Tupac: My Balance for Nostalgia
If memories were breakfast, I was three buttered gravy soppin’ biscuits full.
Last night’s dream had been the first act of a two-act play that would lay heavy on my consciousness on this day.
In the dream, I’d been rushing to catch a boat. One thing after another had delayed my arrival. Jumping out of a cab, I’d finally hailed on a busy city street, I ran through a dock full of people already waving goodbye to loved ones. The ship had left.
Strangely, though, my heart was both happy and full of nostalgia. Not because I’d missed the boat. That was not the feeling. Missing the ship had felt like something that was meant to be. It was more because everyone around me seemed joyous.
My morning meditation kept being invaded by random and vivid memories that crashed, like waves, against my soul.
Each memory came like a fruity sorbet flavor burst that gained presence with each effort to focus on my breath.
That honey from Finland in that farmhouse in Essex (UK) popped into my consciousness while I showered.
We’d spent a decent amount of time talking, sitting downstairs in front of the fireplace close enough to share scents.
I’d caught a ride to the Cambridge folk festival from Amsterdam. The young owners of the farmhouse had welcomed a bunch of us hostel warriors to stay a few nights. Blunts and sex were in the air.
After I showed her the badly drawn sketch of her I’d drawn, she said, “I thought you didn’t like me.” What I should have said was that I had no condoms. What would life in Finland have been like? I wondered.
Bill and Toby were supposed to do that two-month European adventure with me. I bet one of them would have had condoms.
I chuckled as I got into my car. There’d been no time for breakfast. I’d never been at this airport before and needed to find a parking space. The three of us had hung out in Montreal for a weekend that turned into two weeks because Bill’s car broke down. They’d punked out! “See what ya’ll missed,” I snickered, telling the car to play Tupac’s “California Love.”
The flight to Pittsburgh would be short, and I didn’t want to be any more of a mess than I thought I’d be when I arrived. Finding balance in Tupac, going eighty with the windows down seemed perfect. Though it was a bit like deliberately taking a Tyson punch to sober up.
My self-esteem was crap back then.
Going to Europe by myself for two months was more than a leap of faith. It was fly or die!
I grew up ugly in a small town in a racist part of a state where few Black people lived. We were not raised thinking we could make our dreams come true, especially if you had the dreams I had.
It took a chance meeting with an angel who sat beside me on the grounds of McGill University during the Montreal hiatus for me to say the things to someone I’d not told anyone before, how it felt to be me. Her reply was what I needed, when I could hear it: “People will treat you the way you treat yourself.”
As if on cue, Tupac spits, (now) “I’m hearin hoochies screamin” Yes, Tupac, even ugly ducklings can become swans! I thought, as the expressway liberated my accelerator.
Bill left us years ago. The last time he and I talked, it was apparent he knew where the path he was on would lead. I could hear it in his voice.
The same was true for Karen, the longest friendship of my long life. She gave up last year. We’d also talked. She didn’t tell me, though, how close she was to giving up. And I was too full of thoughts of saving her to hear what she did not say.
Herman left us three years ago. Jimmy followed the year after. Jimmy, I called him the “big dog,” spread sunshine on all who dared to stay in his orbit for more than a glance. Stare too long at his flawlessly deep, dark skin you’d feel like you were in the presence of Moorish royalty. We did dirt together, we long ago agreed never to talk about!
Herman threw the baddest house parties in the burgh. Everyone waited for that invite.
At one of those parties, me and two of my sistahs by another mother guarded a bottle of Patron Silver until we drained that sucker! We were the new young Black professionals. We fed off scholars, artists, and a rising smooth jazz scene. We were not in any place to be seen. Though we were seen where we went.
BG had said Jimmy didn’t like her. I couldn’t reconcile that. Which was my consistency with her. I’d not gotten her right either. She was Jessica Rabbit before that damsel hit the big screen. More, though, she was as genuine as a newly minted fairy godmother. It took me forty years to tell her that it was my limitations that minimized her desires. Damn, I hate regrets!
“Worldwide, let ’em recognize from Long Beach to Rosecrans
Bumpin’ and grindin’ like a slow jam”
You got that right Tupac, BG and I were flame throwers whenever we rolled.
Speaking of regrets, what about the two new agers out in Squirrel Hill?
I’d gone back, solo, the Friday after a foursome had spontaneously burst into lust the weekend before.
The woman who owned the first million dollar house I’d even been in said, “You came here to fuck us both didn’t you?”
That replay came to me like fine wine gone bad as I took my exit. There was no space for my truth, though. How many times in my life has there been no space for my truth? How many times have I not asserted my truth is the real question.
“California (California) knows how to party
California knows how to party (c’mon, baby”
I should have lied. I would’ve lived with them and made them both happy.
Standing in the street in the small town where I grew up, I watched my cousin cry. We were sixteen. His uncle has just passed.
We talked of our dreams, our futures. He was grounded. I wanted to fly. “Man, I want a family, some kids, a nice house, a nice ride.” He said.
“Not me,” I replied, “I want to date and drive something small, fast, and foreign.” He just looked at me, shaking his head, finally smiling a bit.
When I got my doctorate, someone yelled from a block away, “Heard you finished. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
When I left Pittsburgh, I left the doubters, the haters, the shade throwers, and the chains.
I also left my friends, my brothers and sisters, with whom becoming the adult I wanted to be was made possible.
Now I was going back, again, to say goodbye to a part of my family I’d chosen. And who had chosen me!
“California love (uh, uh, uh)
Let’s show these fools how we do it on this Westside.”
“Y’all don’t know (me),” the lyrics of another Tupac rap came to mind!
Al fin:
Sitting on the plane, I remembered Toby picking off one of my frisbee football passes, on a gorgeous summer day at Schenley Park (Pittsburgh). He filled my heart. We’d run like thoroughbreds that day. Laughed like brothers made from our ancestors’ dreams.
The conversations we’d not had because of distance, geographic, and the twists and turns that strain many friendships, took me to that place of longing I’d been trying to avoid.
(That) “Track hits your eardrum like a slug to your chest!”
Yeah, Tupac, you right about that!
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