Glow

by Rick James

  “A million times easier,” the priest assured me.

  “And I can say anything?”

  “Anything, son, and God will forgive you.”

  I liked that idea. I went to confession, where I told the priest the truth. I told the priest that I’d been drinking wine out of the tabernacle and thinking about putting my prick inside the nuns. Next thing I knew I was kicked out of school.

  “What happened?” Mom asked me.

  “I did what I was told. I confessed.”

  “That wasn’t a good idea,” she said. “Certain things no one needs to know about.”

  The mixed message: the church says tell it all; Mom says keep it on the down-low. Now I understand. Now I see that the church was thinking about the soul and how it needs to be free of sin. Mom was a practical lady who had to stay free of the law. As a kid, though, the disagreement between my mother and the church was unsettling. Rather than let the confusion linger, I took Mom’s advice to heart. She was feeding me. The church wasn’t.

  If I had crazy thoughts, I would keep them hidden. If I did crazy things, no one had to know. If sex was on my mind more than it should have been for a preteen, well, that was my business and no one else’s. If Nancy kept calling me down the basement, where I had learned the right rhythm of riding her to a frenzy, I wasn’t about to tell a soul.

  Mom showed me how to deal with the world on the world’s terms. She knew who to approach and who to avoid. She was savvy, a quality I learned to appreciate early on. Her numbers running had gotten so good she saved enough to get us out of the low-rent projects. I was still a preteen when she told us we could say good-bye to funky town. We were heading over the Swan Street Bridge to a classier situation, the Perry Projects, where the apartments were not only bigger and cleaner, but where everyone was white as the first snowfall of winter.

  HOUND DOG

  The white/black tension in American life and American music all came down on me around the time we moved to the Perry Projects.

  Mom had this 45 rpm record that had a red label with a picture of a peacock. She played it all the time and everyone in our household loved it, me more than anyone. The singer was Big Mama Thornton, whose voice was like Etta James’s—big, brash, and sexy—and the song was “Hound Dog.” I loved the lyrics that said, “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog crying all the time.” I wasn’t even sure what they meant. They sounded so good coming out Big Mama’s mouth.

  Then one day we were watching our little black-and-white TV and there was this white boy called Elvis Presley, with slicked-back hair and a sneer on his face, singing the same song. I couldn’t quite figure out who he wanted to be. He looked a little bit like a juvenile delinquent, but he was also trying to sound black.

  “How come they don’t have Big Mama singing this song on TV?” I asked my mother.

  “ ’Cause Elvis is the most popular thing since sliced white bread.”

  “What’s so good about him?”

  “The girls like him. He’s pretty, and he don’t mind shaking his booty.”

  “Won’t he get in trouble for stealing this song from Big Mama?”

  “Anyone can sing anything they like.”

  “Well, I can sing as good as that guy,” I said.

  Mom laughed, “I bet you can. I bet you will. I want you to.”

  “And then will they put me on TV instead of him?”

  “By the time you grow up, maybe they will.”

  When I started public junior high, I saw a lot of guys who looked like Elvis. They had the slicked-back hair and the sneer on their lips. They were the guys who were quick to call me nigger. They were the guys who made me realize that, although Mom wanted to give us the advantages of living in the white world, the white world didn’t want us.

  My main running partner was my brother Roy. He and I were the only blacks in school. The white gangs chased us home every day. If we weren’t so fast, we wouldn’t have made it. Every day it felt like we were running for our lives. Same thing was true with Camille—only she didn’t run. She stopped and fought. She’d fuck up anyone who called her a nigger.

  One day Mom happened to be home when me and Roy came running in. She looked out the window and saw the white gang. She grabbed us both, opened the door, and told the boys who’d been chasing us, “Ain’t no harm in fighting—long as you do it fair and square. Which of you two boys wanna fight my sons?” Two guys jumped out. “Fine,” said Mom. “Go at it.”

  Maybe it was because Mom was looking. Maybe her confidence filtered down into us. Whatever the reason, Roy and I had no problem kicking their asses. We beat them into bloody submission while Mom beamed with pride.

  That didn’t solve the problem, though. It wasn’t just the greased-up Elvis Presley/James Dean–looking thugs at school who came after us. It was our neighbors as well. Like Boston, Buffalo is a black-hating racist city.

  Every week someone would lob a rock through our front window or burn a cross in the little patch of grass in front of our apartment. We were scared. We wanted to move back to the old projects and be with black people. We wanted to be with our own. We begged Mom to get us out of there.

  “No way,” she said. “We deserve to be here. It’s our right. No one’s gonna drive us outta our house. We staying.”

  “Why?” I kept asking.

  “Because I worked damn hard for this place, and the law is on my side. Law says long as we got the money—and we do—we can live damn well anywhere we please.”

  Our neighbors and schoolmates didn’t see it that way. They thought we were invading their territory, and they weren’t going to have it. When Camille came out the corner grocery store holding big bags of food, a motorcycle gang was waiting for her. Their leader was a muscle head called Toby. He gave his boys the high sign, and, just like that, they started knocking over Camille and stomping on her food. There were too many of them for her to fight. When Mom heard the story, she grabbed a long kitchen knife and headed down to the grocery store. The gang was still there.

  “Touch one of my kids again,” Mom told Toby, “and I’ll put this knife through your heart. I’ll go after you and every one of you motherfuckers—and I won’t be alone.”

  The look on Mom’s face and the tone of Mom’s voice stopped the boys in their tracks. They knew it was best to keep their mouths shut. That night when I heard her call my older brother, Carmen, I knew it was on.

  Carmen was fierce. He’d just gotten out of prison for the third time. I didn’t know all the reasons he’d been sent to jail, but I assumed they involved violence. Carmen was a violent man. He was short, five foot seven or eight, but built of steel. His dark brown eyes looked right through you. When Roy and I were misbehaving beyond normal amounts, Mom would threaten to call Carmen. He was her enforcer. A beating from Mom was one thing—the cord from her iron hurt like hell—but a beating from Carmen was something else. He used his fists.

  When I asked Mom the details of whether Carmen would go after Toby, I never got a straight answer.

  “You go on and mind your business, son,” said Mom. “That’s something you don’t need to worry about.”

  Roy and I talked about it all the time. A few days passed, and then a few weeks.

  “Wonder when Carmen’s getting here,” said Roy.

  “Wonder what’s gonna happen when he does show up,” I said.

  We didn’t have to wonder for long. One night I was asleep in the bed that I shared with Roy when I heard this commotion outside.

  “Fuck you, you nigger!”

  “Fuck you, you punk-ass cracker!”

  I ran to the window. The streetlights had been shot out and it was too dark to make sense of what was happening. Clearly, though, a blow-to-blow struggle was under way. I started to run out and see for myself, but Mom was blocking the door.

  “Get back in your room,” she said. “Carmen’s taking care of this.”

  Not many minutes later I heard the door and saw Carmen walk in. He was with a prison-
mate friend and a third man who I hadn’t seen in years—my father. The three of them had some bruises and bloody knuckles.

  “You take care of business?” Mom asked Carmen.

  Carmen was quick to answer. “Toby and them ain’t ever gonna bother you again.”

  And they never did. Word went out that the Johnson gang was the baddest in Buffalo. Toby and his boys were in the hospital for a month. And when they finally got out, they never said another word to us. “Nigger” was no longer in their vocabulary.

  Funny, though, that Mom, who hated the word “nigger” when white people used it against us, used it herself when she’d punish me. If I got caught stealing or telling a lie, she’d put me over her knee, whip out that iron cord, and let me have it, all the time saying, “Little nigga, you ain’t ever gonna do that again, are you?”

  “No, ma’am,” I’d cry. “Never ever.”

  With Mom said “nigga,” even though she was about to whip me, she used it with love. When Toby said “nigger,” even though he was also looking to put a beating on me, he said it with hatred. Mom wanted to hurt me so I wouldn’t be bad again. Toby wanted to kill me so I’d be dead.

  When Carmen took care of Toby, a good feeling washed all over me. I lived through Carmen just as I lived through Mom. They were both tough characters who walked through the world without fear. They were both fighters, and they were my family. Carmen taught me and Roy how to box. We both proved to be fierce fighters. Carmen also taught us how to wield a switchblade. “Don’t matter how you win a fight,” said Carmen, “long as you win.”

  Mom bought a ten-speed bike for me and Roy to share. “Don’t go off without the other,” she said. “Make sure you got each other’s back.”

  I’d ride while Roy walked or ran beside me—then vice versa. We had our game down tight. Then came the day when, instead of sharing the bike with Roy, I decided to go bounce on Nancy down in the basement. Roy didn’t mind. He had the ten-speed all to himself. When he didn’t come home, though, we all started to worry.

  “Where’s your brother?” asked Mom.

  “Out riding.”

  “Why ain’t you riding with him?”

  “I was too tired,” I lied.

  Then came the call from the hospital. An ice cream truck ran a red light and smashed head-on into Roy, dragging him for blocks.

  “Is my baby gonna die?” Mom asked the doctor when we all rushed over to the hospital.

  “It’s gonna be close.”

  Our family huddled together in prayer. The prayer was answered. Roy was spared, but remained in the hospital for two months. For two years he had to wear a cast that covered both his legs up to his waist. Mom became his nurse. In spite of her day job cleaning houses and her night job running numbers, she found time to care for him. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was with Roy. I felt like I had lost her. I also felt like she blamed me for the accident. Why hadn’t I been there? If I had, maybe I could have pushed Roy out of the way. Maybe I could have prevented the whole thing. Naturally I never told Mom the truth—that I was too busy fucking Nancy to worry about Roy—but I detected that Mom had guessed the truth. She didn’t come out and accuse me of anything, but I felt a strange vibe. I felt a distance between me and Mom that was never there before. And rather than try to decrease that distance and move closer to her, I went the other away. I widened the gap. Rather than subject myself to what felt like Mom’s scorn, I avoided Mom altogether.

  I got bitter. I thought back to those times when Mom took me to the nightclubs and I’d get to play drums during the breaks. I had natural talent for percussion. The grown-up party people would gather round me and dance, applaud, and sing my praises. Mom would beam with pride.

  “My boy’s special,” she’d say. “My boy’s got him some genius talent.”

  After Roy’s accident, though, Mom didn’t offer to take me to the clubs. Those private nights between me and Mom were over. Roy was the one who got all her private time.

  I tried to focus on school but couldn’t. The teachers kept telling me I was smart, but no one knew how to handle my reading problem. No one knew how to get me to pay attention to words on the page or numbers on the blackboard. I was good at all the sports—I was a scrappy YMCA boxer and got a reputation as a tough brawler—but I was never the best athlete. If I couldn’t be the best, I’d rather play. My best friend became music. In music I was easily the best. I could sing in a deep rich voice, sounding older than I was. I could pick out harmony notes and give them to the other guys who liked to sing doo-wop with me. I could pick up a guitar and, just by instinct, play a blues riff by B. B. King or a rhythm riff by Bo Diddley.

  When I came home to show Mom what I had learned, she said, “Later, son, I got to tend to Roy tonight.”

  Well, I had my own affairs to tend to. I had turned thirteen and had me more than one girl. I’d put the lessons that Nancy taught me to good use. A lot of the older girls—ones who were seniors in high school—got the idea that I had special talents. One of the nastier girls—I’ll call her Charlene—had a body that wouldn’t quit. She was known for giving it up easily and quickly. One day at school, she whispered in my ear, “I hear you a pussy pleaser. Is that right?”

  Before I could answer yes, my dick was already hard. That night, in the backseat of an abandoned car on the outskirts of the city, my dick was deep inside her.

  “For a kid,” she said, “you know how to last long.”

  “I ain’t no kid,” I said. And to prove it I went back for seconds, lasting even longer than the first time.

  When Charlene told her best friend, Brenda, about my prowess, Brenda made her wishes known to me. Brenda was an only child who lived alone with her mother, and her mother was gone for the weekend.

  Brenda liked it from behind. Did I know how to do it that way?

  “This way, that way,” I said. “All ways are my ways.”

  From then on, I called her Backdoor Brenda.

  I got busy in a hurry. Pleasing girls was good work. Pleasing girls was a lot more satisfying than schoolwork. Even on those occasions when I made a good grade or wrote a report praised by my teacher, Mom was too preoccupied with Roy to acknowledge me. So I found ways to get that acknowledgment from other females.

  One Friday night I was with a girl who kept me busy till the wee small hours. After our marathon, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up till ten A.M. I’d never been out all night before. I thought Mom would kill me. But when I got home, Mom was feeding Roy. She didn’t bother to look up and say hello. She hadn’t even noticed that I’d been out all night. That crushed me. That also got me to thinking that she didn’t even care. And if that was the case I could go on and do whatever the hell I wanted to do. I could steal some money out of her purse and hop a Greyhound to New York City.

  CHASIN’ THE TRANE

  The Greyhound was cheap. The ride was long. I was bored to death. With all the stops, it took from ten in the morning to ten at night for the bus to make its way from Buffalo to the New York City Port Authority Terminal on Forty-Second Street. When I got out, the energy hit me hard. The lights were blazing. The city was alive. The city was screaming. I started walking faster than I usually walk. I started thinking faster than I usually think. I remembered one of my girlfriends telling me that Greenwich Village was the spot for jazz. I asked a brotha which way to Greenwich Village. He pointed to the subway. I bought a token and a half hour later was standing in front of the Village Vanguard. JOHN COLTRANE APPEARING TONIGHT. Great, but how do I get in? The line is long and the admission is high.

  All my time with Mom had taught me how to slip into clubs without being noticed. I waited till there was a little discussion at the door between the ticket taker and a ticket holder. When the ticket taker was distracted, I slipped under the rope and stood by the kitchen door. There were a few empty seats. I chose one back in the dark shadows. It was a small club so it didn’t matter where I sat. I was in. I was four hundred miles away from home. I was about to hea
r John Coltrane tell the good news.

  I’d heard Coltrane back in Buffalo when he was still with Miles. But this was the newly liberated Coltrane, Coltrane the leader, the Coltrane of Giant Steps and My Favorite Things, the Coltrane that all the hip cats in Buffalo had been listening to night and day. Among them all, I’d be the first to say I’d seen that Coltrane live and in person at the Village Vanguard. I was in a privileged position, and I damn well knew it.

  I remember the name of every man on the stage. I studied each musician like a jeweler studies a watch. McCoy Tyner was the pianist. Reggie Workman played the upright bass. Eric Dolphy blew the bass clarinet, an instrument I had never seen before. Elvin Jones changed forever the way I viewed the drums. He gave the drums a voice—like the drum was a trumpet or saxophone. All these men were masters who understood they were there to serve their master, John Coltrane.

  Trane switched back and forth from soprano to tenor sax. On his soprano, his voice was high and crying. On tenor, his voice was manly and moaning. He didn’t say a word to the audience except to introduce a song. “This is ‘Spiritual,’ ” was all he said. He did all the explaining with his instrument. It wasn’t a regular song that lasted three or four minutes. It seemed to last thirty. Trane seemed to go on a journey, like the journey I took from Buffalo to Greenwich Village. He kept on riding, kept on looking out the window, kept on describing everything he saw. Except the window was a window into his own mind. I felt like he was opening up his mind for me to see inside. And his mind was filled with ideas. One idea led to another. The gears were in motion and meshed together. I understood how his mind was working ’cause mine worked the same way. It was a spirit that was moving him. That’s why the song was called “Spiritual.” That spirit was moving me. That spirit had finally let me focus on something for a long time without getting restless or bored. I could see where I could ride that spirit all the way to the end of the line.

  The line called the A train led me to Harlem and the Apollo Theater, which had haunted my imagination ever since Mom started bringing home Jet magazines with pictures of the stars posed in front of its big marquee on 125th Street. When the Coltrane set ended, I ran up to catch the last show at the Apollo. The big star was Jackie Wilson. If Trane was heaven in the sky, Jackie was heaven on earth. He was down-to-earth, down to where women got wet just watching him move his hips and do his splits. Jackie Wilson made Elvis look like Howdy Doody. The Jackie Wilson I saw that night at the Apollo was prime Jackie Wilson, “Lonely Teardrops” and “To Be Loved” Jackie Wilson, the Jackie Wilson of “Talk That Talk” and “Doggin’ Around,” the Jackie Wilson who, when he asked the audience, “Am I the man?” had a sista screaming, “Yes, Daddy! Hell, yes! You all the man I need!”