Control, page 3
Anyway . . . once he started talking about me acting in his movies, it changed my whole disposition, and I forgot about how disengaged he was earlier. In fact, that’s what he needed to do with everyone, make them feel special. But of course, he couldn’t offer everyone a movie role . . . Or could he?
Charles looked down at his watch again. “It looks like we have another twenty minutes. What was your favorite movie I’ve directed?”
The man had directed at least a dozen films, but I had only seen six.
“Catch a Fallen Star,” I answered. “I could relate the most to that one.”
“Ah, yes, Brenda Stewart. She had some tough times. Has your life been that tough?”
I paused again. How much of my personal story did I want to tell him? I became coy with a smile.
“You said we only had twenty minutes left, but that story would be two hours,” I joked.
He smiled back at me and chuckled. He was extra handsome when he allowed himself to pay attention. He had me in there feeling like a cougar. He was at least ten years my junior, but like I said, he looked twenty years younger.
He said, “Well, we could start it. No great story is told in one sitting anyway. And we’re gonna do this more, right?”
I had hoped so, but after our first twenty minutes of nothing, I wasn’t sure.
I said, “It’s up to you. If you need more counseling, I’m here for it. You just have to remind yourself to be more attentive when you’re speaking to people. Giving someone your undivided attention can really go a long way. So, get used to that.”
He grinned and said, “I will. And I can get used to you telling me what time it is from Camden, New Jersey,” he added. “Sometimes you just need a person who can set you straight instead of kissing your ass all the time, if I’m allowed to be frank about it.”
I chuckled and accepted it. “Go right ahead. That’s what I’m here for. Give me all of your honesty.”
He said, “Okay,” and paused. Then he hit me with this. “You know, I’ve always had a strong attraction to older professional women. Even the nurses turned me on when I was a kid. And I’d be sitting up in the room with a hard-on under the sheets. It was so embarrassing, you know. But I couldn’t help myself.”
I froze. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? It was embarrassing for me to hear it, especially while sitting there thinking like a cougar. I started to wonder if he had a hard-on while sitting there in my lounge chair.
I mumbled, “Okay,” and left his comment alone.
But he didn’t. Charles added kerosene to an awkward fire.
“So . . . when do we do this again?”
DARK & MOODY
Reflection 3
WHEN I LEFT CAMDEN AND HEADED OFF TO COLLEGE DOWN HERE at Clarke Atlanta University in the 1990s, we had plenty of older students and recent graduates who were all into the conspiracy theories of the Illuminati, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and all of that kind of stuff. Of course, with us being at an HBCU (Historically Black College and University), surrounded by two others at Spelman and Morehouse, we all understood that America wasn’t exactly about pushing Black people forward, but I refused to believe there were secret forces trying to hold every single one of us back. It just seemed like an impossible amount of work. How could anyone ever know exactly what Black person is going to be the most dangerous to White society?
People with the most potential to succeed fall off every day, replaced by those you would have never thought of becoming successful.
I look at both Jay-Z and Kanye West becoming billionaires as prime examples. Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter was your typical New York City drug dealer with a side interest in rap music. Or maybe he was an aspiring rapper with a side interest in selling drugs. Either way, guys like him die and go to jail every day. And their fatality and imprisonment has more to do with the regular jealousy, envy, competition, and drug turf wars in the ’hood than any secret force of White people out to get them. One could argue that the fatalistic elements of our inner-city neighborhoods are all set up by “the powers that be” to begin with, but so was everything else in America if you want to use that logic. So, where do the conspiracy theories end, and where does regular life begin?
Then you have Kanye West, a backpacking, hip-hop loner from Chicago with a tendency to spazz out at anyone or anything that he has a conflict with. You could see Kanye coming a mile away with his backpack and no bodyguards. He would be the easiest Black man to kill. Yet, Kanye was able to climb to billionaire status and date international models. Was it because he had sided several times with Donald Trump and the right wing, or did he offer up the “blood sacrifice” of his mother for his success?
I bring all of this up because my next client was into it all. She was a bisexual music producer who called herself Dark & Moody. She specialized in what she called “gothic funk” music, while refusing to give me her real name.
“What does my legal name matter? As long as I respond to you when you call me, it’s all good, right? I could call myself Jack & Jill. What does it matter?”
I shrugged and said, “Okay,” as she relaxed in my office lounge chair.
She was in her early thirties and a chocolate cutie with height. She had played basketball in high school and in college in Louisiana. She had been producing beats for eight years and had landed a few major songs. But she was unsatisfied with the pay and her production credit.
“The industry is always trying to steal your shit and not pay you what you deserve. Especially if you’re a Black woman.”
She wore a blue jeans denim outfit with her pants and jacket littered by record company logos. She had Sony Music, Warner Records, Universal Records, Arista, Def Jam, Bad Boy, Death Row, So So Def, Roc Nation, Aftermath, Shady Records, G-Unit, RuffHouse, Cash Money Millionaires, Rap-A-Lot, Murder Inc., you name it, all over her blue jeans jacket and pants. It reminded me of the old-school baseball jackets that spotlighted all of the Major League Baseball logos. I thought the idea was rather unique. So, I told her.
“I really like what you did with your clothes. You look like a walking billboard for the record labels. They need to sponsor you for doing that,” I suggested.
“I know, right? But they don’t care. They would tell me not to use their logos at all if it was up to them,” she responded.
She had sent me some of her music to listen to, and it was indeed dark and moody with spooky organs and hammering drums. Most of it sounded like a loud, science fiction horror movie to be honest. It wasn’t my cup of tea. But the young people would like it. They loved when the music was considered “hard.” And that’s exactly what Dark & Moody was cooking, hard and spooky beats.
I asked her, “Have you ever heard of Mrs. Melody?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard of her. She’s cute. I’d do her in a heartbeat,” she added.
I grinned and left that alone. “What do you think about her music?”
Dark & Moody shrugged. “I mean, she does sex music. Everybody’s doing that now. People just follow what they think they can make money off of with no originality.”
I didn’t speak up to dispute it. She was probably right.
“Okay, so . . . you’re trying to figure out a way to cope with the frustrations of the music industry?” I asked her. That seemed to be her angle for our first conversation.
“Yeah, that and some other things.”
“What other things are you dealing with?”
“Family, friends, bills, lovers, you name it.”
“So, it’s not just the music that you’re concerned with?”
“Oh, heck no. The music is my sanctuary,” she answered. “I love making music. I’m just trying to get more out of it in business. It’s everything else that’s fucking with me. So, I’m trying to figure out who I need to sacrifice to get ahead.”
That comment got a rise out of me. “Excuse me? Who you need to sacrifice?”
She said it almost casually, as if that kind of talk was normal for her.
“Yeah, you’ve never heard of blood sacrifices and the Illuminati?”
I paused. I wanted to be extra careful with my words and my advice to this young woman.
“Ahhh . . . if you’ve ever gone to college, then you’ve definitely heard of it. But I wouldn’t want to take too much of that to heart. Especially when you start talking about ‘blood sacrifices.’ I think that’s all a bit extreme.”
“You don’t believe in it?” she asked me.
“What, the Illuminati, or the sacrifices?”
“Both.”
I didn’t like her line of questions. I didn’t want to go there. But it was my job to investigate her mind.
“Is that what you want to talk to me about?” I questioned. “Because I’m not an expert on any of that. You may want to go see a tarot card reader,” I joked. I was attempting to lighten up the mood.
She smiled and said, “I tried that before. I’ve tried a little bit of everything.”
“And what did you find out?”
She continued to smile. “That I’m destined for greatness. All I need is one sacrifice.”
When she repeated that, I was ready to end our session. But I felt a need to advise her against talking that way.
“Are you trying to fuck with me, or are you serious?” I asked her.
“Oh, I’m dead serious. Pun intended,” she responded.
That was enough. I said, “Okay, I’m feeling very uncomfortable with this. Are you fucking crazy or what? This is not a game.”
“I know it’s not. And I’m not here for games.”
I studied her demeanor and she remained unnerved by it. That scared the hell out of me. This girl was serious. I said, “Well, I hope you don’t think I’m gonna condone you doing anything like that. Why would you even tell me this?”
“I figured you could help me.”
“Yeah, help you not to do it. But I’m not gonna help you with anything else if you’re in here talking about sacrificing people and shit.”
I was appalled. I sat there and stared at her from across my desk. I asked myself, What would she say or do if I made a comment about the police? What is she thinking? I’m not getting involved in this shit!
She said, “I’m really just trying to take things to the next level.”
“By committing a murder?”
She paused and thought about it. “A blood sacrifice isn’t necessarily murder. We could just pray on someone dying.”
I cringed. “And you would be fine with that?”
She paused again. Then she said, “People die every day.”
I asked myself, Lord, what is this world coming to?
“So, you would pray for someone else to die just so you could become successful?” I put it to her that simple so she could hear it out loud, because it sounded ridiculous!
Then she broke down and cried, sinking her face into her hands. “I just want it that bad. I just wanna be a success.”
“You are a success,” I told her. “You’ve graduated from college. You’re doing your music. You’ve landed big songs. You just have to keep doing it with optimism and not pessimism. You have to know that you’re gonna succeed without harming other people. That way you don’t end up with a blood diamond that will never shine clearly.
“You understand me? You don’t want a career like that,” I told her. “What if someone wanted to sacrifice you for their success? Does it just go on and on? Think about it.”
She wiped her tears away with her hands and sniffed. “I just . . . I just want it.”
I continued to watch her carefully from across my desk. I said, “We all want it. That’s the American way. You think I don’t want things? But I’m not sitting here thinking about killing people to get it. That’s crazy.”
“We all are crazy. People just don’t want to admit it,” she countered.
There was a silence that swept through the room that I didn’t like. I felt like I should have had an immediate response to her, but I didn’t. Finally, I mumbled, “Yeah, but you can’t act out on it. You have to try and keep your sanity. You have to control yourself. We all do.”
She looked hard into my eyes as if sending me a message. “Control is what we all want. Even when you have power you have to control it. And if I had more control . . . then I wouldn’t have to sacrifice people. I could just make shit happen. You know?”
There was silence in the room again. I didn’t disagree with her. I had been studying control issues for most of my life, and for all of my professional career. And she was right. Control was everything. Who presses the buttons to make things go in life? Who ignites the fire? Who controls the algorithms?
That was Dark & Moody’s point. She was willing to do anything to have it. And her hunger for it was admirable; I just didn’t like her choice of method.
As I got caught up in my own thoughts, she asked me, “What are you thinking about?”
Could I be honest with her . . . or not?
“I’m thinking of how I could have more control in my own life.”
Her frown slowly turned into a grin. “Okay . . . so, we have something in common.”
I nodded. “I guess we do.”
JOSEPH DRAKE
Reflection 4
THAT SAME EVENING, I LISTENED TO DARK & MOODY’S GOTHIC funk music while on a drive to my next session. This guy, Joseph Drake, was a venture capitalist, and because of his jammed schedule, he offered to pay me double to come out to him after hours. So, instead of doing my office at three, I was doing his building at seven.
While on my drive east on Interstate 20 for 285 North to Stone Mountain, the gothic funk music thumped in my ears like a soundtrack. There was this one particular production that became my favorite. Dark & Moody listed it as “Ghetto Opera” in her files. And that’s exactly what it sounded like, thick, pounding drums, eerie strings, a rhythmic bass line, and female harmonies in the background, wailing like suffering angels on a street corner.
Dark, spooky, and addictive, I set the track on repeat and imagined myself traveling to Count Dracula’s castle in a horse carriage after midnight in Transylvania. Maybe I shouldn’t have been listening to this music before my first session with Joseph Drake. It was giving me the wrong vision of the man before I even met him. Or . . . maybe it was a prelude of things to come.
When I arrived in the parking lot of his twelve-story, gray-brick building, most of the cars had already gone. Fortunately, the front door was still open without me needing to be buzzed in. They had a lone security guard inside the lobby area next to the elevators. He sat behind a sign-in desk with an open booklet of names in front of him.
“ID please,” he asked me. He was a Black man in his thirties, well shaved and groomed in an all-black security uniform. And he was licensed to carry a gun on his right hip.
I don’t know if the gun made me feel safer or slightly alarmed. It didn’t seem like a building or an area where you would need armed security. But I guess it was better to be safe than sorry. This guy was a venture capitalist with plenty of money, so maybe he thought someone would plan to kidnap him and hold him for ransom.
I blew off my trepidation and pulled out my ID to sign in to the building.
“Who are you here to see?” the security guard asked.
“Joseph Drake.”
He smiled and nodded. “Okay, good luck.”
Maybe I was reading too much into things, but the smile and “good luck” felt peculiar. Good luck for what? I wasn’t asking him for any investment money on a project, and he had already paid me to be there for our first session. What else was I getting myself into where I needed luck?
The first question I wanted to ask Mr. Drake, face-to-face, was why he had chosen me to counsel with? I’m quite sure the multimillionaire’s team had a full Rolodex of professionals in every field to deal with. He didn’t have to do anything with me. But I was grateful for it.
The ride up the elevator to the twelfth floor presented more music, a soft instrumental featuring a very active flute. I grinned, imagining what Dark & Moody would have thought of it.
“That shit is soft, man,” I could imagine her commenting. “That’s typical White people music with no emotion in it.”
I’d then remind her that rock, grunge, garage, acid, and gothic—without the funk—were all considered “White people music” as well. Those genres were not soft and were packed with emotion. But as I stepped through the opening doors at the top floor of the building, what the elevator music did represent was controlled mood. It was the music of a productive office, played to make you feel light, sociable, and optimistic, the opposite of heavy, antisocial, and depressed.
I felt optimistic myself as I walked up to a reception desk, where a pretty blonde in her twenties greeted me.
“Dr. Victoria Benning?”
I loved how respectfully she said my name. She made me sound so . . . distinguished.
“Yes,” I answered.
She smiled. “Okay, Joe is looking forward to seeing you. Right this way.”
She stepped out from behind her reception booth and led me down a hallway, while I continued to psychoanalyze everything.
From what she had stated, her boss, “Joe,” was looking forward to seeing me as opposed to meeting me. Or maybe that was a simple misuse of her words.
As she led me down the hallway, I couldn’t help staring at this White girl’s firm ass in a beige skirt. She had more ass than I ever had, and it was perfectly round with no panty lines. She was either wearing a G-string or nothing at all.
I immediately wondered if Joe was fucking this pretty, young blonde receptionist with the perfect ass after hours. In my profession, I learned that humans were capable of anything and everything. And she seemed too chipper at seven o’clock at night for it to be strictly work related.
“She’s here,” she announced to him, while swinging open his office door at the back end of the hallway.
Joe was still on a phone call when we walked in. He was sitting behind a massive desk with a clear view of the 285 beltway below. With his window facing the south, he also had a perfect view of the sunrise to the left and the sunset to the right. I envied his office view immediately. My only view crashed into the walls of the building that stood beside me.
