by Pam Grier
Lew laughed. “Is the rest of your family here in town?” he asked.
“No, my mom’s in Colorado.”
“There are black people in Colorado?” he asked with a slight smile.
“Last time I checked, there were,” I bantered with him.
I told Lew I’d attended Metropolitan State College in Denver for a year. “I came here to try and get into UCLA, but it’s very expensive. In order to lower the cost of classes, I’d have to be a resident of California.”
Out on the dance floor with Lew, I began to move to the music, and I hoped I would see this gentle man again. It happened when we were both invited to the same party in a frat house on the UCLA campus.
When my towering admirer saw me there, he came right over and we started talking. I was happy to see him, partly because I didn’t know anyone else, but also because I really liked him. True, he was the tallest man I’d ever seen, and his enormous feet looked more like snowshoes than human appendages, but he was surprisingly gentle and intelligent, and he made me feel safe. He was well-spoken. His dad was from Trinidad, and as an only child, Lew had attended a prestigious Catholic school in New York. He was a gangly, gawky adolescent, and the other kids had made fun of him as he continued to shoot upward—until he strode onto a basketball court and showed them what he was born to do.
Lew and I started dating, and I often met him on campus, entranced with him and with everything I saw there. For me, walking around UCLA was pure nirvana, with its imported palm trees, vivid California poppies in yellows and oranges, and the smell of newly mowed lawns. I was in awe of the black student union and the constant discussions about free speech, civil rights, and the Vietnam War. The women’s movement, which my mother had championed in her own small way, was alive with wisdom and messages from the likes of feminists Angela Davis, Coretta Scott King, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, and Bella Abzug. Whenever my mom found an article in the Colorado newspaper about women’s rights, she sent it to me.
It was 1970 when a group called the Third World Women’s Alliance published a piece called the “Black Women’s Manifesto,” which sought to reframe the idea of black feminism to better combat oppression. Black feminists Gayle Lynch, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Maxine Williams, Frances M. Beal, and Linda La Rue cosigned the manifesto, which opposed both racism and capitalism. It stated:
The black woman is demanding a new set of female definitions and a recognition of herself as a citizen, companion and confidant, not a matriarchal villain or a step stool baby-maker. Role integration advocates the complementary recognition of man and woman, not the competitive recognition of same.
In the midst of these powerful social demands and changes, Lew and I were getting along really well. He had attended a private boy’s elementary school and now, at UCLA, he had become educated and adventurous.
He and I had so much in common. As an army brat, I’d lived in England and my father had exposed me to jazz, classical music, and opera. Lew found these interests attractive since he’d been raised to be worldly. We both loved a variety of music as well as travel, exploration, books, culture, anthropology, and Egyptology. We also shared a love of art, architecture, photography, and filmmaking. And we both loved the martial arts. I’d studied karate and jiujitsu when I was young, and Lew and I loved watching Bruce Lee films. He eventually became a student of Bruce Lee’s, and we must have watched Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, the inspiration for the Hollywood classic The Magnificent Seven, at least a dozen times.
Now, let me tell you what it’s like to have a sexual relationship with an athlete. Their bodies are amazingly strong, their body temperatures are hotter than the average man’s, and their scent is refreshingly clean from working out. While most men take a shower in the morning and maybe another before a date in the evening (maybe not), an athlete takes many showers during the day. Lew was diligent about his cleansing rituals, his cologne, and his patchouli oil, and he always smelled fresh and light because he cherished and protected his body, inside and out.
I admired his way of life, and I really liked his mom and dad, Cora and Lew Sr., to whom he proudly introduced me. I liked his friends, too. I appreciated Lew’s taste in home furnishings, especially his sumptuous Persian carpets that made his new Malibu apartment feel like a Middle Eastern mosque. He let me cook him exotic foods, and he listened tirelessly to my stories about farming, raising horses, and nurturing the land. He hung a stunning collection of antique swords on his walls, and he loved Siamese cats. A man after my own heart. I always believed if someone had the desire and the wherewithal to care for animals, they could take care of people, as well.
I let Lew know from the very start, however, that I simply couldn’t get emotionally involved at this stage in my life. I was determined to go to school, so I didn’t want the heartbreak and malaise that so often accompanied love to distract me from what I felt I needed to accomplish. He said he understood, since he was leaving for Milwaukee within the year. We could just enjoy the summer together.
With this clarity established between us, we had a romantic sex life. There are things people want to know, but I’ve never been one to kiss and tell. Let’s just say that whatever you’re imagining, he measures well beyond that. The truth is, though, nothing beat just being in his company and sharing our stories and dreams. I’ve always been the kind of woman who values honesty, companionship, and fun first. Then comes sex.
I want to be clear here that I appreciate good sex as much as the next person. But in my opinion, women are not valuing or appreciating sex enough. When girls start having lots of sex at young ages, they wear their vaginas out. Literally. What do you expect if you have intercourse four or five times a week with different partners starting when you’re fifteen years old? By the time you grow up and meet a great guy, you’re all stretched out. When a marriage or relationship is based on sex alone, there’s nothing to keep it together when the sexual blush fades from that hypnotic, euphoric, in-love phase.
Lew and I had a really good balance in these areas.
We saw each other a lot, and at some point during the summer, I remember he asked me to start calling him Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“Why?” I asked him.
“I’m changing my name.”
“Okay.” I knew that a lot of black UCLA students were changing their names because they wanted to be rid of what they called their “Anglo-Saxon slave names.” But unbeknownst to me, Lew was changing his name for a different purpose—his new religion.
All was going extremely well until one day he asked me a question that would change both of our lives dramatically, shifting our relationship into a roller coaster that could never find its way back to the starting point. “Have you ever heard of Islam?” he asked.
“Yes, I have,” I said. I knew very little about it, but I’d heard it was a progressive religion. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m studying to be a Muslim,” he told me. “I’m going to convert.”
“That sounds great,” I said. Why wouldn’t it be?
“I really believe in it, and it gives me a solid sense of being,” he explained, as if needing to justify his decision to me.
“Are Muslims allowed to date non-Muslims?” I wondered, suddenly concerned for our relationship.
“Yes,” he assured me. “Nothing to worry about. You don’t have to convert or anything like that. This is just for me because it makes me feel good.”
That was fine, and our discussion quickly moved on to some other topic. I wondered what made Lew turn away from the Catholic religion of his parents, but as long as he was happy and we continued to spend time together, he could do what he liked as far as I was concerned.
CHAPTER 12
My Boyfriend and His God
I loved spending the night in Kareem’s Malibu apartment, in his enormous bed. I was there a lot, and then I would drive into Hollywood early in the morning to work my three jobs. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., I was a receptionist at APA. From 5 p.m. to 8
p.m., I had picked up the main receptionist job at American International Pictures (AIP), headed up by Sam Arkoff. And then, after 9 p.m., I spun discs at a popular private club mainly for athletes called the Sports Page in West Hollywood. I’d applied to be a waitress there, but they said I wasn’t pretty enough. I think it was my lack of self-confidence. I felt much more comfortable doing the DJ job, where I worked mostly in the dark and no one saw me unless they were deliberately looking.
I kept a glass tip jar to my right and played rhythm and blues artists like Credence Clearwater Revival and disco artists like Donna Summer. I played Chicago, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and some white rock like Three Dog Night. When people looked tired and needed a break, I switched to easy listening music until the crowd was ready to rock again. Then I spun Average White Band, Santana, and Tower of Power, one of Kareem’s favorite bands. He often visited me at the club, where he danced and people made a huge fuss over him. But it turned out that he wasn’t pleased to have me working at a nightclub. A conservative man at heart who was getting more so by the day, he didn’t want his girlfriend working.
It was mid-summer when Kareem admitted that although he had tried to avoid it, he was becoming emotionally involved with me. “I see you’re getting involved with me, too, but I’m converting pretty soon.”
“I thought you said you could date a non-Muslim,” I reminded him.
“I can,” he said, “but I’m falling in love with you, and I’d like us to get married. I can only marry a woman of the same religion.”
“I really can’t get married right now,” I said. Had he just proposed in a convoluted kind of way? It sounded like it. “We already talked about this. You know I have my heart set on school. You’re about to move to Milwaukee. What decent college can I go to there?”
“If we get married, you don’t have to get an education. I’ll take care of you.”
Those five little words “I’ll take care of you,” which so many women wait their whole lives to hear, did not impress me. In fact, they sent a cold chill up my spine. I knew plenty of women, friends of mine and of my mother’s, who were supposedly being “taken care of,” until the man divorced them and left them with nothing but a brood of kids and a load of bills. That was generally what women got when they tried to “find” themselves in someone else’s life.
My mom had drummed it into me that getting a diploma was the most important insurance policy I could ever have because it led to independence and possibility. School was number one in my eyes, and although I appreciated that Kareem loved me enough to want to marry me and support me financially, I had other priorities.
“I really can’t have anyone taking care of me,” I said. “That’s the master/slave syndrome, and I refuse to ever be oppressed or manipulated.” After all, affirmative action was an issue of debate right then.
“Of course not,” he said. “I wasn’t suggesting that.”
“We all know that being educated is the only way to be free in this world,” I continued, “the only way a woman can be responsible for herself. Don’t forget, not that long ago it was against the law for a slave to have a book on their person. You’re a basketball star; you already have an education. I don’t.”
He looked at me calmly and said, “Let me just give you a book on how to be a Muslim woman. If it speaks to you, we can talk about it.”
“Great,” I said. “I’d love to read it.”
“I think you’ll really learn to embrace this religion, Pam,” he said hopefully. If we wanted to have children together, that was only possible if we were both Muslims.
“You’re going to have to convince me,” I said.
I did not indicate in any way that I was ready to jump in. I wasn’t, and I didn’t believe in pretending. But I was ready to find out what being a Muslim woman entailed. After all, my boyfriend was embracing a religion that made him feel empowered. Since he considered it so valuable, it made sense that he would want the woman in his life to share the same thinking. The least I could do was read about it, so I pored over the book he gave me and I started to study the Koran. But it was all too hard to digest. I barraged him with a load of questions.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked him. “The Koran is oppressive to women. Islam is too strict and dated.”
“Not the new Islam. There are lots of different sects. The new Islam embraces everybody and loves everybody.”
“Then why is the woman, even in the ‘new Islam,’ supposed to walk behind the man?” I asked him. “Why can’t we walk side by side?”
“That’s what Allah wants,” he said—an unsatisfying answer that would be repeated over and over again. “The man is the leader. That is how it is written.”
“Why can’t I walk around without a chaperone?” I challenged him. “Why can’t I work?”
“You can,” he said.
Right, I thought, imagining the expression on a boss’s face when I walked into the office with a head scarf.
Topics like these became the basis for many arguments because Kareem had no answers, except that Allah wanted it and “That is how it is written.” It felt like a parent telling a child, “Because I said so.” The truth was that Kareem didn’t want me to work or go to school, but if I insisted, he would pay for my school. He really wanted me to just be a good Muslim wife, bear his children, walk behind him, and keep my hair covered with a head scarf.
When I talked to my mom about Islam, she went absolutely ballistic. “This is not a religion for women,” she insisted. “Don’t do it, Pam. He won’t let you work, get an education, or have a life of your own. For women, an education is freedom. I’ve read all about Islam in National Geographic”—it was always on our coffee table—“and I know it isn’t right for you.”
She was right. I had just learned about certain sects in which women were required to stay in a special home when they were menstruating. It wasn’t to make it more comfortable for the woman; rather, women were temporarily isolated because they were considered unclean during that time and they were not allowed contact with men. Particularly confusing for me were the multiple interpretations of the Koran’s rules in certain geographical areas and the accompanying laws and traditions. For example, if a woman drove a car in Marina Del Rey, she could be slack about covering her head. By the time she reached Beverly Hills, however, she better have her hair covered. And when she was in Malibu, she was forbidden to drive a car at all. But then in Oxnard, about forty miles away, she could drive all she wanted, with or without her head covered.
If that wasn’t complicated enough, in Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq and Iran, there were both moderate and conservative practitioners of Islam. A woman had to know the rules concerning where she was at any given time so she didn’t make the mistake of sitting on the same bench as a man. In the more conservative areas, this was considered a crime punishable by torture or death. Today, in the strictest Muslim parts of Saudi Arabia, a woman is not allowed to get into a taxi with a man if she has no chaperone. That means that if her child is ill and no one there is considered appropriate to accompany her in the taxi, her child could die. These days, women are trying to get permission to drive taxis in Saudi Arabia so they can take other women with sick children to hospitals, but it’s still an uphill battle.
Having been brought up Catholic, I knew that the ancient Christians were prone to hatred and violence. It was becoming easy to understand why many of my current friends followed the teachings of the Buddha, an East Indian seeker who gave up royalty, supreme wealth, and ultimate power to help himself and others end the cycle of human suffering. Peace, meditation, and service to others, the Buddhist way, made a lot more sense to me than what I observed to be the controlling ways of Islam.
I continued to study the book that Kareem gave me, and I met his teacher and a few of his friends who had converted. They seemed nice enough, but I was concerned. What if I converted, married Kareem, had several children, and my mother fell ill? The rules were that if my husband refus
ed to let me go take care of her, I had no recourse. If he divorced me and cut me off financially, I had no recourse. And if he decided to take other wives, once again, I had no recourse. Sure, Kareem promised it would be the first wife’s (my) choice to condone other wives or to refuse them, but I knew better. From what I could see, once a woman converted to Islam and got married, she gave up all her individual rights.
While the rest of the world seemed to be making strides in women’s rights during this exciting time, it appeared that Islam hadn’t changed much since ancient days. Women were still being abused and brutalized, and their lack of education and financial freedom caused them to be stuck forever in a world that considered them of little or no value. I wanted to please my man because I loved him, but nothing could sway me from my belief that the more educated the woman, the more powerful and liberated she could become. Many of the women I knew were innately intelligent, but they often didn’t know how to think, how to use their minds to solve problems and make decisions to better themselves.
I didn’t know that a small contingent of modern Muslim women was beginning to emerge in more progressive Middle Eastern countries like Jordan. These women were getting educated and had more freedoms, but Kareem never told me about them. Either he didn’t know or he didn’t want me to know. I can’t help but wonder if I’d understood how things were changing if I might have been more open to converting. But the progressive sects were so small and nontraditional that there were no reassurances Kareem would have gone along with them, anyway.