Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

  They kicked back for a time.

  ‘Say then, there, Butterbugs. So what you wanna do?’

  ‘I am waiting for her.’

  ‘No, no. I mean in this town. What you do?’

  ‘I would act.’

  ‘That’s right baby, hang on tight to Miss Vonda’s ass. She’ll coat-tail ya through.’

  ‘I wouldn’t – That’s not what –’

  ‘Well now she just might be a help, to…’

  ‘I already tried that.’

  TABP chuckled knowingly.

  ‘Some of Miss Vonda’s other enterprises are not, shall I say, admirable, that is, within the conventional… you know, way of things.’

  ‘That stuff isn’t part of our life together.’

  ‘No, I ’spect not… Maybe you gonna hafta help her with correcting some of that shit.’

  ‘I’d do anything for her.’

  ‘Whoa there, you don’t even –’

  He cut himself off.

  ‘Hell, you shouldn’t hafta dip into that muh’fuckin’ vat of shit…’

  ‘Boy, for a man of the cloth, you sure do a piece of cussing!’

  They both busted up.

  After some smaller talk, TABP stepped back from the scene, noting how Butterbugs silently went into tending of his own quarters, with an almost transcendental air. He didn’t wish to futz with the idyll, and with one swivel, was gone in his Typhoon.

  Then there came a day of absolute calm. The sky was motionless, the covering sober, featureless, but unthreatening. Neutrality in all natural things seemed in play up here, off Flowertown Lane.

  Vonda was still on location on old Hispaniola, but the wrap was within sight. So reported Urk-Uh of the GerlGardz.

  ‘It won’t be long,’ she intoned cryptically, from between the impregnable bars.

  Then she went on alert. More attuned to the rare traffic on Flowertown than the always-vigilant Butterbugs, Urk-Uh changed into guard-dog mode, even after she ascertained that the serene black Typhoon was, superficially anyway, acceptable in approaching VVVDD. In her mind, the imperative of the moment was: it had better be TABP in that rig.

  Butterbugs rose above the defensive installations that were at ravelin level, and approached, glad at heart.

  ‘TABP…!’

  TABP stood there, his entire person, psyche and performance in a cold, steady and dispassionate holding pattern. As if inanimateness did involve living and breathing, but not much more. The most noticeable aspect of his presence today was one simple thing: his clerical collar was black, like the rest of his kit.

  ‘First off, Butterbugs, I got one question. It’s about love.’

  Butterbugs, upright and steady, gazed at TABP, unaffected by the unusual but respectable neutrality of his august friend.

  ‘I hear ya,’ he replied, ready for potential advice, preferably of the less intimate kind, as he thought none was really necessary at this juncture.

  ‘Do you love Miss Vonda?’

  ‘Oh, I plan to! I will when she returns! Aye! Aye!’

  ‘Not the act, son. The state of mind.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean. I will. When she tells me that we have passed the Maybe-Love. Yes, I certainly will.’

  At the term ‘Maybe-Love’, TABP almost betrayed a softening of his demeanor. It was caused by an understanding.

  ‘I see. So, you don’t love her – yet.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Butterbugs replied, with trust and true optimism.

  ‘Because…?’

  ‘She, and only she, leads the way!’

  TABP knew that ardent was the word for Butterbugs.

  ‘Come. Sit. By the entrance to your tent, and await my statement.’

  He was consummately stiff in his manner now.

  Butterbugs complied. He sat there, looking for all the world like the proverbial happy camper, all being well with the universe.

  TABP wore tinted spectacles of an impassive shade.

  ‘She is – no – more.’

  ‘Who?’

  TABP did not reply.

  Butterbugs waited in respect, then:

  ‘And could you explain?’

  ‘Our Vonda. Expired.’

  A silence ensued. During it, Butterbugs looked at the sky. Featureless still, scarcely a witness to this moment. He looked over at the hills. Unreceptive, unchanged, despite the news. He gazed up at the spot where he’d paused that strange but magical morn, when he’d looked down upon where he was right now and knew of the importance of she who lived here. Or used to live here. Or was it possible to make such a correction so fast? But there was no reaction there, either. The only witness was TABP. No other audience. Thus, Butterbugs found his voice, be it only a whisper.

  ‘She – is – no more? I cannot think it.’

  Stunned was no word to describe his response right now. Without comprehension was perhaps what he felt, but then, seeing the secure lack of emotion from TABP, displayed in front of him, he suddenly understood.

  ‘She’s not coming back,’ Butterbugs uttered in a new monotone.

  ‘She is not,’ echoed TABP in a similar voice. ‘Only her remains.’

  An interlude of deference followed, in which its participants did not pretend to even fathom the news just delivered, but only to take off their hats, so to speak. A moment of suspension before the unsolicited explanation was given.

  ‘Renegade elements of the illicit wing of Da Broze, no control left, eradicated her in an ambush maneuver of gunfire, intended as revenge against an unjust (fucking) coke deal of massive proportions. In short, it was a mistake. Death was instant.’

  TABP’s reportage was detached, almost aloof, but not journalistic. No one in his position of shock and grief, well managed though it was, could have done it any better. Devastation had not arrived quite yet.

  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Butterbugs wept for another, instead of himself.

  8.

  Funerary Arts And Sciences

  All who knew her were in shock. As was the general public. To them, she was simply The Beloved. Now were the days of The Beloved at an end. The solemnity, the severity, the very truth of the matter had altered them, and would for some time to come. These were they who now entered great tribulation.

  It was a cold and hard fact that, because Butterbugs had been in the mutual holding pattern of Maybe-Love with Vonda, and just short of For Sure-Love’s bliss, the young and impressionable actor was thus spared the full impact of her passing.

  Passing.

  As a term, ‘Death’ was too unacceptable. ‘Passing’… e.g. ‘After she passed’; ‘She passed on’, ‘Passed recently’ (to what?) etc.

  Like that.

  But ‘passed away’ is OUT, baby, OUT. Too grandma-ish and doily-like. As in Cardinal Newman’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’. Like the old songs. Like Tiny Tim used to sing. Stephen Foster’s tunes. ‘Beautiful Dreamer’… It’s there, in the lyrics.

  Passing. A term most turned to in a loss-obsessed culture now. The acceptable alternative.

  Had he indeed ventured further, even a little, he would surely have collapsed from within, for that is where true love lives – and dies.

  Or passes.

  Gone within him were the times of mind-numbing but independent internalizing of LA from a distance. Those anonymities, the no-strings life of days in and days out, were indeed a convenience. But, if one were to lead a life slanted towards socialization – and lives in pictures are lives spent engaged – ribbons of involvement, comin’ at ya, from all angles, well then, some of them, at least, must be grasped, be they only faded wisps of banded color. All of a sudden, in Butterbugs’ life of the moment, there were bonds, and even though one was newly severed, those affected by such severance had to step forward into the stark light of acknowledgement.

  And they did.

  It was Butterbugs’ first visit to a Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

  The hideousness of the mock-Tudor complex at the Glendale si
te was imminent. There was a military-sized fleet of tribute vehicles. All of them complied with the protocol of a conventional funeral. Within a black-themed, restrained style of uttermost propriety, despite the edgy soul of the loved one, all who mourned her were won over in their collective state of mind, which was transferred from the familiar, and taken for granted by the ripped-off and bereaved.

  One dude, a beloved second cousin employed by the Vondamic apparatus in a studio property shop, could only keep muttering ‘Shit’ in effective tones the whole route, from the limo launch pad, onward. To him the loss was, in this initial phase, some kind of miscalculation, an inconvenience of the moment. (Well, death is very inconvenient, isn’t it? – as any nurse unto very sick people is wont to say…)

  Surely that specified inconvenience entailed the real extent of things. But this particular dude was inherently correct. His ‘Shit’ utterances were for all time.

  Butterbugs, hastily integrated into the cast of VIPs of associated prestige, rode in one of the fifth-string limos (this stretched Ludge could accommodate over twenty mourners – twenty-two if the Jacuzzi pump unit for the pool over the trunk was removed).

  It was a tad bit bush-league. That is, until the driver got a cell call from a higher level, asking him to pull over at a Flubburger Joint, until a very much higher-level vehicle could intercept and accept a transfer passenger. TABP’s agencies had successfully tracked down Butterbugs and requested that he be upgraded to a more significant level of homage transport. Someone was attending to details.

  Thus, Butterbugs came to be privileged enough to ride with Da Broze, in order to honor the slain star with high solemnity.

  In itself, this painful process was turning out to be a highlight of his Hollywood experience so far. And for they who had provided pleasure for Miss Vonda, there was a place in the limo for every one of them. Nobody got left out – the Da GardzADaBody saw to that. (For what gig were they to tie into now?)

  Their network was more sophisticated than even the Corleone Family’s, and when Butterbugs was summoned, he went. Being the only white boy in the Forward Group was also a prestige factor. Even Scorsese, Spike, Stone, Coppola, Gold-Tang and Szchriedzckiedobrikzc did not merit a place until the twentieth limo.

  As an outsider, observer and fellow mourner, one thing about his fellow passengers that struck Butterbugs as disrespectful was the fact that most of them were doing deals, positioning their paraphernalia, and generally displaying irreverent yet cool behavior. They’d never learn, anyway, even in the midst of this parade of tangible tragedy.

  There was one incredible fact about his group, though. The mutual respect amongst each and every one of them was ironclad and palpable. To have been with her in a moment of intimacy was a life-changing experience, and no matter how cool the coolest home-puppy tried to be, there was inside each of them a kernel of magnificence, a magic awareness that in this world of bizarreness, horror, and glory, there was something of value yet to be treasured.

  Many of them would die, probably within the year, perhaps by the same means that took She whom they mourned from this world, whether through similar violent means, or by the lonelier violence of a successful OD or self-snuff. But at least they tied into the same sense of wonder that perhaps provided another dimension to the sphere of limited existence that surrounded – nay – imprisoned them.

  But Butterbugs sat there like a country parson, naively virtuous, and silently mourning inside. For above all else, it was She who was his First One.

  Nobody here knew how to shed tears.

  Not enough romance, perhaps, but smackings of legend pervaded.

  Under unconscious control of The Builder, now that all were within the confines of the Memorial Park, Butterbugs looked across the pebbled walk. A gentleman approached him. Surely it was The Angry Black Priest.

  Butterbugs thought of the mega-posters for his latest Wrap albums that were hung from the Golden Gate and Storebælt bridges. How good to see this figure again, despite the outsized publicity. Such broad concepts were part of something he didn’t really understand anyway, despite his epic dramatic sense. This – innocence, was one reason why he could be here in this place and at this time, under these circumstances and not dissolve or explode as a response.

  ‘We all wear shades here today, son,’ was what TABP said in toto, and he handed Butterbugs a pair of DeGauzetta tinted spectacles. The kid did a virtual genuflection and donned the dim darkers.

  But then everything went dark. Really dark.

  He had responded, after all.

  A form of transition then progressed through an indeterminate amount of time; time – which never really adds up.

  The Angry Black Priest’s hot breath was in his ear.

  ‘You fainted…,’ he whispered as an impressionistic explanation.

  Then, humanitarian instincts overrode Cool.

  ‘Steady, son. Have a coffee-flavored beverage.’

  They were on the edge of the crowd now, and TABP sat him down under the rustic eaves of the Chapel of the Black Goddesses. Butterbugs gazed in wonder, up at the Harriet Tubman statue, and was speechless.

  ‘I’m on the Forest Lawn Board of Governors,’ TABP said. ‘Figured we needed a saint here in da afta-life country of da white folks, whom I don’t hate no mo.’

  Butterbugs was all amazement.

  ‘You saved me!’

  ‘Damn right I did. Anything for one of Miss Vonda’s chosen few. You’re probably a reason –but only one – why I don’t hate white folks no mo.’

  TABP’s palms were upwards, his face aimed downwards.

  ‘You are as a prophet, sent from far away,’ uttered Butterbugs, who sensed a great-unknown power in the Angry Priest.

  ‘Come on, man, let’s git back to da shindig.’

  ‘I can walk again.’

  ‘Shitsh-yes, you can.’

  ‘You raised me!’

  ‘Man, that Pepito de Tacos-Queveres Memorial Avenue crack-cocaine can really go tew yer head.’

  ‘But I did not ingest any! Anywhere! How…?’

  ‘You rode in that stretch limo motorcar, didn’t yew?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then you got high, baby.’

  ‘I didn’t inhale!’

  TABP laughed. Then he made a sensible commandment.

  ‘Rise up and walk!’

  ‘I will!’

  Face to face again, TABP threw switches.

  ‘She banged you for the first time, didn’t she? Your very first time.’

  ‘Hrrh… dxt… I, uh…’

  ‘Yeah, right. I knew it the first second I laid these hip eyeballs on you, son-son. She about ripped yer apart, huh?’

  The tenderness of this invasive but rite-of-passage moment caused tears to well up in Butterbugs’ eyes.

  ‘Gracious goodness,’ said TABP, his own overflowing ducts safely kept in strict privacy behind midnight lenses. ‘What the fuck’re we talking about here? Miss Vonda! Rest in peace, babe.’

  They sat in silent grief for a time. Sequestered tears were ushered to their appropriate escape routes.

  ‘Oooh, baby, was she hot, though. Not just of body, but mind. Can’t fergit the body, though. Sleekest thighs in high-high bitch-boots. Pumpkin booty, without no distortion. One elegant power chick with landslide control. Perfection and pride of my race card, which I’ll play in any fucking maneuver.’

  He turned and particularly scrutinized Butterbugs, his posture, his features, and how they must have physically applied to Vonda’s considerable assets. It wasn’t jealousy that he felt, but it was hard for him to acknowledge the logic of such a connection, at least at this moment.

  ‘And you, young’un, you won’t be getting any, any no more. Nothin’. It’s ovah. Maybe from here on out, huh?’

  Butterbugs was reticent, but TABP’s comment momentarily reduced his emotions to a moral imperative.

  ‘Isn’t that just a bit… disrespectful, TABP?’

  In grief, propriety reigns a
s a result of grief’s dignity.

  ‘Nah! Vond herself might have said the same thing! She might have said it!’

  Not really believing what he himself just said, he waxed more reflective and took a big breath to acknowledge his callousness.

  ‘Yeah, well, I guess it is… I’ll eject shit like that. Eject it right out of…’

  Butterbugs managed a slight ray-of-hope smile.

  ‘I know, TABP, I know…’

  ‘In this time of tragedy, hell, we think of sex! Or talk out loud about it! Oh God, but does the recollection of her make me happy! Happy! Can you f-ing imagine! Cuz it’s all-retrospective now. We mourn, but we gotta be the first to appreciate. Can you fuckin’ believe it? I’ll miss her the rest of my sorry-ass life.’

  ‘Your truths! But – But – What’re we gonna do, TABP?’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell ya, white boy. First we’re gonna shed a few more tears in private. Just us. Then we’re gonna strut on over to the ‘do’. Rev’s waitin’. We’re gonna do honors. Then it’ll be done, as done as done gets.’

  At the Court of Heroism, Sistah Souljah and Aretha Franklin waited, ready to boom out the soulful Wrap of an expired sistahwoman.

  It was all so sad, so very sad.

  The musical programme was soul-stirring, though. It led upward. TABP did two Wraps, one up-tempo, and the other recessional: ‘VVDD’ and ‘Maybe-Love’ (most appropriately, its composition was suggested by Butterbugs).

  Beyoncé, whose dazzling dignity was especially inspiring to all, then took center stage and announced, ‘We are performing artistes. This is how we perform our grief.’ She then enacted an expansive ritual dance in tribute, scored in collaboration with TABP and Jay-Z, a symphonic-techno-tone poem, augmented by her Black Lives & Panthers Matter troupe, with honorific choreography that was jaw-dropping.

  Amidst all this stardom, Butterbugs’ own grief was stunned into a sort of cosmic wonder.