Black Telephone
Posted in Uncategorized on 03/07/2010 12:47 pm by admin
Black Telephone
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Black & Single Blues
Black & Single Blues
Mpls/St. Paul Magazine
Dwight Hobbes Up at night. It's the middle of the evening. With minimal success, I'm trying to write. Watching a blank page, chin on fist, I'm not sorry when the telephone at my elbow comes to life. I won't say I lunge for it, but the phone only has to ring once. And I rejoice, hearing a welcome voice on the other end. My buddy-cat R. L. is just what I need to pull me away from a staring contest with the computer screen. And to, it turns out, pull me out of the apartment. R. L. has presence. He's the type of guy who walks into an empty room and a good times breaks out. He suggests we slide over to First Fridays, gleefully noting, "Da honeys is gon' be dere!" The man knows whereof he speaks. Black singles mingle somewhere downtown the first Friday of every month. This meet-market is a gorgeous celebration of the black aesthetic for folk of a given age and sensibility. The DJ pumps serious jams – profanity free, sung to actual melodies – and revelers comport themselves in civilized fashion, not only dressed to impress but without cussing and hollering all over the place. In the smartly appointed lobby, vendors offer wares you generally don't find at, say, Macy's unless it's February and they're running a Black History Month promotion: Afro-centric attire, art, jewelry, books and more. Accordingly, R. L.'s prediction that the joint, to quote Fats Waller, will be jumpin' with sistahs hardly makes him clairvoyant. Whether that's enough to make me want to go, though, is not necessarily a given. Dealing with females lately has been much more trouble than anything's worth. On the other hand, loneliness, as the immortal philosopher Jimi Hendrix said, is such a drag. And they are the only opposite sex there is. What the hell? "You're on", I tell him and cut the computer off. At the Hyatt Regency, where this month's event is held, folk cross the lobby like anointed ones relaxing after a hard day. On the dance floor, even the boozhy-est among them thrown down with sufficient elemental exuberance and carnal heat to raise the roof and burn down the building (it's a stereotype and it's true -- nobody parties hard as black folk). And, baby, it's some pretty people up in this bad boy. Eye-catching, attention holding ladies abound, no matter what your preference. To a lot of guys, the most desired gals have the lightest skin, straightest hair and skinniest noses. A woman, whatever her shade or hair texture, catches my eye directly relative to how well a cup and saucer might balance on her butt. This all may sound shallow, but be honest, when was the last time someone's IQ summoned you from across a room? R. L. glad-hands this fellow, flirts with that woman. One about him: homeboy's rap is tight. One thing about me: mine isn't. I just say, "Hi." With sistahs, you really have to do better than that. Or you get the serious shut down. And you truly haven't gone down in flames until a black woman's patented blank-faced stare accuses you using up perfectly good air that someone could be breathing. My response to the shutdown is to back off. R. L.'s is to pour on more charm. "They want to see do you got game", he encourages me. "Bring some sizzle wit' your steak. Sistahs is only cold so you can melt their defense." Once upon a time, I had the ego and energy for this sort of the thing – the harder the chase, the sweeter the catch and all the rest of it. I'm older now, slower, and carefully conserve my limited reserves of charisma and wit for intimate small talk. I'm no longer up for jousting at full gallop just to start a conversation. R. L. ends up with maybe a half-dozen phone numbers. I get one name. It belongs to a fetching lass named Yolanda (who, if she fell backward would bounce back up on her feet). We take a low table in corner of the lobby. She has wine, I have my staple, double-Jack-rocks. We chat. Before long, she pops the question black bachelors hear more times than they care to count. "Why", she asks with what's supposed to be an idle air, "hasn't some woman snatched you up?" Despite her disarming smile and amiable tilt of her head, there's vaguely accusatory tone that puts me in mind of a television news reporter or a personnel administrator inquiring as to why I left my last job. A couple weeks earlier, a prospective date asked me the same thing. "Why are you single?" And a while before, a woman I'd been seeing looked up from my pillow in a contentedly lidded gaze and said, "So, is there a parade of females passing through here?" On hearing there wasn't, she regarded with narrow-eyed suspicion. "Why not?", she just about demanded. The assumption is that an unattached brotha who isn't unemployed, gay, on drugs or in jail – and hasn't been roped by some white woman -- should long since have secured a lasting relationship – either that or he must helping half the women in town hold down their bedroom furniture. Well, fact is, bed-hopping simply isn't the imperative it was in my twenties. As for acquiring companionship, once you rule out sistahs who aren't lesbian or single moms with little kids – or taken by some white man -- it doesn't take a degree in demographics to size up scare resources. The perpetual search can take you to the theatre, art galleries, places like that: see-and-be-seen hot spots for the intelligencia. You wind up encountering creatures who fit the all-this-and-brains-too description to a tee. Imaginably some of the most conversationally capable, aesthetically astute and drop-dead gorgeous women ever to draw breath. Trouble is that the odds are each one already has someone taking that breath away on a nightly basis. I've caught a few in-between breaths and wondered afterward by I hadn't thought to ask why they were single. Or to suggest that in the future they hand out Tylenol with their phone numbers. Sonia, a reception for an ad agency is exquisite – beautiful and smart --but absolutely self-absorbed. Nothing so soothes her ear as the sound of her own voice. Listening is what she intermittently does while waiting for her turn to talk again. At least a few times I'd be laying on the couch, rest the telephone receiver on my chest and stare out the window. On the other end of the line, she wasn't offended. Hell, she barely even noticed. She once was outraged when, a few weeks in advance I had to ask for a rain check. We were supposed to go her girlfriend's wedding or something like that, an affair she wouldn't be able to get out of. I'd got tapped to review a play, Theodore Ward's classic Big White Fog at The Guthrie Theater, the kind of world-class event (not to mention a sweet paycheck) that you just don't turn down. She could fathom for the life of her why I chose to earn my keep instead of tagging along with her. I endured a long-winded reprimand, hung up the phone and tossed her number in the waste can. Esther, of that contentedly lidded gaze, is a stunning mix of wry wit, sensual grace and brilliant intellect – all standing on a bedrock of volcanic passion and depthless insecurity. She's also a celebrated dancer, author and academic professional. I was a non-custodial dad paying child support and maintaining a one-bedroom crib with an office assistant's salary and whatever I drummed up through freelance writing. In short, she was slumming and thought I was social climbing. Such circumstance often scuttles otherwise promising relationships between black men and women. The women have great jobs, bread to throw around and an attendant sense of superiority. The men are prone to prove they don't have to be anybody's kept man. Compounding things was that we had similar temperaments. We're both apt to mouth off first during an argument and consider the potential consequence later – if then. Our testy, on-again off-again association culminated one evening in an ugly exchange. We were at an art center, watching her dance students perform. I'm trying concentrate on them and she won't keep her mouth shut, constantly assessing them aloud right next to me. She felt it was rude of me to ask her to be quiet (though others sitting near us sure didn't think so). I was annoyed at her being so damned inconsiderate. After the performance, in her living room, we had it out. She stood over me while I sat on the love seat, the coffee table between us. We'd been taking each other's personal inventory, in most unflattering terms, for about a good twenty minutes. Esther, maybe a foot away, contemptuously smirked. "You always think everything is about you." "You egotistical bitch, I don't have to sit still for this shit." "Then, stand up." Stupidly, I did. Wagging her finger in my face, she further assailed my character. My anger turned to terror as I realized if this antagonistic broad hauled off and slapped me I might just, out of sheer reflex, smack her into the middle of next Tuesday. Discretion being the better part of not going to jail, I walked out the door and hitch-hiked fifty-five miles home – late at night in a snowstorm. And called myself being ahead of the game, having been in situations that had worked out worse. I'd previously lived with my daughter's mother. Both of us drank like fish. And, one night, got into knockdown, drag out disagreements. Literally. We knocked each other down and the cops dragged me to jail. Twice. For a third arrest, behind some bullshit with this Esther chick, it wouldn't matter who was how much to blame. I'd get life behind bars. Believe me, I didn't mind the cold and snow one bit. And, thank the good Lord, caught a ride soon as I hit the highway. Things weren't physically dangerous with Diane, a psychologist, but she gave Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction a pretty good run for her money. After three dates in two weeks, she decided we should be on the phone everyday and together several times a week. The more I cautiously opted for sensible distance, the closer she insisted we become. As I saw it, we both wanted a relationship; it just was a wise idea to make sure we wanted it with each other. Beyond having healthy horizontal inclinations, we weren't much alike. I like to fall asleep with the television on. She cuts it off and closes her eyes. I'm amorously inclined the next morning. She's ready to get up and have breakfast. She doesn't mind getting to the theater late. If I miss the curtain, there's no point in going. We also held opposing political and social views, so any conversation longer than two minutes turned into an argument. We simply weren't in sync. We kept company because, like the guy who wouldn't call a shrink for his brother who thought he was chicken, we needed the eggs. I eventually realized something isn't always better than nothing. Sometimes the best way to work things out is to stop trying to work things out and move on. She didn't agree on that, either. A week after I served my walking papers, she was still calling to work things out. When I quit answering the phone, she began leaving voicemail messages. When it grew clear I wasn't going to answer them, the messages began assailing everything from my questionable parentage and insubstantial manhood. Finally, she quit calling. Sipping my drink, I'm not quite sure how honest to be in answering Yolanda's inquiry about my being single. Then, lighting her cigarette, I come up with, "It ain't for lack of lookin'." Whereupon we exchange x-rated glances and continue making small talk. I'm not about to give her a whole history in one fell swoop. Besides, if I recount for her the string of head cases I've managed to survive, she's liable to think I'm lying and just trying to make myself look good at those women's expense. And I'm sure not going to say, Well, I drink a bit more than is good for anyone's liver, am opinionated as hell, something of a hot head and have too many cats in my apartment. If she's all that interested in why I'm single and wants to do something about it, she can give me her number, once I get around to asking. From there, we can both proceed to find out what we need to know about one another and, eventually, decide whether there's going to be anything between us. A few weeks later, I sit down at the computer. I look at the screen, it looks at me. The phone rings. I look at the little screen on the receiver. It's R. L., no doubt ready to get up to something. Maybe some other time. I turn the ringer off and begin to type. I've got an article idea about being single that I want to start pitching around to magazines.
About the Author
Twin Cities Daily Planet articles archived at www.tcdailyplanet.net/profiles/dwight-hobbes. Dwight Hobbes has written for ESSENCE, Reader's Digest, Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, City Pages, Mpls/St. Paul, MN Law & Politics, Pulse of the Twin Cities, Twin Cities Daily Planet, Women & Word, San Diego Union-Tribune and Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (where he contributes the commentary column Something I Said). He's spoken his mind over National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Blog Talk Radio's UNOBSTRUCTED and KMOJ in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Was regularly featured as guest commentator on NewsNight Minnesota (KTCA-Minneapolis/St. Paul) and Spectator (Minneapolis Television Network). His monthly column "Hobbes In The House" in MN Spokesman Recorder speaks to domestic abuse and rape. His plays are Shelter - produced at Mixed Blood Theatre by Pangea World Theater, Dues - produced by Mixed Blood Theatre, University of Southern Illinois in Point of Revue, selected for Bedlam Theatre's 10-Minute Play Festival and published by Playscripts, Inc. You Can't Always Sometimes Never Tell - produced by Theater Center Philadelphia, Long Island University, reading at The Kennedy Center and published in the anthology CENTER STAGE, In the Midst - produced by Long Island University, starring Samuel E. Wright. Hobbes spoke on the panel "Farewell To August Wilson" at the Guthrie Theater, broadcast on Conversations With Al McFarlane (KFAI, KMOJ). Singer-songwriter Dwight Hobbes recorded the single "Atlanta Children" (BeatBad Records) and gigged 10 years in the Long Island/NYC area, including The Other End, Kenny's Castaways and My Fathers Place. He fronted the Boston blues band Midlight. In Minneapolis, Hobbes opened for David Daniels at First Street Entry, James Curry at Terminal Bar, sat in with Yohannes Tona, Alicia Wiley at Sol Testimony's Soul Jam, The New Congress at Babalu, Willie Murphy at the Viking Bar and Wain McFarlane & Jahz at Lucille's Kitchen. Dwight Hobbes still drops in at the occasional open mic around town. www.myspace.com/dwighthobbesmusic
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