I Ain't Me No More

by E. N. Joy

  And with that, we were all out the door and headed to the club. For the entire drive my stomach ached with anxiety pains. I knew nothing about club etiquette. Was I supposed to ask a guy to dance, or was he supposed to ask me? Did people even really dance at clubs or just stand around, trying to see and/or be seen? It was safe to say that I feared the unknown.

  We arrived at Alexander’s after 11:30 p.m., and there was a line a mile long. It wasn’t a case of any one of us knowing the owner of the club or someone working the door, so we had to stand in line with the rest of the common, non-VIP folks.

  The entire time I stood in line, Lynn and the dude chatted while my belly grumbled. If there had been a Porta-Potty outside, I would have gone inside of it to get rid of whatever the heap of crap was that was clogging my stomach. Instead, I just let the butterflies that were also inside my belly gnaw at it.

  We stood in line for about twenty minutes before we made it through the door of the club. But once inside, we still had a line to stand in. Lynn complained, but I was too shell-shocked to even care.

  The club was very dark, with ceiling lights of red, yellow, and blue. I could see the DJ booth situated up high at the back of the club. The DJ sat in a Plexiglas booth with nothing but red lights lighting the inside. He was spinning a fairly new artist named Snoop Dogg, accompanied by veteran Dr. Dre. The name of the song was “Gin and Juice.” I’d heard the song being played on the radio, but the words I was now listening to I had never heard before on the radio.

  “Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, tapping Lynn on her shoulder while she was in midsentence, talking with dude. “Did you hear that? They are cursing.”

  Lynn looked at me like I was crazy. “Who is cursing?”

  “The song. They are cursing up a storm in that song.”

  After telling me, “Girl, that’s the uncut, real version. Your nerdy butt ain’t heard nothing but the radio version,” Lynn shooed me like a fly with her hand and then continued her conversation.

  I almost wanted to cover my ears as the song played on. I had had no idea until that point that some songs had two different versions: the radio version and the uncut grown folk version. Someone should have warned me that rap music had all that cursing in it, I mean, big curse words—the F-bomb and all. That was just how out of touch Dub had kept me.

  Lynn’s gentleman friend, who had paid our way into the club, found us all a table. I almost lost them as we headed to the table because I was too engrossed in my surroundings. Everybody had a drink in their hand, and if they didn’t, it was only because they were on the dance floor, dancing, and the DJ had made it clear that no drinks were allowed on the dance floor.

  The couples on the dance floor were dancing as if they were longtime dance partners, some even longtime lovers, the way they were grinding and rubbing all up on each other. But once a song would end and the couples would part and go their separate ways—the guy with his boys and the chick with her girls—I realized quickly that most were complete strangers.

  “What you drinking on?” Lynn’s gentleman friend asked. I looked up from the dance floor to see that he was talking to me and that a waitress was staring down my throat, waiting on my reply. “What you drinkin’, little mama?” he repeated. “Lynn and I already ordered.”

  “Ummm,” I said. I had to admit I was parched. A Coke would have done me just fine, but I was not about to look like lame by ordering a Coke. However, the only other drink I knew of was the wine coolers. “A Bartles and Jaymes wine cooler please,” I told the waitress. “Red, cherry, or whatever.” I didn’t even know the flavor I’d been drinking earlier.

  The waitress scribbled on her tablet and was about to walk away when Lynn stopped her. “Hold up. Bring her a fuzzy navel instead.” The waitress nodded and then walked off.

  “Fuzzy navel?” I had a puzzled look on my face.

  “Yeah, it’s a drink. But it’s a cutesy drink, so you’ll like it.” Lynn sucked her teeth. “I’m not about to let you be babysitting wine coolers all night your first time out clubbin’ it. You done had your taste of Bartles and Jaymes at the house party. You out in the club like a big girl now. It’s time to graduate up a notch.”

  I just shook my head, wondering if I should continue to put all my trust in Lynn. But once again, after the waitress brought back our drinks, Lynn proved to be right. The concoction of peach schnapps and orange juice with a hint of gin, a drink affectionately called a fuzzy navel, was delicious. I was drinking grown-up drinks, and I was feeling all grown up.

  “Ooooh, that’s my song,” Lynn said as she closed her eyes and snapped her fingers while grooving in her seat.

  “Then what you sittin’ here for?” her male friend said. “Let’s go do something out there on the dance floor.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” Lynn said as she got up. “Helen, watch our drinks.”

  I watched the drinks, all right. For the next hour it seemed I watched the drinks while Lynn got busy on the dance floor, dancing to song after song after song.

  I sat in my chair, bobbing my head and grooving, hoping somebody would notice how enticed I was by the beat and would choose me to go out on the dance floor with them. I looked around, even made eye contact with a guy or two. Just when I thought I’d spoken to a dude clearly with my eyes, dang near begging him to come ask me to dance, I would be let down.

  At first I thought maybe the guys were just too shy to ask a girl to dance, but then, five minutes later, I’d see them out on the dance floor with some hoochie, stroking her up and down while getting their groove on hard. I had lost several more pounds and had gone down a couple sizes in clothing, so I was looking pretty decent in my size fourteen black jeans and crisp white blouse. So why didn’t any of the guys choose me? That was when it dawned on me that I didn’t fit the scene. I didn’t look like the type of chick who could really get out there on the dance floor and have fun.

  I looked down at myself; then I looked around at most of the chicks in the club. The outfits some of those girls were wearing were scandalous. I mean, these chicks were all woman, and they were letting it be known with some of the skimpy outfits they were wearing. Boobs and butt cheeks were the name of the game. The guys were catcalling and checking for them.

  There were girls who were dressed conservatively like Lynn and me, wearing a nice pair of jeans and a cute blouse. But those weren’t the chicks getting all the attention. The more skin the women showed, the more attention the men showed. I made a mental note of that, because the next time I decided to venture out to the club, I was bound and determined to be one of those girls who got the attention.

  Stone Number Twenty-four

  “I can’t believe you are actually out with me,” Synthia said. “I thought I’d never see the day Helen Lannden hit the club scene. But I guess the fact that now you ain’t on lockdown no more makes all the difference.” Synthia couldn’t help but tease me as she and I stood in Alexander’s, sipping on our drinks.

  “I’ll drink to that,” I said as I raised my fuzzy navel to her rum and Coke. I didn’t know how she and Lynn drank that hard stuff. It made me want to puke. There was nothing flavorful about rum, if you asked me.

  “Dang, I don’t know which one to ask to dance,” I heard a voice say behind Synthia and me.

  When I turned around, there was this dude standing behind me. His eyes were traveling from me to Synthia and then back to me again. I could not believe this guy was even having a conflict after seeing Synthia. I mean, how hard was the choice? Synthia looked like the typical video girl. Due to her mixed heritage, she had that exotic look. That “good” jet-black hair raced down her back. Her size eight clothing fit her like a glove. She exuded beauty.

  On top of that, Synthia stayed in the tanning salon, so she always had a perfect, glowing, golden complexion. And did I forget to mention her gorgeous dimples were the icing on the cake?

  I, on the other hand, was aw’ight. I had dark skin, but thanks to Wesley Snipes and Denzel Washington, it wasn’t s
uch a bad thing anymore. But at the end of the day, it still wasn’t light skin. I had shoulder-length hair that I wore in a nice roller set. Fourteen was an average size, but it wasn’t skinny. So was this dude blind or something? But then again, this second time at the club, I had dressed for the occasion. Perhaps that had made all the difference.

  I was wearing as little as I could without being arrested for indecent exposure. I was bound and determined to get the attention this time that I had failed to get the last time I was at the club. And it appeared as though my plan was working well.

  The little black miniskirt I had on just barely covered my butt cheeks. And I made sure it fell down my hips in such a way that the little strings of my thong showed. It was an idea I’d gotten from the late hip-hop princess Aaliyah, from one of her videos, only she had been wearing a long skirt. The little black tube top just barely stayed over my 36 Cs. I had purchased the black sandals with the three-inch heels that I was wearing three days ago, after which I had called Synthia and had told her that I wanted to hit the club this weekend.

  She had agreed, of course, but had told me that she wouldn’t believe it until she actually saw me up in the club. Well, now she could believe it. Because there I was, in the club, in the flesh . . . literally. And I was workin’ them pumps like a pro.

  “So you trying to get your groove on?” Synthia responded to the dude. She’d been hitting the clubs since before she was even old enough to get into them. Light skin and dimples could get you into places and provide you with opportunities that black and ugly couldn’t. So she wasn’t shy about conversing with anybody who stepped to her. I decided to let her do all the talking while I just took notes.

  “Yeah, but I don’t even know which one of you fine ladies I want to hit the floor with,” the dude said, still allowing his eyes to go back and forth from Synthia to me. But now he started licking his lips as well.

  “Well, you look like a strong, growing boy.” Synthia gave him the once-over and then licked her lips. “So why is it you can’t handle the both of us out there?” She nodded toward the dance floor.

  “Oh, Miss Lady, you ain’t said nothing but a thang.” He raised each of his hands to both Synthia and me in order to lead us onto the dance floor.

  My heart was beating ninety miles per hour. I’d never, ever danced in front of a lot of people like this before. Dub and I had never even danced at the prom. It was mainly because we arrived late and I had an attitude. Baby D had gotten real sick the day of the prom, and I had had to tend to him and take him to the doctors. I’d been unable to go to my hair appointment and get my makeup done, like I had planned on doing with Synthia, so I had had to wing everything myself. I didn’t feel the least bit pretty, to say the least, so I declined getting on that dance floor, where all eyes could see me.

  Synthia sat her glass down on the square wood railing we had been standing against and took his hand.

  I shot Synthia a look that asked, “What in the world have you gotten me into?”

  “Come on,” the dude urged me. “You ain’t scared, are you?”

  “She’s scared of how bad she ’bout to hurt you out there on that dance floor,” Synthia said, coming to my defense.

  “Ooh, then you must be heaven-sent. Because I love pain,” he said, looking me dead in my eyes. “Now, put that drink down and let’s go do the darn thang.”

  I drank the last few swallows of my drink down straight, hoping it would give me the courage I needed, like it had done before. I sat the empty glass next to Synthia’s and allowed dude to escort me to the dance floor with one hand, while Synthia hung on to his other hand.

  Once I got out there on that dance floor, I felt like a star. At first, I barely moved, though, not knowing if I looked crazy or not. So I just wore a smile and slightly mimicked the dances Synthia and the other girls were doing. By the second song the alcohol had kicked in full blast, and I was popping and shaking and bending and grinding. Synthia and I were giving this guy a run for his money. We were doing to him what everybody in the club would call “freakin’ him.” And it was all in fun, but I guess that was usually what sin started out being . . . all in fun.

  Once other guys saw how I got down on the dance floor, I had a dance partner for every song the DJ played and a drink waiting on me when I got finished. Yep, I felt like a superstar, all right. It didn’t even matter that the guys didn’t see me, but instead saw all my body parts hanging out.

  I loved all the attention, negative or not. I never wanted the feeling to end. And since the club was the only place I’d ever experienced this type of acceptance, I knew I had to make it my second home, and that was exactly what I did.

  Between calling up Synthia, Lynn, and even Konnie on occasion, I had club partners for Thursday, which was the day of the week the clubs started jumping in Columbus, and I had partners for Friday and Saturday as well. I would dump Baby D off with whoever would keep him: Dub’s mom, Nana, or whichever one of my girlfriends I wasn’t going out with.

  I was having a blast clubbin’ it. The more I got used to the club scene, the more relaxed I became. I even upgraded my drinks to sloe gin fizzes and Long Island iced teas. Oh, it was on and poppin’.

  At first, Nana was my main babysitter, but she started to travel out of town quite a bit to visit her sister, my aunt Martha, in Florida. After a while it got to the point where it didn’t even matter whether I had a sitter or not for Baby D, who was now in first grade. Like I said before, he was a hard sleeper. I’d bathe him, feed him, then tuck him in for the night, and he never even knew Mommy had tiptoed out the door in the wee hours of the night, secretly and selfishly leaving him alone.

  After a night of clubbin’ on Thursdays, I could barely make it to work the next day, but I always managed to. I remembered one coworker overheard me talking with another coworker about my nights out on the town. Her nights out on the town consisted of evening church service. So whenever I spoke about how I spent my time versus how she spent hers, I always felt guilty. She recited scriptures, while I recited rap lyrics. But any shame I felt would quickly go down the drain the minute I stepped up into a club and was back in my element. I used to say, “Show me in the Bible where it says drinking and going out to the club is a sin.” And nobody ever could.

  But deep inside, even though nobody could show me anywhere in the Bible where it said that drinking and the kind of dancing I was doing was a sin, I knew it wasn’t glorifying God. It was the infant stages of sin. I had a feeling that sooner rather than later, if I didn’t stop dancing to the devil’s tune, I’d find myself so deep in the pit of hell that not even God could find me.

  Stone Number Twenty-five

  Lynn hipped me to this club called Ashley’s, where an older, more laid-back crowd hung out. The most popular and most moneymaking night for Ashley’s was none other than the day of rest and the day most Christians designated for the Lord. So now I even had a spot to hang out at on Sunday nights.

  Just to try to balance my evil with good, I started going to church with Nana on Sundays. She had been going to this predominantly white nondenominational church for the past seven years. I’d tagged along with her on many occasions. The church service lasted only an hour, which was why I loved it. It didn’t take up all of my Sunday, and I felt as though I was doing my spiritual deed. It didn’t require much work, either, like looking up scriptures, writing down notes from the pastor’s teachings, or turning to our neighbors to say this, that, or the other. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even really reference the Bible. We just sat there and listened to the pastor, voted in by the church board, give us a moving message. We sang a couple of hymns, listened to the announcements that were read, heard the message, took up the collection, and that was that. My Christian duties were fulfilled in one hour.

  It was funny how I’d go from saint to sinner in a matter of hours, because by ten o’clock Sunday night, Baby D was tucked in his bed, if he wasn’t spending the night somewhere else, and I was on my way to pick up
one of my girls so that we could hit the club.

  On one particular Sunday night, Lynn couldn’t get a sitter to watch my nephew, so I talked Synthia into going with me to the club. As soon as Synthia and I walked through the door, I could tell that Ashley’s was much more lively than usual. It had a whole bunch of new faces I hadn’t seen in the month I had been a regular. There was one face in particular that caught my eye. I couldn’t help but notice him as he sat across from me at the bar, conversing with his boys.

  What made this guy stand out from all the others was that he was smiling. All the other guys were pinned up, trying to look cool or hard-core. But this guy was smiling. He was smiling so much that I felt my jaw beginning to ache from smiling myself. It was like his smile was a magnet. It pulled with such force a smile from the face of anyone who was looking at him. I never remembered Dub making me smile. Ever.

  “Yo, what’s up, Dino, man?” I heard a guy say. He had just entered the club and had walked over to where this guy and his boys were.

  “Nothin’ too much,” the guy responded, still smiling as he gave the other guy a handshake.

  A handshake, I thought. A regular, old-fashioned handshake. No dap, no secret handshake with a snap or anything else. Just a regular ole handshake. So perhaps he was just a regular ole guy. I hoped he had a regular name, though, because Dino was the name the Flintstones had given their pet dinosaur.

  I was sitting there, with my eyes all down this Dino dude’s throat, a smile still plastered on my face, but then he busted me. His eyes were dead on me. I had been in such a trance, I didn’t even have a clue how long he had been staring back at me.

  “What’s got you all in a zone?” Synthia asked me. It was her voice that finally made me tear my eyes away from Dino. Even when he busted me, I hadn’t looked away.

  “Oh, nothing,” I lied.

  Synthia’s eyes followed the trail mine had journeyed just seconds before she’d spoken to me. “Oh, I see. Dude in the button up, huh?”