Control, page 4
Once we invaded his room, he looked up and addressed his call. “Hey, let me reach you later. I have a meeting here at the office.”
Joseph Drake stood from his black leather office chair to greet me. He was a chiseled, forty-something White man in a charcoal-gray suit with a white dress shirt and no tie. He had a mane of dark brown hair combed to the back, like an old-school Italian, but with blue eyes. Being from Camden, New Jersey—with a lot of time spent in Philadelphia—I knew the Italian look, and Joe had it. He even had a tan. He was physically imposing, handsome and rugged, like an assertive corporate golfer capable of playing a lot of rounds.
He extended his hand to mine and said, “Nice to meet you, Victoria.”
I grinned, shook his hand, and responded, “Likewise.”
“I’ll be out front if you need me,” his receptionist said as she walked out.
“Close the door behind you, Rochelle,” he told her.
Rochelle did it without comment, and I immediately felt awkward inside the room alone with him. I was used to meeting clients in the comfortable setup of my own office.
“I guess this is awkward for you being on that side of the desk instead of this side, right? You wanna use my desk and have me sit over there?”
He was reading my mind, so I chuckled at it. “I don’t know if that’s going to make a big difference. I would still feel out of place in your chair. So, let’s just . . . hold our positions and get through it.”
He shrugged and said, “Okay,” and retook his seat, while I sat in the office chair across from his desk and pulled out my notebook with his name in it.
“So, Camden, New Jersey, huh? How do you like it down here?” he started.
“I’ve been here for nearly thirty years now. It’s home,” I answered.
“Really? I still don’t call this place home. I’m originally from Connecticut.”
I nodded. “I figured you were from up North somewhere. Connecticut fits you.”
“Yeah, UConn and Columbia to your Clarke Atlanta and Georgia Tech.”
I guess he had done his homework on me. But I couldn’t find much of anything on him. His website and social media links were all about his business, Capital Exposure Unlimited.
I said, “I’m assuming that you’re very private, because I couldn’t find anything on you online.”
He laughed deeply and proudly, as if mocking the world. “Yeah, I like it that way. When you get to a certain level of income, résumés don’t matter anymore. Either you know the business, or you don’t.”
“Do you think I know the business?” I asked him.
“Do you?” he asked me back.
“I don’t know, I’m just wondering why you chose me?”
He frowned and said, “Why not? Why not you? You’re capable. Would you rather I do this with someone else?”
White men had a confidence in business that was unmatched. And it wasn’t viewed as arrogant or cocky with them, it was more natural. They had been in dominant business positions for years.
I answered, “No, I can handle it. Whatever you have for me,” and chuckled.
“Good, so you won’t mind signing my confidentiality form.”
Just like that, he slid a legal document over his desk for me to sign. And it wasn’t a big document. It was only two pages long, but it still surprised me. I just didn’t expect it. Nevertheless, most of my work was in confidence anyway. So, I read his two-page document, signed it, and dated it.
Mr. Drake countersigned it and made a copy for me from his fax machine.
“Good, we got that out of the way. I just don’t want any confusions about anything I may have to say to you. And it’s all in confidence. All right?”
I smiled. We were dealing with that one word again. Control. There I was at his office, on his time, signing his paperwork, at his building. I began to wonder how much of that was planned, because it felt like all of it.
“It must be something heavy you’re planning to lay on me,” I joked. I felt like a pigeon in a cage.
He laughed hard and loud again, as if mocking me. He said, “I need a drink. You need one?” He stood and walked over to a minibar in the corner of the room, where he pulled out a bottle of Rémy Martin Cognac. Then he grabbed two glasses as if I had said yes already.
“You do drink, right?” he asked.
“Usually not at the office,” I answered.
“Well, you’re not at your office now. You’re at mine. So, loosen up and have a drink.”
He was a White man all right. They dictate all of the terms, even when they’re trying to be nice to you. But what the hell? I wanted to see where he was trying to take me. I was curious.
“All right, I’ll have a drink. I just hope I don’t crash on my way home tonight?” I joked again. Sarcasm was my only defense.
Mr. Drake paused and eyed me with concern. “Wait a minute. You can’t handle your alcohol? I’m not gonna have you drink a lot, just a glass or two to take the edge off.”
“I don’t have any edge to take off. I had a good drive over here and I’m feeling good,” I told him.
He nodded and set one of the glasses down. “All right, no drinks for you. You’re straight by the book and I don’t want to ruin your comfort zone.”
“I can have one drink,” I commented.
He continued to eye me. “Are you sure?”
I grinned at him. “I’m not a child. I can handle a drink,” I confirmed.
“All right.” He picked up the second glass, poured me a quarter of Cognac, poured three quarters for his, and brought both drinks over. He even gave me a toast. “Bottoms up.”
Joe drowned his drink like water before I could even sip mine.
“Someone’s a little thirsty in here,” I joked.
He looked over at me and nodded, pensively. “I see you have a sense of humor.”
I took a sip of my drink and said, “Yeah, that tends to pop right out of me.” Especially when I’m on guard, I thought. We hadn’t gotten anywhere near starting our session yet. And before I knew it, it was 7:27, so I became pressed.
“So . . . what exactly do you want to talk to me about?”
As soon as I asked him the question, I felt lightheaded and dizzy. I looked back at my glass to see how much alcohol I had left.
That shouldn’t have been enough to get me dizzy, I pondered. I began to wonder if he had spiked my drink with something. This is very unprofessional, I told myself. I was embarrassed and determined to pull myself back together.
Joe sat back in his office chair with the Rémy Martin out in front of him on the desk.
He said, “Okay, here’s the thing,” and took a sip of his third drink already. “My family was originally from South Carolina, and we owned a whole lot of slaves.”
As soon as his words hit my ears, I regretted being there. Here we go with this shit, I told myself. A White man’s confession to Black people is the last thing you ever want to hear. It’s always awkward, typically forced on you, and it usually comes from out of nowhere. And how come they always have to be drunk before they decide to do it?
Joseph Drake rambled on about his family history in South Carolina, but I didn’t comprehend much of it. Half of me ignored him, while the other half tried to recuperate from the strong shot of Cognac. But I did hear his ending.
He said, “Now I wanna try and see how I can get a bunch of Black businesses to qualify for this capital that I have. I feel like it’s only right, you know.”
The key word was qualify. It seemed like we never qualified for the big money, only for the smaller money. We only qualified for the pebbles and crumbs.
I told him, “Get the money for yourself and just give it to them. Then you can deal with Black businesses directly instead of these unseen boards getting in the way.”
I didn’t know a lot about corporate business, but I knew enough. I knew how they played the game of passing the buck, so you never knew exactly who or what had turned you down. And when they operated on a checks and balances system, you could pass three checks and fail the fourth. The only way to get past it was to find a qualifying cosigner, and that’s what Drake was if he agreed to do it.
He said, “That would put a hell of lot of responsibility on me.”
“And,” I responded, “you’re the one sitting in here feeling guilty about the past, right? Well, do something about it. Talking about trying means nothing. You need to succeed at it. So, you take on the business responsibility and set up your own criteria.”
He eyed me across his desk and started giggling. “You’re crazy. I’m not gonna do that. That would jeopardize my whole career.”
“Well, what else do you want me to say in here? You know most of these businesses aren’t gonna qualify for that money. The ones who will already have it. And they are not gonna share with the ones who don’t. It’ll be the same nonsense all over again with the haves and the have-nots.”
On the same day that Dark & Moody talked about offering up blood sacrifices to succeed in life, I end up in a counseling session with a guilty rich White man who had access to plenty of money but refused to do what was needed to get it. I couldn’t believe I was even in that conversation with him. All he did was make me angry and more cynical.
It was that damn hard for Black people to get their hands on any money, even when these assholes felt guilty about it. So, once it hit eight fifteen, I stood up and was ready to go. That man had wasted my damn time and was getting under my skin. There was nothing else to talk about in there. Corporate America really was like Dracula. They sucked your blood out and turned you into zombies.
“Where are you going?” Joe asked me.
“I’m going home. I just gave you an hour, and you wasted most of it drinking.”
“All right, let’s follow up next week sometime. I need to think about what you said and the ideas that you have.”
I turned and faced him from the doorway. “Are you really gonna consider it? Because I could meet with a few Black businesses and come up with more ideas, if you really want them to qualify. But if you’re not gonna go out of your way to make that happen . . . then what’s the point? And I’m not gonna sit in here for you to patronize me for two hundred dollars, while you’re sitting over there on two hundred million.”
He heard my number and cringed. “Two hundred million. Oh, we got a lot more on the table than that,” he boasted.
I stared at him and shook my head. Maybe Dark & Moody needed to sacrifice someone like him. It all felt like a frustrating tease. If you’re not willing to do what’s needed, then why even bring it up?
Before I left his office, I told him, “I had no idea what you planned to discuss with me this evening, but I surely wasn’t thinking this. And all you did was irritate me while pretending to feel guilty. So, I pray for you.”
“Hey,” he mumbled as I walked out. “Hey . . .”
When I reached Rochelle out front, she asked me, “How did it go?”
“How does it go with you?” I asked her back.
The blonde receptionist looked confused. “Excuse me?”
I waved her off with my right hand. “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter.”
I walked back to the elevators and pressed the button for down, hoping to get out of there as quickly as possible. I felt used and manipulated, but that wasn’t the first time. There had been plenty of people who had used my kindness and curiosity for a weakness.
There are vultures in this world that you can’t do anything about. And when they see you stranded on the side of the road with no food, water, or gas, they swoop right down to get you, and you have to fight them off to survive. So, it was a good thing I was from Camden. I still knew how to fight.
As I climbed back into my car to drive off, I thought of playing Dark & Moody’s music again. I initially didn’t like it, but as I continued to play it and think about my current circumstances, the music began to make a lot of sense to me, so I continued to listen to it. I guess I was in a dark and moody mindset myself.
TYRELL HODGE
Reflection 5
TYRELL HODGE WAS A FRUSTRATED SCREENWRITER IN HIS FORTIES, who had success early on in his career and not much since. He was another Black Hollywood boy wonder in his twenties, along with John Singleton, the Hughes brothers, and Matty Rich. But his early success as a screenwriter didn’t translate into his thirties or forties, which left him irritated and mad at the world.
He said, “It’s not that I don’t have the skills anymore. I just can’t get these producers to say yes to the new projects. It’s almost like, if it’s not their people doing it, then they wanna control your shit. But I already got my own ideas. So, I just need the money to hire my own people now,” he explained in our session at my office.
That was less than a week after my skirmish with Joseph Drake, so ideas about getting Black businesspeople money was still fresh on my mind. And since I had already known Tyrell for a few years, I could be more relaxed and casual with him.
Wearing a black-and-white Adidas sweatsuit, with a young man’s tapered haircut, Tyrell was in a dark and moody place himself, very moody. People joked that he was liable to snap at the mailman for not delivering his mail on time. He reacted to everything and everyone. He couldn’t seem to help himself. He was on response overdrive to anything he perceived as negative energy, which transformed every conversation into a battle.
“Have you tried to find your own investors?” I asked him.
“Of course I have. But a lot of these guys want you to have the film started already,” he answered. “Then they come in as the saviors to help you finish it, while trying to claim a big chunk of the project, because they know you need the money.”
Still athletic from playing multiple sports in high school and college, Tyrell was one of those guys who felt he had an answer or an explanation for everything. He had been a point guard in basketball, a quarterback in football, and an anchor on the track team, so he was used to being the man in charge. But now he couldn’t get out of his own way to get something done with other people, where he wasn’t in charge.
I suggested, “How about giving up one of your less popular projects to see what the producers would do with it.”
He said, “I tried that already. And you know what happened . . . ? Nothing. Because if you don’t have a committed team to push it forward, it just sets there, like a bill on Capitol Hill, trying to become a law.”
I smiled, reflecting on the Schoolhouse Rock! song and cartoon from the seventies. Tyrell and I were closer in age and from the same generation. But he was from the Chicago area with admiration for Eric Monte, the writer of the classic Cooley High movie. We had talked about it in our cell phone briefing before the session.
“Do you feel like someone is blackballing you in the industry?” I questioned. “How about writing for Tyler Perry or something?”
I was just reaching to see how he would respond.
Tyrell frowned and repeated, “Tyler Perry? Is Jordan Peele writing for Tyler Perry? Is Spike Lee writing for Tyler Perry? Is Keenan Ivory Wayans writing for Tyler Perry?”
I grinned and shook my head. He sounded obnoxious. “They all have their own deals already, but you don’t. So, you need to humble yourself and work your way back up.”
“I am humbled. Didn’t I tell you I’m driving PDS every day now? How humbling is that?” he responded. “And there’s plenty of people who recognize me here in Atlanta.”
PDS was a professional driver service that catered to a higher clientele.
“Well, that’s a good thing. People still know who you are,” I commented.
He stared at me for a moment of silence. “Are you trying to be sarcastic?”
“No. It is a good thing that people still notice you. You don’t think so?”
He paused and took a deep breath. “I just need the money to do one solid project, man. That’s all I’m asking for. Then I can build from there.”
“Well, that’s not gonna happen if you keep arguing with people and being difficult,” I told him. “Nobody likes that extra aggravation.”
“I don’t go out of my way to argue with people. People just rub me the wrong way by saying the wrong shit.”
“And you’re never able to just ignore it and move on? Because you really don’t need to respond to everything. Every issue is not that serious.”
He exhaled and nodded, agreeing with me. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just fucking pissed that I can’t make shit go on my own. I’m just tired of needing all these other motherfuckers to make shit happen.”
“Well, welcome to the world, brother. We all hate that,” I told him. I was just about to mention Joseph Drake and his desire to allocate major capital to Black businesses, but I remembered to bite my tongue. He had me sign a confidentiality agreement, and I still needed to work with him on how to get it all done. So, I kept the information to myself.
I said, “It’ll happen for you. You just have to stay at it.”
Tyrell looked up at the ceiling in my office and mumbled, “I just feel like I’m running out of time. Everything is for these young people now.”
“And you used to be one of them,” I reminded him. “Now you’re more seasoned. And you just have to stay on that bike, or that treadmill, and keep your cool until something pops for you.”
Sometimes I sounded more like a motivational speaker than a shrink. I just wanted people to win, and Tyrell’s frustrations were obvious.
He said, “Hell, I can’t even get my lady to say yes to me now. Things are just fucked up all the way around.”
“What did you do?” I asked him curiously.
“Got caught cheating,” he answered. “You just feel like you need something extra to fill the void of so many failures, you know. So, every little victory counts to keep you going?”
I didn’t comment on that. Far too many men still looked at women as conquests, like we were some kind of ego booster fuel. That attitude from men has gone on for a long time.
