I said, “Yes, yes, yes, baby. Ooh, yes, baby. Please, help me find my seat. The Democratic National Committee sent me this ticket at the last minute. How do I get there?”
Well, lo and be-fucking-hold, if the seat wasn’t all the hell the way at the top of the stadium, behind the podium where my new president would be speaking. I conjured the tears and they came swiftly.
I said, “Ooh, girl . . . please, girl, I can’t sit all the way up here. I’m terrified of heights and sure to be mobbed. Ooh, you know how famous I am and important to my people. Help me, girl. Help me, if you can.”
Well, bless her heart. She did. Sistergirl had an all-access pass and I had my teased hair. As far as I was concerned, the sky was the limit!
The young woman said, “Now, Miss Lewis, I can try to get you down on the floor, but I don’t know if this is gonna work.”
I said, “Lead the way, baby.” Something I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone to do, but in desperate times you leave your alpha self behind.
At the entrance to the VIP area all the way down on the floor, we came upon a large white woman with a sheriff’s badge on. Scariest woman I’d ever seen in my life. My knees buckled. I was reduced to Little Jenny Lewis. I stood humbly behind the girl as she told the sheriff my tale of woe. When the sheriff’s eyes shifted over to me, I blurted out, “I’m with the Jesse Jackson people.”
She knew I was lying, but she also knew me from television. Thank God. With a vigorous wave of her wand, which I was grateful didn’t hit me or fuck with my teased hair, she said, “All right, y’all go on.”
And there my lying ass was free to run amok and find myself a good seat before being discovered. I saw that the seats were sectioned off with names of states—Illinois was front and center. Now, being a sneaky little manipulator most of my life, I knew not to sit down front. I wasn’t that stupid. So I walked back about a dozen rows in the Illinois section. It wasn’t five minutes before another volunteer with ten thousand buttons on his ass stood in front of me.
“Ma’am, are you a delegate?”
I said, “Oh, yes. Yes, I am. I’m Michelle Obama’s oldest college friend.”
He looked at me as if to say, “Lady, I ain’t seen you at none of the parties. You ain’t no delegate,” but he said, “All righty then.” But I knew he knew I was lying.
I sat there, imagining a SWAT team carrying my un-ticketed ass out of the stadium. Instead, God showed mercy when I spotted Jesse Jackson Jr. in the front row, shaking hands with everyone and being the politician that he is. Having never met him, I went down and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He turned around and immediately said, “My favorite actress.”
We embraced, and as we did, I whispered in his ear, “I sneaked down here, and I know they’re getting ready to throw me out.”
He pulled back, held me by both shoulders, and said, “No, they’re not. Sit down.”
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. I witnessed Barack Hussein Obama accept the nomination, front and center, twenty feet from the podium sitting between Jesse Jackson Jr. and Spike Lee.
I was close enough that Michelle Obama actually made eye contact with me. I waved and blew a kiss to my “old college friend.” Merry fucking Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Rosh Hashanah, Kwanzaa, and Fourth of July, bitches.
The evening was life changing, and I assure you, after all that conniving, I sat there with great humility and reverence for that historical moment. When the ceremony was over, once again, I knew not to try to get in the departing crowd. I stayed seated and wept. I sat there weeping with gratitude for Harriet, Sojourner, Frederick, Nat Turner, Emmett Till, Dr. King, Malcolm, Bethune, and the men, women, and children who took the hoses and the dogs on the front lines of the ’60s.
When I raised up my head, a young black man in an orange vest with a bald head was standing in front of me. I was about to say, “You’re too late to arrest me, fool.” Thank God I didn’t, because he leaned down and without words, put his head on my shoulder, and sobbed like a baby.
What a night. What a night . . . what a night.
With newfound inspiration from one of the greatest speeches I had ever witnessed, I made my way out of the stadium and boarded one of the two buses left. When I stepped onto the bus, I was immediately recognized and applauded by a bus full of black people. All right, there were three white folks, too. God bless them. After the applause died down, in perfect comic timing, as only Jenifer Lewis could, I shouted, “Well, I guess we don’t have to sit in the back of the fucking bus tonight!” I walked down the center aisle giving high-fives and black power signs and hugging and kissing. Then I realized that the only seat left was in the very back of the goddamn bus. Everybody laughed at my crazy ass.
That night, I lay in Brian’s guest room and thought, “My God, my God . . . it’s a new day.”
Eubie! wasn’t the only “black” show in DC that winter of 1981. Sophisticated Ladies, a musical based on the works of the masterful Duke Ellington, was at the Kennedy Center before heading for Broadway. This meant that every night the casts of both shows would gather at a club called One Step Down. It was wonderful to hang out with Gregory Hines again and the beautiful Amazons Judith Jamison and Phyllis Hyman, who were all starring in the show.
In DC, the reviewers again singled me out. But, when would I get my big break?
Back in New York City, I resumed classes at the LeTang Studio. Lonnie McNeil, a brilliant dancer and choreographer, told me, “If you want to be famous, Jenifer, you need to pull back and not be so damn good.”
This was a theme I’d heard before. About a year earlier, when I’d been turned down for a major Broadway role, the director said, “Jenifer, I just can’t see anyone else when you’re on stage.” What was I supposed to do? Be less? Idiots!
My mood plummeted. I was on unemployment, hanging out every night at Possible 20, drinking Black Russians, smoking a little pot, and regretting each Virginia Slims while trying to figure out my relationship with Thomas.
JOURNAL ENTRY: I can’t take this sick ass way of living. Struggling so hard to get out of this funk.
But I couldn’t pull myself up. In March, I missed the opportunity to sing for the great Cy Coleman because I’d awakened from a drunken stupor too late to make the audition. I knew I was truly fucking up because I had never missed an audition before. My professionalism and discipline were my greatest assets. I did not understand what was going on. I wanted to blame anyone, everyone else. I could not see that it was full-out self-sabotage.