October ‘07 Highlight Reel
My sister and her Bajan boy celebrated their first anniversary by getting married again in Barbados. Marched the 80° cool oceanside aisle in pin stripes, scarlett saris, gold trimmed tunics, floral’d sun dresses. Bathed in the bright light of friends from around the globe and family from around the island. Photo ops and barefoot conversation on the beach at sunset. Double-brother Gowda toast realized by his interpretive dance groove and my baritone crooning of the theme from ‘Beaches’. Champagne funnels (compliments of Gov’t Issue Arun) and appearances by Mexican Ben’s nipples unexpectedly bountiful throughout the rest of the night.
Danced fantastic on white sand-flanked red tile with Princess CC, the fattest Cambodian I’ve ever met & a girl named Saadam. Dove through azure waters at darkest midnight chased by laughter, striking beauty and a bobbing liter of rum. Still waiting on the police report from Utha Brother Gowda and leggy redhead Wolf’s decidedly risky (but, at the time, highly entertaining) experiment in high seas breaking & entering onto a motored 35-footer named the Scotch & Soda.
Arrived in NY to learn of cancer’s final call to King Neil, one of the baddest muthas ever to grace this planet and, in my eyes, the undisputed epitome of not one but all the 5 boroughs. My one sorrow: bearing the patience of waiting for my strut to the other side till I hear his barbaric yalp again. (Writing this somewhere in Brooklyn just before dawn, listening to the floating wails of Muslim morning prayer, I imagine his soul sped aloft on deliciously smoky air, screaming down past concrete & glass valleys, his wake shaking the cities’ every gold turned leaf, flecked red brick and flaked wrought iron.)
Fell faster & harder than granite off the Empire State for a strong, stunning Bed-Stuy dream who writes like once to which I aspired, radiates a fever for life that makes my typical frenzy feel like I’m whispering underwater, and is able to school me on hip hop present, past and future like I just failed kindergarten. Reports of the death of my once idealistic & fire-filled heart found to have apparently been greatly exaggerated.
My life and its cast of characters realized as far greater & grander than any script I could ever spin.