual Technician

Host: Iyanla Fix My Life (OWN)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It must be said at the outset that I could not have had the temerity to approach this project without the grace and mercy of God, who has kept me over these forty-five years. A project like this is a labor of emotional anguish as pretense to miracle work. As such there are some folk who performed their own forms of miracles to ensure that this project was birthed.

My mother Sandra, sister Bianca, and daughter Heather, we all we got!

To Momma Irma Jones, Lisa, Letrisa and all the Jones family, thank you for loving me.

The angel of this project is Marie White Small and her husband, Frank. You allowed me in your home to eat good ole Vermont food, into your minds to help me shape this memoir, and into your hearts to soak up love and encouragement. Not sure how I could have pressed send without you.

My Degreed Money Ent Family: Dr. Sha’Dawn Battle, Dr. A.D. Carson, (the almost Dr.) Dalitso Ruwe, and Adam Schueler, thank you for the years of trusting my mentorship. My prayer is that the bond you three share never breaks and you have the continuous strength to be the excellent examples of scholarship and service that you have been.

To my colleagues who, in their own way, helped to push me ahead with this project: Dr. Lori Askeland, Dr. Tommy Curry, Dr. D’Arcy Fallon, Ken Irwin, Dr.

T’Hasan Johnson, Dr. Mike Mattison, Dr. Nancy McHugh, Dr. Malik Raheem, Dr. Elaine Richardson, and Dr. Steven Spoonover. Your collegiality has been deeply appreciated.

The great students in my three semesters of teaching Love, Death, and Desire at Wittenberg University deserve much appreciation. Your trust in me, your belief in yourselves, and your courage to be, give me the strength to continue to talk through my love hurts. Oh and shout out to Karlos Marshall and Brian LaDuca at the Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation (IACT) at ArtStreet (University of Dayton) and Anisi Daniels-Smith (Hiram College) for allowing me to incubate a chapter with your students. Thank you.

I am indebted and grateful to all my academic institutions who reared a knucklehead to the man I am today: St. Gerard Majella (Markham, IL), St. Jude Thaddeus (Chicago, IL), Quigley Seminary South (Chicago, IL), Brother Rice High School (Oak Lawn, IL), Thornwood High School (South Holland, IL), the great Howard University (Washington, DC), the esteemed Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), and finally the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana, IL).

Sarah Horowitz and Bryan Szabo for your roles in securing the release of this project.

Faculty Endowment Fund Board at Wittenberg for the grant to assist in this project.

To my Main Street Church family in Decatur, Illinois, my earnest gratitude for helping me to Be-Long (again).

To Bennie Bailey and the entire Bailey family, thank you for always accepting me as yours.

To Kortni Alston, Toni Blackman, Doug Caridine, LaMetricia Johnson-Eaddy, Bre Harris, Yolanda Sandifer-Horton, Chaka Jenkins, Raymond Jones, Dr. Laurie Joyner, TeeJ Mercer, Terrance Robinson, Adam Schueler, Rev. Philip Turner, and Janice Williams, thank you, dear friends, for generously giving your love, time, gifts, and talents to my life.

And finally to all those women who have loved me and whom I have loved or tried to love, thank you for our season together.

CHAPTER ONE

The Mirror Moment

I woke in a dusky room that smelled faintly of hibiscus and strongly of coconut oil. My head turned toward the window. I watched Marshonda toweling herself, sitting in her brown, silk boudoir chair. Her sienna skin, enhanced by the room’s light, gave off a radiance of its own. Her full breasts glistened with water. While I watched, she began to comb and condition her wild hair. For as long as I had known her, she always tried to tame her mane, but I liked it best as it was when she was fresh out of the shower—as wild and free as she was. She rested her chin in her hand and smiled softly at me. I smiled back and turned to the window, watching the dust motes dance in the early morning light. “Come sit by me,” she cooed, solicitously patting the chair beside her. She tried to put me at ease, wanting me to feel as comfortable in my skin as she did in hers. She always seemed most comfortable in her apartment, surrounded by her pretty things—most of them pink or green. She appeared to be comfortable almost anywhere, though there was a faint difference between her inside and outdoor selves—one I had learned to recognize and appreciate. Marshonda was a thoroughly independent and modern woman, a successful educator, a lady of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She was a vigorous, vivacious, and beautiful Black woman, and I envied her comfort, envied her equally effortless movement and stillness, envied her equanimity. I was a fat man, a self-conscious man, and embarrassed by my size. Even in bed —especially in bed—I hid my body from my lover. I hid my flesh beneath Tshirts and pulled the sheets high up on my chest. During sex, I insisted that the lights be turned down low or off entirely. I was convinced that if my lover took all of me in, I would quickly be shown the door. So, beneath sheets and shirts, I hid, nevertheless seeking all of this five-footfour, caramel-skinned, sensual southern belle.

From her prissy, high-heeled gait to her sweet perfumed scent, Marshonda’s style was overwhelmingly girlie. Equally overwhelming was my ravenous desire for her. I struggled to believe that I was actually with a woman of such style and beauty, as I didn’t see myself as worthy. If I could’ve wrapped my mind around the fact that a woman like her sincerely wanted to be with me, then maybe I would have allowed myself to feel deserving of love as well. Marshonda’s green eyes both enticed me and scared me. I was weak-kneed in her gaze. She was catlike in the bedroom, quiet, unassuming but full of fire. I often called her “Maggie with the cat eyes.” She never knew I was referring to the Tennessee Williams play or that I was Brick, living in mendacity. I wanted her hands on my body. I wanted her to rub my belly and kiss my chest, but the thought of her exploring my body with her eyes, her hands, and her tongue also terrified me. The minute she discovered what was beneath the shirt or under the covers, I was convinced she would forever see me as undesirable. And now Marshonda wanted me to come to her, to come as I was and to sit by her, both of us nude. She wanted me to lift the sheets and parade myself in front of her. “Sit by you?” I asked. “Now?” I could hear the distress in my voice. “Yes, Julius,” she said. “Come sit with me.” I wasn’t prepared for this. I had counted on her leaving the room so I could reach for my pants and shirt at the foot of the bed, but she wasn’t about to give me that chance. I was cornered. “I’ve run a bath,” she said. “I thought we could soak together.” I blinked at her. I could feel my mouth hanging open. “Or maybe,” she said, “I could bathe you.” I was flummoxed, at a loss for words. Rather than throwing off the covers and ing her, I pulled the sheets tighter around my body. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing my body in the light, heaving itself out of bed and across the room. I always avoided looking at myself in the mirror until I was fully dressed. I wrapped myself like a mummy in the top sheet. I shook my head at her and went on the offensive: “I don’t want you to bathe me,” I said. “I’m a grown man.

I can bathe myself.” “Lord, go ahead!” she said, raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Help me endure this sarcastic man. Yes, Lord, he knows he’s an arrogant man. He knows he looks at life as a transactional affair. He gives only to get, and, of course, he gives less than he ought to and receives less than he deserves. What he doesn’t know Lord is how you love him so and how I love him so. He doesn’t know that there is love all around him. Lord, he doesn’t know how to love himself.” “What do you mean I don’t know how to love myself? Of course I do. I know my own mind, don’t I? I influence young minds, don’t I? I’m well educated. I have money. I—” “Come look at yourself in the mirror,” she said, cutting me off before I could finish. She stood at the foot of the bed with her arm stretched out toward me, her palm open and waiting. When I didn’t release my grasp on the sheets, she took another step toward me. “Come on,” she said. “Show me how much you love yourself. Show me that you know what a beautiful man you are. You’re not fooling anybody hiding under that sheet. You know you’re a fat man, the Lord above knows you’re a fat man, and yes, I know you’re a fat man.” My blood pounded in my ears. I tore back the cover and stood nose to nose with her. “How dare you—” “No, no, love. It’s you that has to dare. Turn around. Look at yourself.” Marshonda seized my shoulders and pivoted me on the spot. There I stood, naked, every inch of me reflected in her full-length cheval mirror. We were silent for a second, both of us looking at my reflection. “Do you dare to love that man?” she asked. I couldn’t answer as I continued staring at myself. Loving myself was something that had always been beyond my capacity. I wasn’t sure I knew how to love… Surely my father had not loved me. Was I unlovable?

My father, Michael Hill, met my mother, Sandra Hoskins, when he was twenty and she was just fifteen years old. The two of them were both relaxing at The Point, a beach hangout on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, one of the few such beaches in a still deeply segregated Chicago where Black folk could congregate. Michael, fresh off a stint with the US Army, was playing football professionally with the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Fire. His time with the army had marked him, as it marked so many other men of his generation, indelibly. He was imperious, treating those who crossed paths with him as though they were subordinates, barking out orders and making unreasonable demands. He had very strong and unenlightened beliefs about what it meant to be a man and equally narrow-minded views about what a woman’s role in the home and in the broader world should be. Although Sandra considered herself a worldly woman, she was no match for the ex-military man who had brought back from Vietnam a nearly unquenchable thirst for alcohol, drugs, and sexual conquest. Michael took Sandra to a local nightclub. A few dates later, not long after her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a gift that would grow inside of her for the next nine months. To her credit, Sandra refused to see herself as a conquest. She was an active and willing agent in the development of her own sexuality, but this was not enough to tip the scales in her favor. She was still the sheltered daughter of a pastor, just a teenager masquerading in adult-like autonomy. She was in over her head, and the behavior of her future child’s father made this all the more apparent. Michael’s overbearing and raucous behavior and his propensity for extreme political and social views scared her half to death. Here she was, a pregnant sixteen-year-old, and the man who would-be the father did not seem to be father material—not even remotely. The two of them sat side by side on the steps of her father’s church on a scalding summer night. She was watching him carefully as he eyed ersby, sizing up the men and ogling the women. He took a slug from a bottle of Wild Irish Rose wrapped in a bag. “Put that away,” she said. “Daddy would be scandalized if he saw you drinking at his house of worship.”

“Girl, you getting kind of mouthy,” he shot back. “Who you think you are telling what I can and cannot do? We ain’t actually inside no church.” He spat through his teeth and went back to eyeballing pedestrians. Sandra bit her tongue. She already knew there was no use arguing. He didn’t so much as acknowledge she had her own opinions, and once he’d decided to do something, there was no deterring him. She knew she was in over her head, but she hoped if she started kicking now, she could get above the surface. She took a deep breath. “I got something to tell you,” she said. “Yeah, what’s that?” “I’m having your baby.” “Say what? A baby?” Michael jumped off the step. Grinning broadly, he strutted from the church steps to the curb and back again. He was mumbling to himself and swigging back the bottle. Within a few seconds, he had a plan. “We got to get married, and it’s gotta be right away. Right away, you hear?” He said this not only to my mother but to everybody else within earshot. “Please,” my mother said, “lower your voice. I don’t need Daddy hearing you ranting and raving, and there’s no need to announce to half the neighborhood that I’m pregnant.” He shot her a look and went on. “My son’s gonna be named Ra’Hasan. The boy’s gonna be strong and audacious like his daddy. He’ll be virile and handsome because I am all that and more.” He had it all figured out. If my mom hadn’t interrupted him, he might have planned what my first child’s name would be, or maybe what should be written on my gravestone. My mother had other plans. “I’m not going to marry you, Michael Hill. You will be a daddy, but you are not going to be my husband. I know you been with other women, and I know you still prowling around like some kind of feral cat.” He rounded on her, coming close enough for her to smell this alcohol on his

breath. He shook his fist under her chin. “You will marry me, you hear? That’s my boy in your belly.” “How you know it’s a boy? Maybe it’s my own little girl.” He scoffed. “Whatever. All I know is you and that boy in your belly will be mine. Otherwise I’ll write you and the baby off forever, you hear me?” Perhaps he expected the threat to change her tack, but she was made of stronger stuff. “I hear you. I hear the way you speak to me, the way you disrespect me. I’m not g up for a lifetime of you.” And just like that, true to his word, he wrote mother and baby off forever. He was gone. My mother did not name me Ra’Hasan according to my father’s wishes. She had her heart set on Julius; she had just read—and loved—Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in English class that year. Nor did she raise me to be the audacious braggart that my father hoped I would be. I often wonder how my life might have been different had my absent father been present. Though I was not short on positive male role models, I longed, in my youth, for a father to call my own. I envied my peers with present fathers—even when that presence was less frequent or uniformly positive than they hoped for. I identified most with those whose fathers were either entirely or mostly absent. I knew what it meant to grow up in a fatherless home, what it meant to yearn for something that could never be—namely, for my father to walk up the front steps and take his place beside my mother at the table. In 2009, Michael Hill died in Cook County, Illinois. He was alone, with few assets, and no family or loved ones came forward to bury him. I didn’t find out my father had ed until he was already five years beneath the ground in the Abraham Lincoln Cemetery—only twenty rows away from where my mother’s father was laid to rest. My daughter and I visited his grave one gray and drizzly Thanksgiving morning. The trees were bare, and the gravestones and crosses stretched to the horizon and beyond. Our breath hung in the brisk early morning air and we stamped our feet and shook our hands to keep them from going numb. My daughter, then a tender seven years of age, was too young to understand the sadness that moment held for me. By this time, I had run out of anger and resentment for the man who

refused to be a father to me. I was now, once and for all, truly fatherless. The fantasy of the father returning like Odysseus was no longer a bauble I toyed with in idle moments. I would not get the reckoning I had long desired. I would never be granted the satisfaction of acknowledgment, never shake my father’s hand, never break bread with him. The answers to my questions—why he left, why he never returned, what kind of man he was—went with him to his grave.

In the absence of a father, my grandfather, Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins, gave me and my mother all that he could and all that he had. He had escaped the oppressive South by ing the army but soon discovered he was not made for violence. Rather than face the long uphill battle of conscientious objection, he deceived his superiors, telling them he was a man of the cloth, whereupon he was placed in the chaplaincy. He never had to take a human life, though it would not be accurate to describe him as a peaceful man—his wives and daughters can attest to that. The Reverend was an enigmatic man, gifted with words, and one of the most persuasive men I ever met. He was, my mother would say, “so slick he could slide through glass and not ever crack it.” He’d curse you out like a soldier and lead you to the altar with his ministerial humility in the same breath. My grandfather loved the ladies. He cheated on his wife, known as J.R., her nickname from her days growing up in Alabama. His infidelities bore fruit—a child in 1961 and another in 1962. J.R. died in 1962—of a broken heart, so the story goes. It wasn’t long before he married again, this time to a woman named Lois, never mending a stitch of his skirt-chasing ways. By the time I was a boy, the reverend and Lois were no longer living as man and wife. Though they never divorced, they lived separately. The church ladies all believed the position of helpmeet and wife was a vacant one. The Reverend was not only an eligible bachelor, as far as the community knew, but a desirable one as well. He was tall, over six feet, and slender. His skin was smooth, the color of melted caramel. He had a big heart—almost as big as the Buick he drove. He would often bring neighborhood children clothes, feed the hungry, and work on behalf of those who needed low-income housing—all of this in the efforts of his ministry. It was no secret that he ministered to some of the ladies in the congregation in private, and what that entailed he never said. He would, however, wax philosophic about what he called the “democratization of love,” by which he meant love was non-exclusive, something to be shared widely rather than jealously guarded. This sounded good enough, but I am quite sure that the philosophy came well after the infidelity. It was his feeble attempt to make his love for the flesh into something that more closely resembled a pure love of the

spirit. I know that his philosophy was self-serving and even heretical. But as a young man, I positively worshiped my grandfather, taking his word as gospel, and it often was. He was, I thought, the very definition of manliness—a broadcaster of seed, a smooth-talker, a skirt-chaser. One could apparently be a godly man, a man who had the respect and love of his flock, while still a philanderer.

“Julius! Are you lost in that mirror?” Shonda’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts and back to reality. She looked at me with concern, studying my face. “What were you thinking about?” she asked. “I was just thinking about my father,” I said, “whom I never really knew, and reminiscing about the rest of family. You know, thinking about how they loved me, or maybe could have. My dad, I mean…” “But, I love you, Jay.” I stood there, naked as a jaybird. My eyes moved up and down Marshonda’s body in the mirror. I took all of her in, my gaze lingering on her breasts and hips. It was so much easier and so much better than looking at myself. She was watching me too, her eyes locked on mine. She gazed at me watching her, and though she might have enjoyed seeing the clear desire play across my features, she knew perfectly well the trick I was playing. “Look at yourself, Julius Hoskins,” she said. She called me this, the name I was born with but not the one I use when she really meant business. “Don’t you be looking at me, look there,” she said, pointing to my naked body in the mirror. “You see? You see that loving, beautiful man?” Inside that armor of girth, I saw myself as I was then, a twenty-seven-year-old man, a fat man, but also a child. I saw a little boy longing for a father. I saw a child hungry for attention and love from the women in his life—mother, grandmother, step-grandmother, aunties, cute girl cousins, and babysitters—so many babysitters. I saw the boy I had almost forgotten—the one who existed before the rude sexual awakening that came before his adolescence. I saw the young man who had carried the weight of that awakening into manhood and never shed it. I saw the lover, the husband, and the father. I saw the man, fat and Black with tears streaming down his face. In the early hours of the morning I penned a thank you to Marshonda. Little did I know that would be one of the last intimate moments we would share, but one that would affect me interminably.

Dear Marshonda Your gaze Chased away the darkness. Your words Blew away the tobacco-stained atmosphere. Every syllable was a breath of fresh air. You were the time I traded X-rated for X-ray: Girl You Saw Right through me. Or did you Saw right through me? Did you rip me open and expose the truth that I had been hiding? Yeah, You did that, too. And as I stood there, Bleeding tears from my hidden wounds, All I could say was: “Thank you.” Thank you. For bringing me face–to-face with my Creator; I was trying to outrun Him like I forgot He made the raceway.

Thank you. There was really nowhere for me to go but death Because when God calls, you pick up, or fall down. Thank you. For letting His light shine through you. For shining it down on me.

This is my story of loss and love in a culture of youth. This is my story of loneliness, of hiding behind layers of indulgence and intellect. This is my story of identity, of what beauty and love truly are, and what it means to love and trust your reflection in the mirror. This is the story of my journey, my longing to be.

CHAPTER TWO

In Search of a Dad

My teenage mother, pregnant and unmarried, was initially shipped off to Birmingham, Alabama, where she was expected to stay with her Aunt Aritha and her husband, Arthur—at least until she gave birth. My grandfather was none too pleased with the prospect of the of his flock watching his daughter’s belly swell before their eyes. He was married to Lois, and as far as anybody knew, the marriage was a serene one. He hid his unsatisfying marriage and his stepping out from his congregation, but a pregnant teenage daughter would be harder to conceal. So he sent her away before she began to show, hoping some time down South would quell her mile-wide rebellious streak and keep any scandal at bay. My grandfather saw the choices my mother made leading up to her pregnancy as a shot across his bow. He knew that my mother realized that he was stepping out on his first wife, and when my grandmother died, my mother held him directly responsible. He only further compounded this by quickly remarrying and just as quickly cheating on that wife, too. Mom wasn’t having any of the holier-thanthou talk from him, but young and pregnant as she was, she had to obey his wishes and go to Alabama. To nobody’s surprise, he regretted sending her away. Shortly before she gave birth to me, she moved back into her old room under my grandfather’s roof on the corner of Ninety-First and Emerald on the South Side of Chicago. Washington Heights was a neighborhood of manicured lawns, working folk, and dedicated churchgoers. As a Baptist minister, my grandfather was an important member of the Black community, and he was widely known and well liked. When we walked together or drove down the street in his big black Buick, people smiled or waved as we ed. My grandfather acknowledged those salutations with an almost imperceptible nod of his head. I felt that on the South Side of Chicago, it meant something to be a Hoskins. There was trust. There was respect. There was love, and this extended to my mother, and to me as well.

Even at sixteen, my mother was already a bright and articulate woman. She was focused on her education. Just as she refused to take my father as her husband when life would have been financially easier with his , she was not interested in relying upon taxpayer dollars, or the judgmental offerings of her dad, to raise her child. She was too proud for that. She was her own woman, and people knew that and respected her for it. In Birmingham, where no one knew her as the minister’s daughter, my mother still faced judgment. Though tongues wagged when her belly started to swell and her ring finger remained bare, there was something about the way she held her head high for all the world to see, something that let the gossips know that Sandra Hoskins was not somebody to be tutted at or pitied. Gossip is unavoidable in any tight-knit community, and eventually, the truth about my mother’s pregnancy did come out. Fortunately, our community was mostly an empathic one, in which each member ed and uplifted others. My mom returned to school when I was still a baby, and the community stepped up to help her. It was clear that Sandra Hoskins had potential, and ive of the community made sure that this potential was not wasted. They saw to it that she had everything she needed. When my mom was at school, her half-sister, my Auntie Judy, who lived with us in the house on Emerald, took care of me. When she wasn’t available, my mom called on the services of one of the neighborhood’s many babysitters, mostly unemployed single mothers who made ends meet by watching the neighborhood’s children. As a toddler, my network of babysitters stretched down the street and around the block. Mrs. Brown, who lived across the street, took care of lots of kids from the neighborhood. I was with her often, and for a long time, I assumed she was family—and in a way she was. Then there was Mrs. Doby, who introduced me to R & B, funk, jazz, and show tunes. By the time I could walk, I was shaking my little butt as hard as I could to the sounds of KC and the Sunshine Band, Earth, Wind & Fire, and David Ruffin. The Doby children, Jimmy and Debbie, treated me like another sibling as we ran around the house in our bare feet, dancing until we were dizzy and exhausted. After all that, we’d fall to the floor laughing and hollering. It was an innocent and carefree childhood. I would wrap my chubby arms around Mrs. Doby, snuggling with her until I was drowsy and content in her lap. She would carry me into the back bedroom—my favorite room in the house with its

wide yellow-and-white striped wallpaper and jasmine plants hanging in the window. Their heady and warm scent filled the room as she laid me down to sleep the deep sleep of the innocent. I moved through spaces saturated with femininity, surrounded by nurturing women of all ages in public and private spaces. From the street to the church, my mother or her friends were there. Men may have been present, but the women closed ranks around me, keeping men and their musk at a distance. Mine was a perfumed and silky smooth early childhood—these women held and kissed me. I was the center of attention. I was—and I felt myself to be—loved.

When I was three years old, my mom married Bennie Bailey. He and my mom had known each other since they were teenagers. He was a dependable and predictable man, not the sort my mother was generally attracted to romantically; she was untamable, and more often drawn to men who, as she said, “had the devil’s tail in them.” Bennie had steady work at the Greyhound station, and he always made it clear that he would, if given the chance, be a good man for her. When she finally gave him his chance, he was true to his word. We moved fifteen miles south from Washington Heights to Markham, Illinois, and I went from being cared for by aunties and neighbors to a neighborhood nursery school, Thompkins Tiny Tots. There was no more dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band with surrogate siblings, no more stand-in mothers and their strong, wide brown arms, no more yellow and white, jasmine-scented room. My mother tried to find reliable babysitters for the times I was not in nursery school, but each one proved a disappointment—this one was careless, that one was late, another one was slovenly and lazy. With each new babysitter, I moved farther and farther from home, first to the street behind our home, then eventually six blocks away. Faces changed, and I never found the same comfort or familiarity as I’d felt in the Washington Heights neighborhood. I made friends on each street and bonded with some of the babysitters, but positives and negatives canceled each other out. For every babysitter who cooed and fawned over me, there was another one who screamed at me or slapped me whenever I stepped out of line, which was hardly a rare occurrence. At first, when I complained to my mother, I found myself with a new babysitter the next day, but as the list of former babysitters grew and the pool of applicants diminished, my mother seemed more willing to lower her expectations. When I complained of punishments meted out at the hands of overzealous babysitters, my mother began to lay the fault at my feet—not at the feet of my caregivers. “You,” she would say, “ought to know better.”

I learned to stop complaining, staying mum even when I should have been telling an adult about what was happening to me. When rules were less than obvious or unwritten, the response to transgressions great or small was always the same: “You should have known better.” By the time I reached the second grade, I’d become a silent penitent—a child who assumed himself to be in the wrong, praying for forgiveness when I should have been speaking up. I was eight years old when I was molested by one of my Markham babysitters. She was a sixteen-year-old girl who lived across the street from us, and Mom often left me with her when she and Bennie had their date nights at the end of the week. This babysitter often invited her friends over, who spoke frankly about boys and sex. She made me promise not to tell anybody about what I was hearing, and she and her friends seemed to enjoy shocking or confusing me. They asked me what I thought about oral sex and then snickered through their fingers when I squirmed. I liked this babysitter. She made me feel like one of the older neighborhood kids, and I told my friends at school she was my girlfriend. One night when it was just the two of us in her parents’ house, she took me into her bedroom and closed the door. She sat me down beside her and bared her breasts to me. I was too young to be aroused, but I knew that I was being given a glimpse of something special—something only boyfriends got to see. She told me to fondle her breasts and then kiss and suck on her nipples, coaching me and calling me a “good boy” the entire time. I could see that I was pleased her, and I wanted to make her happy, but when she told me to stop, the pleasure was erased in an instant. She put her top back on. Holding me at arm’s length, she looked deadly serious now. “Julius,” she said, “you need to promise me that you won’t tell anybody about this.” I stared at her and nodded. “If your mom finds out,” she said, “she’ll kill you.” I was confused. I enjoyed pleasing her, but she now seemed displeased with me —as though I had done something very wrong. Her insistence that I keep what happened a secret only further muddied the waters. I had been proud only moments earlier, but now I was suddenly gripped with shame. I was terrified that

I would be subject to a scolding or worse from my mother. No way was I going to tell her what happened. I had learned enough about what “big boys” do and don’t do to know that good boys kept their feelings to themselves. They don’t cry; they remain silent and just get on with it. I overheard my mother on the phone with the babysitter a few days later saying, “He should have known better.” I was convinced they were talking about what happened—me touching my babysitter’s breasts—so I hid for days to avoid the whipping I was sure was coming. But it never came. As for what had happened, no one ever spoke of it. Not my mom, not the babysitter, and definitely not me. If anything, I was relieved. I kept quiet, but the babysitter obviously told at least one of her friends about what happened. When I was nine or ten, one of the babysitter’s friends appeared at my door and invited herself into my house, first making sure nobody was around. She asked me if I liked my babysitter, as in, “…like, really like her.” I nodded and said, “Yes.” She told me she had to teach me something—something that I would need if I was going to make the babysitter my girlfriend. She said older girls wouldn’t even consider liking a boy unless he could do this one special thing. She went into her bag and pulled out a VHS tape. She put it on and sat down beside me on the couch. It was a porno—the first one I had seen—and she’d cued it up to the moment when the man went down on the woman. It was the first time I’d ever seen a woman’s vagina, and here I was watching this provocative and disturbing scene, scared out of my mind. My babysitter’s friend stopped the tape and lay down on the couch, sliding off her panties, lifting up her skirt, and spreading her legs. She told me to do exactly what the man had done. I did as I was told, and she started to moan like the girl on the tape. I stopped to ask if I was doing it right and she smacked me on the head and told me not to stop until she said to. When she finally said I could stop, I was exhausted. She said I had done all right, but I needed more practice. She came back twice that week, then a couple more times that month, and each time she coached me while I went down on her. I felt like I was learning how to be a man and believed that this was how a man learned to please a woman—by being told exactly what to do by an older woman. It was years before I understood that

I was not being coached on the arts of masculinity. This girl was not, as she said, doing me a favor. She was abusing me. Like all children, I had sexual thoughts and feelings, but they were mere curiosities—the kind that comes naturally to young boys and girls as they begin to approach adolescence. Frequent sexual abuse and exploitation stirred something in me, though. Before I had reached the fifth grade, sex, secrecy, and shame were fused together in my mind. In time, all the abuse and the silence, some of it the result of abs’ threats about what would happen to me if I told anybody, the rest self-enforced, began to crack the surface. I developed a stutter. I groped for even the simplest words, stumbling over consonants and falling into the wells of vowels. This only drove me further into my silent world in which I thought far more than I said. With each new incident—each time I was touched or made to touch—I further convinced myself that what I was experiencing was a mark of favor. I believed that these women, a total of four before my twelfth birthday, granted me privileged access to the world of adult and feminine sexuality. I was convinced that what my abs were telling me—that I was a good boy and that what I was doing was manly—was the truth. It was a rude and premature sexual awakening, and it left me raw and vulnerable—a child chafing in a man’s shoes. In one moment, my sexual ego swelled to gigantic proportions; the next I was deflated. I was torn between the excitement of sexual arousal and experiences forced upon me and the shame that followed. The longer the abuse continued, the more I became certain that we were doing something taboo. Because I hadn’t spoken up immediately, I felt I’d waited too long and now it was too late. I was no longer a victim; I was now a willing participant. In my mind, there was nothing I could do to change the situation. As I grew into adolescence and my peers began to brag about losing their virginity, I discovered that sex was not just about the woman’s pleasure, but the man’s as well. My friends told me stories of giving oral sex, which I could relate to, though I never said as much. They also told me about receiving oral sex and what it felt like to penetrate a woman. I wondered why, after all the time I had spent between a woman’s legs, I had never been asked to penetrate her. I desired reciprocation, and after going down on one of my abs, I bashfully asked her to return the favor. The shocked and appalled look on her face made it clear that

this was a one-sided transaction—she had no desire for me specifically, and any desire I had obviously didn’t matter. She made me promise never to ask again.

When I was nine, my mom and Bennie, whom I now called Dad, brought home a baby sister. I was no longer the only child, no longer the sun around which my mother and Bennie revolved. The baby slept in their bedroom, and I felt something I had not felt before: jealousy. I asked if I could move my single bed in with them so we could all sleep in the same room. Momma said I would have to sleep by myself in my room, like a big boy. I acquiesced, but I still grappled with feelings of jealousy, the unfairness of the situation, and, above all, what it meant to be a “big boy.” They sat with me while I held little Bianca. It was the first time I ever held a baby, and I was fascinated with how tiny she was. Her teeny but perfect hands and button nose, the way she would stretch and yawn, making sweet burbling noises—every little thing about her seemed perfect. My mother took her back into her arms and rocked her, singing “Rock-a-Bye Baby” and “You Are So Beautiful” softly into her tiny ears. When her song was done and Bianca was nearly asleep, Momma would whisper to her. “Bianca,” she would say, “you are perfect. You will always be perfect.” “Momma,” I whispered, “did you used to tell me I was perfect when I was a baby?” “Of course I did, Jay. You were a charming baby boy, right from the beginning, sweet and beguiling, just like you still are.” “Am I still perfect, Momma?” She puffed through her nose and smiled at me. “You know the answer to that, Jay. You got the tail end of the devil in you.” She smiled and winked at me. “But I guess that’s how God made you, so yes, you’re perfect in your own way.” Her answer was satisfying enough, but I still wished that she would hold me and coo in my ear as she did with little Bianca. I saw what a mother’s love for her infant looked like. I wondered what it was about me that made me less worthy of my mother’s affection. I didn’t ever being held like that, though she almost certainly had fawned over her son just as much as she fawned over her little daughter. I didn’t understand then that memory is an imperfect, selective thing and that I couldn’t being held as an infant because, for all of us, our earliest years are buried in the sands of oblivion.

When Bennie Bailey married my momma, he brought with him a whole new set of relatives. I had two new uncles, two new aunts, and new grandparents as well. They fawned over young Bianca, making a big deal about her birthdays and offering to help out whenever possible. Although I was not related by blood like Bianca was, they always treated me as a full member of the family. Bennie’s youngest sister, Aunt Pat, loved skating and playing cards, spades and bid whist, with her friends in the evening, and they often ed us at the house, sitting around the dining room table. The conversation was raucous and with a liberal dose of spice. They sometimes forgot I was listening, and it was from these overheard conversations that I started to get a more complete and accurate picture of adult life, relationships, and—as the evening wore on—sex as well. When the game was in play, the conversation was mostly about the cards, but in between rounds, while the dealer shuffled, salty talk dominated. I would lurk in the kitchen just out of sight and listen to their stories, listen to the gossip, listen to them as they described their lovers, real and imagined boyfriends, and husbands and their insatiable or sometimes waning sexual appetites. I frequently ed the ladies at the table as well. When I was confused about something I overheard, I asked them what certain words meant. They howled and told me I would understand one day, pinching my chubby cheeks, telling me how cute I was. When I was still quite young, my baby fat was, as the ladies said, adorable, but that began to change as I approached adolescence. While my peers began to grow upward, becoming more lean and lithe by the day, I continued to expand outward with each ing year. The ladies no longer pinched my cheeks or called me adorable. “Cute” and “adorable” began to be replaced with “chubby” and “husky.” I grew increasingly self-conscious and aware, and I was sometimes told by the girls at school that my weight made me less desirable. While the girls shunned me, the boys teased me. Since I wasn’t about to win any friends, male or female, with my looks, I tried to compensate with storytelling. Self-deprecation and whoppers were my stock-intrade. One minute I was making myself the butt of the joke, almost always with

a fat joke, and the next I was weaving fantastical tapestries, always placing myself in the center of the frame bathed in the hero’s light. I told stories of defending the honor of young women and of standing up to bullies and showing them that on my block, insults were met with swift retributive justice. This was the kind of man I imagined my father had been when he was my age: the former football player who threw his weight around and imposed his will. Women must have ired him for his bravado, and I wanted that same kind of iration, but I was too sensitive, too soft around the middle and at my core. I couldn’t be the kind of man I imagined my father to be, so I created and shared larger-thanlife fantasies that were more reflections of my absent father than of me. Luckily, nobody at my school lived on my block, so my stories were never contradicted, even if they weren’t always believed. Even though some of my classmates saw me as my block’s Shaft, not everybody heard the stories, so the taunts about my weight continued. But I never gave the bullies the satisfaction of seeing their barbs wound me. I projected an image of bravado, fragile though it was, which, combined with my husky frame, enabled me to keep the bullies at arm’s length. I had adversaries, but I had defenders as well. No matter what image I projected, on the inside I was lonely. I longed for honest and affectionate companionship with any of my classmates. I wanted to be loved, not for the man I was pretending to be but for the boy I was. I yearned for the father I had never known, and I envied those of my friends with fathers who appeared at community, church, or school functions. I envied my adopted cousins the fact that my adopted father was of their own flesh and blood. Bennie and other senior male of the family tried to fill the emotional void left by my absent father with their love and attention, but I was still not privy to the intricacies of a normal father-son relationship. I would always be Bennie’s stepson and not his biological child, a distinction that I simply couldn’t forget. In our family, I didn’t feel like I belonged the same way my sister did. My husky and muscular father was not in the picture, so I was also out of place physically. In family photographs, it looked as though I was a stranger’s child who had wandered into the picture. Only when looking closely could you see that my mother and I shared the same eyes and cheekbones—but not her svelte figure. The more I grew, the more obvious it became that I was made from different DNA.

At the end of my fourth-grade year, Bennie and my mother separated after seven years of marriage. Consistent with all I knew of my mother, once she made a determination, she acted on it. This twenty-seven-year-old, tall, slender, beautiful woman freed herself and threw caution to the wind. Bennie was caught offguard, and was visibly, viscerally heartbroken. His love for my mother, coupled with the joy of being a new father, had invigorated his life, and that happiness was abruptly severed by my mother’s decision to leave. I imagine she had good reasons, or maybe she didn’t; either way, such is the nature of stepchildren and stepparents. We are bonded by a third party, one who must seek their own happiness, though instead they often choose to unhappily remain for stability. Not my mother! Stability and Sandra just were not synonymous. My mother was a free spirit, an impulsive and regret-free woman whose fear of the unknown may have existed, but never prevented her emancipation. For all of the day-to-day ways a boy needs a father, surrogate or actual, I had to once again make do on my own or turn to my mother or her friends with questions—many of which flummoxed them. I acted out in a clear bid for attention, but my mother’s open palms and sharp tongue did nothing to quell the feelings roiling inside of me. Bennie might not have been my biological father, but he provided me with male bonding and a male role model, which was at least a partial replacement for my absent father. I wished that I could call him my father in the same way my sister could, but at least he was someone I could and did call Dad. I needed that male-to-male connection more than I had realized, and after he was gone, I found myself staring at the empty place at the table where he used to sit and ask me about what I was learning and doing at school. I didn’t dare sit in that empty seat, and it always made me uncomfortable when anyone else did. I still had so much to learn about what it meant to be a man—so many questions unanswered, so much silent observation of Bennie I had yet to do. As long as Bennie occupied his place at the dining room table, I had a model of masculinity under our roof. My mother, my sister, and I were all protected and provided for, not merely materially, but spiritually and emotionally as well. He provided the center to our nuclear family that allowed me to pretend—at least sometimes— that my life was normal, that all was as it should be. Without him, that illusion crumbled.

We moved back in with my grandfather, into that same house in Chicago. For the year that we lived with him, we lived in the basement. I used to clomp up the stairs, bringing him the newspaper or some apple juice, any excuse to visit and spend time with him. “Whatcha doing?” I’d ask as he sat up in his bed with his reading glasses nesting halfway between his nose and his eyes. “Just working on the church bulletin.” My mother had tried to simplify his work by showing him how to create his projects on the computer, but he was dedicated to his cut-and-paste method, which involved creating a master bulletin for the old mimeograph machine in his pastoral office. A committee comprised of mostly women came by on Thursday afternoons to run off the copies and fold and staple as needed. Sometimes they met on Saturdays and I would help, watching my grandfather flutter around those pretty ladies who smelled so sweet and wore form-fitting dresses that piqued my imagination—and my grandfather’s too. For all of Bennie Bailey’s steadfastness, he was no longer there to model constancy and faithfulness. My grandfather was now my only male role model.

CHAPTER THREE

Confessions of Puppy Love

On my first day as a first-grader at St. Gerard’s Catholic Grammar School, my grandfather dropped me off on the curb outside of the school. He made the daily trek from his South Side Emerald Street home out to Markham to bring me to school. Both my mom and Bennie left for work long before the doors to St. Gerard’s were open. I climbed out of my grandfather’s old Buick and slammed the heavy door shut. I looked around at the other kids outside the school entrance, chatting and laughing as they climbed the front steps. My new blue polyester slacks chafed me, and I felt uncomfortable in my collared shirt and clip-on tie. I adjusted the neck of my shirt and took a deep breath. In a predominantly White school in the late 1970s, I stood out merely by being Black; my roly-poly third-grade body and my stutter only drew more attention to me, amplifying my already growing sense that I did not belong. For all its discomfort, I welcomed the uniformity of my parochial school attire; I felt less like an outsider, if only slightly. For once I looked like everybody else, as though I actually was like everybody else. I soon learned this sameness did not extend beyond clothing, but still, I was hopeful. I stood in the playground watching the other boys shoot hoops and realized that I would have to practice and wow them with my skills to be accepted. They were not likely to ask me to in their schoolyard games; I was seldom anyone’s first pick. I joked and laughed and did my best to fit in, but soon enough I realized that the girls were more to my liking. I complimented those diminutive ladies and sweet-talked my way into grade school friendships that protected me from crueler children—the kids who were quick to taunt, or worse. I was in third grade when I met a cute classmate named Lisa Jurgen. She was the prettiest little blond-haired girl an eight-year-old boy had ever known. Lisa

slipped me a valentine from her fancy red box of cards that year. She ran over to me in the playground and quickly handed it to me, then blushed and ran off. From that moment, I was in love. I hadn’t bought Lisa a thing, but I was determined to get her something to express my feelings, and it was still a few days before February fourteenth. That weekend, I was over at my elder cousin Liz’s house. She was like a second mom to my mother. I was in her room watching television when I noticed her jewelry box. Thinking of Lisa, I rummaged through colorful bangles and silver chains to see if I could find a ring for my valentine. I figured if I searched deep down in the box I would find something that my cousin wouldn’t miss. Eventually, I found just what I needed. That Monday, I went to school with a ring wrapped in some tissue paper from the bag filled with leftover Christmas paper. I scrawled Lisa in red marker, dotting the i with a big red heart on the front of the package, and presented it to her at recess. She smiled and blushed, ripping open the package. “You got me a ring, my own ring? It’s so pretty, Julius.” She twisted it onto her finger, smiled, and then ran off to preen in front of all the other little girls. I watched her chatter away and then look back and point toward me. I was pretty pleased with myself. That next day I was called into the principal’s office; my mom had already been called and was waiting there for me, along with Lisa and her mom. I was nervous but didn’t expect questions about the ring; I thought we were in trouble for being in love, that at a Catholic grammar school, it was unacceptable to be in love without the permission of our parents. As I sat outside on the bench waiting to be called in, I imagined the speech I would recite for Lisa’s mom… Mrs. Jurgen, I know I am just nine, and only a boy, but I love Lisa. My mom thinks it is just puppy love, but I know it’s more than that; it is full-grown dog love. I promise to be a good boyfriend to Lisa and never be mean to her. But before I could say any of that, Principal Sister s demanded to know where I got such a ring to give to Lisa Jurgen. I refused to answer. All I knew was that I was in deep trouble for giving Lisa that

ring. My mom finished up her conference with Mrs. Jurgen and Principal Sister s, who I knew hated me just from the looks she flashed my way. Truthfully, I felt the same way about her. In the small room outside the principal’s office, my mom found me and immediately gave me the look of death. “Where did you get that ring, Jay?” she growled in a low voice. I was nervous and embarrassed. I felt like everyone was against me, so I lied, stuttering and stammering, “I found it.” “Where did you find it, Julius?” Her face was so close to mine I could feel her spittle on my cheek and smell her bitter coffee breath. I shifted my weight back and forth from foot to foot, knowing I couldn’t it I stole it from a family member. Instead I broke down, tears running down my face as I fell to my knees under the crucifix hanging on the wall. I began to pray. “Dear Father, forgive me as I have sinned. Please bless my mother, Mrs. Jurgen, and Lisa, as I have hurt them and I did not mean to. You know I have only good intentions and whatever my punishment is, may it be given knowing that I only loved Lisa as I love you, and my mommy, Heavenly Father. Amen.” Mrs. Jurgen grabbed Lisa’s hand and stormed out of the room, saying, “I have no more time to waste with this nonsense. Lisa, you are never to talk to Julius again.” “Julius, you must tell us where you found the ring. We are not leaving until you tell the truth,” Sister s warned. I whispered under my breath, “Cousin Liz’s,” but neither she nor my mom heard me. She asked again. This time my mother propped my chin up. “Sit up straight, Julius! Now you tell me what you know. You got to swallow your own nasty medicine this time.” “Cousin Liz’s,” I blurted out. “I found it at Cousin Liz’s.”

“Boy, I’m about to beat your behind, as soon as we get out of here. I can’t believe you stole Liz’s ring! What is wrong with you?” I wondered if little kids were allowed to call a lawyer. I had already prayed, and then finally told the truth. There would be hell to pay. But no one understood any of it. I was a nine-year-old boy in full-grown dog love. In the end, my career at the Catholic grammar school didn’t last long. I was eventually expelled for something that wasn’t entirely my fault. Although I was a vexatious kid by the time fourth grade rolled around, I was both victim and perpetrator. I had finished my work and turned around to flirt with Debbie, the cutest of the four Black girls in my fourth-grade class. We were ing notes, and I had repeatedly been warned to turn around and stop bothering her. I knew I wasn’t technically “bothering” Debbie, so I figured I could ignore the warning. Clearly, I was already a parser of words. Debbie and I were friends, and we chatted about what age we would be when we got married, how many kids we were going to have, that sort of thing. We played a game using an origami-like whirlybird made by folding and cutting a piece of paper. Some kids called the game “Fortune Teller,” others called it “Chatterbox.” We’d hold it on our fingers, opening and closing the triangular paper doors and singing, “Eenie, meenie, miney, mo…” Once we landed on the appropriate door, one of us would ask the question and unfold the paper to reveal the hidden answer. As I turned to Debbie, still talking a mile a minute despite having been warned, I felt a sharp slap on the back of my neck. I knew exactly who had hit me— Patrick Cleveland. He was smitten with Debbie and jealous of my already suave ways with every girl I met. I smiled, thinking, I’ll show that boy. We gonna have a little fun. It was not malicious, but it was certainly intentional. I flung around with my right arm leading the way and connected with a sixty-four-year-old diminutive Irish nun— right in the face. The moment was surreal.

The entire fourth-grade class at St. Gerard’s gasped, reacting almost in unison. “Oh, no!” my classmates exclaimed. I tried to apologize, but Sister Mary Bernadette stumbled to the floor before righting herself, grabbing her face, and then running out of the classroom. I didn’t know if I was going to Hell or the principal’s office first. I sat there, nervous, trying to explain myself to the rest of the class as I stuttered through every other word. A chorus of overlapping voices filled the room, ringing in my head—and all of them were directed at me. “You in trouble!” “What’s wrong with you?” “I can’t believe you slapped a nun!” “You going to Hell, Julius.” “Glad I’m not you, cause you sucker-punched a nun.” I wanted to run, but where to? I had just slapped a nun. I mean, she was basically next to Jesus in the hierarchy of Catholicism. I had just blown my chances of ever making my way through the Pearly Gates. I knew no one could hide from God. I sat as still as a church mouse, hoping the spirit of forgiveness would shine down on Sister Mary Bernadette and somehow she would know it was an accident. She would make me stay inside during recess for a couple days to wash the blackboards or, at worst, write lines on the blackboard over and over, until I had written five hundred times, I will not hit. I will not hit. I will not hit… The minutes ticked by, but still our teacher did not return. We were twenty-five fourth- graders alone in a classroom and I had filled the room with so much fear that no one acted up or even left their seat. After what seemed an eternity, my name was called over the PA system. “Julius Bailey, report to the main office.”

Immediately the mocking began again. “Oooh, you’re in trouble! You’re in trouble!” I felt my face grow hot, but I didn’t respond; I was too consumed with the rapid thoughts racing through my head as I stood up and began the long walk to the principal’s office. I stared at the boxed pattern on the floor as I made my way down the stretch of seemingly endless hallway. My chest felt tight and a heavy sense of dread in the pit of my stomach grew stronger with each step I took. Already wracked with guilt, I was terrified of the inevitable shame and punishment that awaited me. By the time I arrived at the principal’s office, the school had already called my mom at work, my grandfather, and the police. I sat there alone. No one talked to me for an hour. When my mother finally arrived, Principal Sister s escorted her into the office, taking a moment to glare at me before closing the door. Now I knew she hated me. I sat there looking through the glass, worriedly trying to read lips and body language. I wondered if this simply meant another whooping, a skill at which my mother had become increasingly proficient, or if my punishment might be something worse. Surely there would be a penalty for nearly coldcocking a fourfoot-nine nun from the Old Sod. The guillotine fell. I was suspended for hitting a nun. Immediately, I tried to defend myself, explaining that it was an accident, that I was sorry, I had no intention of hurting Sister Mary Bernadette— but no one wanted to hear my side.

CHAPTER FOUR

On Our Own

Eventually, my mother saved enough money that she managed to buy us a home. We moved into a shotgun house, a style that is now recognized as an African contribution to American architectural designs. It was a small brick house, and although it had its flaws, we were happy to call it our own. The front door opened into the den, where a cheap, uncomfortable couch that had seen better days sat against the wall. To the left was the dining/living room, with white stucco walls covered in photos of Bianca and me at various ages. In the middle of the room was the dining room table, where visitors preferred to sit rather than on our worn-out couch. In the kitchen, a large brown washer and dryer stood right next to the sink, the refrigerator and stove just a few feet away. My mother’s room was tiny, to say the least, with just enough space for two or three people to stand. The shotgun hallway led past the bathroom and linen closet and to the back of the house, where my sister and I each had a bedroom along the wall that faced the park. What I liked best about living there were the hours of raucous playtime in the park with the other neighborhood kids. We played a version of softball called Piggy. When there were not enough players for teams, players were rotated; if the batter got a hit, the catcher then became the batter, the pitcher became the catcher, and so on. I used to call the first batter “Piggy One” and the pitcher “Piggy Two.” Rarely was there much interest in being “Piggy Three,” the catcher. Other times, we played neighborhood football games—Church Street versus Hale Street, or Vincennes and Watkins against Church Street. There was also a basketball court directly behind our house that was always full. In many ways, it seemed like the perfect place for a kid to grow up. But the reality of our neighborhood also included gang life. Twice a month, just five blocks away from the Morgan Park Police Station, our park was filled with gangster disciples in meetings, organizing and mobilizing, or sometimes

shooting craps and playing dice. Oftentimes, I would look out my bedroom window wondering two things: How could the police not break this up? And how could I gain access to this lifestyle and obtain the accoutrements of the hustle: a Starter Jacket, some Jordan’s, and some “ends,” as we called money for the girls, without the forewarned pitfalls of death or incarceration? My vision of infamous grandeur was often quelled by ranking gang who respected both my mother and my Aunt Joanne, who lived with us. Their opposition to the idea of me ing a gang was so forceful that one day, when I thought I was being “jumped in,” a term for initiation, I was beaten up for even asking to be a part of the gang. “Stay your ass in school,” they told me, “cause you ain’t built for this.” Despite my occasional misbehavior, I was still considered a “good boy,” a kid who played sports and went to Catholic school and had many other options in life. While I may not have liked it, the gangsters ultimately did me a favor—they recognized and rejected me for the innocent kid I was. Our family struggled in other ways as well; my mother was laid off from one job and fired from another. For a while, she struggled to find a stable full-time job. Finally, she found work as an ant for several small private firms. For Bianca and me, this meant we were back with friends and new “aunts” every day after school. My mother worried about sending me to an inner city school. Although I would have been with the boys from our neighborhood, most of whom were good kids, my mother believed I deserved better. In her mind, a good education meant a private education, so she decided to send me to St. Thaddeus Catholic Grammar School. There, she felt I would acquire a proper education to propel me along the intellectual path she envisioned for me. But my grandfather, the enigmatic Baptist church pastor, who lived just a few blocks away from the parochial school, objected—vehemently. Given that he would have to contribute to my tuition, he had plenty to say. “Sandra, you expect me to pay the Catholics with their bingo halls? I’m a Baptist preacher!” It was all he could do not to add, “For Christ’s sake!” He pulled out a kitchen chair, scraping it along the painted wood floor. I stood around the corner, pressing against the wall, listening to them argue. I

held my breath, waiting, knowing that if I had dragged that kitchen chair across the floor, my momma would have whooped my behind. She wouldn’t dare do such a thing to her father, but I could imagine the look she must have had on her face. It was the first week of April and still cold in Chicago, but the kitchen window was open. Momma had just finished washing the floor with ammonia and scrubbing the tiny gas range and oven. Sunday was Easter, and she was cooking for the whole family: my maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, aunts and uncles, and cousins. My grandfather was oblivious to her drudgery. He paced back and forth over her clean floor, leaving muddied shoe prints in his wake. “Dad! Will you sit down? Can’t you see you messing my clean floor? Now I got to do it all over again.” “Fine. Fine.” He scraped the chair back across the floor again. I cringed, peeking around the corner. Yup, she had that scrunched-up smirk on her face. I pulled back before she could see me and drag me out for a good swat. “I know what you’re saying, Dad,” Momma went on, “but what do you think will happen to JJ in one of these public schools? He stutters, he’s more than chubby, mad at Michael for not being around, and now with my divorce he carries a violent chip on his shoulder for all of it.” My grandfather waved his hand. “Now come on. San, the boy can handle whatever they throw at him. He’s got charisma and personality. Besides, I think he’ll be a fine preacher one day, and in line to take over my congregation. He won’t get in any trouble that would affect that.” He cleared his throat, adding, “I don’t mind saying, I think the boy takes right after me. Give him a little practice calming those bullies down.” I watched Momma roll her eyes at Granddaddy. “Uh-huh,” she mumbled, wringing out the string mop. “That is why he was expelled from fourth grade.” “Pour me some tea, and while you’re at it, you can stop with the eye-rolling and grumbling.”

I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. My mother sank into the kitchen chair and poured herself some tea as well, staring out the window while her father reviewed the proof of that week’s church bulletin. He mumbled, and she looked back at him, his teacup in hand with his pinky finger raised. “See that, Daddy?” she said. “What?” “You think those jive boys, those street-kids will say, ‘Oh, Julius, look at how you hold your cup. Ain’t that charming and special,’ and then smile, pat his head, and walk away? Hell, no!” “Now, you know that boy’s got to learn to stand up for himself.” She rolled her eyes again and slapped her teacup against the saucer. “No, Daddy! They gonna beat the hell out of my boy. You want that?” “Stop your cussing, girl.” I imagined some of those big boys knocking me down, chasing me home from school. I held my breath. Even if I had wanted to interject in the conversation, I could feel the words caught in my throat, stuck to my tongue. In the end, my grandfather relented. That was how it was in my family. Men were cheating dogs that were expected to provide financially, and women were tyrants whose words were near gospel, however errant or flawed they might be.

I entered fifth grade back in the city, enrolled in another Catholic school, St. Thaddeus. This time it was a Black Catholic parish with two Irish priests, Father Charles Cronin and Father John Collins, and Principal Nadolny, who may as well have been another Sister s. If I knew then what foreshadowing was, I would have realized it was going to be a long road to eighth-grade graduation. Along that long road, I consistently found myself on “the bench” outside the principal’s office, the designated detention seat meant to embarrass the ornery students who sat upon it. Between my stuttering and my weight I was constantly teased and laughed at, and I had grown from pugnacious to belligerent; I now kicked ass and took names. I had no recourse but to use my size to beat up people. The day I finally earned respect was in seventh grade. Some of my schoolmates lived in the low-income housing around the corner from St. Thaddeus. They told stories about Parnell, the most notorious bully and gang member who lived in the projects. He was skinny but tall and fearless in a frightening way. He took pleasure in robbing and beating up old people and kids from the complex, and he harassed us daily as he ed by our school. Almost everyone was afraid of him. It was a Friday afternoon and we were all excited to be off for the weekend. I was feeling particularly lucky that day because I was walking a girl named Kenya home, all the while vying for her affections. Kenya lived just around the corner from me, about a mile from the school, and I was smitten with her. She was cute and smart and always nice to me, and most afternoons she played double Dutch by the church. I would watch her bounce up and down, hoping to catch a glimpse of her panties as her skirt rose while she jumped the ropes. This was my guilty pleasure, a strange symbiosis. Both under the sound of church bells and on the church grounds, I was vexed with sexual fantasy, yet tempered by parochial provincialism. Sometimes, I volunteered to turn the ropes so that I could get close to the girls in their plaid Catholic school skirts and imagine… One day, after watching Kenya jump rope, I decided to hang around. Parnell soon appeared and grabbed Kenya by the arm. Without thinking, I ran over and pushed him off her. I was shorter than him but bigger and heavier, and he fell to

the ground. Pulling himself up, his eyes now fixated on me. “Nigga, you messing with me? You ain’t got the balls for it, chubs. A fat boy like you, I’m gonna cut you up.” Before he could say another word, adrenaline and a dose of chivalry took over and I lunged at him. I kicked him in his side and then quickly threw a punch, and my right fist struck him straight on the crown of his head. I wish I could say that this knocked him out and I was heralded as the boy who beat up Parnell. But he retaliated. He hit me with a flurry of punches that felt like dozens of tiny bees stinging me. I lost my balance and toppled over. It was then that he pulled out a knife. I jumped to my feet and ran. He chased me into the empty school parking lot, where Father Collins and a parent intervened. “Parnell!” Father Collins shouted. “You are not allowed on school property. I’m calling the police!” Parnell ran off, and for once, I was not in trouble, though I lived in fear of retaliation for the next few days. I didn’t know what he might do to me, and I didn’t want to find out. The upside was that in Kenya’s eyes, I had stood up for her. I kept her safe, and we became closer after that. Not long after, on a Sunday evening in the back of my grandfather’s garage, Kenya stood on her tiptoes and kissed me—a soft, wet, and warm kiss that I felt down to my toes. That first kiss, so much more than kisses practiced on my pillow and bedroom mirror, marked the beginning of my kissing spree with girls.

In the summer before eighth grade, my school sponsored a day camp. On a rainy afternoon after popcorn and a movie, my friend Perron and I carried the projector back to the rectory. We were the lead altar boys, with gold cords around our waists at mass. Because of this distinction, we had some degree of clout at school. Other boys looked up to us. Once we stowed the projector away, Perron took off, probably looking for Kenya—he had stolen her from me. I stayed, flirting with a tall, long-black-haired, light-skinned girl a year younger than me named Tania, who was standing on a ladder. She and a few other girls had popcorn duty, but they left her to clean the kitchen alone. She and I had always been cool. Her older cousin Bridgette had just graduated, and I was cool with her, too—although she wasn’t interested in me the way I was in her. In truth, I was enamored with nearly all the eighth-grade girls, with Lisa, Joann, and Bridgette as favorites. My affections were a frustrating one-way street; none of them liked me as a boyfriend. It was much the same in seventh grade; I wasn’t boyfriend material then either, except for Rochelle, but I really didn’t like her in that way. After the same rejection year after year, I finally found my thrill in the class under me. I discovered being older was more appealing to girls, and was excited that I might get a cute girl I liked—I was tired of watching my friends with girls and feeling inadequate. Standing there in the kitchen, I looked up at sweet Tania and asked, “What are you doing up on that ladder, girl?” “Changing the light bulb,” she cooed. “Here, let me help you down from there.” She laughed as I wrapped my arms around her waist. “I got you now. Just jump into my arms.” She jumped, and I brought her in tight and laid a kiss on her. Her full, plump lips locked onto mine. My head filled with the taste and smell of her strawberry lip gloss. That kiss was one part delicacy and two parts ecstasy,

but wholly the most memorable kiss of my entire life. I suddenly knew what love felt like—I had felt it wash over my body and mind, and I still get a thrill thinking of it. My synapses fired, my body stirred, and my heart pounded in my chest. I struggled to catch my breath. For years, and well into my twenties, I asking girls I knew two questions: Did they have any strawberry lip gloss, and if they did, would they put some on and kiss me? Most of them laughed, and a few, to my great joy, answered yes to both questions. Oddly, no one ever asked the reason for my specific request. It was simple: I wanted to relive that first strawberry-flavored kiss with Tania so that it would last forever. For the rest of that summer and into eighth grade, Tania and I talked on the phone constantly, though I was forbidden to go to any girl’s house. My mother didn’t want me going anywhere without adult supervision, and while I broke this rule on many other occasions, I was content with my relationship with Tania the way it was, with most of our interaction being over the phone or in my lovestruck imagination. On one Sunday not long before the school year began, my mother and a group of her friends were playing cards. Tania and I, as usual, were on the phone. “Julius,” she said, “you know my momma’s not home. She gonna be gone most of the day, and your mother’s all in with her friends and playing cards. I’m thinking you ought to come over here.” “That sounds good, Tania. I’ll just tell my mom I’m going around to the corner store.” I breezed by her card game, told my latest canard, and slipped out the door. My mom barely acknowledged me. When I got to the small grocery store down the block, I caught a taxi. Tania lived in the Beverly area, about two miles away on One Hundred and Fifth Street, and I was on One Hundred and Sixteenth. We had fun, listened to DeBarge’s “All This Love,” “I Like It,” and “This Ring,” fantasizing about what life would be like for us as adults. Minutes became hours and before I knew it, I had been gone for three hours. It was the 1980s, so we had no cell phones, no pagers, no way for my mom to track me down or know my whereabouts. I wasn’t sure she even noticed my absence with all the vodka and card partying going on, but if she did, she would worry. I knew I needed a

plan, a cover story. I called her collect from a pay phone, making sure to add a note of distress to my voice. “Julius! Where are you? You don’t sound right. Why you calling me collect?” “Oh Momma, I was so scared. These three guys grabbed me and stuffed me into the backseat of their car. There was one guy on each side of me and I couldn’t get away.” “What? Where are you? Are you okay?” “I’m just scared, Momma. Two of them got into a fight, that’s when I ran and ran. I’m in front of the bookstore on One Hundred and Third in Beverly.” “You go on inside that store and tell them your momma is coming to get you in just a few minutes. Go inside right now and wait.” “Okay Momma, but hurry. I don’t want them to find me.” I ditched my wallet and put my bus card, my money, and my library card in my shoe. I scratched my face and arms so there would be a little blood. I had to look as if I had been through a major ordeal. When my mother arrived, she hugged me and cried, “Thank God my baby’s okay. Just look at what they did to you! I’m so proud of you that you got away.” I told her I had been blindfolded and how scared I was wondering what they were going to do to me. I whimpered and sighed for effect, and it worked. I had gotten to spend time with my sweet Tania, without getting in trouble and enduring another whooping from my mother. About ten years later, my mom and I were driving down One Hundred and Third Street in Beverly. As we ed the pickup point of my faux abduction, I looked down the street and unwittingly said, “I wonder if Tania still lives down here.” I had lost with her. My mother was quiet for a moment.

“Ma, you Tania, don’t you?” I asked. Calmly, she pulled the car over and asked me if Tania was the girl from grammar school. “Yeah,” I answered, already grinning and fantasizing about her. Reaching over to me in the enger seat, my mother immediately slapped me. I was dumbfounded, and a little indignant. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you hitting on me?” “Kidnapped?! You told me you were abducted—your even called me collect!” I laughed and laughed as she whacked me again on the side of my head.

CHAPTER FIVE

From Strawberry Kisses to Suicidal Thoughts

Though kissing Tania provided an immutable memory, kissing Kim was the second most memorable kiss in my entire life. Kim, like Tania and Kenya, was one grade below me. She didn’t have the dainty, cute looks of Kenya. She didn’t have fair skin and long black hair that I clamored to brush, as Tania did. Kim was unassuming, quiet, with a warm smile and caring heart. I was drawn to her chiefly because she was so kind to me. Kim and I occasionally talked on the phone and sometimes hung out together. One day after softball practice, I walked back to school. It was nearly dinner time, and Kim was still standing at the back stairs of the church waiting for her mom to pick her up. “Hey Kim, you want me to wait with you so you won’t be alone?” “You’d do that? Sure.” She smiled and tilted her head, coy and charming and cute. “I guess you like me, Julius, don’t you?” I shuffled my feet, feeling uncomfortably shy. Sure, I liked Kim, but I was smitten with Kenya. Nevertheless I answered, “Of course I like you.” “No you don’t!” she hollered. “You like Kenya.” Obviously caught, I responded tactfully and unemotionally, “I do like Kenya, but I love you, Kim.” Kim stared at me. “For real?” she asked. “Come here, I will show you.” Fresh off my first-class kissing debuts with Kenya and Tania, and after years of practicing on my pillow and even the mirror, surely I was the kissing champion of my grammar school.

I leaned in to kiss her and it was like magic. Our lips were perfectly contoured to one another’s, our head movements were in sync, and all was perfect. Then I began to taste a sort of wet, salty substance on the top of my lip. I pulled back and to my surprise, Kim was crying. I knew then that I was the kissing champ. Georgie Porgie Puddin’ Pie had nothing on me! Despite having declared my undying affection for Kim, after that kiss I pretended I didn’t really like her. And she didn’t seem to care about my nonchalant attitude. We still talked on the phone and laughed together in the hallway at school. We were kids needing to experiment with French kissing between friends. We never kissed like that again, and although there were opportunities, part of me didn’t want to ruin the memory of what I thought was just a kiss—a kiss I would always . I was still in love with her classmate, Kenya, or at least thought I was, and that was good enough for a nearly thirteen-year-old boy. It was my secret, a profound feeling that no one could take from me. Anyone with half a brain could see that I was smitten. I mooned and ogled over her, following her around like a puppy dog. Even though I once claimed I was in full-grown dog love with Lisa Jurgen, by eighth grade I knew the difference. My love for Kenya was the real deal, only there was a tenable leash involved, namely her unrequitedness. No matter how hard I tried—and I was persistent, calling Kenya, walking her home, buying her candy and soda pop at the grocery around the corner—she seemed to slip through my fingers, as fat as they were. Sometimes she would be attentive, asking me if I thought she was pretty, but her mind was on another boy and only looking for reassurance. “You’re the prettiest girl at school,” I told her. “Prettier than Leigh?” Now Leigh may have been the most attractive girl in my grade and might’ve been more attractive than Kenya but, in this moment, such an honest response was unwarranted. “Girl, she got nothing on you. Leigh is as cute as a boy beside you.” Kenya smiled. “You gonna twirl the ropes after school for me?”

“Of course,” I murmured. And maybe this time she’ll jump so high I will see her flowery pink panties. But I didn’t get to twirl the ropes. When I turned the corner in front of the church, Perron was turning the ropes, staring at my Kenya, grinning from ear to ear. She smiled and shrugged her tawny shoulder at him, lowering her eyelashes flirtatiously the way she always did with me. Only this time, she wouldn’t look up at me, though I knew she saw me out of the corner of her eye. When it was one of the other girls’ turn on the ropes, I sidled up to Kenya and smiled. “What do you want, Julius?” Her voice bordered on rude. I stared at her, wide-eyed. A couple of hours ago we were stealing kisses just out of view of Principal Sister s. Her mercurial temperament was difficult to understand, especially for a twelve-year-old struggling to comprehend himself. “Why are you being so mean, Kenya? You know I love you. I’ll love you forever.” “No you won’t, Julius! You wanna know why?” I nodded, dreading what she would say. “Cause I don’t love you at all. You can’t love somebody who doesn’t love you back.” But I do love you, I thought. But was she right? Was that true? How could she know who I loved or didn’t love? I wanted to understand. My mind and body were sending mixed messages. The physical and chemical responses I felt for her were undeniable, but logic told me that of course, she was right. I was not, in fact, in love with her. “Go home, Julius, and stop bothering me.” She shouted loudly enough for everyone to hear, for everyone to stop and stare at me. Under my dark skin, my face was red as a beet. I picked up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, then smirked at her like I didn’t care, like she couldn’t hurt me. But inside I was crushed. Not wanting to

go home, I instead headed to the bleachers in the athletic field, thinking, I’ll show her. It was a beautiful day in May. The sun was warm. Another Chicago winter had melted away, but I didn’t see any of that. There was no sunshine for me. I sat on the bleachers in despair. The person I most loved had dissed me in front of everyone. I could end it all, you know, I thought to myself. Then you’ll be sorry. In my briefcase (what I carried instead of a book bag, mirroring my granddad) was a can of Wildwood pop and the container of Acetaminophen I always kept with me (I struggled with headaches nearly every week). I popped open the bottle of tablets and poured a bunch in my hand—maybe ten, maybe more. I didn’t count. I slugged them back, the hard pills filling my mouth, and then washed them down with the strawberry pop. You’ll be sorry; I repeated to myself as I waited for the pills to take effect. But after a long few minutes, I didn’t feel anything. Nothing was happening. I wondered if I should ingest more, but I waited. What if I took so much that I got sick and vomited everything? Would I fail at this, too? The next thing I knew, I was woozy and dizzy. My belly ached badly, forcing me to lie on the ground. I don’t anything else after that, until I woke up in a dark room, confused and disoriented. Looking around as my eyes adjusted, I found myself lying in bed with an IV drip attached to my arm. Monitors were beeping and buzzing around me. I heard voices from the hallway and turned toward them. In the darkened corner next to my bed, I saw Father Collins sitting motionless in a chair. He was praying, beads in his hands, saying the Rosary. I couldn’t talk, but I felt a tear escape from the corner of my eye. It trickled down my cheek, cold and wet. There was a tube down my throat; seeing it, I panicked, almost gagging. Father Collins looked up and walked over, putting his gentle face up to mine. He looked deeply into my eyes with kindness. Then he touched my face with his large hand, cupping it softly and whispering, “Thank God.” He smiled and let his hand fall, then turned to step out into the hallway. A moment later, I heard him exclaim, “The boy’s awake!”

My mother rushed in, looking relieved but angry in the way that only mothers can. “Why?” she pleaded. “What were you thinking, Julius?” I couldn’t speak with the tube down my throat, but I was too embarrassed anyway to tell her the truth. If I could talk, I wondered, would I tell her I had been sexually abused for years, fondled and made to fondle older girls? That inside I was yearning and screaming, and crying for love? Would I tell her? No. Besides, her natural response whenever I acted out was a major whooping to my backside, and right then, that was the last thing I needed. “Never mind,” she said with frustration, softening. “I’m just thankful you’re still alive.” Me, too, I thought. They all stayed for a while—my mother, my grandfather, and Father Collins, who remained with me the longest. While I slipped in and out of sleep, he prayed and asked God to forgive me, bless me, and hold me in his arms. They’d have to be mighty big arms, I thought. I tried to laugh, but couldn’t. Just before he left, Father Collins washed my face, my arms, and my hands. “Julius,” he said, “I know you didn’t really want to die. It’s not your time. God is far from ready to call you. You want attention, and this was the only option you thought you had. But that’s not true. You have to trust in God. He will show you exactly what you need to shine.” But for the longest time, I really thought I did want to die. Even then, in eighth grade, death wasn’t foreign to me. I had served funerals as an altar boy and witnessed ings in my family and neighborhood. Growing up Christian, I was always taught that Heaven was such a good place, and I already knew that living here on Earth was rather rough. Did I truly want to die? No. I just wanted to be loved by someone I loved. Perhaps what happened was a product of too much play with my emotions for years. Kenya knew how I felt, but she was always toying with me, talking to me for countless hours on the phone, hanging out with me in our homes, and playing with me in the church rectory, then abruptly pretending she didn’t know or like me. It was the same incomprehensible irrationality I suffered at home.

Then she rejected me publicly, in front of our schoolmates and friends. Exhausted from one rejection after another, this time I lost hope in the only thing that I thought I could control: the affection and validation of the girl I loved. It would take a lifetime before I could figure it out.

CHAPTER SIX

Cast Out

I began high school in 1985 at the Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, an all-boys school with a clear mission advocating the priesthood for their enrollees. Despite how enraptured I was with girls and women, Father Cronin and Father Collins from St. Thaddeus encouraged me to pursue the religious life. Between their guidance and my grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins, wanting me to be his successor on the Baptist pulpit, it seemed that such a vocation was my destiny. As usual, I daydreamed about what a wonderful life I would have as a revered priest: helping people, listening to confessions, living in a lovely parish house with a cook and a housekeeper, too, and driving a shiny brand-new black Cadillac. For a kid from the South Side, that vision was powerful. I even thought I might be the first Black Pope and imagined how proud my mother would be. Each underclassman at the seminary was assigned a big brother. In my freshman year, I was assigned another Black student named James. James was a pretty boy —for real. He had no interest in the priesthood, but he loved ministry. In retrospect, the ministry he excelled at was the ministry of women. Every girl liked James, and I was in awe. A group of us—Anton, Brian, Darwin, James, and I—called ourselves the Black Seminarians. We met regularly in James’s basement, where we played pool and listened to James’s family’s vast record selection. This was familiar territory for me. My mom partied in the living room or outside with her friends, playing cards and dancing, while I listened from my room. Each song became a soundtrack to learn, recite, and memorize: Betcha by golly, wow! You’re the one that I’ve been waiting for forever…and ever will my love for you keep growing strong, keep growing strong. I’d croon, Me and Mrs.

Jones, we got a thang going on. We both know that it’s wrong, but it’s much too strong to let it go now. This music and the men and women who sang at my mom’s parties incited my imagination. I wanted to make a woman feel what those lyrics promised. I wanted to slow dance with my hand on a girl’s booty. I wanted to fall in love with a different girl every day, each week, year after year—not because I knew what a womanizer was, though I had heard the term “playa,” but more so because there were so many different kinds of women who seemed to be as uniquely interesting as the songs I learned. I wanted to learn about all of it, all the music and all the women. One musical genre and one type of woman would not be enough for me. This was democratized love in a world of sadness. I wanted to be the harbinger of hope, the leader of love, the director of desire, and the captain of comion. I had to learn about women, learn their likes, dislikes, fears, and joys the same way I had to learn the lyrics to the Bee Gees’ “How Deep is Your Love.” I wanted to explore the depths of a woman’s heart, stake claim, and always reside—not as an imperialist, but as a navigator, a voyeur sharing my gifts and receiving all that was germane. Meeting James seemed like another kind of destiny, and somehow I convinced myself that I could have it all…for the time being, anyway. These were the days of house music in Chicago and James was an aspiring DJ. We went from house music to early hip-hop to R & B, which James and I embraced as our genre of choice. We switched up verses of Heatwave’s “Always and Forever” and created complex harmonies at the chorus. Our favorite exercise was to see who could hit the high notes of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Reasons,” along with many of their other hits. We bonded—James and Julius, or as we called ourselves, J&J: Voices that Could Seduce Millions. We even had business cards with a black background and silver lettering. James’s name and phone number were on the left and mine on the right. We gave them out to women all over the city: in the mall, at weekend parties, after church services. No cute girl could avoid being approached by one or both of us.

Our phones were like 911 operators’ lines, and though he had more calls than me, we both had girls calling all the time. With three-way calling—unless it was one of our special girls —whoever called had to have a friend on the other line. In our foursome conversations, we chattered and laughed and, inevitably, James and I sang. One of our favorite and most effective songs was “Gloria” by a group called Enchantment. We crooned, Gloria, my Gloria, things ain’t been the same since you’ve been away… Gloria, sweet Gloria, I don’t want to see another day. Most girls’ names would fit the cadence of Gloria, so we personalized each call. We sang from our repertoire of ten favorite songs, each tune numbered. One of us called out the number as we burst into spontaneous harmonies. The girls of Chicago were fodder for our partnership of charm. Being around James built up my confidence around girls and increased my tally of girls who now considered me a friend. Some were just friends, some were kissing friends, and some were touching friends, but most became subjects within my heterosexual imagination. I was learning, and searching for love by searching for souls. Secondary school wasn’t all about girls, but it was close. Being in an all-boys school likely heightened our longing for girls of every shape and size—Black girls, White girls, and Latinas were all welcome in our salacious fantasies. Even in our exacting English grammar and composition classes, where we were taught the rudiments of essays, I wrote about girls. I wrote romantic letters and love notes with borrowed lyrics and outpourings that would make a grown woman blush. All of this gave me a sense of prowess that countered my persistent stuttering—and my girth, which didn’t help, either. In grammar school, I ed my struggle more vividly. My classmates both laughed and groaned when it was my turn to read aloud. It took me so long to get through a single paragraph. During my high school years, I went to a speech therapist who worked with me. She instructed me to listen to myself speak into a tape recorder and to practice various breathing exercises to slow my speech in general. These techniques helped, but they did not fully resolve my stammering. That I lived in reveries in my head was no surprise. I met Venus that year in ninth grade. She attended a smaller nearby Catholic

school and was the most beautiful girl most of us had ever seen. I was dazzled by her. She was something ethereal, an angel who walked among us. There was something about her that radiated from within, which translated to her outward appearance. She had full lips and bright, playful eyes. Her makeup and hair were exquisite— eyebrows with a perfect arc, her mascara so elegantly applied that it appeared natural, and just a touch of foundation, not that she needed it. And, of course, that dark pink gloss that she always painted over her lips. All the boys stared as she applied lip gloss and rubbed those full pink lips together. I was a friend to her boyfriend, who was on the baseball team. Venus and I watched games together to cheer him on, and all the while I penned fictions of us together in my head that I desperately wanted to believe. But she took a lot of pride in being his girlfriend. Despite my jealousy, I had to it that they were great together. But I convinced myself that she was secretly in love with me. I told myself it was her kindness that made her stay with her boyfriend and that the three of us were in this untenable triangle. Despite my romantic overtures, my one and only Venus friend-zoned me hard— and we stayed that way throughout my college years and beyond. We talked on the phone or wrote letters and told each other how hard our lives were, how our relationships were going. She always seemed so genuinely interested in my life, and I could listen to her melodic voice for hours describing her day at work, what she ate for dinner, or what television show she was watching while we sat on the phone. Occasionally we drifted into a comfortable silence. I had no idea what she would mean to me on that day we met in high school. All I knew back then was that I wanted to be more than a friend. And since I wasn’t, I continued to look elsewhere. In my sophomore year at the seminary, I met Gia at the bus stop. We took the Seventy-Ninth Street bus every morning and sat together. She was beautiful and fascinating with a sweet, low laugh and syrup-colored skin. I imagined vivid scenarios of pleasing her and being her guy. But like Venus, she was more of a friend, a girl who sometimes called me for advice about guys. But that didn’t matter. She went to the public school down the street from my

high school, so no one at the seminary was the wiser when I bragged that she and I were together. Soon enough it didn’t matter. I was a student at the seminary for only two and a half years. It was a small archdiocesan high school with seven hundred students of mostly Irish heritage from Beverly, Oak Lawn, and Mount Greenwood. My friends and I, the one hundred or so of us, were known as the United Black Seminarians (UBS). We were told we were fortunate to be in such an academically competitive school, perennially ranked second in Chicago behind St. Ignatius. But being minority students, even those seriously considering the priesthood, we were viewed with suspicion. Our group was a source of camaraderie and emotional , a Catholic subcommunity keeping a hold on our Black cultural traditions. The istration, however, viewed us as radicalized, little more than a street gang. Our club jackets were black with gold lettering, substantially different from the school’s blue and gold coloring. We stood out intentionally. Our advisor was Fr. Mike Ivers, a fiery Irish priest who pastored on the West Side and “the low end” of the South Side of Chicago. Fr. Ivers was my wrestling coach as well, authoritative and rebellious in both his coaching and his role as counselor at Quigley. Most “minority clubs” would have the token Black staff member as its advisor, but there were none to choose from; Fr. Ivers was the closest to a Black priest as we could get at the seminary in the mid-1980s. He pastored a Black congregation, and his Sunday sermon was ripped straight from the Pentecostal playbook of flailing arms and elevated vocals that turned him beet red with the fire of the Holy Spirit. Despite discussions about our efforts as Black Catholics to worship in a manner that was culturally congruent with our upbringing, our group, and me in particular, were regarded as troublemakers. We threatened the status quo. My mother was called in for a conference; I was to be expelled due to what was regarded by the school istration as my rebellion and disobedience to authority. However, due to their roles as my parish priests, I knew Father Michael Pfleger and Father Collins would do right by me. My mother and I were escorted into an opulent office with rich drapery and leather chairs—a room where we each whispered rather than speaking aloud.

She sighed, letting out her ragged breath slowly and shaking her head. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Jay. You have to learn to walk the tightrope.” “Why should I?” I spoke louder than I should have. “Shhh. I shouldn’t have to explain any of this to you.” “Then don’t. We all live it, and the more we just go along, the worse it is.” She looked away because she knew I was right. Father Pfleger laid out my case while the s, seemingly reenacting the Sanhedrin Council, sat, with sour looks wallpapered across their faces at me. The choice was immediate expulsion or weekend suspension. The latter included draconian measures: For seven weekends I would clean the campus, wash and wax floors, dust and polish the chapel, sweep, and rake. Upon returning to classes, I would not be allowed to congregate with more than two other students during class, in the hall, or on school grounds. They were concerned by my abilities to raise awareness and mobilize other students. My mother and I felt their remedy was overly harsh and oppressive. In our view, there was little choice. I chose to transfer. The istration offered to help; they would recommend me to any other Catholic school of my choice. Father Pfleger suggested St. Leo because it was predominantly Black. I was vaguely interested but opted for Brother Rice, a Franciscan Order Catholic school. Students there wore brown robes and did not call teachers and s “Father.” Instead, the salutation was “Brother.” There were trivial aspects I appreciated about the school: great breakfasts with hash browns and link sausage and the Mother McCauley girls, whose campus was just across the field. I enjoyed gazing at them every day. I met some good guys there with whom I stayed connected: Stewart Thomas, James McDowell, and Tim Berry. They were all wrestlers. I reunited with two of them at Howard University years later. But I was done with Brother Rice in one quick semester. They were not my brothers, and I refused to address them as such. I cursed out a priest. I was talkative and not attentive in class. I was angry, bored, and felt I knew more than

any of these folks. I was asked not to come back the next semester, and they too offered to write a letter of recommendation that would at least get me in the door to another Catholic school. My mom threw up her hands in exasperation with my behavior. “Now what, Julius?” She stood at the stove frying chicken, and I wondered if she was at the point of sending me to my room with no dinner, but she had a far more radical idea in mind. “So that you know, I’m looking into St. Lawrence. It’s a Catholic school for troubled boys. I think you’ll fit right in.” Her voice was rich with sarcasm. The thought of combining militarism and Catholicism into a miasma of guilt, sin, and torture was too much. I had to find my way through this dilemma. “Are you trying to get me killed? Do you know what those kinds of goons do to a pudgy Black kid?” In the end, she recapitulated; in the fall, I would finish my secondary education at another Catholic high school, either St. Rita or St. Leo. I had been expelled from three Catholic schools and was disdainful of parochial schooling, but not priests. I was mentored at the seminary school by Father Michael Pfleger, and like me, he was a rebel, often at odds with the church. He adopted and raised children when the church hierarchy forbade such and followed in the defiant footsteps of Father George Clements. He preached his political and social gospel from the pulpit and adhered to a Black cultural liturgy. He had an open door policy for us young boys. He, as well as Father Collins, loved me when everyone else wanted to toss me to the curb. Other priests, including John Calicut and Michael Ivers, also kept the fire for Black liturgical bones to prosper. My avuncular relationships with Father Pfleger and Father Collins were followed by many more; I was intellectually sired by contemporary great thinkers, and I wanted to emulate something about each of them, but like most

decisions in life, there were multiple factors involved. I thought I could be a race man as a priest. I bragged about being the first Black pope from the hood, but I couldn’t imagine girls, women—the female persuasion—not being part of my life. I dreamed about Venus and fantasized about Gia and looked at girls whenever I could. They distracted me from my mission, my calling. As a Catholic priest, I wouldn’t be able to marry, and I began to see girls not just as cute little play partners to ogle, but also as objects of my affection and my attention. I was still too young and unschooled to understand women as more than that. I think, embarrassingly even now, the scent of a woman inspired me more than the Holy Smoke of Catholic incense. Ultimately, reconciliation for both my love for God and my love for women was to become a Protestant pastor. The first step after high school would be an undergraduate degree in philosophy and religion. That summer, I attended a wrestling camp at the University of Michigan under the tutelage of Coach Gary Haupert. He was a Michigan grad who was now the head coach at Thornwood High, a suburban public school of Chicago. Before the camp ended, I told Coach Haupert that I couldn’t return to Brother Rice and was likely transferring to St. Rita or St. Leo. He asked if I had any family near Thornwood High School. I did—my older cousin Liz, whom I’d stolen the ring from as a child to give to Lisa Jurgen. She and her husband, Fletcher, lived in Sandridge Apartments in Calumet City. Between the coach and my cousin, and, honestly, my need to escape from Church Street and my mother’s frequent slaps and whoopings, I was persuaded to attend Thornwood and the wrestling and football teams. Compared to the Catholic schools I came from, Thornwood was very large, with nearly two thousand students. It was seventy-five percent White at that time (a radical difference from the Thornwood of today), but due to its massive size, there were actually more Black students at Thornwood than at any other school I attended. At first, I found it hard to navigate all the wings of the school, and despite being a junior and an athlete, each time I got lost or needed guidance, I felt embarrassed, like a freshman again. Every time the bell rang, it felt like a herd of cattle stampeding through the halls. There were all sorts of bodies racing by and squeezing through, but it was the female ones that interested me. I hadn’t been in school with girls for two and a half years. It was like Christmas for a female-fawning kid like me.

That first semester I spent at Thornwood is a blur. At the time, I didn’t have any friends. I quit the wrestling team because I was having a hard time meeting the two hundred seventy-five pound weight limit the Illinois High School Association had recently implemented; to make weight each week meant that I couldn’t eat my favorite lunch in the cafeteria: two individual pizzas, an order of fries, and two fruit punch juices. Food was my friend in this huge school, and it was more important to me than wrestling. I did have one other friend, named Clifford, but we called him Pete. He lived across the street from my cousin, and he and I played Tecmo Bowl video games after school and ed the pickup football games in the open grass field next to his apartment complex. Pete lived with his mom and little brother, and they welcomed me in their home with an open door. By the time I started at Thornwood, football season was over, and I eventually quit wrestling; I no longer had the convenience of sports to make friends, so I relied on my friendship with Pete. I also became friends with Craig Wallace, who was a tall, strong kid who lived in Sandridge Apartments as well. Craig used to introduce me to everybody as “Big Ju.” When we played pickup games, he always chose me for his team. I thought it was just because I was big, but I later learned that he knew I was strong and rather quick for my size. To put it simply, Craig was the man. He was respected by White and Black students alike, and his seal of approval was like a golden ticket. If Craig thought you were cool, then you were cool, no questions asked. It’s no surprise that he was Homecoming King senior year, or that he is still the person who brings old friends together. Craig introduced me to new people and helped me to form new friendships. Having him as an ally accelerated my popularity. The Thornwood School District spanned numerous suburban cities. We were in Calumet City, but students living in Dolton, Lansing, and parts of Markham attended Thornwood as well. Ironically, I learned that kids from my former block, off Marshfield, were also at Thornwood. That helped because I was reunited with Tammy and Debbie, girls I hadn’t seen since I left fourth grade at St. Gerard. Patrick, who had lived across the street, also went to Thornwood, but he was in a more sinister crowd. By the spring of junior year, I became close to Coach Haupert, the head track-

and-field coach and our conditioning teacher. One of the exciting aspects of being an athlete at Thornwood was the exemption from gym class. Playing organized sports with disorganized and awkward non-athletes was of no interest to a competitor like me. But in conditioning we had a different routine. Each week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we were in the weight room. Tuesday was the dreaded mile-run day, and Thursday was aerobics with our cheerleaders and an obstacle course. Most of us arrived early to watch the cheerleaders lead us in stretching and core exercises. Thursdays made me thirsty! Around this time, Coach Haupert asked me to come out for shot put on the track team. I had a strong upper body and thought I would be a natural at it. The problem was, I had no technique and less interest. However, the guys that Craig had introduced me to—Phillip, Woody, Chip, Greg—were all on the track team. Being on the team was my way to get entrenched in the athletic culture of Thornwood. And so I remained, for two seasons, a letterman on the Thornwood state-qualifying and championship team…as track manager. My senior year was astronomically better. I was a starting defensive tackle and was soon known across the school. I’d even spent the summer getting close to a couple girls. ittedly, it took me seven months to find a girlfriend at a coed school, but when I did, the opportunities were rather plentiful. I dated a White pom-pom dancer, a Mexican mamacita, and a pretty Black girl with a physical disability, whom I appreciate for dating me to this day. But my most memorable dating experience took place at homecoming of my senior year. I still had never actually had intercourse with a girl, so I wanted a date with whom I had a pretty good chance of losing my virginity. A week leading up to the dance, I was excited, fantasizing about what being inside a woman would feel. I had been tormented for nearly seventeen years, experiencing all sorts of sexual lasciviousness, but never intercourse. To me, homecoming was going to be the most memorable night of my life. It was Thursday before the game, our last full practice before playing Bloom Trail for homecoming. Our starting all-conference defensive back was an hour late for practice. This was not like him. In the locker room after practice, it seemed like everyone was laughing, except me. All the guys were huddled around him. I figured there was a story being told but wasn’t sure why I wasn’t

involved. I mean, he and I were cool. I had been over his house and was a defensive side of the ball, his track manager, etc. As I headed over to his locker to find out what was going on, Carlos came up to me and said, “Damn Ju-Ju, he shouldn’t have done that to you, bro.” Of course, this made me very curious— although, deep down, something told me I might not want to know. As I approached my teammate, he blurted out, “Ju man, my bad but I had to.” I still had no idea what was going on and asked him what had happened. “Well, Beth saw me right before the seventh period and asked me to come by her house after school. I knew ya’ll were going to homecoming together and all, but I couldn’t turn it down if she was giving it to me.” Trying to appear nonchalant, I smirked and told him, “It’s all good bro, I ain’t trippin.” But inside I was. Damn! Why can’t I have this moment to myself? I didn’t want to share her with anyone. True, we weren’t a couple, but how dare she sleep with someone forty-eight hours before we were to do it? Had she no shame? With my teammate, no less! I almost broke off the date. I told Pete all about it. Craig tried to counsel me on what to do, but he was Homecoming King, and his queen was the absolutely stunning Leslie Davis, one of only two Black girls on the cheer team. Between Pete, Craig, and my desire to end my virginity, it was decided that I would go to homecoming. I didn’t confront Beth about this Thursday afternoon deception— until I showed up to her house Saturday night for the dance. We had lost the homecoming game, so I figured if I wore black sunglasses then people would just assume I was embarrassed about losing and missing a tackle that left the middle of the field open to the running back. But that wasn’t what the sunglasses were for. I arrived at Beth’s house, corsage in hand, donning my off-white tuxedo and dark black sunglasses. I was upset with Beth, but her parents were nice people, and I was raised to be respectful, so I tried to be polite and not ruin the pictures and the snacks they had prepared. But once we got in the car, she wanted answers. “Julius, why do you have those glasses on?”

“Because you screwed my boy Thursday and I am embarrassed even to be going to this dance with you,” I answered rather matter-of-factly. She began to cry, and now the tender side, the Christian side, the often hurt side of me empathized with her. I took my satin handkerchief out of my lapel pocket and wiped her tears. “Don’t cry. I’m sure you weren’t crying as you were riding him the other day.” I it, it was a bit ive-aggressive, but I was torn; on the one hand, I genuinely felt for her and wanted to cheer her up, but I was also still very much pissed off. “Julius, I am sorry. Don’t act like that.” “You did what you wanted to do. No need to apologize to me. Decisions are the foundation of our destiny.” Feeling the tension in the car, I pulled over, turned to her, and said, rather convincingly, “I am not mad at all, just embarrassed. I wanted to be the boy who you kissed and touched. The boy you gave your beautiful body to. And now…” She responded with a kiss. I could taste the saltiness of her tears, a taste I had experienced before, back in eighth grade with Kim. I kissed her back, grabbed her breasts, and went in to take her dress off right there in the car. Suddenly she had control again—she’d regained it the second I’d lost it. Gently, she pushed me back and said, “You want me, Julius?” There was no macho in me. I was weak as a boiled lasagna noodle. “Yes, can I have you tonight?” She responded, rather assuredly, “Yes, as soon as the dance is over I am yours, Julius.” The night couldn’t end quickly enough. All the dancing, the pictures, the laughter—every minute of it felt like slow torture. I kept on my black sunglasses, but instead of embarrassment, they were now hiding my childlike anticipation. When the night was over, we rushed back in the car and I reluctantly asked, “Did you want to go to the after-party?” I was afraid she would say yes and then

further prolong this agony. Instead, she said, “Well I have to be home by twelve, and it is ten now. We won’t have time to go to the after-party and go back to the hotel… You did get a hotel, right?” “No, my mom left me the house. She’s spending the night with her friend Wyomia.” Rather amused, she replied, “You don’t mind having sex inside your mom’s house? I could never do that.” Knowing she had just screwed my friend at her house about fifty-five hours prior, I focused on the subtext of her question instead of her lie. What I heard her really asking was, You aren’t a virgin, are you? Not sure how to reply, I looked into her eyes and said, “I would never have sex in my mom’s house, but tonight is more than sex. I am going to make love to you for the full hour we have left.” She got excited. I got nervous. I mean, folk on the R and B songs make love all night, the people on the porn videos have sex for long stretches, so surely that was a reasonable promise to make. We kissed, we undressed, but I kept my T-shirt on. I was ready immediately. I fondled her a little, kissed her body, and then went for it… It was the most intense ninety seconds of my life. It was nothing like I had expected, nothing like the videos I’d seen or what I’d heard guys at school describe. This was a true, unintentional quickie. I felt defeated. Embarrassed, I tried to defend myself. I blamed it on her, claiming I couldn’t perform knowing she’d just been with my boy. “I kissed you and felt like I was kissing him. I tasted you with his face staring back at me. I just couldn’t keep it up.” She smirked, walked the three steps to the bathroom, and said, “Yeah right. Your fat ass just came in like two minutes.” She was right—I was both fat and inexperienced at intercourse. Being inside a

woman was a completely different feeling than I had ever known. How could I be good at sex without having had it? I wondered if sex was performative, not emotional. I got no cool points for being a nice guy if I couldn’t also perform well. It didn’t help that I had talked up my game right before we had sex. It goes without saying that we barely spoke to each other at school the rest of the year. But I had other love interests to pursue, and no one caught my attention more than my homeroom classmate LaTonya. She was a short, chocolate-coated beauty who always dressed well and smelled like expensive perfume. She hung with a crew that caught all the guys’ attention. When LaTonya, Wendy, Kim, Sharice, and Jackie walked the halls together, they were like the Black girl dream team. Some called them stuck up, conceited, and bourgeoisie. I called them wonderful. The funny thing was, none of them would give me the time of day. But that would change a few years later. Despite countless hours in Dean Wilhelm’s office and numerous in-school suspensions for discipline issues, I was a towering student academically. But I was a proud Black kid in a sea of whiteness. I was unapologetically Black and wasn’t afraid to call out racist behavior or people. This included my dean, who, without question, hated Black kids. To this day I don’t know how he held his position until his retirement, given that the demographics of the school quickly changed Thornwood into a nearly all-Black school within ten years. I was saved by a counselor, Mrs. Curtestine Miller, who was LaTonya’s godmother. We spent many hours together with her counseling me on how to make it out of Thornwood, despite Dean Wilhelm’s resistance, and me trying to persuade her to put a good word in with LaTonya. She was truly a lifesaver. I ended up graduating with a 3.87 GPA, elevated slightly from my Honors English and Honors Spanish classes. I graduated from Thornwood and planned to attend a state school, someplace close to home. Many of us were getting football offers, even though we had a horrible senior season. I was set on playing football at Rice University, Illinois State University, or Northern Illinois University. All of them offered me scholarships. But my plans were about to change.

On Thanksgiving of my senior year, I sat at home watching TV. As if by fate, I flipped channels to the Ms. Black Chicago pageant just in time to see them announce the winner. Her name was Melanie Martin, and I thought I was in love with her. As soon as I learned that she was a student at Howard University, I abandoned all plans I had for my future and began imagining a new one. Instead of going to a state school and focusing on football, I decided, in that instant, to attend Howard and find Melanie Martin. It seems crazy now; she didn’t even know I existed. But that was a mere trifle to me then. All that mattered at the time was that I believed this woman would one day be my wife.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Howard University Man

I was accepted at Howard University in Washington, DC, and I was thrilled to start a new phase of my life both educationally and socially. I was about to embark on the road to becoming a man. Howard offered academics, friends, and girls—lots of stunning and sexy people. But before I could delve too deeply into chasing my quarry, there was a roster of classes to be filled. I had no idea what to choose as my major. I knew I enjoyed religion, but that was not an option as an undergrad. My high school counselor told me that philosophy was “almost the same thing.” I didn’t know that philosophy could be a major, although at the seminary we studied St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, but to major in it was a horse of a different color. Being so heavily influenced by theology and religion, I wanted to continue in my quest. My very first philosophy class, with a Professor Noah Latham, was startling. He looked just like every Western art depiction of Jesus. He was tall and slender with long flowing black hair and dressed in sandals and linen. He wrote on the blackboard of this capacious auditorium in scrawling capital letters, “GOD IS DEAD.” He turned to us, extending his arms, and said, “Your final exam is going to be to prove or disprove that statement.” I was floored. How was this “just like religion,” as my high school counselor claimed? I stayed in that dynamic class and many others during my undergraduate career at Howard, but in the back of my mind during my first two years, I planned to concentrate on theology in a master’s program. I moved forward, and in new ways that I had not expected, and retrospectively I realize these changes in my freshman year at Howard were keys to a successful future. My youthful dreams were refined and transformed, and along the way, I

learned that progress in life could be measured by confidence. While I often wore a shroud of faux assurance, my coolness as a freshman was lukewarm at best, though I soon discovered ways to elevate my profile. Social governance and responsibility concerning the Black community in a predominantly European-descended population in the United States had been a topic around the dinner table and the pulpit all my life as I met numerous Chicago leaders before my Howard years. One outspoken and controversial Black politician whom I knew through my grandfather was Congressman Gus Savage, from Chicago’s South Side. I ed him soon after my arrival on campus and he invited me to work with him and his staff at the Congressional Black Caucus. The most significant goal that year was to have the twenty-four congressional meet with President George H.W. Bush and present their agenda respectfully regarding housing, employment, Black youth, education, and many more issues that were hot buttons for Black citizens. The Congressional Black Caucus had not met with a US president since 1981 when Ronald Reagan was in office; he declined subsequent meetings. Part of my job with Congressman Savage was to write eloquent statements that would help pave the way to a meeting. That was the easy part for me, and I did it successfully. The more challenging aspect was determining how to woo the impressive, tall, stunning Black girl with freckles who was part of his staff. I sidled up to her and smiled. “Hey, girl!” I said. “You the go-to, I hear.” She responded with an intriguing and unexpected British accent. To this day, I still don’t recall what she said other than her name, Natalie Burgess Boyd. I was mesmerized by her intonation and word choice. Like so many girls back then, she smiled sweetly and looked right through me, not that she blatantly disrespected me; she just didn’t see me as more than a cog in the same wheel in which she was engaged. Her head was in the game of politics. She wasn’t looking for a guy like me. Not many were. Natalie came to America sponsored by Bernie Grant, a senior Black member of the British House of Commons from Tottenham, England. She was his legislative aide, and I was determined to be more than invisible to her. But for now, I played the game and bided my time, happy to be at the side of a Chicago

guy like Guy Savage. My new life at Howard provided me the opportunity to leave the old labels behind. To just be myself was thrilling. My high school days were a distant and forgettable memory. It was time to make my mark in the adult world. Others would see me in a whole new way as the world opened its arms for me. I saw myself as reborn and transported into a life that left me wide-eyed and open to new possibilities; university life was truly about broadening horizons and achievement, and included in that was access to many more girls.

I sought out women for validation and pleasure, and like many of my hetero male contemporaries, we looked to bed as many women as we could, and as often as possible. I found Sonja. She was definitely a large part of the reason why life was so good at Howard University in the fall of 1989. At twenty-six, Sonja was nine years my senior. I told her I was twenty when in truth I was only seventeen. She wasn’t exactly my girlfriend; to call her that would make her sound too young, too innocent, and not like the worldly woman she was. My lady friend was just too formal. It sounds like we went to brunch and art galleries rather than had sex and drank wine. She was not my experiment. No, that sounds too cruel, as if I didn’t care about her, and I did. What we had was an arrangement. We were not in love, but we cared for each other. She was fun to be around and the sex was good, but it wasn’t forever, and there were no promises, though I never wanted to hurt her. Life was good and labels hardly mattered. I wasn’t going to let a lack of definition ruin what we had. Sonja was just Sonja. That definition was enough. On the surface, my life looked pretty perfect, and I wondered how it could get any better at that point. Not only did I have Sonja, but there were other girls too: girls who liked me, girls who appreciated my conversational skills and wanted to know more about me. There were also the girls I knew I could spend a couple of dollars on for dinner who would then wrangle into bed with me. Some of them took more persuasion (“I thought since I bought you a nice dinner…”), but enough of them were just interested in being with someone new, or being wild and carefree. I had a theory, and I tested it on plenty of girls. My theory—borrowed, to be exact—was that of every ten girls I made an effort with, one would like me straight away. One would be interested enough in what I had to say to delve a bit deeper, and one would be the “date” girl who would hopefully have sex with me if I bought her dinner. Statistically speaking, for every ten girls, I had a thirty percent chance of having sex. The truth was, it would take me until after my undergraduate days to mature to the point of not seeing some girls as mere conquests to be studied and understood.

I was determined to use my time at university to learn everything I could about women—how to please them both in and out of the bedroom and how to become a red-hot lover, a great conversationalist, and an even better listener. I knew these were the keys to loving women. I wanted to learn how to get them interested and keep them interested. Most of all, I wanted to experience university life like all the other red-blooded hetero males. On a gloriously hot DC afternoon, the promised Indian summer was in full swing. Sonja and I sat on her porch sipping iced tea and chatting with Sarah, a good friend of Sonja’s to whom I had just been introduced. Mostly, the girls chatted and I listened, but I threw in the occasional comment or funny comeback. Both girls were happy, laughing at my witty remarks. It was obvious they were enjoying my company. The conversation was interrupted by Sonja’s cell phone. Reaching for it, she wiped away the still spilling tears of laughter. She checked the screen and rolled her eyes, all traces of good humor gone from her face. “Hello?” she answered, her voice cold and formal. “Work,” she mouthed silently in our direction, giving her phone the finger. Sarah and I chuckled quietly, not wanting to give her away. “Now, I’m kind of busy.” Silence while she listened to the speaker on the other end. “Fine, I’ll be right there.” A frown disturbed her face as she disconnected the call. “I’m really sorry I have to go to work for a couple of hours, an emergency meeting. If I don’t show up, I could lose my job.” “It’s all good,” I replied, and stood to leave as well. “Call me when you’re done?” “No, stay right there. I’ll only be gone a couple of hours, if that. It’ll be good— you two getting to know each other a bit better.” I glanced over at Sarah, who shrugged, and then I saw it—the wisp of a smile played briefly across her lips. I nodded my agreement as Sonja dashed into the house, re-emerging minutes later juggling her handbag and some files, the mascara smear disappeared from beneath her eye.

Grabbing her cell, she kissed my cheek. “See you both in a little while.” She jumped in the car, rolled the window down, and laughingly shouted, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” I noticed Sarah wince ever so slightly, and I began to wonder… Sonja’s car pulled away, out of sight, and I felt the atmosphere change slightly. There was a definite attraction between Sarah and me. Out of sight, out of mind. I smiled to myself. Sarah looked at me quizzically, assessing the situation, working out if I was interested or if I would be shocked and reject her, and then tell Sonja and ruin their friendship. For a quick moment, I wondered if I imagined it, but I knew I wasn’t. I knew she was into me. “Want a refill?” I asked Sarah, nodding toward her empty glass. I stalled for time while I decided how to play this. She shook her head. “So, you and Sonja then…” she said. “Yeah, me and Sonja.” “We talk, you know.” “Huh?” I wasn’t expecting that, and I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I decided a noncommittal grunt would cover all bases. “Yeah,” she confirmed. “Me and Sonja, we talk.” I still didn’t know where this was going, though I had an idea…and wondered how it would get there. I rolled with it. Sarah’s blank expression gave nothing away, not the slightest signal. It was probably better this way, to let it play out naturally; it would give me a chance to discern if I was reading her correctly. “Really? And what do you and Sonja talk about?” Sarah’s expression suddenly became very readable, and the word written all over her face was sex. She licked her lips and seemed to contemplate how to answer my question.

I suspected this was leading to sex, but I wasn’t sure how quickly she would get there. “Sonja claims you can go.” I was a bit taken aback, not knowing yet what to say. Did she want me to make the first move? Her eyes roamed down my body and back up again, lingering over my crotch, making no secret of what she meant by the word go. “Damn straight I can go,” I replied. I was glad Sonja had bragged about my prowess. Despite my swagger, I was never quite sure if I was enough for Sonja; it was something I dared not ask. She made all the right noises, she came back for more, but she seldom verbally reassured me. As we lay together afterward, I was often tempted to ask the question on my mind: “Did you enjoy it?” But I never found the courage. Perhaps I feared the answer and was happy enough believing she enjoyed the sex we shared. Why ruin that? I didn’t want her to see me as a needy schoolboy, desperate for validation. I had to be careful. I was underage, although I would be eighteen in December, and if my self-doubt showed, maybe she would question whether I was actually twenty. All of that abated as Sarah now confirmed what Sonja thought of my sexual prowess: I was a good lay. I felt relieved and proud, and it was better coming from Sarah. Sonja had no reason to lie to her, and whatever she’d said had piqued Sarah’s interest. “Julius, can you keep a secret from Sonja?” Sarah asked, glancing around as if Sonja might be hiding nearby. “Sure,” I said, feigning ignorance. I knew exactly where was she going with this, but I let her think I had no idea what was coming next. “I’m intrigued by you. Are you really that good in bed?” Did she ask because she thought I didn’t have much experience, that it would all be over in seconds?

“I’ve never had any complaints.” My tone was cocky, my posture posed, casual and relaxed, but my mind was racing. What if I was right and she wanted sex, but then she thought I was rubbish? No, I reasoned, I was reading this wrong. But, if she did want sex, I knew what I was doing—it was all about the foreplay —and now I had confirmation that I was doing it right. “I wasn’t sure you’d be any good with you being, like, well, you know…” “Younger?” I finished. She looked puzzled for a second. “No, fat,” she answered. “I’ve never been with a fat guy. I always wondered if it was the same.” Here we go again. I knew this routine inside out. I had been here in high school, and I found myself in this situation with college girls too. As a teen I was the best friend, the shoulder to cry on, the one girls came to for advice on guys and dating. I was never the object of their desires, at least not until they decided they wanted to try something different, something taboo. I was not the fit, toned six-pack-abs guy sanctioned by mainstream media. I was the guy they came to if they were feeling curious or rebellious, but only if I kept our deal a secret. I had to promise those girls I would never tell that they had sex with a fat guy like me, and that promise guaranteed action. There was an unspoken belief in our society that overweight people weren’t sexually attractive and were rarely featured in any sexual fantasy. But I knew that wasn’t true. Many women were interested in me, chiefly because of my charm and kindness. They wanted the experience, but most of them didn’t want anyone to know about it. I told myself that I walked away with more than I had given, that the gain was worth the insults and the wounds to my esteem because I learned meticulously how to pleasure a woman, how to make her feel good about herself not only using my body but also with whispered sweet nothings. Like the sex, my words were only for the moment; they slipped away as soon as I was out the door. I was becoming a ladies’ man at a price that drove home my insecurities and shame about my body. The message I received over and over was that I was only good enough for a taste of love, for fleeting affection; no one would genuinely love me as I was.

Instead of looking in the mirror and trying to understand my role in this transactional and temporary lovemaking, I told myself that these girls were every bit as insecure as I was. They didn’t want to be seen as the girl who could only get a fat guy or be the butt of some cruel joke. They worried about what others thought of them. Surely I understood that; I knew what it was like to be different. I should have been angry, been more introspective, and not allowed myself to be that guy—an embarrassment, someone to be used. But I was grateful to be having regular sex, and keeping quiet seemed like a small price to pay. I had the chance to learn more about women with every encounter, and each encounter bettered my chances of there being another one. Over time, I was able to push the negative feelings aside. I felt nothing. I became numb to my deeper needs, to the river of pain that flowed below the surface. I justified the usury nature of my sex life and lied to myself that it didn’t bother me. “Have I offended you?” Sarah’s quiet voice broke into my thoughts. We had been sitting in silence as the minutes ticked by. I laughed. “No, not at all.” And she hadn’t. Not really. Why would I expect her to be any different? This seemed to appease her, and her confident veneer returned. “Wanna do it?” she asked me. I grinned. I had her now and I knew exactly how to play it. “Sure, but we can’t tell Sonja.” With an agreement of confidentiality between us, I stood up and took her by the hand, pulling her to her feet. I kissed her, gently at first, and she responded, pushing her body against mine, feeling me, testing me, and experiencing me. I pushed my hand into her hair and kissed her harder, ionately, my other hand skimming down her back and pulling her closer to me. When I pulled back and looked at her face, her cheeks were flushed and sweaty. Her breath was fast now, her swollen red lips slightly parted. She reached out, caressed my chest through my T-shirt, and then moved lower, rubbing, probing. As my body responded she smiled knowingly.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, reminding me that to be seen with me could not happen to her. It should have bothered me; it should have killed the mood, but it didn’t, and I allowed her to lead me into the lounge. Slowly, we undressed each other. As she removed my clothes, I waited for her to flinch, for the look of revulsion to cross her face, but it didn’t happen. She was as into this as I was. The warm wetness between her legs confirmed it. I pulled her to the floor and as I worked on her pleasure, I contemplated how different she and Sonja were. Quiet, shy Sonja was pretty but not beautiful; she was natural looking, and she never hid our relationship. She told her friends we were together and introduced me to them. Sonja genuinely didn’t care what anyone else thought; that was how real confidence looked . Then there was loud, seemingly self-confident Sarah, who worried about what people thought of her, yet was willing to have sex with her friend’s boyfriend, just to feel good about herself for a couple of minutes. She was hot in a fake way —hair extensions, slightly too much makeup, and ridiculously long acrylic nails. Sarah’s confidence was as phony as her looks. As Sarah moaned through her orgasm, she saw that I was different than the magazine-perfect guys she normally dated. I cared about her pleasure, even more than mine. I made sex about enjoying each other, not all about getting mine. “I’m going to rock your world,” I said as I penetrated her. She let out a short gasp as I lost myself, moving inside her. All I thought about was how good this felt, physically and mentally. How, as I moved in her, each thrust brought a new gasp from her. I knew I was showing her how good a lover I was. Her gasps became louder, faster, and I matched my rhythm to hers. I was close then, but I held back. I wanted her to be satisfied first. I watched as her face contorted. Her orgasm ripped from her lips in a loud moan, and as I felt her clench tightly around me, I couldn’t hold back any longer, my moans ed hers. We lay next to each other for a few minutes as our breathing slowed and returned to normal.

I stood up, pulling my clothes back on. I expected Sarah to do the same, but she didn’t. I glanced over my shoulder; she was propped up on one elbow, watching me. I wondered what she was thinking. Perhaps how this body could make her feel so good, or why she did what she did? I didn’t care. I was sated, and I knew she enjoyed it, even if she pretended it didn’t happen. We both knew the truth, and that was enough for me. I finished dressing and grabbed Sarah’s sundress, throwing it toward her. “You better put this on. Sonja will be home soon.” I wanted to ask if it was good for her, but I didn’t. I was afraid of the answer. I was always afraid of that answer. “Oh God, Sonja,” Sarah said, her voice shaky. She covered her breasts with the dress, crossing her arms around herself, but made no move to put it on. “Get dressed,” I said again. “You’re not going to tell her, are you?” I shrugged my shoulders as if I hadn’t yet decided, acting like I didn’t care either way. Of course, I had no intention of telling Sonja, but Sarah didn’t need to know that. Not yet. This was my moment, the moment of power, the moment when my actions could change the subsequent course of events. Her eyes filled with tears. For a moment I felt bad for her. I didn’t want to hurt her—not really. I only wanted to hold on a bit longer to the moment where I was not yet the forgotten secret, but the powerful man who held all the cards. “I’m not going to tell her,” I said quickly. Instantly, her tears stopped, and a look of relief washed over her face. “You know, so this doesn’t get back to her.” “You’re right,” she agreed. I gave her a way out, letting her think I believed that was the only reason she didn’t want anyone to know. At least she was gentle about it, tried to save my feelings. Inside I knew, she, like others had been in my past wanted to keep her fat-boy sex to herself.

I became accustomed to the self-loathing but also to being a penitent secret. For a moment I hoped Sarah would sing her praises for me from the rooftops so that it momentarily pushed back the pain and anger. I waited, she said nothing. The look on her face was now less about me and more about Sonja. After all, Sarah had much more to lose in this than I did. She had committed the ultimate act of betrayal—sleeping with her best friend’s guy. In my mind, it was simpler for me; Sonja had been in my life only a few months. This wasn’t the first time I cheated on her, and it wouldn’t be the last. I barely considered it cheating. We weren’t married, and I was only eighteen. We were not a forever thing, and this was my time to experiment, to try on as many women as possible. As if reading my thoughts, Sarah lowered her head and spoke in barely a whisper. “I feel so guilty. Don’t you?” “She’s not my best friend,” I said, my tone casual. “How long did you say you two have been friends?” Her head snapped up sharply. She stared at me, her eyes piercing through me with a look that could freeze lava. “Look,” I said, my voice calm and reasoned. “This is what it is. It was just sex. That’s all, nothing more. It’s not like you and I are in love or anything.” “Right,” she said, louder now, more like the assertive tone she used when she was seducing me. “Right. Of course, I’m being silly.” The fantasy in my head was that she would confess that she had intensely fallen in love with me. But no, that would have complicated things. Finally, she was on her feet and making a move to get dressed. The playful, flirty Sarah was now gone, her desire satisfied, and the friendly if slightly distant girl whom I’d first met was back. “The dress isn’t much good without the underwear first.” She half smiled, stepping into her panties. “True.” I smiled back. “I’ll see you back out on the porch.”

I sat back outside in the heat of the day, enjoying the sun on my skin. Sarah reed me a few minutes later. “Sonja was right, you know,” she said as she sat beside me. “You can go.” I wanted to tell her, Of course I can. I’m fat, not broken, but I didn’t say anything. I winked at her and said, “Told ya I could.” We sat in comfortable, contemplative silence for a while. Sarah’s eyes were closed, her face turned toward the sun, and I thought she had fallen asleep. She surprised me when she opened her eyes and looked over at me. “What do you prefer, Pepsi or Coke?” “Coke,” I responded. “You?” “Pepsi.” All signs of our brief intimacy were gone, but I had no doubt Sarah would it. We were fully clothed and still debating whether a Coke made a better refreshment than a Pepsi when Sonja returned. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she announced as she walked toward us. “Have you two gotten to know each other a little better?” Sarah flinched slightly, and I thought, She’s ing, all right. It made me happy, and luckily Sonja didn’t seem to notice Sarah’s momentary discomfort. “Well,” I replied, “I know she prefers Pepsi to Coke.” Sonja laughed, “Yeah, well she’s got good taste. I’m going to grab a soda. Be right back.” She disappeared into the house and I turned to Sarah. “Relax,” I said. “Yes, nothing happened,” she responded. Yes, nothing. I was nothing, and I told myself I was perfectly okay with that. It would be years before I understood my role in all of this, before I understood my

self-inflicted game of torture and mayhem before I understood that for me love was unattainable, and that at the bottom of my soul, I did not believe I was lovable. Lying in bed that night, I thought about how I had upset Sarah, dangling the possibility of telling Sonja. A small laugh escaped my lips. At that moment, I became her equal, or maybe more. For once, I held the cards. I was the one exploiting her instead of the other way around. But it was never really that way. Had I told, Sarah would have denied it, and Sonja wouldn’t believe the desperate fat guy, anyway. But for those brief moments, I could pretend. The laughter turned bitter. I glanced over at Sonja to make sure I didn’t wake her. She lay beside me sleeping peacefully, sated and confident I would still be there when she woke. I felt reassured by that. It gave me hope that maybe there were other women out there like Sonja, confident women who didn’t need the world to validate their feelings. I rolled over in bed. Sonja was still beside me, breathing deeply and hopefully dreaming of me.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Proving My Manhood

My ventures into the world of women weren’t always successful, but that never stopped me. By my sophomore year, I was feeling confident in my ability to both get with women and satisfy them. At this point, I believed I was already an experienced lover, when in reality I was more like a wounded boy in the body of a nineteen-year-old. I would soon realize I still had much to learn, and much to prove to myself. I was walking to class one day when I heard a group of five or six girls behind me discussing penis size. I couldn’t resist ing in. I turned and said, “I bet you can’t guess my size.” Caught unprepared, they giggled like schoolgirls, which they were. The oldest of them was only twenty-two, and the youngest just turned nineteen. One of the older girls, Moriah, knowing she’d get a laugh out of the coven, said, “Shut up, Julius, you’re not packing.” It worked. The group of girls shrieked their laughter and nodded in agreement, brave now that they had a spokeswoman. No way was I letting that one go by without a comeback. “Really? You’re that sure?” I inquired. “The relativity of such a statement abounds, and as such, any knowledge of the fact must be met by exploration and experience.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” the ringleader asked. It was a cheap ploy, using my superior intellect to make them feel small, but it worked, and I felt vindicated. “It means that you can’t make that statement without actually having any

experience of said penis,” I responded, a smug grin on my face. Encouraged by Moriah’s bravery, another girl demanded, “Pull it out then, big daddy. Let’s have a look.” This was met by further shrieking. “And what’s in it for me?” I asked them. “I don’t mind showing you, but only if I get something in return.” The girls laughed again, their childish giggles ringing through the hallway. I noticed Moriah wasn’t laughing. That’s when I decided I had a chance of hooking up with her. “Moriah doesn’t think it’s funny, but she wants to know, don’t you?” I asked. “I already know.” Moriah smiled. “You messed around with Tonia; she told me everything.” Before I had a chance to process this, let alone respond, Moriah’s assertion was met with a chorus of whoops, catcalls, and surprised outbursts from the other girls. This was dangerous territory. I hadn’t actually had sex with Tonia, but we’d fooled around, and she had made it quite clear it wasn’t to be discussed. Had she broken her own vow of silence? Or had Moriah just picked up on something? Howard was a big school, but it was still small enough for gossip to be rife. Had someone spotted me leaving Tonia’s room that night and spread it around campus? Tonia was a member of an elite sorority; she would be furious if this got out. It would damage her reputation and make her seem attainable to the masses. But Moriah didn’t care; comion was not a word in her vocabulary. Without lowering the volume of her voice one decibel, she burst out with, “Oh yeah girls, his fat ass screwed Tonia.” I was embarrassed but intrigued by this display of hyperbole from the girls. They were like animals, wildly encouraging one another to cross lines. I felt trapped.

Should I deny it and get hit with more catcalls, draw more attention to the conversation? I decided the best way to go was to try to diffuse the situation by neither itting nor denying it. I hung my head and shook it back and forth, as though a bit embarrassed. Moriah spoke up again. “Give me your number. I’m going to call Tonia and find out exactly what happened.” I opened my mouth to ask why she needed my number to call Tonia. Then I realized what was going on here. She had no intention of calling Tonia. She knew nothing; she had just pulled a name out of thin air, hitting on a lucky guess. This was all a ruse, a way to get my number without the girls knowing the actual reason. She wanted to see me for herself. I gave her my number and hurried off to class, escaping from the coven, their laughter fading as I got farther away. Not three hours later, my cell phone rang. It was Moriah. She wanted to study together that night. Sure it wasn’t my philosophy paper she wanted to study, I readily agreed. As I waited for her to arrive, I came up with the genius idea of rolling up a sock and placing it in my briefs so when Moriah saw it, she would think I had a huge penis. I wanted to increase my chances with her, so I wore a pair of tight jogging pants. The outline was clear. To this day I’m not sure why I thought that was a good idea. Moriah arrived as expected and we sat down and started chatting. It wasn’t long before she made me promise I wouldn’t tell her girls she had stopped by. I knew why, but I asked her anyway. “They wouldn’t understand,” she told me. Whatever. Of course I agreed, and we continued chatting about this and that. I adjusted my position on the couch, sitting in a way that highlighted the huge penis sock. I knew she had seen it; her gaze kept darting south, so I took my opportunity to steer this meeting.

“Have you ever been with a fat guy before?” I asked her. “No!” she responded, in a tone I would have expected if I asked her if she had ever murdered someone. I went on. “You’ve never been kissed by fat boy lips, touched by fat boy hands, hugged by fat boy arms, aroused by fat boy twelve play.” As she smiled and shook her head no, I could see her embarrassment turning to curiosity. She was up for it. “We should do something about that,” I said. “Can I hug you?” She nodded her consent, and I wrapped her in my arms, kissing her neck, moving up toward her lips. “Can I kiss you?” I whispered, and she nodded again. As I kissed her, she started to respond, to kiss me back. I pulled back slightly and caressed her breasts. Hearing her breathing change to pants of desire, my body began to respond, and the sock, before an adroit move, was now a major obstacle. I had to work out how to remove it without her seeing. I blurted out the only words I could think of to try to slow things down long enough that I would have a chance to lose the sock. “We can’t do this, Moriah. We barely know each other.” And they say chivalry is dead. “Please don’t stop, Julius, I want you,” she begged me, standing up and quickly stripping off her clothes. I knew she would want me to do the same, but I still had the damn sock in there, and with my growing erection, if she happened to glance down now, it would look like I had two penises. Cursing myself for my stupid idea, I mumbled, “No, we have to stop. God is watching.” Where did that come from? If I got the sock out, I would have to explain my way around that comment. This was going from bad to worse.

With a look of distrust, she bent to retrieve her clothes and rushed into my bathroom. Taking my chance, I pulled the sock out, hid it in a drawer, and went to the bathroom door. “Don’t be mad,” I said. She opened the door and burst out, fully clothed again. “I was just trying to keep your honor,” I told her, cringing inside. “Honor!” She scoffed. “Well, if you feel that way, we can go back to where we left off.” Okay, this could work. It looked like I had tried to do the right thing, and she had persuaded me otherwise. I reached out to hug her, and she pushed me away. “Don’t touch me,” she said. “I didn’t care about honor or any of that stuff. I just wanted your dick.” With that, she pushed past me and stormed out. Although I didn’t end up getting anything except frustrated, I did feel elated knowing the effect I’d had on her. A fat boy had made her feel so good she begged for it to go on. And for once, I was the one to say no, the one to retain the power. More than that, for once, I had honored myself.

A few weeks later, my friend Diane and I were talking when she looked at me coyly and said, “Can I ask you something?” “Of course,” I said. “Do all fat guys have really small penises?” I don’t know what I thought she was going to ask me, but it wasn’t that. I’m not gay, and I’m not a urologist, so examining other people’s penises isn’t something with which I have any experience, and I told her as much. “Okay,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I saw a documentary on TV about fat guys who have hidden penises. It’s just a nice way to say tiny. I just want to know if it’s true.” “Well, it can be, I suppose,” I said. “Genetics and the way the body distributes fat cells can lead to the penis being hidden among fat. Why are you so interested?” I thought maybe she was writing a paper on it—a strange thing to think, really, but Diane and I were friends, and she never showed the slightest interest in me sexually, so her answer surprised me. “Because I like you Julius, I thought maybe we could take our friendship to the next level, but it’s pointless if your penis is tiny. I would want to be blissful, but if you’re not big enough, I would just be frustrated.” I had never thought of Diane that way, either. But I dove right in. “How about you try me and see? It would be silly to miss out on this opportunity for me to prove that I can satisfy you.” I purposely made it sound like a challenge, as an added incentive for Diane. She didn’t have to particularly be sexy to me; this was about not losing face, a form of hyper-masculinity. Diane seemed up for it, and we arranged for her to stop by my place in two days’ time. I bought some wine and strawberries to help set the mood and eagerly awaited her arrival.

She knocked, and I invited her in. She looked stunning, wearing a pretty red dress with black sandals and a matching black flower in her hair. This was going to be special. I set the strawberries out on a blanket on the floor and had the wine chilling, ready for her arrival. As she sat down and helped herself to a strawberry, I poured the wine and handed her a glass. Sitting beside her, I sipped my wine. Then, I leaned in to kiss her. She pushed me roughly away. “I don’t kiss,” she said, throwing down the halfeaten strawberry in disgust. It rolled across the blanket. This was weird. Everything I had ever watched or read, everything I knew about sex, started with kissing. Even when the sex was insincere, it always started out with the girlfriend experience. I thought for sure Diane would want that—we weren’t strangers, and it would be uncomfortable to act like we were. I was a bit lost as to what to do next. Diane drained her wine glass in one big gulp, stood up, and led me to the couch. “Let’s just get this over with,” she said. So this wasn’t going to be special. It was going to be awkward sex, but it was still sex. I could work with that, I told myself. “I—” “Never mind all that.” She sounded irritated and impatient. “Come on then, take your pants off, but not your shirt. Your huge belly might put me off, you know?” She laughed softly as she said it, but it didn’t ease the blow. Never had a girl said something so offensive; usually, they were into it, even if they didn’t want anyone else to know that. I decided to stop overthinking it and just go with it. I would do as she asked. What else could I do? Throw her out? She wanted to be in control. I let her. She reached over and removed my belt, grabbing at my crotch, fumbling. I wasn’t erect; how could I be? She had rejected my kiss and rejected my body. I was so far from turned on, and I was worried my flaccid penis would be another target of her cruelty. I couldn’t bear the thought of any more of her barbed

words. I turned her over and pushed her dress up, kneeling between her legs, kissing my way up her thighs until I reached my target. I was desperately hoping that pleasuring her would turn me on, rekindle the mood, and I would get hard. It wasn’t happening, and five minutes became ten. Diane kept punctuating the moment with requests like, “Give it to me now” and “Just stick it in, already.” The pressure was doing nothing to get me hard, and thoughts kept running through my mind: I’m far too young to have erectile dysfunction! Why is this happening? But it was her hurtful comment, “Your huge belly might turn me off,” that ate at me. It was also the years of being ridiculed, sexually abused, and experimented upon as if being fat made me an alien. I had to think of something to say, anything. “Just screw me, already,” she said with irritation clear in her voice. “Diane, I don’t want to screw you; it doesn’t feel right. I want to make love to you.” She shouted. “It’s too late for that sweet ass shit now, Julius. Just give it to me. Let’s get this over with.” Damnatio memoriae, I thought to myself. It was as if she was already trying to wipe me from her memory. Usually that combination of assertive and aggressive would send me spiraling into overdrive, but not now. Not in this state of mind. It was apparent to me at that moment that Diane wasn’t thinking of me as a person, as someone with feelings and insecurities; she was thinking of me as an object—a sex toy, something to satisfy her curiosity and fulfill her sexual needs. No need for kisses or affection. This wasn’t mutual pleasure, the way I thought sex should be. I soon realized this wasn’t performance anxiety; that’s not why I couldn’t get it up. It was performance aversion. I didn’t want to have sex with someone who couldn’t offer me a shred of kindness, who couldn’t attempt to hide her obvious revulsion to my body, someone who rejected me so openly, someone who was supposedly a friend. Angry now, I stood up, straightened my boxers, and fastened my pants. “Get out

of here,” I said, and I meant it. It wasn’t some ploy to have her beg for me. Even if she had begged, in that moment, her cruelty could not be undone. Standing and pulling her dress back into place, Diane stormed toward the door. Pulling it open, she turned back to me and spouted, “It’s not my fault your fat ass can’t get it up. Lose my number. Don’t tell anyone you know me, because from now on, you don’t.” She had hurled her final insult, and at that moment, I more than agreed that our friendship was over. I could have argued with her. I could have told her that humiliating me was entirely her fault, and that shaming me was like hitting the “off” button, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that she hurt me. I laughed as she slammed the door, but inside I was that hurt, sad little fat boy I had always been. My fat had repulsed her, and yet, it was part of my body, part of me. Just before the door latched shut, she shouted, “Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!” I had no intention of telling anyone, though maybe for once, I should have. She was right; I didn’t know her at all. I had thought we were friends, but a true friend would not have treated me so disrespectfully, and that made the rejection all the more painful. If she had been a stranger, I would have more easily discounted her brutality, but she was a person for whom I had genuine affection. I was better off without her in my life. Too many times, I had substituted my dignity for desire, yet I rarely felt sad about it. Most young men were having regular sex, at least if their claims could be believed, and I could see no reason why I should be left out. This should have been my breakthrough moment, my shining light, the moment where I said, “You know what, it’s not happening. If you don’t like me as I am, then be gone.” But I didn’t feel empowered. I hadn’t gained enough insight or self-respect. I didn’t yet understand my complicity in these loveless interchanges. All I felt was belittled, that I was a joke. I was someone so unimportant that it was acceptable to berate me and still expect me to perform like a show dog.

I continued to let myself be used, exploited and fetishized as long as I kept getting sex, but I never again allowed myself to be so completely objectified, nor did I put up with anyone so obviously disgusted by my body. I picked up my forgotten wine and sipped the dark red liquid, her musk still on me, the half-eaten strawberry stuck to the blanket along with the black flower she had worn in her hair. The flower was as dead as I was to her.

CHAPTER NINE

Hanging Up on the Call from God

Although I had given up the idea of becoming a Roman Catholic priest, the goal of inheriting my grandfather’s Baptist pulpit and congregation still played in my mind. Like Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in California, I dreamed that I would build a glass cathedral in the hood, the Englewood area of Chicago. The streets would be lined with planters of flowers and the road with parishioners’ names engraved. Then, on spring break of my sophomore year of college, I was with my then-girlfriend, Nicole, in North Carolina visiting her family there. Nicole was a very active Christian and leader of the Campus Crusade for Christ organization. One night, we sat on her porch and talked for hours on end about ministry. “I have a vision,” I began. I shared with her my dream of the glass cathedral, my ten thousand , and all that I would do for the city of Chicago. Wide-eyed, she listened intently, nodding her head as I spoke. I thought she was completely in awe of my vision…and in a way, she was. “Julius, I believe you have the charisma and the foundation to accomplish all of that, but just know now that I will not be your first lady,” she said, referring to the common title for a pastor’s wife. “What?” I asked, genuinely confused. “I don’t understand, Nicole.” “I have listened to you for over an hour talk about all you want, all you dream about, all you plan to accomplish, and not once did you mention God. No prayer for guidance, no adherence to His call for your life. As such, I choose not to be a part of a narcissistic ministry.”

I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I considered her words carefully as they sunk in, and I wondered if her insight was accurate. Had I left God out of my vision? Was she seeing me more clearly than I saw myself? I listened as she went on. “I know you mean well, Julius, but who is not beholden to the call and will of God? Not even you!” In that moment, because of that conversation, I felt afraid to become a minister, a preacher of God. What if I went too far? An over-the-top ministry had always been my vision, and I knew it would gnaw at me to do less. But I understood as well that my vision had little to do with the discernment of God’s will. I knew that my path would point me in a new direction, but it was clear that a pastorship that overshadowed the “Thou” would not be true ministry. Nicole and I continued our relationship for the remainder of the semester, but it became increasingly difficult for me to maintain this Christian relationship of abstinence and weekly Bible study. Once summer came, I felt it was a perfect time to put on a full-court press to get Nicole to have sex with me. Nicole had secured an internship with the federal government and would be living in the Howard Plaza Towers for the summer. My friend Stacy had a studio apartment in the building, but she more often stayed at her boyfriend’s, so her apartment was empty. Wanting to be closer to Nicole, I asked Stacy if I could live there. It worked like a charm. Nicole and I spent every day together. Since I had a car and she didn’t, I drove her to work and picked her up afterward. I adapted to her schedule since I wasn’t working at the time; my Congressional internship had ended, and I was preparing for my London semester abroad. I was her chauffeur, friend, cook, and confidant. All summer, this is how it went, all according to the same rhythm. Each morning, she would knock on my door at 7:30 a.m. and I would drive her to work, drop her off with a kiss her on the cheek or a gentle peck on the lips (but never with tongue), and then return at 4:30 to pick her up. At home, we took turns cooking dinner for each other. This became our summer 1991 schedule. One night, I decided it was time to try the Boyz n the Hood move. There’s a scene in the movie where Trey becomes so distraught with sadness and anger that he cries. Brandy consoles him, and after months and months of denying him sex, it finally happens. Sorrow sex! That “what can I ever do to make him feel

better?” sex. That was what I was going for. I made up some tragedy—I can’t even the lie now, but I cried and cried on her shoulder and let myself look vulnerable. I reached her soul and made her feel she was the only one in the world who could make me feel better. It was all with a weaponized tear. We were sitting on a white daybed that Stacy had left in her apartment for me. There was no other furniture but a borrowed chair from the student lounge and some floor pillows. After several minutes of emotional ranting and Nicole’s gallant attempts at making me feel better, I reached in and kissed her. As she returned the kiss, I realized it was lasting longer than any of our previous kisses during the nearly two years of our friendship. I reached out and drew her closer, kissed her more ionately. My goal was to commit this young woman to a night of ion. I wanted her so badly, and I began to feel her inhibitions release as she allowed me to take off her top, then her shorts. I went down on her as I had learned to do at a young age. I figured this would get her so sexually enticed that she would not forbid me from entering into her body with mine. I was so wrong. After she had climaxed, she looked at me and began to cry. I knew then that I was not going to get mine. Without asking what was wrong, I apologized to her. She rebuffed my apology by screaming, “You know we were not supposed to do that!” Hell, you had fifteen minutes to come to that conclusion, I thought to myself. Now you want to reclaim your virtue? But I didn’t share these thoughts with her. I was never flippant with Nicole, always in deference to her spiritual side. I apologized again and kept quiet while she got dressed. As each arm went into her shirt, I felt further and further removed from that goal line. I watched as she grabbed her white panties and blue shorts and stormed into the bathroom and shut the door. She might as well have been in a foreign country, thousands of miles away, for I knew that was just how far I was from having this chance to bed her again. I assumed she would find another ride to work the next morning, so the ritual knock on my door surprised me. When I opened the door, it was apparent to her that I’d still been sleeping. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t take me to work now?”

I was confused and somewhat frustrated. “Wait,” I said. “You left here last night, didn’t even say good night, and somehow I was supposed to know you wanted a ride from me this morning?” She stood there in shock, looking at me like I was a total stranger. “Are you going to give me a ride or is this what it is now, Julius?” My face wrinkled in embarrassment, as I really did care for Nicole and I’d invested over a year with her, so I was not going to let it go so easily. I quickly dressed, and we went to the car. We rode in silence for the first few blocks. Finally, I said, “Do you regret last night?” She looked at me and asked, “Do you?” “Of course not. I wanted to make you happy, and I thought I did. I mean, you had your happy ending, didn’t you?” With a disgusted look, she replied, “I thought you were better than that, Julius. I thought you respected our boundaries and last night you invaded my space and took advantage of me trying to be available for your consolation.” Now I was confused. “Invaded your space? Took advantage of you? You can’t be serious. You never resisted, never said no.” “Julius, the Bible said no for us. I have said no since we met. Don’t you think I have desires? You don’t think I know you do too? But I wanted to wait for my husband, and you knew that, but you decided to hell with what I sought for my spiritual development and took it upon yourself to take me in my weakened state. This is your fault! No, it’s my fault for believing you were the man of God I thought you were. You are a devil in sheep’s clothing.” I sped up to get her to work before I said something inappropriate. I sat there seething, wanting to lash out, but I didn’t. I held it in. When we arrived, I said simply, “I will pick you up after work. Have a nice day.” I leaned over to hug her as I did every work day. “So you have nothing to say?” she demanded, pulling away from me. I repeated, “Have a wonderful day, my dear.” As she climbed out of the car I heard her murmur, “He is such a punk.”

“A punk!” I yelled. “Would a punk take your ass to work every day and pick you up? Would a punk cook you dinner and share all his time with you? Would a punk spend time with you at your family’s house and disclose all his secrets? I ain’t no punk. What I am is hurt. But I am used to being hurt by women. You ain’t the first, honey, and you won’t be the last.” “How did I hurt you?” she asked as she stood outside the half-open door. “You’re right, you didn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I hurt myself. I hurt myself thinking you were different and wouldn’t use me and take advantage of my kindness. I hurt myself thinking that we had a long-term future together.” “Well, at least we agree there, Julius. I have always been honest with you. It was you who took our relationship to another level, thinking…what were you thinking? That I would have sex with you last night? Oh no! Tell me you didn’t think that your tears and my moments of weakness would grant you access into what God ordained for my husband.” Feeling exposed, guilty, and a bit angry, I yelled, “Well tell your husband to pick you up from work today. Goodbye.” The remainder of the summer didn’t fare well for our relationship. By the time I departed for London, Nicole had become like a stranger to me. I left knowing that upon my return I wouldn’t have the friend I had for over a year. But I also knew that I was at Howard University, where there was no shortage of beautiful women.

CHAPTER TEN

Senior Year and Post-Graduation

I found myself questioning ideas about love during the summer before my senior year. Was I simply an investor in so many others, seeking to build them up so they might reach their innate abilities of achievement? In truth, my hope was that somewhere down the line they would me and perhaps bring me with them. Was that sort of social networking so wrong? It wasn’t merely transactional. Relationships I had already established proved to be transformational. I had just won the election for student president of the College of Arts and Sciences and had my freshly laminated business cards in my pocket. It was with these concepts and my nascent political rise in mind that I returned to my family in Chicago in the heat of July. “You should visit your Grandma Anne,” my mother advised. “You know, she’s not doing so well these days. The fact is, you may not recognize her.” I didn’t give too much thought to what my mother said. Of course, I would visit my Grandma Anne, my biological father’s mother. I hadn’t been gone from Chicago that long, only seven months, and it seemed ridiculous to suggest I wouldn’t recognize her. I figured she was just getting older; that was all. I drove to her apartment with plans to bring her to the grocery store. But my mother was right. I rang the bell to her three-story apartment; she buzzed me in and called me to come upstairs. I walked into her sitting room and was met with a shell of my previously robust and jovial grandmother. I didn’t react. I hugged her and made small talk while I watched her slowly get around. I was so shocked and sad. I had visited her at Christmas seven months earlier, and she looked like she always had. My mom’s warning now made more sense.

She already had her coat on, ready to get her groceries—she had become one of those old ladies who bundled up on an eighty-five-degree summer day. Grandma Anne and I walked through Jewel-Osco grocery store on Stony Island Avenue on a sunny afternoon. I pushed the cart while she held onto my arm. She had always been a stocky woman, but now she weighed no more than one hundred twenty pounds. As we wandered up and down the grocery aisles, I noticed that she didn’t seem to want to talk about herself, only about me. I thought about how much she’d invested in me from an early age. That continued. She sent me generous amounts of money during my first three years at Howard—enough to sustain me. There was never a limit to her kindness or for me. As she read my shiny new business card, she said, “I’m so proud of you, Jay. I just want to see you graduate.” She paused, leaning against me with the shelves of sugar and flour rising above us. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Grandma, what’s wrong?” “Oh, nothing much. I’m just so proud of you; that’s all. A boy needs to be reminded when he’s doing just so fine out here in the big wide world.” I kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Grandma. Thank you.” “You have been through so much and to see that the largest college at Howard University voted you president, well. I just thank God for you and for the chance to be your grandmother.” She slouched in my arms, this now-dainty woman, still bright in spirit but darker in solace. “Grandma, you’re scaring me. Why are you saying these things?” “Didn’t your momma tell you? I got cancer, lung cancer. I just hope I make it to your graduation.” I was dumbfounded, and at first, I thought she was being a bit melodramatic, the way grandparents sometimes are with their grandchildren—that she was reminding me to make some time in my busy life for her. But she was right; she died a few months later, never to see me graduate, never to see me speak in front of thousands, never to see me give to others the way she taught me to give, and

the way she had always given to me. I was determined to carry forward with all that she had taught me, to give of myself the way she modeled for me. I was resolved to continue making her proud of me, to go as far as I could while I was at Howard, to her as a tribute. I went home for her funeral in September 1992. The world would always be a little less without my grandmother Anne B. Crawford. I knew very little about her family and was only linked to her son—my father, Michael—and her sister and nephews. I hadn’t seen or heard from my father in a couple of years, and I hoped to see him so we could talk and reconnect. A.R. Leak Sr., who was the most prominent Black funeral director in Chicago, handled my grandmother’s funeral arrangements. He was her close friend and trusted confidant, and that relationship would prove most valuable over the next few days. It was Mr. Leak who paid for my airfare and arranged my flight in time for Grandma Anne’s Thursday evening wake. I was so grateful for this and told him so the first chance I had. As family and friends kneeled at her coffin and paid their respects to those of us left behind, many asked me, “Where is your father?” I was upset and discouraged with so many mourners who kept asking about my father. There was no reasonable answer. I was angry and hurt and felt cornered. Should I defend him or condemn him? Neither choice was welcome. I was in an awkward and indefensible position, placed there by my grandmother’s callous son, my indifferent father. Grandma Anne’s church service was the next day, Friday morning, and since my father had not attended the wake, I assumed he would be at her funeral and burial. I had two siblings, my father’s children from two other relationships, Erica and Michael Jr., both younger than me—Erica by four years and Michael by fourteen. They both came to the funeral and, like me were looking for their dad. Our father was a no-show. Was it that he couldn’t handle the guilt, the shame of being an emotional burden on his mother, of not ing his children and their mothers? Was he too embarrassed to see his progeny in the light and their love of his mother, who had always been there for her grandchildren?

I would never know. Still, I held out hope, watching for him at the cemetery. Was he watching from a distance, hidden behind some ancient and majestic elm with its elegant canopy? My grandmother was buried at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, the same burial ground where Emmett Till and many other prominent Blacks were committed to the earth. Although my Grandma Anne had no national recognition, she deserved to be there. She had lived a quiet life, embracing peace and the goal of moving her people upward, not dissimilar to Dr. King and Medgar Evers. I understood that she saw all of that in me. I was proud of her, just as she had always been proud of me, and watching her as she was interred broke my heart; this was the most emotionally draining day of my life. Despite that, I continued to scan the cemetery, looking for my father, her son. I walked back to the limousine with my mom and sister, our arms entwined. Mr. Leak pulled me aside and asked me to stop by his office the following day, on Saturday morning. He let me know that he had some money to give to me on behalf of my grandmother—money to help me finish my undergraduate degree at Howard. It was reasonable to assume she had left me some money; she had paid for most of my fees on campus. She, along with my maternal grandfather, was my only means of cash outside of loans. When I showed up at A.R. Leak’s office on Cottage Grove Avenue on the South Side of Chicago, he told me that my dad would soon be arriving as well. He appeared from around a corner, walking into Mr. Leak’s office with the look of a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. He barked at Leak. “What is my son doing here?” he demanded. There was no “Hello, son.” No “Hey Jay, how about a hug from your old man?” None of that. Mr. Leak explained that he knew my grandmother’s wishes, and though her death came before she finalized her will to include me, he wanted to make sure I

was taken care of for the rest of my senior year. He knew my grandmother would not want me to worry about finances. My father was livid. He attempted to clarify, saying, “Well, this is my son, but that is my momma’s money, not yours or my son’s money. I will take care of things.” I watched my father’s smirk, his angry eyes, and I wondered why he still hadn’t acknowledged me. Damn, Dad, I thought, you didn’t even show up to your own mother’s funeral, and now you’re worried about her money. Mr. Leak was unfazed. He asked me to gather up all my bills and let him know what my graduation fees were, plus the cost of my rent, meal plan, and so on. He assured me that my father would pay these fees out of my grandmother’s benefits. My dad finally turned to me with a look of astonishment on his face. “You’re graduating from college, Jay? I gotta be there to see. Momma would have wanted that!” He nodded to Mr. Leak and said, “Give me an extra thousand dollars so I can give that to my son. At Christmas, I will give him another fifteen hundred bucks and, of course, make sure all his graduation bills are paid.” I sat there confused as if I were ten years old. Finally, I spoke up for myself. “Dad, why didn’t you come to the funeral?” He didn’t answer. I turned to Mr. Leak and asked, “Is there any way I could receive the money directly, and not through my dad? I am just not sure I will be able to find him in time for my tuition and so on.” “He can’t give you a damn thing that I don’t authorize.” The anger in my father’s voice was palpable. I began to cry. None of this was in the spirit of my grandmother’s character or wishes. I thanked Mr. Leak and told him I would do as he asked and I’d see him again in December during my holiday break.

“Let me know if you need gas money or another plane ticket for December. And take my card,” he said, handing me one of his business cards. “Have the school fax me your final bills and they will be taken care of.” “Thank you, sir,” I responded. I reached out to hug my dad and to say goodbye. “You mind waiting, Jay? Maybe you could take me to the currency exchange around the corner and then give me a ride home?” Reluctantly, I waited, mainly because if he were going to give me some money, I would wait for it. I sat in my car for half an hour, waiting. The currency exchange was on the corner, two doors down from the funeral home. It shouldn’t take this long, I thought to myself. I got out of the car, walked toward the currency exchange, and around the corner my father stumbled toward me, stonecold drunk. “Jay, can you give me a ride home?” “Of course, Dad. You live around here?” We’d been out of touch, not that I hadn’t tried to find him. I had no idea where he lived. He got in my car and gave me directions. I smelled alcohol on his breath and noticed a plastic bag sticking out of his pocket. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I figured it was drugs. I drove the two miles to his apartment. When we arrived, he reached into his pocket and said, “Here, Jay, I want to give you some money.” He pulled out seven hundred dollars and gave me five hundred of it. “I thought you were going to give me a thousand?” “I’ll send you some money next week. I need the rest right now.” Five hundred was more than I had that morning, so I was thankful. My biological father got out of the car, and I wrote down the address. At least I now knew where my dad was living. I would visit him in December when I returned to Chicago, though I was reluctant to get excited about him giving me any money. When I told my mother about my day, she cried and explained that my grandmother knew something like this would happen.

“Jay, believe me, we tried to get all of her affairs in order, but we just didn’t have time to complete everything.” She sighed. “I’m so sorry. Your father has been calling Grandma Anne’s job, even before she died, questioning how to file for her pension and other benefits. His drug addiction has taken over. His state of mind is so sad that the only meaning his mother’s death has is a way to cash in. He’s not even capable of mourning her loss.” I had lost my grandmother and any balance of respect stored for my father that week. But I had to go on, to move forward, if not for myself, then certainly for my grandmother. She would have expected no less. She wanted the best for me, always, and I was determined to give that to her, to honor her with service and excellence, and to offer myself to the world in her spirit. So I returned to Howard University, a school that was an incubator for many of us, including me, with its core values of leadership, excellence, truth, and service, and culminated with lifelong connections and indoctrinations into the machinations of political campaigns.

The late Dr. Ronald Walters, Chairman of Howard’s Political Science Department and the campaign manager for Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential bid, gave all of his students his sage political wisdom. His classes were some of the most memorable of my years at Howard. Dr. Walters often had political friends visit his classes. In my sophomore year, I intentionally took an upper-level class just to be in the same room with April Silver, then student leader and now founder and president of Akila Worksongs, a publicity agency that includes progressive poets, award-winning filmmakers, public intellectuals, social justice organizations, and cultural arts institutions. Ras Baraka, son of famed poet Amiri Baraka and also a student leader, who was elected the mayor of Newark, New Jersey in 2014, ed Ms. Silver in a packed lecture hall. They had been our campus student body president and vice president 1990–1991. The repartee and buzz in the room were electric. We were in awe as both Ms. Silver and Mr. Baraka inspired us with their humanity and their mantra that we were just like them, that each of us could and should rise up to become our best selves, to give back and pursue our higher calling—whatever that might be. I walking out of that hall with words that echoed in my head for days afterward. I walked on air, believing, truly believing, that I could make something of myself. Dr. Walters’s class also brought me in union with award-winning writers: TaNehisi Coates, author and commentator Jelani Cobb, and national Black Lives Matter activist and organizer Melina Reimann-Abdullah. Just as important were the connections I made with other students that have sustained me since my years at Howard. Kevin Bryan and I bonded during our senior year when we both ran on the same slate. He campaigned for student body trustee while I sought the office of student president. I was active in many school organizations and was a well-known figure on campus. Running for class president seemed like the obvious next step. I easily won the election, as did Kevin. We had campaigned together and ed each other throughout the process. To celebrate our political achievements, Kevin, who was from Fayetteville, North Carolina, invited me to his home over a long autumn weekend. We drove

the three hundred miles south under clear blue skies and turning leaves that signaled the coming of winter. I walked into his parents’ home, and his mother beamed at me, immediately wrapping her arms around me. “Welcome! Welcome, Julius. Have a seat. What can I bring you to drink?” “Thank you, ma’am. You have some of that lemonade Kevin brags about?” “Just so long as you call me mom. Kevin has told us how much you helped him. You’re part of the family now.” Kevin’s mother immediately became my second mother and cared and nurtured me like one of her own. Being part of Kevin’s loving family carried and lifted me for many years to come. I was loved for just who I was. They were not like my family, and while I adored and loved my family, there was always a sense of a swinging door as I was growing up. My mother loved the way my grandfather loved, as did I at that point; for most of our lives, we each lacked the steadiness of a long-term partner. Love was transitory, transactional, and conditional. Even my Grandma Anne’s love was now gone. Personally, I had come to believe that love was messy, not rational or calculable. I couldn’t control love, but I still wanted it, and yet, at the same time, I tried to avoid it. I acknowledged the benefits of stable relationships, often witnessing the enviable relationship between Kevin’s parents, but I was pessimistic about the meaning of life itself, including the role of love. I could never actually know the other person or completely trust in their intentions. I preferred not to allow the irrationality of love to rule my attachments with others. Relationships were only momentary, and in the end, life and death were loneliness. This was the precept to which I clung: a worldview that allowed my mind to soar with possibilities and to accept what was base and sometimes cruel. On that first trip, Kevin and I went to a strip club. I had spent time in my share of strip clubs with the brothas in DC and friends back in Chicago, blowing off steam, being rowdy and enjoying the sights and sounds, and always looking and imagining what it would be like to be with one of those gorgeous women. That night with Kevin was the first time I went through those particular opulent doors in Fayetteville. I was in an element in which I was familiar and comfortable, but Kevin was a bit out of place, not into that scene. As for Phil and my brother Terrence, who also made this trip to Fayetteville, they too were

piqued. Inside, with low lights, cushy seats, and velvet drapes, I took in those silky girls. They drew me into a world of fantasy and idealism that bloomed for me that night and stayed with me for years. I saw those alluring, beautiful girls through a lens of perfection. I imagined their circumstances—dire in ways that led them to become strippers and sex workers. I was enchanted with the idea of a working girl that had a heart of gold. The music was loud, too loud, but fell away that night when a girl—a woman, with full, beautiful breasts and legs that went from the tips of her pink-painted toenails all the way up to Paradise looked at me and smiled. Her tender pink lips curved so delicately, but what pulled me in was that she smiled at me with her eyes as well. Her eyes were on me only. Her name was Strawberry, and I wanted her arms around me, her nipples grazing across my chest, and the taste of her strawberry-colored lips on mine. I knew at that moment what my grandfather, the philandering Baptist minister, had felt for the lovelies he secretly paraded on his arm—that strange feeling of everything rushing inside that overtook me. My blood coursed like a river, my heart swelled in my chest, my mind raced from one thought to the next, and every nerve ending on my body was alive. I was smitten and in love. This woman was on display for me alone. All those other crass and seedy guys staring at her were nothing; they were not worthy of her and would never see what I saw in my Strawberry girl. They were mere animals, though I guess I was one as well, but I was refined, educated, and enlightened. I would always respect her. They certainly wouldn’t. She walked offstage, her eyes still boring into me, and then sidled up to me. Wow, I thought, she knows how I feel because she was watching me as intently as I was looking at her. My heart soared. She smiled at me, pivoting and swirling around me, cooing at me. I could smell her perfume, her skin, and hair. “Call me April,” she said. But I loved her as Strawberry, and I wanted to keep calling her that name. She and I seemed like a destiny kind of thing. I thought back to that memorable strawberry kiss with Tania when I was in elementary school. Of course, this creature named Strawberry made me feel special like no other woman had.

There was something about her that radiated total acceptance, that sort of openness to all that was possible. It was as if an aura of surrender emanated like a poem from her body. I realized that all the other times I had gone to strip clubs I had been looking for Strawberry—not someone like her, but her. I now understood that the others were just shades and lesser copies. Her face was written all over my heart even before I met her. I believed she knew I was mesmerized, although I’m sure she had no true understanding why. Beyond the predictability of the heterosexual male imagination, there was no reason she would discern the depth of my fascination or the intensity of the desire and lust I felt for her, but she did. It was engraved in her. I could feel it in her every move. She took me by the hand and asked, “Do you want to go into a private room? We can talk and get to know one another.” I rose from my seat, mesmerized, entranced with her soft hand in mine as she led me into a curtained room and began dancing just for me, her beautiful breasts and bottom undulating, her nipples erect and dark. I wanted to reach out and caress all of her. She gave herself to me that night like no other, without restraint and with the strength of a lioness, dancing around me, gyrating in my lap, whispering in my ear, telling me about her dreams and aspirations. In fact later giving me her phone number, and eventually her mother’s number as well, so we could stay in touch when she left Fayetteville for her home in Arizona. I was her man, her warrior, and king. There could be no one else. I knew she could give herself to no other in this way. What she had for me was ours alone. What could be wrong with this universe? I asked myself. If this was depraved, then something was wrong with the world. Everything was damned and out of place. There could be no God—maybe a devil, but not a God, and I knew there was a God… Kevin, the guys, and I walked out into the cool night air at nearly two in the morning. As soon as we were in the parking lot, Kevin stopped short and turned to me, shaking his head. “You got to tell me, brotha…for real, what the hell was that?”

“That was love, man, pure love.” “It can’t be. She’s a stripper making eyes at you and a whole lot of other guys too. She’s not looking into your soul, man; she looking into your wallet.” “Kevin, I love you like a brother, but you can’t tell me how I feel about her. You just can’t.” “Ju, you know it’s just make-believe—right?” “Not so. There are different realities; one is not more real than another. I assume you acknowledge imagination, determination, visualizations in your mind can, in fact, affect reality—right?” “All right, Ju. I’ll drop it.” “Good,” I said, but I doubted he would. I never stopped to ask myself why I felt this way or examined how my infatuation limited me when all I felt was blissful with April. I was not yet ready for those questions, and certainly not for such answers. There were other matters at hand. Graduation was soon in the air, with all of us making plans. Some were headed off to interviews and their first professional jobs. I would stay on at Howard University for postgraduate studies in philosophy and a position as a postgrad teaching assistant, the first such given to a Howard student. My master’s degree was now on the horizon as my next attainable goal. I spent a month before graduation working on the commencement speech I was asked to give. Being invited to speak was an incredible honor. I practiced for hours, standing in front of a mirror and learning how to connect with an audience. A group of my friends formed a beta audience, and I practiced in front of them as well. By the time graduation day arrived, I was as ready as I could be; my only worry was my stuttering and stammering. On graduation day, I sat across the aisle from the Simpson family. Arnelle Simpson, O.J.’s oldest daughter, was a member of our 1992 graduating class. I met her through my friend Ananda Lewis, who made her music video debut in

the yard at Howard along with the university’s very own rhythm and blues group, SHAI, made up of Garfield Bright, Carl Martin, Marc Gay, and Darnell Van Rensalier. They kicked it with all of us in the yard on a daily basis. Sitting just ten feet away from us were Arnelle’s father, O.J., and her mother, and on the other side of O. J. sat a tall, slender blond. My friend Armand and I wondered who she was—perhaps his publicist or a manager. We wrongly assumed Arnelle’s parents were still together. It wasn’t until two years later that we realized that she was O.J. Simpson’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. Years later, I feeling so badly about the tragedy that engulfed Arnelle’s family. I had not lived her reality, but I understood loss. With my mother and grandfather in the audience and the spirit of my Grandmother Anne balanced on my shoulders, I gave my commencement speech, paving the way for the address by Benjamin Hooks, who was then the Executive Director of the NAA. With my closing statement, I was cheered and lauded by my Howard University friends and faculty, and by my family. It was a joyous moment that still stirs in me a sense of gratitude and pride. Like any moment in life, the more important point is to move on, to reach higher, and I did. My next endeavor during my first year as a postgrad was also political. I would run for student body president, a coveted and hard-won position. The competition was intense. The Howard University Student Association was in charge of the election, and the process was very similar to standard national and state elections. I hired a public relations firm, a marketing team, speechwriters, and a stylist. This was big-league. Our first hurdle was to create a phenomenal “get out the vote” action committee. Our goal was to procure commitments from older students, mostly seniors and grad students. Traditionally these groups of Howard voters participated with a dismal thirty-five-percent voting record. We needed them to ensure a win, and we had a leg up—I was now a teaching assistant, and across the spectrum of Howard students, most took at least an introductory philosophy course, so I interacted with the vast majority of those students. Although I graded papers, taught classes, and to a minor degree impacted their futures, I was treated like one of their own. Straddling that middle ground was a strategic position while seeking votes. The most profound gift from my campaign was my association with Toni

Blackman, a Howard communications student a few years older than me. Not only did Toni change my oratory life, but she also helped me embrace my true self-worth. During her speech classes, Toni told me to love myself and trust my mind—a concept that was startling and enlightening. She said to me to allow that confidence and love for myself to feed my tongue, and then let my tongue feed the world. She slowed me down and taught me to be more deliberate with words, and with my thoughts that came before the words. In short, Toni fixed my life. I still give her credit publicly. From my years in student government to speeches I gave at Howard and beyond, I owe it all to Toni. Now feeling like one of the cool kids, I strutted instead of stuttered and met many more unique and beautiful people at Howard University. Unfortunately, my handlers had another concern—my weight. They worried that I would be seen as an unappealing candidate. It was a troubling position I found myself in, though not a new one. With such a forward-thinking student body, it was astounding that I was openly discriminated against due to my weight, my body size. The committee’s solution was to engage a senior named Erik DeShields, a guy who was deeply involved in student government. He was a good-looking kid, a lacrosse player, a light-skinned, fair-haired pretty boy, and he served as my alter ego on the stump in the freshmen girls’ dorms, handing out flyers and flirting with all the pretty coeds. I went along with this plan against my better judgment, but retrospectively, I should have objected. My stand-in was a bit too crude for my taste, and he came off too often as an arrogant know-it-all. Most distressing was that all this was on display during the final candidates’ debate before the election. It was a town hall–style debate and students lined up to ask the candidates various questions. I watched one girl in line who looked angry and upset, and I had that sinking feeling something bad was about to happen—and it wasn’t going to be good for me. When she got to the mic, she glared at Erik and me and then said, “I have one question for you, Erik.” Her voice was icy. “How do you expect to be a leader when you refer to women as bitches and hoes?”

Everyone in the hall seemed to hold their collective breath, all at once, and stare at Erik and me. Erik was undaunted, replying, “Thank you for the question. You’re right. I call a spade a spade, and a bitch a bitch.” His answer was met with laughter and booing that filled the hall and immediately ended the evening’s debate. We were now in damage-control mode. My public relations team immediately created an apology note and then found the nearest twenty-four-hour printing service. At 10:45 that evening we were back in the dorms, sliding apology notes under the doors. For the next week I was public enemy number one, and we upped the ante in our apology tour with flowers and notes. Once again I felt humiliated and disrespected. I was a fat man who had not been regarded as good enough or smart enough or worthy enough to win an election without a pretty boy on the ticket. It was just wrong. Nonetheless, on Election Day, I was the top vote getter in a five-person race, but according to the rules at Howard University, the victor had to win by a mandate of at least fifty percent. A week or so later, there was a runoff vote between the runner-up and me. This time I won with a clear mandate. Around that same time, I met a beautiful, tall woman named Deborah Lee. She was an Alpha Kappa Alpha and was the housing manager in the dorm for which I was a graduate assistant. In some ways, she was my coworker, and in another sense, she was my superior, but in every way, she was my morning ritual. I’d ride down the elevator to the ground floor and head to her office suite, where I would greet the other staff with obligatory “good mornings,” though they all knew why I was there. I would walk into her office just to see which heels she had on that day, to smell what perfume she scented the room with, to embrace her and tell her that it was not the coffee—the best part of waking up was the touch and scent of her. Back then, there were stolen kisses—in her office at night, sometimes on the elevator, and sometimes in the garage by her car, but there was nothing beyond sweet and tender kisses. She knew I flirted with any girl who would give me half a chance, and that I probably had kissed her and three other girls that day.

Deborah, who would later become an ordained minister and rename herself Chinaza, and I would keep in touch over the years, occasionally chatting on the phone and meeting up once when I was at a conference in Washington, DC. There were other times when I agreed to meet her for an event, a dinner out, a movie or lecture in which we were both interested, but time and again, I stood her up. I was too busy amusing myself with casual relationships and going to see my Strawberry in Fayetteville, eventually from whatever small Midwestern city I ended up calling home. Life for me was unfolding like a wild roller-coaster, and I was ready for the ride.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Cornel West Effect

On a Sunday morning in February of 1993, I pushed play on my answering machine. An unmistakable voice crackled through the speaker—a flowing cool jazz sound laced with ministerial cadence. “Brother Julius,” it said, “this is Cornel West. Thank you for reaching out. I would be honored to speak for your college at Howard University. I have yet to speak at Howard, and I will not miss this opportunity to do so.” He pulled into the parking lot in an old-school Cadillac. I’m no car enthusiast, so I can’t recall the year or model, but the car exuded a “hood” aura, a Blackness distinctly out of place next to Volkswagens and Chevrolets. He and his teenage son, Cliff, stepped out of the car and began to walk toward me. There was an air of authority on Cornel; his clothes, his walk, the way he styled his hair and held his head, all of it suggested that this was no ordinary brother. An old, familiar feeling washed over me. I was suddenly in my middle school parking lot, watching my friend’s dad pick him up after school. He stood there, leaning against his car, smoking while he waited for his son. When the boy emerged, his dad greeted him with a firm hand on the shoulder and then slid into the driver’s seat—but not before giving the parking lot a quick protective scan and carelessly flicking his cigarette. I wondered if my father would have been equally impressive had he stuck around. I felt his absence, felt it more strongly than ever. I was jealous. I wanted that confident and impressive man to be my father, and now, watching Cornel West stride across the parking lot beside his son, I experienced those same feelings again. I caught myself staring and took a few steps toward him, greeting him and his son with cordial handshakes and a beaming smile. He was, of course, on campus to speak—first to what was supposed to be a relatively intimate group of philosophy majors and then to a much larger audience of students, faculty, and interested of the public. I was more than a little starstruck. I was also

intensely proud of what I had accomplished by landing Dr. West as a speaker. This was one of the biggest coups of my presidency, second only to our Boys to Men conference, during which Jesse Jackson spoke to more than five hundred high-school-age young men who had expressed interest in Howard. Dr. West’s first discussion with the philosophy majors was standing room only. We had to turn latecomers away at the door because the room was already filled with students and faculty, all agog. We had booked a room with a maximum fire marshal capacity of fifty-five, but we didn’t expect to get such a high turnout. More than seven hundred people attended his second lecture in the much larger auditorium. The university awarded the event with its Program of the Year Award, and the Arts and Sciences Student Council received a handsome student government award to recognize its substantial contributions to the event. Cornel West’s appearance on campus, like the Boys to Men Conference, was a massive success by every conceivable measure. Both helped further cement Howard’s position on the academic map—and they did the same for my position on campus. West’s speech, the s invited him to them for dinner, but he told them it was getting late and that he still had to drive back to New Jersey. We walked back toward the student center together and talked about some of the points he had brought up during his speeches. People who wanted to get close to Cornel—to shake his hand, to hear him speak in person—interrupted us every few minutes. I basked in this attention as well; many of the students and faculty knew that I had been instrumental in landing Cornel as a speaker, and many of them thanked me warmly and personally. Cliff was walking with us as well. He was more used to the attention shown to his father, especially in places where intellectuals congregate, so he had posted himself up against the wall, iring the beautiful older women who streamed by him. I ed what I was like when I was a high school senior, like Cliff, and how university campuses seemed to be gardens of bliss. I couldn’t wait to graduate high school and start hanging out on campus. Cliff seemed to be thinking these same things. He struggled to hide his enthusiasm. “Cliff,” I said, “we have a game room in the student center. If your dad has time, one of our council could bring you to meet folk for a little bit.” I expected Cornel to kindly insist that they be on their way, but, to my surprise, he did not refuse.

“You guys got a ping-pong table down there?” he asked. “Of course,” I said. “You feel like getting beat a game or two while Cliff mingles?” When I walked into the student center with Cornel West, each of us with one arm draped over the other’s shoulder, the students couldn’t believe what they were seeing. We moved over to the ping-pong table, and Cornel asked me about my studies. It turned out he already knew some of the answers. “So,” he said, “you’ve started your graduate classes as a senior already?” I nodded. “Your chairperson and some of the other s speak highly of you, particularly about your role as a student leader. How would you like to come to Princeton when you are done with your master’s?” I didn’t have to think about it. “Of course!” I said. It was settled. We played ping-pong, talking trash and laughing to beat the band. I was over the moon, still reeling from West’s offer. I was twenty-one and on the cusp of guidance and mentorship by one of my intellectual idols. I began to fantasize about what studying under Cornel West would mean for me—not just the future it would hold as an academic, but also the potential to fill the gap left by my father. I dreamed of a growing intimacy between the two of us, a bond that would culminate in his acceptance of me as an adopted son. I imagined dinners together around the West family table and lamp-lit mentoring sessions about being the best version of myself. He would teach me what to read and how to read between the lines and through the window of history; he would teach me how to speak, how to carry myself like a man of substance, how, in short, to be more like him. I had, I hoped, found the father I had lost.

One year later, West returned to Howard. The relationship I had hoped for hadn’t materialized, but he put me in touch with Princeton’s philosophy department, and I was sure that he pulled strings behind the scenes for placement once my undergraduate degree was complete. His landmark work on race relations in the United States, Race Matters, was hot off the presses, and his celebrity was growing. He gave a fiery and prophetic speech that revisited some of the themes in his book—our common humanity and his experiences in California during the riots that followed the acquittal of the four LAPD police officers who beat Rodney King. He spurred the crowd to a renewed and ionate activism. “We cannot,” he said, “be intoxicated by the felicities of bourgeois existence.” The auditorium echoed with the sound of hundreds of inner fires being sparked in an instant. So many of us had been lulled into sleepwalking in the privileges of middle-class university life; our heads had been turned by capitalism’s often empty promises. We, myself included, had grown complacent, cozy, and disionate. There were few who attended that speech not stirred to action, or at least thoughtful introspection. I met with him after his speech, and he invited me to eat dinner with him and Cliff at a DC restaurant. At dinner, Cliff and I talked about life at Howard; he was considering enrollment. Shortly before the bill arrived, Cornel cleared his throat and told me he had some bad news to deliver. My heart leapt into my throat. Was he about to rescind his offer? Was there no longer a place for me to study under him at Princeton? “I am leaving Princeton and going to Harvard,” he said. I knew this was good news for him, but I still wasn’t sure what it meant for me. I congratulated him and held my breath, waiting for him to continue. “What do you think about Harvard?” he asked. “Well, it’s the best school in the world, right?” Cornel grinned and silently reached into his pocket. He laid a small stack of twenty-dollar bills on the table. “Here’s three hundred dollars,” he said. “Meet me in Boston on Monday. I’m not sure if we’ll have time to get you a scholarship for this fall, but I want you to study at Harvard with me.”

I had prepared myself for heartbreak but instead was given the key to the intellectual city. The money he gave me wasn’t a government or department grant; it had come out of his pocket. His gesture touched me profoundly. It was just money, but I saw deeper veins of meaning there. He spoke warmly about the need to encourage young Black men and women to use higher education as a springboard to personal and community development. I was being encouraged, and again, I felt like I was being fathered. The moment he laid those bills on the table, Cornel West became one of three men who materially ed my development as a man. There was my grandfather, who saw generosity as a religious duty, Father Pfleger, who was open-handed with me, and with anybody who asked for or needed help, and now Cornel. These men taught me that our impact must outweigh our importance. They made their communities better by being better themselves when nobody was watching. Cornel quietly lifted me up, helping me seize a significant opportunity, expecting nothing in return. This small pile of bills was how a father’s love and provision looked. With dinner over, Cornel closed the distance between us in an instant, embracing me and said, “I’ll see you at Harvard next week.” He and Cliff got into a cab and were gone to the night and beyond, while I stood motionless in his validation and encouragement. My heart pounded in my chest as I stood at the curb. I rubbed the folded bills between my fingers. He trusted me—I wasn’t about to let him down. The money was enough to cover airfare to Boston, but I found a cheap Amtrak ticket and booked a one-night stay at a Boston economy motel, pocketing the rest of the money—I was, at heart, still just a kid from Chicago’s South Side. As I watched the landscape rush past the train’s windows, I imagined scenarios ran through my head. We agreed to meet in Harvard Square, and I wondered if he would beam with pleasure or remain aloof when we met. Would he embrace me again or tell me how pleased he was I was there in Boston? Or might he ask for his money back? What if he didn’t show? I imagined myself standing in the square, waiting for the father who once again blew me off. Like a statue, I would wait, rooted to that spot until the seasons turned and the snow began to gather on my shoulders.

I got off the train in Harvard Square, the epicenter of American Ivy League academics, wondering if I was smart enough or deserving. I felt conspicuous, a dark face in the crowd, though not the only one. I was a Kool-Aid-drinking wannabe gangsta from Chicago. Could I be a cultural fit for this place, where everybody seemed to wear khakis and sweater vests? As if on cue, Dr. West appeared by my side. “Brother Julius,” he said, “you made it.” Instead of the embrace I had hoped for, he extended his hand in a collegial greeting—Dr. West and I were not only student and mentor, but we also would become colleagues. As we walked together onto the campus, he talked about Harvard’s history and institutions. I did my best to soak it all in without being caught up and swept away in the moment, though my eyes must have been the size of dinner plates. I had arrived and at the side of one of America’s preeminent thinkers. I felt proud of the man by my side, and of myself. Again, the feelings of kinship, of paternity, pressed in on me. I was sure Cornel understood; he must have seen the shine of iration in my eyes. He never discouraged my veneration. For the next two years, Harvard was the center of my academic life, where I grew into a proficient and comionate teacher, an academic, and a thinker. I became a teaching fellow under Dr. West in Harvard’s prestigious Department of Afro-American Studies. My first year, I taught two sections of Dr. West’s Introduction to African American Studies—one of the most popular courses on campus. I found myself in the midst of Black academics who were on the cusp of bringing Black culture into the academy. They considered Black literature, music, and cinema through critical lenses most often reserved for canonical authors, and they proved that the Black Arts held up to readings every bit as close as those applied to the classics of the Western tradition. What is more, they were doing so in desegregated spaces, making the study of Black culture something relevant to White and Black university students alike. I met Andre C. Willis and his now wife, Tricia Rose, who both helped me develop my approach to hip-hop as a literary form and the pedagogy that introduces it into the classroom. Tricia’s work on this, particularly her book Black Noise, was nothing less than groundbreaking—nobody was talking about hip-hop in the ‘90s the way she was.

On the first day of class, I looked out over two hundred fourteen students. They were waiting for Dr. West to arrive, shuffling nervously in their seats, unsure what to expect. I would be responsible for twenty-four of these students and lead them through discussion sessions and assignments and graded their work. Their overall impressions of the course would reflect how I handled our sessions together. The first day I stepped in front of my group, I felt my legs shaking, but then I ed what it was like to be an undergraduate. I relaxed and began to speak ionately about topics that Dr. West would discuss in his lectures. I watched the lights going on in some young students’ eyes, and my confidence grew—my legs held me firmly, and the air in the room seemed to grow richer. The twenty-four students who had attended my first class all returned for the second. For the duration of the semester, I held their interest, and attendance never waned. I felt I accomplished something with my students, but also that I laid a foundation for my future. With guidance from Andre, I learned how to grade and critique student papers, which gave me a deeper understanding of the teacher’s art, but also that of the writer and the rhetorician. I began to see through the pasteboard and drywall to the beams and girders beneath, began to see what made Cornel’s books and speeches so moving and persuasive. I may have been playing second fiddle to Cornel, but still, I felt my students looked up to me. They sought my instruction and guidance, and I first tasted Ivy League prestige. It was heady and addictive. I grew as a teacher, and as a student, as well. Race and Democracy, a course cotaught by Cornel West and Roberto Unger, opened my eyes to new ways of looking at life and race in America. I was exposed to new texts and new ways of reading. The extremely close reading of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America tapped into all that I had learned while studying in Howard’s political science department and gave it praxis. I soon saw how race and democracy have shaped our past and our present and how, through activism, we can both seek and obtain justice, giving voice to those currently living in the margins of our democracy. I was learning—with the help of mind-bending authors like Du Bois, Toni Morrison, and the Russian novelists and playwrights of the nineteenth century, a genre that West continually gushed over—that it is the duty of every thinking man and woman in America to challenge our country and its leaders to be better. Further, that we are a land that was founded on such a revolutionary document as

the American Constitution and the belief in equitable justice and liberty for all. It is our duty to demand that these radical promises be fulfilled. Dr. West was the catalyst for these changes, and every day I grew more devoted to the man and his worldview that shaped mine. I hoped that our relationship would become more intimate with time, but I could never gather the courage to tell him that I wanted more than academic guidance from him. Everywhere that he went, I followed—when permitted. On Tuesday evenings, he and an ever-changing group of graduate students met for dinner at Casablanca. The now-closed restaurant was Cornel’s unofficial office, and the informal setting put everybody at ease. Typically frazzled grad students worked through ideas, made their arguments, and had them tested by the group. It was a powerful workshop, where attendees knew that Casablanca dinners ranked equally with Harvard’s lecture halls and libraries in their education. I never failed to attend these dinners, observing Dr. West as he worked the room of aspiring academics. He listened carefully to each person’s argument; he never interrupted and never was combative when the argument was flawed or wrongheaded. Of course, he corrected students, but he always let them have their say without interruption from anyone. He displayed a tenderness of spirit so rare in academia, a mentorship that was equal parts thoughtful critique and genuine encouragement. I taped these conversations and his lectures, playing them back to digest each nuance covered in his wide-ranging dialogues. He quoted authors I had never heard of and ages in works that had ed me by. Visiting these texts gave me a broader understanding of his philosophy and its underpinnings. I also paid close attention to his cadence particularly his calm ministerial flow. I wanted to know what he knew. I wanted to emulate him. I wanted to internalize who he was. Beyond that, I sought a particular view in his eyes—that of a protégé and his natural successor, as a son would be. At the end of my second year at Harvard, it was clear that Harvard would not be the place to continue my studies. The graduate program in African American studies was still in limbo, yet to be approved by Harvard’s s. To continue there, I needed to switch to a philosophy program. Though they were luminaries in their field, the philosophy professors at Harvard, John Rawls,

Robert Nozick, and Anthony Appiah, just to name a few, didn’t resonate with me in the same way that Cornel had. Though I wasn’t ready to give up on Cornel as a father figure just yet, I had to accept that staying geographically close to him wasn’t in the cards. Illinois was also calling me back home. My grandfather was exhibiting early signs of dementia, and he was still convinced I might take his place at the pulpit when he retired. Not fully knowing if he had one or ten years left to live, I knew that I was bound to disappoint him in this respect. Nonetheless, after so many years as a role model and father figure, he deserved my presence in his final years. I talked to Cornel about my grandfather and my plans to return to Chicago and to study philosophy at Howard, and he ed that decision. He made a few phone calls and arranged for his program to count toward my graduate degree. He also asked to sit on my dissertation committee—a request the department was thrilled to honor. On the day that I left, he told me he would always be only a phone call away, and he was true to his word. I returned to Illinois in 2007 and began studying philosophy and education at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, working toward my doctorate, which I was awarded in 1999. Proud, prepared, and purposed to make Dr. West proud, I aggressively completed my exams and writing and soon began teaching at Millikin University in the fall of 2008 as a visiting teaching fellow, a position I was more than ready for after my time teaching at Harvard. During this time, the distance between Cornel and me grew inch by inch. I began by calling him every time I was puzzled or adrift, and he either answered or returned my call almost immediately. No matter what I wanted to talk about— my manifold problems with women, money issues, or more academic questions —he always listened patiently and offered advice that felt to me like it was coming from a place of paternal love and care. Needy for his affection and greedy for his time, I kept him on the phone far too long, squeezing out every drop of attention I could. If I tested his patience during these years, he never let on. Between 1995 and 2005, Cornel continued to offer both academic and emotional . He was on the committee that approved my doctoral thesis, and it was his recommendation that secured my first two academic positions. He walked my mother down the aisle at my wedding in 2004, he called me in the hospital when I was recovering from lung surgery, and he told me about his prostate

cancer diagnosis before he announced it publicly. When we spoke, he encouraged me at every turn. He offered financial whenever it appeared I was about to go under. He was the first man whose guidance I sought when I felt overwhelmed, and his calm reassurances helped me find my feet when I felt out of my depth. But his responsibilities to others meant that, over time, our conversations grew shorter and less frequent. After he visited me in Decatur, Illinois for a ceremony naming a church computer lab after him, I only spoke to him a handful of times. They were conversations bereft of emotional connection; he was the thoughtful brother he had always been, but I sought something more. It was evident that I had matriculated academically, but not as much emotionally. In my zealous quest for a father’s love, I had severed my relationship with my stepdad, Bennie, tossing out the good in want of the perfect. My grandfather’s dementia progressed until his death, and he died not knowing the adult I became. Gradually, the return calls from Dr. West took longer to receive. His responsibilities to family and the world grew more demanding while I devolved into a tailspin of emotion. I needed to find my way in the world.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Decatur, Illinois was like Selma

On November 16 of 1999 I was arrested. Soon after that, I lost the job I loved— teaching academic classes at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, a position Dr. West had helped procure for me. Shortly after returning to Illinois from Harvard, I was awarded a teaching fellowship at Millikin. Brief though it may have been, my time at Millikin was deeply satisfying. The rapport between my students and me had grown increasingly warm over the past year. I taught African American History, Hip-Hop in America, Black Religion, and a number of philosophy courses. I was one of the youngest faculty , shortening the gap separating my students from me as an educator. I could relate to their lives and they could relate to mine. I encouraged my students to look at stale ideas from new angles, to see them upside down or at least sideways. It proved a powerful classroom tool, and engagement was at an all-time high in my classrooms. My popularity among students, Black and White, rose, and with stellar reviews and a growing popularity with senior faculty, my rise in self-confidence continued after my Harvard years. In addition to my teaching duties at Millikin, I became involved in youth and social justice causes in Decatur. Like Rev. Jackson, Dr. King, Rep. John Lewis, and many others, the cry for social justice led to my arrest. I pulled into the parking lot at Decatur’s Dwight D. Eisenhower High School on a cool, gray November morning in 1999 to find the state flexing its muscles— local police and the National Guard, who thought it necessary to bring a tank with them, were blocking the entrance to the high school. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, including a friend, Keith Anderson, who was a vocal activist and organizer for the local Rainbow/PUSH chapter, and I assembled there to escort six young Black students back to their classrooms. Two months earlier, the boys were involved in a seventeen-second fracas during halftime at a high school football match between Dwight D. Eisenhower High and their

crosstown rivals, MacArthur High. The fight was brief and without injuries, but the students involved—most of them seventeen, two of them college-bound seniors, all of them Black—were disciplined according to the school’s strict policies regarding violence. They were suspended for two years. The subsequent uproar and protests saw the board cut this suspension in half—with a consideration for re-entry after one year—but the punishment was still wildly out of proportion with the offense. Video of the altercation clearly showed a minor incident—no weapons, no bloodshed, nothing any more violent than what was happening on the field in the foreground. Principal Walt Scott told reporters from The Chicago Tribune that the boys had telegraphed their intentions with “their swagger, their manner.” The racial overtones were as plain as the broad noses on the boys’ faces. Jesse Jackson eventually stepped in; his coalition pushed for the boys to have their cases evaluated separately and fairly—rather than examining each boy and his role in the altercation, school s chose to punish the boys as a group with no respect for shades of culpability. We all lobbied hard to have the children return to Dwight D. Eisenhower High, even calling in the big guns by having Jesse Jackson himself address the board, but none of it produced the desired effect. Jesse redoubled his efforts, doing everything he could to get the boys back to school—holding rallies, speaking to the media, and shining the national spotlight on the school board, but all of it was in vain. The school board didn’t seem to care that their decision would have long-lasting consequences for the boys; they didn’t seem to care that the boys’ trajectories would be forever altered in ways that had nothing to do with proportional justice. In 1999, sixteen percent of Decatur’s population was Black, but a full forty percent of Decatur’s public school children were Black or brown. The sixmember board reflected the town’s demographics, but thanks to a large percentage of privately educated White children, the whitewashed board did not remotely reflect the demographics of public schools. The vast majority of teachers and s were also White, and the students of color I spoke to told me about being treated as outsiders at best, and menaces at worst. Along with a number of other coalition activists and ministers, I appeared in Decatur that morning to escort the teenage boys to their classes, defying the school board’s decision. Tensions were high. There we stood, unarmed and stoic, against the state baring its metal teeth. With their hands in ours, we made our

way through the assembled crowd of reporters and gawkers onto the school grounds. We were met at Eisenhower High School by an army of law enforcement easily numbering one hundred. They were arm in arm, some with riot gear, and there was an armored military vehicle toward the back of the school parking lot. We were turned back well before we reached our destination. With tears in his eyes, Rev. Jackson returned to his car, but he wasn’t done fighting. He called President Bill Clinton from his cell phone, asking him to instruct the Justice Department to intercede, but from watching Jackson’s expression, it was clear he was fearful. I overheard him telling President Clinton that he felt he was in Selma all over again. Department of Justice officials were dispatched, but the die was cast. Once more we crossed through the lines and attempted to walk past the soldiers, but Decatur officials weren’t having it. We were arrested, tossed in the back of three different police cars, and escorted two miles away to the local station. This was my crossing in life against waters that would not recede and allow me age. It was a journey that I did not understand, and I did not have the tools with which to stave off my sense of rejection. As I sat in the squad car, I felt as if I had entered a historical reenactment of the Little Rock Nine from 1957. It was a wound I would carry for many years. I was doing what I knew was right, fighting for a worthy cause. I also shared the wide and bright beam that Jesse brought with him to this urgent cause. I was interviewed by Ted Koppel and appeared on Hannity and Colmes as the boys’ unofficial public spokesman. For a number of weeks, I appeared on local and national television programs to discuss the situation. I highlighted the inequalities rife in the situation and the injustice of it all, and although we received countless messages of from the local and national community, the school board was one of the largest employers in Decatur. They had enough power and influence to stand their ground with the state’s war machinery to back them up. I ed the days when Father Pfleger, Reverend Jackson, Father Collins, and my grandfather fought for me—then a troubled boy—to stay in school, stepping in when my high school seminary was dead set on expelling me. They were all men of Jesus, preachers and actors of a social justice gospel that had saved so many young Black men from the bottomless pit of the prison system. I was one of those countless young Black men saved by prototypical social justice

warriors, and now the baton had been ed to me. I had an opportunity to fight for those who deserved a second chance. Social justice coursed through my veins. The blood it mixed with boiled when I saw young Black men painted in dark colors, described as thugs or gangsters when they were, in fact, no more or less violent than any other kids their age. I wanted to tell their stories individually, to make sure that the fact that they were all Black teenagers didn’t lead—as it so often did and still does—to their lives being discarded en masse. They deserved better from their community and from their educators, and we were prepared to stand toe to toe with the state on their behalf. On that cold morning in Decatur, the Black community and the broader social justice community rallied around those young boys, and also around those of us who were willing to hold their hands as they crossed the line, but there were many in the crowd who were there to defend the school board’s decision. They accused Jesse Jackson of meddling in an unambiguous discipline issue. “Nothing to see here, Black America,” they seemed to say… “just a bunch of rotten kids doing what rotten kids do.” It broke my heart to see a community cannibalize itself like this. These children needed the community’s help and guidance, and instead they scorned them, branded them as thugs and miscreants, and watched with approval as those who stood up to defend them were taken into police custody. Where were the notions of community welfare and equitable justice? Where were the second chances and open doors for which America patted itself on the back? I was dismayed, but I also felt alive and important. From the moment I was arrested until the moment I was released, I felt as though I was a part of a great tradition of social activists who had fought for desegregation, fair housing, and the right to vote. Electric energy surged through my body. I was an educator, but also fighting on the front lines. The arrests brought the national spotlight, and with that increased attention came thousands of young men and women who wanted to our cause and fight on behalf of these young men. The first rally was attended by a little more than two thousand people. The one after the arrest was closer to five thousand. I felt like I was answering my calling. The unmistakable aroma of racial unrest brought many who were allied with our cause to Decatur, but it also brought vultures and jackals who wanted to use the opportunity to demonize the boys, the Black community, and those who, like

Jesse Jackson, had stepped up to address the injustice. Matt Hale, who only a few years later would be arrested for trying to hire a hit man—actually an undercover fed—to assassinate a United States District Court judge, organized a White supremacist rally in the park across from my campus. Police patrolled to keep the peace between neo-Nazis, their ers, and outraged students and of the community. Tensions ran so high that armed police remained on campus for the entire week. For me, the cost of my involvement was higher still; I received death threats on campus. As a result, the university arranged security for me. For a time, security officers guarded me twenty-four hours a day. As if my profile wasn’t toxic enough for some in Decatur, before the dust settled on the Decatur Seven case, as it came to be known, a Black teenage boy was killed—shot in the back—by a Decatur police officer, while one of the suspended boys was present at the shooting. I addressed the media on behalf of the slain boy’s family and expressed the family, Rev. Jackson, and his coalition’s wish for a fair and peaceful resolution. In some ways this was the first time I was on the opposite side of the local NAA’s position. Their president, Dr. Jeanelle Norman, a stalwart trailblazer for justice in the area, had taken a very vocal stance against the officer’s use of force. But given I knew the Sheriff personally, I was told that gunshot residue was found on the slain boy’s hand. Between that piece of information and the conversation I had with the other boy, one of the original Decatur Seven, I knew the officer had shot in self-defense. I won some credibility with police officers, not that they won much from me. Three months later, I was called into the office of one of our university s. I assumed the meeting would be to discuss the third year of my teaching fellowship. I was certain my fellowship would be renewed. I sat down in one of the plush chairs and began mentally preparing to discuss my vision for the year. The was on a call when I walked in, and he held up one finger to let me know that he was about to wrap things up. I shifted in my seat and looked around the room, scanning his shelves and his desk, both cluttered with books and pictures of him and his smiling family. The call ended and he cleared his throat. “We are not going to be renewing your contract, Julius.”

I was flummoxed. My heart pounded, my palms sweating. “I don’t understand. Are you unhappy with my work? If-if-if-if so,” I stammered, my long-mastered stutter returning in an instant, “why haven’t you said so before? My evaluations —yours and my students’—have never reflected any problems with my teaching.” He waved his hand in the air. “It’s nothing like that. The problem is, some folks from the Chamber of Commerce, they’ve found you to be…well…let’s say troublesome.” He sighed and placed his hands palms up on the desk in front of him. “It’s out of my hands.” I’d hoped and expected to continue in that position for a few years longer, but the dignity conferred upon me by the position and the pride I felt as I strode down the halls and across the grassy campus were destined to be short-lived. This wasn’t the first school from which I had been ejected; I was expelled from grammar school and two high schools in my never-ending clamor for higher education. I thought those days of rejection and denunciation were part of a past I would never again face, and yet here I was again being robbed of my dignity and confidence. I felt as though I had been unjustly stripped of my position and cut off from the future of prestige and comfort that I felt I had earned after all of my years as a student. I convinced myself I had arrived, but just as quickly as I’d landed, I found myself being shown the door. The told me about the university’s plans for expansion, about the new Tabor School of Business and Scovill Foundation’s plans to build a new science building. The pieces began to fall into place, but I still wasn’t prepared for what he said next. “I was at the Decatur Club last week, and a man approached me and asked me point-blank: ‘When are you going to get rid of that nigger?’ I honestly didn’t know who or what he was talking about. I was raised in North Carolina, but I’d never heard anybody refer to a specific person using that word. Sensing my confusion, the man clarified…‘that troublemaking nigger Julius Bailey, when you getting rid of him?’” The word lingered in the air, hanging over both of our heads. He took a breath and continued. “Given that you are on a term contract, and given that your social activism brought a tidal wave of press—and not all of it

positive—I have no choice but to let you go. I can’t count the number of times I’ve defended you to incensed parents who think that your militant advocacy is somehow to blame for Matt Hale and his White supremacist rallies last year. They think your presence is creating an unsafe learning environment for their children. I’ve fought them tooth and nail, and your colleagues have come forward to your defense as well. This has nothing to do with your teaching record. We all know you have a wonderful future, but it can’t be here. I have made arrangements that should help ease your transition.” I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean?” “We’re going to pay your salary for the next year,” he said. “You have at least one friend at the Chamber of Commerce and he has been following you. He’s watched your interviews, and he wants to see you succeed. Frankly, he’s outraged by this deal, but this is how the world turns.” Though he wasn’t explicit, he let the word deal slip. I was dangerous, a PR liability, a troublemaker. The school was part of the business community, and it relied on the of prominent of that community. I had the of one of these , but not the others. The ’s hand was forced; that much was apparent. He sighed and ran his hand over the back of his neck. I remained dumbstruck, fighting back tears. I had fought for the Decatur Seven in part because I knew what it felt like to be expelled from school, but I thought that was all well behind me. Yet here I was, once again, being expelled—and this time, not for something I was ashamed of, but rather, for something I was proud of, something I was praised for, something that made me feel as though I made a difference. I stood up. “This is a lot to lay on me, sir. I need a day or two to process this.” “Sure,” he said, “take a couple of days.” I shook his hand and left. He was always kind to me, a decent guy, but he was caught up in the politics of Black and White America. He now had a taste of unadulterated American-brand racism, and he seemed as shocked and appalled by it as I was. It was, as he said, out of his hands. The powers that be demanded I be sacrificed. I took solace in the fact that people I respected did what they could to keep me from being given the axe. It seemed I was becoming a nuisance White America could no longer ignore.

When we met the following week, he accepted all of my demands: written assurances regarding letters of commendation, covered payroll taxes, and covered insurance s. We parted amicably. I tried to play the role of the proud Black man who stoically faced the heavy injustice dealt to him, but I saw the pity written on his face—I was fooling no one. The wound smarted, and it showed. My fragile confidence crumbled; it would be a long time before I could hold my head high again. I was still struggling to take it all in. “You know,” he said, “Pastor Thomas Walker and the Ministerial Alliance came to see me last week.” I had discussed the university’s decision with Pastor Walker, one of Decatur’s most influential preachers, the week before, keeping confidential the for me by one of Decatur’s business leaders. “Really?” I said. “The pastor and his church are big fans of yours. The local ministers offered to pay your salary to keep you around. I couldn’t accept their offer, but it’s important that you know you have ers out there.” It felt good to learn that Pastor Walker had gone to bat for me, but although I had ers, I still felt as though the deck had been stacked against me. Try as I might to fight the feeling, quite suddenly, I was a boy of nine years old, eavesdropping in the kitchen while the adults spoke in the next room. Once again, I found myself looking in from the circle’s margins. Adrift and placeless, excluded and insulted, my long-repressed self-recriminations and insecurities came back, bringing wave after wave of hot-faced humiliation. I was desperate to rise out of this lonesome place.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She Had Me at Bacon and Raisin Toast

Each year, Millikin University held a freshman orientation picnic, during which faculty, staff, and first-year students mingled. A few students inevitably distinguished themselves at these picnics; gregarious and loquacious, they seemed to immediately step into the limelight. They seated themselves in the front rows, engaging with complex ideas and arguing with all the grace and maturity of grad students. Soon enough, they took leadership roles in student organizations. For as long as I was at Millikin, I looked forward to those picnics. I scouted the crowd, looking for the next would-be scholar among the frosh. At my second freshman picnic, in 1999, one student, in particular, stood out. Her name was Delores, and she immediately struck me as a bit quirky, bright, and extremely pretty. She was playing spades with some older students, and ittedly her tall, slender, Tyra Banks–like build caught my attention. She wasn’t in any of my classes, but I often saw her in Shilling Hall, the main academic building, or at various Black Student Union events. We acknowledged each other with a nod, and if walking in the same direction, we sometimes walked together, talking convivially until our paths diverged. In November of 1999, we began working on the same project—a social outreach program called Restoration 2000. A group of committed students and faculty met in the library to discuss the project. A chilly wind blew outside, but inside we warmed ourselves on hot-button issues, discussing civil disobedience and effective means of protest. Millikin was a predominantly White campus, and as a group comprised entirely of minorities, we discussed ways that the university could be more inclusive, or at least more open to recognizing its hierarchies of inequality. There were many socially conscious students of various races and faiths who sought me out to discuss my history as a student activist. It was well after ten o’clock when the room finally began to empty. Delores and I hung back to continue the conversation, but also just to be—for the first time—

alone together; our previous conversations were always in the midst of the currents and eddies of campus corridors. The conversation slowed to a more languid pace, with both of us blinking slowly at each other. The air was charged with electricity. After a pregnant pause, I suggested we grab a slice of pizza together. She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she stared across the table at me, her eyes now wide open, a smile playing across her lips. She’s just a girl, I thought. I was twenty-seven; she was a fresh-faced eighteenyear-old. “You want to walk, Dr. B?” she asked, rising from her seat. “I can drive if you’re comfortable with that. It’s kinda cold outside.” She nodded, and we walked toward my car. We drove to a pizza place downtown, where we slid into a booth and ordered a pizza to share—a thin-crust with sausage and green peppers. “It’s not Giordano’s,” I said with a smile, “but this ain’t Chicago.” Delores squealed through her fingers, trying not to laugh with her mouth full. “You been here before?” I asked. “Yeah. Me and my girls, we come down here almost every weekend. Love the thin crust.” I laughed, enchanted with her sweetness. “Who doesn’t?” This scene wasn’t as awkward as it should have been. Though I was not her professor, I was a visiting professor on campus who, in effect, was on a date with a student. In all honesty, it wasn’t my first time. I sat there as she talked; Delores could talk an ear off once she got revved up. My mind wandered off to a moment I’d shared just the year prior with another student… She was caramel colored, very shapely, a “dyme” from our college town. Her hair bounced at the same pace as her behind when she walked down the hall of my office building. I was twenty-six, fresh out of graduate school, and she was a

university undergrad, a senior with a toddler. This co-ed piqued my imagination more than a Stephen King novel. Her coy but inviting gestures had me smitten. When she moved, I moved—just like that. Daily, I wished she would just close my office door, grab my belt, and whip it from the buckles so that my pants would drop. It was a crisp Tuesday night in autumn when my phone rang and she asked if I could help her with her graduate school applications. She wanted to be a nurse, and every time she talked about her plans, all I could imagine was her sponge bathing me at five in the morning. Whatever I could do to help her officially become my personal Florence Nightingale, I happily obliged. “Of course,” I said. “Can you come by my place now?” she asked. I had never gone to a student’s apartment before. I was both reluctant and expectant as I drove the three miles east to her apartment. I knocked on her door and she answered, bathed in soft light and wearing only a long denim shirt. She was all legs, and I felt helpless and blessed at the same time. I looked around. There was no paperwork on the table or open laptop—or anything pertaining to the stated purpose of her call. It was all a pretext to get her doctor in a position of submission. I sat, feeling afraid and rationalizing in my head: She’s a grown woman; I am just seven years older. She called me! I’m not her professor—not this semester, anyway. Each word she uttered sounded jumbled by the lust in my spirit, by my eager desire for her. But I couldn’t and wouldn’t make the first move. What if I was mistaken? What if there was a hidden camera in the room? I was ready to make one of my famous excuses to leave this place until her CD player began playing R. Kelly. That’s when I knew. This twenty-year-old was allowing R. Kelly’s “12 play” to become the roap to our love destiny…but my reverie was interrupted. “Dr. Bailey! Dr. Bailey, are you listening?” Delores’s sweet voice called out. “Oh, yeah, I was listening, Delores.” I hoped I sounded sincere. “But you must know,” I said, smiling at her, “as I looked into your eyes, I got lost in curiosity, wondering if I would ever know, more personally, the young lady behind those

eyes.” She laughed and dismissed my lines with, “Yeah right. You weren’t listening.” Smart girl, I thought. When we finished eating, Delores cut straight to the chase. “You got a girlfriend, Doc? Word on the street is that you are something of a player.” “Me?” I replied. “Nah. I get played, but I’m no player.” I could have leveled with her and told her about the long string of hookups at local bars, but those stories would have given her the wrong impression. A player elicits at least some sense of connection between him and the women he beds. He leaves a string of women behind who feel used or jilted. I had no such record with women. I had only had two bona fide girlfriends—Nicole, who left me without so much as a backward glance, and LaTonya. Women in my life disappeared as quickly as they appeared—there were no hurt feelings and often few feelings at all. To say that I had lots of experience with unconditional love, somebody who was always there for me, somebody I could love and who loved me in return, would be a lie. I was a member of that club once, only once, with LaTonya. I was, however, experienced in the game of seduction played by both men and women, and always for low stakes, but this felt markedly different. I wasn’t luring her or being lured by her into bed. There was physical attraction, but there was also a deeper chemical combustion. I felt dizzy when she smiled at me and my pulse raced each time she chuckled softly. Here she stood, this tall, longhaired, tawny-skinned model chick, who had this overweight wannabe player flummoxed. It felt like I was on a job interview, but it was unclear who was interviewing whom. As we parted that night at nearly 11:30 p.m., I drove her to her dorm and politely said good night. I eliminated all post-date nervousness by getting out of the car quickly and pretending I had to use the coffee shop restroom in the lower level of her dorm. “See ya later, Delores. Had fun,” I yelled as I quickly retreated, not wanting to feel the awkwardness of a clumsy good night salutation. Soon after, Delores and I began seeing each other regularly. Restoration 2000 was quickly approaching, so we met often to discuss the project, though we

spent most of the time talking about other things. We’d go out for a bite to eat in the early evening after our classes. I played the part of a chivalrous gentleman, holding doors for her, helping her into my car, and escorting her to her dormitory door at the end of each evening. But I always made sure I wasn’t suggestive about sex or even kissing her. I needed to maintain that slight deniability that I was dating a student, though my thoughts were consumed with her. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she appeared at my office door with breakfast from the student cafeteria—raisin toast and bacon. It became a ritual for us. We sat and talked for an hour or so before I walked her to her first class. While our conversations grew increasingly intimate, so did our relationship. Our first kiss was in my office on the second floor of Shilling Hall. I can’t how it happened, but I am sure I asked her permission. I was fearful like that. I think it was my vulnerability that relieved her inhibitions. I told her about my fears of not being a successful professor or regretting not going into ministry. I lay bare my insecurities about being older than her, and about perhaps being too much of a distraction from her academic progress. She told me that if it weren’t for our times together in the mornings, she would sleep instead of being engaged in “deep conversations.” She enjoyed our time together; she referred to me as a friend and a mentor. I was sure she thought this was a compliment, but for me, it added stress. How could I be a mentor and be physically interested in her? Delores was my first challenge as a professor and I failed. It was not as if I was in love with her, given that I was still dating other women around town, though none of them sparked in me the level of comfort that Delores did, or had the ability to upend my world. We were together so frequently that tongues started to wag. One of Delores’s contemporaries cornered me and asked, “Are you and Delores an item?” “Of course not! We are mad cool, but we aren’t together. Not like that.” “Word around the dorms is that she was driving around in your car yesterday. Everybody’s saying you’re a couple. You know she’s only interested in your money, right?” I laughed it off and quickly ended the conversation, telling her that I could handle my affairs, but I was stung by her words—pierced by their possibility. I

mean, she had driven my car before and by this time we had shared embraces. Had she told people we kissed? I surely hadn’t. As much as I thought we were doing well, I didn’t want to be seen as a sugar daddy. It was not that I found the interchange untoward, but I hoped we might have a chance to be a couple. I was growing weary of dating women indiscriminately. Did she not see me the same way? I decided to push things with Delores to the next level. I convinced myself that there was a next level to the relationship and that it was only a matter of time before we would be there, but doubts now set in. If I tried more than kisses and she repelled my advances, I would know where I stood. If she welcomed my advances, that opened new doors of possibility. With my heart racing, I dialed her number late one evening. After a nervous preamble, I blurted out, “You want to come by?” “To your house? You serious? It’s almost midnight.” “I’ll come pick you up. Meet me outside.” “What do I tell the girls in the suite?” “Tell them whatever you want,” I said. “Tell them to mind their own business.” The line went silent for a moment. I thought for a second that she had hung up on me, but she had merely paused to consider the subtext of what I was asking. “I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.” She was waiting on the curb when I arrived, and we drove to my apartment. I parked the car and turned to look at her. I needed to know her intentions before I brought her inside. “How much do you want from me?” I asked. She looked shocked, puzzled by the straightforwardness of the question. She didn’t answer. I continued. “I’ve heard that all you want from me is my money, so before I let this go any further, I’ve got to ask: How much money are we talking about? What’s it going to cost for me to be your sponsor—that is what you called me, isn’t it?”

“Who told you that?” “Look, I’m not lame. I’m from the same place you are. I know the game. You should know that I don’t have much money. If that’s what you’re after …” I looked down in a contrived expression, playing the wounded. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I just thought you were different, and you were special…we were special. I thought you actually liked me. I’ve been with women who were with me for the material benefits; I didn’t believe that you were one of those.” I pushed out a tear —something I used to be able to do on demand, a trick I’d use when I thought a liberal dash of feminine pity would seal the deal. I’d think of DeBarge’s “Time Will Reveal” and the weaponized waterworks began. The movie Boyz n the Hood taught me that well-timed pity was an aphrodisiac. Getting a lady to see me needing to be salvaged was one of my angles. I used angles since I was not attractive enough to come straight out with the “Can I get some?” line. In retrospect, I should have been sincere with Delores, but I convinced myself I needed her to make a move and prove herself to me. “I’m sorry, this is stupid,” I said, wiping the tear away. “I’ll take you back home.” “No, I want to come in.” She leaned over the console and kissed me on the cheek and held my cheeks between her hands. “I like you a lot,” she said. “I may have thought of you as a sponsor at first, but that was before. This is now.” I pressed my advantage. “If you mean it, kiss me again.”

There was only one positive spin on my dismissal from Millikin, and that was being able to date Delores. Even though I had moved some one hundred seventy miles away, back home to Chicago, we remained in touch and saw each other when she visited family in Chicago. Despite being eight years my junior, she provided hope and an exciting anticipation for the future of my life. We courted for the next three years, visiting friends and attending dinners and holiday celebrations with each other’s families. We took vacations together. We were lovers, smitten with each other, over the moon in love, and that was clear to everyone around us. Our happiness was infectious. We were now on firm footing; both Delores and I were sure of our commitment to each other. We focused on our future life together, talking about our children and how we’d raise them, where they’d go to school, and what their names would be. We started saving for a down payment on a home and planning how we would decorate. When we talked about the future, we both created a fantastic image that bore little resemblance to our current circumstances. We imagined a life of complete marital bliss, one in which we were both completely fulfilled and content—as were our children. The reality was very different. Ten months before our wedding, I suggested that we remain celibate until our wedding night. I wanted to create desire and ion that would be unequaled, but I was a master at my undoing. I frequently strayed outside of the relationship. I had romantic affairs with a stripper named Monae and my longtime dream girl, Venus—deluding myself into believing that by sleeping with these women, I was ensuring that I would be the best lover I could be on my wedding night. Using twisted and self-serving logic, I avoided much of the guilt that I should have felt. Nonetheless, in my private moments, my selfish urges and my conscience battled. There was another reason I came up with my celibacy theory. One evening, I noticed a bump on my genitals. Rather than come clean with Delores, I avoided physical with her for more than a month. I didn’t see a doctor, and I made up excuse after excuse for my romantic reticence. My flimsy excuses were wearing thinner and thinner. That was when I came up with my plan; I painted a picture for her of a wedding night and wedding bed positively dripping with sexual energy and ion. A prolonged celibacy would make us want each other

all the more that night, and that ion would carry over into the marriage itself, carrying both of us over the threshold. If I had been brave and sensible enough to go to a doctor, he would have told me that it was merely acne, but by the time I got the medical all-clear, we had already committed to the celibacy plan. As the wedding got closer and closer, I began suggesting that we bend the rules so that we could do almost everything but the act itself, and Delores didn’t seem to find anything suspicious about this. She never let on that she had even an inkling of what I was doing when I wasn’t with her. As married life drew nearer, the prospect of a lifelong commitment made within earshot of His throne seemed more daunting. I wanted and planned to be a faithful husband. My wedding vows, spoken in the church and in front of witnesses, would bind me to my pledges of love and fidelity. But I had not made these promises yet. I was still relatively young. If I was ever going to sow my wild oats, this brief window was my last chance. I told myself I would never so much as look at another woman with lust in my heart, but until those vows were formally made, I was technically a free man. I gave myself license to operate in what I thought of as a moral gray area. We booked the wedding at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ—a church later made famous by one of its pastors, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and one of its , who went on to become the forty-fourth president of the United States. The church insisted that we meet with Reverend Wanda Washington for premarital counseling. During our final session, she asked us: “What do you think will be your biggest challenge your spouse will present to you as you enter into this marriage?” I cited the closeness of her family. They were so physically loving, frequently hugging, kissing, and cuddling, lolling in each other’s beds on weekends. This level of physical intimacy between her mom, dad, and sister was strange to me. In some ways, I was jealous. I didn’t have a father to love on, and though my mother, sister, and I loved each other dearly and shared many childhood moments of card and board games, recreational outings, and more, we were not touchy-feely in that manner. When I finished, Delores answered the same question: “He has these bouts of isolation and sadness at times. Jay has mentioned that he must fight daily to

avoid depression. His mom and his grandfather had the same problem. I don’t know much about it, and I’m just praying that when it comes, it won’t be bad.” Reverend Wanda looked at me and then at Delores. “Depression,” she said, “is serious. We don’t have time today, but maybe we should meet again next week to talk about this more.” “We’ll think about it,” I said. I wish that she had made the extra session mandatory—perhaps it would have prepared us for the black dog when he came, but neither of us enjoyed the counseling much. We thought our love would be strong enough to weather the storms. We didn’t talk much about it afterward, a neglect that would prove deleterious.

We were married on May 23, 2004. I was thirty-one, my bride a young twentytwo. I stood close to the altar, a tear in my eye. The moment verged on overwhelming me. My future stretched out before me. My young wife and I would endure whatever came our way. The church pews were filled with friends and family, all there to witness our union. Delores took my breath away when she entered the church, her white dress flowing down the aisle to the tune of India Arie’s “Beautiful Surprise.” Her hair was pulled back and tied by a fresh coral flower symbolizing eternal happiness, a wish that drew closer to me with her every step. She was so beautiful, I thought, and ever so mine. We were in love and enthusiastic. This was, I thought, what all newlyweds must feel like. There was renewed joy in each other’s company. The world was ours; hand in hand, we would prevail over whatever life threw at us. Through trials and tribulations, our love would sustain us.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Decatur, Illinois: The Fatal Return

Throughout our courtship and the early days of our marriage, I taught in Chicago at Lewis University, my post after Millikin. Being an educator was certainly fulfilling, but I wanted a deeper connection to community—especially a spiritual community. I felt as though my true calling might lie elsewhere. I soon accepted a position as the full-time under Pastor Thomas E. Walker, who led a sizable flock at Main Street Church of the Living God in Decatur. Around the time when I left Millikin, I started growing closer to Pastor Walker. I celebrated his fiftieth birthday with him and his family in St. Louis, and as I was preparing to leave, he told me that my move to Chicago had left something of a hole in the community. “Decatur,” he said, “needs a young man like you. I need someone like you.” At that time, I wanted more desperately than ever to feel needed, and here was Pastor Walker telling me that both he and Decatur needed me. Pastor Walker was, and still is, not just a man of the cloth, but also a political man, seeking and wielding influence where and when he could—always for the benefit of his family and those he counted as his flock. His overflowing openhandedness made him a magnetic figure in the community, and I was drawn into his circle; I immediately felt embraced and needed as well. I had been running from the call of ministry since the day I started college, but I still fantasized about being a pastor, even as my career as a professor drew me into its orbit. The line between calling and career blurred. Working as an gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of the church again, but without the overwhelming responsibilities of a pastor. The decision took me back to my roots, back to the ministering life that my grandfather had tried to guide me toward for so long. I went back to the church and back to the activism of the social Gospel. It was a quieter form of prestige, a humble profession in which my impact outweighed my importance. Changing

lives and steering the lost back to the flock was powerfully affirming. This was also another chance to become close with a senior male figure, one who was already a figurative father to hundreds. Pastor Walker invited me into his inner circle. I sat at his table, next to his children, and from his place at the head of the table, he dropped pearls of wisdom in my lap. He advised me in ways that felt paternal. My grandfather’s Alzheimer’s had taken him from me in all ways but physically, but under Pastor Walker’s guidance, that absence was filled with his warm and wise presence. After dinner, we sat in his den, looking out over his heavily wooded backyard, Pastor Walker in his chair, often visibly fatigued and dozing off at the tail end of our conversations. It was from that chair that he had pitched moving back to Decatur to me. He told me that young people at the church needed my leadership. He sealed the deal by promising that he would arrange things so that Delores would be offered a job at one of Decatur’s local banks, a promise he kept. I felt wanted—needed even. Teaching, rewarding and useful as it was, rarely made me feel needed. It was like God had answered my prayers. I would be impacting lives, coordinating necessary activities and programs, and building up the church’s auxiliary ministries to impact the lives of parishioners Sunday through Saturday. I heard and answered the call. Immediately following our wedding in May, Delores and I packed up and moved in with Pastor Walker. He and I began reaching out more intently to Decatur’s Black community, with my focus being on younger of the community, often leading them toward higher education. Pastor Walker and I drove to church together on Sundays. After services, we did the grocery shopping and then cooked for our wives and the Pastor’s children. We talked multiple times daily, often about how best to guide Decatur’s at-risk families—single-parent families, households living in poverty in which one or both parents were unemployed or underemployed. We shared and aligned our visions and put that t vision into practice, ministering to Decatur’s ailing and forgotten, doing our level best to make them whole again. This was the role I tried to assign myself with Cornel West and Jesse Jackson— the man working in the background to help them become sought-after leaders of their communities. And now this role was offered to me voluntarily and with gratitude. I wondered with West and Jackson whether I made a meaningful impact in their lives, but this time was different. I wasn’t forcing myself on the

role; it was being asked of me, and by a man I ired no less than Reverend Jackson or Professor West. Rev. Walker now had another son. Delores and I stayed with the Walkers for a month while we searched for an apartment and made runs back to Chicago, hauling back furniture and wedding gifts. We would make a home again, in a place where we had said our goodbyes —moving back to Decatur felt like a step backward for Delores, and for the first year that I worked for Pastor Walker, I was still teaching in Chicago. I was gone for three days every week, leaving my wife alone in a city she thought she had left in her rearview mirror. My position at the church may have been spiritually satisfying, but it was a significant financial step-down, a far cry from the relative comfort that a professor’s salary provided. Nevertheless, Delores and I continued to enjoy each other’s company. Our home was the “it spot” for older teens and young adults who flocked to our Orchard Street townhome. We were one of the first families to move into this newly developed housing community called Wabash Crossing and folk were excited to fellowship with us. We were organizing and hosting musical events through the ministry. Our signature event, Mahogany Soul, made news all over the city. We were able to offer a Christian alternative to the club scene, a club night featuring dim lights, nonalcoholic drinks, soul food, and best of all, a live band that kept the floor jumping often until the wee hours of the morning. As the popularity of Mahogany Soul grew, we were able to feature prominent local musicians like Tamela Mann, Jennifer Hudson, and Judy Peterson and comedians such as Vanessa Fraction, Tony Sculfield, and Ron Baker Jr. It gave up-and-coming gospel artists and performers a chance to showcase their considerable talents in a nontraditional format, and more importantly, it provided a safe place for young Christians where they could let it all hang out. We hosted these events in the church hall, with Delores and me paying for the events out of our pocket. Since these were atypical Christian events, Pastor Walker couldn’t publicly them—though he did allow us to use the church hall free of charge. Some of the more conservative of the church thought even this indirect was too much. “They runnin’ a club in God’s house,” they said, not recognizing just how many young people the events were brought into the fold. When the entertainment

editor of the local paper did a feature on us, calling Mahogany Soul “innovative,” word began to spread that we were really onto something. Some other churches, White and Black alike, started hosting similar events, and some of the controversy-wary holdouts, including Pastor Walker, began showing up at the events. These affairs and their seemingly endless organizing tasks took a lot out of Delores and me, but we were energized by the response from the community. Working together on the events brought us closer, but the relationship was by no means perfect. Delores certainly knew, as did I, that there would be sacrifices to make during our marriage, but she might not have expected these sacrifices to arrive as quickly as they did. Mahogany Soul was as close to a date night as we got. The church was my life, and this meant that it was Delores’s life as well, which was almost certainly not what she had envisioned when she agreed to marry me. I was spending sixty to eighty hours a week organizing church events and meeting with church people. We had to steal what moments we could to be together. We would eat together in the church kitchen or sit in my office and talk, but I could still tell that these were but paltry consolations. Delores made it clear, with increasing frequency, that she was less than pleased with the new arrangement and the endless demands on my time. From my point of view, the position allowed me to continue living my life as I saw fit. I could and influence a community of the faithful without having my activities scrutinized as I would have had in a more visible leadership role. A pastor must live their life in full view of the public and in a way that is beyond reproach. They must be the very model of temperance and uprightness, and my private life would not have held up well under such inspection. I could be a Christian and hold influence in a Christian community, but the strict dogmatic standard that church leaders were expected to uphold would not be applied to me. I was still a relatively young man, and the freedom to do what I wanted appealed to me. At the same time, the church brought me closer to Christ’s example. Pastor Walker was a family man; his door stayed open for people to enter at any time, day or night. I watched him help families with food and rent when they fell on hard times. He prayed at hospital bedsides, resolved family squabbles, paid for funeral services for those who couldn’t afford them, and checked in at the local

high school regarding his flock, particularly his daughter, who spent more time suspended or in detention than bent over her schoolwork. He modeled Christian behavior, and even if I couldn’t be like him in every way, he made me sincerely want to be a better man and a better Christian. Together, Overseer Walker and I helped people find in Main Street an active and assertive church meeting the needs of youth and young adults while providing a wonderful edifice for God’s people to worship. Theologically, we agreed our next step was to help parishioners find the God in themselves. I learned patience, or at least some, of which I had little to none for adults within the church. I became upset with factions reluctant to change their small-church mentality, and I had to reign in my impatience while working toward a full-service ministry to impact thousands. Each day I came to work, I envisioned the great opportunity and blessings of this ministry. It mimicked my visions as a young man, exactly what my granddad and I often discussed. I wanted to build homes, host live concerts and offer counseling services and health care ministries to our community. As I tried to do all of this at a frenzied pace, Rev. Walker urged me to slow down and let the parishioners catch up. “You have to give the people time, Dr. Bailey.” Still, I pushed on, dedicated to my newfound calling. Through my role of Educational Coordinator of the church’s youth arm, Youth with a Positive Direction, I created a subsidiary organization called Project Eight. Initially founded to satisfy a mini-grant from the state of Illinois to deal with issues that concerned mental health and safe video gaming among youth, we quickly pivoted and began HIV/AIDS awareness and taught safe sex practices. We hosted concerts and events, partnering with BET to reach a broader audience and using music to reach out to troubled or at-risk community youth. Many of these outreach programs flew in the face of what the pastor espoused from the pulpit. Publicly, Pastor Walker took a tough stance on homosexuality, but his Christian concern and pity for the afflicted made outreach work with of the community living with or dying from HIV/AIDS a necessity. I took this even further by working with the community to teach safe sex practices, as opposed to abstinence preached from the pulpit. It was, I believed, community work that assisted us in walking in Christ’s own footsteps, although it did not toe the church’s dogmatic line. Among those who were aware of my

advocacy work, I developed a reputation as something of a renegade. There were times when I went without paychecks or received less than promised, but I was all in. I had persuaded Delores to move with me to Decatur, and for a time, I felt needed and even loved by the pastor and his family. I knew that as a church , material remunerations offered in the secular, professional world would not be forthcoming. The rewards were spiritual in nature, and I was never promised more than this. My work would be important and rewarding, but it would never be lucrative—not by a long shot. It was my job to help the church grow by taking as much off of Pastor Walker’s plate as I could. In my eyes, this meant encouraging him to drop the funeral home’s reins and let the highly capable funeral directors do what they were hired to do. I wanted Pastor Walker to grow the church by being at the church to welcome and counsel parishioners during the day instead of only a few hours bookending his sermons. The goal was to streamline the church’s operations so Pastor Walker could balance his time, allowing him to find the new time to study, to minister, and to devote to his family. As it was, he spent too many hours on the phone, fielding requests I could handle seamlessly. Early on, it became apparent that the pastor and I didn’t always see eye to eye. He didn’t want to change his approach to his flock, and I wanted to plow forward, impatiently stepping on toes, and in the process teach his parishioners what I viewed shortsightedly as independence. In my thinking, I would give them the tools they needed to be self-sufficient. On the other hand, Pastor Walker wanted to give, and give, and give until, in my opinion, there was no more of him left. He wanted to fish for his flock and prepare the dining table for them; I wanted to teach them to fish on their own. We both wanted to create leaders, but our approaches were not aligned. While there were many who needed our assistance, many came to depend on Pastor Walker and other church to do for them what they were capable of doing for themselves. We could minister to the poor, the insecure, and the sad, showing them the path of good hope, but we could not walk this path for them. Pastor Walker and I often bumped heads on this issue; of course, he had—and always kept—the upper hand, as was his right. This was, after all, his church, his calling, not mine. This was how he wanted his ministry, and I was not the pastor. Truthfully, there were times when I forgot that fact. I got ahead of myself, overstepping the boundaries of my role, enacting what I saw as necessary

changes. Change happened glacially at the church, and I was headstrong and impatient. Each day, I looked around at other successful ministries both in the area and nationally, and each day I felt that we had all the ingredients needed to be a powerful beacon of light in central Illinois. With the respect that Thomas and Margaret Walker garnered within the community, coupled with the organizational vision and knowledge that I brought to the table, we could catapult this ministry into the limelight. I presented growth plans, organizational charts, programmatic proposals, facility usage options, and media/public relations action points. The church had moved into a massive edifice at a prime location in the city. This was the point where preparation met opportunity, and I was prepared to spend the bulk of my time enacting my plan. All I needed was the pastor to focus on his preaching and counseling. If he did this, he would be adding to his church, but he would also be adding to the Kingdom of God. Too often though, the offices were quiet, the building was empty, and Pastor was nowhere to be found. It was just me, my assistant Lisa, Missionary Goodman, whose office had relocated to our campus, and Paula and Earl, the building’s custodians. I felt empowered in my role—even if my role didn’t call for expanded responsibilities. I was so zealous that I was blind to what everyone, including Pastor Walker, saw: I wanted those within the church, including the pastors, to follow me. I took Walker’s words about my role as a leader in the church too much to heart, and I tried to impose my will on the pastors. I let the praise of others go to my head. One visiting sermonizer, Pastor Sampson, pulled me aside before he left and told me that he saw a future pastor in me—the kind of pastor that the community needed. “Pastor Walker,” he said, “is a good man, but he is a businessman first. The church needs leaders committed first and foremost to the Kingdom. That’s you, Julius.” His words resonated with me for a long time after that. Had I been avoiding my true calling for all my life? Was it my role to help other community leaders shepherd their flocks, or was I destined for a flock of my own? Believing that I was answering my calling, I acted in headstrong ways, forgetting

that my role had been offered because I could help usher in Walker’s vision, not vice versa. Tensions began to emerge. Our relationship grew less cordial, and the further Pastor Walker slipped from me, the more I pushed my agenda. Of course, all this affected Delores as well. My role carried with it opinions about how she should behave. Church leaders expected Delores to play a part similar to that of a pastor’s wife, and she found the outfit, hat and all, chafing. This was not a role she had signed up for, and when we were alone at the end of the night, she frequently reminded me that the move back to Decatur had been my decision, not hers. I could feel her becoming more and more frustrated with me. Tensions climaxed in the spring of 2006. Coordinating with BET, I had arranged a two-day gospel event, and there were dozens of contracts to sign and tens of thousands of dollars in expenses. The state of Illinois awarded us a $20,000 grant, but expenses soon overran my working capital within budget. I asked Pastor Walker if the church could loan me enough money to cover my outlay, but he refused. I thought about canceling, but that ship had sailed. The buzz surrounding the event spread through the community, and everyone I saw told me how much they were looking forward to it. My credibility was intertwined with the event. I couldn’t cancel, so I borrowed from friends, knowing that the state grant would reimburse the church for some of these expenses. A week before the event, Pastor Walker approached me. “I am getting calls, and they’re telling me you’re not paying your bills. You are giving me, and this church, a bad name.” I thought I had it under control, showing each contractor my grant from the state of Illinois. I thought they would be more patient with me, but maybe they figured because the name Thomas E. Walker was synonymous with trust in the business community they could get paid faster if they called him. His paternalistic tone irked me. I was being chided like a prodigal son—not the kind of father-son interaction I imagined would characterize our relationship when I was still new to the church. I longed for a father figure, and I thought I had found one, but I was unprepared for his stern reproaches. We argued heatedly in the hallway.

“I told you a month ago I was having cash-flow problems for deposits. It’s not like the grant isn’t going to reimburse us. I asked for your help. You refused.” “We have to find a way out of this,” he said with a tone of finality. “Fine,” I said, “let’s just cancel it.” “No, it is too late to cancel. Add up how much you need to pay the bills. We’ll cover that. If you had come to me earlier, perhaps we could have avoided this, but here we are.” I thought I had done just that, but I didn’t bother pressing my point any further. After the concerts, Pastor Walker took the credit for saving the day. The truth or falsity of this statement wasn’t what bothered me—he got some of the contractors off my back; it was the fact that I was doing something to benefit his ministry and I felt treated with disinterest and irrelevancy. There were no accolades for bringing this monumental event to Decatur from him. He didn’t hug me or congratulate me for my hard work. I wanted his love, his adulation for doing this for him and his ministry. My relationship with a man I considered a dad was unraveling before my eyes. I ed what Delores had said about my bouts with depression in the prewedding counseling sessions, so I tried to keep the black dog at bay for as long as I could. As my relationship with Pastor Walker began to deteriorate, depression began to nip at my heels. When I wasn’t withdrawn and despondent, I was prone to fits of rage, and my young wife was not equipped to handle my mood swings. There was no history of mental illness in her family; she came into the marriage hoping our relationship would be outwardly similar to the one between her mother and father. I was so deeply immersed in my sadness that I never stopped for a moment to imagine how she must have been feeling. She withdrew, and I resented her all the more for it. I craved her and affection, but I was pushing her away as hard as I could. She was too young to understand, and she had seen nothing from me resembling this behavior up to this point. In my melancholy, I could offer her no reassurances. It was simply too much to handle. She grew increasingly critical, hounding me about getting a real job. Her insistence grew with each ing day—especially when my paycheck was late, which happened with increasing regularity as my relationship with Pastor

Walker soured. I couldn’t bring in more than two thousand a month, which wasn’t nearly enough to provide the kind of lifestyle Delores expected. When I tried to supplement this income with other work, she ridiculed me. “Are you a professor, a promoter, an , a youth leader, or a songwriter?” Half joking, she suggested we open one of those catchall stores that sell everything from beer cups to Hawaiian luau kits.“Who are you?” she asked. “What are you doing?” I asked myself those same questions, and the answers I came up with—answers about being called by God to the ministry—satisfied neither Delores nor me. I was desperate to prove myself to her, to prove that I could be a success, but I was spinning gossamer webs. With each week came a new grand idea, a new enterprise I was sure would be a success. Each one failed more spectacularly than the last, and with each failure, I sank further into depression. I hid most of my failures from my wife, and as a result, I felt more alone and more depressed as the days slipped by. I wanted back all that I had lost: respect, pride, position, all of it. It was impossible to miss that the light had gone out of Delores’s eyes; still I was determined to regain my stature. The love and iration that had once shone there was gone, and by withdrawing, I was doing nothing to preserve the relationship. Delores’s critiques grew sharper, and I began to believe all of them. I was never going to be a success. Our failures rested squarely on my shoulders. We should never have come back to Decatur. She wanted to spur me to action because she understood a new position was the route out of my depression, and I wanted to leap over my difficulties in a single bound. I needed to step back and re-evaluate, and then climb steadily with new insights regarding my unrealistic view of what a husband should be. I felt as though Delores hectored me; my masculine pride was deeply wounded by what I thought of as henpecking. Church teachings long ingrained in me, I had gone into marriage expecting feminine acquiescence from my mate. What I got was a headstrong young woman—albeit one with equally misguided notions about what a husband’s role in a marriage should be. I had only one solace left: food.

I started putting on weight that I had previously lost: first ten pounds, then another twenty. The worse I felt, the more I ate. It wasn’t long before I gained back seventy-five of the one hundred forty I had previously lost. I grew more ornery; fights with Delores became more intense. She wanted to help me, but she didn’t know where or how to begin, and I was no help. “Just tell me what I can do to be a better wife.” “Ask a wife!” I shouted. “Start talking to a few adults, ask your mother, and then maybe you’ll learn something.” I instantly regretted saying this, but I had convinced myself that her naivety was the root of our inability to communicate. I married a woman who didn’t know the first thing about being a man’s helpmeet. I started sleeping on the couch, withholding all affection. After three weeks of this, she reached the end of her rope. She confronted me in the living room, laying it on thick. “Just go,” I said, foolishly believing I was doing her a favor. “I have nothing more to offer you. I’m just bringing you down.” This was the first time we talked like this; the dissolution of the marriage had hung like a cloud over our heads for a long time, but we never addressed it. A large part of me didn’t want to lose her; I hoped she would call my bluff, yet I knew she would leave me the moment I uttered the words. Another part of me wanted her to leave. With what felt like the weight of the world on my shoulders, I didn’t feel I could be responsible for anybody else’s happiness—and I was undoubtedly making Delores miserable. She would be happier on her own, or happier with somebody else. At my bedrock, I never wanted her to leave. I wanted , unconditional love, understanding, and a little grit. She didn’t want to leave either, but my depressed state was simply too much for her to handle. By December of 2005, after less than two years of marriage, she moved back to Chicago, back to what had once been my grandfather’s house on Ninety-First and South Emerald. Unwittingly, I had turned the knife back on myself with behavior regarding women that I refused to acknowledge or change. I went into hiding, spending weeks without leaving my apartment, but the gossip going around still reached my ears. There was a rumor that I had stolen money

from the church and speculation about the sudden collapse of my marriage. I didn’t want to go anywhere near the church. In my absence, the check for the State’s reimbursement for concert expenses arrived at the church. A few days later, Pastor Walker showed up at my apartment, bringing with him an itemized list of expenses. Now, I met the businessman that Pastor Al Sampson had talked about more than a year prior. We argued over each line of the budget, haggling over nickels and dimes. When he left, I held in my hands a check for less than a third of what I had expected. I was more brokenhearted than ever. My time at the church was over. I had hoped to experience a sense of belonging —a religious envelopment, but also a familial one. These dreams became a profound disappointment; I felt foolish for having become so attached now that I had been treated with all the familiarity of a stranger. There was not a trace of appreciation for my service, not one iota of fatherly care. I longed for the paternal tone that had lifted me up just a few weeks earlier. I had begged for his kindness, showing the pastor how much of a hole the event’s expenses had put me in, but he was intractable. He was cold; even the way he called me “Doctor Bailey” seemed dismissive. Once again, the man I had hoped would be something of a father to me left me alone in the world, as fatherless and vulnerable as I had ever been. Time, however, was my friend, and it would take years before I understood how I had sabotaged my marriage and my relationships, including those with Pastor Walker and with myself. My solace was that enduring these travails made me a better person, with far more to give and a more comionate understanding of how people find their way in this life. I wanted Pastor Walker to stop giving away so much of himself. Of course, this was asking a river not to move; this was asking a man to deny his essence. I did not understand this back then.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When the Bacon Wilts and Toast Dries

In the aftermath of Delores leaving, depression largely ruled my life. I was in the company of only a handful of people for six or seven months and remained confined to my house, desolate and isolated from the larger community, not wanting my dark disposition to come to light. My pastor friend James Mann, along with my friends Lawrence Barbee, the Peterson family, my main guy T.P., his girlfriend, Blane, and his sister, Latoria, were the only people with whom I remained in . T.P., Blane, and Latoria kept an eye on me daily. They understood the tenuous nature of my mind and my broken-heartedness. The Joneses, my adopted family in Decatur, never closed their door on me, though there wasn’t much communication. Maybe it was their disappointment in me or the fact that they chose a side in Dr. Bailey versus the church. Despite the fact that the church won, I never understood how they couldn’t feel me as aggrieved. I saw myself as a big brother, a mentor to nineteen-year-old Latoria, a girl whom I had counseled to finish high school when she was hell-bent on dropping out. She listened and, thankfully, graduated. I encouraged her to take part in service projects I had initiated through the church and steered her toward roles of responsibility. She looked up to me and was grateful. I was thirty-four, and my relationship with her had always been avuncular and sometimes paternal. Soon enough the rumor mill began. Whispers about Latoria and me began swirling through church and the larger community. People were convinced that she and I had a relationship that went beyond the bounds of friendship. To some degree, I paid it no mind. I knew the truth, but I worried that Delores would hear the rumors and believe the lies. Sure enough, the long arm of gossip reached my estranged wife. The rumors weren’t true, but she chose to believe the lie, maybe because it helped her feel exonerated. I ignored the swirl of innuendo and presumption and spent a lot of time planning and working my events with Latoria as my helper, a role she had

often filled at previous church events. She knew what to do. Despite the logical reasons for Latoria assisting me, the church community buzzed with curiosity about our relationship. They hungered for the reasons Delores had left me, and Latoria’s constant presence was proof enough. In February, Delores returned to Decatur, ostensibly to help me with a concert I was promoting. She let herself in with her keys, and before she’d even taken her shoes off, the fireworks began. She noticed a phone bill on the sideboard with another woman’s name on it. “What the f is this?” she said, waving the envelope under my nose. “You paying bills now?” I tried to explain that Latoria and I were just working together. “I just added an for her on my phone bill, and she’s paying her monthly share of the bill,” I told her. Not wanting to get involved in a full-fledged argument with the concert just hours later, I left without saying another word. Later, I knew that Delores would be waiting for me at home, so I spent the night at a hotel, hoping that when she realized I wasn’t coming home, she would leave and head back to Chicago of her own accord. When I returned the next morning, she was gone, but she’d left a clear message behind her. The house was trashed. Frazzled and amused, I called Latoria and her brother, T.P., and Pastor Mann to tell them what had happened. They all came by to witness the damage and help me clean up. Delores returned later that night. At first I refused to let her in, but she pleaded with me on the front step, promising to remain calm. Finally, I relented and let her in. She sat in the rather uncomfortable gray chenille chair I had recently purchased, while I sat across the room on the matching love seat, in style and discomfort. The calm didn’t last long. “If you won’t man up and talk to me,” she said, her lips twisted into a sneer, “I’m leaving.” I remained quiet, so she pushed her way past me and stormed to her car, squealing the tires as she tore down the street. Not long after that heated evening, she called and asked me to bring her the extra set of car keys she had left at the house. When I pulled up in front of her apartment, I saw Delores walking arm in arm with a man I didn’t recognize. They walked in the front door of the building together, and the lights in her apartment soon went on. I watched through the window as she wrapped her arms

around this man and kissed him ionately. I was surprised by how deeply this spectacle wounded me, how it cut me to my core. Even if her departure from our shared home had signaled that the end of our marriage was nigh, or the night that she trashed my place was the point from which we would likely not recover, it was painfully clear that when I pushed away the woman I loved, I’d lost her forever.

In June 2006, T.P. and Blane took me to a county fair. I wasn’t enthusiastic about going, but they insisted. These days, the only time I willingly left my house was for a youth group activity; otherwise, I wandered around in my Wabash Crossing apartment, embarrassed, mad as hell, and disappointed. I wasn’t working and the bills were piling up. I used to be respected, and I’d grown accustomed to being Dr. Bailey, “the man” from the ministry and the surrounding community. Now I felt like a pariah in the eyes of church folk. We returned to my townhome, grabbed a tequila shot or three, and watched the BET awards on television. Destiny’s Child performed “Let Me Cater to You” while I sat back in my chair, mesmerized by Kelly Rowland. My friends all knew my unashamed fascination with Kelly. She was my latest dream girl, my latest fixation of the many beguiling, idealized women that were somehow beyond reach. I sat there enraged with jealousy as the rapper Nelly smiled salaciously at Kelly as she ground into his lap on national television. A few hours later, T.P. and Blane were on the porch kissing while Latoria, who had shown up shortly after we got back to my place, cleaned my kitchen. I kept rewinding “Let Me Cater to You” on the digital video recorder, listening, glowering in my personal pity pot, and ruminating on the imposed exile from my marriage bed. It was a hot, steamy summer night in Illinois when my nineteen-year-old assistant and friend sidled up to me and said, “I can do that for you.” Initially, I brushed her off. But she cooed and smiled, simulating a beautiful winding motion in sync with the rhythm of Kelly Rowland’s. I tried to ignore her, watching Kelly, then gazing at Latoria, looking back and forth from the image of an idealized woman to that of a living, breathing woman—a girl, really. “For sure you can dance…I have seen you around the city jukin’ and percolatin’ with that Chi-Town footwork…but what Kelly is doing on Nelly’s lap?” I challenged. She smiled and wiggled onto my lap, straddling my chair. I was momentarily flummoxed as the girl on my lap moved and gyrated like a woman. I had not been touched like that in months. Simultaneously, I wanted her to both stop and continue. I was confused and shaken by those five minutes. Her

beautiful dance became my inauguration into seeing Latoria not simply as the wonderful helper she was, but now also as a woman. It was as if she were thirtynine and not nineteen. In the days that followed, she made efforts to appeal to my needs. She was astute and intuitive, calling first to ask how I was doing. Her thoughtfulness continued, wanting to know if I was eating properly. She began to invite me to the mall or a movie, anything to get me out of the house, calling at the end of her shift—she had a part-time job—to ask what I wanted for dinner. She brought groceries and cooked for me. No one, ever, had asked me if I was hungry or bought me something to eat. She paid attention to me when no other woman did. She allowed me to cry, to expunge frustrations and fears. In retrospect, I opened a channel each day for her, an unspoken invitation for her to come into my life. My tears became her problem, my hunger became her challenge, and my desires became her mission. Soon enough, I pushed the envelope toward a sexual relationship. The first time we had sex was intense. The weight of failure was on my back and I wanted to push it out and off. Unfortunately, I had little stamina and the experience didn’t last long. I expected her to be disappointed; I felt poorly about my performance and figured I would not get a chance to redeem myself. But she showed no signs of disappointment. Instead, she modeled maturity far greater than I expected from a nineteen-year-old. Despite what may have been a one-sided sexual performance our first time together, Latoria refused to add yet another scar to my psyche. On Independence Day of 2006, out of the clear blue sky, she brought a gift to my house. It was a thin envelope with a handwritten card that read: “Thank you for caring about me and being a friend when I needed one.” Her words jarred me emotionally. This young woman—all of nineteen years old —was thanking me for doing what came naturally. She didn’t know, and I never told her, how much her thoughtfulness meant to me, how her friendship in the midst of troubling times buoyed my spirits. If I had written her a card that day, the inscription would have been identical. I fought back the tears, but I could feel them coming. I embraced her, holding her tight, my face buried in her hair. I began to feel her hands rubbing my back.

They worked their way up to my shoulders. Tension rolled off of my body in waves. She caressed me for about a minute before I gently took her shoulders in my hands, kissed her on the cheek, and thanked her for her gift. “I can feel your tension in your shoulders,” she said. “Let me give you a massage.” My reply was caught in my throat. Her hands moved to my chest, where she undid my shirt buttons one by one. When she had unbuttoned most of them, she tried to pull the shirt over my head, T-shirt and all. My stomach was exposed for a second, and I quickly pulled down the T-shirt, trying to hide my stomach and my embarrassment. Unfazed, she locked my gaze with hers. She reached down and began to pull the T-shirt up and over my head. It had been so long since I had been shirtless in front of anybody except Delores. The T-shirt had long been something of a security blanket for me. By removing it, she was exposing me—to what, I didn’t know. Would she laugh? Show disgust? Disappointment? She showed none of these things. She ran her hands over my exposed flesh, touching my stomach and the decade-old scar on my chest from an operation on my lungs. I felt like a naive and insecure teenager, and I fought the urge to turn my back to her or to cover my body in some way. I stayed facing her, frozen and breathless. The urge to cover myself faded with each second that her hands remained on my body. I began to feel comfortable in my skin, just as Marshonda made me feel eight years prior, and unlike how I felt in my encounters with the young lady who became my wife. My chest swelled as I breathed deeply. I gave all of myself to Latoria that night, as the bombs burst in the July Fourth air. Latoria became more attentive, more interested in my hurts, my cries, and me. She was patient, sensual, and giving. She graduated to taking my side on every issue in which I was involved. It felt good to have a friend, a confidant, someone to lean on in a time of wanton isolation. Still, she was young and unschooled in the ways of adult relationships. It never occurred to me to talk to her about our relationship, to define what we

were, or what we weren’t. I assumed that we were simply friends with benefits, nothing more. I was not in love with this woman-girl, and soon enough I began to feel repentant. I tried to put a plug on our physicality, but she was not easy to resist. The day I decided to stop kissing and touching, to avoid further complicating our already impossible situation, she knew something was up. I hadn’t seen her for a few days and ignored her calls. In fact, I had even begun to see other women. First I hooked up with another woman from church, then another one at a sister church, one of the temples within the Church of the Living God. I began an online campaign, messaging girls for dates and meeting up with them while avoiding Latoria. A woman named Eileen, who was a social media friend, emailed me looking to get hooked up with a ticket to a concert series I was coordinating for HIV/AIDS awareness. We had never met in person, but she had some sexy photos on her profile page, so I was interested. I wrote her back and invited her out to dinner the following evening. We went to Applebee’s and laughed over a couple of glasses of wine and a steak dinner. She was witty and charming, and pretty. “I’m not looking for a serious relationship,” she said, staring at me slyly. I smiled and nodded, but I wondered if that was the line she dropped to get a guy in her life; I wasn’t looking for anything permanent or serious. I wanted adult company with a woman who was more mature than Latoria. What that led to would be part of the thrill. I dropped her off with a quick hug and kiss and a promise to meet up again, so I was surprised when she called me two hours later to chat. We laughed, telling stories about our lives, and I found out then that she had three kids. “I was worried that you wouldn’t want to get involved with a woman with kids.” “Me?” I asked in good humor. “I love kids, just so long as they’re not mine.” “You don’t want kids?” “Yeah, I do someday, just not now. I need to get my life together first.”

“I hear that,” she said. The next night she called and invited me over. I lived only five minutes away, and even though it was late, almost eleven o’clock, it wasn’t a big deal to pop around the corner. We sat on the couch; her three children were in bed. One thing led to another, and we began to kiss and tentatively touch each other. At one point, one of her kids opened the bedroom door to get a glass of water. “Get your ass back in that room,” Eileen screamed, her face contorted in angry lines. “You know better than to come out when I have company.” My critical ear was piqued. I realized that she had done this before, had a man over late at night, but why scream like that at her little girl? The child was just thirsty. I was not comfortable getting it on in the living room when an open door would expose us to her children. “Let’s go on in your bedroom where it’s more private,” I suggested. “We okay here. They won’t be out again; they know better than that,” she insisted. As excited as I was, I decided to leave and hopefully come back another time. I straightened my clothes, zipped my pants, hugged her, and left. “You gonna just leave like this?” Eileen shrieked. “You got me all hot, and now you just leave?” I was perplexed. This woman was going to have sex with a man she’d just met online a week ago and within fifty feet of her children? Why not go into her room? I mean, what was she hiding in there? Another man? A woman? Thoughts raced through my head. Still, I hoped she’d call again, and next time invited me into her bedroom. She did call again, and I sped around the corner and back into her arms. For months I would go over between nine and ten o’clock and leave by six in the morning before the kids woke up. She tapped into every sexual part of my body. It was clear she was no amateur, and it was equally clear that I was her willing apprentice. Her appetite for sex was insatiable. I did my best to fulfill her, and

she did her best to help me. Rarely did I have to ask if she was satisfied; I couldn’t leave the room until I had met that criterion. Ours was a purely physical relationship that quickly escalated into deep, paincentered conversations. We shared stories of our hurts and disappointments in the spaces where we made love. It was as if we were supposed to find each other…two souls longing for love, but neither equipped to love the other. I had experienced being wounded, by my marriage that ended too soon and by socalled friends who turned their backs on me to take Delores’s side. Eileen was wrestling with years of self-worth issues, sexual abuse, and desertion by men. There I was, Jesus—well, Julius, but there were days when it felt the same. “Julius, please come over tonight. I don’t want to be alone.” This was her daily cry, and most nights I agreed. All the while, I was still playing a crazy game with Latoria, trying to avoid being so close to her without shutting her out entirely. I was also dealing with family and friends who tried to cajole, guide, and change me for the better—whatever that was. My sister, Lisa—not biologically like Bianca but more a confidant, a woman of the cloth, a prophetess—wanted me to find a lasting relationship. Translation: go get my wife. I kept my mouth closed while Lisa berated me once again for flirting and playing with women the way I did. The truth was, I still wanted my wife, but I never told Delores that. “But I don’t mean anything by it,” I explained. “Rarely am I truly interested. I just like women, and generally my manner of communication with women is to be flirty.” “Really?” Lisa answered sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed.” “Ooh sista, be kind,” I onished. “I know sometimes I have gotten myself in real trouble for this. But you know, in my heart I’m just ing the time with words that mean nothing, words that symbolically speak to an interest in romance. For me, it is the art of the game, the tongue, the ‘spit,’ as some of my brothas say. That is who I am. I flirt, I encourage, I compliment, but nine times out of ten, I don’t want her—or I do want her…and her…and her…and her too…” “Julius, it ain’t even ethical for you to be involved with more than one woman. Don’t you realize that karma will get you in the end? What you do to others will

come back to haunt you.” I shook my head. How do you know? I thought. “Dr. Julius Bailey!” she hollered. “You need to listen to me, Lisa. There is no more haunting experience than to search for all your needs in one person. Further, am I not allowed to be happy? Why must I give up myself and my needs for some hope that one woman can make me happy for the rest of my life? I love my solitude and my detachment. People are usually boring, and when they are interesting, they are completely messy. Besides, I like being alone.” “Who you kidding, Julius? You hate being alone—more than anyone I know.” I waved her off. “I am far more productive when I’m alone.” Plus, Delores is gone forever, I lamented to myself. She nodded and then shook her head in disbelief. “I love you, brother, but I gotta go. You are talking nonsense.” I watched her close the back door and skirt down the walkway, knowing we had disconnected. I had that nagging feeling that somehow I had disappointed my sister and she was off to pray for my philandering soul.

I continued to navigate between Latoria and Eileen, though Latoria knew what Eileen didn’t know—that there was someone else on the sideline. Still, she remained a significant part of my life, insinuating herself whenever and wherever she could. Latoria knew that I felt a sense of obligation to her for her friendship, and I imagined that to some extent she took credit for my ability to even be with another woman. After all, she was the one who gave me attention when I needed it most. She was the one who saved me from self-destruction. Of course, like any market trade, there was a price. Latoria’s response was to raise the stakes. She knew the situation, but she refused to be defeated. Her plan was to lock onto her Dr. Bailey, while I, under the pretense of feeling bad about my relationship with her, had moved on to other women, women who became a physical soundboard for my sexual frustrations and desires. Latoria was my friend. I couldn’t do with her what I was doing with these other women. I had grown to rely on her trust, her silence, her comion, and simply her presence. Why taint that for cheap, self-serving sex? Latoria arrived at my doorstep one hot August night to help plan a concert that my good friend Terrence Robinson and I would host in October. She wore green lenses and a sexy outfit and had extensions in her hair. I was awestruck, enticed, and later satiated and ravaged. I wanted her, she knew it, and it happened again and again. It was not that I didn’t try to fight these urges. My resistance was always there, but it was rather half-hearted, overpowered by the intensity of my desire. I wanted to be with a woman, and Latoria knew my weaknesses. She would change her appearance, altering my line of sight so that I didn’t get bored with her. She dressed to keep me interested, and it ignited my desire for her. The power she had over me came not only from lust but also from a natural need to feel wanted. I knew she was playing with me, keeping me on the hook, but I also knew this was more than just empty flirtation, and it felt good to be desired. Later that month, I brought Latoria to Chicago with me to find a venue for the concert. We stopped by my mom’s house to say hello. Meeting Latoria for the first time, my mom seemed unsure what to make of her, giving her strange glances and not saying much. Later, she called me wondering why I’d brought some young chick into her house—and when I was not even divorced yet. She

was incensed by Latoria’s demeanor, fawning all over me in front of her, as if she were my lady, donned in a short skirt and a crop top with her midriff exposed in my mother’s living room. To Latoria’s credit, she had no idea she would be meeting my mother, and would have dressed more appropriately if she had known. It was a terrible first meeting of these two women in my life. That night, we had unprotected sex. “Just a little bit,” I begged. “Only a minute and I promise I will pull out.” And I did, out and away. I continued to distance myself from Latoria by seeing Eileen. For the amount of energy Eileen and I shared, mental, emotional, and sexual, we pushed each other further away from our fullness. Instead of uplifting me, she dragged me down, and I didn’t understand why or how. I needed time away from her, and I had an out-of-town obligation that I hoped would help me clear my head and gain some perspective. That first week in October, I went back to Chicago to get ready for the concert. On October tenth, “The Slow-Jam Master’s Tour,” featuring Ginuwine, H-Town, Jon B, Silk and Shai, and others, began its four-day run. Delores arrived, telling folks at the door that she was Mrs. Bailey, my wife, and asked to go backstage under that name. Honestly, I was pleased to see her. She was very helpful and seemed enthusiastic. I wondered if she wanted to stop the divorce proceedings and try to reconcile. I was prepared to say yes. In truth, I had not yet forgiven her and wouldn’t until years later, but at the time, I believed there was still a chance to salvage our marriage. So when the concert was over, and she asked to speak to me in private, I was happy and hopeful. She stood to face me squarely and looked at me. Wasting no time, she asked, “Julius, did you get Latoria pregnant?” “What are you talking about, Delores? Of course not. No, emphatically, no.” “Well, she is going around telling folk that she is pregnant by Dr. Bailey. Why is she saying that?” “I don’t know. These rumors in Decatur are getting out of control. I’m going to clear this up right now.” I called Latoria on the spot while Delores stood there with her hands on her hips.

“Latoria, apparently rumors are going around that you are pregnant.” She paused, giggling. “People got nothing better to do than make things up. There’s nothing to worry about.” I was relieved and also amused. My soon-to-be-former wife was jealous to the point of accusing me of fathering a child. But then, the Delores I had loved asked the most intelligent and poignant question: “Jay, is it possible that she is pregnant by you? And don’t lie this time…please.” I had rejected these claims for so long, since before I’d even touched Latoria, so there was no way I would it it now. It would have weakened my credibility from months before of denial. So I did the most honorable thing I could: I changed the subject and walked away. We were three months away from a divorce and I didn’t have to answer this inquisition. As she watched me walk away, I knew this would be the last time she used the name, Mrs. Bailey. Back in Decatur, the gossip continued. Weeks later, my friend Bobbi called and said, “We need to talk.” We met two days later and I knew it was about Latoria. Bobbi always kept it real with me. She still was active in the church and had heard all the rumors for months. She looked at me and pushed my shoulders, chastising me in a loving but deeply disappointed way. “How could you get that girl pregnant?” “Bobbi, I called Latoria and asked. She said she wasn’t.” I realized with that answer, I hadn’t left myself any way to deny my sexual relationship with Latoria. “That girl is pregnant,” Bobbi stated unequivocally. I was floored, pissed, shocked, and sullen. I felt like nothing could have been worse. I didn’t have a job, and I barely had any credibility left with my family or my circle of acquaintances. I was already experiencing the nadir of my existence, and now I had to face the news that I had impregnated a nineteenyear-old girl…and she had lied to me about it.

I jumped into my car and drove the highway for hours, thinking, crying, and praying. I considered rolling the car off the side of the road. There was no way I could have a baby then. I fretted and stewed, wound up into my head with thoughts cascading, each more despairing than the previous. I thought about Delores, how hurt she would be, how ruined our chances of reconciling now were. I thought about the woman I’d envisioned as the mother of my child, a woman so different from this girl I’d gotten pregnant. I was broke, unemployed, and disconnected from my community. Of all the chances I’d had to become a father, this had to be the worst timing of all. I was more brokenhearted than I had ever been on that long night. How could I have been so irresponsible, so out of control, so vulnerable to a nineteen-yearold girl? She was little more than a child playing dress-up in high heels. The stakes were higher than either of us was willing to acknowledge. I had lost any chance of reconciliation with my wife and gained a child I did not want, and for whom I had no means of .

I called Latoria the next morning and told her we needed to talk about our situation. Now that I knew she was pregnant, calling her out for lying to me seemed irrelevant. I asked her three questions in quick succession: How did she feel about being pregnant right now in her life? Was it possible that I was not the father of her child? And was she completely sure she wanted to keep the baby? Being opposed to abortion, I was mentally tripping. I had unfortunately gone through that process twice with other women. Each time, I was sick about it for months—for years. I imagine both of those women are still haunted, maybe more than me. But this time was different. This time I was the one pushing for an abortion. I was such an ass, and irrational too. I preyed upon Latoria’s financial needs and was willing to pay up to five grand for her to abort the child. I was willing to pay people close to her to persuade her as well. I desperately hoped she would reconsider. I felt that the long-term struggle of being parental partners would prove insurmountable. She was a loyal friend, but we were too different—from our educational backgrounds to our worldviews and political beliefs, we had little in common. We did share a mutual respect for one another, but I feared that was not enough. Perhaps more importantly, I hated myself at this time in my life. In my depressed and impoverished state, I was numb. I didn’t want anything to do with having a baby, and I certainly did not feel equipped to be a father. For a while I thought I was getting through to her, and it was then that I pounced on her emotional heartstrings. “Don’t you believe that I care about you? Don’t you realize that I will be your best friend forever? Don’t you see the hardship this will put us both through? Where will you live? How will you yourself and your baby? You know I don’t have anything, you know that. Do you realize Delores will likely bring legal action against me because of this? “Please,” I begged her. “Please…I promise you that if we solidify our relationship, I would be happy to have a child with you in a couple of years.” For me, the lies I told and the buttons I pushed were my last-ditch efforts to breathe. I couldn’t be tied down so quickly after ending my marriage. I just wasn’t ready.

Unsure if I had reached her, convinced her or not, we ended our phone conversation, and I waited. Day after day, I waited. There was no reply, nothing. On the sixth day, I asked to see her. She obliged, and we met for lunch downtown. “I hear you; I really do,” she said. “But I just don’t think abortion is right.” Those words, I didn’t want to hear those words, but deep inside they were a relief. Now instead of the lies, the misdirection, and the games, I could look squarely at my circumstances and handle them. I became teary, with fake tears of sadness, so I didn’t look more the fool than I had already been. But to Latoria’s credit and her love for me, she grabbed me and pulled me close to her and comforted me. Given that I was faking, I was now stuck in the arms of a young woman who was determined to love me through my despair, purposed to tap into my creativity, to get me out of the house, engaged in life and activities. Now she was about to be the mother of my child. It was hard to dismiss all the lies she had told, but it was equally impossible to not appreciate her for what she had been for me: a steady hand, a devoted friend. The lines that I had crossed could never be uncrossed. And I had told my share of lies as well. Somehow, we would move forward, now with a child we shared.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A Handful of Russet Tulips

My grandfather, who had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, lost his battle in November 2006. My mom called me early that fateful morning. “Jay, you got to come back and be here with me and your sister. Dad died this morning.” Her voice was shaky. We cried together on the phone. “I’m leaving right now, Mom. What can I bring you? You need anything?” “Lord no, Jay. We just have to do the business and I need you and Bianca to take care of everything.” I stopped on my way to buy my mother some flowers, figuring it was the least I could do. I was surprised to find tulips at the flower shop, but the girl there explained that in Holland there’s a short season of autumn bulbs. They seemed hopeful, that handful of russet tulips, something my grandfather would have appreciated and I knew my mother would as well. Two days later, I sat in that chapel with my mother and Bianca in the front row, the three of us in dark, somber garb. The chapel was filled to the nave with mourners, people from all over Chicago there to pay their respects to Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins. I did think there would be more, however. I mean he had touched so many lives, and certainly mine. Without him, I would have gone to a public school, and I would not have had the influences of a religious education or the keen sense of social responsibility instilled in me. But he did die nearly ninety years of age so most of his contemporaries had gone before. I spoke of all these things as I stood at the lectern delivering my grandfather’s eulogy to a rapt audience. They cried all the more at the humorous lines I delivered, laughing, too, through their tears. As I delivered my practiced words, I wondered what my grandfather would have said about his life. I told his

mourners that in these last years, he had lost who he was and who we were as well, and that he was freed now of this earthly toil, but we would go forward on his behalf. No one is truly gone. They reside in our memories. While I stood in front of that crowded chapel, I found myself wanting more of my grandfather, yet he had given all he could. Still, it was not enough. I realized that was how I felt about every man who had guided me. I wanted more and they had given all they would. There was a bottomless empty place in me, this was the most consistent man in my life and I would miss him. Somehow I had to find a will to fill it, or at least quiet the rumbling. Regardless of my wanting soul, I would soon be a father and I was determined to succeed in that role. I would be the father to my child that my father had not been to me. News of the pregnancy soon spread. The gossips already knew that Delores and I had effectively separated, but now a child was going to be born of adultery. This was a scandal they could really sink their teeth into. Despite the fact that my marriage didn’t end because of another woman, it sure seems as though I went from being a pitiable object of a broken marriage to an irredeemable adulterer. The gossips scorned me for my cheating ways and laid the blame for the marriage’s dissolution entirely at my feet, and I couldn’t deny that my personal failings were at the root of my marital problems. Delores played the martyr well, reveling in her role as the betrayed and innocent wife, courting sympathy because I was certainly the cheat who had destroyed everything. Although I never made excuses for being a deeply flawed man, I had taken my wedding vows seriously, and it hurt to be judged for my actions when no one knew the actual circumstances. Yes, I cheated, but only after… well it was after I had asked her to leave. In my mind, that reduced my culpability and made my behavior seem less shameful. For much of that year, I reached out to guy friends and reconnected with people from Howard, including my former groomsman, Terrence Robinson. In addition, there were long and endearing phone calls with my soul-centered friend Chinaza. She, more than any other friend, engaged with me at a philosophical level; she was a therapist and healer who worked with Iyanla Vanzant, the well-known television personality, and understood the essence of human struggles on many levels.

When thoughts raced through my head, she was the one person who could untangle so much of what perplexed me, or at least try. I called her often in those last months in Decatur. “The singer Trey Songz proclaimed in his title song, ‘Sex Ain’t Better Than Love,’” I told Chinaza late one night, not long after Delores left. I prattled on, telling her, “The idealist in me sees the efficacy in that phrase. It speaks to the hope, the permanence, the consistency of partnership and an adherence to nonmarket values that often wane in American culture. The problem is, these values, though lauded both intellectually and spiritually, are the underdogs in this race called life. Market forces of ‘the new and improved versions,’ competition, and so many choices make love a herculean task. There are not too many Herculeslike folk in this world.” I heard Chinaza sigh on the other end of the phone. “My beloved friend, Julius, how can I reach you? How can I make you listen to me, and to your heart?” “But I’m here, Chinaza, calling you, talking to you.” “You are, Jay, but you are so far from me, so cynical. Your life is desolate, and you seem to enjoy living there, by yourself, alone. Everything is predictable for you. You make the rules; you claim victory in the results you expect. And, what are they—a world where only you exist, moving the pieces?” I struggled to understand how she could see me as cynical. I idealized women— all kinds of women, especially women who were more troubled. Sex workers, strippers, women who were poor or desperate—I always saw the best in them. My mom had a name for me: “Captain Save a Hoe.” How was that cynical? She went on, “Partnership, permanence, and consistency depend entirely on choice, not on market conditions. Market values have no place here; relationships are not shoes or stock options. Marriage may very well be a financial decision when, at its end, the assets are split. But permanence and consistency are not market values; they are life principles. Principles don’t change like the wind. They exist on their own, whether you choose to honor them or not, like loyalty, honor, and comion. They are not fashion, they are not a fad, and they don’t depend upon country or time zone or sex. Love is not a herculean task. It is easy, it is natural, and it is real. Love is everywhere and in

everything. God is love, and all creation resonates with love. That you choose to focus elsewhere, seeing difficulty where there is ease, is another matter. Love is not a market force, either. Choosing the ‘right’ partner may be, but expediency, not love, guides those decisions. Love is not a decision either; it is present or it isn’t. It can’t be forced. If you choose to open your eyes, it is everywhere. If you do not, it may be nowhere.” “But Chinaza, this is what you present as your reality, and now you tell me I must accept this as true and real for myself as well.” “You decide what you want, Jay, and that becomes your reality. And God? Oh, no, we can’t talk of that. That’s taboo; it makes you ill. Too much restriction, introspection, and time… Life is not a race unless you want it to be; you don’t know how much time you have. It may be a second, or a hundred years. Day runs until night catches up to it…” Her voice was still tender; she was amazing like that. She could tell me I was misguided all day long and still never stop holding me from hundreds of miles away in a loving embrace. “This whole conversation, Julius, is based on two basic worldviews: One focuses on lack, as in shortage, that if you have, I do not have, and vice versa, and the other focuses on a lack of time, on living with the understanding that time is a finite principle. You believe that you have a set time and that at the end of your corporeal life, there is nothing more. To you, there is no forever, no time continuum, no quantum theory.” I listened intently, trying to understand how to extricate myself from my desolation. I needed to understand this not only on an emotional level, but also intellectually. I was a philosophy professor; my identity was tied up in my ability to follow the threads of academic conundrums, to find meaning and understanding in thought. “Promise me, Julius, you will seek out community and friends, you will go back to God and prayer. Denying your spiritual nature, turning away from faith, will not enhance your life.” I told her I would consider finding a way forward, and yes I would open my door back into the world. Truth be told, the impending reality of being responsible for a child’s life was a bit overwhelming, just as the mother herself proved to be.

In the end, the sad truth was unwavering and clear. Though it broke my heart, I had nobody to blame but myself. The move back to Decatur, the unsecure position with the church, my unpredictable mood swings—these were root and branch of my marital issues, and it would have taken an extremely mature woman, one with the patience of a saint, to stay by my side through all of it. To expect this level of maturity and patience from my twenty-two-year-old bride was unreasonable, just as it would have been unreasonable to expect similar levels of maturity from me when I was that age. In hindsight, it’s surprising she stuck it out for as long as she did. I told her to leave, and she left. I’m still not sure whether, like a trapped feral cat, she’d been patiently waiting for the door to open wide enough for her to reclaim her freedom, or telling her to leave broke her heart, as it broke mine. I was an emotional wreck and far too much work for such a young woman. She lacked mature constancy and—as I learned later—she also had her own emotional issues, which hadn’t come to the fore while we were together. When we could have repaired our brokenness and the damage we did to each other, instead we argued over who did what, and to whom. On a cold January morning in 2007, we drove to the courthouse together, both of us in tears. We shared one final hug in the parking lot. I gently kissed her on the cheek, and then we went inside the Macon County, Illinois courtroom. Neither of us stopped to ask the other: “Is this really what you want?” After the judge asked his six questions and we’d signed the paperwork, it was official. With a bang of the gavel and a stroke of the pen, we were no longer married. Since then, we’ve managed to somewhat repair our relationship. We have remained on friendly , at times talking openly about our failed marriage. We both agree that our age difference was our largest hurdle. Although our easy conclusion leaves much unaddressed, it has provided both of us some solace regarding our behavior and its consequences. I was happy to learn that Delores eventually remarried—a capable man who makes her happy in ways I couldn’t.

I went on with my life, feeling unmoored. I was about to have a baby with a girl who had danced at my wedding. Yet I was eerily elated—due to a steady diet of sex with Eileen. I went over a little earlier that evening and straight to her bedroom. We were lying there watching television when her phone rang. “Yeah, okay,” she answered. “I’ll be right there.” She ended the call and sat on the edge of the bed. “I have to pick up my youngest from her father’s.” “All right, maybe we’ll get together tomorrow?” “Just stay. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” I was okay with that and lay there on her bed, which also housed a stack of folded towels, her son’s socks and underwear, a nightgown, and other items she was folding in bed. Her floor looked like a hurricane had hit it. Clothes, toys, baskets of more clothes, books, cookies, Pepsi Cola cans—she loved Pepsi—and a used condom. At first, I thought, No, that can’t be. But I spotted it on the right side of her bed, next to her scarf, some candy wrappers, and a cigarette butt. My initial instinct was to jump up in anger, but I sat there and reflected on that first night with her on her couch when she wouldn’t allow me in her bedroom. My mind quickly moved from anger to laughter, and then to jealousy. Without a doubt, she was the most seasoned and exciting lover I’d ever had, and she was sharing her talents with another man. It was true; she had never hidden the fact, either by skill or conversation, that she was experienced in the art of sex. But I guess I wanted fidelity. There was part of me that wanted this relationship to somehow be both traditional and unconventional. I wanted the things we were doing, the experiences that were new to me, to be mine, and mine alone. It was hard to wrap my mind around the idea that maybe earlier that day she had been carrying on with someone else— right here—maybe in this spot. I jumped up in disgust and quickly went to the other side of the bed, knocking over the folded towels and socks. I heard her car enter the driveway, and I was in a quandary. Should I stay, or leave? I didn’t want to argue. I had too much going on to be mad at her for being

her. That was what I told myself, but at a gut level, I was hurt and angry. Her bed language of “I love you so much, Julius” was just momentary words of ion. She loved me all right…she loved the feeling, and the feeling was not specific to me. She loved me, Tyrone, Hector, and especially Dick. My ive-aggressive nature took hold. I wanted to hear her boldfaced lie, to look into her eyes and call her out, humiliate her, and then dump her. She walked into the bedroom and I joked, “Girl, we need to change these sheets. I know I’m sweet, but this man don’t need no cookie-crumb topping.” She pulled some sheets from the back of her junky closet. They were folded, so I figured, though skeptically, they were clean. She went to draw a bath for her youngest while I lay back in the bed. An hour ed while I fumed and planned my revenge. When she came in and closed the door, I proposed an idea. “Let’s make tonight special. You in?” She agreed and opened the bottom drawer of the chest. Reaching under some towels and a plastic bag, she pulled out an orange candle and a small drawstring cloth bag. I curiously waited to see what was in the bag. She lit the candle, took off her black sweater and blue jeans, and handed the bag to me. “Here, open it. It’s your make-a-wish night.” I lay there in my boxers and a black wife-beater T-shirt and opened the box to find a pair of dice inscribed with words—sexual prompts. These were adult dice for playing love games. “Roll the dice twice, and then choose something special that I will do for you tonight.” She smiled and looked at me coyly. The suggestive dice aroused me and I nearly forgot that I was likely lying in the same spot where another man recently had his own special treatment. I rolled the dice and had to choose between “special toppings” and “slave for a night.” There was no way I could harness the gall to ask any sista to be my slave, so I chose the toppings. She left the room and came back with chocolate and caramel sauce. “Which one?” she asked. “I don’t know what you asking me to choose for. These are for your taste buds,

not mine.” As our romantic evening came to a close, I lay back, fully satiated but aggravated, knowing this was our last time. I pulled her close into my arms and in a very calm voice said, “Eileen, can you do me a favor? Next time you invite someone into your bedroom, please clean up. I mean this room looks a mess, baby. First, I had to change the sheets, and now I still gotta look at your children’s clothes, pop cans, candy wrappers, used condoms, and shit lying around.” She sat there silently, not moving, as if she was processing what I had just said. I repeated, “I am simply asking for a bit of decency, baby girl. I mean all this trash and used condoms and shit lying around…” She sat straight up, staring at me, giving me a look. “Why you keep saying condoms?” I laughed bitterly, knowing I had backed her into a corner. “Yeah somebody’s condom— look over here.” She climbed over my nearly naked body while I searched beneath the sheets to find my boxers. I stood on the opposite side of the bed, redressing. The air between us was thick, frozen in a moment of truth. My fantasy girl was just that —not someone I could be with in reality. For a brief moment I wondered why I always found myself in this place, more enraptured with fantasy, more in love with girls I would never have in my life, yet less attracted to those who might walk the long line with me. “You are a trashy, dirty whore and I have no reason to be here.” I grabbed my shirt, waiting for this feisty, aggressive woman to call me names and attack me physically and verbally. I had heard it all before. “F— you, you fat mother …” or, “Leave, cause I don’t want your fat ass anyway.” In this case, I knew the only retort she could have for me was about my weight. She couldn’t insult my prowess in bed; the only abuse she could hurl at me would be in the form of the fat card. But instead of cursing me, she dropped to the floor and grabbed my leg as I stood tying my scarf around my neck.

“Please don’t leave me, Julius… Please. I know I acted like a trashy whore and I am sorry. You don’t deserve that. I will be better for you. You can’t leave me, I need you.” There she was, at my feet, sobbing, clinging to me as if I were her lifeline. It was sad, really, more so because I wasn’t leaving because she was promiscuous. Calling her a whore was absurd; I was leaving because I was the one whoring around. I wasn’t mad because she cheated on me with a man she likely knew before me; I was mad because, in my despair, I turned to this meaningless, but exhilarating, sexual encounter that cost only my pride. This was what I had substituted for love. I pulled her up to her feet, wiped her tears with my hand, and kissed her puffedup eye. “I’m sorry, truly sorry, Eileen. I know you need more from me than I can give you. We just two broken people trying to fill ourselves up with something less than love and telling each other this is good enough. I used you to build my esteem, trying to prove to myself that I can be loved and that I can love again. I took advantage of your traumatic past, and instead of seeking to build with you, I levied a gentlemanly blow of destruction. I am leaving because I was wrong.” The next day I left for Ohio—sad, sullen, and feeling just as empty as I felt the day Delores left me. I felt the same blow to my stomach as when I saw her kissing that other man, or when so many of my other relationships with women ended. The drive was four hours, but it seemed like ten. I needed someone to talk to but I couldn’t call Eileen; that would be the act of a desperate man, but it had been fifteen hours and she hadn’t called me yet. I had Dru Hill on repeat: Somebody’s sleeping in my bed, baby, somebody’s taking my place… I drove to Cincinnati to hear my mentor Dr. Cornel West speak. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, not since I had invited him to Decatur to speak at my church, and now I needed Cornel’s guidance more than ever—to talk with, to engage with over love and loss, and to simply sound off to about the recklessness of my sexual decisions. I found a seat at Cornel’s lecture and made my physical presence known by sitting within eyeshot of the podium. He finally noticed me as people stood in line to shake his hand following his lecture. He smiled, walked over, and hugged

me, an embrace I sorely needed. I told him I was just here to talk to him about important matters. He told me to meet him at his hotel later that night. I told Cornel about the loss of my granddad. Our grandfathers were prominent Baptist pastors, something that always linked us. We talked about what they gave us and how we missed them. I then told him about my breakup with Delores, stating that I needed to leave Decatur. I didn’t have the courage just then to tell him that we were now divorced. I simply softened the blow with, “Oh, but good news is I am having a daughter next month.” Cornel smiled gregariously and offered a toast. We clacked glasses of Coke and he went on to tell me how much of a blessing it is to be a father. This was the moment I had not had with anyone, not my mother, not my pastor, not anyone. Most folk just wanted to talk about the breakup with my wife, not the birth of my daughter. So I relished this moment, in a downtown Cincinnati hotel room, eating room service with “my dad,” being the kindhearted man he is, he obliged me and endured my pitifulness. The conversation never got around to my extreme sadness, though it did involve my unemployment. When I told him I had resigned from Main Street Church, where I had served as Church and Educational Director for the youth arm, he asked what I would do. I mentioned a possibility that had opened up for me at Fresno State and wondered if he would call to seal the deal. I had already had my second phone call and a visit was scheduled for May, but as in the past, a call from him was like gold. As I left, he reached in his pocket again, a gesture reminiscent of our meeting when I was twenty-two. He pulled out some twenty-dollar bills, peeled off two hundred dollars, and handed it to me with no questions asked. I literally cried in front of him and quickly apologized. It was a prelude to the dam of tears that finally burst during my drive back to Illinois. I was a thirtyfive-year-old wreck. Eileen still hadn’t called and I never called her. We were done. And I still had Latoria to deal with. For the sake of our unborn child, Latoria and I continued our rocky and striferidden relationship. Despite that, and all those who tried to persuade me to rid myself of her, I remained committed to our friendship. She was there for me when most were not. She loved me when I didn’t love myself. She was the mother of my baby, and there was nothing she or I could do to change any of

those realities. In some respects I think she believed that no matter what she did, I would be there for her. Despite the hurtful ways that would have tested the limits of any man’s patience, she was right. In the end I am reminded of what my mother told me in March 2007 when I called her for advice. “Mom,” I asked, “what am I going to do? Latoria’s mother told her she had to leave the house and now she has nowhere to live.” In my mind, this wasn’t my responsibility; she wasn’t my woman. We were friends who had a few sexual encounters, including a night that led to a pregnancy. “The son I know,” my mom cautioned, “would not let that girl become homeless. You were raised better than that… No matter what, you have to think of that baby.” “You don’t get it, Mom. She is crazy…she once pulled a knife on me and threatened to kill me.” “Well let’s just hope she ain’t that crazy, cause if she kills you, Imma have to kill her, and I am too damn old to be going to jail, Jay. Then again, what did you do to drive her to that point?” I laughed. “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t do nothing to warrant a death threat.” “She is young, baby, and confused right now. Likely she’s worried about how or where she will lay her head. This is the bed you made. You are now forced to lie in it, Jay. You have no choice but to care for your responsibility, and right now, her health, both mental and physical, and her well-being are your responsibility.” Sometimes I hate that my mom ever said that. Those words rang through my mind every time I was ready to cut Latoria off and give up on her foolishness. But I was a father now. Given the years of being denied that pleasure, from a woman who aborted without my knowledge, to the woman who aborted with my knowledge, to the woman who married another man during her pregnancy and locked me out of being a father, this was my time. This was my season. The nadir of my existence, the darkest hour of my adult life, had just been given a new light in the form of a child, my child, Latoria’s child, our child conceived together. I was a man who sought redemption and she was a woman who sought me—an imperfect match, an unequaled yoke, tied together by fate. I accepted

the calling, I embraced the challenge, and I began to love the woman who gave me life. This is not to say that the following months were easy. We lived together, and that meant a constant barrage of questions and assumptions. She would occasionally go on a rant or throw a fit of rage. I was sincerely scared of her, and I often found myself walking on pins and needles trying not to upset her. For the most part, though, we were cordial. I made sure she went to work and to the doctor and had all she needed without stress. We functioned, in my mind, as parental partners. We were friends having a baby, with live-in benefits— although, we did not have a very robust sex life during her pregnancy. At this point, I had slowed down seeing other women in Decatur to avoid the drama, but Eileen and I had repaired our friendship and would sometimes sneak in a romantic tryst or two, for old times’ sake. Eileen was at my house one afternoon when Latoria came home. Being pregnant, Latoria was especially emotional, but she played nice in Eileen’s presence. Once Eileen left, she lost it. She pulled a knife out of the wood block in the kitchen and held it in the air, threatening to kill me. This escalation was what I’d been trying to avoid our entire relationship. By misrepresenting myself to this young and impressionable woman, she’d become attached and possessive in a way I never intended. I hated myself for not having been open and forthright from the start. I wished her mother hadn’t kicked her out of the house, but I had to deal with the situation as it was. Latoria was the mother of my child, and I had to make sure she was taken care of. Financially, this was difficult. I was very nervous and very broke throughout Latoria’s pregnancy. My concert promotion wasn’t making money and my best friend Terrance even had to pay my rent a couple of times. In fact, this was the first time I took out a payday loan, the beginning of a stressful cycle for me. I knew I had to have money for my daughter’s arrival. With a baby on the way, I became even more anxious to get back to work. She needed benefits and a stable life, and I knew I would give these to her. On May 1, 2007, I got the call. I was at my campus visit before being hired at Fresno State. Latoria’s mother was on the other end. “You are coming home

soon, right?” she asked. “You have a baby daughter, Heather Monique Bailey. Everyone’s doing just fine. They’re all waiting for the new daddy.” Purposed in fatherhood, I dragged myself out of Decatur and returned to teaching in late fall of 2007. I suppose in some way I needed an escape from Latoria, Eileen, and Delores, too—but most of all, from Decatur. It seemed my endings there were fraught with controversy and despair. But the birth of my daughter created newfound possibilities for a different sort of love.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Annette Let Me Eat Cake

In 2007, I took a yearlong position as a visiting professor at Fresno State University in California. It was a strange period of adjustment. I rented a small one-bedroom apartment not far from campus on Sussex Way near Blackstone Ave. I would quickly learn that Blackstone was known as “The Strip,” a lesson that came quite unexpectedly. One afternoon, I pulled into a gas station on Blackstone and noticed two women walking into the station’s convenience store. One was a short Latina sista with long curly black hair, and the one that caught my attention was a beautiful Black woman dressed in white shorts and a blue button-up blouse. I was in love at first sight. As I stood by my car pumping gas, I waited for her to exit the store so I could speak to her. We struck up a conversation and about two minutes into the discussion her friend pulled her away from me and began to walk down the street. Afraid I’d missed my opportunity to get her phone number, I quickly hung up the gas nozzle, drove half a block down Blackstone Ave, and pulled into a department store parking lot just ahead of them. As I was about to get out my car, the Latina woman looked at me and said, “Leave us alone.” I was shocked, first because I hadn’t even said anything to her, and second, I thought I’d been getting somewhere with her friend, Shay. I quickly asked, “Shay, can I at least get your number so we can continue our discussion?” Her friend pulled her closer and pivoted to cross the street as if they were in a hurry to get away from me. Shay turned her head and yelled, “I already have a daddy. Just leave us alone please.” Dazed, I stood at the door of my red Chevy and watched as they ran away from me as if they’d seen a ghost. I had been rejected before, but I had never experienced this sort of anxiety. As I climbed back into my car, a blue Cadillac suddenly pulled up next to me. The man in the driver’s seat glared at

me and hollered out the window, “I don’t want no trouble, big man, but this is my strip, and those are my girls. You need to push it further down The Strip.” The reality of the situation slapped me in the face. Here I was, a Ph.D., being mistaken for a pimp. How could anyone think I was a pimp? I didn’t even know pimping still existed. After that, I didn’t speak to a single woman I hadn’t met on campus for the entire time I was in Fresno. The year went fast, and as I sought to live closer to my daughter in the Midwest, I decided to accept a new position as the lead professor in Philosophy and Religion at Central State University. Beginning Central was bittersweet, as I was recruited by Dr. Toi CaldwellColbert, whom I knew from both Howard and the University of Illinois. But before I could make it to campus, Toi ed away, and it was too late to reclaim my position at Fresno State. My office at Central was a small, brick cubbyhole with no windows. Each day, I felt more and more engulfed by the diminutive office space and the various roles I had to play in my position. My colleagues were great to be around and wonderfully ive, and the students made campus life not just easy to be a part of but enthusiastic. But soon I began feeling that I could not be an effective scholar at Central State. Between the many committees I was on, teaching on two campuses, and the needs of students both in and outside of the classroom, I felt like I was spread too thin. Truth be told, I became a friend, brother, professor, and professional counselor to students at Central State—not to mention bail bondsman and court-appointed site for community service. Greene County Court would soon allow students to work with me instead of some jail time for small offenses. While I was grateful to stave off jail for these students, I was also a bit overwhelmed, and it began to take a toll on my spirit. Everything was happening to me at Central State, except I wasn’t writing or being professionally engaged. I saw my career slipping into a sinkhole and I was unhappy. I had frequent arguments with my dean and my chair, an actual argument with a student, and a near harassment case for patronizing a local strip club where a student was dancing. It was just too much to handle. As I sought an exit strategy, I happened to meet a wonderful woman name Lori Askeland at the Black Atlantic Conference, where we were both presenting, in spring of 2010. Lori, apparently impressed with me, informed me of an open position in the

philosophy department at Wittenberg University. Wittenberg University was just seventeen miles north of Central State University, but it was light-years ahead of my previous department. The philosophy department at Wittenberg embraced my academic acumen and unconventional pedagogical approach in the classroom. It was a powerful experience to be accepted for what I brought to the classroom and my students. My employment change made little difference in my three-hundred-mile trek every other week to visit my daughter in Decatur. But what did change was my deeper sense of loneliness. I had floundered without Delores, lost my footing, although I had finally found the right academic soil in which to flourish. That much felt good, but I was still akimbo, a man without a home or a family of my own. It was true—I had a daughter, but she and I were a part-time family, and I wanted more. I wanted to be grounded to another, partnered by love and a mutual sense of trust, and occasionally pampered. For three years I worked hard to establish myself as an award-winning professor and scholar. I dated very little during that time, and my loneliness grew to be overwhelming. I tried to shake it by burying myself in my work, focusing on my writing, teaching, and public speaking. I hoped that I could fill the void of my solitude with a sense of accomplishment and productivity. At the very least, I figured, staying busy would provide my mind with an adequate distraction. But at the end of the day, when I went to bed alone, nothing could make me forget how truly lonely I was. Social media seemed a good place to start. I had reconnected with former church friends from Chicago and Decatur, including a woman named Lori from my time as a church . She had a friend named Annette. Lori told me that she was a wonderful woman and the mother of two wonderful boys. She was now a single parent, as she’d recently left her man. She told me that Annette wanted a good man, a role model for her sons, and someone who was looking for permanence and stability. After seeing her pictures and profile on Facebook, I asked Lori to put in a good word for me. She was happy to oblige, and soon Annette and I began conversations on Facebook. In short order, we were talking on the phone endlessly, like teenagers back in high school.

A few weeks later, in May 2013, we met in person. Our first date was at the Outback Steakhouse, my favorite restaurant, and she was happy to oblige me; instead of sitting across the table from one another, she agreed to sit next to me in the booth. We laughed, sipping on peach sangria, telling each other our hopes and dreams for the future. That night, we rented a room at the Ramada Inn; we had talked about doing this before the meeting, agreeing that we would not have sex. We wanted to see what being in each other’s company would feel like. It was an opportunity to extend our date. We lay in bed in the low light, whispering, she in sweatpants and a T-shirt and I in similar nightwear. I knew she was that kind of wholesome woman I wanted. I was prepared to love her right then. From late June until August, if she wasn’t working and I wasn’t finishing the edits for my book, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, we were on the phone with each other, and would have been twenty-four hours a day, if possible. It was magical. We laughed and anticipated our lives together. We decided on a destination wedding, an elegant affair on a cruise ship. I even told some of my friends and family of our plans. “Ju, aren’t you jumping into this way too fast? I’m not saying she isn’t great, but you don’t know her. Not really, man. Take your time,” my best friend Terrence begged of me. “Terrence, bro. I know you always look out for me, but she’s the one. I just know it.” He gave me a look that spoke volumes. It was true, I had said the same thing about Delores, but being in love and staying in love were two different phenomenons. I had learned that through failure. I was determined to succeed this time and willing to put my feelings on the line. By August, merely three months after our first date, I moved out of my small bachelor apartment and rented a townhouse, just outside of Pittsburgh, PA, large enough for Annette and her boys, and with room for my daughter, Heather, when she visited. Annette packed up her things and her boys and moved into our new place. Like magic, she turned the empty rooms into a home with comfortable and cozy chairs, a couch that demanded to be stretched out on, and a dining room set with placemats and cloth napkins. Soon the walls were adorned with mirrors, the boys’ school pictures, and stickers that said, “Family, Love, Share” and

“Together We Make Family.” Annette was a beautiful woman who kept a clean and organized household. She liked to cook, and family meals were a priority. She was a great mom to her boys and I was sure she would love Heather as well. It seemed I had finally found the perfect woman, and I looked forward to the happy times we would share. We became relatively predictable in a way that smoothed out the rough edges of the harsher outside world. I took the kids to school most mornings on my way to work. On my days off, I stayed home to lie around with her, to talk, to laugh, to cook together, and make love. She didn’t work for the first five months that we lived together. I was okay with that because she had saved money, drew an income, and took care of the house. Every room of the house stayed spotlessly clean. Meals, no less than two per day, were always prepared, and I was content. The boys played basketball; her younger son went to the YMCA and her oldest boy played on his seventh-grade school team. Most Tuesdays and Saturdays we attended their games, cheering them on. Friday nights the kids went to a program sponsored by a local church that included fellowship, outings, and basketball from 5:30 until nearly10:30. Saturdays were often similar. Those were our date nights, and they were ever so important given that we both were away from our families and all we had was each other. Generally, we went out to dinner at one of our favorite seafood spots, where we were always met with a smile. We usually sat in a booth, snuggled on the same bench, sharing a pitcher of margaritas, buffalo shrimp, and catfish. People stopped by our table to say hello or simply smiled at us; it was apparent we were in love. I looked forward to these public nights with this beautiful woman. No matter how much she may have frustrated me during the week, being with her made me feel better about myself, about my failings and shortcomings. After all, Annette was my woman; she lived with me. We enjoyed dinner as a family, as well. When I wasn’t out of town promoting my books or at a speaking engagement, we gathered around the table together, though the boys rarely spoke; it seemed they were raised to be quiet while they ate and to socialize later. The first month, it was a bit awkward for me, being a talkative guy, but I chalked it up to Annette’s sons being uncomfortable around me and only used to their mom.

The boys never disrespected me as the man of the house. They were well behaved, respectful, and overall routinized young guys. This was part of Annette’s character; she was somewhat of a drill sergeant. It was always her way, with consequences for any insurrections. The boys knew it, and I was learning this, as well. They grew closer to me, still not too talkative except when it came to sports. They all adored LeBron James, while I was a Bulls fan. They loved the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, and the Dallas Cowboys, respectively. I differed, being a Bears fan all day long. When we watched sports, the mood of the house was fun. What I tried to model, and I think I did aptly, was how to be a responsible man. A man goes to work every day, pays the bills, helps out in the kitchen with the cooking and dishes, s the kids, works in the community, and is visible. At the end of the day, I knew, just as Annette and the boys did, that they had a man of the house, a man who was there for them. The boys and Annette were insular. They kept to themselves with not much of a social circle other than church. In fact, the boys played almost exclusively with each other, including when they played video games. They were fine being alone in the basement for hours on end. At times, when I returned from work, it seemed no one was home, but they were; Annette would be in bed and the boys in the basement, both in their private worlds. Sometimes, this stillness was soothing, but I often felt left out, alone in a house filled with strangers. This unusual dynamic bothered me and left me feeling hurt—as if I were no more than a roommate. In late October of 2013, I was teaching a night class at the university where I taught that year. The sun was setting as my class ended, so by the time I got home around 9:30, it was dark. The boys had a nine-o’clock bedtime—lights out, television off, full-on bedtime. When I opened the door, the whole house was middle-of-the-night dark. I fumbled around, kicking off my shoes just inside the door—Annette was a stickler for no shoes in the house—and carefully made my way to the light switch by the stairs. Flipping the switch, I tiptoed down the hall. Our bedroom door was closed, so I quietly opened it and saw Annette lying on the bed. I kissed her on the forehead, something I did in the morning and when I got home at night. She was already asleep. I turned on the light in the closet to quietly hang up my clothes. “Why you gotta cut on all the lights?” Annette grumbled.

I thought she was joking. I laughed. “Girl, I almost tripped up the stairs. I needed some light.” “Get you a mother f’in night-light, then.” Her voice had that edge, and I realized she wasn’t kidding—not in the least. I was dumbfounded, standing there with my eyebrows pinched, wanting to laugh as if it was a joke, but it wasn’t. Enough, I thought. I snapped around and turned on every light in the bedroom. “This is my house. You moved here, yes, but I’ll be damned if you gonna tell me to get a night-light when it’s my lights. I tried to be considerate and quiet, but damn, it ain’t even ten o’clock. You ain’t got nothing to do in the morning. You ain’t worked hard all day. You got nothing to be exhausted about. “Oh, me… I just got off work, dealing with the pressures of being a Black man at a White university, and now I get told, in my own house, to ‘get a mother f’ing night-light.’ This has to end today.” This wasn’t our first argument, but as far as I was concerned, it would be our last. I called her family and told them to come get this woman out of my house while she screamed at me. “How stupid do you look calling my mom and dad about me? What kind of man does that? They are my family, not yours. They always have my back.” I ignored her, went to bed, and left by six o’clock the next morning, before she and the boys were up. I had some last-minute edits to finish for my book. It was as good an excuse as any to get the hell away from her. I had seen my stepfather, Bennie Bailey, being what I had thought was castigated and humiliated in his home. I never saw him stand up for himself; and Cheryl, whom he married after he and my mother split up, never relented, always telling him he was worthless, no better than her cat. To be fair, It is entirely probable that my observations were a less than complete and accurate depiction of their relationship. Bennie’s daughter, my sister Bianca, grew up watching them interact, so her insight into their marriage is likely more reliable than mine. She views their relationship very differently; what I saw as berating and belittling was in her eyes just their way of joking. I know that now, but back then, I only knew what I saw—and what I saw was not what I wanted for myself. No way

was I going to follow in my stepdad’s footsteps. I would not be demeaned in my house. When I got home, Annette was in the kitchen making sesame turkey breast with soy and honey. It was one of my favorites, and so I thought…maybe she was trying to make it up to me. Maybe things between us would be okay. But she started right away. “I am not leaving, so don’t think you can throw me out. My kids are in school and you made me pack up and leave Decatur to come here and ain’t no way in hell Imma go back there, especially three months later.” I stood there, looking at her and imagining her with horns and a tail, asking myself, Why did I let myself rush into moving her into my home? Why did I allow myself to fall for the fantasy? I just wanted her to leave…but then again, I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to love her, or need her, or want her in any way, but it was too late. I did love her, and I needed her in my life. I wanted her every damn day—that was clear, and she knew that from the onset. I allowed the lie she told me every morning and night, and would continue to do so. I knew she didn’t really love me, no matter how many times she mouthed the words. I was about to tell her how pretty she looked when she handed me a bag. “Here,” she said. “I bought you three night-lights: one for the stairs, one for your closet, and one for the bathroom in the hallway. Plug them in and then you won’t have to worry about your big ass falling down.” “Thank you,” I said, but I wanted to say F— you. I wanted to tell her she was a fool for throwing away so much, but instead I nodded and gently put down the bag, changing the subject. Maybe I was the fool, and had been all along. The next night, when I got home from my Thursday night class, the night-lights were installed. I walked up the stairs and into the room illuminated by nightlights, though darkened with hateful intent. I didn’t kiss her that night. I took a shower, put on a T-shirt and boxers, lay down, and willed myself to sleep, wishing some other lovely and loving woman were there. I quickly realized that except her, no one had been beside me for the last six years.

I had a choice: make this work, or go another six years or longer before another beautiful, sexy woman who loved children and could cook and take care of a home would come along to replace her. I acknowledged this analysis was transactional, but maybe that was good enough for now. I promised myself I would not fall into the transient pattern my father had. I would try harder. If in six months our relationship remained contentious, then she would have to leave, or hell, I would leave; she would not have a choice but to go back to her momma. As I turned to gaze at the curves of her naked body in my bed, I thought, This can’t get any worse. I kissed her shoulder and down her back. I waited for her to awaken with pleasure, or maybe a slap. That night it was the pleasure. I used my lips to please her, never saying a word, just wanting her to scream in ecstasy so that just maybe the coming weekend would be a good one. This was my crutch, my ive-aggressive way of survival: stay quiet, don’t argue, and find those moments when she would submit to me in ion. I knew she would never bend to reason. I was unwilling to be vulnerable to her. That seemed too dangerous. In retrospect, our beginning seemed loving, and easy—maybe too easy. What I had not yet realized was that Annette was insecure. She worried and wondered why I still stayed in with my ex-wife and why I had phone calls and emails from my daughter’s mother. “But baby,” I said, “My ex and I—we’re friends, nothing more. She’s got a boyfriend. I’m happy for her, and she’s about giddy for you and me. You know?” She smirked. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s weird the way you all keep tabs on one another. Who does that?” “All kinds of people do that. Regardless of the past, we’re still friends. We moved away from being romantic partners, a long time ago. You have nothing to worry about. Not a thing. I’m here with you.” I pulled her into me, wrapping my arms around her, kissing her neck, her cheeks, her mouth. “Better?” I asked. “Yeah, Jay, I’m better.”

“Good.” “But you know, I don’t really get it. When my relationships are over, that’s it. I got nothing to do with them. Nothing.” “I guess that’s your way. But that doesn’t mean it has to be mine. You got to know, Annette, you’re my lady now, and I’m your man. That’s all.” She assured me that she understood, and I was relieved that we had put that behind us. I also made a note to keep reassuring her of my love, and my fidelity. After all, we were planning a wedding. We weren’t officially engaged, but we might as well have been. In the future we discussed, she would be my wife, and I was determined to make my marriage work this time. But this was not the end of the problem. We continued to argue over my ex-wife, who in my opinion had nothing to do with my relationship with Annette. I listened to her worries and did all I could to reassure her. “Baby, I tell you, again and again, my ex does not want me, we’re friends. Heck, we were each other’s best friends for a while. I tell you, it’s a gift from God that we are in this place. She didn’t know it, but as I watched her move up the corporate ladder, it made me proud. I knew that I had something to do with her confidence, her determination, and her love for the community. So yes, I cherish those periodic check-in phone calls. I know you don’t like it, Annette, but you got to trust me.” Regardless of all my assurances, Annette was intimidated by Delores. I knew Delores had a new man in her life, but I didn’t know his name or much about him, and I hadn’t asked. If Delores had wanted to share that with me, she would have. Decatur was a small city, and Annette was a lifelong native. It wasn’t long before she had her friends trolling and spying on Delores. Soon enough, they were able to find and her new man. Delores immediately called me. “Your girl called my guy and asked him if he knew that you and I communicated.” It was tragically sad for a grown woman to resort to junior high tactics, looking for nonexistent conflict to create drama. The three of us, Delores, her new man, and I, laughed out loud at Annette’s foolishness. Delores explained to her boyfriend that I was and always would be

important to her. She never hid conversations with me from him. The truth was we were over and didn’t want each other romantically. In fact, her boyfriend responded to Annette with Delores’s blessing, explaining that I was not a threat to their relationship and she shouldn’t see Delores as a threat, either. He knew all about Delores and my periodic talks, and he trusted his lady. I hoped this was the end of the problem, but of course, there was more. Annette felt that my daughter’s mother used me. She was correct, but what could I do? I had to take her calls, some of which had nothing to do with my daughter. She talked about her family, church, and her relationships because I was her friend, and I understood and welcomed her most confused and unhappy calls. They were conversations with a trusted sounding board, someone who would just sit and listen. They were never about her and me. Still, they troubled Annette. “Every time that Latoria calls, your mood changes and I have to deal with you and all that sad shit. You need to tell her to get another friend.” She was right to some extent, but I couldn’t cut Latoria off. I owed her. She was there for me when everybody left my side. She was my daughter’s mother. She had carried my baby and was responsible for raising my daughter. I continued to try to have the same conversations with Annette about loyalties, boundaries, and respecting each other’s differences, but her response was always the same: “I don’t go backward. Once we break up, we break up.” That logic made some sense, but I didn’t think it worked for people who, aside from being lovers, were friends at the core. What was clear was that she was never friends with her exes. They did not have a bond that outlasted lust, desire, and romance. To me, this meant they had not enriched each other or experienced events that were solidifying and deeply meaningful. Her past relationships were easily eradicated from her heart. Either that or she had learned to cut off her tenderness in favor of a brittle wall of protection. Of course, it was possible I was reading too much into her decision to not stay friends with her exes, and all she wanted was for me to respect her choice without judging her for it. Still, I couldn’t get past the fact that I had not broken her trend; we were not deep and trusting friends as well as lovers, and that was a deal breaker. I knew then that I could not marry Annette, and although neither of

us spoke of this, it hung in the air like a sour note. In December 2013 as I was driving west on I-74 to Decatur, IL to be with my daughter for Christmas, Annette and I talked on the phone about our relationship. I knew I had to stop the drama and let her know that these kinds of behaviors were not what I wanted in a wife. I finally said it: “I am sure that I will not ask you to marry me, Annette.” Her response was astounding. “I need to ask you something,” she said. “Are you gay?” Her question didn’t upset me. I was more curious than insulted; what drew her to that question? Was it that I considered myself an ally to my LGBTQ brothers and sisters? Was it my propensity to cry when I was upset or completely happy? I asked, “Why would you ask me that, Annette?” She quickly retorted, “Well, if you wasn’t, the first thing that should have come out of your mouth was an emphatic ‘No!’” I laughed and said, “Something is terribly wrong with you, woman.” “No, Julius, there is something wrong with you! How is it that you lie in bed next to my naked body every night for two months and don’t have sex with me? I know I look good. My body is tight. I smell sweet and stay clean, and every night all you do is lie there with your fat arms around me saying all kind of sweet shit, but you won’t do anything. What happened to the man you were in July and August? That man would handle my body as he wanted it, ired it, but now you act like you’re not attracted to me. You must be gay; cause ain’t no straight man gonna do this.” I wanted less drama and trouble, so I said to her, “Well, you’re right. Something may be wrong with me. You are also correct in that you are a sexy and very attractive woman. But you are wrong to surmise that the reason I don’t make love to you is that I am gay. “No, Annette, I’m not the man for you. That you look at our relationship and deflect to me…that is why we can’t be together. You never take inventory of yourself or your attitude. Sex to me is about intimacy, closeness, oneness. The only thing you’re worried about is getting screwed; you’re not concerned about keeping me in your life. Don’t think those nights I go down on you to please you

that I don’t want you. When you feel me or see me erect, don’t you think that I want you?” “Yeah, I see, but all you want is oral sex in return. I mean it’s not like you even want “this good stuff,” like you scared of it. You weren’t scared that day at the Ramada. You weren’t scared that day at the Howard Johnson in Chicago. You weren’t scared that first night I moved here with you, but now—” I interrupted her. “I’m not scared of sex, girl. I’m just afraid of getting you pregnant. The last time I did this with so much carelessness, my daughter was born. I do not want any more children, especially out of wedlock. I would be crazy as hell to get you pregnant. You are mean as hell now. How mean would you be during pregnancy, woman? Let’s keep it real; it wasn’t your looks that prevented your children’s fathers from staying with you.” I immediately regretted what I had said. I knew I had messed up and was about to hear her wrath, but I didn’t have to keep arguing with her. So I hung up—fully expecting her to call me back, knowing I would not answer. I envisioned her calling over and over, and my pressing ignore on my cell phone, but a minute went by, five minutes, and then thirty with no returned call. Annette was done with me, and it had happened in what may have been a phone call to repair our relationship with sex, that “comeback,” as many call it. She was right about the change in my behavior; ever since the night-light incident, I was disinterested in sex with this woman. I told her the bed made too much noise, the walls were thin, and I didn’t want the neighbors to know my name intimately. I hadn’t lied about being afraid of getting Annette pregnant. I knew we were not going to last, and I also knew that she unilaterally dismissed all her exes and neither communicated nor cooperated with her sons’ fathers. It was clear that if we had a child and failed as a couple, she would do all she could to block my involvement as a co-parent. The cure for that was not birth control; it was abstinence. But that wasn’t the whole truth about why I was avoiding sex. Annette had shown her hard-hearted side. Regardless of her physical beauty, meanness became what radiated from her. I felt little connection to her. It was difficult and disheartening to have sex just because she was there, and I had come to realize

that I would never trust her with my true self. I had also been seeing another woman—Michelle, whom I’d known for years and had never really stopped seeing—so my needs were being satisfied elsewhere. But I couldn’t tell Annette any of that. She began using birth control, thinking that would solve my problem. Now I was more boxed in. Did the ends justify the means for me to conveniently use her body in this feral manner just to satiate lust? This was the question with which I struggled, seeing people “as ends in themselves,” to quote the philosopher Immanuel Kant. I knew I would likely not marry this woman, but she was here every day under the auspice of family, stability, and marriage. I had sex with her for convenience, not for love. Each time I entered this woman part of me was released. It neither created life within her nor sustained my life outside of her. It wasn’t enough, and it certainly wasn’t pleasing to God.

The beginning of 2014 brought a new opportunity and a happier me. In January, Latoria asked if I wanted my daughter to live with Annette and me for a while. I was so excited and immediately thought, This is something that might bring me and Annette closer together. Maybe she would stop seeing me as some punk, afraid to fight with my daughter’s mom for what was right, namely her being with me. Annette would be a perfect stepmom, both disciplinarian and girlie girl with Heather. There would be rules, responsibilities, and plenty of perks for my then six-year-old. We rearranged the townhome, gave her the room across the hall from ours, moved my office, and converted that space into a bedroom for her youngest son. We enrolled her in the same elementary school as Annette’s then nine-year-old son, and for a month I was the happiest man in the world. I sensed that Annette was happier because I was happy. My daughter loved Annette. “She’s a girlie girl just like me!” Heather said. She was right. Annette liked to dress up, go shopping, paint nails, and do hair — all in Heather’s category of fun. That was a big help, but like all blended families, there were bumps along the way. The structure was initially overbearing for Heather: breakfast at 7:15, dinner at 5 p.m., a bath by 8:30 or 9 p.m., immediately followed by bedtime. Annette had raised her boys on this schedule and Heather was not going to be treated differently. But my girl Heather liked to buck the system. She tried to extend the times and sleep in bed with us, which Annette didn’t go for at all. I typically acquiesced by lying with her in her room or allowing her to use her tablet until she fell asleep. These concessions upset Annette. She needed me to be tougher and consistent. She needed me to unite with her as a co-parent, but I just wanted my daughter to be happy and would do whatever it took, at least for the time being. Eventually, Heather would learn the ways of our household. She needed some time to adjust. Annette wasn’t happy about a compromise, but I stood my ground on this one. Although we had different tensions now, we laughed more, talked more, but the elephant in the room of me not wanting to marry her loomed ominous. She exacted her form of ive-aggressive revenge.

My new books, Philosophy and Hip-Hop and The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, came out while we were living together. She participated in no celebrations with me, just a cold sort of congrats. In February, I gave the city of Springfield, Ohio’s Black History Month address. I asked her to come and be with me to one of my speeches. As I sat on the dais and then stood at the podium, I scanned the crowd all night long looking for her, but she never showed. She never came to campus to hear me lecture, never brought her boys to visit and experience a college classroom. She mostly hid away from family, rarely visited her former city, and didn’t call home much. She was with me daily but always kept to herself. I felt alone while living with all I claimed I ever wanted: a gorgeous woman who loved children and could cook well. Still, I stayed, even through the arguing and silent treatment with which she punished me. I was comfortable with the illusion of a home with a wife, or at least a play wife, kids, dinners together, weekend activities, a warm body in bed with me, someone to watch favorite television shows with, and a built-in dinner date. On paper, I had it all, and I wasn’t ready to give it up just yet.

The spring of 2014 was frightful. My daughter returned to her mother’s home in Decatur, and Annette moved into Heather’s room. There was no particular climactic dispute in which Annette declared her separation from me; it simply and organically happened. When she moved out of our room, I knew then all physicality was over. It was a cold period. We began to argue about money, about food—she had stopped cooking for me, and now meals were only for her and her boys. We lived as roommates, each of us counting down to the end of May when she would move out. I wanted our relationship to be over as soon as possible now that she had laid down the gauntlet. But April and May dragged on, each of us trying to avoid the other and the disappointment we felt. She began taking down pictures and decorations from the walls in early May. The “Family, Love, Share” and “Together We Make Family” stickers were the first to go, followed by the candles and mirrors, all of which Annette carefully wrapped and boxed. It took her thirty days to pack up the stuff that took her three days to unpack when she moved in. She was methodical, intentional; some might even say trifling. For me, watching this process was gut-wrenching. Eventually I had to leave. Luckily, I had a speaking engagement at Dominican University in Chicago the last week of May, so I fabricated a story about a second engagement and left six days earlier. I couldn’t take the drama, the eggshell walking, the edgy silence. I left on a school day. She was on a graveyard shift gig, and so I made sure the boys were up and following their routine. She usually was home by 7:20, when I was walking out the door, though on this morning, I met her in the garage. I purposely packed my car around the same time she got home, hoping to force a private conversation. We hadn’t talked in months; we had become strangers living separate lives in the same house. She pulled in—probably muttering to herself, “Damn, he wants to talk!” She got out of her car and didn’t try to avoid me. “Well, I’m leaving today, and when I return, I expect you won’t be here.” “Yep,” she said. I reached out for her hand, saying, “Let’s at least say goodbye.” She reluctantly and rather lifelessly placed her hands into mine.

“I want you to know that you are loved, and I am sorry I couldn’t be the man you needed. You are a gorgeous woman, a wonderful parent, and you were so kind to Heather. We will miss you. I will miss you. But I also know you. This is it, isn’t it? You won’t talk to me ever again, will you?” She looked at me, almost unaffected. “I don’t know, probably not. You know once it’s over for me, it’s over.” “I know, but hopefully you can tap into the God in you and let it commune with the God in me, for I never hurt you, never disrespected you, and tried to be the best I could.” I hugged her, kissed her on the forehead, and watched her leave the garage and head into the townhouse. I walked toward my car, fighting back the tears—not tears of missing Annette, but sincere tears of what we could have had together: stability, marriage, a family, and a home filled with people who loved each other. I knew it would be a long time before I had that again. As I returned from Dominican University after my speaking engagement, the drive back was eerie. I expected the house to be trashed with vulgar names written across the walls and my bed slashed. I slipped the key into the door, holding my breath, expecting the worst. The house was still and quiet as I opened the door. The living room was empty except for my flat-screen TV on the dark brown wood stand. The dining room still had the six-seat marble dining room set I bought in August, but the mirror that witnessed our family times was gone. I sat in the chair, teary, envisioning Annette sitting next to me and the boys downstairs roughhousing with a Nerf basketball hoop. She didn’t tear up a thing; it was almost as if she was never there in the first place. This was what I wanted, right? For her to leave, the same way I wanted Delores to leave? At that moment, my answer was, No! I glanced up at the cream-colored walls and noticed a vinyl decal Annette had left behind. It read, “Family: where life begins and love never ends.” She had left it for me to read, for me to digest. I had let my chance of a family pack up a U-Haul and drive away. It would have been easier if she had trashed the house. I jumped up and violently ripped the decal off the wall, with no concern for the paint job. I tried to tear the words apart, but the vinyl letters proved too tough. I

took the decal to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of scissors, slashing the letters into indecipherable confetti pieces that fell to the floor like leaves in autumn. Each cut brought more tears as I sat on the floor amid the ruin, the pieces that could have spelled out, Here ends love. I moved out of the townhouse within days, breaking the lease. I took the financial hit because I couldn’t bear another night there alone, constantly reminded of all that I’d lost. I moved back to the apartment complex where I’d lived before I met Annette, knowing my relationship with her was another failed attempt at love.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Michelle’s Way or Else

Michelle was a girl I met right after I moved to Dayton, Ohio in June 2008, the year after my daughter was born and five years before my relationship with Annette. The cable wasn’t hooked up yet in my new place, which I’d only been in for three days, and the NBA finals were playing: Lakers versus the Celtics. Though a Bulls fan, I wanted the Black coach, Doc Rivers, to win. I didn’t know the city well enough yet, so I asked my neighbor for a recommendation, someplace close so I wouldn’t get lost. “Go on down to ‘The Coast.’ You’ll find the Fox2 Club. Nice place,” he said. Being an average South Side Chicago boy, I asked, “Sir, ‘The Coast?’ I want to watch the game, kick it some, not drink wine and spirits.” He laughed and said, “Naw man, it’s a local bar with just average folk in there.” I found the bar on “The Coast” and drove by the next day just to get to know the area. By this time I had lived in so many cities: Chicago and one of its suburbs, Calumet City; Washington, DC; London; and Boston. There was Champaign, Illinois; Decatur; Fresno; and now Dayton, Ohio. I had learned to get lost just to find my way home and without a GPS system. It was a June afternoon. As I drove down “The Coast,” known formally as James H. McGee Boulevard, I noticed this brown-skinned, slender girl wearing a russet sundress, tan sandals, and a yellow ribbon in her hair. She had a switch in her walk, reminiscent of the left to right swoop of girls in elementary school playing double Dutch. She looked to be about one hundred fifteen pounds compared to my three hundred fifty-four pounds of prime USDA girth. I drove closer to get a better look. She was walking in the opposite direction, and what I saw took me back, way back, to plaid Catholic school uniforms and puberty. I knew she was a grown woman; this was no young girl I was pathetically ogling. This was a

woman, a sexy, secure woman on a mission. I drove two blocks up and turned around to catch her walking and maybe get a hello. I stopped the car. I wasn’t driving anything fancy at the time, just a red Chevy Cobalt that was great on gas mileage. I figured if I could pull her number in a Cobalt, I had a great chance of being with this doll of a girl. Funnily enough, I later discovered her Facebook name was Dollface. “Hi, there,” I said. “I just had to pull over and say hello to a sexy sista like you.” She smiled and we got to talking, hitting it off right away. I asked where she was headed and she told me she was on her way to her mom’s house to pick up her kids. “How many children do you have?” I asked. “Oh, just two, but I guess that’s enough, huh?” “I guess,” I laughed. “If you want a ride, I’ll give you one.” “Thanks, but I like to walk, but I’ll take your number. Maybe we could talk sometime.” I was glad she refused my offer. She was careful and smart, and I liked that immediately. I wrote my phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. She thanked me and went on her way. As I watched her sashay down the sidewalk, I wondered if I would ever hear from her. I had been there hundreds of times before, handing out my number and waiting for the call that never came. But Michelle didn’t leave me waiting; she called three hours later and asked, “Hey, what are you doing?” “Not a thing,” I replied. “Just kind of bored, mostly because I’m new here and don’t know a soul.” “You want to come get me and we can hang out?” “Sure.” The second I hung up, I was dancing and chest bumping, proud that I was about

to go out with this sexy little mama. As a fat man, the petite female body type was one of my particular favorites—albeit, the optics were a little off-putting, like King Kong and Jane, Sherman Klump and Carla Purty…me and Michelle. Right away I began daydreaming about having sex with Michelle. I had never had sex with a woman as dainty as she was, though I dreamed about it, envisioning several women I’d known in the throes of my girth. Throughout my lifetime, I fantasized about a host of them: Shandrika, Nicole, Charise, Carmen, and Danielle. They were visions, my mental utopia. In many respects, I wanted to hold them, caress them, love them, but not in a rough sexual way. I wanted to cherish them, protect them from the world of vulture-like men who would misuse their bodies. I wanted to preserve them, their dignity, and their fears and become their comforter, as the R & B group Shai sung about in the ‘90s. On our first date, we went to a local restaurant and had drinks and finger food and then went to a club for an evening of dancing, though mostly we laughed and laughed. For our next date, she came to my place for dinner, and she was dessert served in my bed. My fantasy girl moved into reality and another barrier was broken. Most importantly, she was kind to me and asked me questions. She didn’t want to corral me or shine the light of scrutiny on what our relationship meant or where it was going. She was my reprieve, and I assumed I was her safe place as well. I saw Michelle fairly often; I trusted her with my body, and she understood my fears and my desires. Michelle made me feel free, although it always cost me something…a little cash, a cell phone, shoes for her or the kids, Christmas gifts for all of them, and so on. But money was a small price for emotional emancipation—what I thought and hoped would be my reward with Annette for the long term. I got too much in my head with Annette, worried about everything and never allowed myself just to be. Haunted by both societal pressures and personal demons, I thought, What if I can’t or don’t please her? It was impossible to revert to those early moments of our sexual experiences. They ed in just five short months. But she kept trying. Sometimes she climbed on top and took control. I only slightly resisted, and when I felt like it was enough, I would still my body and start singing gospel songs: Roll Me Through the Rushes or So

Good. Soon enough everything stilled and relaxed. When it came to self-control, the question was not why but how? How was I not to take advantage of this live-in relationship and indulge in all the sex we wanted? So many people do it just for sport. I was torn, knowing in my head all the reasons we should limit our physical relationship but also wanting to give in to my body’s wants and needs. I was constantly overthinking this balance, and it began to weigh me down, as did Annette’s frustration with me for being this way. I often loathed myself and consequently felt incapable and unqualified for love. When I left my marriage six years earlier, I told my ex-wife that she would find love and remarry before I would. I wasn’t being ive-aggressive; I was stating the level of optimism I had in my ability to sustain a relationship. I did not believe then that I was worthy or deserving of real love. It was clear that I couldn’t hold onto anyone in a continued relationship, or think that anyone would want to hold onto me. I wondered if I was capable of finding someone who could love me back wholeheartedly and unconditionally. It had become the pattern all my life. I coped with Annette leaving as best as I could with a mixture of emptiness and relief. In retrospect, though I felt the issues we disagreed on, like spoiling my daughter and the amount of communication between my exes and me, were trivial and mundane, apparently they affected Annette. I wondered if maybe we would have made it if I had respected her wishes and stopped communicating with these other women, women who were friends. But there were other issues that affected me, though honestly I didn’t speak up, and I should have; chief among them was her lack of for me as a professor, a writer, a public figure, and a man. I reached out to friends, went out with the guys, and counseled with my dear friend Chinaza via phone calls, Skype, and emails. If it weren’t for those conversations and Chinaza’s valiant attempts to help me, I would not have eventually sought counseling and engaged in a period of honesty and selfreflection. “Tell me about Annette,” Chinaza said on a late-night Skype call. “There’s nothing to tell, really. We just went our separate ways. I couldn’t force

her to stay; we were on a specific path that she no longer wanted. I had to respect that, and I would want the same. That is, if I didn’t want to live in a certain way, I needed my decisions to be understood. “Understanding does not mean approving or taking part in my actions. It just means understanding. In the end, I hoped we accomplished that kind of deal, that we appreciated each other’s position and views. She wasn’t often good to me, but yeah, maybe she was good for me—like a drill sergeant. She whipped me into emotional shape. I was unhealthy with my ex-wife, unhealthy with my daughter’s mom, unhealthy with myself.” I laughed. “She even had me eating spinach salads on a daily basis. Yeah, she was good for me, but…” “Don’t you feel sorry, even a little bit?” “Sorry? Not really. Disappointed? Definitely. Ultimately, I think Annette and I could have made it. She had been making one final effort, one last attempt to reach out and bridge the distance we’d let grow between us. Even then, I put up an emotional wall. I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t let her in. I was afraid of feeling vulnerable, and that meant withholding my trust, my emotions, and even my fidelity. I already felt a bit like an outsider in my own home, a loner living with someone else’s family. She just had no mirror to see herself, and I have no tolerance for mean-ass people—which is why I love you, Chinaza. You have never been mean to me. Other than it was downright cruel that you never let me make love to you back at Howard. That was just onerous, but you have loved me through my life and my mistakes.” “You weren’t ready then, boy,” she chided. “You thought you were a playa, and though I was intrigued by you, I knew it wouldn’t work at that time. I did enjoy our kisses though.” “Kiss me now, come on—a big ole buss right over the phone,” I laughed. She laughed, too. “You are incorrigible, Julius, not to mention that you digress. You didn’t call to play kissy-face through Skype. Back to your exes, you already said that you have regrets about your ex-wife. What are those regrets?” “Well… I often wonder if my life might be more fulfilled if we had stayed together and fought to overcome the darkness. If we had stood united in Christ, and let Christ stand in us… Sacrificing for the unity in Christ is a difficult task. It is a heavy cross to bear, but I always felt that sharing the weight of the burden

was the right way to go. Delores was not willing to share the weight. Maybe she was too young, too inexperienced, and less worldly. That was my fault; I married a woman in the making, not a woman more fully formed. I was alone before she left and alone after she left. The lonesome traveler with no friends on the road is a romantic image, but how practical is it?” “There you go again with a blues analogy!” she laughed. “Julius, love…you’ve kind of been asking for it. Hellhounds are on your tail. Stop wasting your life. It will flicker by you in a second. Believe me, one day it will be too late to change some things. Simply said, some things you only do when you are young. And you are still young enough to find a right woman and start a family.” I smiled and channeled the Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins: “Oh, I know God always carries hope, faith, and love. I am just not sure that my views on those matters are the same as God’s, or even yours, Chinaza. If love is freedom, let me love the way I want to! If hope should lead your heart, let me hope the way I hope. If faith is the eye of the soul, let me see the world the way I see it. Isn’t that what we are made for—to be unique in every way as God’s creatures, images taken from His very dreams?” She shot back, “Even if the star of your hope has led you to chicks and strip clubs, and not to Bethlehem?” “In the words of your homeboy Wale, ‘Hood girls want a smart dude, college girls want a thug.’ I can’t help it! Is that my fault? Should not angels know their jobs?” Chinaza chuckled. “I forgot I’m talkin’ to one of the original hip-hop professors. How is it not your fault, Dr. Bailey? Or should I call you Dr. Silk da Shocker? I need you to take some responsibility for your choices, not of your fetishes or wanton and dangerous desires.” “First of all, hood girls need love too, and it ain’t my fault I got a hood-chick fetish like Dorrough,” I laughed. “You the rapper Dorrough? ‘Get Big’ or ‘Ice Cream Paint Job’? But for real, you say I am not concrete in my statements and understanding of my situation? Oh, I do feel I am! I am in a constant search for a salvation on this Earth! For a concrete and specific salvation…for hands and eyes of a concrete angel, of a concrete savior, of the one who can stand in front of me, one I can touch, feel, and taste, and love the

way my love is designed! And if the star of my hope is pointing to some striptease bar or club, I will follow! Should I forsake the urges of my heart? Should I cut the connection from the deepest wells of my living? And If I were to find my salvation in the arms of a stripper, should I reject it? Is that what you are telling me, Chinaza? It would be just like refusing to live! I might as well die right now; it would be a lesser punishment to me not to spend the days on this Earth without fighting and loving.” “I was joking about the strip club, Professor Bailey.” She sighed. “I feel like I am seated in one of your heady classes!” “That’s what I love about you and me. There are few women with whom I share the intellectual and the sexual—or even want to.” Chinaza laughed. “Maybe someday.” She sighed again. I wondered, did she envision being with me romantically, sexually? She went on, “You told me you stopped going to them. Is that still the case or have you returned to ‘the garden?’” “One must tend to one’s garden, but no, I haven’t stepped foot in a strip club in three years, not since 2011. I’m proud of that. Also, me at a bar? That is oh so like a scene from a Eugene O’Neill play. I am not a bar guy. I mean, I love me some Buffalo Wild Wings with my family there, the occasional drunk White-girl kiss, a nice strong island iced tea, and a double shot of Hennessy, but only once a week. My salvation is Michelle. She’s my garden and balm.” After Annette had moved out, I continued to see Michelle at least every other week. Our relationship was quite unconventional—I was never her man; she was never my girl. Sometimes it felt like we were a real couple, but in truth, I was her trick, her john, and to me in intimate moments, she was my lady. We had sex in a plethora of places: a park, the shower, in a parking lot, at the car wash, and in a movie theater. I sought her out whenever I was hurt or just in a mood. She was my postsurgical caretaker; I sought her affection with stitches on my body fresh from surgery, another time immediately after leaving the dentist, still drugged from a procedure.

We not only had sex, but we also had fun—nights out at dance clubs, trips out of town, music concerts, breakfast at our favorite restaurant, Cracker Barrel, drinks at a Mexican spot, and even bingo. We laughed, cried, screamed, and made love countless times over the years. Of course there was a codicil to this idyllic relationship; in nearly eight years, she paid for only one of our dates—a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s. The arrangement was that she would take care of me, and I would do things for her. At first, it was just something to eat or drink and it felt like a normal date with mutual physical desires met. Then it turned into a “couple dollars” here, a “few bucks” there… Still, I didn’t consider these anything but generous gestures, and she rarely asked for much. But then came her children’s birthdays, Christmas, the birth of a third child and the need for baby items, phone bills, and electric bills, each closely associated with our physical time together. This lasted for five years, and I paid each time I saw her, less so monetarily, but heavily with my dignity. I used to cheat the system, if you will. I would give her extra to last a few days so that we could hook up another day during the week without financial exchange. I loved those days; they felt easier, like pre-paid shopping; not having to worry about payment, I could just enjoy the ease of a pleasurable experience. Then our first fight occurred. Michelle stole a check from me and gave it to her real boyfriend, who cashed it. I sat in the detective’s office on the second day of his investigation, trying to explain to him that, yes, I had given her more than five hundred dollars in cash over the years I had known her, but this was different. If she had cashed the check herself and used the money for her and her kids…well, that would have been one thing. I still would not have been too pleased, but it wouldn’t have been as bad as stealing my check and giving it to another guy to cash. Her other guy benefitted from me! The detective sat there with a quizzical look on his face. “So, Julius,” he asked, “have you ever paid Michelle for sex?” I was floored. I began to stutter and fumble around the question. “You see, what happened was…” I was getting nowhere, so I tried to turn the tables, asking, “Have you ever bought dinners, paid a bill or two, dropped a pretty lady at the hair salon with some bills pressed into her hand, or simply given her a couple of twenties to put in her pocket? Maybe as a handsome officer, you never had to do

these things, but I have done them over and over.” The officer looked at me and said, “She’s twenty-nine and you’re what, forty? She’s young and sexy, and let’s be honest, you are a middle-aged, overweight man paying for sex. Let’s call it what it is…” Call it what it is? I was incredulous at his implications. Michelle and I were friends; we had a five-year relationship, albeit not a typical one. I knew her family; I was cool with her kids… He gently said, “Sir, I need you to come clean here. She told us, you were a date, a john, and you gave her the check for sex.” I jumped up. “I ain’t never been no john to her, sir! You got me messed up! I am a Ph.D. I was married to a gorgeous woman. I date beautiful women. I don’t need to pay no thieving, cheating woman five hundred dollars for sex.” What I didn’t say was, here we go again, somebody putting me down for my weight, my race, assuming I’m not educated or informed, or believing that some young, beautiful woman could not love or even care for me. “Sit down, Julius,” he encouraged with a kindhearted voice. “So let me understand…your anger is over the amount, but you agree, you have paid her before?” At that point, it hit me like a brick. She stole from me as if I was just a trick, and she gave the check to a man who likely made her do it, a man who was essentially her pimp. I had been a mark for nearly five years, giving little by little, until this moment, in this interview room, where she took so much more— she took my pride, no easy wound. It cut me, having to own up to this ugly truth in front of a police officer, who nailed it in two and a half seconds. Five weeks ed and no Michelle. I was moving on without her. She blocked me on Facebook, wouldn’t answer my calls. I started having withdrawal. I missed her…I missed her dearly. Finally, she called and asked, “Can we talk…please?” I played hard. “Hell no!” I said. I wasn’t even mad about the money; I got that back within a week or so. I was mad because what she did was a mirror to the truth; all I was to her was a john! Still, she was the only woman right then with

whom I had a relationship, or even a chance. Other than being with her, my days were filled with teaching, writing, speaking to audiences, and talking to God. All of that was significant, but also routine. In matters of the heart, Michelle was my only stability. Of course I agreed to meet with her. She cried. I was quiet, stoic. She explained and I listened to the plight of her court date. “I can’t go to jail, Julius. I have already been there.” I ed her telling me over dinner one evening that five years before we met, she was picked up on an outstanding warrant—the original charges over a street fight she was involved in, and she served time. If she ended up back in jail, of course I would go down there to put some money on her books so she could at least call me so that I could hear her voice, and so I would know that she was okay. But I didn’t get caught up in a whole lot of sympathy for her. I pretty much figured this was going to be my last time seeing her or speaking to her. It was my swan song, my one last cry. I would leave this chick alone to get my mind right. My rigid exterior lasted about an hour. Then I asked her, “One last drink?” She obliged, so we went to get some Long Islands and sat back in the car. She looked at me with those doe eyes. “I love you, Ju,” she said. It was then that I cried—not because I believed her, but because I wanted to believe that just maybe she did love me, that someone could truly love me. The real question was, would someone someday love me for real? Being with Michelle may have assuaged my sexual desires, but my heart still longed for stability. It seemed I had reverted to hiding myself in my work and engaging in meaningless transactional relationships so that I could forget that I was lonely. I wrote more, I catapulted myself in social justice campaigns— anything to push back the reality that I was a forty-year-old lonely man in search of someone to hold onto, and someone who would hold onto me. Michelle had become my pharmakon: disease and cure.

It was one in the morning; I couldn’t sleep. I had been tormented all day about spiritual matters and earthly ones, too. At these times, I sometimes called my sister Lisa, the prophetess, when I wanted the raw truth; she knew me too well and always saw right through my hokum. Other times I went to the altar at altar call as Chinaza often advised. “Bring your burdens to the altar and leave them there,” she’d say. I appreciated altar calls at churches where people weren’t browbeaten to step up. The preacher might say, “If anything pressing is on your heart this morning, or if there is someone you want to stand in the gap for, come on down.” If few were moved to stand at the altar, five minutes later the invite seemed more like a demand. “If anyone needs God to do anything for them, come on down!” It went from upper-level prayer time to general enrollment prayer. The entire altar filled with folk; some were serious about their supplications, while others just needed a man, or needed fifty dollars, or were sorry about whom they slept with last night, or whom they wanted to sleep with tonight. There was no supplication for redemption, just a ritualistic gathering in the front so that the deacons and other preachers on the pulpit had something to do. But tonight I needed serious intervention, some deep existential wrestling, so I called upon my friend, my love, the teacher of spiritual matters. I texted Chinaza, “You awake? I can’t sleep. Need my spiritual boo, but don’t want to waste your sleep or your time.” She texted back, “You see, Julius, my time is just as limited as yours. We all have places to go and people to see. But I will talk to you now and whenever you need me. Why is that so difficult to understand? I love you. I need you to FaceTime me, though. I want to see what lies deep inside of you, Julius. I always tell you that.” I connected to her on a video call and immediately her beautiful face popped up on my screen. “Hey Julius.” Chinaza smiled. “You look so handsome, baby, but it’s clear you are heavy in spirit. Every single day I look into people’s eyes all the time, but how often do we truly try to explore the hidden caves underneath? I believe that

many answers are waiting for us there. We need to have a certain amount of bravery to descend into our personal hades. Julius, you don’t mind going into those depths, and that is why I love you and learn from you, my beloved.” “So you want us to stare at each other, Chinaza?” I asked, chiding just a little bit. “If that is what it takes, we could stare all night long. I might even enjoy the closeness, but not the competition. Life is no staring competition, you know?” “Sometimes it sure feels so,” I said. “Life is always a battle of two warring souls, one trying to gain recognition from the other. One seeking solace, the other seeking…well…who knows?” “I hear you. Was it that way with your ex-wife or the girl you recently broke up with? Annette, I think was her name?” “Oh girl, there you go… It is way too late to be revisiting them at this hour. I am here with you, on your FaceTime, right? I am looking at the God in you, the God who crafted those beautiful full lips of yours. Oh, the memories…” “You speak of me as though I am dead. I am still here, Julius, fully human, wanting and in need, just as you are. I, too, am a sexual being. I don’t want your pedestal, the height to which you elevate some of your women. Do you understand? You are the one who runs from me once we start to get close again —” “It’s late,” I interrupted, “and I need to focus. If I get caught up in you here in the middle of the night, lying in my bed, I cannot assure you that I will be a good boy. And as you say, you have a busy schedule tomorrow. No time to lose. Yes, we could stare into each other’s eyes for a day or two and eventually one of us would blink. But my views have changed. I no longer regard life solely as a competition. I know I am often sarcastic, and my conclusions often seem selfrevealing; still, I assure you that these things have more complexity. I am more in transition, learning to accept my reality—not yet sure if that’s a good thing or not. But my inner struggle is becoming too much of a burden. I just want all of it to stop. Acceptance is the best thing I have come up with for now. Don’t get me wrong, all that bleeding and fighting inside is still on, I am just contemplating a possible solution.” “Hmm…” Chinaza took a deep breath.

“You know, when you said acceptance and coming to with your reality, I started hearing blues in my head. Old-time blues, the ones they played before World War II. Are you a blues man, Julius?” Chinaza raised her eyebrows in expectation of an answer. “What a strange question!” I remarked, genuinely surprised. “Strange question for a baffling man,” she quipped. “Well, you are a blues man to me, just no guitar. I you walking around The Towers in DC singing Bobby Womack and B.B. King. You run around with a hole in your soul, trying to fill it with all sorts of nasty things. I bet you even sing about Jesus sometimes. You call the sweet name of the Lord, but most of the time it’s about women and liquor. So you tell me, Julius, am I wrong?” She waited for an answer, but I said nothing. “Of course there is nothing wrong with blues; we all go up and down in our lives and the blues comes as a natural consequence of our falls. The trouble comes when we get hooked on blues. We start to over-consume the blues. We add a sweet scent to our despairs to make them more glorious and we lose ourselves in them. We become fused with the blues. Suddenly, we stop going to church, because we went late to bed on a Saturday night. We sleep while the hymns are sung. The escape from the sadness that happened yesterday becomes escape from the Lord today. Do you follow me, Julius? But I have to it, you are not an ordinary blues man, with all those fancy words you like to use. Nevertheless, not being ordinary does not give you the exclusive right to seek salvation in a way different from other men.” “So the darkness is pouring from my eyes? Is that what you’re telling me, Chinaza?” “If the light in your eyes is darkness…” I could feel the calm in her voice. She knew I was trying to dominate the situation, the conversation, as I most always did, and I knew she was doing her best to dampen my natural inclinations. “But,” I protested, “I want to accept; I am preparing to accept my reality, as it is.”

“Ah, so you said…but I do not hear it. It sounded like a wage and the poorly written statement of a politician in which he its taking that money was a bad thing. Nonetheless, he is still thinking about what he could do in the future, since being on the take is the only way he knows. It is the only way he performs his important duty. “Wage and general statements, Julius. Yes, sometimes statements can be helpful, but not in a form you presented. The footsteps we take should match the footsteps we announce. The strength of our words does come before the strength of our deeds. What kind of deeds and action could a man expect from himself after statements that lack concrete and named moves?” I sat there, fully checked, read like a book, and listened with a stale expression on my face. I felt like the staring competition meant to help in my understanding of life was coming back to me. I felt forced and bruised, attacked with the weapon I hated the most: talking in the name of the higher, unquestionable authority. My nature was to doubt; I even doubted my own doubt. There was no room for playing the card of absolute truth in my mind. I felt that Chinaza was trying to back up every word said with Jesus’s name, God’s ordinance, and, by doing so, to make His conclusion valid and mine wrong without even examining it and putting it into perspective. “What you should ask,” Chinaza Lee continued, “is to let God find the right way for your dreams, plans, and desires to become a reality. Let God lead you! You trust yourself too much. Let Jesus take your burden. Believe me, all that bleeding inside will stop. You will be fed. You will be given to drink. You will have the touch of a woman, perhaps a wife, a family? Julius, how does that sound? The Lord can make this happen, but it is up to you to clear the ground in your life for Him to work. The love of God can heal you and your broken life. It can cast light and make everything, even that which may have seemed lost, take a new and more beautiful form than before.” We would continue this conversation for months and years to come. I was so sure of that.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Dr. House in Me: A Turning Point

The summer of 2014 was particularly rife with the angst of loneliness. Without Annette my hope of being a husband and a full-time father was gone. I knew the only way Heather would live with me was if there were other kids around. I continued to despair. I coped by hiding within the confines of my home. It was summer, so I didn’t have work to rely on as a reason to leave the house and be around people. I was isolated from the outside world and realized that I had to do something radical to change my day-to-day pattern. I spent a lot of time during that period watching old episodes of House M.D. Years back, Delores suggested I look at the show because the main character reminded her of me. It quickly became my favorite television show in the early 2000s. From the first time I watched, I knew it explained a lot of my personality —particularly in the way Dr. House dealt with love. House believed that everything was a choice—conscious or not. And because it was a choice, there was always a reason for the actions or lack thereof. That didn’t mean everything was purely rational; decisions could be based on instinct, intuition, or the unconscious as well. Dr. House acknowledged the different levels of intellectual capacity in various people and then judged them not for their capacity, but for the level at which they used their given intelligence. His judgments regarding their use or non-use of intelligence were quite harsh but were mainly due to his inability to acknowledge that he was not an entirely rational being. As a person who often denied or rejected his irrational side, House’s interest in hookers made sense. Relationships are messy, and love is not rational, so House opted for the simplistic alternative. This way, he was not required to be emotionally involved, which would sacrifice his rationality to meet his physical

needs. I tended to avoid real relationships for the same reason and opted for temporary relationships, transactional relationships with no endgame of happily ever after. These relationships served and protected me in a sense, but they were problematic in other ways. By avoiding love, it was impossible to remain fully rational all of the time. My years of obsession with strip clubs had nothing to do with reason. The inexplicable effect the bounce of the bass and the ladies on stage had on me was pleasurable and powerful. It was something I could not rationally explain or understand—because it resonated with me on a primal, instinctive level. Nonetheless, being a logician, I still tried to understand and for this. The lack of rationality was exactly what kept my interest, but I couldn’t acknowledge this to my peers or co-workers. On a rational level, I knew strip clubs were exploitive, not cool, and I could not pretend otherwise in the real world. So, I hid behind my intelligence as Dr. House did. I criticized the lack of control or knowledge in others that I saw in myself. House acknowledged the benefit of the so-called love that people around him might have had, but he did not see love as a reasonable option for himself. This was not due to self-hate, but due to a pessimism related to the meaning of life itself. In general, I was not opposed to love or commitment either; I was happy for those in my life who had found joy in such relationships. But like House, I preferred not to get involved in the mess, to not allow an irrational force to control my emotions and attachments. Instead, I sought refuge in transactional relationships from the time I was a pre-teen before I even realized what I was doing. Considering my weight issues, early molestation, and the familial philosophy of the democratization of love, it’s not surprising that much of my life has been ruled by fear of commitment and rejection. Transactional love worked for me because it provided me with a tool to combat that fear: power. By establishing clear, set guidelines, I knew exactly what I was getting into and was reassured that I would have no misconceptions. This provided me with a sense of stability; there was comfort in the certainty that if I did this, the woman would do that. In a way, I protected myself by removing the risk of being hurt, although there were times that I willingly blurred the lines. It allowed me the feeling of being in control. Of course, in doing so, I was also relinquishing any chance of being

truly loved, and that ultimately hurt even more. And in the end, these relationships often took a toll on me, leaving me in some way bereft and wounded. Women had power over me for most of my life, and some of them, babysitters, family friends, and even Venus, abused that power. Growing up in a household where I was raised predominately by women, I saw them as authority figures— people in control against whom I naturally resisted. But at the same time, I desperately craved their approval. This was particularly reinforced by the sexual experiences with babysitters. I wanted women, needed women, but a normal love relationship would not meet my contradictory needs. As an adult, I discovered that the give-and-take of sexual transactions provided me with a balance that quieted my inner resistance and satisfied my desperate desire. My career as a professor of philosophy added another layer of protection, though often my life outside the classroom reared its ugly head in lectures. From public speeches to my daily teaching responsibilities, who I loved and how that love affected me was rarely divorced from my interaction with students. At Wittenberg, I taught a philosophy class called Love, Death, and Desire. In the spring of 2016, during a class discussion on the nature of love and relationships in today’s society, a student raised her hand. “Professor Bailey, why are you so intent on arguing that transaction-based relationships are the best way to approach love? It seems so capitalistic, materialistic, and non-feeling.” A couple of students chimed in to defend my position; one brought up materialism, explaining that a law of power rules our relationships, and the other questioned whether love even had a place in our current state of affairs. “Does it sound capitalistic?” I asked. “Of course it does! Think for instance of the popular science phrase social glue. The term is used as a euphemism to masquerade power relationships. Love, dear students, is another euphemism for the same thing. This is because love is at the center of a particular type of power relationship. Just like freedom is the ideological trope that allows relations of exploitation to become the norm in the workplace, love is its counterpart when it comes to relations of kinship, of family bonds, or of blood.” Carly blurted out, “So, love as a form of metaphysical force and love as a

fundamental biological need are both ways in which modern man has normalized the essence of so-called love relationships.” “I am not sure I would disagree there either, Carly,” I replied. “Love relationships entail a much more subtle yet equally violent form of exploitation.” My professorial role demanded this gadfly response. I wanted my students to deeply engage in this question. “When I say I am in love,” I continued, “I am stating my willingness to submit to the needs of another. Love is, under this guise, a renunciation, an accepted ritual by which humans are allowed to become objects of use for one another. We are saying in this manner, ‘I will allow this person or others to objectify me for their own interests, but by doing so willfully I acquit them of all liability or fault.’ To maintain the relationship, this contract is biconditional.” The class rumbled at my response. Even to my students—or perhaps especially to my philosophy majors—my pessimism about love was apparent. While some agreed with my arguments, many challenged my strong points of view. They defended love and ultimately pushed me to have more faith in love and relationships, but for a long time I remained stalwart. I am a Capricorn, rather stubborn and bullheaded, thinking too much for my good. Maybe that was part of the problem. Thinking about life, instead of simply allowing myself to live it, is one of my most frustrating patterns. There were days when all I wanted to do is work a nine-to-five at the post office, a bowling league, or volunteer coach kids’ sports on a Saturday. A life of simplicity and routine might have served me well. Maybe then I could engage in polite small talk without simultaneously contemplating its meaninglessness. But I am not wired that way. Even on my days off from teaching, I am thinking, planning, crafting arguments to some of life’s greatest questions. From sunup to sundown my brain is overwhelmed with mental stimuli and logical analysis. Since my senior year of undergrad at Howard, I have been teaching logic. The problem with being a logician is that you quickly see how many people are illogical in their thinking. I often tell my logic students that it will be the best class they will take in college, but it might also be the most frustrating. They will learn how to debate and win most arguments within their circle of friends, but that circle is likely to shrink. As they begin to change the way they think and see

the world, they will come to realize that most people are not logical. This is not to say they lack all sense or rationality when drawing conclusions. Rather, they care more about being perceived as right or intelligent than about accurate use of reason. These people value appearance over logic and truth. There is a significant disconnect between these people and those who value logic. It creates a sort of “us” versus “them.” And the more we hang around them, the lonelier we feel. In my case, the more people I am around as my Dr. Bailey self, the less comfortable I am. I seem to impulsively want to lecture people or correct their faulty reasoning right in the middle of dinner or a social gathering. I am less inclined to find humor in jokes or interest in the mundane. It is not that I think these things are beneath me or that I am somehow better than other people. It is because I am an intellectual, and I carry that weight. However, there is another side of me, that postman side of me, that could turn Dr. Bailey into Andre, my self-expressed alter ego, and simply not be. There were times when I enjoyed being with other people since alone I am much too heady, too serious and professorial. I laugh at funny memes, talk informally, use slang and broken language. I disengage from the analytic and rest in the hovel of the emotional. In this not-me state, I am more hopeful and more fun, willing to drink and laugh with people regardless of their background or education level. I find common ground in our existence as bodies in space and seek not some rational connection of mind. This is the Julius who bowled and even won the championship from 2003 to 2005 at Skyway Bowl in Chicago. It is the Julius who for years patronized stripper after stripper straddled upon his lap. Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Malcolm X said, “the examined life is painful.” I think I dwell somewhere in the middle, vacillating between the two. The not-me side allows me to survive by offering an escape from the pain and loneliness that comes with the examined life I lead as a philosopher and an intellectual. It also provides a much-needed distraction for my overworked brain. When I consider how I got through that summer after Annette left, I know it wasn’t just me; it was not-me. One Saturday in June of 2014 I ed by the Springfield, Ohio mall and found myself in the wrong lane to turn and go back to my house. I ventured two blocks

east to make a U-turn when I saw a sign advertising Wings of Love Bingo. I decided to check it out, singing the R & B song made popular by Jeffrey Osborne as I turned in. I hadn’t been inside a bingo hall since 1998 when I was dating Angie in Champaign, Illinois. Even then it was less about the bingo and more about being around her. But on this day, the first thing I noticed when I walked inside was the jackpot listings. The sign read: “Today’s Payout $4600.” I was floored. This ain’t grandma’s bingo no more. There were two games with thousand-dollar jackpots and others ranging from one hundred to three hundred dollars. The next week I visited the bingo hall twice, and then four or five more times that month. I was enthralled by the ease with which money could be won, simply by sitting there looking at a red Turbo game machine and daubing a few dots on paper. Long gone were the days of plastic chips carefully placed upon cards only to be disrupted by abrupt movement. Dainty elderly ladies with their bingo bags and trinkets still gathered in the halls, but they were outnumbered by younger folks like me, less interested in the social camaraderie and more interested in the jackpot. There was also the added benefit of being amongst people without really having to communicate with them. In a way, it was the best of both worlds. Bingo kept me sane that summer. I began to find as many bingo halls as I could, traveling up to thirty miles for a game and the excuse to leave the isolation of my apartment. I found a home for myself at Valley Street Bingo in Dayton. Situated across from a trailer park was an unassuming building with an aged, painted sign advertising daily bingo games. It was here that I would research a chapter in a book I had begun writing, Racial Realities and Post-Racial Dreams: The Age of Obama and Beyond. Here I was, a salaried university professor, sitting next to struggling working folk trying to turn a little into a lot, relatively speaking. As much as I wanted or sometimes needed to win a five-hundred- or thousand-dollar bingo game, to see the excitement on the face of a winner who desperately needed the money to keep their electricity on or help a family member was priceless. Once, I sat next to a woman whose son had called one hour before bingo to ask for a grand to avoid going to jail. She brought her last thirty dollars to bingo and hit the jackpot. She sat there crying and audibly thanking God for this “blessing.”

Each day I went over the course of six months or so, I met person after person with story after story. I would ask political questions about public policy and how it affected them. Obamacare, a.k.a. The Affordable Care Act was a topic that always came up, and to hear the number of people who appreciated Obama, even those who were clear about not liking him, proved to be interesting research. At the height of Black Lives Matter in the area with the deaths of John Crawford III or Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice, the discussions were no less interesting. No one at bingo knew I was a professor. Some days I wore a Black Lives Matter hat just to gauge the reactions of those who sat with me, Black and White, old and young alike. Sometimes, in the presence of Black patrons, I would loudly bring up a racial issue to see how neighboring Whites would respond. It became an interesting test case of race and class on certain issues, information that proved vital to my book. It goes without saying that I tried to pick up a date or two, though the selection of twenty-nine to forty-year-old women I might be interested in dating was slim. The real challenge was that I usually connected with women through my profession and the intrigue associated with that—but none of these women knew what I did for a living. I never disclosed my identity or any specifics beyond the fact that I worked at Wittenberg University, and rarely did anyone consider that I might be a professor there. I did find a few dates during my time spent at bingo, but nothing of substance panned out, more likely because of my rawness of heart than because of the women themselves. Still, I was fortunate enough to befriend some kind people. Jenna and Erin, both longtime workers at the hall, were two best friends whose beauty was as much of a draw for me as the jackpots. Erin mastered personality while Jenna’s mysteriousness drew me in like a moth to a flame. Later I met Kortni and Janice, women who have become two of my most precious friends, and both accepted me into their lives as a brother and friend. They are the first to me and the first to offer me criticism. Janice stands tall, about six feet, and loves all those close to her. Kortni can be a bit brash and outspoken and opens bingo tickets with the speed of lightning. She is a sensitive soul with a giving heart. It had been a long time since I had female friends undefiled by my lust. Along with bingo, my other place of refuge around this period was Buffalo Wild

Wings. I spent countless hours there on days I look back on as fun and even meaningful. Like bingo, BWW gave me just enough buoyancy to keep me afloat during some of my heaviest days. The people I hung around there were my weekend family and the reason I kept going back. Every Sunday during football season we sat together, ate wings, laughed, and watched the game. We celebrated significant events in one another’s lives like birthdays, new babies, weddings, and even the funeral of one of our own. These friends, Bigga, Cam, Rodney, Melissa, Jeremy, Deborah, and her husband, Dwayne, knew me only as Julius, not Dr. Bailey, the intellectual professor, but our companionship was no less real, nor was the time we shared any less important. My friendliness toward, and care for, these people was sincere. I tried vehemently to be genuinely social with them. I tended to be cynical of friendship for myself. I’d developed a barrier of established emotional boundaries to protect myself from the inevitable letdown of friends or loved ones. People are often disappointing, but my B-Dubs crew was a tight bunch, and I was ever so grateful to have met them.

In almost every aspect of my life, this is who I was: the person who gave too much, only to be inevitably disappointed by what I got back. I was happy to help —but not to the point of my constant detriment. My experience helping, giving to, and paying for others would not have been an issue if they thanked me or returned the favor. But the occasions were so infrequent that when someone offered to help me or treat me to something, I almost didn’t know how to react. I found joy in helping others, and I was comfortable in a role that allowed me to fulfill others’ wants and needs. It was about belonging. It is very different, however, to be used. Despite how wanted or needed I may have felt, I did not feel appreciated when I was being used. At a certain point, I simply felt drained. Without someone who replenished my energy and ed me in return, I was depleted, unable to be of any further use. When I reach this point with a woman, I have two options: to end it and lose all benefits that come with that relationship or to endure and delay the inevitable. Maybe if I were a different person, this lifestyle really would be a sustainable solution for me. I could pay for a woman’s affection and reap my rewards; then, if she raised her price or changed the rules, I could cut ties, walk away, and not look back. But I was not built that way. I become attached and develop expectations, despite this not being part of the agreement. Part of me hopes I’ll get more than I bargained for: more respect, attention, or maybe even love. If this doesn’t happen, I limit what I give. Eventually, companionship just isn’t worth it. I can still cut ties and walk away, but it leaves a scar, and so I wound up covered in scars, the most recent one from Annette. I wallowed in my solitude and mourned the good parts of the relationship that I’d lost. I blamed her for things she’d said and done, but I still wondered what was wrong with me to have wound up alone yet again. Maybe I wasn’t built for what I desired: true love. Nothing is true but God in that sense. And when I thought about it, I didn’t know how any woman, no matter how imperfect, could put up with me. I was too complicated, often struggling just to keep up with my thoughts. How could I expect a woman to understand me enough to love me? I began to put my thoughts down on paper, to get them out the only way I knew how. I am a paradox of sorts, a too-many-sided being. One instance I am a professor and activist, teaching in the classroom or fighting for justice out in the world,

and the next instance I am alone in my room, pensive, introspective, praying to God for guidance and inner peace. One Julius is confident, active, and selfless; the other is lost, frustrated, desperately seeking comfort and self-acceptance. The latter questions and ponders, singing gospel songs to ease his mind and giving thanks to God for all he has, for even being here this long as a Black man in America. And then there is another part of me, the part that is ruled by lust. Desire is something that is triggered, not chosen, and rules me without thought or deliberation. My lust and love for women overpower me when it is awakened, and I become a man unrecognizable as either of the two aforementioned Juliuses. How can I be all of them at once? I am that unholy trinity, one man comprised of three parts. This complexity is too much to navigate at times. No matter which part of me manifests itself, I am always all three parts—one part active and two parts dormant but always there. This contradictory combination of selves can be challenging, particularly when my lustful side begins to take over. The church-going man would not submit to such urges, nor would the insecure existentialist. I am the gatekeeper of my lust. Whether I give in to or deny it depends on which part of me is in control. But they often overlap, as one part of me is used to another at times. I go to church for the word of God—and for a beautiful woman in a nice dress. I get involved in the community to make it better and affect positive change—and to potentially meet a woman. I inject myself in the lives of women in need so I can be the good guy and help them out—and, of course, to meet my physical needs. My actions are rarely singularly motivated, as there are multiple forces driving me. It is overwhelming trying to manage three people in one body, and it is impossible to keep each aspect of oneself separate. I am human. I do not fit neatly into one categorical box, as perhaps I would like to for my peace of mind. People are complicated and messy, and many-sided. We are multidimensional, and often one part contradicts another. I have come to realize that it is only through acknowledgement and acceptance of that that I will be able to be myself fully and truly be happy. I paused and breathed deeply, still processing what I’d just written. My hand hurt from trying to keep up with my thoughts, and my mind was still racing. I could

feel my pain catching up with me. It wasn’t just pain from Annette leaving; it was everything. Over time, in serving everyone else, I’d deprived myself and neglected my health. I would come home tired and eat cheap, unhealthy microwave or fast-food meals, never exercising or taking care of my body. As exhausted as I was, I had trouble sleeping because I was so stressed; I couldn’t turn off my mind. I worried about my career and my fading ambition. I wondered if I was too old to move up the ladder of success. Each year seemed to more quickly, and I became increasingly tired, unhappy, and unsettled. I felt like my life was slipping away. I needed to be reassured. I was on the verge of isolation, and I wanted someone to rescue me, to take over and to breathe for me. I ed something I’d learned about deer. When deer are wounded, they take shelter in a private space deep in the woods. They seek isolation for safety, hiding there from danger until they can regain enough strength to face the world again. That is how I felt. I had become that deer, too weak to pick myself up and drag myself out of the woods. I doubted I’d ever leave that dark, lonely place. Yet, there is an instinct that the philosopher Spinoza called a “conatus,” a desire to live. It is what Nietzche called a “will to power,” and somewhere deep inside of me that instinct existed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Time to Seek Professional Help

I hadn’t yet started to question the accuracy or even legitimacy of my philosophy, but after many similar encounters with women—each of which should have told me in no uncertain that my theory was deeply flawed—I began to see that how I related to women was unworkable. I gradually became aware that if things continued unchanged, I would be looking at a life lived mostly without the fulfilling company of women. The first of these encounters was at a gentleman’s club in Dayton, Ohio. I went there to see Candy—sweet Candy, dark chocolate Candy wrapped in purple chiffon and dancing for me. I had been seeing her every week for two months and looked forward to our time together. When she danced for me, she focused on only me. I felt like we had a genuine connection. She coyly smiled when she slid into a split and she cooed in my ear while I stuffed singles into her G-string —fifty dollars every Tuesday. Candy was the highlight of my week. Tuesday night was Candy’s regular night working the pole on stage, but on one particular Tuesday, some dude with a thick wallet downing Jameson called Candy over while she was giving me a private dance. He threw two onehundred-dollar bills at his feet, and she crawled toward him and picked up the bills with her mouth. I was furious and disgusted. How could she put that dirty money in her mouth? Not to mention that I was convinced that she owed me her time and attention. I marched over to the table with my wad of singles, hurling them at her, shouting, “Damn! This is all you f-ing women want, isn’t it?” She refused to look at me, and within seconds security grabbed me by the arms and tossed me out. “Obviously, you don’t respect women,” one of them shouted. “Don’t ever come back.”

The irony of being told by strip club employees that I didn’t respect women was rich. As I left, I yelled back at them, “I respect women, but they sure don’t show me any damn respect! That’s the problem!” As I sat in my car trying to cool down, a woman wearing a short skirt and a tube top approached my window. “Hey there, sugar. You all right? You look like you’ve had a rough night.” I spat back at her. “I don’t have no damn money.” With her hands on her hips, she upbraided me like I was a child. “I don’t want your money,” she said. “I was genuinely worried. You look upset, and I thought I could help.” “Yeah right,” I said. “Don’t try that lying shit with me.” “Look,” she said, leaning down and bringing her face close to mine, “I may be a hooker, but that don’t mean I’m not a good person. If you don’t want help, fine, but I’m no liar, and I can tell when somebody genuinely needs help.” “It’s not me who needs help; it’s women who need help. They all need a damn optometrist! They can’t see real love. They don’t know what honest people look like.” “Right,” she said, “and you’re clearly a perfect judge of that, yourself. You got problems, brother—problems even a good lay won’t fix, and a good lay fixes a lot of shit. Look in the mirror—there are your answers.” She pivoted on her heels and walked away, shouting into the night, “You need professional help, brother.” My humiliation was complete. I didn’t yet know just how true her words were, but they would soon echo in my ears when, for the second time, somebody told me I needed help. Jennica iterated much the same. She was a ravishing, intelligent colleague at a neighboring university, and I had been pursuing her romantically for a while. She had thus far politely rejected my overtures, but I was convinced that one grand gesture would entice her.

I showed up at one of her lectures, striding down the steps toward her, offering her a bouquet of roses. She ended the class on the spot and guided me into a nearby empty classroom. “What is wrong with you, Julius? Do you have no self-control, no decency? Did you honestly think this kind of thing would work? Did you think you were romantic? Honestly, it’s insulting—misogynistic even. I didn’t consent to participate in that grotesque spectacle, and in front of my students! You’ve humiliated me.” I was shocked; after all, I had wooed many women in just this way. “No, no,” I responded, smiling at her. “I’ve only humiliated myself, and that’s the point. I wanted to show you and anybody else who was watching how crazy I am about you. I’m willing to debase myself for you. A little humiliation means nothing to me if it allows me to show you that I’ll do anything for you. I’ll treat you like a queen.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “You’re not getting it. You think you know me better than I know myself, don’t you? You think that with a little persuasion you can convince me that you’re the man of my dreams? Newsflash! I don’t want to date a misogynist who has no respect for the choices I make!” “Breathe, baby girl, breathe,” I said cockily, a smile still spread across my face. “It’s all right to it that you liked it. I know that, as a feminist, you’re not supposed to like this kind of thing, but I know you’re falling for me, even if the feminist in you hates it.” I dropped the flowers and quickly closed the distance between us. My arms spread wide to embrace her. Jennica took one step back, hauled her arm back and delivered an open-palmed blow to the side of my face that echoed in the empty room. “No!” she said. “That is not okay. Sit your ass down in that chair.” She pointed to the front row of seats. My ears and my cheek buzzed, and I was too stunned to protest. I took my seat and looked up at her. “Nothing you’ve done, nothing I’ve said, has given you the right to touch me. What you’ve just done borders on sexual assault. You made your interest in me clear with your roses. I made my disinterest equally clear by spurning your gesture. Now, in the midst of me telling you that your behavior is rude and

sexist, you try to put your hands on me. You say that you are not like other men, but I’m here to tell you that you are like other men. And, what’s worse, your misguided and antiquated notions of chivalry make you think you’re better than most. If you want the right to call yourself a gentleman, you need to start acting like one. You need to hear what I’m saying loud and clear: No, I don’t allow you to decide what I want. That’s my decision to make, not yours. You might think you know what I want, but you don’t. You’re just projecting your desires onto me, and then, to top it all off, you’re deny me the right to refuse you. This is me saying ‘No’ to you as clearly as I can. I’m not playing hard to get. I don’t want you.” She paused for a moment, looking at me to ensure that her words were being discerned. The stern look on her face made it clear to me that I’d overstepped my bounds. I was silent—embarrassed beyond measure. She twisted the knife: “You need help, Julius. You need professional help. Come talk to me again when you’ve got this stuff figured out.” She walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I stood up, threw the rejected roses into the trash, and walked to my car. It had barely been a month since the hooker told me I needed help. Not one week earlier, a graduate student had upbraided me for calling her “sweetheart” and “baby girl,” telling me that she found that kind of language demeaning. I dismissed these criticisms out of hand—the first because of the source, and the second as oversensitivity— but here was another woman, one I ired, telling me that I was dangerously wrongheaded and that I needed professional help. I had now been urged by three diverse people to seek professional counseling. In my religious teachings, three is the number of the Trinity, the confirmation number, so I took that as a sign. It was evident that if I wanted to pursue a meaningful relationship, I would have to work on my mental health and change my behavior. I wanted to be able to be open and honest with a woman, to find someone who could know me intimately, and love me for the person I am, all of me, not just the part of me I allowed her to see. If I wanted to get better, I had to confront my emotions, alter my patterns, and be truly honest, wholly penitent and vulnerable for correction. I would have to find a stranger, a professional whose only job was to help me heal, not sleep with me.

This revelation did not come apace. I was an academic, a philosopher who thought for a living. Needless to say, I had my share of issues and beliefs about psychiatry. To me, it would always be Oedipal to the core. It would always be about necessity, normality, and transgression. It would always be about taboos and repression, with mommy and daddy relationships everywhere and correction of chemical imbalances as the main resort. I questioned the popularity of psychotherapy in general. Did anyone believe in psychiatrists as a long-term cure any more conventional than they believed in meditation or exercise as regular medicines for the soul? It was not surprising that modern psychiatry had mostly given up on the couch talk and the analysis of a patient’s story. There was no longer an overruling interest in the id or the unconscious repressions. The reason was not simply that we had become positivists about the mind, but that we had given up on metaphysical ideas like balance, enlightenment, or peace of mind. When I called my friend Malik, a professor at Fresno State, he asked, “Why not give psychotherapy a chance?” I could not help but wonder what motivated such advice. Was he a believer of balance as a superior state of being? Or, did he want me to be medicated? If that were the case, I would have preferred if he candidly told me to get real and get some pills. Why bother with the foreplay? Just give me the damn pills. In all seriousness, I did not believe a therapist could help me. What kind of person would want to listen to my endless ranting about love, death, and hedonism? Knowing me, if the therapist was a man, he would render me manic; if she were a woman, I would likely end up pursuing her romantically. So I felt sure the couch wouldn’t change a thing, and although it sounded nihilistic, it was not the meaninglessness of the couch that I was criticizing. At that time, I believed there was nothing significant, if one used the term in an absolutist manner. My issue with therapy then was purely pragmatic. It seemed to me to be an inefficient method with a high risk of failure. Pharmacology is, from that perspective, more efficient, as it acts almost immediately on the person, as long as the medication is continued. My discussions with Chinaza sometimes filled the void. She encouraged me to stop the mental fighting with who God wanted me to be. She often said the

solution was “to stop resistance and to simply go on with the flow.” Despite what I knew was an incomplete happiness with myself and my lot in life, I always responded, “I am about as happy as I am ever going to get in this rat race called life.” In one such conversation, Chinaza pushed back; instead of allowing me to lament in my complacency, she challenged me. “Julius, you are far from happy and you know it.” I retorted, “This is all I got, baby girl; this is all I deserve.” “But why do you keep punishing yourself, my beloved?” “Chinaza, look, the very reason I have not stepped correctly to you is because I see myself as a relationship screw-up and I don’t deserve to put anyone else in my mess.” “Julius, my love, you can’t make decisions for me. That is between God and me. You are already in my life and have been since we were at Howard; if it weren’t meant to be, we wouldn’t be here, right now.” It was clear that Chinaza cared deeply for me. Our delightful flirting had an unintended consequence; it made me hide and protect myself. “Okay,” I said, hesitating. “Let the process continue. I hope you can agree with me. In the end your main concern, I believe, is my happiness, well-being, or whatever we decide to call it. As it stands right now, I am about as happy as I can be, for any other imagined state of being is just that: imagination. For me, I choose to live in the omnipresence of now.” It was becoming clear to me that I needed to talk to somebody about this, and when my colleague and friend Malik invited me to California, I took him up on his offer. I was considering therapy, but, at the same time, I kept talking myself out of it. I was nervous and uncertain about seeing a therapist, and hearing myself consider it out loud reminded me of all my doubts. But Malik listened to me, and together we discussed what was going on in my life. I was stressed, I wasn’t sleeping well, I was struggling to balance my time as a professor and an active father, and I was dealing with both the anger I felt in my relationship and the disappointment over what was lacking. It was a pattern I had repeated.

Malik convinced me that I was spinning and in serious need of some direction and help. He assured me that nothing was embarrassing about seeing a therapist and that seeking counseling did not signify weakness, but instead was a sign of strength. He also pointed out that being a Black man in America was hard, and it meant facing many unique challenges, especially as a professional. Tending to my mental health needs, according to Malik, would make me stronger, happier, and more equipped to deal with my daily struggles. I left with a lasting impression as he said to me, “We need serious healing. We need to learn how to love in healthy ways. Get help, brother.” Once I returned to Ohio, I picked up the phone on that October morning of 2014 and called a highly recommended therapist. When the receptionist asked when I would like to see the doctor, I said, “I need help as soon as possible.”

She’s shorter than I thought she’d be, I thought as the petite brunette approached me with her outstretched hand. “Hi Julius,” she said. “I’m Dr. Molly Clemons.” I smiled at her half-heartedly, trying to make it look sincere. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Clemons,” I said, pumping her hand a few times. She gestured toward the open door of her office, and I walked in ahead of her. She closed the door behind me, the latch clicking softly into place. The room was divided into two parts. Her desk was in back with a few bookshelves. Closer to the door was a space designed with psychotherapy in mind. There were two large brown reclining chairs facing the door and a matching couch with its back to the door. A wooden coffee table filled the space between. The room was bathed in soft light, punctuated with a few lamps with dark shades. A Persian rug in browns, reds, and blues completed the room. The space felt comfortable, homey. The room was professional, but not clinical. She moved toward one of the armchairs and sat. When she noticed that I hadn’t moved, she nodded toward the couch. “Have a seat,” she said, smiling warmly and picking up a notebook and a purple pen from the coffee table, which was otherwise bare. Once I settled on the couch, she leaned forward in her seat. Before she could speak, I asked her, “So, how does this start?” “Well, normally we start with your family history and talk about where you are today and where you’d like to be in the future. Then we’ll make a plan that will help you get where you want to be. How does that sound?” “What if I don’t feel particularly inclined to talk about my family history?” I had come prepared for questions about my childhood, but I didn’t feel like having this woman rooting behind the closed doors of my past. I also wanted to show her that I was in control of the situation; I needed to preserve my pride—which had taken a beating by itting that I needed help. I felt demoralized, but I was determined not to show it. She answered my question with one of her own: “What do you feel like talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you? It’s your job to guide the session, not mine. Isn’t that what I’m paying you for?” I expected to rattle her, but she took it all in stride. “I can’t do my job if you’re uncooperative.” She paused for effect, taking a short sip from her water glass beside her. “What brought you here today? Why did you me in the first place?” She stared at me, waited, and then went on. “It’s like when an electrician comes to your house. If you don’t tell him where the fuse box is, he probably can’t do the work. He wants to, and he tries to ask you, but if you just stand around telling him that he’s supposed to know where the fuse box is…well, it probably doesn’t make for a pleasant experience for either of you.” She set the glass down, then rested her hands in her lap. “Where’s the fuse box, Julius? Hmm? What’s got you so angry today? Why did you want to come in and talk with me? You can answer any of those questions.” She arched her eyebrows at me and flashed her warm smile at me again. Is she mocking me? I thought. No, there was no trace of derision in her smile. She wasn’t playing with me. I wanted an excuse to stand up and storm out of the room. I wanted to be able to tell the people that told me to get help that I saw through the charlatan’s charade. I wanted to be able to say, She’s just like all the rest of them, but she wasn’t making it easy. I looked around the room and processed this woman’s aggressive approach. Where’s the fuse box? It echoed in my head that the electrical control center of the house was my brain. Was she baiting me? “Well, the electrician would start by checking the usual locations,” I snapped back at her. “Yes, if you allow him in the house,” Dr. Clemons responded calmly. “So why are you here today? If it’s to attack my metaphors, I can write you up a list of them. Bring me back a two-page essay on each and how it’s faulty. You probably haven’t had homework in a while—more accustomed to doling it out, right, Professor?” She addressed me professionally, but her playful tone now felt like a jab to my arm, a warning shot. Her style change caught me off guard; it angered me that she would use taunts regarding my profession. She was acting high and mighty. Her air of intelligence didn’t impress me. She likely wouldn’t understand anything I wrote; philosophy

was clearly over her head. She waited for a response. I found the silence incredibly awkward, but she looked calm, unruffled, and even unflappable. I went back on the attack: “You’re supposed to fix me,” I said, staring her down. “What about you need fixing?” She held my gaze until I looked down at my hands folded between my knees. My cheeks and ears were hot with blood. “I…I’m not interested in women anymore,” I stammered. I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze. I looked now at the glass of water beside her, watching a drop of condensation roll slowly down the side. “Do you mean sexually, as in you’re interested in men?” I laughed. “No, that’s not it.” “Is it that you’re not interested in anybody and that worries you?” “No,” I said, “that’s not it either. I’m definitely interested in someone, but she’s not interested in me. I’m not interested in anybody else.” “What’s her name?” “Venus,” I said, and the room seemed to brighten somewhat, as though her name brought with it a trace of her radiance. She removed the cap from the purple pen and began writing in her notebook. “All right,” she said, “we’ll work our way forward to Venus. Let’s start by talking about your previous relationships.” I leaned forward and lifted my face to her. “Look,” I said, “I don’t need to talk about them. I need to talk about Venus. I know what this is. I’m anxious, maybe a little depressed, and I just need a few tips—something that will help me feel tolerably better. There’s no reason to start probing around in my past.” “Julius,” she said, “you’ve come to a professional for help, which means you want to find the root of your issues. If you just wanted to feel better about

yourself, there are thousands of self-help books that will help you turn that frown upside down, but there’s clearly more going on than a little bit of anxiety—more even than depression. When you say that you’re fine and just a little anxious, you’re making excuses. You’re trying to avoid talking about your deeper issues, and that avoidance is itself telling. When we’re talking about relationships, deeper issues begin, for lack of a better word, in the beginning, so we need to start there. Tell me about your first relationship.” I sighed and leaned back into the couch, resting my head on the back of it. I sifted through my memories of high school, of college, of my young adult life. I hadn’t considered before what my first real relationship was. “I suppose it would have to be Jackie,” I said. I was fourteen, and she must have been sixteen. I can still vividly what she looked like as she walked down my street toward me. I was sitting on my step, and she came up to me. It was a hot summer day, and she was wearing these cutoff jeans over a pair of fishnet stockings. The top few buttons of her blouse were unbuttoned, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. It looked like her breasts might fall out of her shirt at any moment. We talked for a minute and then she walked up the steps, past me, and into my house. I followed. We made out on the couch, and she began using her hand on me. When I climaxed, she cleaned herself up in the bathroom. After she returned, she looked at me and put out her hand. “I need bus fare to get back home,” she said. I didn’t have much money, but I gave her everything I had. As soon as the money was in her hand, she was gone. Dr. Clemons took notes as I told her all of this. She didn’t look up, so I continued. “It was my first orgasm, and I had to pay for it. It wouldn’t be the last time either—far from it.” “Did you feel used?” Dr. Clemons asked, looking up from the notepad. “Yes.” “How so?” “She was a whore. Maybe she craved attention, but she figured out that she could use sex to get whatever she wanted from men like me.”

“But Julius, you were a boy.” “I wasn’t a boy to those other girls,” I answered under my breath. “Women always get what they want.” “What do you mean?” “Oh nothing…we’re digressing from your earlier point.” “Okay,” she said, jotting down another note. “You said that this wasn’t the last time. Tell me about the next time.” She coaxed me onward without a trace of judgment. “When I was a college student, I paid a girl to give me a hand job. I even got a nickname because of it. I was hanging out in the hallway near my dorm, and this girl walked by with a bottle of lotion in her hand. I catcalled her, yelling, ‘Girl, I got something you can rub with that lotion!’ I expected her just to keep walking, but she stopped and turned around to face me. ‘How much money you got?’ she asked. I turned out my pockets. I had fifty-two dollars. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘come on then.’ She led me to her dorm room and got to work stroking me with that lotion. She had Anita Baker playing, and I tell you, it was like heaven. This clearly wasn’t her first time. When I finished, she wiped me down with a washcloth and then, while I was pulling my pants up, she put her hand out, palm up. I paid her and left, embarrassed that the boys waiting out in the hallway knew that I had to pay for sex. They called me ‘Fifty-Deuce’ and chuckled from then on.” “How did you feel after—when you were alone?” Dr. Clemons asked. “I was all right. I wasn’t ashamed or anything. She asked for it, literally. I wasn’t using her. She was using me—just like every other woman I’ve ever met. Nothing mattered except that paper. Hell, it’s the only reason you’re listening to me now, ain’t it?” Dr. Clemons closed her notebook and leaned forward in her chair to address me. She fixed me with a look that made it instantly clear I had crossed the line. “I’m

listening,” she said, “because I’ve dedicated my life to helping people and because you need help. You’ve come to me because you’re unhappy, and I want to help. If you think I’m only sitting here listening to you because I want your money, you can leave, and I won’t charge you for our time together, but you don’t think that, do you?” My pulse was racing. I tried to hold her gaze, but I couldn’t. I dropped my head down between my shoulders and sank back into the couch. She leaned back into her chair and reopened her notebook. “Do you think that everyone has a hidden agenda?” Her voice returned to its calmer . “Women are manipulative,” I said. “That’s not an answer to my question. Do you think that everyone has a hidden agenda?” “People are, by and large, selfish,” I said. “They do what suits them, thinking of others only when it is convenient to do so. Rather than seeking goodness for its intrinsic reward, they seek the clearest and quickest path to material and physical rewards. This is particularly the case in relationships.” “So you don’t think there is a higher good in people that would tend to move them away from selfishness toward a more intrinsic or even spiritual good?” Dr. Clemons asked. I wanted to ask her, What was the higher good of my babysitters forcing me to go down on them? Instead, I stated, “You can’t expect much else. I mean, there’s nothing in this life but the moment—no afterlife or greater purpose. We’re just here. And some people use that as an excuse to be shitty people, from babysitters to presidents. That’s mostly the kind of people I run into.” I paused and started tapping my leg. “Why not be hedonistic, if there’s no greater purpose? Enjoy what you’ve got while you’ve got it, right?” Dr. Clemons wrote another note. I wondered if she scratched, This dude is out of control. Nonetheless, I continued my rant. “You should do more than that! You should help people. You should be good. You should strive for more! You shouldn’t use people! You should try!” My anger was palpable yet contained to an imioned speech.

“Sure,” said Dr. Clemons. “It would be lovely if that were the case. It would be fantastic if everyone were always helpful and kind and looked to better themselves. If everyone came from a place of acceptance and no judgment, and then looked only to produce happiness, they would enjoy their hedonism in consensual, harmless ways. But…” She shrugged. “The world doesn’t work that way.” “It should. If I can do it, everyone else on the planet should, too!” I growled. She leaned forward. “That’s the problem. You’re holding everyone to your perceived level. Not everyone is you. No one owes you anything. Consider it a gift—not a right—to be treated nicely. You know of the social contract, of course, as a philosopher professor… Nowhere in the social contract is it stated that anyone owes you anything except not killing you for your possessions. “Julius you see relationships in reciprocal ,” she said. “You give X and, in return, you receive Y or vice versa. So, for instance, you give them money and they give you attention or affection. Is that the gist of it?” I launched into another exposition of my theories surrounding love and relationships, each point punctuated with an example from my life. I started with Angela, a woman I met in 1998 while in grad school at The University of Illinois. We had fun together; she was a gambler and had me at every gambling house in Champaign, Illinois. Around Christmas of that year, she got pregnant. When I found out, she merely thanked me for being a sperm donor and vowed never to see me again. Then she immediately married her boyfriend, consequently leaving me with no legal claim to the baby. She used me to get pregnant and blocked my chance at fatherhood. I kept going down the list. “Then there’s Michelle, who spent five years with me without once paying for anything, only to steal money from my car—money she used to her and her boyfriend—and Delores, my ex-wife, who destroyed my reputation when she was no less guilty than I was.” I painted myself as a victim of cunning and manipulative women, and although Dr. Clemons asked for clarification, she never contradicted me. She allowed me, in my usual way, to spin my tires. I went on to tell her about Lisa, a girlfriend I had before all the others whom I’d unknowingly gotten pregnant. Instead of telling me about the pregnancy, she told

my mom. They discussed the options and decided it would be best not to have the baby; we were still in school pursuing higher education. I felt betrayed by both of them—Lisa for not telling me, and my mom for going behind my back. I didn’t talk to Lisa for six months or to my mom for nearly a year. “It sounds like this relationship was different from the others,” said Dr. Clemons. “You were upset, but it doesn’t seem like you felt used.” “No, I didn’t feel used. I just felt angry and hurt. I felt like I’d lost my trust in two important women in my life.” Dr. Clemons laid the purple pen and the notebook on the table in front of her. “Thank you, Julius, that’s all the time we have for today, but you’ve given me a lot to work with. Thank you for speaking so honestly with me. It’s clear where we’ll need to start our work next week. We’ll be trying something called interpersonal psychotherapy, talking through your relationships—one at a time— and trying to find the roots of your dissatisfaction. It should help you find your interest in women again.” She stood. “Does that sound reasonable?” I also stood. “Yes. I think that could be helpful.” I nodded. “Er… Thanks, Dr. Clemons,” I mumbled, shaking her hand again. “If you are as forthcoming as you have been today, I’m confident we’ll be able to locate the issue and rekindle your interest in women. How does that sound?” “Great. Thank you, Doctor.” I walked out the door with renewed confidence and also humility. I was, after all, just a man among billions, a speck in the universe, who through good works could be a better man, a person who might influence young minds with ideas that were new to me. I got into my car and rolled down the windows, driving past the Old Town Hall on East High Street, heading back to my office at Wittenberg, but something in my mind clicked and I just kept driving, thinking about all that Dr. Clemons had to say. I wondered about my father, as I did every so often. How might my trajectory in life have been different with his guiding hand on my shoulder? Would I have been less burdened, or would Lisa have been more willing to give me a chance, less likely to have aborted our child? If I had I become a father much earlier in my life, I might have made different choices, better choices.

But this was the present, and my time was at hand to rise to my better self, not just for me, but for my family, my students, and especially for my beautiful daughter Heather. When I met with Dr. Clemmons for our second session, the conversation turned almost immediately to Delores. I told her that when I met Delores, I had lost a tremendous amount of weight, more than one hundred fifty pounds, and there was a dramatic change in how women viewed me. I was, quite suddenly, a desirable man, and this only reinforced my belief that woman were superficial. For nearly three years, I slept with as many women as I could, especially ones who had previously rejected me. I painted these encounters as retributive justice. I was merely returning in kind what I had received—a withholding of sincere affection—and it felt good to do so. “Let’s dig into that for just a moment,” she said. “It’s hard being a big guy,” I said. “And I don’t just mean big. I mean fat. Women either reject me outright because I’m fat, or they use my attraction to squeeze me for whatever I’m worth —usually money, but sometimes my pride.” “Were these women all conventionally attractive?” she asked. “They were all objects of desire, but nobody desires the fat guy. For so long, I felt undesirable, and after I lost the weight, many of these same women suddenly wanted me, and this pissed me off. Nothing changed about me—nothing but my body, but that’s all they saw. They might have made overtures about wanting a caring man, an intelligent man, a good man, but when I was fat, they couldn’t see beyond my body to those qualities in me. They didn’t want to see. Without the extra weight, women could suddenly see the man within? Please.” “So, you gave them what you felt they deserved?” “Yeah,” I said, nodding at her. “They would ask to cuddle after sex or to go out in public with me, but they never wanted to do those things before. I gave them a taste of their own medicine. I would hook up with them and leave—no affection, no attention that wasn’t sexual, nothing. I wanted them to understand what it felt like to be used up and discarded.” “And Delores changed all of this?” Dr. Clemons asked.

“Delores respected me. She wanted me—not my body, but me—my intelligence, my spirituality, my stability. She made me feel comfortable in my skin, and she didn’t have ulterior motives. Her affection was genuine.” Dr. Clemons nodded. “You weren’t the friend, the guy with money, the smart guy who could help her her courses or anything like that, and it felt good; is that right?” “Yeah.” “So what went wrong, then?” I straightened up in my chair and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my thighs. “She was young—so young and so innocent. The home she grew up in was filled with love. Her mother and father were always affectionate with each other, hugging and kissing all the time, and they showed their children love at every possible occasion. And then it was just the two of us, and I proved a difficult man to love. She couldn’t handle me at my worst. I was happy in the relationship, but my life outside of our marriage was still less than satisfying. Sadness and rage just poured out of me and overwhelmed her.” “Is that why you separated?” “She tried to stay, but I drove her away. I regained most of the weight I had lost, and when I wasn’t miserable, I was angry. In the end, I kicked her out. It was for her own good. She deserved more than I could give her.” “You mentioned that you gained back the weight and this coincided with or perhaps partially caused the dissolution of your marriage. Your insecurities about your body are manifesting themselves in your relationships. You say that your relationship with Delores was genuine, particularly because it was non transactional, but you didn’t give her a chance to prove her true or unconditional love. You think love and affection are things that have to be earned or traded for. As soon as you convinced yourself that you had nothing of value to offer in exchange for her love, you pushed Delores away—assuming that she was, in the end, every bit as transactional as you believed all women to be. In the end, Julius, you have become equally as transactional.” I was silent. Dr. Clemons peered over her notebook at me, waiting for some response. She could see that I was trying to digest her words. She pressed her

point further. “You want a deeply romantic, sensual, and sexual love; you want a love that’s all-consuming, yet you don’t receive it. Have you considered that you don’t receive it because you don’t give it?” The accusation sent my mind reeling. I leapt out of my seat, infuriated. “I loved Delores. I loved Venus. I loved Lisa, I loved Chaka, and I loved what Annette and I stood for. As crazy as it sounds, I love Michelle, I definitely love Chinaza, and I will always love Latoria. I love, I do. I give and I give—you can’t tell me I don’t give women the kind of love I want in return. I give my heart and my time and my money. I give them everything, and what do I get in return? Not a damn thing.” Dr. Clemons waited until I was finished and then calmly motioned to the chair and waited for me to sit. “I’m not suggesting you don’t give, but with that giving comes an expectation of reciprocation. It seems that you give because you want and expect to receive, not because you want to give. It’s a selfish love, which is precisely why it’s so unsatisfying.” The doctor spoke matter-of-factly, yet there was a sensitive tenderness in her voice. “Have you ever,” she asked, “witnessed truly selfless love?” I looked at the clock on the wall, watching the second-hand ratchet forward incessantly. I nodded my head. Without raising my eyes to hers, I answered, “Marshonda.” She asked me to elaborate. “One night, she invited me to shower with her. We had been intimate many times, but I couldn’t handle being fully naked with her. I always wore a T-shirt— during sex, while sleeping, lounging around the house—it didn’t matter. And Shonda noticed. She knew that I was insecure about my weight, and she tried to put me at ease. She told me that my size didn’t matter, that she loved me, fat and all.” As I spoke, tears rolled down my cheeks. I wiped my face with my sleeve. “What happened to Shonda?” she asked. “She died three years ago. I don’t know if she knew how much she helped me.

She showed me that I was worthy of love, that I was a man who could be cherished. I miss her.” The tears were flowing now, and Dr. Clemons, apparently no stranger to weeping patients, stayed silent, writing on her pad. I stood up and excused myself, saying that I’d had enough for the day. She didn’t protest. Instead, she merely reminded me of our appointment for the following week. When we met the next week again, Dr. Clemons asked me to start the session by talking about Venus. “When did you meet her?” she asked. “I was in the ninth grade. She was in the year below me. Something about her radiated in every direction. I just wanted to be close to her, and for the next decade or so, I was always hanging around her. We were friends—excellent friends. We talked on the phone and wrote letters to each other. We told each other everything—about life, relationships, struggles—everything. She was genuinely interested in my life, and I could have listened to her talk for hours.” “What you’re describing sounds like a normal platonic relationship.” “Yes.” I nodded. “That’s what it was—at least on her side.” “You wanted more, expected more from her?” “I love her. I’ve always loved her. She’s never told me outright that I have a shot with her, but it was always there in the subtext. Her coy smile, the way she coos at me, the texts that she sends me in the morning—all of it shows me that she cares. I’m the first person she turns to when things go wrong. She knows that I’m perfect for her. She knows that I’m everything she needs. I’ve known her for so long, I’ve seen all of her demons, and she’s seen mine, but I still love her. I’m just waiting for her to see—” Dr. Clemons cleared her throat. “You came here because you’re struggling to form meaningful relationships. Is Venus the only option you’re willing to consider?” “Yes, Venus is the only option. We’re supposed to be together. We were made for each other. I know exactly what she wants and what she needs, and it’s definitely not that idiotic caveman she’s now with. I could be a better husband to her, but she refuses to see me that way. She’s so provincial, and she refuses to leave him.

She chooses the Ibsen-like dollhouse.” “Why do you think you’d be better for her?” she asked. “I want her to be safe. I would never abuse her or take advantage of her. She told me, back when we were in college, that a male friend of hers had assaulted her in her dorm room. He pulled off her clothes and groped her. She was screaming at him, telling him to stop, but he didn’t. I cried when she told me. Venus is pure. She is perfect. How could someone misuse that precious body with unwanted caresses? She is the reincarnation of Aphrodite, a pulchritudinous woman who is to be worshiped, not taken like a whore. I was a thousand miles away and helpless. I wanted to hold her and let her cry herself to sleep on my chest. I wanted to take her away and build a house for her with my hands.” Frustrated and impotent rage washed over me. I blinked away tears. My fists were clenched so tightly my fingernails dug into my palms. I pounded my fists on my thighs. “She needs me, but she won’t let me protect her.” Dr. Clemons leaned forward in her chair. Periodically, she had put pen to paper while I spoke, but most of the time she listened, nodding along while I debased myself in front of her. I felt embarrassed, but she didn’t seem to think I had said anything worthy of scorn or derision. “Okay,” she said, laying her pen and pad down. “I want us to talk about a few of the topics you’ve just raised. First, you have told me in some ways how you can improve her life. You’ve told me what you could do for her, but you haven’t once said anything about what she would do for you. There’s an absence of the kind of transactional relationships you’ve also talked about at length, but that doesn’t mean this is a healthy relationship—far from it. You seem to be obsessed with saving her—at best, only partially recognizing that she might not want you to save her. Let me ask you: What can Venus offer you?” I contemplated her question for only a moment before I answered. “Salvation,” I said. “What is Venus saving you from?” “Everything. Myself. The hell I’ve been through. All I’ve had to put up with these last forty-one years. She’s my salvation from all of it.”

“Do you realize how disrespectful that is?” My head snapped up and my eyes narrowed, focusing on her. “How the hell is that disrespectful? I’d save her. She’d save me. It’s mutual.” “No,” she said, holding my gaze, “it’s not. She doesn’t want you to save her. You’re conflating your wants and needs with hers, but that’s not what makes it disrespectful.” She leaned back in her chair and tucked her pen behind her ear. “You want her to save you, to solve you. You want her to absolve you of your issues—mostly so that you don’t have to face them yourself. You want Venus to do all the heavy lifting while you take the easy route. That’s not respectful. What’s more, it’s not healthy.” “Not healthy? What do you mean?” “You’re living in a fantasy. On one side you’ve got Venus, the very image of perfection and beauty; on the other hand, you’ve got yourself, and you’ve created an equally fantastical image of yourself. You are a hero, storming the walls of the castle to save your damsel in distress, but it’s not Venus that needs, or wants, saving. It’s you. That’s why you’re here, right? You recognize that you need help. Well, that starts with focusing on yourself, which means focusing less on Venus. She’s not going to save you.” “Well I’m not going to abandon her,” I huffed, crossing my arms. “She needs me.” “No,” Dr. Clemons snapped, her voice now cold and clinical, “she doesn’t need you. You think you need her—and, to justify that need, you’ve convinced yourself that she needs you. In your fantasy, she needs you more than you need her, but the opposite is true. Venus is your crutch. You need to learn how to stand on your own two feet without her propping you up. You need to learn who you are without Venus.” I shrugged my shoulders; let my hands drop into my lap. I had a response prepared, but it was becoming clearer that this woman was one step ahead of me. Her words were sinking in—albeit gradually—and they were beginning to break down long-standing barriers, reaching deep into the places I hid from myself. “Let me ask you another question,” she said. “How long have you been depressed?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Years.” “Put a number on it.” “Since high school…about thirty years.” “And how long have you been stuck on Venus?” Her trap had sprung. I couldn’t deny it. It couldn’t be sloughed off as a coincidence. The ticking of the clock was now almost deafening. I tapped my boot against the soft rug, chewing my lower lip, and thought about getting up and walking out the door. She pressed her advantage: “Imagine that you walk out of my office and you get struck by a bus. You wake up in a full-body cast in a hospital bed. Who will drive or fly across the country just to make sure you’re okay?” “My mom and sister, obviously! My Jones family would likely carpool to my rescue, and Latoria…she would try to get there, definitely, but if not, she would send Heather with the Joneses.” “Not Venus?” “No. She’s busy with her own life.” “Not Venus,” she repeated. “Of course not! It’s a one-sided relationship, Julius, which means it isn’t a relationship, or at least not a healthy one. She can never give you the kind of attention you need to meet your emotional needs, and you thrive when those needs are met. What you want to happen with Venus is never going to happen. That’s something you need to accept. Talk it through with me, talk about it with your mom, your sisters, your priest, Chinaza, your colleagues. Go hit a punching bag. Take a long drive. Get out of town for the weekend. Spank your inner moppet if you have to, whatever it takes. It’s time to let her go. After thirty years, it’s time to move on.” Being told that Venus and I would never be together was more than I was prepared for. I had come to the sessions hoping that I would learn how to make myself better for her. I imagined that by dealing with my issues, I would finally

be able to show Venus that I was perfect for her. But Dr. Clemons was not interested in helping me win Venus. She wanted me to abandon the woman I had loved since I was a teenager. “I’m not listening to this bullshit!” I yelled, leaping to my feet. “I don’t need this therapy garbage. You’re causing more problems than you’re solving. What the hell am I paying you for?” I was panting and sweating. “I’m not causing problems,” she answered. “I’m unveiling them. You’re trying to cover them back up with rage and attacking me instead of confronting yourself.” Her composure made me even more furious. I stormed toward the door, yelling over my shoulder, “To hell with this, and to hell with you!” I slammed the door behind me. As I rode down the elevator, I could hear my breath, heaving in and out through gritted teeth. I managed to calm myself by walking around the block, but I was still muttering to myself. “What the hell does she know?” But I knew that she had touched something deep inside—and that her words could not be dismissed out of hand. There was at least some truth to what she had said. Was all of it true? Did I need to stop pursuing Venus? Did I need to stop loving Venus? No, that was impossible. She was a part of me, the part that I couldn’t just turn off at will. I needed to talk to somebody. When I got home, I called Jennica. I had told her about my relationship with Venus, and she too had suggested that the relationship wasn’t a healthy one, but she was sympathetic. She recognized that the love I bore for Venus was genuine. Surely, she would tell me that Dr. Clemons made some good points but that her advice was unreasonable. Surely, she would tell me that I could keep right on loving Venus. We met at a coffee shop, and I told her what Dr. Clemons had said. She didn’t interrupt, just listened carefully. I felt, for a moment, that I was back on the doctor’s couch; the only things missing were the pad of paper and her purple pen. When I was done, I looked at Jennica and asked what she thought. “She’s right.”

My heart dropped. “The love you have for Venus is selfish—even misogynistic. She’s not free to choose whether she wants you or not. Or, more likely, she’s already made her choice, but you choose not to respect that. By continuing to pursue her, you’re telling her in no uncertain that what you need supersedes what she needs or wants. You’re bullying her, and worst of all, you think you’re entitled to do so. She’s made her choice. You’re not entitled to possess her or to demand that she respond to your love in the way you expect her to. You need to respect her decision. You need to let go.” Jennica had my best interests at heart when she told me months back that I needed help, and now here she was telling me that everything Dr. Clemons said was accurate. “I hoped that you would take my side,” I said, my eyes downcast. “I am taking your side,” she said. “It’s not just about what’s best for Venus. It’s also what’s best for you. It’s just painfully obvious you’re making yourself miserable by continuing to pine after Venus. She plays you with her phone calls and texts messages. She has power over you—and only because you allow her that power.” “Wow,” I said. For the first time, I was starting to see that Dr. Clemons wasn’t just making a few good points. She was right about all of it. I felt so foolish. “I did the same thing to you, didn’t I? I didn’t respect you,” I said. “Yes,” she said, reaching across the table and placing her hand on mine. A few days later, I was back at Dr. Clemons’s office. I had assumed that she had taken me out of her calendar when I hurled expletives at her and slammed her door, but when I called to rebook my appointment, the receptionist informed me that nobody had canceled anything. I was still scheduled for the same appointment time that Friday afternoon. When the receptionist showed me into her office, I stood in front of her with my head bowed and my hands clasped behind my back. “I’m so sorry about the way I acted at the end of our last session. I felt a bit like a wounded and cornered animal, but that’s no excuse. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Of course I forgive you, Julius,” she said. “Please, have a seat.” She gestured toward the couch. I sat down and rubbed my sweaty palms on my thighs. I began telling her about my conversation with Jennica. “It sounds like Jennica is a lovely friend. You have a lot of respect for her.” “Yeah, she was one of the people who convinced me I had a problem in the first place, and she’s always been honest with me.” “That’s great,” she said. “It seems like you’re looking at our work together from an entirely new perspective. That will help a great deal as we move forward. Now, the question is, where do we go from here? The answer is up to you. What do you want out of life, Julius?” I thought about her question, noticing that, for the first time, we sat together in a silence that wasn’t awkward. There was an expectant air, but the awkward tension that had characterized so many of the gaps in our earlier conversations was gone. “I want to find somebody,” I said. “I want to find someone with whom I can have a fulfilling, romantic and sexual relationship—a healthy one, not the transaction kind. I see now that my attitude toward women has held me back and I’ve become good at holding grudges. I blamed Delores for stepping out on me, even though the relationship was effectively over when she did so. I blamed Angela for using me as a sperm donor, getting married and locking me out of the ability to be a father. While I might have a say in how we raise our daughter, it’s not fair for me to try to dictate how she feels about me. They’re not responsible for my happiness—and they’re not to blame for my depression. I should have seen that long ago.” “Good.” Dr. Clemons nodded and smiled. “And I blamed Lisa for making a choice I know she made with good intentions. I realize now that she made that decision because she believed it was best for the both of us.” “That’s good. I know that wasn’t easy for you to accept.”

“No, but talking to her helped. She didn’t think we would last and didn’t want to raise a child on her own, or stretched between multiple homes.” “So do you forgive her for her decision now?” I nodded. “I can’t blame her for doing what she thought was best. It wasn’t an easy decision for her to make—or to live with. I had no idea what she’d gone through or the effects it had on her life. I didn’t know until she told me how many nights she was haunted by images of that child standing before her calling her ‘Mama.’” Dr. Clemons was quiet for a moment, letting us both absorb the weight of my words. Then she asked, “And what about the big one? What about Venus?” “My friend Jennica helped me see how right you were and how wrong I was. Though our history is real, I’ve created an ideation about her that has had too much power over me. I know it’s not going to go away instantly, but I am working on a more healthily construct of love.” “That’s a real breakthrough, and it allows you to start working on yourself. I think you are holding onto a lot of self-loathing, and it is easier for you to analyze others than it is to turn that critical lens inward. You’ve started the challenging work of taking an honest look at yourself, and you’ll find that you are as wrong about yourself as you have been about the women in your life. The more you look at yourself and understand yourself, the more you’ll be able to like the man you see in the mirror each morning. You’ll be happier, and you won’t be carrying anybody’s happiness on your shoulders needlessly. You’ll still have responsibilities to your daughter and to those you love, but you’ll be able to see more clearly where these responsibilities begin and where—more importantly—they end.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chinaza’s Me

She was a healer, a counselor, and a minister. She guided the troubled and the confused toward a place of spiritual healing. She was remarkable in the way she could, with a gesture or a kind word, effortlessly move between the realms of the personal and the professional. First and foremost, Chinaza understood that healing begins, in some measure, on the level of the spirit. To all who came to her, she was comionate and wise; knowing that regardless of wealth, position, or education, each of us must walk toward and earn our own redemption. She understood the foundation of Christian redemption, which as a believer; it must be earned, not bought or bargained for. In 2008, she became my mentor and healer, but as time ed, our relationship started to change. We frequently talked on the phone, went to museums together, and browsed the shelves at a local bookstore. We spoke of life and love, sharing our deepest fears and insecurities. Eventually, our time together felt more like two people dating, though at times I would be a no-show as if I were a client that could cancel at will, a bad habit drawn from my emotional baggage. We both traveled a great deal, teaching classes in distant places, speaking all over the country. Ever on the move, she somehow still always found time for me. She never flaked. Phone calls or texts, even just to reach out to me with a warm thought, were never precluded by her busy schedule. Over time, we developed an intimate code—shorthand of the kind that lovers use. We weren’t lovers, though—not fully, not in the flesh. I dreamed of holding her hand, of embracing her and kissing her mouth and body. I longed to run the tips of my fingers across the surface of her face, to massage her back and shoulders, to do all the things those lovers do. But I understood that whatever more there might be, would come in its own time. For me, this was enough.

Something ethereal and unexplainable was happening, and we both felt it as we spent many hours discussing our mutual, yet unreconciled, desires for one another. It was then that an idea came to me that she and I should write a book together. I suggested we title it, The Cracked Containers: Healing His and Hers. It would be a workbook, one that used our relationship as a powerful example for other couples. Our journey would not only heal ourselves, but through the book we would show others the path to healing and wholeness. The book would begin with an invitation in the form of two letters: hers to me explaining that we were likely embarking on a path that could lead to disaster, and mine to her telling that my containers, the embodiment of all that I am, were cracked, damaged in the many struggles we each had endured. We identified our finest assets and examined what those meant. She was conscious; I was healthy. I had modified my behaviors; I was no longer going to strip clubs and had curtailed my unbridled indiscretions and profligate sexual activity. I now understood that casual, serial sexual encounters had worked against my goal of being in a lifelong romantic union. I had replaced my unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns with healthy ones. However, I was by and large still acting unconsciously. As significant as my movements toward a healthy mind, body, and spirit had been, I was still, in essence, stumbling in the dark. I had not yet learned to overhear myself—to bring my unconscious motivations into my conscious awareness. I had cut some of the strings, but I had yet to reckon with the forces that were pulling these strings. Chinaza could see the workings of my subconscious mind as though they were being played out on a stage before her. She could see the inner workings of my mind because she had followed her own strings up to the forces that pulled them. She had come face-to-face with her unconscious, and this had led her to a deeper understanding of herself and of her fellow wayfarers. Each of us wanted the other to be whole. She wanted me to become conscious of my deeper underlying issues, and, through that consciousness, she hoped I would find the spiritual and romantic wholeness that had for so long eluded me. I wanted her to become physically healthy. Though I had seen her take steps to

improve her health, I could see just as plainly that her deteriorating health was becoming a problem that could no longer be ignored. To become spiritually prosperous and centered, I needed to continue on my path of emotional discovery and healing, and she needed to walk a more literal path, one that led to a long life of physical ease and comfort. Focusing, we outlined our differences as thinking versus feeling, and we noted how the healthiest and most conscious choices combined both. Our goal was not to fit together by filling in each other’s deficits but to work toward balancing our strengths and weaknesses so that our eventual union would be greater than the sum of its parts. Who we were together, the couple I felt us becoming, transcended all other relationships I had experienced, and one chilly autumn evening, I told her so. We were talking on the phone as I sat on a park bench beneath the red and orange leaves that rustled in the brisk night air of my Wittenberg University campus. “Why,” she asked, “do you think our relationship has not yet moved into our bed?” Her directness shocked me. “Chinaza,” I said, “I don’t want some casual thing with you. I want you—all of you.” “So are you saying you want total commitment—a lasting and forever relationship?” “What else would I do with you besides forever?” I asked. “I have a decision to make,” she answered. “I guess, ultimately, we both do.” Days later, a letter arrived in my mailbox—not an email, but an old-fashioned, perfume-scented letter written in fountain pen ink on classic blue stationary in her beautiful cursive. I inhaled the musk and flowery scent as I held the letter to my chest before, seated at my desk, I opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. My heart was pounding in anticipation. I wanted to savor every moment.

My Dearest Julius,

The conflict is that I know I cannot be in your head and your bed at the same time. It has to be one or the other and they are mutually exclusive. This is a fundamental principle in coaching, counseling, and any other helping profession. One just cannot maintain a fair and unbiased approach if there is an intimate relationship at play. Ultimately, the good of the individual may be sacrificed for the good of the relationship. This does not serve either of the people and frankly can lead to the destruction of the otherwise inappropriate relationship.

My pounding heart almost stopped as my mind considered the possibility that she might be ending our relationship. I read on with fear and trepidation.

My dilemma here is even greater. That is because the choice may be about your head, but it is also about our bed. I say that because you have made it very clear to me that there is no casualness between us. Once we are in an intimate relationship, we are in it for life. Of course, we will take our chances and hope for forever as all other couples do. It has just already been established that our direction and focus is set once we enter into that realm. We don’t have to wonder about or speculate on each other’s intentions. Once we lie together, what is yours is mine and what is mine is yours. We become us and everything becomes ours.

I stopped reading and stared at the letter, not sure where she was going. Anxiety mushroomed within me.

Now, on an ordinary day, I’d love to hear that. I when I first questioned you about why our relationship had not progressed from its current state. In your response you asked, “What else would I do with you besides forever?”

You could have taken my heart from me in that very moment. What woman would not what to hear that a man thinks of her as his forever? At least what

woman like me would not want to hear it?

Let me tell you; there is not one. A woman who desires to be desired would want to hear that. A woman who wants to be someone’s only would want to hear that. A woman who has never felt that she was the first and only in someone’s life would want to hear that. And I happen to be that lady. My heart was a cauldron spewing flames and sparks.

But on this day, an extraordinary day, it gives me pause. This is when I have to look deep within myself and accept the truth of who I am. I am a woman who would love and her man even when it requires the sacrifice or postponement of her own desires. I am a minister who ushers people into greater relationships with their Creator such that they realize they are created perfect, whole and complete. I am a counselor/coach who s people in actualizing their vision, which is sometimes only to accept who they are. I am a friend who wants the best for her friend whom she had known and loved for over twenty years, even when they were miles and years apart.

There was nothing like the experience I was undergoing. The fear I first felt was being replaced by a surfacing, profound love for this woman as if the letter were releasing it. Whatever she chose, I thought, I would accept.

I reminded myself a few months ago that everything that comes to me is not for me. That is a direct result of the calling on my life. In my station, sometimes what may look good to me and feel right for me is not about me at all. I recalled this in direct relation to my internal conversation about you. Our brief interactions reminded me how much I love you and how much I desire to know you more intimately. However, I also had a feeling that there was a greater calling upon us. I did not know what it was at the time. I assumed it would have something to do with your healing since that is the world I operate in. Little did I know that it would be about healing for both of us. A healing that we could participate in together…both actively and consciously.

Little did I know that you would bring the idea to me and I would know instantly that this is the “purpose” for our union.

I could sense that the verdict was about to be handed down. The great love of my life was the foreperson of the jury, and this foreperson stood to face me, the accused, prepared to read aloud its verdict—a verdict that followed an extended period of intense deliberation.

So now, I sit at the crossroads of choice. I already know the choice that I will make. It is the choice I must make. But for the fact that I know I have free will, and I have evidence of some of my poor choices, I would say I did not have a choice at all. But I know that I do. I am influenced by a society that favors instant gratification. And my ego says, just jump in. Have the love experience right now and you won’t even need the healing. He loves you and you love him. Just do it, and all will be okay; because you’ll have the love you want. He’ll give you the roses, romance, and attention. He will make you a priority in his life. He’ll be The One and you can live happily ever after.

Despite my acceptance of whatever she decided, I cannot lie. At this point, I felt I knew what her answer would be.

The reality is, that might all be true. Or it may not. However, the latter carries burdensome consequences for all involved. Without this healing, we could hurt each other in our earnest effort to love each other. We could create greater bumps and bruises in the very places where we are already cracked. The impact could be devastating especially in a relationship where there is a belief and trust in our mutual love and respect.

I had to stop and put the letter down. I stood up and walked around, fanning my face with the letter, the smell of her perfume wafting into my nose. I couldn’t order my thoughts. The rush of emotions was a tidal juggernaut. As afraid as I was, I had to return to the letter, but I could barely bring myself to do it. Here I was, a three hundred fifty pound man locked in battle with a piece of tissue-thin paper.

That is a hurt I would not wish upon my friend. That is a hurt I would rush in to save you from if I saw you approaching it from a distance. That is what makes the choice very evident and easy. That is what makes it seem as if I have no choice at all… I choose you. I choose me. I choose the healing, but most importantly, I choose and want your undying love forever.

…Now the work is lining up what I think, say, and do with my choice. In that way, I am in integrity within myself. That also puts me in alignment with the greatest healing available for both of us. I put my cracked container away and become the vessel for the Creator to bring healing to us both. My love for you has not and will not change. I “give myself away” to the greater good available for both of us.

All my love, Chinaza

And there it was. In her own way, and in her own words, pen to paper, she had accepted my love into her life. Nothing would ever be the same as we built a stronger and more intimate relationship, with the hope of moving toward a full and final commitment. Chinaza included me in additional aspects of her life, which meant introducing me to her closest friends and making me privy to her most private thoughts. She also introduced me to her beloved godmother, Iyanla Vanzant. Ms. Vanzant was

and is an inspirational speaker, lawyer, spiritual teacher, author, life coach, and television personality—someone who profoundly influenced both of us. I have met many people in my life, but none of them quite like Ms. Vanzant. It was nothing short of awe-inspiring to meet a woman who taps into the inner recesses of the hearts of women—a place I have attempted to navigate to and in since my failed attempt at suicide. I hoped this “great mother” (this is what her name translates to) would fix my life, and she did, though not in the way I expected. In June of 2015, Sierra Leone, a popular Dayton community activist with a large following for her community activism and poetry, invited Iyanla to speak at an event near my home. Sierra and I had worked on projects together, mainly on work that fused the worlds of hip-hop and education. She, along with the YWCA and local female entrepreneurs, sponsored Iyanla’s visit. Chinaza informed me that she would be visiting my city, and we arranged to meet. The night was magical. I sat in the very back of the Schuster Center auditorium, although I had access to a VIP seat that would have put me in the front row. Iyanla was on the stage talking to me, a spiritual arc reaching across the entire room. She spoke of intergenerational mentoring, of the work we needed to do to ensure that moral, cultural messages were shared between and among the generations. She was charismatic beyond words. It was breathtaking to watch her stop people in mid-sentence and chide them for failing to take ownership of their language and its expression of their feelings and their desires. She empowered the downtrodden, giving vent to the inner soul weighed down with decades of doubt and fear. When she spoke to some of the men in the audience, I felt implicated, guilty—ashamed even. It was an awakening. After the presentation, Chinaza brought me backstage so I could meet Iyanla. She invited Chinaza and me to dine with her and her son at a local restaurant called De’Lish owned by an awesome Black female entrepreneur, Jasmine Brown. For three hours Chinaza and I sat, our hands interlocked beneath the table. Iyanla and her son sat and talked with the host, the proprietor, and others while Chinaza and I just smiled, holding hands and embracing.

The Cleveland Cavaliers were playing the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals on the television above us, and I even ignored that. Iyanla smiled at us, saying, “What you two have is inspired by God. It’s more than love; it is a spiritual connection.” I nodded in agreement and thanked her for her inspiring words. Her imprimatur was essential. She was an influential and noble mentor to my sweet Chinaza—a mentor to so many others. I was elated by Iyanla’s affirmation. Since my earliest relationships with women, I had approached women in a transactional way. With Chinaza I learned—perhaps for the first time—to give without expectation. I gave of my time, my resources, and myself, as I had learned and been so inspired to do through biblical teachings. I stopped demanding affection and love, and Chinaza gave me these things freely, without the need of compulsion or bribery. I felt wanted, and the sense of belonging I had long desired was mine at last. Loneliness and self-loathing had haunted my life, and though I still worried that all I had found would be taken away, I was finally able to vanquish these ghosts. In the wee hours of that morning, Chinaza and I shared a kiss in the foyer of the restaurant. People filed past us, but we were swimming in oblivion. For years, we had shared our hearts and minds with each other, and now we were sharing our bodies. It felt like destiny to be in each other’s arms. Chinaza asked, “Why don’t you come to our hotel, Julius?” I desperately wanted to get in my car and follow her to her room, and she wanted that, too, but I was afraid that the essence of my love, the perfection of this moment, the power of this circumstance, would be sullied by yet another one of my unfulfilling hotel trysts. I told her I needed more than just one night, told her I wanted days on end to make her feel my love, told her I wanted the rest of our lives together to make love properly. Hiding behind fear, I turned to an oft-used lie to mask my insecurities. “Chinaza, I don’t want you to leave me alone, abruptly, in my bed hours later. I’ve done that too many times, and it never felt good. Not to mention, won’t Iyanla hear us?” When I left, neither of us was satisfied. I wanted to continue in the dreamlike

state we had experienced in that restaurant. Sex seemed always to tarnish my idyllic conceptions of forever love. In my mind, those physical moments of ion would circumvent the dream, the forever that in my fantasy was blossoming and coming true. The reality of being in love rarely supplants the idea of it. It was on this sweet note that the night ended. She went back to DC the next morning. We frequently talked on the phone and sent emails back and forth, working on our book project and talking about all manner of things. It was a long-distance love affair until we met again a few months later. When we parted from that visit, we kissed again, but something had changed. The kiss in that restaurant had felt full of promise, but this time the kiss felt final, as though we wouldn’t share a moment like this again. I felt I was being tested. We had shied away from physical intimacy, but now it was clear that our focus on the spiritual love had not exactly filled the cup of desire. If our relationship was to progress, it needed physical love—it needed the very thing that challenged me the most. She held my eyes with her gaze and asked me if I was going to continue avoiding physical intimacy. As she well knew, avoidance was easy for me. It came naturally. To commit meant stepping out into a place of uncertainty, that narrow ridge that Martin Buber wrote about, and sharing a bed with Chinaza meant an all-encoming commitment. I wanted her, but I was afraid of what having her meant—how vulnerable it would leave me. I wanted to be ready, told myself time and again that I was willing, but when it came time to put my money where my mouth was, it was clear that I wasn’t ready. I felt unworthy. I thought of all the women in my life that I had lied to, emotionally manipulated, and disappointed. I thought of all the ways I had allowed women to use me: my position, my resources, my sperm, my time, and yes, my body. I thought of the antipathy and depression that followed in the wake of these disappointments. I was a cracked container, and while Chinaza’s love had become a sealant, I was still afraid to test its resilience—and sex was just such a test. The longer I waited, the more heavily the buildup began to weigh on me. Would I be able to please her sexually? With all of our conversations about sex and lovemaking, how would the reality of my performance measure up to her expectations? I wanted privacy and comfort, and neither of them seemed to be available. I had arrived full of intentional vigor, but I hemmed and hawed for the

duration of my visit. My love and affection for Chinaza were as strong as they had ever been, but our relationship had been frozen in a state of arrested development. Chinaza was patient, but even the saintly have their limits. I could see it written all over her face and in the way she moved around me: she had reached the end of her tether. She had given up on me. A little more than three months later, on December 23, 2015, my phone rang at seven in the morning. It was Iyanla Vanzant. There was a stillness in her voice that chilled me to the bone. She had never called before, so I knew something must be terribly wrong. Barely able to speak, I asked her what had happened. Chinaza had had a pulmonary embolism while at home by herself. It had killed her instantly. I was floored. “What are you saying, Priestess? You didn’t—did you say that Chinaza’s dead? That can’t be right.” It was true, though. My Chinaza, the love of my life, was gone. “Julius, I didn’t know if her family would think to you, but I know how close you were. You were one of my first calls.” I thanked her for thinking of me and sullenly asked if I could save her number and call if I needed to talk. She was more than gracious. “Of course, beloved,” she said. “This is difficult for us all.” I hung up, and the moment I was alone with my thoughts, the earth fell away from under me. I slid to the floor, unwilling to accept what I knew must be accepted. How can this be? I thought, my soul, tumbling between disbelief and rage, grief and denial. This had to be a mistake, some awful prank, a joke gone terribly wrong. But it wasn’t. Chinaza had been taking iron infusions and other treatments on her road to physical wellness. She was doing all that was in her power to be healthy, to thrive, and to heal, but it wasn’t enough. She was gone. First Marshonda, and now Chinaza. It was more than I could bear. For days afterward, I went through life’s motions like a zombie, distracted, not sleeping, unable to do even the simplest tasks. When I did sleep, I dreamed that

both Chinaza and Marshonda were calling to me, telling me to watch for them, to listen to the wind, to listen for their signals that only I would be able to understand. My friends and family tried to help by reminding me that this was grief. They told me that what I was experiencing was normal for the recently bereft. “How long will this last?” I asked, but nobody could tell me. My arms and heart were now empty. I was overwhelmed with guilt. I turned the memories of her over and over again in my mind. I had pushed her aside when she sought my physical love. I had always found excuses to divide my attention, giving her only part of me while she gave me all that I needed. Her soul had been a drop of cool fresh water on my heated, ionate desires, but now she was gone from this earthly life. She had returned to her rightful home in the unfathomable waters of that boundless spiritual ocean. I prayed, crying and whispering to her. “Please, Chinaza, return to me. Spirit so beautiful and kind, come back. I want you here, back with me.” It was impossible to say goodbye to my greatest joy, my most familiar friend and the great love of my life—the one who had loved me despite my flaws, my idiosyncrasies. We had not found the way to our bed—the intimacy we had both longed for had never fully arrived. We had committed to each other, and I had convinced myself that that commitment gave me all the time I needed. Even though I had felt her slipping away from me, I was confident that I could overcome my fears and give her all that she wanted. We were, I was sure, destined to be together, and we just needed a little more time. I’d let moment after moment slip through my fingers, always believing that another opportunity was just around the bend. Now, suddenly, the road had reached a dead end. During the days that led up to her burial, I was crushed beneath the weight of memories and regrets. I lowered my head in prayer, whispering, “Chinaza, may your spirit arise. Are you there? Will your Spirit comfort me again? Will you rise, or will the memory I hold of you in my mind ascend again to comfort me?” The simple reality was that Chinaza was gone. The questions between us would remain unanswered. Her spirit would live on in the mirror of my memories.

Confused about the start time, I arrived at the funeral late. I was unable to view her body with the family , so I waited in my car for the recessional to the cemetery to begin. Never in a million years would I have expected the most profound moment in my life to be spent in a rental car. But that’s where I was, squeezed between the driver’s seat and the steering wheel of a rented two-door Subaru. As usual, I felt confined, my largess incongruous with the tiny automotive interior. Through the windshield I could see the cemetery where Chinaza’s body would rest for eternity. My eyes blinked, holding back tears, gazing at her open grave, newly immersed in the ground, her casket among hundreds, her soul preparing for the journey above—the symbol of her final trek. The cemetery was called Harmony Park. Oh, the irony. “I hope she had a pre-paid ticket to Heaven,” I quipped, the notion allowing for a thin smile, light humor in the thick of my mourning. Somewhere between my mind’s eye and her grave, I envisioned her soul taking the shape of the body I knew. She was looking at me, smiling, waving, and blowing me a kiss. In contrast to my deep sadness, she appeared giddy with excitement. Perhaps she knew she was going to a better place, though she so relished life on earth, always one to be celebrating her existence and her friends. Transfixed by my thoughts, I reached up to the cross that hung in solemnity from the rearview mirror. Gripping it between my thumb and index finger, I saw myself in the mirror. My face was Black, fixed, and determined. “I need you, Chinaza!” I yelled, practically coming out of my seat. Sitting back, I caught my breath. Images of her alive flashed before my eyes. My heartbeat slowed, allowing me to voice a profound realization. “Now that you have transcended the earthly world of the flesh, Chinaza, I am freed to think of you as female, as a woman, as more than the incredible mentor for which you served so selflessly, as more than an ageless beacon in my life.” I closed my eyes and imagined she was there, answering my thoughts. “Julius, my beloved,” she said in a deep voice so resonant that it appeared to be channeling the words of all of humankind. “Every man, woman, and child deliver a small piece of the kind of wisdom I knew. You just have to listen to them, in spite of their human arrogance and ignorance. They are children of God, and as such, they are a blessing.”

By now my hands gripped the steering wheel as if I were hanging on for my life, a terrifying ride of fear and realization. I screamed out: “You are gone! Venus is not around, Delores is gone and soon to remarry, Michelle cares so little about me, Annette is gone, Latoria just had another child, and it’s all too much for me to bear. How will I ever find love again? When will I ever find love again? I must know the answers. Maybe I should you in the afterlife, or maybe I should the monastery and love Jesus till death.” “Julius.” I heard Chinaza speak as if she were alive and in front of me. “Perhaps you should look deeper into your call to ministry.” Thoughts and emotions coursed through my veins. Chinaza’s voice chimed in my head. “Whatever you do, don’t put yourself in a straightjacket, condemning yourself. There is a way to incorporate all that you love: teaching, the church, and your sensual nature. Do what you love, and leave behind the rest. Be a beacon to life and all its fruits.” Already, I began to think more clearly. The weight of Chinaza’s death was replaced with a lightness of being. “By the way, Julius, what excites you about women? You’ve never quite told me, and now I’m gone, so I have no interest in you candy-coating things. I want you to be happy and healthy, especially in your heart.” “I want to be happy,” I said out loud. “I want to be partnered.” “Can’t you just enjoy the moment?” she asked. “And if the moment includes an encounter with a woman, can’t you enjoy it for what it is without trying to manipulate it, to force it? Do you know what I mean, Julius?” “I don’t know,” I said with exasperation. “I don’t know.” “Let’s say you’re walking along a pond in a park and you stumble upon a young woman who is throwing bread to the ducks. You have a baguette under your arm, and you begin to in. When she runs out of bread, you share yours. For a few minutes you enjoy the camaraderie, the sunshine, the way you share the bread in synchronicity; you enjoy her hair against the sun and the water.” I had lost track of time. The night had fallen and now my car sat alone in the parking lot. A cold chill gripped the car’s interior. Shivering, I started the engine

and turned up the heater. The blower filled the car with noise until I turned it down. The moment I did, her voice returned. “Imagine if nothing could be added or taken away in that glorious moment at the pond. You smile, you allow the rapture of God and his holy spirit to rise within you, and then you go on, knowing that if God means for you to become closer to this woman, it will happen on its own without you forcing it out of desperation, out of fear of rejection, or out of anger that no one will love your whole self.” A car pulled up next to me, returning me to the present. The headlights flicked off and a woman climbed out and stared at the cemetery as if she were planning to enter its darkness. I opened the car door and said to the woman, “Ma’am, it’s dark out there in the cemetery. Will you be okay?” “I pay respects to my father every Tuesday night, so I walk without fear. This is what the Lord has asked me to do. My father was the deacon of the Burrell River Church.” “I have just lost a loved one, too,” I said. “Chinaza was her name. We buried her earlier today, and I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been having a conversation with her, right here in the parking lot, ever since. She was my counselor and my friend and I loved her dearly. I cannot possibly calculate her loss.” “Don’t be embarrassed, my friend,” she said, and for the next fifteen minutes, we talked about our losses. I walked with her to her father’s grave, shining a light from my mobile phone on the ground to guide our way, though perhaps she did not need it. When we returned to the cars, we said our goodbyes. Opening the door to my car, I thought, I’ve had a lovely time meeting this stranger, and it’s time to leave. She smiled, we said our goodbyes, and we both got into our cars and started their engines. While I was letting my car warm up, she flickered her lights and rolled down her window. I rolled down mine and said, “You all right?” “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?” Caught off guard between surprise and flattery, I smiled but kindly declined. Driving from the cemetery, I watched the road spin under my tires as it began to rain again. I sensed the waves in my mind quiet. The city slipped by in a blur of

headlights and streetlamps as I ed throngs of people walking in their wet shoes. Some were happy or hurried, agitated and argued with themselves and others. They carried their sorrow or joy into the night as I headed to the airport. Soon enough, I was boarding the plane, buckling myself in, ready to fly home. I looked out onto the runway and caught a glimpse of a wing walker waving an orange baton, guiding the plane to the J-line, or maybe me, to take off. As their arms motioned, my mind drew closer and closer to that bright light. Then the plane turned, accelerated, and rose into the dark. It was as if my whole life was ushered into new heights. As we ascended into the clouds, the weight of my years lifted. I was headed toward a new trajectory.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Be-Longing is a work of narrative nonfiction. The events portrayed are to the best of my memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved. In some cases, I had to compress events and expand them in others. I may have made two people into one and one person into two. My effort is not to expose the lives of others but to share my foibles and life lessons with others so as to engage the reader in their own Triumph in their own Mirror.