by Curtis Bunn
Dear Reader:
Homecoming weekends are extremely popular among historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) where alumni converge to celebrate with parties, football games, step shows and even steamy affairs. In Homecoming Weekend, Curtis Bunn visits his real-life alma mater, Norfolk State University, where characters throughout the country arrive in Norfolk, Virginia to connect with friends for good old-fashioned fun times.
The novel’s annual fall tradition features a colorful cast of characters who are anxious to encounter their former crushes, check out their classmates’ new looks or offer advice about life. I’m sure you will enjoy how Curtis uses humor to depict a behind-the-scenes weekend of college alumni and camaraderie.
As always, thanks for supporting the efforts of Strebor Books. We strive to bring you fresh, talented and ground-breaking authors that will help you escape reality when the daily stressors of life seem overwhelming. We appreciate the love and dedication of our readers. You can find all of our titles on the Internet at www.zanestore.com and you can find me on Eroticanoir.com (my personal site), Facebook.com/AuthorZane, or my online social network, PlanetZane.org
Blessings,
Publisher
Strebor Books International
www.simonandschuster.com
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Bumpy Road
Chapter Two: Brand New
Chapter Three: On the Road Again
Chapter Four: Old Friends, New Relationship
Chapter Five: Let the Parties Begin
Chapter Six: The Old with the New
Chapter Seven: The Reunion
Chapter Eight: Making Moves
Chapter Nine: Smokey and the Bandits
Chapter Ten: May I Have Your Attention, Please?
Chapter Eleven: The Aftermath
Chapter Twelve: Displeasure In the Air
Chapter Thirteen: Do What You Know is Right
Chapter Fourteen: A Wild Night
Chapter Fifteen: Let the Chase Begin
Chapter Sixteen: The Tailgate, Part I
Chapter Seventeen: The Tailgate, Part II
Chapter Eighteen: Let the Games Begin
Chapter Nineteen: Happy Homecumming
Chapter Twenty: Revelations
Chapter Twenty-One: Eeenie Meenie Mynee . . . No
Chapter Twenty-Two: A Night not Remembered
Chapter Twenty-Three: It’s Getting Hot in Here
Chapter Twenty-Four: Cold Truths
Chapter Twenty-Five: Chit Chats
Chapter Twenty-Six: Introducing . . .
Chapter Twenty-Seven: It’s Going Down
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bringing it Home
All Hail the HBCU Homecoming Experience
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
‘A Cold Piece of Work’ Excerpt
About Curtis Bunn
This book is dedicated to historically black colleges and universities in general and my beloved Norfolk State University in particular. The nurturing of young minds and dispensing of knowledge and esteem HBCUs provide have laid and continue to lay the foundation of countless productive lives. Say it with me, NSU Spartans: Behold: The Green & Gold!!!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nowhere. That’s where I would be without God. I know He protects me, delivers me and inspires me in everything I do. And He surely provided the uplifting needed for me to complete this work. Thank you, Lord.
I have family that I covet, and I always start with my late father, Edward Earl Bunn, Sr.; he was the ultimate example of a hard-working family man that put family first in every case. My mother, Julia Bunn, has been the most supportive, giving, loving mom around. I love my brothers, Billy and Eddie and my sister, Tammy. My grandmother, Nettie Royster, remains our spiritual foundation.
Curtis Jr. and Gwendolyn (Bunny) are my talented and smart children that make me proud. My nephew, Gordon, has always been like a second son. And my niece, Tamayah (Bink Bink) and nephew Eddie Jr. are blessings that I love so much. My cousins, Greg Agnew and Warren Eggleston, are like my brothers, as well as my brother-in-law Deryk. And I am grateful for cousin Carolyn Keener and uncle Al and aunts Thelma and Barbara and Ms. Brenda Brown, who has been like an aunt/second mom much of my life.
So much love and respect go to Zane, Charmaine Roberts and the entire Strebor Books/Atria/Simon & Schuster family for the support and opportunity to make this book a joyful reality. I’m proud to be a part of the Strebor family.
There are not enough pages to document by name all the people who mean something to me. But I will start with my Norfolk State family that I love: Felita Sisco Rascoe, my NSU classmate and super-duper close friend I rediscovered last year; Kerry Muldrow, Keith Gibson, Randy Brown, Sam Myers, Tony (Kilroy) Hall, Tony Starks, Marc Davenport, Greg Willis, Ronnie Bagley, Brian White, Ronnie Akers, Jacques Walden, Dennis Wade, Julian Jackson, Mark Webb, Kelvin Lloyd, Frank Nelson, Hayward Horton, Mark Bartlett, Marvin Burch, Derrick (Nick Lambert), Gerald Mason, Charles E. Johnson, Harry Sykes, Kim Mosley, Patricia Easley, Gina Dorsey, Shelia Harrison, Demetress Graves, Leslie LeGrande, Bob White, Laura Carpenter, Erika and Tony Sisco, Kevin and Hope Jones, Sybil and Leroy Savage, Avis Easley, David A. Brown, Yvonne Young, Linda Vestal, Sharon Foster, Bruce Lee, Kent Davis, Kevin Davis, Rev. Hank Davis, Judge Susan Davis Widgenton, Kevin Widgenton, Donna Robinson, Sheila Wilson, Ramona Palmer, Derek T. Dingle, Leon H. Carter, Val Guilford, Curtis West, Darryl Robinson, Zack Withers, Joe Cosby, Warren Jones, Joe Alston, Deberah (Sparkle) Williams, Barbara Ray-Jackson, Anna Burch and Gail Patterson. Also, we lost some Spartans I really cared about and miss: Madinah Aziz, Ladina Stevens and Donnie Ebanks. RIP, friends.
I have been blessed with a vast and diverse group of friends that are important to me, including Najah Aziz, Trevor Nigel Lawrence, Wayne Ferguson, Darryl (DJ) Johnson, Betty Roby, Rick Eley, Christine Rudolph, Monica Harris Wade, Yetta Gipson, Denise Bethea, Betty Roby, Tara Ford Payne, Diana Joseph, Monya Bunch, Shelia Bryant, George Hughes, Serena Knight, Marty McNeal, Tamitrice Mitchell, Edward (Bat) Lewis, Kathy Brown, Angela Norwood, Angela Bass, Angie Jones, Carla Griffin, Darryl K. Washington, Lateefah Aziz, Jeff Stevenson, Derrick (Tinee) Muldrow, Lyle V. Harris, Brad Corbin, J.B. Hill, William Mitchell, Carmen Carter, Lesley Hanesworth, Mary Knatt, Sonya Perry, E. Franklin Dudley, Skip Grimes, Sherline Tavernier, Denise Taylor, Jeri Byrom, Hadjii Hand, Laurie Hunt, Karen Shepherd, Clifford Benton, Rob Parker, Cliff Brown, Stephen A. Smith, Zain, D. Orlando Ledbetter, Michele Ship, Francine McCarley, Emma Harris, Garry Howard, Cindy Jackson, Billy Robinson, Jay Nichols, Ralph Howard, Paul Spencer, Jai Wilson, Garry Raines, Glen Robinson, Dwayne Gray, Jessica Ferguson, Carolyn Glover, David R. Squires, Kim Royster, Keela Starr, Mike Dean, Veda McNeal, Alvin Whitney, Pam Oliver, Kimberly Frelow, Karen Elaine Jones, Keisha Hutchinson, Penny Payne, Erin Sherrod, Tawana Turner-Green, Joan Hyatt, Joe Lewis, John Hughes, Sonji Robinson, Vonda Henderson, Natanyi Carter, Mark Lassiter, Shauna Tisdale, Quinn & Teeairra Motton, Tony Carter, Tamaira Thompson, LaToya Tokley, Necole Bobb, Claire Batiste, Olivia Alston, Brenda O’Bryant, Sheryl Williams Jones, Karen Faddis, Leticia McCoy, Dorothy (Dot) Harrell, John Hollis, Elaine Richardson, Aggie Nteta, Danny Anderson, Lakesha Williams, Leah Wilcox, Andre Aldridge, Ursula Renee, Marilyn Bibby, Brad Turner, Desyre Morgan, Billy Robinson, Denise Thomas, Camille York, D.D. Turner, Judith Greer, Anita Wilson, Tim Lewis, Carrie Haley, Dexter Santos, Ron Thomas, April Tarver, Michelle Lemon, Sandra Velazquez, Patricia Hale, Pam Cooper, Pargeet Wright, Regina Collins, Michelle Hixon, Sherrie Green, Jay Nichols, Regina Troy, Karen Turner, Deborah Tinsley, Christine Beatty, Angela Paige, Roland Louis, Dr. Yvonne Sanders-Butler, Deborah R. Johnson, Toni Tyrell, Tanecia Raphael, Tracie Andrews, Debora
h Sharpe, Sheila Powe, Tammy Grier, Sid Tutani, Mike Christian and The Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin, King of Akyem Abuakwa Eastern Region of Ghana, West Africa.
Special thanks and love to my great alma mater, Norfolk State University (Class of 1983); the brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha (especially the Notorious E Pi of Norfolk State); Ballou High School (Class of ’79), ALL of Washington, D.C., especially Southeast.
I am also grateful to all the readers and book clubs that have supported my work over the years and to my many literary friends Nathan McCall, Carol Mackey, Linda Duggins, Karen Hunter, Troy Johnson and Terrie Williams.
I’m sure I left off some names; I ask your forgiveness. If you know me you know I’m getting older and subject to forgetfulness. J, I appreciate and am grateful for you.
Peace and blessings,
CURTIS
CHAPTER ONE
BUMPY ROAD
Jimmy and Monica
Sometimes Jimmy hated his wife. Well, maybe not hated, but on occasion he certainly resented her and how she made him feel. At worst, she had a way of reducing their marriage, an institution he honored, to a prison stint—or some forsaken place he did not want to visit, like hell or the lingerie department at JCPenney.
In those times, he felt like getting into his car and driving off to no place in particular, just away from her, never bothering to look back.
After a while, those feelings would subside. But his anguish was not unfamiliar to any married person, some of whom had even more dramatic emotions than Jimmy’s. Still, he believed being a loyal husband and committed father entitled him to some understanding and not the blow-torch heat Monica spewed.
On this day in particular, it ate at Jimmy like termites through damp wood.
He had waited an entire decade for this weekend.
It was homecoming.
Monica knew how excited he was about the trip—he talked incessantly about how much he looked forward to going back to his old college—but that did not stop her from filling Jimmy’s head with exactly what it did not welcome.
He had the trip all planned. He was trying to get onto Interstate 95 South by noon so he could arrive before traffic built up at the tunnel between Hampton and Norfolk, Virginia around 3 o’clock. It was a solid three-hour, fifteen-minute drive from their home in Southeast Washington, D.C.—and that included time for him to stop downtown to get his customary road food: a half-smoke (a D.C. signature sausage) with mustard and onions, a box of Boston Baked Beans candy, pumpkin seeds and a Welch’s grape soda.
Monica had other notions. She was sweet on occasion, needy at times and overbearing too often. This was one of her patented meltdowns that bothered Jimmy like that sound of the old record needle screeching across an album. When she acted as she did on this day—standing over him as he packed his bags, arms folded, mouth going, attitude funky—it was a miserable existence for Jimmy. He didn’t do drama well, and Monica was in straight Drama Queen mode.
While she was dramatic, and even over the top, she believed she had a valid argument. She wondered why her husband was going back to Norfolk State University’s homecoming without her?
Jimmy was so frustrated because of what he deemed her last-minute sinister objective: To pressure and nag him into not going or to bring her along, even as he was moments from departing. At worst, she wanted to put him in a foul mood so he would not enjoy himself. Selfish, he thought.
Why else would she go into her histrionics now? he surmised. She knew I was going to homecoming for several months. To act a fool just as he was about to leave frustrated him.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he said. He had much more to say, but he worked hard on controlling his fly-off-the-handle temper, and the best way to manage that moment was to shut it down as best he could.
“Believe it,” she said with much attitude.
Monica was not cute when she was this way. Ordinarily, she was a good-looking woman, not breathtaking but certainly attractive enough for Jimmy to be proud to call her his wife. When she was this way, though, she didn’t look the same. In his eyes, she resembled something awkward and distorted, totally unappealing.
Her eyes seemed to darken and to fall back into the sockets, and she held a perceptible amount of saliva in her mouth. Some creature overtook her physical being and the devil owned her mind, Jimmy thought.
Still, he loved his wife. She could be worse; their marriage could be worse. He could have been like one of his close friends, Lonnie, who simply had been emasculated by his spouse. She controlled everything from what he did (or didn’t do) to whom among his “friends” he communicated. He became a joke among their friends.
Monica was not that bad. This level of discord was not regular behavior; Jimmy would not have been able to take it if it were the norm. Other times she got on his nerves (what woman didn’t?) for one thing or another, and he would often acquiesce, mumbling to himself: Keep the peace.
She figured that if she griped enough, Jimmy would again look to keep the peace and give in. She was wrong. No amount of badgering was going to turn his position. For the most part, she was a responsible and fun wife. But something about him going back to his alma mater for homecoming turned her paranoid. Jimmy remained calm, but he would not budge.
“Baby,” he said, trying his best to not sound condescending, “why must we go through this now? You knew about this trip for months. I’m about to leave. This makes no sense.”
“Why is it that you have to go and that I can’t go with you?” Monica said.
She had traveled with Jimmy, a lieutenant in the Army, a few places across the country and the world. They moved back to D.C. from California less than a year before, which was good and bad in this situation. It was good because he was back home and it was much easier to get to Norfolk from D.C. than the West Coast or the foreign stops they made. It was bad because he could not fall back on the excuse that it was not “cost-efficient” for both of them to make the cross-country trip for a two-day weekend, as he had in the past.
Jimmy’s reality was that his wife did not go to Norfolk State. She did not go to an historically black college at all, which meant, to Jimmy, she didn’t understand the value of the weekend—or that there was sort of a “no-spouse code” among most alumni, at least among those he knew well from school.
She went to the “University of Something or Other in Ohio,” he liked to say, where the brothers and sisters there were in the vast minority. So, while homecoming there surely was fun, it did not include all the elements that make homecoming at an HBCU a special experience and sort of family reunion. In fact, African-Americans who went to a “majority” college hardly ever went back to their school’s homecoming because it lacked that welcoming theme.
Jimmy had been in touch with classmates who talked about how impressed and proud they were to see how much their school had grown. They talked about there being fifty thousand people there, all black, all caught up in the pride and celebratory spirit that home-coming raises. At a non-HBCU, the homecoming weekend was about the football game mostly and a whole bunch of stuff that did not measure up to the cultural experience of an HBCU.
“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” he had told Monica. “It’s just different. Our weekend is about us, the fellowshipping, the tailgate (before, during and after the game), the band, the parties and, above all, the pride of being at a place that essentially raised us from teenagers to adults. It’s the place, really, where we were nurtured and grew up. That’s what the black college experience gives you. That school put its arms around us and hugged us when we were hungry or scared or uncertain.
“Homecoming,” he said, “is a celebration of all that.”
“So what are you saying? Your homecoming means more to you than mine because you went to a black college?” Monica argued. “That’s crazy.”
“I’m not saying your homecoming isn’t as important to you or that it isn’t fun and great,” Jimmy said. “But the mere fact that you have asked me
to come with you to yours tells me you’re not having that much fun.
“Listen, honey, it’s not like I’m going there and meeting with some woman,” he went on. “I feel funny about even having to say that. But that’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?”
Jimmy lived mostly on the West Coast in the years after he graduated with honors as a commissioned officer. He had not made it back to a single homecoming since graduation. For the three years they had been married, Jimmy hardly even talked of homecoming because attending did not seem reasonable, as they lived on the West Coast and work responsibilities always arose. He either could not take leave because he had duty he could not abandon—or he was deployed to the Middle East. Surviving both Iraq and Afghanistan and moving back to D.C. allowed him to get excited about making homecoming, especially after he went online and read about all the growth around the school.
“Monica, I told you a while ago that I was going to home-coming,” he said, placing the last of his clothes in his luggage. “Don’t act like you don’t remember.”
He zipped his bag and lifted it onto its wheels and headed to the garage door so he could dump it in the trunk and keep it moving.
“This is the only weekend I get all year to myself,” he said. He was calm even though he was furious to have to go through such explanation. He somehow mastered the art—and it was an art—of composing himself in his most heated moments. Jimmy, in fact, smiled as he explained his position although he was percolating inside.
“I go hard as a husband and father,” he said. “I don’t golf, so I don’t do golf trips. I don’t run off to visit my family without you. I don’t go to the Super Bowl or NBA All-Star Weekend. I don’t go visiting one of my boys for the weekend. This is it. I deserve this break.”
The most important reason of all . . . he had to explain to her again just before he got into his car.
He said: “Even if I did take an occasional trip, this should not be a problem. I have earned it. Plus, you didn’t go to school there. So, you’d be standing around bored, looking for me to entertain you. To be honest, I couldn’t have the same kind of fun I normally would have with my old friends. It’s innocent fun, but we use harsh language and tell jokes that are not always, uh, politically correct. It’s part of what we do. I’m not comfortable doing that around you and you’d be monitoring how much I drink, what I say, what I eat, who I hug. I can hear you now: ‘Who was that? An old girlfriend? Did you sleep with her?’ That’s not how it should be.