In Search of Pretty Young Black Men Read online

  But they were dreams. Dreams. Not nightmares, no bad mind games, no tearful reminiscences. Merely dreams.

  How old was she then, when he swept her off her feet and made her his queen? Cameron. A man who never crossed a giving heart.

  Spread the love. Spread the joy. That’s what she learned. That’s what he taught her. That’s what he gave.

  Love…and happiness. And pretty young black men would be the vessels. That’s what she knew.

  He had died doing what he loved: giving her head to the point of a nosebleed. It was too much for his heart. But there was a smacking smile frozen on his face and a stiff penis dripping in his hand, neither one easily prodded from the erotic tableau.

  And so she moistened herself and played with her titties and moaned at the thought of him eating her out while sweet Dorian pounded her ass from behind.

  Cameron was her last great fuck of the century. Dorian was the reminder. A reminder of what she would not have again. She loved sex as much as she loved love. She had no shame in her claim. And as she served Dorian up to the grateful sistahs of society, she truly wanted to keep him for herself. He was the newborn ghost of Cameron past. He was the sweet, young reminder that there was still joy in the world, pleasure to be had, children who give comfort.

  She wanted him for herself, yet knew his gift was just that. A gift. Not her personal treasure to be hidden away in some dark vault and brought out on that rare occasion when special drag and special jewels are called for.

  But she could not help her hungry self. She wanted him. Stingily. Jealously. So each time she paid him his commission, she pinched off a little of him for herself. She got hers. Hers, so that she would not feel left out, forlorn, double-widowed with nothing to look forward to. So that she would not be driven to murder, to the killing of the golden goose, to the none-for-all that truly and sadly came to pass. And when he died she tried her best to play it off, to make believe that losing him was loss of business only. She had to believe that. She had to pretend to, for she was on the brink of confession, until she heard that Lamont had taken the blame, had thought that he had killed the boy who pleased the wife that he himself could not make happy.

  And so out of quiet gratitude and knowing tea only the discreet could sip, she introduced Lamont to the man whose beard and dreads were red and gold with gentle streaks of gray. And the man smiled. And Lamont smiled back, taking the outstretched hand firmly into his.

  “Lamont Lester-Allegro.”

  “Raymond Harris Sr.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Elaine tells me you used to be a doctor.”

  “A long time ago. I’m involved in the family business nowadays.”

  “Right. The Lester-Allegro Group.”

  “So what line are you in?”

  “I write for the Times.”

  “Features? Editorials?”

  “Obits. That’s how I met Elaine. I did the copy on Raymond St. Jacques and Esther Rolle.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s an art.”

  “Well, I would think. After all, it’s writing.”

  “Celebration in light of sadness.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Completely dichotomous.”

  “Totally.”

  “Isn’t that the new county supervisor?”

  “Lydia Titus. Yes.”

  “Thought so. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Jackie Goldberg, Lydia Titus, Will & Grace, Queer Eye, gay marriages just around the corner. I guess Pat Robertson, Bishop Blake, and all the other dinosaurs better go find a rock to die under.”

  “Lydia Titus and my late wife were very good friends.”

  “I’m so sorry, I mean, about your wife.”

  “Thank you. It was a long time ago.”

  “Wait a minute. Lamont Lester-Allegro. Margaret Arial Lester-Allegro?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wrote the obituary.”

  “Did you?”

  “I hope you were pleased.”

  “From what I remember, I was very pleased.”

  Elaine was back from making her third hostess round. “Did Raymond tell you he used to be a Black Panther?”

  “Really? And you have a son.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The ‘senior’ part. Elaine introduced you as Raymond Harris Sr.”

  “Oh yeah, that’s right. He died a long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It was a long time ago. He died in the movement. The late sixties. A long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  “Yeah.”

  But Lamont Lester-Allegro could clearly see that to Raymond Harris Sr. the loss of his son way back in the 1960s seemed like a loss as near as yesterday, the gash still bleeding, and the pain still there. Lamont knew easily that this man carried the “senior” as part of his name to keep the memory of a martyred son (“he died in the movement”) in its loving place of honor and affection.

  “Fathers should die before their sons.”

  There had been a long silence. An uncomfortable one, where the hum of the party around them, lulled by the soft jazz of the tuxedoed trio at Elaine’s baby grand, wailed out the un-spoken.

  “Fathers should die before their sons.”

  That’s all he said within the silence. And Lamont felt ashamed for understanding all too well.

  “Elaine really knows how to throw a party.”

  “Yes she does. Isn’t that the mayor?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Well, one thing about ol’ Elaine, she’ll cross party lines in a minute for a good cast.”

  “Same ol’ Elaine.”

  “Yeah, same ol’ Elaine.”

  Lamont did not know what it was about Raymond Harris Sr. that kept him in this conversation most of the night. But there was something. Something familiar yet foreign. A comfortable brotherhood that he could only guess at as his past offered no experience in recognizing the condition. Also Raymond Harris Sr. was older than Lamont. Maybe fifteen years older. He seemed the kind of father type Lamont would have wanted. They shared similar pains, similar losses, and perhaps similar sins.

  “My wife talks to me at times,” Lamont found himself saying. “She comes to me at night. She calls my name. She says it softly. And every time I try to explain, she says, ‘Shhhhh.’ And I do. And I feel…I feel…”

  But Lamont could not describe what it was that he felt, but he suspected that what he felt was what Raymond Harris Sr. felt. And that was what they shared. Without saying it, without knowing it, they were bound in some inexplicable way to the losses that they imagined as such senseless, mindlessly masterminded losses.

  And so from the grave two spoke—a father’s son, a husband’s wife—to two who still suffered life, filled with guilt’s pain.

  “Look at us. You a former Panther, me an ex-doctor; I guess we both gave up on trying to save the world.”

  “I guess we did, didn’t we?” Raymond said softly. The party that buzzed around him no longer mattered. The surroundings were just a blur except for Lamont Lester-Allegro’s words: I guess we both gave up on trying to save the world.

  How ironic, Raymond mused with a sadness he did not like to reveal. He was reminded again that he wasn’t even able to save his son.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Raymond Harris Jr. died the way Raymond Harris Sr. would have, had the opportunity presented itself. To have been able to take the place of his son in death would have made death the soothing alternative to the living, guilt-ridden hell he was left to exist in. But it was the son who was taken, a death prompted by insidious times and the fury of a father unwilling to take society’s abuse anymore.

  Reared by an anger induced by a city that gave black people hell, Raymond Harris Jr., by the time he was fifteen in 1965, was as sick of the oppression as his father was at thirty-five. The father-son anger that year was energized by Malcolm’s rev
elations of devils in white sheets seen and unseen. Men burning with the fire of enough-is-enough, Malcolm-articulated black rage and black pride all came to a head in the heat of that summer and a fuse ignited, its atomic fallout still felt to this day.

  While Raymond Harris Sr. stood up to police that started off calling him “boy” and ended up beating his ass, Raymond Harris Jr. learned. While Raymond Harris Sr. was losing a wife who wanted only to make love, not war (“You high yellow niggahs always got to be the blackest”), Raymond Harris Jr. was learning. The marches, protests, and civil unrest that flared in the summer of 1965 cosigned everything his father taught him. But the father, years later, now doubted commitment to a war in which his own child would be laid dead on the battlefield.

  Raymond Harris Sr. became Omoro, a Black Panther faithful. His son became Sadikifu Omoro. And while Aretha sang for “Respect,” black people in America weren’t getting any. The time had come to not only demand but also take what was rightfully owed. The Watts Riots of 1965 lit the keg.

  By 1968 the mule that came with the forty acres of crumbs was kicking society in the head with a vengeance. The father and son rebels were stirring the people. The powers-that-be were getting nervous.

  “Young black men are dying because they refuse to take the lash anymore,” Omoro preached the unwittingly personal prophecy from Compton to Oakland. “Snatch that lash out of the air! Stand up and stare into eyes hidden behind evil and guile.”

  And so Sadikifu Omoro, new president of UCLA’s Black Student Union, inspired by the words of his father, refused to take the lash anymore, snatched it out of the air, stood up, and stared into eyes hidden behind evil and guile.

  “Stand up to injustice! Fight back to the death!” Omoro preached to the converted, including his son.

  But when campus police called him on what he preached, Omoro had to face what he really was made of.

  Sadikifu died—beaten to death by campus police, beaten beyond anything his father knew, beaten like young black men are in the land that enslaved them.

  Suddenly Lamont Lester-Allegro realized, even as the party buzzed around him—around them—the truth that Raymond Harris Sr. represented. He could see the clear truth reflected in the ex-Panther’s honey-colored eyes, eyes that sparkled with pain, loss, and loneliness permeated by guilt. It was a self-hate of its own. It was a self-hate Lamont once knew so well, a self-hate not to be forgotten but learned from so that if it ever reared its ugly head again, it can be fought against by a warrior who knew its strategies.

  The eyes of Raymond Harris Sr. begged to cry but somehow didn’t know how, could not yet bear to. Still, after all these years. Oh how well Lamont understood this too. And how he now ached for this man, yet felt good for him. Who better knew the meaning of darkest before the dawn?

  And suddenly Lamont could see so clearly the son. He could see the junior. He could see the mother. He could see his own wife. Although he did not fully understand what he saw, he did fully understand and was grateful for the deep caring he had for them all, inexplicitly yet unconditionally.

  Something inside Lamont made him bring his hand up gently to Raymond’s lips, in a gentle, halting little gesture. Raymond was brought to grateful doe-eye attention by the move.

  Lamont then shed a single empathetic tear, and from this a new strength appeared. A strength Lamont had not quite known before, nor could have even imagined. It was a strength that made him think beyond himself. Raymond was his brother and he, the keeper. And so he took his brother in his arms and then, and only then, was Raymond allowed to shed the tears he had not allowed himself to shed: tears for his son, tears for himself for condemning his soul to take the blame for what was blameless. What Sadikifu had believed he believed from the bottom of his heart. And it was a noble belief. That the son learned to believe as the father believed was no crime. That the son died for the beliefs he had learned from the father was an honorable thing. Raymond Harris Sr. knew that now. His tears told him so.

  And then suddenly Lamont knew what it was. He knew what he felt when his wife would come visit him at night in his dreams and his nightmares. He knew what it was that she brought. He knew what it was that he felt just as sure as the Santa Ana winds blow when they want to. He knew. He felt…her forgiveness.

  For the first time in his life Lamont felt free to experience unconditional love, given and received. The comfort and support he and Raymond provided each other defied society’s oppression and they lived their lives as openly gay men in a committed relationship built on deep caring, buoyed by personal strengths ever burgeoning, blessed by a perfect God unsubjected to imperfect man’s condemnations. And there was the added gift of a sweet lovemaking neither partner had experienced before.

  The good black people of Baldwin Hills got over it. Had to. Times had changed, were changing, and the corpses of intolerance lined along the side of the road known as the future, were picked at by unprejudiced vultures, bones left to brittle and break and dissolve into the dust of the ground.

  Those yesterday Negroes and trailer-trash yahoos who managed to breathe for so long now breathed a death-rattle foulness. Kicking and screaming, their one foot in the grave of their own misery-making felt the sting of the hellfire they’d kindled.

  When San Francisco’s mayor defied President Bush’s edict masked as urging, Lamont and Raymond were one of the state’s first same-sex couples to marry. Their civil ceremony was flashed throughout the nation and they were known as that handsome black couple from Baldwin Hills. The black bourgeois enclave was forced out of the closet of perceived conservatism, yet no one in the community was worsened by it, except maybe Abner Lester-Allegro. His cold-blooded heart attacked him with a vengeance when he saw Lamont and Raymond seal it with a kiss on the five o’clock news. The attendant stroke rendered him to mumblings from a wheelchair and round-the-clock services of uncaring caretakers.

  Lamont looked in on his father daily. The hatred he thought he had for him, Lamont had long since realized, was a hatred he had had for himself, a hatred that no longer existed, replaced by self-love and the love of his man.

  Forgiveness was beginning to spread all around.

  The company’s main offices faced the County Art Museum on Wilshire Boulevard. The staff, a sea of multicolored buppies, buzzed about with the cool and calm of Stepfords. The company had long been structured to operate on automatic, fueled by these well-paid worker bees whose queen was pure benevolence.

  The elder Lester-Allegro, Doctor Abner, though recovered somewhat from the stroke, was still too infirm for much of anything. Too infirm to come to board meetings, hold public office, or to painlessly piss. Too infirm to remember the pains he had caused. Too infirm to know he too had been forgiven. So Lamont would make the appearance at the office, having assumed the position of president of the Lester-Allegro Group. He would smile and greet and show genuine concern for the smallest situation with the most unseniored employee. And it was a true interest. He had come too far to give up the smell of the roses, the brush of the sea breeze, the tale of a child crying and playing and sleeping and laughing. He had come too far up the mountain. And he knew that he was better for the journey, and respectful and regretful of the lives he had beached. He knew that whatever he would be called upon to do, whatever recompense was due, whatever the penitence, he was ready to deliver from the deepest resources of his heart and soul. He had gotten past the bitter and had reached the sweet.

  So he stood on the rock and looked toward the sun. The clean breeze of the high air swirled gently around him, whispering to him like angels pointing him toward grace. He then looked down at the world minuscule below. It was a beautiful lush of rolling hills, swimming pools, palm trees, and ocean. He was not afraid anymore, not afraid of living. And the realization made him shake, vibrated him. Something wonderful was brewing deep inside him and causing his veins to tingle with a wanting.

  And then they came. In great buckets came tears. He shook and cried and wailed like a feel-too-g
ood Baptist preacher at Christmas morning service.

  As the sun smiled down on him he smiled right back up, and the tears ran past his smile, down his neck, over his bosom. He then stretched out his arms and received all that the sun was giving. And for the first time, for the very first time…he was truly living life with his eyes and heart wide open. He had love on his side.

  He had wings.

  Epilogue

  It is often said Los Angeles has no ghettos, and this is nearly true. You would be hard pressed to find alleys in Los Angeles County, save for, ironically, Beverly Hills. Tenements, such as they are, are stucco haciendas surrounded by flower gardens and palm trees. The homeless of the city do not starve or freeze. They can always pick fruit off trees that grow abundantly in city parks in a year-round eighty-degree climate.

  It is also often said that it never rains in Southern California. Well, this is simply not the case. It rarely rains in Southern California. It only rains enough to tease the thirsty, like Dorian’s dick pulled away from the flickering tip of Ricardo Mathis’ outstretched tongue.

  What is said about black Los Angeles and what is true about black Los Angeles have always made for lively debate, a debate kept alive by Ricardo Mathis. He finally wrote the novel years of writing brilliant short stories and essays had prepared him for.

  He never identified Baldwin Hills as Baldwin Hills in his first long-form work, not that Baldwin Hills of this day really cared. It was so much better to fictionalize the little he knew and maintain a hush-hush expertise that could not be challenged.

  Like everyone else, Ricardo felt the loss of Dorian Moore. He was compelled by fond memories and projected wealth to write about it and the effect this loss had on L.A.’s proper blacks. The sex was just that good, the tale too intriguing.

  The immortalization of Dorian Moore, renamed Delroy Potter, did indeed make Ricardo Mathis rich. His torrid first novel, In Search of Pretty Young Black Men, was an instant bestseller. It told a fascinating story that was less roman à clef than erotic fantasy. Outside of the late Dorian Moore and the unexplained man watching them fucking that inspiring night, Ricardo knew or had seen none of the key players in this dramedy of manners and morals.