(FAME)
Remember
me as a sunny day
That you once had, along the way
Didn’t I inspire you a little higher
Remember me as a funny clown
That made you laugh when you were down
Didn’t I boy, didn’t I boy
(From
the song “Remember Me,” from Diana Ross’ Surrender album, 1971, composed by
Nickolas Ashford/Valerie Simpson)
Being
a host on the QVC network gave me a level of fame I had always dreamed of. But when my contract ended in 1994 and
I was not picked up immediately by another channel, I decided to return home to
Baltimore. One of the vendors from my QVC show, Destination: Africa, offered me a job as manger of a store he
wanted to open in my hometown called “Out of Africa.”
Having a store in Baltimore made me feel as if I still had some
fame. I moved into a corner store
on Read and Cathedral streets in Mt. Vernon, down the street from the Maryland
Institute College of Art, the same place I had posed nude ten years
earlier. The area was the heart of
the gay community, and it crackled with excitement. It was nicknamed “The Meat Rack” because the gay street
hustlers worked the corners at night while men would cruise the neighborhood
looking for sex.
The store was huge, over 2500 square feet. I filled it with traditional African
art but also featured my line of dolls.
I even set up a sewing machine and living quarters in the back, and
designed and created African garments for customers. Running the store was a big deal to me, and I tried to
capitalize off my QVC celebrity. I ran videos of my shows in the store and hung
up photographs of me with various celebrities like Susan Lucci, Richard
Simmons, and Nancy Wilson. I also
posted up my famous picture with Wesley Snipes, in drag, from the movie Too Wong Foo.
Newspapers did stories about me and I received invitations to appear at
doll collector shows around the country.
The store had a huge grand opening, and I felt like Diana Ross coming
back to Detroit after the Supremes had been on the Ed Sullivan Show.
After a few months, I decided to buy the owner out and take full ownership
of the store. I leased the
Baltimore store for four years. It
felt good to have something I could call my own. I was able to give back to the community and became a role
model for other gay men. I added more gay friendly products to my store’s selection,
and changed the name of the store to the business name that was used for the
dolls, “A.N.D.”
The A.N.D. store gave me a venue to sell not only African art but also
art directed towards the gay community. I launched another special line of
dolls, a limited collection called “Damn Good Man.” There were twelve doll
designs in all, and the eventual goal was to do a calendar of them; each doll
would represent a sexy male image for each month of the year. What also made
the dolls special was that I gave them penises, bulging hard-ons you could feel
through their costumes. I even put beads in their sacs so they could have
testicles. The line was my urban
alternative to my African dolls.
I had recognized a
need to fill a market not addressed by the white gay community. There already existed stores that were
gay themed, but they never targeted the African-American community. I contacted author James Earl Hardy to
do an in-store reading of the first book in his gay, African-American themed
series of novels, B-Boy Blues. It was
a huge success. That led to other in-store appearances, including Keith Boykin
with his book One More River to Cross:
Black & Gay in America.
Additional artists, visual and literary, followed suit. We sold black
erotic nude calendars and photography books from Rundu, Vega, and Jamal. If it was black and gay themed, I tried
to get the product on my shelves and the artist in my store. A.N.D. became quite the meeting place
for gays in the area, and my friends started calling my store the “Black Gay
Community Center.”
Many people assumed that because I sold erotic images, publishers of
erotic books and calendars might discover aspiring male models with my
help. This wasn’t necessarily the
case but I will admit -- since I did own a camera and loved the nude, male
image, I never really denied the possibility of being able to “assist” a hungry
male model. As a result, I amassed quite a collection of “test” model
images. In addition, the street
hustlers who worked the “Meat Rack” were always looking for any opportunity to
earn a few dollars, so they often offered to pose nude for me, for the chance
to have their pictures sold to a publisher.
Sam Jennings, a performer who I had become very close to during my work
with Actors Against Drugs, lived nearby and shared my love of erotic
photography. Often, we would trade or share models for our “freaky foto”
sessions. We had a collection of over three hundred images. The street hustlers
were always asking when I was going to have their pictures published.
Another wonderful thing about the store was that it
allowed me a sense of independence. As the owner, I could leave in the middle
of the day to audition for movies and television shows. As I mentioned earlier, several movie
production companies were shooting projects in Baltimore during that time. Will Smith shot several scenes for the
movie Enemy of the State just outside
of my store. During that
production, someone on set told me that he had married Baltimore native Jada
Pinkett over the production’s Thanksgiving break. During the late 80’s, when Pinkett was a student at the
Baltimore School for the Arts and I was a trolley driver, she and Tupac used to
ride my trolley route to school.
My one-man show, FREEda Slave:
Mask of a Diva, debuted in 1995 at Baltimore’s Artscape festival in the
second year of the store’s operation. People who saw me in the show would come
through the store just to meet me, and to see the images of the show that I had
on display. Across the street from
my store was the local AIDS organization HERO (Health Education Resource
Organization.) Carlton Smith,
Executive Director of the Baltimore Black Gay Pride, Inc. asked me to head up a
special program called “Men of Color Against AIDS.” I wrote, directed, and
produced a public service announcement featuring the then mayor of Baltimore,
Kurt L. Schmoke. It was a campaign
aimed at keeping men of color HIV negative by encouraging positive self-images.
“If you love yourself, you will protect yourself,” was our theme.
I was settling nicely into my new community when I got
a surprising proposition that put me back on television. One of my former co-workers from QVC,
Kelly Dobbs, had been named Head of Talent at a new shopping channel in New
York called the Global Shopping Network.
She offered me the unique opportunity to work three days a week as a
host on the channel in New York, and I could commute from Baltimore. The timing was perfect. I lived a few
blocks from the train station in Baltimore, and the studio in New York was also
within walking distance of a train station. Sam urged me to accept the job, as he was a train conductor
and was familiar with the train’s punctuality -- he could nearly guarantee me
that I’d never be late for work. The four-hour metro ride was like taking a nap
and waking up to work in another city.
Working at GSN, I had creative freedom.
I produced another version of my African themed show,
re-named African Accents, which also
sold a limited line of my dolls.
The network was a satellite feed with an audience even smaller than that
of the Fashion Channel. Although
we sold a lot of jewelry, the shows we did at GSN focused on some of the
special things one can find only in New York, such as clothing by certain New
York designers and Hollywood and Broadway collectibles. I hosted a “Hollywood Memorabilia” show
that showcased some of my favorite movies, and I gave the audience a little
trivia associated with those movies.
I next did a show on Elvis Presley memorabilia and dressed up like a
black Elvis. That would have never
happened at QVC. Everything about
GSN was theatrical and very much like me.
I felt like I was Gladys Knight at Buddah Records, (the label Gladys
Knight and the Pips joined after leaving Motown), and was a big fish in a small
pond. Unfortunately, GSN could not
thrive in the marketplace and went bankrupt. The day we had to shut down, you
would have thought a president had died.
I have never known such a wonderful and supportive network crew.
By the fourth year of operation, my store began to suffer
financially. I had made a huge
mistake in marketing by making my store personality driven. Support for A.N.D was heavy when I was
present in the store, but sales dropped whenever I went out of town and left my
manager in charge. I had made my store all about me and not about the
products. Sales dropped during the
last year of business. In 1997,
the month the lease was up for renewal, I decided to call it quits and closed
the store.
Remember
me when you drink the wine
Of sweet success and I gave you my best
Remember me with every song you sing
Remember me as a good thing
When the store closed, my fame diminished. I felt like I needed to stage a
comeback. How would I reinvent
myself? I looked to my talents as
a costume designer. While I had still been operating the store, Darryl Wharton
had brought me on as the costumer for his independent film, Detention. I had enjoyed the challenge. The film community in Baltimore is small. Once people find
out what you do creatively, your name gets around. After closing the store, I worked as a dresser on the
national touring company of Ragtime
in Washington D.C. I followed that
by working as a stitcher on the film Random
Hearts with Harrison Ford, and hand stitched all of Harrison’s pants in that
film. I felt like I got more
respect as a wardrobe person than I had ever gotten as a background extra. I leapt at the chance to work on the
Barry Levinson film Liberty Heights,
as an on-set dresser.
Some of my best work appears in a scene that takes place at the Royal Theater with a young James Brown look-a-like. I learned that his back-up singers, Kenny, Zahmu, and Chris, were huge Supremes fans. We shared old performance videos and became lifelong friends. I next worked my way up to lead wardrobe person on a commercial with famed Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken, Jr. I liked being on the other side of the camera for once. Things were looking good for a while.
Some of my best work appears in a scene that takes place at the Royal Theater with a young James Brown look-a-like. I learned that his back-up singers, Kenny, Zahmu, and Chris, were huge Supremes fans. We shared old performance videos and became lifelong friends. I next worked my way up to lead wardrobe person on a commercial with famed Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken, Jr. I liked being on the other side of the camera for once. Things were looking good for a while.
By 1997, I started feeling very detached from the city
I had loved for so many years. My
close friendship with Sam started to deteriorate when he relapsed into drug
addiction. When we were with AAD,
Sam would speak to the audiences after our performances and share his own true
horror story of drug addiction. His honesty would bring our performances full
circle. Now he was complaining
about migraines and asking for my pain pills. On a few occasions, I gave in. However, when I later told him I didn’t have any more, he
accused me of lying. He would
arrive at my door looking wild and emaciated, with a crazed look on his face,
so I knew he was suffering from more than just a headache. I agreed to
feed him, but promised myself not to give him any money or any more
medication. I kept keys to his apartment for safety reasons, because I was
always concerned for his well-being when he photographed street hustlers
without me being present.
One time, I entered Sam’s apartment when I knew he was
not there and was shocked beyond belief; across a pile of drug paraphernalia,
unkempt clothes, dirty bottles, and half-eaten food lay the beautiful framed
poster of Mary Wilson that we had carried to her University of Delaware concert
in ’96. The place looked
unlivable. I wanted so badly to remove the poster from the ruins and give it a
proper home in my Diana Ross art gallery. I decided at that point that
Sam had to help himself first before I could do anything to help him, so I left
him alone. It would be years
before he and I would speak again.
Thankfully, he is now clean and sober. Ironically enough, he is the one who inspired me to write my
life story. He spoke to me daily
throughout the writing of these memoirs to make sure I stayed on track.
When Homicide:
Life on the Street, the show for which Darryl was a staff writer, wrapped
production, Darryl proposed the idea of going to Los Angeles to do FREEda Slave. He did not need to ask twice. There was nothing keeping me in Baltimore. After the success
of FREEda Slave in Los Angeles, work
became scarce and I did many jobs to support myself. I signed with an agency, but did not get many
auditions. However, my agent,
Michelle, one day called me with a different kind of opportunity; a friend of
hers knew of a position as a temporary driver for film and commercial director
Tony Kaye. The gig would only be for
a few days while he was in town shooting a commercial, and it would give me the
extra money I needed at the time. Michelle asked if I was interested, but I was
hesitant at first. I told her that
since I was new to L.A., I did not know much about the city nor how to get
around it easily. Michelle found
out that, other than traveling to the set, Tony was a creature of habit and
liked to travel to only a few select spots in the city. His assistant would provide me with the
locations so I could know ahead of time where I needed to go. Figuring it should be simple enough, I
agreed to do the job, out of a need for money.
On my first day of work, I picked up Tony’s car from
his production office, had it washed and got a list of the places he liked to
frequent. I am bad at recognizing
and remembering cars, but I believe the car was a huge Lincoln Continental. I
was just happy it was not a stick shift, or I would have really been up shit’s
creek. When I went to Tony’s
production office in Santa Monica, some of the staff presented me with a file
of articles about him so I could familiarize myself with who he was. I learned that he had directed a young
Ed Norton in the movie American History X,
and when Norton got final editing privileges over him, Kaye asked to have his
name taken off the credits and later sued the studio for not letting him do
so. Ed went on to receive an
Academy Award nomination for the movie, and Tony at that time refused to direct
any more movies. Instead, he went back to doing commercials and music videos.
Michelle told me to just make sure I did not tell him
I was an actor. That mistake would
get me fired on the spot. Then she
explained to me a few of his quirks -- the oddest thing was that he did not
like to speak directly into his cell phone. I was to drive him and answer his cell phone at the same
time, relaying the message to Tony and repeating back to the caller Tony’s
exact response. His staff told me
it had something to do with a divorce he was going through. In addition, I was supposed to do this
without a headset. So not only did
I have to drive this man around in a huge car across a sprawling city that I
was unfamiliar with, I also had to hold a cell phone and communicate messages
back and forth like a ventriloquist dummy.
Someone warned me not to be startled when I picked him
up from the airport. His staff
described him as looking like a skinhead, since he had a shaved head and lots
of tattoos and piercings. I
learned he was a fitness freak who liked to work out a lot. He had a gym he
went to often, and he liked to run along the Santa Monica pier.
I picked him up at the airport and it was no problem
finding him. He did look like a
skinhead. He was an older,
middle-aged man, but he was not as buff as I would have assumed for a fitness
freak. I took him first to a quick
meeting at his production office, where he met with the commercial agency about
the shoot. The agency representatives
then left the meeting in the car with Tony, and I dropped them off at their
hotel in Santa Monica, near the beach.
Tony was staying in his loft in Santa Monica but, instead of going home,
he wanted to take a hike in the Hollywood Hills. After a quick call to his assistant, I was able to locate
the exact trail he preferred. When
he returned from his hike, he had gotten either a bug bite or a rash, and when
he saw it he feared he was developing cancer. He had me contact his assistant to find a doctor who could
see him late in the day, as it was approaching 5:00 pm. During the forty minutes that followed,
he called different friends and asked them various questions about whether or
not they thought he might be dying of cancer. Remember, he was not talking
directly into the phone, so I had to relay the conversations back and forth. When I did not quote him correctly or
shortened anything he said, he yelled at me. In between all this ranting, he still had not cast the
little girl who was to be in the commercial that was shooting the next day. So while I was driving, he went through
headshots and had me call agents and ask various questions. I convinced myself that I had to be on
some version of Candid Camera, since
no one would take another person through all these ridiculous changes without a
television camera being present.
I don’t know how the assistant did it, but we found a doctor’s office in
Beverly Hills that was open late.
I waited outside for the news we all knew -- he was not going to die.
However, he had worked my “last good nerve” by then. It was after 8:00 p.m. and
he still wanted to go to the gym to meet up with his trainer. The gym was on
Pico Boulevard, not far from his production office. I plotted the trip in my head, trying to convince myself it
was worth it. I kept telling
myself, “Two more days of insanity, I can do this. A nice paycheck is waiting
on the other side. And who knows
-- he could end up liking me and ask me to be in his next film.”
After his workout, Tony
came out of the gym and had a taste for a restaurant that was not on the list
given to me. Oh, fuck! The worst possible scenario was playing
out before my eyes. I had no clue where the place was and he could not tell
me. I frantically called his
assistant, but got no answer. Tony became enraged.
“Don’t you know where the place is? What kind of driver are you?”
He started screaming and
carrying on like a spoiled child.
I got out of the car and called his assistant one more time, leaving
Tony to scream at me from inside the car.
Because the assistant drove a motorcycle, he was not able to hear the
phone ring until he came to a stop.
As soon as he knew I needed him, he headed over to meet us at the gym on
Pico.
“Sorry about that man,” he said. “The place where he wants to eat is
just a block over on Olympic.”
“I’m still hungry!” Kaye bellowed from the back seat
of the car.
“Hell no,” I said, turning to the assistant. “I ain’t taking him anywhere, I quit.
This job is not worth the humiliation of being spoken to like this.”
I left them there and walked to the bus stop. Two years later, while working as an extra on a commercial,
I walked on set and low and behold, the director was Tony Kaye. I made sure to stay far in the
background because if there was ever a time I wanted to stay unnoticed, it was
that day. Since most of the time I
had spent with him had been with my back to him, I doubted that he would even
recognize me. Nevertheless, I took
no chances.
I was back in front of the camera after having been
part of the team behind it. On a
Hollywood production, regardless of what side of the camera you’re on, there’s
a pecking order that has a top dog and a bottom player. If you’re acting, you’re either the
star or a background extra, or somewhere in between. If you’re part of the production team, you’re either the
producer or the production assistant, or somewhere in between. Up to that point, I had been a
background extra, a star while at QVC, and a production assistant of sorts
during my “adventure” with Tony Kaye.
That experience with Tony, although horrible at the time, helped me in
many ways. It made me realize that
anyone can go back to square one and start all over again. Tony had directed an
Academy Award nominated film but was back directing commercials. I had been a
host on a national network but was back doing extra work in commercials. Fame can have you signing autographs
one day and standing in the background the next. It is humbling, but it also
makes you stronger.
There’s something Diana Ross says in her 1977 NBC
television special An Evening with Diana
Ross that comes to mind when I think of my own drive to succeed. When reminiscing about how she took
direction from Berry Gordy, Jr. during the early days of Motown she says, “It
reminds me of a game we used to play as kids called ‘Mother May I?’ Sometimes,
in my eagerness to reach the goal, I might take a step without asking his
permission and he would yell, ‘Go back Ross, you didn’t say ‘May I.’ I guess it
was then I discovered that unconscious desire to win and want to be the best.”
I too have always wanted to be the best. And my quest for fame would next see me take a giant step up
on the production food chain to become an executive film producer.
Bye baby, see you around
Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t hold you down
Take good care of yourself, y’hear
Don’t let me hear about you shedding a tear
You’re gonna make it
You’re gonna take it
Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t hold you down
Take good care of yourself, y’hear
Don’t let me hear about you shedding a tear
You’re gonna make it
You’re gonna take it
“Sometimes you have to take two steps backwards to make a step forward.
Remember SANKOFA.”
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