by John Ridley
“SCREW OFF,” I told the boss man, the guy who ran the moving company—large guy, furry with hair. If you'd been of the mind, you could've used him for a human-skin rug. “Screw off,” I told him.
In my head.
I'd been fantasizing about quitting the company since the day I first started working there. I had the scene conjured down to the detail: me walking into big boss man's office, thanking him for the long hours and lousy pay, telling him how the next time I had anything to do with him would be when his little outfit was moving me from uptown to downtown, or from Harlem to Hollywood. Then I'd be out the door, no looks back.
No more daydreaming. I was striding over to Seventh Ave., the company office, to hand the boss man back his job. Didn't need it. My life was in a comfortable groove. Thanks to Sid and his mini-miracles, I was working clubs regular. I was getting spots earlier. My act was getting stronger. I was making money. Not great money. Steady money, but that made it good money. Good enough the clubs were the only work I needed. By that time I was going into the moving company only three days out of five, and the little dough I'd lose not going in at all would be missed zero.
So, boss man, “screw off.”
In my mind I said that.
What I actually said when it came time, all I had nerve enough to say was I wouldn't be coming in anymore, and followed that up with a very polite request as to if it would be all right to have my last check. Sir.
I went away hands empty.
Before I left the place altogether, I stopped down to see Li'l Mo. He was in the garage with the trucks, big machines, backs open and empty, waiting to go out on a job and get filled. The filling would take a lot of long and hard hours.
Screw off, trucks.
I caught up to Mo, told him I was out.
He nodded his head to the news, said nothing.
I tried to tell him, to share with him my enthusiasm over how things were working out for me in the clubs, how Sid was really helping me to—
“So what, you're quitting. You don't hardly ever come around anymore anyhow. You ain't working, how you gonna be quitting anything?”
“I'm just saying this is a good thing. I've wanted this as long as I can remember.” I tried to get Mo to grab on to some of the excitement I was pitching around. “If you knew what it was like to be up onstage … You remember back in that logging camp, how I got even those rednecks to bust up? When people who are supposed to hate you are clapping and—”
“I'm glad for you,” he strained. “All right? You go tell your jokes. I gotta go move the man's shit.”
Mo crossed to one of the trucks, crossed quick like he had something important to do. From the way he stood around when he got there, it didn't seem he was doing much but getting away from me.
I couldn't understand the way Mo acted, couldn't understand why he should be resentful of my doing well.
The other thing I couldn't seem to do was collect enough energy to care.
FRAN'S SINGLE GOT RELEASED. After the expense of the recording session there was no money behind it, no promotion, and little air play to go with it. Even as a redheaded stepchild, the song charted in the top sixty before it went away.
IT'S THE SAME AS WITH YOUR FIRST CAR, or kiss. Your first girlfriend. They're with you always—always in your memory, and the memory always good.
Thursday night. The Village Vanguard. Late in the show. That clear it is to me. I was doing a bit, almost a throwaway line, about a guy I saw at a restaurant smoking while he was eating. What's the point of that? To give your food a nice hickory-smoke flavor? Guess it's just for people who are too busy to barbecue. Me, going into a gravelly voice: “Just gimme some raw meat and a pack of Camels. I gotta go.”
An applause break is what comics call it. It's when you say some thing so funny the audience has got to do more than just laugh. They've got to sit and whistle and clap while they get themselves back together: catch a breath, dry their eyes that are pouring with tears from the thing you said that was so damn hysterical. That night—Thursday night. Village Vanguard. Late in the show—with that line I earned my very first applause break. And like I'd do so many times with the breaks I'd earn in the years that followed, I stopped and I stood and waited for the people to finish clapping, deep breathing, and wiping their eyes. I stood and I waited and I soaked up their applause and affection.
Affection.
Affection that I had otherwise gone most my entire life not being familiar with any other way. Affection and adulation and admiration and appreciation. They loved me. For saying something funny a slew of people I did not know, had never met before, had no attachment to, loved me.
Can you understand why a guy, alone, backed only with the wits in his head and the mike in his grip, would go up in front of a pack of people and dare to impress them? To stand onstage, not spinning plates or spitting nickels. Talking. Just talking. But what you say and how you say it has a way … It has a way, and it affects people so that they can't help but laugh. They cannot help it. When you can do that—when you can make people want you strictly for the things that come spilling from your mouth—it is a feeling like no other. Not like drink or drugs. Not even like women. It's a high that goes unmatched, and that you're forever forced to chase.
TIME SPENT WITH TOMMY was spent in the clouds. Time spent with Tommy was time spent free of my father. Still living at home, any reason was reason enough to be away from him. Being with Tommy was more than enough. Over a bunch of months the two of us had put together a relationship that worked despite our differences. She was a walk-in-the-park chick, a stay-at-home-and-snuggle girl to my staying out late and cruising the clubs. If there was a scene to be made, I wanted to make it. I wanted to be in with the in crowd. Tommy wanted nothing to do with them. We were opposites, yeah, but me and her were opposites attracting at speeds up to one hundred miles an hour. Point of impact: love. What we got from each other is what we gave to each other. Tommy gave me a sense of being, a sense of worth. Except that I tried to make her feel like a princess every moment I could, I don't know I gave Tommy much of anything. Didn't have much to give. She loved me just the same.
And jokes. That was the other thing Tommy gave me, jokes for the act. A couple of times she came up with some bits she thought were funny, pitched them to me. Because I was her guy, and it's the kind of thing a guy does for his girl, I used one once. It got no laughs. It made her happy I'd even tried it. One thing more Tommy and I didn't have in common: what we thought was funny.
“You're not laughing,” I said.
“It's not funny,” she said back.
On the Zenith in her apartment: Milton Berle in drag, flopping around onstage in glorious black and white. It did nothing for her.
I tried to school Tommy in Caesar and Gleason and Kovacs and Berle. She didn't particularly go for them. She especially didn't go for Berle, taking to his show about as well as a Muslim to a Jolson concert.
Tommy, head laid over my chest as we sat on her couch, gave more attention to something across the room than to what was on the TV.
“This is classic stuff.”
“A guy in a dress?”
“Yeah, a guy in a dress. It's funny. Eveiybody loves this bit.”
Tommy, dry: “If everybody else loves it, it's funny?”
“I'm just saying if a lot of people like something, there must be a reason. Come up with a bit that goes over big, that's how you get somewhere.”
On the Zenith: Berle swatting some stooge with a purse. The studio audience was busting up. And right then thirty-five million people around the country were busting up with them.
Tommy not included. “A lot of people like something, so what? Doesn't mean it's good.”
“Okay, yeah, but … It's like …” What was it like? “It's like blues and popular music, right? Blues is better music; it's real music, but nobody digs it.”
Tommy's head came up off my body and her gaze got trained on a spot right between my eyes. “I dig it.” A bul
let couldn't have hit harder. “And I'd rather be doing something that's real than something that's just popular.”
“I'd rather go somewhere.”
“You want to go somewhere? Go to hell!”
Discord jamming itself between me and Tommy. Sometimes opposites attract. Sometimes they just slam into each other.
She got up quickly and started to move away. I was steps behind her. As worked up as she was about what I'd said, I was the same about her not seeing my meaning. Firm, I took her arm in my hand. Gentle, I pulled her to me.
“Baby, I'm not saying it's right. That's just the way it is. Like with Uncle Milty; that's the way comedy's always been; that's the way it's always going to be.”
“So one day you'll wear a dress?” Her eyes were hot. Her chest rose and fell against mine. She was angry. Anger made her sexy. Sexier.
“If they were paying me the kind of bread they're paying him …”
Tommy's hands went to her skull, her fingers wide and groping, trying to swallow it whole. She moaned at me: “Jesus, you make my head hurt!”
She wasn't kidding about that. The girl was migraining bad. You could catch her temples throbbing without even a hard look.
Weak, tired, Tommy bled from my hands, went back to the couch, back to watching the comic-in-a-dress. She didn't laugh or smile; she didn't do anything more than soak in monochrome light. Compliance and protest in the same act. She gave in to me, but giving in was the same as slapping my face: Here, I'm watching. I'm faking like I care. Happy?
I wasn't happy. I hadn't meant to, but I'd hurt her. Hurting Tommy was the same as taking a razor to a part of myself—her pain was mine.
Tommy was done talking to me, but the conversation was only stalled, not over. From then on it would be with us always—art versus commerce. Being something versus saying something. For Tommy and me the argument was our bastard child that could never long be left alone.
“CBS? CBS!” I would've said it again if I could've come up with one more version of surprise and excitement. Instead, I gave some surprise and excitement to: “Friday? This Friday!”
Sid: “Jackie …”
Fran got grabbed up in my arms, swung around Sid's small office.
“CBS is coming to see us!”
“I heard,” Fran squealed, eyes shut to keep from going dizzy.
“Jackie …” Sid's voice barely reaching me where I was.
Where I was was a Sunday night a couple of weeks, or a month's time in the future. Where I was was onstage with Ed Sullivan, who was trying—trying hard but not getting the job done—to quiet a busting-up audience after I'd just finished my first coast-to-coast television broadcast. And let me tell you, just as fast as that day-dream had come into my head, it was suddenly too small for me. A guest on a program? How about my own program? How about the Colgate-Jackie Mann Variety Hour? How about the Gillette-Jackie Mann Cavalcade? My fantasies didn't care that up till then Nat King Cole was the only black to ever have his own television program, and he had to be one of the biggest stars in America to get it, and once he'd gotten it America got his black behind off the airwaves fast as they could. The King was a star, sure, a natural talent, but the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave … they'd rather catch Lassie.
Maybe I had that history working against me, but my daydreams were tougher than anything reality could put in my way. “CBS! This is great, Sid. Isn't this …”
I let Fran down. She slid out of my arms, woozied to a wall, and steadied herself. I didn't really register any of that, though. I was looking at Sid. Sid didn't look good. For all the excitement I was throwing around, Sid looked just about sick.
“What?” I asked, scared to ask any more.
“It's … The thing is …” With all the effort he put into getting just that much out, Sid made talking come off as torture.
“What!”
“They're coming to see Frances. … Only Frances.”
Just like that.
“I didn't want you to hear it secondhand. I didn't want … You and Frances are best friends, and I didn't want you to think …”
Just like that. For a moment I'd let my fantasies come alive, and just like that they were grabbed from me and made useless. My eyes dodged Sid and Fran. I couldn't look at them, was too embarrassed after the little show I'd put on, giving off girlish shrieks from thinking for even one hot second that some television executive or talent scout would ever want to be in the Jackie Mann business. Why would they? Why would anyone want to have anything to do with … with a little black nothing.
I hurt. I physically hurt. A razor-wired mile of humiliation wrapped around me and I twisted in it. As bad as from any pounding I'd ever received from my father, his punches to the head were soft next to this blow to my soul.
Voices.
Voices above me. Fran and Sid. I heard them from the bottom of the pit where I'd sunk.
“Can't you talk to them?”
“I tried. I tried to ta—”
“Three minutes. You tell them to watch just three minutes of Jackie's—”
“They know Jackie, know about him.”
“Then they know he's funny. So what's it going to hurt for them to watch a couple of minutes of—”
“It's not that they don't … What they said … They told me they don't—”
I mumbled: “They don't have anything for Negroes.” The truth. I got tired of them talking around it, so I just said it. “It's not about being funny, Fran. It's about being Negro. They're not looking to put Negroes on TV, are they, Sid?”
“… No.”
No. You better believe they weren't. But if I were Lassie …
Fran didn't hear any of that, or if she did she didn't care. “You talk to these guys, Sid. You tell them that if they don't look at Jackie, then they don't—”
I had to jump in, cut Fran off before she did a hara-kiri job on her own career.
“What's the big deal?” I tossed out, nonchalant despite my internal bleeding. “They don't want to see me, they don't want to see me. Why force 'em to sit through the act?”
“Because they won't look at you otherwise, that's why. Because it's wrong. It'd be one thing if they didn't think you were funny, but they won't even do you the courtesy of sipping their comp drinks while you tell jokes.”
Frannie was civil rights before civil rights had a name. The idea of holding your ground against bigots had been branded into her by the hot memories of her father's embarrassed looks as he was politely, coldly, shamefully turned away in front of the watching eyes of his family from “exclusive” restaurants and “restricted” hotels. Exclusive. Restricted. Fran had grown up speaking the secret code of anti-Semitism. She'd grown up learning not to flinch from it the way her father had. And now she was about to equal-opportunity herself right out of an audition.
“Why are you making a stink over things when I'm not? CBS doesn't want me, I'll sell my act to NBC. Besides, it's not as if I don't love it in the clubs.”
“Sure you do. You love the clubs, the smaller the better. If you had things your way, you'd book yourself right back into the Fourteenth Street Theater.” Fran wasn't buying my I-don't-care bits. Not even a little. I kept on selling. Had to for her sake. For her sake I worked my deceits, told her how the audition was no big deal to me. How another one would come along same as a gypsy cab, and how CBS'd be sorry when someone else snatched me up. I told Fran I almost felt bad for her having to sing for some guys from the biggest television network, pen poised over paper, ready to sign her up.
With my sad little show I was able to lure Frances to the notion of not quitting the audition. My lies were obvious, but so was my desire that she go on.
She would, on a condition: “You'll be in the audience?”
“Wouldn't miss it.”
Then we all stood around some, talking about what a real good thing this audition was going to be for Fran. I smiled a little. Acted happy. One more lie.
Pretty soon Fran excused hers
elf, said she wanted to go home and pick out a dress, some numbers, rehearse them … . Generally she wanted to start the process of getting ready for the biggest night of her life. One more round of congratulations to her, and Fran left.
The second she was out the door Sid started talking, not wanting to let the dead air get any staler. “Like you said, to hell with them if they don't want you.” He still looked ill. “Sooner or later NBC's going to—or ABC. They're the ones really shaking things up— they'll get a look at you, and they'll go nuts. These CBS suits, they don't know what they're missing.”
God bless Sid. He was a worse liar than I was.
FRIDAY NIGHT. The Village. The Blue Angel. The vibe: good. The crowd: good. The CBS talent scouts seated among them. Sid was juiced with a nervous excitement proud-pop-style. I was a little cuckoo myself, dizzy and light-headed like I'd been downing smoke from a jazzman's cigarette. It wasn't anticipation that had me feeling that way. Part of me was not right, feeling something I'd never thought I'd feel for Fran. No matter it was her big night, there was part of me that was a small percent jealous. I tried to drive the feeling away with thoughts on how happy I was for Frances. I tried real, real hard.
Eventually the house went dark and the show started, and, eventually, after some warm-up acts, Fran took the stage and did her set. I half expected her to throw the audition, to take a dive: If you won't watch Jackie, then I won't let you watch me.