Black Chicago Page 4

  Raoul was right. But Raoul thought he was right about most things. His name was really Richard but he thought Raoul was more like him than Richard.

  “Fuck a Richard! I ain’t into nothing that a Richard would be into, I’m into being Raoul.”

  And so, with no arguments from us, he became Raoul. He wore berets a lot, smoked his herb in a cigarette holder, idolized Black women “ain’t nothin’ on Earth as beautiful as a Black women! with that butter on the hips, them neat little waistlines, them pretty tidies and those gorgeous lips ’n shit—but he dated white women as often as he could.

  He viciously denied any preference for white over black.

  “Fuck y’all! It ain’t about that, it’s about freedom of choice ’n what we got in common.”

  He didn’t want to hear that some sister his age (24) could be into Miles.

  “No, sisters wanna listen to the Ravens, or the Shirelees ’n shit like that. It’s them white broads that’s into our music.”

  So, thusly it came to pass that Richard, alias Raoul, would wind up in the Sutherland Lounge on a gorgeous-summer Friday night with a white woman named Margreta Lundgren.

  We were all there that night, even Sweet Peter Deeder, giving his’ hoes a rare rest period. Us younger ones, who didn’t have grand theft incomes, had sold, stole, begged and borrowed to meet the entrance fee and two drinks per set minimum.

  Miles, Philly Joe, Paul Chambers, Coltrane, Cannonball and Wynton Kelly were going to play together for the weekend at the Sutherland Lounge and the aficionado had to make the pilgrimage.

  It wasn’t much of a problem for Raoul to be there, Miss Lundgren made certain of that.

  “You don’t have to worry too much about money when you hanging out with these white broads, they get allowances ’n shit.”

  If the truth means anything we were somewhat envious of Raoul. He was going to be able to sit at a choice table and buy as many gin ’n tonics as Miss Lundgren could afford.

  Four of us were positioned three tables away from him and his blonde benefactress. Nice thing about the Sutherland, you really couldn’t really get a bad seat, it was purely a matter of looking up at the stage.

  Raoul, trying to maintain his community-love image, cast smirks and sly smiles at us from time to time. We were cool.

  The Lady seemed to be in a Disneyland state, her head swiveled around flinging her golden locks this way ’n that, as she chucked Roaul under the chin and tried to riffle her hand through his conk.

  Enviously we watched them go thru two gin ’n tonics before the lights were dimmed.

  Be’Be leaned across the table and whispered, “Damn! That Bitch must be richer than Carnation cream.”

  We nodded in agreement.

  I pinned them onto my little mental butterfly wall and tried to get a fix on what made them a couple, what kind of chemistry was happening.

  Like I said earlier, it was an acknowledged fact that she was a good looking motherfucker. She was a white good looking woman, not an imitation Black woman or anything like that.

  What I’m trying to say is that comparisons between different kinds of people just won’t work. Her blue eyes, blonde hair and pale-freckly skin could only have come from generations of blue eyed, blonde haired, pale freckly people.

  She did have a wonderful set of milk jugs on her, though.

  The musicians almost do a little dance tripping up the steps to the stage. Never witnessed the Sutherland Lounge audience go into that obligatory pre-set applause bullshit.

  They had to give it to us fresh every time. The tension was dark textured. Everybody was on stage but Miles.

  “Where is that Little evil Black Motherfucker?” One of the players spoke loud enough for the in joke to be heard.

  Lundgren’s head snapped around as though she had been slapped, and scowled in the direction of the hipster.

  Raoul patted her lightly on a freckly arm and whispered something mollifying in her silky earlobe.

  It was evident that she didn’t relate to affectionate profanity and that she was on her way to being “white-drunk” as Beau Felt defined it.

  “What’s being ‘white drunk?’” Well, there’s a bunch of ways to define it. I think it would be better to describe the behaviors and let you reach your own definition. Or definitions.

  Number one, it doesn’t take a lot of anything to ring the “white drunk” bell. I was in the Army with dudes who would get fucked up on that 3.2 beer from the PX and start howling like wolves ’n beatin’ each other in the head with chairs.

  Real examples of primitive “white-drunk” shit, the woman seem to go into a neurotic mode when they get “white drunk.” They break into tears and start giving up the story of their miserable lives. In addition, they usually want to bring some kind of sexual garbage onto the scene.

  You know, shit like, would you let my husband peek thru the screen at us if you fuck me? Shit like that.

  There’re so many variations of the “white drunk” that it would be impossible to give a rock hard definition. Strangely, in my lifetime, I’ve only seen two Black people go “white drunk” one of them was a brother who had fallen in love with country and western music and hated himself because he loved the Confederate Flag.

  The other was a sister who had graduated from an exclusive all white girl’s school where it was popular to be as fucked up as possible, the motto of the school could’ve been—“I don’t know where my fucking head is”—pronounced in that super clipped way that folks speak after they’ve gone to school too long and don’t know shit about life.

  Beau Felt was right on it, we winked at each other from across our watery drinks, Miss Lundgren was going into a “white drunk” mode.

  She ignored Miles Davis’ appearance on stage as she plunged her glistening red tongue into Raouls ear and draped her right arm around his neck in a boa constrictor embrace.

  Raoul was trying to be cool because he knew we were checking him out, but he was beginning to express a whole new body language of discomfort.

  Miles had blasted open with a toe tapper, I forget what the tune was, maybe it was “Night n’ Tunisia” or something. Mostly what I remembered was Philly Joe Jones sticks twirling around from drum to drum like a dervish.

  Everybody got a piece; Paul Chambers locked into some kind of Hindo rhythm, I don’t know what that shit was he was playing. ’Trane got fired up and damned near had to be prodded away from the mike, and it was pretty much the same with Cannonball and Wynton Kelly.

  They put the pot on and righteously cooked for about thirty hard minutes; it went from hard bop to salsa tinged fringes to something that sounded like Senegalese blues and then back to bop.

  During the course of the first number, the lady made two exhibitionistic trips to powder her nose. How could you go pee when Coltrane was pouring musical money in your ear?

  Miles sneered in her direction as she bumped and ground her way thru the audience. The consensus was that Raoul would be lucky to get past Miles Davis’ “Funny Valentine.”

  The second time she tripped thru to be seen, Raoul hunchbacked to our table and said, “Order what you want, I’ll put it on our check.”

  All four of us stared as skeptically as we could stare at him.

  “You sure its gon’ be cool man?” Hawk asked him, “I mean we don’t wanna get embarrassed up in here.”

  “It’s cool,” he answered with a sigh, and pulled out four C notes.

  “Thanks, Raoul, you a beautiful cat, man,” Brother Be’Be’ whispered to him.

  “Whooh, here she comes,” he whispered in a panic and scuttled back to their table.

  The music was already happenin’, but now, with no bar bill to worry about, it became delicious.

  We signalled to the waitress for another round, she was already hip to the scene and accepted our thanks, “I know, its on his tab,” with a gracious smile.

  As we all know, or remember, Miles never announced his pieces, but by the time he got to “Green Do
lphin Street” the house was levitating with good jazz vibes, except for Margreta Lundgren. She was “white drunk.”

  “Well just who is this guy anyway, Raoul that he doesn’t tell you what he’s playing. How ’bout a lil’ kiss for baby hmmmmm?”

  She didn’t know who Miles Davis was, or Philly Joe, or ‘Trane or Cannonball or Kelly! That was obviously bad enough but now she was beginning to slur a lot and talk loud.

  The back of Raoul’s conk began to look like a latter day jheri curl dripping. If he had been a white man his neck would’ve been as red as a buzzard’s beak after the kill.

  Have to give it to the brother, he hung in there. When her outburst got too ebullient—“how ’bout two more over here?!”—he would sorta clamp his hand around he upper arm and lean over and whisper real urgently into her ear.

  I couldn’t hear what he was saying to her but it would cool her out for a few minutes and then she’d hit it again.

  “Raoul”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Let’s dance.”

  All of the people near enough to hear the exchange looked at each other in amazement. Had anybody ever thought of dancing in the Sutherland, to Miles playing “All Blues”?

  “Uhh, we can’t dance up in here, Margreta.”

  “Why not?”

  The words came like gravelly thunderclaps from the top of a tall mountain: “Shut up, Bitch!”

  Miles Davis had spoken. Raoul slid six inches lower in his seat as the white girl pulled herself into a fetal knot in her chair, her hands clutched to her ears, her blue eyes rolling from side to side like loose marbles.

  I think it was the first time that evening that she had actually paid any attention to the stage, and her reaction was terror and fear. God had called her a Bitch.

  Mercifully the set ended, Raoul couldn’t seem to figure out a way to hold his head low enough, but Miss Lindgren, having recovered somewhat had gotten a second wind.

  “Oooh Raoul! isn’t it exciting?!”

  The collection of jazz lovers applauded long and hard. Miles ignored it, of course, and made a quick exit. The other players however, made gracious bows before they left the stage.

  We signalled for another round. The lights were up and everybody was checking everybody out, the way they used to do at the Sutherland. It would’ve been impossible not to see this large boned Black man with all these muscles stroll thru the aisles towards Raoul’s table.

  Real big Black man with a Michael Jordan hair cut and a beautifully cut tuxedo on his back.

  He stood in front of Raoul’s table like an ebony statue for a full quiet minute. When he spoke his voice had the sound of black velvet.

  “The management requests that the two of you not attend the second set. Furthermore, the management requests, that the two of you not come to the Sutherland Lounge ever again.”

  I’m not certain, but I thought I saw the glisten of a tear well up in the corner of Raoul’s eyes.

  He was being barred from the Sutherland, he was being exiled from one of the jazz heavens in Chicago.

  Hawk, a quick thinker, immediately sized up the situation and frantically signalled for our waitress.

  “Uhh look, uhh, what’s your name?”

  “Rose.”

  “Rose, we want to save you the trouble of running back ’n forth during the next set, you think you could bring each of us four drinks each on Raoul.”

  “No problem.”

  Raoul, poor brother, I don’t even think he paid much attention to the tab. He had been barred from the Sutherland.

  He tried to slink past our table but we wouldn’t let him, each of us solemnly shook his hand and tried to say something sympathetic.

  “Well, Homes, sorry you gon’ miss the second set, you know that’s when it really gets loose.”

  He nodded and slunk on out behind Miss Lundgren, who was ranting and raving about discrimination and shit.

  “I mean, I can’t believe it! After all you people have been thru, Raoul, how can they discriminate against other people? They’re picking on us because we’re a mixed couple, right?”

  We settled back for the second set which of course, was 110 degrees hotter than the first set. During one climatic run Hawk, actually screamed. It wasn’t the music that made him do it, however, he thought his lit cigarette had wedged between his legs.

  And too soon it was over, we stumbled out onto the blue streaked streets of the southside and wandered until we found out way home, loaded to the gills.

  Didn’t see and couldn’t find Raoul for days.

  “Hey man, when you seen Raoul?”

  “I ain’t seen him since that night at the Sutherland.”

  “He’s probably hanging up North.” Of course, we had all agreed not to anything about the scene at the Sutherland, but it wasn’t necessary.

  In that telepathic way that news is transmitted on the Southside (and the Westside, and wherever Black people live) everybody seemed to know already.

  When I finally ran into Raoul, about three months later, he seemed like a different person.

  “Raoul, what it is brother? Where you been keeping yourself?”

  “Call me Richard, man, my real name is Richard.”

  We kicked it around for awhile, even strolled over to the Place for a taste, but the Sutherland and Miss Lundgren never came up in our conversation.

  Years later, back in Chicago on an annual visit, I ran into Richard again. We were both older, ten pounds heavier, grey on the top and bottom, relatively successful you might say.

  We popped into the President’s Lounge for a cognac, made our way into the Other Place (it was a Saturday night and wound up in a quiet little bar on Cottage Grove and Marquette Road.

  “Richard, something I’ve wanted to ask you for years,”

  “I know, about me ’n the white girl, right?”

  “Yeah, whatever happened?”

  “Well, you know we had to split up behind some crazy shit like that. Imagine, being barred from the Sutherland. But you see what happened to them? The fucking place went bankrupt and closed.”

  After all these years I could see bitterness in the down curled corners of his mouth.

  We finished off the evening with him showing me pictures of his beautiful Ethiopian wife and four teenaged children.

  “I met her in England, a conference.”

  We parted company on a mellow note after promising each other we’d keep in touch, Richard-Raoul was a powerful reminder of nights at the Sutherland Lounge.

  Wonder what happened to the white girl?

  Dances

  Africans in Chicago are always dancing. Black children dance while waiting for the stop light to change from red to green and then they dance across the street, inventing unique little stutter steps and dips.

  Middle aged brothers and sisters do a dance-walk, feeding on inner-ear music. The silky dip and postured pause demand a graceful splay of the feet, an artful slackness of the hip, it could be called ballet.

  Older men, women go to nightclubs, where they dance with each other, and others years younger. They do dances that some of them have been doing since the Twenties. And they’re still popular under other names.

  The original types have their special steps, stuff that they’ve worked out over the years. The followers maintain the bass rhythms, the soft back upon which the thing is carried.

  In any case, the dancing goes on, even when it sounds like the music has stopped.…

  The Projects

  Some of the gratest dancers in Chicago, in the world, live in the projects.

  “Billie Holiday” lives on the 10th floor of one of the sandwiched boxes of the Robert Taylor Homes. “Billie” is twelve years old and has been singing all her life. She sings from the time she wakes up ’til she goes to bed.

  She sings commercials, popular songs, raps, whatever passes thru her head, but her personal preference is for Billie Holiday.

  “I don’t really know what it was about Bill
ie Holiday that grabbed me.”

  “Billie” sits at the corner of an ancient dinette table, her pregnant belly wedged between her and the table. From time to time she stares pensively down in to the common courtyard shared by all the inmates.

  Snatches of “Stormy Monday,” “Don’t Explain” and “Strange Fruit” spill out of her as naturally as the story of her life.

  “My grandmother lived in the projects. It’s kinda hard to believe that any old person could live in the projects.”

  “Billie” is lovely, no doubt in anybody’s mind about that. The young man (28 yrs old) who got her in a family way doesn’t think she is quite as beautiful as she once was, however.

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I still think “Billie” is something special, but now, since she done messed up ’n got pregnant ’n shit, she seems to have changed a lot. You know what I mean? Shes not as much fun as she used to be.”

  “No, I don’t remember my father, really. He like a shadow in my life.”

  The grizzled old timers pop into the “Holiday” apartment on the weekends (which are apt to start on Thursday), wine, beer, gin and whisky bottles held at port arms, loaded, thirsty for the sound of “Billiers” renditions of Billie’s music.

  “It’s mostly the older people who want to hear me sing Billie Holiday’s music. The younger people, my friends, they ain’t into it, they say its too slow ’n draggy.”

  She sits at the dinette table, her hands folded like a shy school girl, and sings,” them thats got shall get, them thats not shall lose, so the Bible says, and it still is news.

  “Momma may have, Poppa may have, but God bess the child thats got his own …”

  “Thats her, baby, thats really her. You got Billie in your souls.”

  Sometimes they leave a few bills in the dish on the table, some offer her a drink.

  “No thank you, it ain’t good for the baby.”

  “Yeah, it is something, ain’t it? Ain’t nobody on either side of our family can carry a tune in a bucket, and now she comes along.”

  Robert Taylor acrobats, an esoteric breed for whom the term “daring” is the least descriptive of their activities, swing from one tall building to the other, unconcerned about falling.