by Maxine Lopez-Keough
I text my mom while she is at work and say: There will be a large black man in your living room when you arrive home this evening. Do not be alarmed, his name is Curtis. He is a friend of mine, and he needed a place to hash things out with his manager. Starbucks was too loud.
When she arrives home, I introduce them. I say, Curtis, this is my mother. She is a scientist.
Mother, I say, this is Curtis. He is a musician and an entrepreneur, you own his CDs. No, he is not Jay-Z. He is a different rapper, Mom, this is not Jay-Z, please stop crying.
From then on, things go well. My mom brings out a quiche, seemingly from nowhere, the way mothers do. We discuss the unusual amount of thunderstorms this summer, and what Beyonce smells like. When my mother asks him point-blank why so much rap is self-referential he writes down a list of artists and albums for her to try. Report back in a week, he jokes, and she promises that she will.
He shows her how to use her new iPad. She compliments his shoes, asks him how he keeps them so clean. Windex, he faux-whispers, and she mimes like she's writing it all down.
I say, Curtis, would you like to go for a walk—would you like to see the fountains? And he does, so we do. They are throwing water up towards the sky, reliably. This moves us. We discuss our movement.
Later we go to the Institute of Contemporary Art and get into a brief argument about Swoon's new show, which culminates in me standing in the middle of the gallery yelling I JUST THINK THAT ARTISTS SHOULD BE PAID FOR THEIR WORK, and suddenly we are laughing so hard that the docent asks us to leave.
We find a restaurant that smells like old leather and salt. The wait staff is primarily tanned twenty-something girls with small breasts and very muscular legs.
The menus are coated in plastic. We share a plate of fried clams. Curtis explains to me that for a while, he was so obsessed with fitness that he only ate Beige Meat: lean chicken, pork, something called tempe which sounds disgusting. We commiserate over the body public, and I ask him how many takes he needed to get that upside-down sit-up shot for the In Da Club video. He says he didn't even think they were filming, but we both know he is kidding.
I tell him one time I ran so hard I threw up, and he shakes his head knowingly. He shows me a picture of his son. We order another bottle of wine.
After a few weeks of bantering back and forth I get up the courage to ask him about Chelsea Handler—what she was like, where he thinks he went wrong. I tell him, sort of jokingly, that I don't mind extravagant gifts, since he says that was part of the problem. We talk about the evolution of the female MC and how it felt to get shot in the head. Chelsea was worse, he says, and I kind of believe him.
He shovels out my car in a snowstorm.
When I bring him home for Christmas he hands my aunt a pecan pie. I made it, he says, like that's all it takes, and it is, surprisingly.
Everyone has been briefed. My grandmother gets drunk, which is new. Later, she puts her hand on his hand and says You Are A Kind Man, and he actually tears up—real tears, I see one of them fall before he can catch it with the tip of his middle finger. He speaks Spanish to her and I don't understand a word.
We play board games with my little cousin. She asks about his jewelry.
When at the end of the night it becomes clear that grandma is having trouble getting down the stairs, he picks her up like she weighs as much as a handful of moss. He carries her down, two stairs at a time, and when they reach the bottom she whispers something into his ear. They share a knowing look. I watch the whole thing in a dress he bought for me.
In the car ride home I say, What is this? What are we doing? And he says, We’re doing us, like it’s the simplest thing.
I get to where he is. I say, if you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? And he answers: Cincinnati, like it’s the funniest joke in the world. We laugh until we catch sight of the Garden, and I give him shit about loving Carmelo Anthony. He says No, he’s cool, and that I’d like his wife, and I don’t mention that I’ve secretly felt that way for about a decade.
It doesn’t work out, in the end, but it does for a while and I find a new appreciation for things like Connecticut and Rottweilers and the Knicks—not their team so much as their fans, which remind me of home.
I tell people: I dated a famous rapper once. I always said I would and then I did it. But the people who matter already know, and the people who don’t smile anyway.
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