Drama Is Her Middle Name

by Wendy Williams

  As he sat in his gray Herman Miller Aeron chair at his large, art deco glass desk in his home office, Ivan thought about how he worked too much. He was becoming like so many of the men he read about—the kind of men who had everything and then suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. He had read in Jet magazine about Glenn Cunningham, mayor of Jersey City, New Jersey—the first black mayor of Jersey City—who was at the top of his game and one day after coming home from riding his bike had a massive heart attack and died. The article talked about how he was in such great shape and how he was a workaholic.

  “That won’t be me!” Ivan muttered to himself as he took a sip of Georges Vesselle Grand Cru from his Waterford champagne glass. Ivan preferred the taste of champagne to wine in the afternoon. He especially liked high-end, smooth champagnes like Georges Vesselle. The bubbles made it feel less like alcohol. He then picked up the recent issue of Ebony magazine and smiled. The cover story was about the emergence of the megachurches. And on the cover was a familiar face.

  Ivan was amazed by how so many blacks were flocking to church in record numbers and how so many ministers were becoming celebrities in their own right. There were pastors who had their own television shows, wore more bling than rappers, drove Bentleys, and lived in homes that looked like palaces—while those in their congregation went home to projects and tenements. To Ivan it was looking like a repeat of the days of Reverend Ike and Father Divine and Sweet Daddy Grace, those flamboyant ministers who would pimp off the poor in their communities, promising wealth and salvation.

  Ivan’s grandmother was a disciple of Sweet Daddy Grace. She was from Augusta, Georgia, and used to attend the House of Prayer religiously, a church that was packed with mostly women and effeminate men. There were too many rules—no makeup, no secular music, women couldn’t wear pants. Ivan felt like a prisoner. He was a young boy on summer vacation but was held hostage with the fun literally wrung out of his life. He would gladly have attended school during the summer rather than suffer through this. Ivan was forced to sit on the hard wooden pews for what seemed like eighteen hours straight. His little legs, which dangled from the pews, often fell asleep, and he could barely walk when it was time to leave.

  The only excitement came when Sweet Daddy Grace actually came to town. The House of Prayer was run by one of his many bishops. But when Sweet Daddy came to town, it was like the Fourth of July or more like Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn during the West Indian Day Parade. There would be dancing in the street, music (gospel, of course), baptizing, and lots of praise.

  Ivan liked it when Sweet Daddy came to town. It would break up the monotony of what had become the bane of his existence. Sweet Daddy was a spectacle with his gregarious garb and his processed hair, worn long “the way Jesus did.” Ivan liked to watch him.

  But when he was not there, it was back to business as usual—the long, long, long, long services and the numerous women falling out with the “holy ghost.” Ivan hated how the women, like Egyptian concubines, would fan the bishop. And he really hated when the big metal tubs would circulate around the church, taking the hard-earned money right out of the pockets of all of the unsuspecting worshippers. His grandmother was one of the biggest contributors. And all Ivan would think was “There goes my ice cream money.”

  Those summers spent in Georgia at the House of Prayer really made Ivan a cynic when it came to religion. He wasn’t quite an atheist but he used to say to himself, “If these are the kinds of people who will be getting into heaven, I’ll take my chances in hell!”

  As Ivan got older, he started to search for the true meaning of life and God. He believed that there were a few ministers left who weren’t out for their own selfish agenda. As Ivan stared at the Ebony cover, he reflected that Pastor Edwin Lakes Jr. seemed to be one of the good guys. He really did care about salvation and the souls of his congregants more than his bank account balance. He did preach the word. He was showing people that the true way to salvation didn’t come through a Mercedes, a diamond, or a mansion, but more people were following the other, flamboyant preachers.

  Pastor Lakes was becoming known because the younger generation—those in hip-hop—were flocking to his church. He bridged the two worlds of bling-bling ministries and down-home, word-based religion. He didn’t drive a Bentley but he was fast becoming a star. He was handsome, handsome in the way actor Dennis Haysbert is handsome. Pastor Lakes was a full-size man, more than six foot three, with broad shoulders and a booming voice. From the pulpit he damn near looked like a black Zeus—larger than life with a singular command over his congregation.

  Pastor Lakes also had a humility that softened what could have been a very intimidating visage. He was youthful—just over forty—but had a fatherly demeanor that made even Elder Jenkins, who had been attending Faith Baptist Church in Harlem since she and Methuselah were kids, feel comfortable. Elder Jenkins hated change. She had had the same seat in the same pew for more than forty years and refused to move. And when the church decided to move from its small three-hundred-seat firebox to the cathedral-like three-thousand-seat space a few blocks away, she complained for months. But Elder Jenkins accepted Edwin as her pastor without a hitch.

  Edwin Lakes had that way about him. In just a few short years after taking over Faith Baptist following the death of his father, he had built it into one of the fastest-growing churches in the nation.

  Pastor Lakes earned that Ebony cover. And there he was with his stately mother at his left side, his beautiful and then pregnant wife, Patricia, at his right side and their little boy perched perfectly in his lap.

  “You look great,” Ivan said aloud to himself as he reclined slightly in his seat. “You certainly made it, my friend.”

  Ivan tossed the magazine across the table. It landed faceup.

  Ivan, too, had made it. It had been nearly five years since he left his position as project manager at McKenzie & Braxton, one of the largest and most sought-after architect firms in Miami. Ivan was one of the most creative minds in the business. He found a way to incorporate his interior design skills into the actual architecture of his buildings. Ivan was an architectural genius, compared to Frank Lloyd Wright.

  When Ivan left McKenzie & Braxton, many of their clients followed him. Within that first year, he had more business than he could handle. He was forced to take on a partner to pick up the load. He had envisioned himself being right where he was. But it felt empty. He didn’t have anyone to share his success with—no children, no wife, no love.

  As Ivan took another glance his old friend smiling on the cover of Ebony, having everything Ivan did not, he took another sip of his champagne and thought, “I guess you can have everything.”

  It was a coincidence that Ivan had had his assistant, Morgan, go out and get a copy of Ebony. One of Ivan’s prized works—the Martin Luther King Memorial in Atlanta, Georgia—was featured in that issue, which happened to have the Lakes family on the cover. Coincidence? Or fate? Or maybe it was a sign. Divine intervention. The more Ivan stared at the picture of Edwin Lakes, the more Ivan got the notion that it was time to pay an old friend a visit.

  Morgan, a tall woman in her forties with graying blond hair, was more than an assistant. She was Ivan’s backbone. She had come with him from McKenzie & Braxton and knew the business inside out. Of all of the people there, Morgan was the most valuable, and he knew he needed her if his business was going to start off right. Ivan wanted Morgan. And Ivan got what Ivan wanted—one way or another.

  “Morgan, I need you to arrange an open-ended ticket to New York and lodging,” he said. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, but it is important business. Let’s sit down after you have made the arrangements and put together a priority list of the things that need to be done in my absence.”

  She left to make the arrangements. Ivan rang her again.

  “Morgan, make the flight for this evening, please,” he said. “I’m leaving now to get some shopping done.”

  Ivan intended to have a good time and
needed to have the right gear if he was going to be checking out the club scene. He picked the magazine up off the desk and tucked it under his arm. It would make good reading on the airplane ride to New York City. Ivan had spent the last four years building his business. It was time to get his groove back and maybe find a little religion along the way.

  12

  ON THE AIR

  “Okay, Mark from Manhattan, the show is about over and I’m going to have to let you go,” Ritz said in her best, exasperated I-can’t-believe-this-nigga-is-still-talking voice.

  “All I’m saying, Ritz, is that sometimes these hos need a pimp-slap from they man just so they know we care,” Mark from Manhattan said. “Don’t you remember your parents disciplining you out of love?”

  “Uhhh! Mark, we have to go! I have to go and you most certainly have to go! I am unfortunately out of time. I love you for listening!” Ritz gave the signal and Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” brought her show to a close. The song was old, but the beat was timeless and the message that her show would be eternally hot could never be lost.

  As soon as the red “On Air” sign shut off, the studio erupted into laughter. Everyone was laughing except Ritz. She was in one of her moods. Was it melancholy? Was she antsy? She couldn’t put her finger on it. Jamie and Chas ignored her. They had learned to do that because recently they never knew what kind of shade Ritz would be throwing from day to day. She was turning into a real diva—attitude and all. Aaron and Chas and now Jamie worked hard to keep the ambience of the studio fun. Ritz could be so over the top that they needed to keep the balance.

  “Yo, did you hear how serious that brother was about pimp-slapping his woman?” Aaron said. “Chas, maybe we can find his girl and bring her on the show. I bet he’s full of shit. I bet we’ll find out that he’s the one getting pimp-slapped.”

  Chas could find anyone. Since he came on the show, there wasn’t an interview Ritz couldn’t have. Chas wasn’t only well connected; he was so charming even straight men were attracted to him. He had that way about him. And since he had come to the station to work with Ritz, her show was doing better than anyone ever imagined.

  Stations that had previously been ambivalent were now taking a second look. The Ritz Harper Excursion meant instant syndication success. It was heading toward full-out national syndication. Folks in Los Angeles and Miami wanted a piece of Ritz, who was enjoying her new lifestyle with its million-dollar-plus salary—which came on the heels of her hitting incentives every time her show came in the top three in the ratings.

  Chas was proud. He was proud of his team.

  He was particularly proud of Aaron and how he’d developed. When Chas came aboard, Aaron—a dark-skinned brother with curly hair and glasses, who if he wasn’t so skinny could easily be mistaken for New York Jets running back Cur-tis Martin—was the board operator for Dr. Mark. He was on his way to being fired when Ritz moved to afternoons. Aaron didn’t take shit from anyone and was fed up with what he deemed “the niggerish way” the station was being run. Management was fed up with him telling them how “niggerish” everything was. He was talented, but his anger and attitude overshadowed his talent at times. Aaron and Chas hit it off from the door and Chas schooled Aaron on how to play the game.

  “Hey, what’s your goal?” Chas asked. “To win, right? Well, my little brother, you have to know the rules and then learn how to play this game. Your first move is to lose the attitude.”

  Aaron did. And he became an integral part of the Ritz Harper team. He was even making a little name for himself with the on-air comments he was allowed to slip in from time to time. Ritz would use him when there was a lull during the five hours. She would harass him about his date the previous night and even talk to him about his foot fetish.

  Once when she was interviewing sexy R&B ingenue Maria Marie, Ritz got the young singer to take off her shoes and show Aaron her feet. He went crazy and sucked on her big toe—and Maria Marie let him—on the air. It was classic, and it was these kinds of shenanigans that the Ritz Harper Excursion became known for.

  Jamie, the intern, was sometimes disgusted by Aaron’s antics. But most of the time she found him amusing. Secretly, Aaron was absolutely in love with Jamie. She, however, wouldn’t give him a bit of attention.

  The internship program was developed by Chas, who reached out to the broadcast and media departments of the local colleges. It was the first and only internship program at the station. Chas had Ritz announce a tryout for interns over the air and had them submit their bios and résumés. He personally interviewed the ones who seemed like winners. Chas put them through a grueling interview, but the real test came when they had to work with Ritz. During the five-hour show she would have them do everything from going across town to pick up her custom-made hair from Beverly Lugo Hair on Second Avenue, to going to Junior’s in Brooklyn to satisfy her craving for strawberry cheese pie with amaretto chips. (At least she never made any of them walk to Junior’s the way P. Diddy did on his Making the Band MTV reality show.)

  Most of the interns ended up quitting in humiliation. The last one before Jamie was Brad, a senior at Hunter College. Ritz sent him to the store to get her some Kotex super tampons.

  “They have to be Kotex!” Ritz said. “Don’t come back here with no Tampax or Playtex. I don’t wear those!”

  Brad just didn’t come back. Jamie was the next intern and she stuck it out. She passed the humiliating initiation period, which was Ritz’s idea.

  “You have to weed out those who really want to be down from those who just want to hang around,” she would say. Jamie really wanted to be down.

  At twenty, she had a solid head on her shoulders and really knew what she wanted to do—she wanted to be in the business and, one day, on the air. Jamie wanted to learn every aspect of radio from the bottom up. On Ritz’s show, Jamie was getting a top-drawer education.

  Jamie, at five foot five, was a very pretty, brown-skinned girl with shoulder-length hair that she styled in a roller set that gave her a head full of bouncy curls. Jamie was serious and determined. She was on a mission. Chas saw that in her eyes from the first day he interviewed her. And she stuck close to Chas, learning all of his tricks and taking mental notes of all of his contacts and connections. And becoming more invaluable by the day.

  Chas kept the show current. Ritz would be breaking news way before the New York Post’s “Page Six” or the Daily News’ “Rush & Molly” ever knew what was going on. They started listening to her show to fill their pages the next day. Chas would get a call from one of his sources all hours of the day and he would feed it to Ritz, who would have it over the air before he flipped his cell phone closed.

  He was the big brother. He was the regulator. He was not only the producer, but he also kept everything and everyone in the studio on the same page.

  They had turned into a little family—Ritz’s dysfunctional, crazy, out-of-control family. Ritz needed the family atmosphere. Her world outside of the station was growing more and more strange. She couldn’t really go out the way she used to because she was becoming so famous. The station had finally invested in promoting her, and her face was on bus ads, subways ads, and billboards around the city and throughout New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Ritz’s face was becoming as well known as her voice. And the many television appearances she was making for some explosive interview or another were creating even more of a buzz around Ritz. There was even talk of a magazine-style show on VH-1.

  Ritz wasn’t comfortable in front of the camera. Her first love was being behind the mike and on the radio. She was at home there, but she was losing some of her inhibitions. For the first time, Ritz felt like she had people who had her back and that she could go out on a limb and there would be someone there to catch her if she stumbled or fell. Until now, Ritz had never trusted anyone to have her back. She couldn’t. People always let her down. And honestly, she had never been the type of chick that people really wanted to look out for.

  Ri
tz had only one true friend in the whole wide world— Tracee Remington. She was the one person who completely understood the madness that was Ritz. She knew the vulnerable Ritz, the sensitive Ritz, the soft Ritz that nobody—not even her studio family—knew. Hell, her own aunt and uncle didn’t know that Ritz too well. But Tracee did.

  Chas had glimpsed other sides of Ritz, but not as deeply as Tracee.

  Ritz was slowly letting her guard down around Aaron and Jamie. She was starting to trust, just a little. Tracee would caution Ritz not to be so skeptical.

  “You don’t trust people because you don’t trust yourself,” said Tracee. “That’s all a reflection on you. You have to have faith and know that no one can do anything to you unless you let them. Everyone isn’t out to get you. Everything happens in the fullness of time, and everything happens for a reason. You have to see the blessing in every situation, and even in your enemies you have to be able to see the good.”

  It was because of Tracee’s advice that Ritz was open to Chas and let him into her world. Connecting with him was one of the best decisions Ritz had ever made.

  Chas was always the last one out of the studio, constantly on the phone booking guests and setting up interviews. Most evenings after walking Ritz to her car, he would go back up to the station to make more phone calls and work on show strategy. Or Chas would go to a club, which was really more work than fun. Every now and then he would hang out with Ritz. Chas was the only one at the station who had been to her home.

  Friday was supposed be their brainstorming night.

  “Mr. Chas, are you free to work on the show tonight?” Ritz asked as they walked to her car on Friday. “Or do you have another date?”

  “Look, don’t be jealous,” Chas said, poking Ritz playfully in the side. “I cannot help it that I am in high demand.”

  The comment stung Ritz a little but she never let on. She was a little jealous of Chas’s social life. Not that she would go out with as many men as he did or go to as many clubs. She just wanted to be asked. It seemed as if the more money she made, the more successful she became, the less attention she got from the opposite sex.