If This World Were Mine

by E. Lynn Harris

  Chapter 2

  It’s Friday and I’m wondering why God ever created sex. It just so happens that on this last day of the week, each one of my eight patients is dealing with how sex has messed up their lives. Maybe I’m pissed off because despite all their problems, at least they’re getting some. More than I can say for myself. It’s usually on Fridays that I seriously consider switching from psychiatry to being a general practitioner in some small, uncomplicated, slow-paced southern town near my hometown of New Orleans.

  Sometimes on Fridays I long to be back at Hampton, sitting under Emancipation Oak or in the library, trying to solve a complicated chemistry problem. I wish I were back at Booker T. Washington Junior High, when sex was something I only pretended to know about.

  On this particular humid mid-July Friday I had made it through the first five clients then managed to finish a tuna and American cheese on rye while jotting down a few notes on the morning patients. I was praying for the strength to give my final three clients my undivided attention.

  I had a good thirty minutes before my afternoon patients, so I decided to write an entry to read to the group on Sunday. When my office was quiet, like it was now, I was grateful that Riley had suggested that I join a group of her friends keeping journals: My journals had become much-needed therapy for me.

  It’s been a good week. I feel like some of my patients are making progress. I’m trying not to get too excited, but a couple of my patients who are HIV-positive (and who months ago were at death’s door) have started taking some of these new drugs and now they look great! Could we be close to beating this AIDS thing? I’m excited, yet frightened to even think about something so miraculous and wonderful.

  I know you guys have been worrying about my social life. I don’t know if you’re really worried or you’re all homoerotic voyeurs. I don’t think you’ll ever understand that dating for a Black gay man is different than with you guys. Anyway, I had a date this week and in my world you never know what you’re gonna get.

  This was a rugged-looking guy I met near my office. He was part of a work crew widening the streets close to Grant Park. He caught my eye one day when I was having lunch in the park and I guess I caught his, because he came over and started a conversation. I didn’t know at first if he was gay, but I was hoping. Then he told me I should be eating something more substantial and then he offered to cook dinner. His invitation surprised me. I never figured he might be gay, but only wished. He had a wonderful smile and was very masculine. You guys know I like macho.

  When I got to his apartment I thought I was walking into my great-great-auntie’s apartment. It smelled like an old person’s house! I mean, it was decorated with all this old-timey furniture with shawls and plastic covering everything. It looked like the showroom of The Price Is Right. In the seventies. When I asked him if he lived with his mother, he smiled and said no, he had decorated the place himself. That’s when I noticed his voice was softer than it had been at the park, and he was wearing a long, flowing blousy kind of shirt with huge exotic flowers all over it. Thank God I had instructed my answering service to page me thirty minutes after my arrival. I know the operator must have thought I was crazy when I kept saying “Oh, no. No. I’ll be right there.” When I explained to him I had a medical emergency, he said, “I hope you feel better soon.” I started to tell him I was a doctor, but decided it might take too long. He insisted on fixing me a plate, and the food did smell good, so I agreed to take some food home. When I left, he was standing at the door in that outrageous outfit, his head posed ever so Doris Day-like. “You got a rain check you can cash anytime, man friend.” Man friend, what exactly is that? Sounds like something my uncle would call his trade. All I could think of was I had been faked out again.

  Before I knew it, I had made it through two more clients, including my married, closeted ex-judge and “Joyless Joey,” my Friday ABM (angry black man) who still hadn’t confessed the sexual secret that was causing him so much pain. As usual, he had spent his fifty minutes blaming everyone, especially white folks and faggots, for his lack of social skills. Several times I had been tempted to tell him, “Excuse me, but you’re sitting here depending on a ‘faggot’ to help you with all your problems.” I thought he and my journal member Dwight might make good buddies. Not because I think Dwight is that homophobic—just mad at everybody.

  While waiting for my last patient, I picked up a pink message slip from the receptionist’s desk. My best friend, Yolanda, had called, saying that she would pick me up at six P.M. sharp on the Michigan Avenue side of my office. There was a special instruction for me to be on time because she had “big news.” I guess she had finished her business in New York early enough to get a midday flight back to O’Hare.

  Yolanda, or Yogi as I sometimes called her, and I had a standing Friday-night date when she was in town. We left Saturdays open for dates that for me never seemed to happen. Before she left for New York, we made tentative plans to check out Vanessa Williams in the movie Eraser, and then grab a bite at my uncle Doc’s South Side eatery. I was still wondering what her big news was, when I heard the outer office door open. My three o’clock appointment called out, “Whatsup, Dr. Thompson?”

  I turned toward the door and gave my best I’m-a-doctor-who-cares smile.

  “Michael, come on in,” I said. I had been seeing Michael Hunter for a little over a year. We hadn’t made much progress with his sexual addiction. He was a handsome man, slender, yet well muscled with white, slightly crooked teeth under a trim auburn mustache. For the past two years he had made a living as a high-priced escort for both men and women, even though he considered himself gay. I was thankful we didn’t have to deal with the bisexual thing. He had, on occasion, modeled for legitimate clients like Marshall Field. Michael had convinced himself that the reason he was working as an escort was that the Chicago modeling opportunities hadn’t panned out. He denied the fact that he enjoyed the sex with as many as a dozen clients a week.

  I followed Michael into my office and placed Yolanda’s message on my desk, picked up my yellow legal pad, and sat in my well-worn chair. Michael plopped in the black leather wing chair facing me. It looked as though the chair had swallowed him whole. I spent a few minutes trying to remember if he normally sat in the chair or the sofa. Some of my patients always sat on the sofa, while my more uptight patients, like the judge, favored the chair. I didn’t consider Michael uptight.

  “I’ve got some exciting news, Dr. Thompson,” Michael said. “I’m moving back to New York.”

  “I thought you enjoyed living in Chicago,” I said. He had been living in Chicago for less than two years.

  “Yeah, I do, but I think things are changing with the New York modeling scene,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The Tyson look, you know, all that dark skin, is finally wearing thin and agencies are going to be looking for light-skinned men. You just know light skin is coming back.” He smiled as if he had heard some special news bulletin interrupting his favorite soap. I didn’t know whether to get up and shake this fool or to laugh. My people never fail to amaze me.

  I was worried. It was nearly eight o’clock and I hadn’t heard from Yolanda. I had waited outside on Michigan Avenue for over an hour before returning to my office. I tried her cellular. I called her office phone and home number. I checked my home answering machine to see if she had left a message for me there. Nothing. I checked to see if her flight had arrived on time. It had. I called the Omni in New York, where Yolanda always stayed. She had checked out. I was eager to see my girl and to hear her “big news” as well. I smiled when I thought about my big news. I had to warn my Hershey bar-colored friend that light skin was making a comeback.

  I decided to take a taxi over to Uncle Doc’s. Yolanda would know to find me there.

  I paid for my taxi, and as I approached Miss Thing’s Wings, I could see a long line leading up to the door. The door itself defied logic. It was a ramshackle wooden door with a
wire mesh screen inserted into its upper half. Like rings on a tree, different colors told the history of the door, which had been painted again and again over the years. Currently, it was a reddish-brown with bits of hospital green peeking through. The door hung on spring hinges, so it was easy to push open and could shut by itself. With the constant flow of customers in and out of the place, the banging of that door was as familiar to me as Uncle Doc’s voice shouting out orders to Miss Mavis in the kitchen.

  While many small businesses in the area had come and gone, Miss Thing’s Wings was entering its twentieth year, despite competition from the chicken franchise down the block. My uncle had refused several good offers to move and expand, because as he put it, “I don’t want nobody in my skillets or my business.” It was located just past the 1200 block of South Michigan, where it had always been. Its address should have been thirteen something, but Uncle Doc thought that would be unlucky and had somehow managed to convince city officials to give him a 1200-numbered address. Uncle Doc had changed the name from Doug’s Chicken Shack during the early ’80s, when every gay man in the country started using the term “Miss Thing” to describe each other and close girlfriends. Some of my uncle’s closest friends would call him after leaving the club with the same question Friday after Friday: “Miss Thing, you got any of them wings fryin’?” And the ever-popular “Miss Thing know she can put a fryin’ on some wings.”

  A full block before you entered the one-story building you could smell the barbecue smoking in the huge barrel smoke pit out back. The tiny dining room was the size of a project bedroom, with a kitchen the size of a walk-in closet. The place was packed—as always. Each of the six tables was covered with a plastic pink and green checked tablecloth (a tribute to my mother’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha; Uncle Doc had declared himself an honorary member of the AKAs). They were wedged between the used-to-be-white, greased-stained walls. Each plastic upholstered chair was spoken for. A red Formica counter with three stools stood at the back of the room in front of the kitchen, and beside the fully occupied counter was the cash register and takeout window. In the corner, the jukebox still offered three selections for a quarter and was belting out some serious B. B. King over the roar of voices. Two pay phones were attached to the wall near the front door. Most of the wall space was covered with mismatched framed pictures of Uncle Doc’s favorites like Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and Nat King Cole, as well as Chicago dignitaries like the late Mayor Harold Washington, John H. Johnson, Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Jesse Jackson, Senator Carol Mosely Braun, and the latest edition—Dennis Rodman. The frequent visiting celebrities like Vanessa Williams, Babyface, Laurence Fishburne and even Elton John were also showcased shaking hands with Uncle Doc.

  The remaining reachable wall space was dotted with every possible handwritten sign indicating the acceptable behavior in Miss Thing’s Wings: NO FEETS ON THE WALL, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE, and my favorite, IF IT AIN’T RIGHT, IT’S WRONG!

  One summer I had come to Chicago from college to work with Uncle Doc. I was full of myself, cocky and feeling college-boy smarter than anyone else. Clearly, it was up to me to save my uncle from himself. Or so I thought. I decided I would take down all the misspelled signs and correct them while Uncle Doc was out. Sort of my surprise thank-you for all the financial help he was giving me. I was tacking up the last sign, EXTRA POTATO SALAD, 50 CENTS, when the door banged. It was Uncle Doc. I stood there grinning, waiting for my well-deserved thanks, but Uncle Doc just walked right past me up to the counter. He called out to Miss Mavis, “Love, has anybody ever had any trouble reading the signs in my place?”

  “Naw, not to my knowledge, Doc,” she answered thoughtfully. “Well,” Uncle Doc said, turning to look me right in the eye, “has anybody ever questioned the ’s’ on ‘feets’? Or maybe the ‘e’ on ‘p-o-t-a-t-o-e’?”

  “Naw, Doc, don’t you think maybe it’s because we’s just too stupid?” Mavis asked.

  “ ’Cause we ain’t been to no big fancy c-o-l-l-e-g-e?” Uncle Doc chimed in.

  I changed the signs back. Uncle Doc never said a word directly to me, but he did give me a large circle pop and a smile, as if to say, “Now, there,” one of his favorite lines.

  The takeout line snaked into the establishment along the walls and ended at the cash register, where orders were placed from the chalkboard price list that hung from the ceiling over the register. The menu included a “Girlfriend Basket” (five wings, fries, and slaw with a thin slice of white bread on top), a “Snap ’N Pop Plate” (short ribs and potato salad), and my own personal favorite, the “Trade Basket” (a combination of wings, hot links, short ribs, and fries, drenched in hot barbecue sauce with two slices of white bread). The orders were served in too-small green plastic baskets. If it was a “bird flying,” meaning to go, the baskets were covered with plain brown paper bags that the sauce would seep through before the customers banged the door on their way out.

  There was no denying the food. It was simply among the best in Chicago. The lines told the story. The steady stream of celebrities or their assistants, rich white folks slumming, gangstas, Chicago Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks, and regular folks all proved that Miss Thing’s Wings was putting out something almost everybody wanted. The clientele was as much a part of the ambience as the smell of smoking hot links. Tonight a Buppie couple in formal wear—she in sequins, he in a tux—sat greasy-fingered at one of the tables, poring over plates of short ribs and slaw. Now I knew who owned the limo double-parked outside. Or maybe it had delivered the two white businessmen whispering conspiratorially over steaming Trade Baskets. I smiled to myself, thinking they probably had no idea where Uncle Doc had gotten the name from. Maybe they thought it was a part of the NAFTA agreement.

  Two of Chicago’s finest were finishing off their Hot ’N Spicy wings and potato salad with long swallows of Uncle Doc’s famous red fruit punch. He had another version of the punch he wasn’t allowed by law to serve, something about a liquor license. No one paid the cops or the white businessmen any mind, and the cops seemed oblivious to the noisy flurry of activity all around them. The table in the back corner was occupied by a middle-aged, diamond-studded blonde and a brother who appeared at least twenty-five years her junior. They had moved their chairs close together, and their blue plastic tumblers were raised in a toast. Their other hands were not visible above the table as they gazed feverishly into each other’s eyes.

  Four open-shirted, gold-chained, Jheri-curled young men were hunched over their food like they were afraid somebody was gonna take it away. Their many-ringed fingers were dripping with sauce, and the table was littered with greasy used paper napkins.

  My stomach was growling for some of Uncle Doc’s throw-down food. I couldn’t wait on Yolanda.

  “Hey, hey! Here comes my baby!” Aunt Thelma’s booming voice greeted me from clear across the room like a warm bear hug. She was ringing up orders and calling them out to Miss Mavis in the kitchen. Thelma Washington, a hefty brown sweet-faced woman, was no more my aunt than Patti LaBelle was my mother, but she was family. Aunt Thelma had worked for my uncle for over fifteen years. When Uncle Doc wasn’t there, Thelma ruled Miss Thing’s Wings with an iron fist. Sometimes gloved in velvet, more often not. She was not only headwaitress-in-charge, but often the entertainment for the evening. Aunt Thelma wouldn’t hesitate to read first-timers who behaved like they had no home training, much to the delight of the old-timers, who’d laugh openly, remembering their own trial by fire. I still remember the day she snatched my baseball cap off my head just as me and some friends were getting ready to dive into plates of short ribs and potato salad. Took me forever to live that one down.

  “How’s my favorite chile? You shrunk any heads this week?” Thelma asked. We both laughed and hugged the best we could across the counter. I always got the shrink joke from Aunt Thelma when I came in wearing my uniform: khaki slacks, oxford shirt, tie with a vest, and regulation penny loafers. “I’m doing okay. And I’m doing the best I can on the oth
er tip. What’s going on with you?” I answered back.

  “Chicken and customers. Customers and chicken,” she replied.

  “Where’s my uncle?” I wanted to see my wiry, fun-loving uncle, my father’s brother with the big smile. Uncle Doc’s aging features came at you in waves, a button nose, large teeth, and lips almost too big for his oval-shaped face. He dyed his hair constantly, so it was always too black for peanut-butter-brown skin.

  “Now, Doc, Jr. You know he’s running the stand over at the Taste,” Thelma said. Sometimes she called me Doc, Jr., because I had given Uncle Doc my medical degree when I graduated from Howard Medical School. He had paid my tuition all the way through school. He was so touched and proud that he had a duplicate made so that he could have one at home and one in his restaurant, right next to the triple chicken fryers.

  “I forgot the Taste of Chicago is going on. Couldn’t tell by this packed house,” I said. This was Uncle Doc’s fifth year of participating in the huge and popular Chicago food festival. Only the best restaurateurs were invited, and this year was supposed to be extra special because First Eater President Bill Clinton was making a visit. Uncle Doc had been busy for months trying to figure out a way to make sure the President tasted at least one of his wings.

  “I’m sure there’s a line over there too. You want your usual?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But don’t rush yourself, wait on your paying customers. Yolanda hasn’t called here, has she?”

  “Now, you know you askin’ the wrong one. I don’t answer that contraption ’less I have to,” Thelma said.

  “I wonder what happened?” Before I could answer myself, I felt two delicate hands cover my eyes. I knew those hands, and her exquisite vanilla perfume confirmed it.

  “Guess who’s my favorite boyfriend?” Yolanda said as I turned around and gave her a quick kiss on the lips and then a big hug. She looked great in a cranberry-colored silk dress with thin straps.