Ever After, page 20
“Right, right,” Marvin approved. “And let’s hit the AUC. I hear 559’s got a party on tonight. Ladies free before eleven.”
“Shit!” the other five men said simultaneously. For the four that knew, Club 559 was a notorious booty shake spot a few blocks down the street from Morehouse. On a ladies’-night Thursday, that place would be unbelievably packed.
“559 it is, gentlemen!” Nick declared.
The crew had stumbled home after four that morning, half of them drunk, all of them smelling like the weed smoked up inside 559. Between the six of them, they had amassed more than twenty numbers of some of Atlanta’s finest and easiest women. Some of these women had been notified that Malloy, Nick, and Craig were leaving on Sunday night—and still did not care. Some of these women had given numbers to pizza joints or police stations. But the thrill of the chase had been mixed with four hours of bass and Gulf Coast music, dashed with the overt hint of sexuality that came with their dancing.
That whole evening had been off the hook. They had started out cruising down Memorial Drive into Downtown Atlanta. A number of cars were doing the exact same thing, boasting license plates from half the continental forty-eight states. But the Freaknik veterans knew that if they could drive and actually get someplace, Freaknik was not yet in full effect. That would come Friday night. Pulling up to 559 at eleven-thirty after cruising by the AUC, hollering at the numerous people walking the street and huddling in the West End Mall parking lot, the crew had been ready to party. The action had been going on both inside and outside of 559, with young black people getting acquainted in the parking lot as well as in the extensive line to get into the place. Once the six had gained entrance, the evening had been a series of little escapades surrounding the all-consuming quest to push up on women. When the club closed at four, they had reluctantly gone home.
Now, the group was passed out, three of them in their own beds, the visitors on two couches and a spot on the floor for Craig. Big fun had been had by all. And Freaknik had not yet officially begun.
Their mission: Freaknik. Their method: to drink, carouse, dance, and socialize at every opportunity. Their goal: to have fun. That was their mission, should they choose to accept it. With all six of these employed young black men taking off from work that Friday, their mission was in hand.
It was three in the afternoon that Friday. As it was, it had taken until noon for all the crew to wake up. Nick’s forest green 4Runner had just been hand-washed at a car wash down the street from the AUC. Gleaming in the sunlight of an agreeable sixty-five-degree day, the 4Runner attracted almost as much notice as the men hanging outside of it. In the midst of heavy, slowed-down Freaknik traffic progressing down Lee Street, Nick’s carload of revelers featured Loq poking through the sunroof and Tank hanging out the back window. With reckless abandon, everyone near a window hollered out greetings to attractive women on the street, particularly those scantily clad. For the most part, the women smiled back in return.
Not surprisingly, but much to the crew’s dismay, AUC cops diverted traffic away from entering the heart of the AUC schools and back toward Ashby Street. Seizing the first parking spot he saw on the street, Nick smoothly parallel parked his ride. Time to mingle with the natives.
The streets were crawling with young black people. Although they seemed as much at home as any of the students from the AUC, the passersby were for the most part tourists. Even in hot weather, locals did not wear such blatantly attention-grabbing outfits as those worn by some of the women Nick noticed swish by him. It was Freaknik and you were on display, whether you liked it or not. The crew was a fairly social bunch. Again, they continued to welcome and greet strangers, offering a “hello” or a “whassup” to a fine woman in passing. Needless to say, in the concentrated and friendly scope of Freaknik, Nick and the crew were meeting a lot of new faces.
Lazily, they made their way down to The Wall. Craig was aghast. If his chin were any lower, it would be scraping along the ground. The Wall looked nothing like it had yesterday. There were people, black people, stretched out for as far as the eye could see down the corridor of The Wall and James P. Brawley Drive, which lay beyond it. The numbers were too many to count, but Craig estimated that the women outnumbered the men at this site. As if that mattered. There were so many ladies, the kid-in-the-candy-store analogy did not do him justice.
Malloy rubbed his hands gleefully as he sized up the crowd. “Gentlemen, start your engines!”
The crew had agreed to meet by Spelman’s gate in an hour. They broke up into their own little parties: Marvin went with Loq, Craig with Nick, while Mal and Tank both flew solo. Within moments, all six of them became a part of the amorphous crowd of black college students.
This was what Nick remembered best about Freakniks. Sure, there was the endless supply of scandalously dressed women, complete with exquisite tattoos on chests, shoulders, and thighs. Of course at grandiose black affairs like this, the enterprising black-owned businesses were ubiquitous. Where else could you find the latest Miami or New York DJ mix tape, sandalwood incense sticks, boosted Tommy Hilfiger polo shirts, and bootleg videos of new releases that had just made the theaters—all at the same place? Most of all Nick missed the camaraderie of Freaknik, the friendliness. It was as if even some of the more saditty university chicks came down to a human level and opened their mouths. Women stepped to men. Friendliness was encouraged. Assertiveness was rewarded. At any given moment, there were people who did not know one another all hugged up on one another for the sake of a Kodak moment. That was Nick’s angle.
“Excuse me.” Nick had just injected himself into an enclave of five beautiful sistas huddled by the steps of a Clark Atlanta building. His camcorder sat noticeably in his hand. Awash in the Freaknik mood of festivity, Nick beamed a smile and said, “How y’all doin’?”
“Fine,” they answered simultaneously.
“Not how you lookin’, how you doin’?” Nick grinned. “Wanted to ask a favor of you. My name’s Nick and I’m from Chicago. I wanted to know if me and my boy Craig here could get y’all on tape for my peeps in Chitown?”
This had been about their thirtieth photo op for the young day so they were used to the drill. Still, the women delighted in being asked. After a quick visual canvass of opinions, they voiced their approval. Nick backed up, used the zoom-out feature on the camcorder, and began punching out instructions. “Alright, ladies. Go ’head and tell me what your names are.”
Ranging from sexy to seductive to silly, all five called out their names with enthusiasm.
“Where y’all from?” Nick prompted.
“Newport News, V-A, baby!” one of them hollered. Even after introductions, these girls were still nameless to Nick, as he was surely nameless to them.
“Eh, Craig, why don’t you get in this shot, man!” Nick encouraged. “Camp right out right next to my girl . . .”
“Tawanna.”
“Right, Tawanna,” Nick approved, smiling. Tawanna was dark, thick, and foine. Craig did as he was instructed. Upon feeling the love from this group, he draped his arms around Tawanna and his newfound friend to his right. “Look at you, Craig, just a playa! Why am I even here?”
The ladies laughed politely as Nick shut off his camera. He walked up to Tawanna, arm outstretched. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, ladies. You have most definitely brightened up my day.”
Tawanna took his hand and shook it nicely. Nick looked directly at her and addressed her directly, as if she was the group leader. “So where y’all stayin’ at?”
“Days Inn off International Boulevard.”
“I know where that’s at,” Nick said. “What’re you lovely ladies getting into tonight?”
Tawanna copped a coy smile. “We don’t know yet. Just kickin’ it.”
No clearer invitation could have been given. “Well lemme get y’all’s number so we can hook up later on tonight and kick it.”
Tawanna opted not to defer to her comrades this time and made the decision herself. “Sure. You got a pen?”
Nick smiled. Did he. Producing a pen and scrap of paper, Nick proclaimed, “A Morehouse man is never without a pen.”
A couple of Tawanna’s girls chuckled in the background. A Morehouse man. This Negro was destined to be, or already could be, in some money. Morehouse’s reputation as a producer of fine, intelligent, articulate, successful black men preceded its students.
Tawanna wrote down the number at the hotel, her pager number, and her name on the paper. Looking up with a knowing smirk, she warned him, “I’m only going to give this to you if you’re gonna call.”
A cute line, Nick assessed, giving her cool points for using one of his favorites. “No doubt, boo. No doubt.”
“Is Nick your real name?” she asked suspiciously.
Nick laughed. Somewhere in that crowd right now, Mal was gaming on some female, hiding behind his signature fake name of Ché. “Nick is my real name. Is Tawanna yours?”
Touché. “Yes.”
Once again, Nick shook her hand. “Nice to meet you—again.” Withdrawing, Nick pocketed the number, never breaking eye contact with Tawanna. “Y’all ladies be cool. Me and my boys will get up with you later.” Craig followed him in similar style.
Back among the anonymity of the crowd, Craig could not stop smiling. “Dawg, them girls were ’bout it! That brownskin one wants me. Talk about hotties!”
Fatherly, Nick dramatically placed a hand on Craig’s shoulder. “Patience, young squire. You have yet to see the cream of the crop. Trust me.”
“You think they gave us a real number?”
“Yeah. Most Freaknik numbers don’t work out, but those girls were from out of town. Besides, they were too friendly not to be ’bout it. They lookin’ for something to do tonight,” Nick estimated.
Craig grinned. “I ain’t mad at ’em.”
Nick wanted to capture this crazy, packed, intense social atmosphere on tape. He turned the camcorder on again and put the lens to his eye, panning it slowly from left to right, absorbing the environment for everyone to enjoy in the months to come. That was when he saw her.
Suddenly, Nick stopped filming. He turned off the camera and lowered it slowly, eyes not budging from the person he had seen. It was her, it had to be her. Tall, slender, lightskin, with dark hair fashioned in a bob. Nick wanted to disappear, but he also wanted to see her. The man was torn. This had to be a sign, right? Out of the two-hundred-thousand-plus who would be jamming the streets, the good fifty thousand who had to be in the AUC area alone, he would have to run into her. Outrageous, and just his luck, too. He could walk away, and she would have never known he had been there. But there was a reason why she was there. And Nick would go over to talk to her.
Nebulously telling Craig, “Hold on,” Nick crossed the distance with an outward facade of calm, an inward bubble of torment. He was scared. Nick had not faced her since that snowy day in December, when she had officially sealed their fate without so much as saying “no.” Was he ready to look into that abyss that had stolen his heart? Could he possibly be able to talk to her and not be attracted to her, or remember the hundreds of times they had made love? Had the pain from her rejection gone away yet? And the “Is she fucking Jacque?” question loomed in the back of his mind. So much to process, so little would be emoted when he tapped her on the shoulder. “Jasmine.”
The woman turned around. To his dismay—and relief—it was not her. Physically, her body looked exactly like Jasmine’s. But then she had turned around and Nick saw her ugly face—it could never be her. Ever! Yet Nick was shaken nonetheless. “Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
The ugly woman frowned at yet another lame come-on she had heard today, turning her attention back to her friends. Nick walked back over to Craig defeated, and confused.
“That was quick,” his friend mused.
“Thought it was someone I knew.”
“Aren’t you glad you don’t? Her grille was shook,” Craig joked.
“Let’s walk down Brawley one time, post for a minute outside the library, then double back and meet up with the fellas,” Nick suggested, changing the subject, but not able to shake the image of Jasmine in his mind.
“True,” Craig authorized.
Thirty-five minutes later, they met up with the crew outside Spelman’s gate to compare stories. Surprisingly, Nick was the only one who had come away with a number. Marvin and Loq had tag-teamed in taking pictures with attractive women they met, exercising the same form of verbal pitch-and-catch they had been doing since freshman year. Tank reveled in telling of the variety and quality of fineness walking around Clark Atlanta’s campus. Mal told them that he had seen three professional basketball players getting sweated by a dozen girls somewhere near Fair Street. When Nick informed them of his and Craig’s good fortune with the girls from Virginia, he was immediately dapped up by the other four. Of course, there was no guarantee they would come through for tonight; after all, this was Freaknik. People came to party, have fun, and act in the moment—not to sit around hotel rooms and wait on dudes. But the possibility they could come through was tantalizing enough.
It was going on five at this point, and The Wall was beginning to break up. The crew strolled down Lee Street to the neighborhood Popeye’s Chicken & Biscuits. Nick had virtually lived off Popeye’s three-dollar combos during his undergrad days, especially when the cafeteria served something real foul. Typically, the chicken joint was packed. On the marquee outside the restaurant, Popeye’s boasted it would be open twenty-four hours a day during Freaknik weekend. They would rarely get a moment’s peace, too.
Luckily, the crew was able to secure a booth. They sat around for a half hour, inhaling their combos and window-shopping. Outside, Lee Street had become a promenade of blackness. Within the police barriers that lined the edges of the sidewalks, all varieties of young black people ambled along in all their hair-weaved, permed-out, derby-hatted, Daisy-Duked, tank-topped glory. Cars jammed the street itself, mostly going nowhere. One minivan near an intersection was stopped and parked while its inhabitants stepped out and surrounded a Buick Regal full of females, talking to them. The crew inside Popeye’s discussed their plans for the evening.
“So when your friends comin’ in?” Mal asked Loq.
“Brandon and them? ’Bout ten o’clock tonight,” said Loq.
“Brandon? More dudes?” Nick objected. “I thought he was bringing some honeys with him?”
Tank smiled. “He is. He’s bringing his cousin LaShawn and her freaky friends. They kinda young, but they’ll keep us entertained.”
“How young is young?” Mal inquired suspiciously.
“About nineteen, twenty. It’s all good, hoss,” Tank assured him.
“So what’s poppin’ tonight?” Craig asked. “Where the hotties gonna be at?”
“There’s a party goin’ on at World Club,” offered Marvin.
“Step show at the World Congress Center,” said Tank.
“No parties and no step shows tonight,” Loq decided. He was the undisputed leader of the crew. “After puttin’ out ten bones to get into 559 last night, let’s keep our expenses strictly alcohol-related. I say we have ourselves a free Freaknik Friday tonight. You know what that means.”
“To the screets!” Nick proclaimed.
Atlantans were well aware of Freaknik weekend. Special Freaknik reports had been running on the local news stations ever since Wednesday night. By five o’clock that afternoon, Downtown Atlanta was devoid of nearly all its predominantly white workers and suburbanites, who had fled the scene as early as noon, that is, those who had bothered to show up to work at all. By nightfall, there was no question who owned the streets Downtown now. A five- to seven-block-radius around Downtown’s main drag, Peachtree Street, had become a giant parking-lot party. One did not drive down here to get somewhere. People freely roamed the streets, walking in between cars, stopping to talk to others in cars, on the streets, whatever. Booty shake music saturated the air, with a few lowriders and suped-up Caddies parked off to the side, showing off their thousand-dollar systems. Beer and alcohol bottles littered the sidewalks and the air was electric.
Nick loved it all. He could remember how shocked and amazed he had been during his freshman year at Morehouse. It was bad enough he had never been around so many black people in his life as in just the AUC alone, having come from Seattle, but the influx of his people that Freaknik brought was overwhelming. Now, his fifth Freaknik, Nick was accustomed to seeing legions of partying, successful, intelligent, outrageous, and rich young black folk. Rodeos, Troopers, 4Runners, minivans, Yukons, Beemers, and Acuras dotted the landscape of gridlock with surprising frequency. So he could sympathize with Craig’s glazed look at the moment. This was probably one of the most culturally and self-reaffirming moments in his life.
It was eleven that night and the crew had picked up four new members. Brandon, his cousin LaShawn, and her friends Kecia and Desiree had rolled up to Loq’s house in Decatur right on time. Introductions were made quickly as they all prepared to pile into Nick’s 4Runner and Brandon’s Acura Legend. Kecia and Desiree were hotties, in Craig’s estimation. Kecia was short, caramel, and thick in all the right places. She had naturally two-toned lips and a quiet yet energetic air about her that seemed mature for her nineteen years. Her Carolina accent and carriage denoted a born-and-raised Southern belle. Desiree was tall, chocolate, thick, not fat, and fine as red wine. Knowing this, she wore a baby tee cut off just above the navel, a red tennis skirt displaying her nicely thick, yet not toned, legs, and sported a Chinese tattoo on her flattened stomach. Nick made a mental note to ask her what the tattoo meant sometime. LaShawn, Brandon’s cousin, was instantly forgettable. She was plain, conservative, and wore glasses. Brandon seemed just as conservative, an opinion that was sure to change through the course of the night.
After having made a liquor stop for the drinkers of the crew, Nick and Brandon rolled out to a MARTA train station to park their cars. As the slogan went, MARTA would sure be “smarta” this weekend. The crew rode the train into Downtown to join the fray.
