by Nile Rodgers
Deborah took my virginity. Well, “took” is not even close to accurate. I surrendered like the runt of the litter. Though she was a year younger, I was clearly outmatched. I didn’t even know what to do, but she was in total control. After some super heavy “tongue kissing,” as she called it, she took my penis in her hand, shifted her body around, then gently put me inside her. “Wow, oh my God,” I whispered to her. My body felt completely weak and liquid, as if it had no bones. I may have been crying. It was like being high, only better. I felt like I was flying.
Deborah and Stephanie were women, regardless of the dates on their birth certificates. It was so different to have girls as my best friends and leaders. A woman commandant is amazing, especially when she conducts the mission better than a guy. In the black community in those days (please forgive my generalizing and political incorrectness), women typically ran the show, and these girls were teaching me the way our world really worked.
FRESH GARDENIAS and apricots scented the evening air as I walked down Third Avenue and onto Pico Boulevard. There were lots of flowering trees directly next to the Westchester Arms, and it was easy to imagine what the place could have been. Once upon a time, maybe it was glamorous.
When you walked into the building’s lobby, there was a desk to the right of the elevators, where the rental agent sat. Our apartment was a one-room flat, equipped with a kitchenette and a double Murphy bed that pulled down from the narrowest wall of an almost square room. I slept on the couch.
Once a week there was a big card game at the Westchester Arms. The responsibility to cook rotated amongst the participants. Today was my mother’s turn. She was going to prepare a huge banquet with enough food to last the length of the marathon casino tournament. While she was in a friend’s apartment talking about her plans for the night, a guy named Bang-Bang, new to the building and the card game, introduced himself and offered to help.
Bang-Bang had earned his nickname because he was a hit man for hire. He had killed lots of people, with many different techniques, but his preference was to shoot them—hence, Bang-Bang. He would introduce himself by saying, “Hi, my name is Bang-Bang, but my friends call me Bang!”
He was the cousin of the building’s manager and had just finished a stint in prison, where a number of cons had tried to kill him in his cell. They waited until he was alone, threw an accelerant on him while he was lying in his bunk, and set him on fire. He was so hated that even the guards let him burn for some time before they rang the alarm. As a result he was scarred all over his body, from head to toe.
Everyone at the Westchester Arms knew of Bang’s reputation as a cold-blooded killer, except my mother, because she said with a laugh, “Bang-Bang, what kind of name is that?”
“What’s so funny?” Bang-Bang said in his intimidating baritone.
He was a hulk of a man and his severely deformed face completed the terrifying effect. Only my mom didn’t seem to notice. “What were your parents thinking?” she said.
Incredibly, the contract killer backed down. “Yeah, you’re absolutely right,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “If my parents had given it to me, it would be silly, but it’s a nickname.”
Instead of being kind in return, Bev hit below the belt. “Well, I don’t know why you kept it. So I guess it’s not your parents who were silly, it’s you!”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” Bang said, again losing his temper.
“My name is Beverly,” Mom shot back. “I’m truly sorry that I don’t have a more colorful name like Pop-Pop or Fizz-Fizz because I take too many Alka-Seltzers. I’m just plain old Beverly. Nice meeting you, Bang-Bang. Or do I call you Mr. Bang-Bang?” And with that she turned and walked out of her friend’s apartment and into the elevator, leaving the killer speechless.
From that moment on, Bang-Bang had to have Beverly. He’d never met a woman with such chutzpah and wit, wrapped in a package so lovely. Bang became obsessed with winning Beverly’s love. He knew she was married, and to a white man, but he treated her husband with the utmost respect.
He also gave me lots of money, every day in fact. I spent it on my girlfriend Deborah and her friends. He would even babysit my baby brother, and treated him well. He was my mother’s adoring servant, at her beck and call. Once he gave my mother the keys to a brand-new sports car, and she couldn’t even drive. She said, “Bang, I can’t accept this. Besides, I’m married, what would it look like, you giving me presents that Bobby can’t afford?”
“Well, the car is yours. If you don’t want it, give it away, you can even give it to Bobby, but the car is yours to do what you will with it.”
“Bang, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, and I’m truly grateful, but I can’t accept it.” And with that she returned the keys, a rare act of sanity in a clearly insane arrangement.
BOBBY HAD MOVED BACK to L.A. because he wanted so badly to bring the family together. Ironically, the arrival of his newborn son, Bobby Glanzrock Jr., who was now getting most of Beverly’s attention, unhinged him with jealousy. He was soon back to using heroin (which they’d actually kicked on the cross-country road trip).
Pretty soon Mom and Bobby were on the skids again, and brother Bunchy was sent back to New York. Little Bobby was the only child Beverly actually planned to have, and her whole world revolved around him; strangely enough, this was the best time Beverly and I ever spent together. Not only was I not jealous of little Bobby, I adored him; together we took great care of him.
Mothering Bobby actually made Beverly a better mother to me. Her cute figure had returned in record time, along with her naturally independent attitude. But her constant fawning over her baby was, in Bobby’s opinion, “not very groovy.” The family he so wanted had completely alienated him from Beverly.
Bobby and Beverly had always had a somewhat open relationship, so it was cool with her when he started dating other women. After a few months, Bobby even stopped sleeping at the Westchester. He’d just come in the morning to dress for work. He had taken a new job at a high-end haberdashery in Hollywood. His new girlfriend was the wife of a successful black real estate broker who approved of their relationship, because, as he said to my mother, “all I care about is my wife’s happiness.” Meanwhile, Mom took a boyfriend named Charles. Charles was small-framed and light-skinned like my mom. He was really nice, like all of Mom’s paramours, and also lived at the Westchester. We’d all become friends as a result of the card games and the daily comings and goings. Everybody and everything was cool.
What was not cool was Bang. Bang was disgusted by our family’s salacious romantic free-for-all. Things started to spiral out of control during one of the weekly casino nights.
The evening had begun as just another ordinary night of card playing. There was the usual feasting, joking, and reverie, but then Bang jumped into Charles’s face for no reason. To everyone’s surprise, the skinny pretty boy wouldn’t back down. Charles, much like his girlfriend Beverly, was small but quick-witted, and he verbally kicked Bang’s butt, shutting him down with a virtuoso round of the dozens.
Bang had given Bobby a pass because he was Beverly’s husband. In Bang’s funhouse morality, that counted for something. But Charles was just a side piece. Bang wasn’t about to let him get away with sleeping with Beverly, especially after he humiliated him in front of her.
The next morning, while Bobby was in the shower and Charles was eating breakfast with me in the tiny kitchen, Bang knocked on the door. When Beverly answered, he whispered the following threat: “If you don’t stop fucking that skinny bitch-looking motherfucker, I’m going to kill him. I mean it, Beverly.”
Until then Bang had always been a complete gentleman. But he was totally deranged by Bev’s fling with this light-skinned pretty boy with naturally straight hair like Super Fly. Her open sexuality and this cat’s good looks were too much for Bang to deal with.
Both Bobby and Charles left for their respective jobs, and I went to school, leaving my mother home alone with baby Bob
by. And that’s when Bang went completely berserk. He returned to the apartment and pushed his way in. He pulled out his gun and put it on the arm of an easy chair. He went to my newborn brother Bobby’s crib, picked him up, walked over to the window, and dangled him outside. Mom was hysterical, but she steadied herself. She told Bang that she didn’t love Charles and that she would quit him. She was just “going out with him because Bobby had gotten a new girlfriend” and for all intents and purposes had moved out. She begged him not to drop little Bobby out the window.
Bang brought the baby inside, put him back in the crib, and in one motion swept everything off the coffee table with his massive arm. He ripped off my mother’s clothes and raped her, while her baby lay unattended and crying through the entire ordeal. In this one violent attack, Bang was trying to pay her back for everything he was feeling. In his own psychotic way, I think Bang believed he really loved her.
“Now, you remember what I said, because I mean every word,” he told her when he finished. “Quit that nigger or I’ll kill him, and any other motherfucker that looks at you now,” as if the rape had consummated a bond between them.
My mother attempted to collect herself. She wasn’t sure Bang’s wrath was done. Beverly had no choice but to break up with Charles that very night to save his life. Charles was completely blindsided. She never told Bobby about the rape or about his young son being held out the window. Bobby didn’t seem to notice Charles wasn’t around the next morning when he came to shower and change for work. He left for the office, and Mom let Bang and everyone else in the building know that she and Charles were no longer an item. Bang was satisfied that Beverly was starting to act right and had come around to his way of seeing things.
Later that day she casually told Bang she was popping out for a pack of cigarettes and told him she’d get him a pack. Instead, she caught the bus to Lenora’s house. She called my school and spoke to the principal. She told them to summon me to the phone. She didn’t tell me about the rape, but told me not to go back to the apartment under any circumstances. She said, “Please come to Lenora’s.”
This might have worked had it not been for the fact that I couldn’t imagine not seeing my thirteen-going-on-thirty Deborah. I thought of her every waking moment. I’d never had sex before her and I wanted it every day. Not fully understanding, and knowing Mom’s flair for the melodramatic, I followed my hormones and disobeyed.
BY NOW BEVERLY had been away entirely too long just to get a pack of cigarettes. Bang knew something was up. He also knew how bright Beverly was. He couldn’t outwit her, so he played the only game he had a small chance of winning: the fear game.
I was in our apartment, doing it with Deborah, when Bang knocked on the door. I reluctantly broke off and opened the door. When Bang saw me, he said, “Oops, sorry to bother you.” Now he knew where both Deborah and I were. But since Mom hadn’t told me anything about the rape—I wouldn’t hear about this until forty years later—I wasn’t even remotely alarmed.
Meanwhile, Bang went back to his apartment and phoned Deborah’s mother. Bang knew Deborah’s mom and my mother were best friends, so he told Deborah’s mother to call Beverly “and tell her if she wants to see Nile alive again, she’d better get her ass back.” He also told Deborah’s mom that he was holding her daughter at gunpoint, too. None of it was true. After the call, Bang returned to my place and proceeded to treat us nicely. Deborah and I took advantage of the usual Bang mix of cash, gifts, and the best pot in town. Ultimately he let us go. We never knew we were prisoners.
As soon as I left I nonchalantly headed to Lenora’s to meet up with my mom, who dropped the news that we were never going back to the Westchester, “because Bang is a bad man.” Really? I still found this hard to believe.
Mom quickly got us a place near the University of Southern California, and I transferred to yet another school. I adapted like I always did, though I longed to be with Deborah. Masturbating quietly after Mom fell asleep in our studio apartment was no substitute. A few weeks later, I visited Deborah, and Bang spotted me and followed me back home. The next day, after I left for school, he showed up at our new house. He hadn’t counted on finding Beverly there with her mother, Goodie.
This unexpected plot twist allowed Beverly to gain the upper hand. “Bang, my mom’s here and Bobby’s coming over,” she told him, thinking on her feet. “How about I meet you tomorrow for dinner?” Bang told my mother he wanted to take care of her in a manner that she deserved, while trying to hang a very expensive watch on my little brother Bobby’s wrist. He told her he’d gotten it off the body of a pawnbroker he’d killed who was about to turn state’s evidence on the mob. “All I want is to be a part of your family,” he pleaded. Then he made her promise that she and Bobby would come to his apartment for dinner the next day.
Beverly had him exactly where she wanted him.
Soon after he left, there was a knock at the door. A tall, somber-looking guy introduced himself as Detective Klatanoff, “from Homicide,” he said. He showed his badge to my mother. “We’re trying to track down”—here he used Bang’s government name. “We’ve been to the Westchester Arms and everyone says if we find you we’ll find him.” The detective had been told of Bang’s infatuation with Mom. “They’re all afraid of him,” he added, “with good reason. We’d like to move you to the Capitol Motel on La Cienega, so we can set up a stakeout here. We found you and believe he’ll find you, too.”
Beverly told Detective Klatanoff they’d just missed him and about the dinner rendezvous she’d promised Bang the next night. All of this was still hard for me to believe. Despite the cops’ arrival, I still didn’t take the Bang threat seriously. But I had to do what my mom said. So we moved to the motel for what we believed would be a couple of days at best. As usual, things didn’t go as planned.
The cops hoped that once Beverly and Bobby didn’t show for dinner, Bang would return to our apartment. Instead, Bang left Mom, Goodie, and me alone and returned to the Westchester Arms, where, for reasons not entirely clear, he started shooting up the building. He and one of the guys from the weekly card game exchanged fire, and both men were wounded. Though Bang was hit in the thigh, he managed to escape—and to start a high-drama run from the law worthy of Bonnie and Clyde.
Bang had a female friend who happened to be a nurse. He paid her to hit the road with him. They robbed various establishments all across the country, while she tended to him. He never went to a hospital, where it’s mandatory to report gunshot wounds to the cops.
And Bang was still obsessed with Beverly. He’d lifted her address book from our apartment, and he’d been calling and bribing people for her whereabouts. Fortunately, no one knew where we were; she knew better than to tell anyone. While Bang was at large, the cops moved us from place to place for our own safety. One day Mom called my brother Bunchy’s father, Graham, from the shelter that we were now living in. The always dependable Graham said, “You’ll never guess who showed up at my house last night.”
“Who?”
“Bang.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No, he believes you’re here in New York.”
“Graham, tell me where he is. He’s fucking crazy.” Bang had given Graham the dead pawnbroker’s wristwatch. Maybe Graham was afraid, or he just wanted to honor a deal, so all he would say was, “He’s in the most obvious place.”
My mother got it right away. She knew Bang had never been to New York. Harlem was the one place he’d blend in. Knowing he always had to have the best, he was most likely at the Hotel Theresa. In the interest of protecting Graham, she called the front desk herself.
“I believe he might be staying there under another name,” she said, asking permission to describe her adversary. “He’s tall with dark skin, might walk with a limp, and …” Before Mom could finish her Sherlock Holmes act, the desk clerk said, “Oh dear God, he’s here, and I am so afraid of him. Whenever those two—”
“Two, what do you me
an two?” interrupted my mother.
“He has a woman with him most of the time. He is a very scary individual.”
“Thank you so much. Please call the police right away if he checks out.”
And with that Mom hung up. She called Detective Klatanoff, and he called the NYPD. Then about two hours later he called Mom back.
“Beverly?”
“Yes.”
“This is Detective Klatanoff. I’m coming over with the biggest bottle of champagne I can find. We apprehended the son of a bitch and you deserve a medal. We couldn’t have done it without you. You and your kids don’t have to hide anymore.”
I never saw my beloved Deborah again.
(Illustration credit 5.2)
six
In Search of the Lost Chord
WITH BANG IN POLICE CUSTODY, WE WERE AT LONG LAST FREE TO LEAD normal lives, no longer on the run or trapped in hotels. Of course, “normal” for us was always relative. Since Bobby now had a new girl, job, and lifestyle in Los Angeles, my mother decided on another cross-continental migration. She would return to New York to live with Graham. I would stay behind in Los Angeles with Lenora.
I felt abandoned—again—but this time I was pleasantly distracted by my new friends and appetites. Mom had two distinct sides to her personality. Though she was the ultimate hip nonconformist, she also respected collegiate strait-lacers. And she believed that by living with my strict grandmother, I’d have a better chance of leading a normal life. My mother didn’t know that “normal” for me had changed dramatically since I’d started getting high on hallucinogens, inhalants, and Deborah. I was fifteen years old, and sex and drugs were now my total preoccupations. All I needed to make my transformation into a black hippie complete was rock and roll.