by Aya De León
As Deza gave a noncommittal murmur, Lily walked down to the apartment door, and Tyesha introduced the two of them.
They exchanged pleasantries while Tyesha opened the door. Her apartment had a compact living room decorated with Tyesha’s framed diplomas, blown-up posters of Serena Williams in a sultry evening dress on the cover of New York magazine, and the cast of Orange Is the New Black on the cover of Essence. In front of the turquoise couch, a half-empty bottle of wine sat on the coffee table. Beside it was a pair of wine glasses—one with Tyesha’s shade of lipstick.
“Uh-oh,” Deza said. “I was hoping to sleep over. Unless you’ve got a boyfriend here.”
“Just a friend,” Tyesha said. “And he left hours ago.”
“Tyesha needs a boyfriend,” Lily muttered. “But nobody’s been good enough since she stopped seeing Thug Woofer.”
Deza did a double take. “What?! Auntie, you were messing with Thug Woofer. As in the rap star?”
“We just went out a couple of times,” Tyesha said.
“A couple of times?” Deza’s mouth was wide open. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“Once to the Oscars,” Lily put in.
“You what?” Deza nearly shrieked.
“Stay out of this, Lily,” Tyesha said.
“Sure,” Lily said. “As soon as you tell your niece why you broke up with him.”
“We didn’t break up,” Tyesha said. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. We just went on two dates.”
“Wait,” Deza said. “You dumped Thug Woofer?”
“He was rude,” Tyesha said.
“He’s the mad dog of rap,” Deza said. “You didn’t expect a Boy Scout, did you?”
“It’s complicated,” Tyesha said.
“How complicated could it get in two dates?” Deza asked. “Did he hit you? Pull a weapon?”
“He pressured her for sex,” Lily supplied.
“He what?” Deza asked. “He went out with you twice and you didn’t give him none?”
“And it’s not like she wasn’t feeling him,” Lily said.
“He acted like I owed him sex,” Tyesha said. “Like I told you. Rude.”
“So in all that time when you were dating him and not having sex, it didn’t occur to you to tell him you had a niece that was a rap artist?” Deza asked.
“I was just getting to know him,” Tyesha said. “And I didn’t like what I found out. If he couldn’t make the cut for me to have sex with him, he certainly didn’t make the cut for me to trust him with anything connected to your career.”
Lily opened her mouth to speak, but Tyesha cut her off. “Lily, we need to stay focused and look at this video.”
“What video could be more important than my auntie dating Thug Woofer?” Deza asked.
“It’s a video of a girl getting grabbed in a strip club,” Lily said. “He tries to drag her into a room until the other strippers rescue her and walk out, but then the Ukrainian mob comes to break it up.”
“What show is this?” Deza asked. “Something new by Shonda Rhimes?”
“Not a show, baby,” Lily said. “It’s my life from three hours ago.”
“Damn,” Deza said.
“I just have one more thing to say about Thug Woofer,” Lily added with a grin and turned to Deza. “You remember how he surprised everybody when he did that soft boy album, ‘Melvyn’? Remember how he dedicated it to T? Guess who T is?”
“Are you kidding me?” Deza asked. “Are you fucking kidding me? He dedicated his heartbreak album to you?”
“You don’t know that for a fact,” Tyesha said. “It could be some girl named Tiffany. Tanya. Tremaine.”
“Bullshit,” Lily said. “He knew he fucked up, but you wouldn’t give him a second chance.”
“A third chance,” Tyesha said.
“Please!” Deza said. “Please give him a third chance. And you can give him my demo CD. Please, Auntie. This could be my big break in hip-hop. I’m begging you.”
“No, baby. I’m sorry,” Tyesha said. “When I’m done, I’m done. Don’t ask me again.”
“I can’t believe you,” Deza said. “You always told me that it was okay to date a guy who could move your life forward in some way. But now you’re up here in New York, with your big job and your nice apartment, and your big baller life without us. So I guess it was okay to date guys who moved your life forward, but the rest of us are on our own. Mama was right about you.”
Deza stood up and grabbed her purse.
“Deza, wait!” Tyesha said.
But Deza had stormed out the door.
Tyesha rushed to get her own purse, but Lily pulled her back.
“Leave that girl,” Lily said. “We have our own drama to deal with.”
“How you gonna just tell her all my business with Thug Woofer?” Tyesha asked.
“Cause I’m fucking jealous,” Lily said. “If I had the number one rapper in the U.S. dedicating albums to me, I would be fucking him and living the good life, not dealing with this bullshit at the One-Eyed King, now would I?”
“It’s not that simple,” Tyesha said.
“Those are some high-class American problems,” Lily said. “You gotta go read Oprah magazine or some shit cause I can’t help you with that. Right now, I got some stripper problems that you need to help me with.”
Tyesha nodded. “Stripper problems take priority,” she said. “Hoes before bros.” They tapped fists, and the two of them sat down at the computer.
Tyesha opened up the email. The reporter hadn’t lied. He’d managed to get a shaky but clear recording of everything that had happened inside the club. It was perfect. You couldn’t see the girl’s face, but you could see the guy’s.
“So do we send this to the New York Times or some shit?” Lily asked.
“Nope,” Tyesha said. “We’re just gonna post it on the clinic’s website.”
She put on the headline “New York Strippers Walk Out After Security Stands Silently By During Violent Assault.” She left all the dancers anonymous, but named the club.
After she posted the video, she put it on social media.
Five minutes later, she checked her Twitter account, and there were already a hundred retweets. An hour later, Lily was snoring gently in the bed beside her, but Tyesha was wide awake. Every few minutes, she would check her phone to see hundreds, then thousands of retweets. But the image that nagged at her, kept her awake, was the memory of the first time she heard Thug Woofer’s soft boy album.
* * *
Thug Woofer’s album had dropped several months before. At the time, she hadn’t seen him in weeks. She was with her girls in Cuba and was thrilled to be in a country that wasn’t particularly bothered with the number one rapper in the U.S.
They were at the Hotel Palacio in Havana. Tyesha, Marisol, Kim, and Jody were in the living room of the suite finishing a large breakfast.
“I’m going out on the balcony to study,” Tyesha said, picking up a plate of bacon and setting it on top of a pile of books. As she slid open the balcony door, Tyesha heard shouts and traffic noise. Inside the suite, the TV was turned to a low murmur in the background.
Marisol poured herself a cup of coffee and buttered her toast.
“Hey, it’s Ellen,” Kim said, and pulled Jody over to the couch to watch. Kim turned up the volume.
Marisol joined them on the couch, as Ellen DeGeneres came dancing out into the audience at the top of her show to “Macho Man” by the Village People. Midwestern white audience members danced along with awkward, poorly timed moves.
Marisol ate her toast in the recliner while Kim lay with her head in Jody’s lap on the hotel couch.
“Ellen is still totally hot to me,” Kim said. “I’d do her in a minute.”
“Better not,” Jody said.
The music faded. “Speaking of macho men,” Ellen said, “one of our guests today is rap sensation Thug Woofer!” The audience applauded.
As the show cut to a commercial, they showed a phot
o of the rapper in front of a platinum tractor.
“Should we tell her?” Kim said.
Jody shook her head.
When they came back from the commercial break, Thug Woofer came out in a button-down shirt and a sweater. His jeans, while low slung, didn’t seem to be threatening to fall off his ass.
He hugged Ellen and sat down.
“So, we were backstage getting to know each other, and I feel like we’re really friends now,” Ellen said. “So what should I call you? Thug? Thugsie?” The audience laughed.
The rapper laughed, too. “Usually, I just go by Woof to my friends.”
“Okay, Woof,” she said. “So you’ve been dubbed ‘the bad dog of rap’ and ‘a canine hurricane of destruction,’ but lately you’ve decided to change your image a little bit. Can you tell us about this new project?”
“Sure, Ellen,” he said. “This is my new album, and it’s a different side of Woof. It’s called Melvyn: The Real Me.”
“As in?” Ellen asked.
“It’s what my mama named me,” he said. “Melvyn.”
“Tyesha!” Kim yelled. “You have to come see this!”
“What?” Tyesha asked, stepping in from the balcony, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the comparatively dim indoors.
“Is your publicist angry?” Ellen asked Woof. “I can see how ‘the bad Melvyn of rap’ or ‘hurricane Melvyn of destruction’ don’t have quite the same hook.”
“What?” Tyesha asked. “You interrupted me studying so I could see Woof on TV? You know tomorrow is my last day before I go back to New York.”
“Wait,” Kim said, grabbing Tyesha’s wrist. “Listen.”
“For this album concept, I wanted to take it back to the old school,” Woof said. “I remember one of the first rappers I heard was in my auntie’s collection, some old LL Cool J, called ‘I Need Love.’ That was the first time I ever heard a rapper say ‘I love you’ in a song.”
“I thought LL Cool J was hard as hell,” Ellen said, and the audience laughed.
“Underneath every hard-shell rapper is a guy who needs love, Ellen,” Woof said.
“Aww,” Ellen said and turned to her audience. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“Awwwwww!” the audience agreed.
“So this is the first single we’ll be releasing off the album. It’s called ‘Third Chance,’” Woof said. “And I want to dedicate it to a special someone. She knows who she is. And I may have realized too late, but T, if you’re out there, I’m sorry. I was lucky to get a second chance with you. I probably won’t get a third chance, but this song is my hope and prayer that maybe I could.”
“Okay,” Ellen said. “T? If you’re listening, this is for you. And everyone else, here’s a clip of the real Thug Woofer, off the album Melvyn: The Real Me.”
On the screen, Woof mostly walked along the river, rapping and looking mopey, with flashbacks of the silhouettes of two people walking along the river together.
“He’s not bad.” Jody shrugged. “Nice alliteration.”
“I don’t have time for this shit,” Tyesha said and walked back out to her books.
* * *
The next afternoon, the multipurpose room of the Maria de la Vega clinic was packed with reporters. Tyesha had consulted with Marisol, who had called a press conference to discuss the viral video from the strip club and the subsequent walkout.
The large space was standing room only, with members of the press sitting in a motley assortment of metal and plastic folding chairs.
On the walls around them were posters for the clinic’s newly published Sexy Girl’s Guide to Staying Safe and Healthy in NYC and schedules for the clinic’s mobile health van, which served Lower Manhattan. These were interspersed with images of attractive, confident young women from the clinic’s demographics that encouraged them to:
Use condoms . . . every time.
Watch your drink.
Recognize the signs of an abusive relationship.
“This is our moment,” Marisol said. Now that we’ve drawn attention to the situation, we need to shame the strip club into doing the right thing.”
Tyesha stood off to the side with Lily, Marisol, and Kim. Lily was touching up Tyesha’s makeup.
“I only care that my face isn’t shiny. I don’t need to look like a runway model,” Tyesha said.
“My older sister works with one of the top makeup artists in New York,” Lily said. “She didn’t teach me how to do basic makeup. Only gorgeous.”
“Looking good can’t hurt,” Marisol said.
“I still don’t know why I need to be the face of the clinic,” Tyesha said. “You’re always so good at this.”
“I wasn’t at first,” Marisol said. “I learned to be good at it. Like you will, too. Part of growing into being executive director.”
Lily stood Tyesha up and twirled her around. She had on her best navy blue suit, a pink silk blouse, and high-heeled pumps.
“You look amazing,” Kim said.
Tyesha looked in the mirror. Her large eyes were extra smoky, and her full lips looked like a fifties starlet’s with the matte plum lipstick. Lily had sculpted her cheekbones with several dimensions of blush.
“Don’t overthink it,” Marisol said, handing Tyesha a piece of paper. “We spent all day preparing this speech. Just read it off the paper. When it comes time to take questions, I’ll be up there next to you. If you don’t have an answer, just look at me, and I’ll step in, okay? Or Eva will, since she’s the shrink and attorney.”
Tyesha nodded, but her hand shook as she took the paper. Just read it. Just read.
She felt that same low-grade panic she had when it was time to speak in front of her classes at school. She was sweating and slightly nauseated. But in class she was talking in front of academic white people. She was on her own in those classes. This was different. She was speaking for her folks. Her girls had her back. The audience of reporters was at least half people of color.
In the front of the room, they had a screen, which was showing Nashonna’s video. The twenty-something African American former stripper turned rapper who had the current number one hip-hop album. Woof had done a verse on one of the tracks, but the favorite at the clinic was the hit single “What the Stripper Had to Say.”
On the screen, Nashonna strutted around in a thong and bra while surrounded by rappers dancing in go-go cages suspended above, throwing money at her.
You didn’t care what the stripper had to say
You let the pole get in the way
You had some kind of jones
to see me dance to some weak hip-hop with fake-ass moans.
At this point, the rappers all moaned on cue and made parody faces of female sexiness.
No-talent rappers in the club throwing money around
I’m in the dressing room writing rhymes to take you down
You paid to see me make it clap
Well, motherfucker, now you gonna hear me rap . . .
As Tyesha walked across the room, she let Nashonna pump her up. This was their chance to have their say. All she had to do was read the speech.
As she was on her way to the podium, a black man in his early thirties approached her. He was handsome behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, but bourgie like the stockbroker from Tinder. Maybe Lily was right. She did sort of compare all the men she met to Thug Woofer, and none of them quite measured up.
“I’m the reporter from the Village Voice who sent you the video,” he said. “I was doing a piece on strip clubs in the city, but I didn’t expect to get that kind of footage.”
“Thank you so much,” Tyesha said.
He put out his hand. “I’m Drew Thomas,” he said.
“Tyesha Couvillier,” she replied.
“I know,” he said. “I looked you up online. You’re from Chicago, right? Are you related to the Couvillier family who ran the Urban Peace Accord Center?”
Tyesha hadn’t heard that name in nearly a decade. Hadn’t set foot
in the center for just as long. She had a sudden flashback of the center opening. She hadn’t been more than ten. But she had sat in the front row with her family. She looked up at her auntie standing at the microphone, her voice ringing through the center like a preacher:
Street violence is a public health epidemic in our community. It’s not on the public health agenda, because white middle class people don’t have to deal with it, but many of our children don’t live long enough to die of AIDS, cancer, heart disease, even diabetes.
Tyesha recalled how her aunt had had the respect of all the gangs. How the murder rate was dropping in the neighborhood, due to her work.
But when Drew brought it up, she didn’t flash back to the jubilation of the center’s opening or the accolades from the City Council. Instead, her mind was invaded by the sensory recall of a burning smell. The night the Urban Peace Accord Center was torched to the ground.
“Here,” Drew said. “Let me give you my info.”
Tyesha felt dazed as the reporter handed her his card. She slid it into the pocket of her suit jacket, over her hammering heart. Her fingers felt numb.
Without recalling the walk across the room, she found herself at the podium, in front of all the expectant faces. She was flanked by the clinic staff on one side and the strippers on the other.
She pulled out the piece of paper she hadn’t realized she had been clutching in her pocket, tightly enough to crush it. She smoothed it on the podium with moist palms.
She attempted to speak, but her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat.
“Good afternoon,” she began.
And then she smelled it. Smoke. Some motherfucker was smoking just inside the door. Jody, the tall spiky-haired blonde, strode up to him and grabbed the cigarette. She stomped it into the linoleum floor and tossed the guy out.
But Tyesha could only smell smoke. Her heart continued to hammer under Drew Thomas’s card. The words on the crumpled paper swam before her eyes. She couldn’t seem to get enough air. She could barely inhale for fear of pulling the remains of a burning building into her lungs. The charred shell of everything her aunt had worked for.