One day I knocked on 4D. A cute guy answered the door and soon produced a cigarette. “You got a light?” I asked, and he presented a lighter. Then I said, “I’m Jenifer Lewis. I’m a diva. We’ll have to meet again when it’s not so morning and not so ugly.”
A couple of weeks later, the guy and I were riding in the same elevator. This time, I was in full beat and dressed to kill. When he made eye contact with me, I said, “See?”
That was how I met Lee Summers, a wonderful friend, actor, and singer. He was in the original cast of Dreamgirls. One of our favorite things to do together was people watching. Like the time we were sitting at an outdoor café and saw a man running away from a taxi driver he’d stiffed for a fare. Poor bastard slipped and fell on his face, and in unison we sang, “Karma, Karma Jackson, that bitch’ll get you every time.”
Then we fell out with laughter.
It didn’t take long for me to know that I loved Lee and his singing voice. When the opportunity arose to headline for a week at a swank club in Monte Carlo, Monaco, I wasted no time asking him to join me singing backup with my friend Todd Hunter, an amazing dancer.
Monaco was memorable for a number of reasons. I even met Grace Kelly’s son, Prince Albert, who currently is the small country’s reigning monarch. But Monaco will always stand out for me because I was there when the AIDS crisis really broke open in the US media. One day I decided to go ahead and sleep with the club’s gorgeous ma?tre d’ after that night’s show. Then someone phoned and told me that Luther Vandross had AIDS. He had lost a lot of weight, and as a result, this rumor was born. During this period people were paranoid. Anyone who had lost weight or suddenly fell ill was rumored to have the virus. Nonetheless, when I heard that, oh, did I put the brakes on the ma?tre d’! I had heard someone on the news say something to the effect of “Whomever you’ve slept with, you have essentially slept with everyone they have slept with for the last seven years.” I said to a friend, “Honey, I want you to book me a flight around the world. Put it on the credit card because I’m a dead bitch.”
Of course, I had been aware of HIV/AIDS for some time. The plague hit the entertainment community, especially the world of gay black gypsies, like a freight train. In these years, you knew what was coming when yet another call began with “Sit down Jenifer, I have some bad news.” It started slowly at first. Curtis Worthy Jr., a cast mate from Mahalia passed away. A couple months later, Jerry Grimes, a dancer I knew through Shirley Black-Brown, died. Then we bore helpless witness as our friends started to die, two or three in one week. For God’s sake, they dropped like flies! Another dancer, another hairstylist, another costume designer. By now I understood that the rare form of pneumonia that killed Will B. Able was no longer rare and that he was among the nation’s earliest victims of AIDS.
By the time I returned from doing my shows in Monaco the entire United States was in an uproar. President Reagan had finally mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time, but those SOBs in the government did almost nothing to address or remedy the situation, probably because it was mostly gay men, drug users, and poor people who were dying. But then, Americans began to freak out when it became clear that heterosexuals, women, and children were also at risk.
I recall watching Ted Koppel’s Town Hall on the AIDS crisis. We were glued to the television. Come on, you SOBs, do something. It was a horrible time. The following month the legendary creator of Dreamgirls, Michael Bennett, died. The Broadway community was devastated, and groups like Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Cares were organized to raise money and to push the government to do more for AIDS research and treatment.
To try to alleviate our feelings of helplessness, my friends and I came up with an idea called “Divas for Dollars.” For several Saturday nights, when the gay spots were jumping, a few of us gypsies, including Sharon McKnight, Karen Mason, Lena Katrakas, Nancy LaMott, and Amy Rider, popped in to perform a couple of songs before we passed the hat for AIDS relief and research. It wasn’t much, but I like to think that we made a difference.
I cursed at God as the AIDS toll mounted. And not just in New York City. During Black History Month, when I toured the college circuit with From Billie to Lena with Jenifer, I was often asked back by the same schools year after year. Usually, when I’d arrive in a small town to perform at the local campus, I’d immediately go to the black hair salon, hoping to find a gay man who would appreciate my diva-ness and get my hair teased and snatched for the show. But far too often, I’d return to a salon I’d used the previous year only to learn their sole gay male stylist had passed away. The plague had reached small-town America. It was relentless and horrible.
The reality of just how many friends and colleagues of mine were very sick or had passed away was overwhelming. The relentless epidemic claimed nearly two hundred of my friends and coworkers in the span of about eleven years: Roderick Sibert and Breelum Daniels from the Eubie! tour; Tony Franklin and Larry Stewart from the Dreamgirls original cast; Philp Gilmore, from the Dreamgirls Broadway revival; Jerry Blatt and Ed Love from DeTour ’83; Carl Weaver, from Rock ’N Roll! The First 5,000 Years; three of my favorite hairstylists: Stanley Crowe, Jerry Terrell, and Michael Robinson; Sharon Redd, who had been a Harlette in the ’70s; Robert Melvin; Stanley Ingram; Chris Vaughn; Keith McDaniel; Mart McChesney; Craig Frawley. There are just too many to name. The trauma of their suffering, and their untimely and unnecessary deaths, haunts me to this day.
In late January, Quitman gave me terrible news: he was leaving New York City for San Francisco. I went all the way off! A screaming, crying, snot-filled breakdown. He said he was going out west to find someone to produce the musical he’d been working on for years. I cussed him out for losing hope and leaving. I did not know what I would do without him nearby.