Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live with One (5 page)

During one of these manic services, our preacher proudly surveyed the spiritual ecstasy set to music. “If you don’t feel
nothing … then you must not HAVE NOTHING!” he exclaimed, smirking righteously for effect.

I was crushed. I felt nothing, so …

I couldn’t believe it. Just then, my friend JoNathan Watkins, who was sitting next to me, leaped to his feet and started shouting and jumping. JoNathan was one of my few good friends at the church, a kid my age who was in the same situation as me: trapped at services most of the time. We’d hit it off by joking while the preacher spoke, and soon developed complex games to pass the time, all while appearing to be interested by what the Elder was saying. Any ill-timed giggle, outburst, or horseplay would bring down the wrath of our mothers or other churchgoers, and the certainty of a whupping for me at home. We grew skilled at being the good little boys who always appeared respectful, while making slick fun of the church’s authority figures when they turned around.

I looked at JoNathan, waiting for him to signal to me that this was a ploy—just another game he’d invented to make the long church service pass a little faster. But he was giving me no such signs. He kept shouting, hopping, and speaking strange words, over and over again. I couldn’t understand what was happening.

Oh, NO!
I thought.
The spirit skipped right over me and got into him! What am I not doing right?

At first I thought I’d been passed over because I’d been jimmying the channels on the cable box just right so the adult channel, Escapade, came through. But no, JoNathan had done that, too.
How come he got the Holy Ghost and not me?
I was sad and confused. I felt like God didn’t deem me worthy, so I had no choice but to get worthy and become a person God paid attention to, before it was too late.

It wasn’t just because of the scare tactics employed by our church that I maintained a deep, personal faith. I knew God loved me, and I felt protected by him. I knew that we have to be good to others. I didn’t want to be a jerk. I wanted good things to happen to me. In order for this to be possible, I tried to be a good kid.

But because I was a pleaser, it wasn’t enough to be a good kid. I had to be the best kid ever. I became almost like our church’s poster child. While many kids in the church were necking in the bathroom, smoking cigarettes and weed, and doing all kinds of forbidden stuff, I was the opposite of that. I was there for every service and youth group session, and I always volunteered for everything.

The pastor leaned into the pulpit. “Who wants to say the prayer?” he asked.

I raised my hand. As I looked around, I realized my hand was the only one aloft in the entire congregation. It looked like I was saying the prayer.

“Who wants to sing? We need someone to solo in the children’s choir.”

Again, my hand was the only one in the air.

It reached the point that our youth minister would come to me when she needed a volunteer from the congregation. She knew I’d always say yes, and that I would do whatever I’d been asked to do perfectly, so I’d make the church look good. And I always did. Because I was such a pleaser, I was always down to do whatever I was asked. I also knew it was a way to make my mother like me, to make people in our church like me, and to make God like me. And that was all I wanted. I lived so much of my life scared, and I really wanted to please God so he would protect me and take care of me. I also had a very long-term
mind-set about who I wanted to be, and I didn’t want any bad decisions I made now to catch up with me later in life.

When I was in the fourth grade, I started playing the flute during our church services. It was Mama Z’s idea to give us instruments.

“Baby, what instrument do you want?” she asked.

I considered my options. The only musician I knew was my Uncle John. He was a cool guy, a jazzman, and he played flute and saxophone. I decided I would play flute, too. Marcelle asked for a guitar. I didn’t grasp the significance of this conversation, or think about it again, until the following Christmas. Underneath the tree was a guitar for Marcelle and a flute for me, compliments of Mama Z. As soon as I saw Marcelle’s guitar, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. I should have asked for a drum kit. But it was already too late. I was a flutist.

For the next four years, once a week, I went over to John’s house every Wednesday after school for my flute lesson. On top of that, Trish made me practice for an hour every day. Soon enough, I was a pretty good flute player. And so it wasn’t long before they recruited me to start playing the flute in church at the Sunday service. So there I was, in my little red suit and my big black Afro, standing in front of the congregation, playing along with the organ. While we played, people kept jumping up to holler and scream, but I kept playing, and Trish and our pastor beamed at me. I felt a moment of peace. I was a good kid.

OUR CHURCH FELT PEOPLE WERE BEING TOO
worldly if they listened to secular music, wore makeup, went to dance clubs, played sports, or went to the movies.
The Exorcist
was huge around that time, and our church used its success to prove “the devil” was in the country’s movie theaters. The only thing that was permitted was to eat, and there were more obese people at our church than in all of New Orleans.

I didn’t like these rules, but I mostly got along fine. It helped that Big Terry once broke ranks and took Marcelle and me to see
The Apple Dumpling Gang
, although he snored through the whole thing. Now, whenever I nod off during a movie with my kids, it cracks me up. We really do become our parents. Also, although we couldn’t go to the movies, when a film was shown on TV, we could see it. I always thought this was strange, but no one could ever give me an explanation.

Trish was a big television fan. Marcelle and I were allowed to have a television in our room from my third-grade year, when we moved into our house on Winona Street, until we grew up and moved out. On hot summer nights, Marcelle and I watched TV with a fan blowing on us, drinking cold Kool-Aid and eating Paramount potato chips and bologna sandwiches with mustard, followed by glazed crullers from Dawn Donuts down the street, until Trish commanded us to bed. We watched all of the prime-time shows, including
Good Times, The Jeffersons
, and
Sanford and Son
. And then, on Saturday nights, we watched
The Love Boat
. African-American kids didn’t have many role models on TV at that time, and Isaac on
The Love Boat
was our guy, as were the characters on the predominantly black sitcoms. We really held on to them. It was like,
Wow, maybe we are just like on TV. Maybe we’re actually worth something
.

Marcelle and I playacted out the scenes we’d just seen, faking heart attacks and get-rich-quick schemes, and singing, “If I didn’t care …” with candy rings on our pinkie fingers. Anytime anyone did something stupid—except for Trish, of course—we borrowed the line from
Sanford and Son
and said, “You big dummy.”

My favorite character was also from
Sanford and Son
. Aunt Esther, played by LaWanda Page, as a bible-toting, gospel-preaching, purse-swinging crusader who suffered no fools. This character reminded me of so many women I grew up with that I thought the writers must have gone to our church.

I actually got much of my sense of comedy from TV, but from a source that might surprise you. It wasn’t Richard Pryor, even though I loved him, too, and faithfully watched all four episodes of
The Richard Pryor Show
. It was Carol Burnett.
The Carol Burnett Show
was my absolute favorite. She didn’t care about being cute—even though she was—because she was so
committed to her comedy. She could sing, dance, and tell a joke. I was in awe of her, and she still means a great deal to me.

So even though I felt like I was missing out when the other kids at school talked about some movie they’d seen, I had plenty to keep me entertained at home. And then, in 1977, a few months before my ninth birthday, I was exposed to something for the first time that impacted my life in the most profound way possible:
Star Wars
. This was different. Even though movie trailers back then never actually gave away what the movie was about, we knew from the television commercials that this was the best movie ever.

Marcelle and I didn’t dare ask Trish, but we were desperate to go. And then we experienced the kind of miracle I could believe in: Aunt Paulette asked if she could take us to see
Star Wars
at the drive-in. Marcelle and I begged and begged for Trish to let us go. I think we would’ve collapsed into a heap and never recovered if she denied us, and Trish knew it. Finally, after a long protest, she acquiesced. We couldn’t believe it! We were going to a real movie at a real drive-in movie theater!

Marcelle and I were ecstatic as we piled into Aunt Paulette’s purple Pontiac Monte Carlo with the landau top and drove to the Miracle Twin Drive-in Theater in Burton, a suburb of Flint. When the sun set, the whole parking lot buzzed with excitement. This was more than a movie. This was an event. I was so glad to be a part of it. The John Williams score hit, and the
Star Wars
logo snatched me into its vortex. For the next 125 minutes I was so enthralled I couldn’t move. It was like I was actually there among the aliens, warriors, and Stormtroopers.

It was as thrilling as any experience I’d ever had. In fact, that movie changed everything. Immediately, I knew this was what I wanted to do. It never occurred to me to be an actor. But I was definitely going to make movies someday. I was an artist, so I
figured I could be an animator or a special-effects person. But first I had to get out of Flint. And I had no idea how I was going to do that.

THERE WAS A MUCH MORE SERIOUS CONSEQUENCE OF
attending a church that strict. It was an open secret that many people in our congregation led double lives. We knew it was happening all around us, but we never talked about it. There were known homosexuals who sang in the choir but chose to keep their lifestyle quiet to retain their membership. There were men who had second families across town. And it was later revealed that our pastor was using cocaine, frequenting prostitutes, and even attempting to sell drugs while still preaching.

Because I saw supposedly virtuous adults behaving in these ways, I believed a hidden, subterranean life was normal, and my own secret side bloomed around this time. When I was nine, I was at my Uncle John’s house for my flute lesson one day when I went down to the basement to play. In one corner, not even all that hidden, I came across a bunch of pornographic movies and magazines. At first I just stared at the images of naked women in disbelief. I knew it was wrong. But I was already excited. Even though it was bad—or maybe because it was bad—I was tempted to look, just like JoNathan and I did with the Escapade channel. I opened a magazine and examined a picture. I was too young to do more than stare, but I liked how it made me feel. I got a rush from doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.

And then, suddenly, I was afraid. I threw down the magazine and looked up quickly. The basement was empty. No one had seen me. But God had seen me. If he’d come down to earth at just that moment, I would have been left behind for sure. I
had to pray to be forgiven and swear never to look again. I ran back upstairs feeling nervous and uncomfortable, hoping if I kept my promise I’d avoid getting in trouble.

I WANTED SO MUCH MORE. I HATED THE DRINKING AND STUPIDITY
I saw around me. The divide between all I wanted for myself and the limitations of my surroundings pressed down upon me. There was Uncle Jesse, who drank so much he developed gout and lost both his legs. And still, he got us kids to bring him drinks in his wheelchair, even though he was already slurring so badly he could hardly speak.

My step-grandfather, William, who once told my mother I was the ugliest baby he’d ever seen, put on overalls every Saturday and detailed his Cadillac for hours, paying more attention and care to that car than he ever did to his own family. When finished, he dressed up and rode around in that highly polished car until early Sunday morning, leaving my grandmother at home.

Even my own father had a double life. We sometimes received strange calls at our house from some woman telling Trish what her husband was up to on the side.

“Who are you?” Trish hissed into the phone. “Leave us alone. You’re gonna have to bring that up with him. I don’t care.”

She slammed the phone down. But she couldn’t make it go away.

Another time, Marcelle and I were standing in front of the church with Trish when some lady came up to us from out of the crowd. She scowled at Trish.

“You know your husband ain’t no good, right?” she said.

The three of us stood together, glaring back at her until she was gone.

“What was that?” I asked Trish.

“Nothing,” she said.

Big Terry had too much silence about everything, and he wouldn’t talk about anything. He just got drunk, and cried, and listened to his records.