Meet the Mistress

Few women I know are willing to share.  And I have to confess, I'm also a bit reluctant in this area.  My dear husband works 60+ hours on his day job.  And sixty hours is a slow week for him.  You may have a hunch as to why I  would want to guard our family time like a watchdog.  

But the mistress makes him happy.  And he's so self-sacrificial.  If anyone deserves happiness, it would be this man.  So I accept the 'ole girl.  I even watch her.  You gotta watch her.

Brian and I joke often about his other woman.  I'm using the word 'joke' loosely, I do throw shade about sharing. But I like her. She's black, sexy, witty, and original.  Lucky for her she's also anthropomorphic .

The hubby spends a good deal of his free time kneeling behind cameras, hunching over computers, working tirelessly with his partners to build the Black&Sexy.TV Channel on YouTube. This Black&Sexy is the other woman.

She has been with us for a while.  The night before our wedding, my guy wasn't hanging out at a Gentlemen's Club.  He and director Dennis Dortch were filming A Good Day to be Black & Sexy.  

The movie  went on to woo audiences at Sundance in 2008.  Shortly after Dortch began talking at Q&A's about building a brand - a Black & Sexy brand.  I didn't understand it then, but that's what makes a visionary - they get it when others don't.  

Dennis carried his Black&Sexy brand over to YouTube and has been attracting a loyal following of folk thirsty to see their everyday lives played out on screen, hungry to see characters that look like their cousins, their besties, and their homies.

The hard work has paid off.  Black&Sexy landed a development deal with HBO for its most popular web series The Couple.  Created by Jeanine Daniels and Dennis Dortch, The Couple showcases those tiny moments between a romantic pair who have decided  to go for it and live together under the same roof.  

The series stars Numa Perrier and Desmond Faison.  It's real and it's funny.  So real and funny that legendary filmmaker Spike Lee joined forces to shepherd their move onward to HBO.  

Congratulations are in order for Team Black&Sexy!

And a very special shout out to the hardest working man in showbiz - Mr. Brian Ali Harding!

Queen of the House Party

After years of watching the musical Grease on VHS, spending countless evenings reading Sweet Valley High novels, and constantly daydreaming of strolling the halls with a buff jock, my opportunity to go to high school had finally arrived.  

I could not sleep the night before.  My hair was pressed like MC Lyte's.  I had rid myself of the wave nouveau.  For those of you who don't know black girl hair trends, the wave nouveau was like Jheri Curl's love child.  The wave wasn't as wet or spirally as the curl.  It was basically finger waves, but light and swingable.  I don't remember what I wore, but I'm sure it was something from the Gap.  I do remember the upperclassmen donned crisp, button down shirts and ties. They looked all studious with their stiff collars and high top fades. It was Afro-Prep season at Heights High School and I loved it!

That very first day was probably the only time I spent a whole day at school.  It was an awkward first year for me.  I was boy crazy, but the boys on campus did not reciprocate my adoration.  The fellas at our rival school did. To the Shaker Boys, I was like forbidden fruit, a girl who had crossed the tracks just to hang out with them. Dangerous!

I was cool with this.  The Shaker kids knew how to throw a good house party.  Instead of doing homework, I did the dances. All of them.  It was in a Shaker basement in 1988 that I remember hearing a certain record spin. There are  songs you hear and love the first moment that first note hits your ear.  This time it wasn't about enjoying an instant groove, I was witnessing a shift in the hip hop atmosphere.  The best way to describe it, some of you will consider this blasphemy, but it was like when the The Beatles washed up onto American shores in late 1963.  Betty Lee Teenager heard these Brits and was changed forever.  I had just heard some Niggaz Wit Attitudes and was altered.  

What is this?  Who is this?  Where on God's green earth is Compton?  Mr. DJ please fill us in.  He had just finished playing Ice Cube's I Ain't tha 1  and I, for one, was not the same.  NWA's Straight Outta Compton  album was unlike any other.  Raw, honest, rebellious, funny, anti-skank.  OK, we've learned since 1988 that skanks need love too.  This music was the real deal.  Someone had aired our dirty street laundry and we could finally take in some fresh air.  Ice Cube, Eazy E, Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, MC Ren formed NWA . The Arabian Prince had left the group shortly after photographing the album cover - oops!  NWA rapped about crackheads, drug dealers, police brutality, and money hungry hoes.  For the record, I believe hoes should be money hungry - pay what you owe.

Filmmaker John Singleton, also a fan of Ice Cube, stalked him until he accepted a role in Boyz n the Hood.  This film earned Singleton two Academy Award nominations and launched Ice Cube's career as a rapper turned actor.

Over twenty years have passed and Cube is onto film #28.  He's starring alongside Kevin Hart in a brand new comedy.  When I saw the trailer, I couldn't stop laughing.  Ride Along opens today in theaters nationwide. I seriously doubt it will have the same effect on me as hearing a young woman ask over a rap beat, "Ice Cube, do you think you can get me some money to get my hair done?"   But I'm grabbing a girlfriend anyway and riding along for a few good laughs.  

See you at the movies!

A Woman Wearing Red

I wrote The Curious Habits of a Wanton Wife as a short piece of fiction loosely inspired by rumors.  These were rumors of my grandfather's philandering, but the truth is a little more heartbreaking.

I grew up in a pretty open family.  Any skeletons hung out with us at the breakfast table, never in the closet.  I was awash with childhood stories.  And I thought I heard all there was to hear.  I was wrong.  Here is what I learned.

My grandmother Mary Lillie loved to talk on the telephone.  They had one jack installed for each floor of the house.  This was new.  Before the two jack system, there was only one phone.  My grandmother kept this one phone occupied.

The year was 1972.  Grandpa Saul had been laid off from work at the steel factory.  He used his down time to get better acquainted with the neighbor.  On the 1st floor phone, he and the lady made plans to meet up.  On the upstairs phone, my grandmother made plans to dial up a relative in Georgia.  She never made that call.

As Saul found his way out the driveway, my grandmother sat still.

Before long, she was searching, fumbling with keys to a locked cabinet.  This was a curious thing.  She avoided this cabinet.  This is where Grandpa Saul kept his gun.  Mary Lillie was afraid of guns.

Saul would pull out his pistol only on New Year's Eve, shoot as soon as the clock struck midnight, then put it away.  This gun made my grandmother very nervous.  Now she was standing with it by her side.

She took it to the meeting place of Saul and the lady.  They were not found.  She searched late into the night. She searched long enough to return home and lock the gun back inside the cabinet.

***

Saul was the controlling type.  He didn't want Mary Lillie to work.  He didn't want her to spend time with her elder sister Maggie (Aunt Maggie wore platinum blonde wigs, owned a beauty shop, and dated Big Timers).  He also didn't want Mary Lillie to wear the color red.  Tramps wore red.

The morning after overhearing that phone call, my grandmother got up and dressed herself.  She wore red from hat to heel.  She wore red and went to church.  It was Sunday.

She soon took to bed. Then the hospital.  She was dying.

My mother remembers receiving a late night call.  Her mother had asked to speak to Saul.

"Mama, daddy isn't home."

Mary Lillie, from her hospital bed said, "OK, do not tell him I called."

When my mother and her eight siblings were carried to Cleveland Clinic the next afternoon, they saw their father sitting by a man's bedside.  The man was unable to speak or move.  My mother at age fifteen was confused.  She asked, "Why are we in a room with this old man?  Why aren't we visiting my mother?"  My grandfather answered her, "This is your mother."

Mary Lillie's hair had turned white over night.  Her skin ash gray.  There was little trace of herself.  Her own children did not recognize her.

When my grandmother passed, shocked and weeping mourners crowded 113th Street.  Mary Lillie had meant a great deal to them.

My grandfather wed once again, but found himself at my grandmother's grave every Sunday.

He died a decade later, of a heart attack, while having sex with a woman who wasn't his wife.