I couldn’t go to my brother for help, because he was struggling with the barbershop. The building had a glass storefront, so that people passing by could see everyone working inside—and every now and then, he would glimpse Dad’s face pressed against the glass, staring. But as soon as my brother spotted him, Dad would disappear into the street. That’s pretty much all we saw of our dad for years.
I couldn’t go to Torrei for a loan because we’d gotten into an argument after I went to a party one night and didn’t answer her calls. So we temporarily broke up because I felt like I was losing my freedom. In that period, I started seeing someone else very casually, and one day she came up with an idea.
Me: My mom’s playing around with this rent money. I gotta do something.
Her: You know what? You should dance.
Me: What?
Her: You small. You got a nice-sized package. You should dance. They’ll love you.
Me: You mean strip?
Her: Yeah, why not? I got a few girlfriends who dance and clean up. You’ll kill the game.
Me: Yo, I probably would do okay, huh?
Her: I’ll help get you right.
The next day, I was hanging out with my friend Zachary and I asked him what he thought about the whole thing.
Zachary was always down for pretty much anything, so naturally he responded, “Let’s do it.”
“You don’t wanna talk about it?”
“Naw, man. We should do it.”
“Well, let’s talk to this chick and get the breakdown.”
I called her later that day, and she laid out the plan: “All I need is an hour of your time every day for a week, and I’ll get you guys comfortable with it. Then y’all can go out there and make a lot of money.”
“Okay, why not?” I was desperate. And TuRae did say that the way to get better at comedy was through more stage time.
She took Zachary and me shopping, and with my last dollars I bought a bow tie, a G-string, and some Johnson & Johnson baby oil. Zachary bought something equally ridiculous. We got back to my house and class began.
The first lesson was about choosing a song. I picked Ginuwine’s “Pony.” I think Zachary went with Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna . . . ”
Lesson two was about choreographing a dance routine. I started working on some moves, while Zachary just stood there.
“What’s your move?” she asked him.
“I only wanna do bow-legged stuff.”
She gave him a funny look.
“You know you been looking,” he shot back, completely serious.
Lesson three: Oiling up.
We went to the bathroom, doused ourselves in baby oil, and changed into our stripper outfits. When we emerged, we looked more like victims of a fraternity prank than hot strippers, plus we’d gotten oil stains all over our bow ties.
“You sure this is how it works?” I asked.
She looked around the house for something. “This right here can be the girl.” She placed a wooden stool in the middle of the room.
Then she put on “Pony.” I started gyrating my body and running my hands over my chest to the song.
“It’s cool, Zachary, you can dance too,” she encouraged him.
He joined me in the middle of the living room. The lights were blazing, Ginuwine was pumping, and we were glistening.
Zachary got to the stool first and started humping it, while I stood behind him, shirt off and oiled up, trying to do the R. Kelly move where he bends all the way backward until he looks like a table with two legs. It doesn’t look sexy now, and it probably didn’t at the time, especially cause I didn’t have half his flexibility.
When Zachary finished doing the chair and I finished doing the table, we looked up and saw my brother, my roommate, Spank, Na’im, and my upstairs neighbor staring at us. The music was so loud we hadn’t heard them enter. And now, with one exception, they were doubled over, breathless with laughter. That exception was my brother, who was pissed off: “What the fuck is going on in here?” He always felt protective of me. Throughout my life, he was constantly trying to help me become what he considered a man, and I let him down on that front pretty regularly.
“What does it look like?” I yelled back, in my G-string and nothing else. “We’re working.”
“Working at what?”
“Laugh all you want, but you’d do it too if you knew how much money strippers made.”
“You think anyone’s gonna pay to see that shit? Man, the only thing I’d pay for is the therapy to get that fucking image out of my head.”
That was the end of my stripper days.
35
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SALVATION
After I was two months late with rent, the landlord put an eviction notice on our door. I visited my mom, begging: “Mom, I just got an eviction notice. I need to pay the rent. I’m serious.”
“Have you read the Bible?”
This time I lied. When your survival is at stake, morality is the first thing to go out the window. “Yes.”
“Don’t lie to me, Kevin. Talk to me after you’ve read your Bible.”
She must have had a sixth sense. “Mom, whatever, I don’t want to talk about Scripture. Forget it.” I slammed the door shut. I was so angry that she’d bailed on her part of the bargain.
But of course, she hadn’t. It was me who’d broken my word.
I got home and figured I’d open the Bible and pray for guidance. Maybe Mom knew something I didn’t.
I pulled it out of a drawer and opened it for the first time since she’d given it to me. A stack of rent checks, all signed and dated for the first of each month for the whole year, fell out.
She’d kept her promise after all. I felt so low and ungrateful. She was a tough woman and always true to her word.
* * *
I’d never expected to fall on such hard times. Once I finally found my passion and made a plan, I thought I was set. That’s how it works, right? You make a plan, work hard to execute it, and then succeed.
But I’ve learned that I’m not the only person in the world who’s making plans. Everyone is reaching for what they believe is a better future, and not all of those futures are in alignment. Some people’s plans conflict directly with the plans of others: In a basketball game, both teams are planning to win, but only one is going to succeed.
Now add to this mess of plans the forces that are beyond our control. There is so much that is greater than us, whatever you believe. So while we get to choose the roads we take, we don’t get to know where they lead. Acceptance, then, is knowing that when your plan fails, or your road dead ends, it means a bigger plan is at work. And I’d rather be part of a big plan than a small one.
So I cracked that Bible open and read the entire books of Genesis and Exodus on the spot. Then I called my mom and apologized with all my heart.
“Mom, I’m so sorry. I just began reading the Bible, and I found my salvation.”
“That Bible will serve you better than those checks,” she replied. “You’re going to need to stay faithful if you want to succeed on your journey.”
My mom had a funny way of doing things, and even in my darkest days, she was able to turn the hard times into a lesson or cast a positive light on them. Even when things got negative in her own life, she stood tall as a model of optimism and resiliency.
Out of respect for her, I started reading Scripture every day for years after that.
And pretty soon, a miracle happened.
Life Lessons
FROM APPRENTICESHIP
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