Episode Two | Full | Exclusive

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S1: Episode Two - "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number" - MEMBERS ONLY

Much like the music industry, DC was changing. The perception that everything is old and gray—the buildings, the streets, the men—was being challenged. We were surviving the country’s economic slump and undergoing an entire social renovation. Things that were once old were now new again. And no longer was age a prerequisite for dominance.

In fact, women like my friend J were not above personal quests to investigate and prove the hypothesis that with youth came certain... physical benefits.

“Oh my god! His energy is ridiculous. And his mouth!” she exclaimed with a long blink as if she was remembering something right then and there. “I mean the things he can do with his teeth?! Not his tongue, but his tee—”

Cut off by the glare the waitress, a short Barbadian woman, likely 60 or so, who was giving her one of those eye-cutting, judgmental non-stares while topping off coffee for us, J stopped as the table fell silent for the moment.

There was no telling exactly how much the woman had heard before J had decided to spare her of the details that she was more than ready to give me and Ty about what had happened last night—and this morning too for that matter.

It was no longer breakfast time technically, but we all chose breakfast food in an unconscious effort to elongate our Saturday. And as much as I didn’t need a third cup of coffee, I sat there and watched the waitress refill my mug without saying a word.

She quickly finished and walked off, sneaking in another condemnatory look at J, who fortunately missed it as she was concentrating on lowering that stack of French toast in front of her.

“Anyway,” J continued, right on cue. “I wonder if using the teeth like that is a thing where he’s from—somewhere in Britain or some-fucking-where. I don’t know. But it’s a goddamn gift—”

“And he’s British! You cannot make this stuff up,” Ty said, laughing at some untold portions of this story.

“I don’t get it,” I said, looking back and forth at them, waiting for somebody to fill me in.

“Hey, why don’t you tell Kenya his name?” Ty asked J with a devious smile on her face.

But J simply rolled her eyes, holding in a blush, and didn’t respond. Perhaps the French toast was more important than this too.

So Ty went on: “His name is, get this… Mason Dixon.”

I smiled and looked at J, waiting for her say something in defense or maybe correct Ty or something. But again, food was priority.

“You’re seeing a guy named Mason Dixon?” I asked, for some reason finding that rather fascinating.

“I met him when I went to get a tattoo.”

“Wait... You got a tattoo?” I was so out of the loop.

“She didn’t get the tattoo,” Ty said, calmingly. And then she turned to J and said, “He looked young. You bother to find out how old he is?”

“Yeah,” I said, “make sure you’re not crossing any lines.”

Ty got it and smiled. J ignored me.

“You know...” J started, taking her time. “Age… is such an arbitrary thing.”

“That answer...” Ty said, shaking her head. “Seriously? Makes me question his legality—”

“He’s legal, okay,” J said, very unconvincingly.

Ty looked at her waiting for the other shoe to drop, and again, J took her time before finally saying, “He’s... 20.”

“20?!” Ty said, louder than expected. “Are you kidding me?”

J shrugged, “A mature 20.”

And I could no longer hold in my laughter.

Ty wanted to laugh too, but she refused and just looked at me and repeated, “A ‘mature’ 20,” and shook her head in disbelief at the obvious absurdity of the statement. “Would you believe she graduated summa cum laude from Howard and she’s says things like this—”

“Listen,” J said, “an 8-year age difference is nothing. If I was 39 and he was 31…”

“But he’s not 31,” Ty said. “He’s 20—not even old enough to buy you a drink.”

“Shit, he’ll be 21…” And J didn’t know when, so she went with, “Eventually.”

Ty offered nothing more than her now customary eye-roll, head shaking reaction to J’s responses.

Despite finding humor at her expense, I felt bad for J this time.

“You know... if she were a man,” I said to Ty without looking at her, “you wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

“Exactly!” J agreed.

And with her eyebrows raised, Ty put her fork down, looked at me and said, “So you’re siding with her on this?”

“I’m just saying... Men have been dating people half their age since the beginning of time and everybody’s okay with it.”

“He’s not half my age,” J corrected justifiably.

But in response to me, Ty said, “Because it balances out. Look, men mature much later than women so a 50 year old man is really only mentally in his early to mid 30s. So if he dates a woman who’s 30, they’re actually about the same age. In this case... the guy you’re seeing, J, is only... about 6, maybe 7-years-old.”

J couldn’t help but laugh at the potential truth of that statement, but I, however, was still caught up on the part about a 50-year-old and a 30-year-old men…

“What?” Ty asked, noticing that I was suddenly distant.

I took a deep breath, not really wanting to bring this up, but I couldn’t avoid it now because it was already up.

So I revealed, “Last night… I got the chance to meet who my father’s been seeing the past few months.”

Ty and J’s eyes met without either one of them having to move their heads. I could feel that they were figuratively on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear this story.

Most nights, by the time I got home, my father was either already asleep or already gone for work. He was an emergency nurse practitioner with crazy hours, so I seldom knew exactly when we’d see each other throughout a given day. We had a system though: before sleep every night, if we hadn’t seen or talked to each other that day, we had to call and hear the other one’s voice, if only for a brief moment to say, “Love you,” before the day ended.

This was something my dad started when I went to college—even though I didn’t leave town for school—and things had begun to change in the house with his and my mother’s relationship… or lack thereof. We hadn’t had a particularly ideal father-daughter connection when I was growing up and perhaps he felt bad about that. Perhaps he felt bad about a lot of things. But Jon Shaw has always been the type of guy to make an effort to correct things and embrace change, rather than wallow in misery.

But last night, instead of coming home to a sleeping dad or an empty house, I found myself standing outside my front door trying to decipher how many voices, exactly, were coming from inside. We were the only two people who lived there, so the blend of voices was confusing me.

I carefully unlocked the door, not knowing what I’d be walking into and potentially interrupting, and immediately caught eyes with my dad, who had just stood up to make an effort to formally introduce me to the other person in the room—a well-dressed guy wearing a complimentary smile, who stood too.

“Kenya! You’re home. Finally,” my dad said, coming toward me in order to guide me into the living room to meet our guest. “I’d like you to meet Manuel. Manuel, my daughter, Kenya.”

Taking my hand before I could officially offer it, Manuel said with an undeniable excitement, “Kenya. Wow. I’ve heard so much about you. Nice to finally meet you.”

I forced a smile, but couldn’t offer up words about the finality of meeting him. I knew he existed—I knew that my father had been seeing someone for the past half-year or so—but I hadn’t heard a single thing about him. I didn’t know what he looked like—average height with light brown skin and close cut hair. I didn’t know where he came from; he had a slight accent, which revealed that he might’ve been of Latin descent. And I didn’t know that he was probably not much older than me—young enough to be my father’s son!

I was at a loss for words as I found myself still holding his hand from our initial handshake like 20 seconds in. I just kept looking at him, trying to find a way to perceive him being in his 40s, at least. But after about five minutes, which really didn’t seem as uncomfortable for either of them as it was for me, he eventually revealed that he was a surgical intern at the hospital where my father worked, and I couldn’t help but mentally do the math: 30, maybe 31.

“He’s barely older than me,” I said to Ty and J, avoiding looking at either of them. I stared into my coffee, swirling the spoon around, trying to make the almond milk blend better.

“And this bothers you?” Ty asked.

“It doesn’t bother me,” I said, too quickly.

But then, after a thought: “Okay, it bothers me,” I admitted. “I mean… first guy I meet. Not exactly what I expected.”

“Man. That’s gotta be weird as fuck,” J said, almost mechanically.

Ty looked at her in disbelief, perhaps thinking that she was being insensitive.

But I agreed, “It is. But what can I say? They seem to be really… serious. He’s happy.”

“That’s the thing about love, Kenya: it doesn’t make sense—”

“Wait a goddamn minute,” J said. “Didn’t you just harass me about dating a younger dude like five minutes ago—”

“Yeah, that’s because what you’re doing has nothing to do with love, it’s... damn near statutory rape. I’m tempted to call somebody.”

That made me laugh.

“I don’t understand though, Kenya. If your father’s happy,” J said, “then... what difference does it make?”

There was no way that I could answer that and still sound my age.

When I turned 18, I finally got my first car—an already six-year-old Nissan Altima. It was taupe inside, aubergine on the outside, and before I’d been the owner a full year, all four hubcaps had already mysteriously vanished, seemingly all at once. But the cool thing was: when I was really feeling nostalgic, I could pop in a cassette tape because the player still worked, although that was probably the only thing that still functioned without some kind of jimmy-rig to assist its function.

Now, I was almost 10 years older… and so was the car. I aged quite well, if I do say so myself. The car, though? Not so much. Short distances weren’t as scary, so I reserved its use for important errands like grocery shopping, where today I had lost track of time after getting caught up tasting samples of pumpkin spice nonsense and talking about it with old people.

So that afternoon, I was late for an appointment at my own house. Apparently, the wall around the property was slowly collapsing. The house was built in 1900—a Victorian row-house just blocks away from Eastern Market—so despite a few rounds of renovations throughout its lifetime, the wall had met its match with Father Time. So it either needed to be reinforced, rebuilt, or taken down all together. I was scheduled to meet an engineer at 2 to assess the damage and get the verdict, which, of course, I would give to my father.

I pulled into a parking space right in front of my house and immediately noticed the guy—with his white shirt tucked into his jeans—already walking around the wall and taking notes.

I quickly got out with an apology written on my face as I approached him, but before I could say anything, he introduced himself: “Gideon Lamar, GL Engineering,” while offering a handshake.

“Hi. Sorry I’m late,” I said, accepting his hand.

“Traffic?” he asked with a smile, before looking back at my car and saying, “Or car trouble,” condescendingly.

“No,” I said. “No excuse. I’m just... late.”

And he accepted that with a smile and said, “Don’t sweat it. Late happens.”

I was a bit relieved that he wasn’t a jerk about it.

“I went ahead and got started out here. Will the ah... man of the house be joining us today?”

I could immediately read that this question was not as professional as it might be—or should be—construed.

I answered anyway, “Ah. No. He won’t,” knowing that his question was meant to provide deeper insight that had nothing to do with a father, and more to do with whether I was single.

In those five seconds I’d known him, I hadn’t entertained the idea of whether Gideon was attractive or not until that very moment, because… Well, I’d like to say that it was because I was professional and assumed he’d keep it that way too, but that wasn’t the reason.

Gideon could’ve been 45, give or take a few years, and he was very fit, had all his hair and very little, if any, gray. But honestly… I almost never initially saw men as an attractive option when they were over a certain obvious age. Not that I couldn’t, I just never did.

But now that I had been presented with the idea of whether to consider Gideon as an option… Well, I guess he was kind of good looking. It still felt weird to me trying to see someone probably 20 years my senior in that way.

He spent the next 20 minutes explaining things to me about the integrity of the retaining wall surrounding the house, pointing out cracks and splits in the concrete, talking about weeping holes and drainage concerns, while sneaking in a few personal questions, like: Did you grow up in DC? What do you do for a living? And a collection of others that led to more specificity about who, exactly, the man of the house was, which, once he found out was my father, ultimately led to:

“Do you have an email address where I can send the quote for the work?”

“Sure,” I responded, taking the yellow pad and pen he’d been using to take notes.

“And... also, a phone number… so that I can call you to ask you out?”

Like most women, I had no idea how to avoid unsolicited number inquiries. So I wrote my number on the pad.

I watched as he went across the street to a small, relatively new pickup truck, and nodded a cordial goodbye to me as he pulled off.

With all of the age-talk lately, I was curious. I had dated my fair share of frogs... Could prince charming actually be a man of a certain age?

After I put my groceries away, I headed down to one of my favorite record stores to meet up with Stax before we headed to the movies. As movie buffs, Stax and I had always made it a priority post-Thanksgiving to see the films that might be Oscar contenders in February.

“I never discriminate based on age. I fucked a 50 year old when I was 25. It’s all the same in the dark,” he said, before looking over at me with a wicked smile, while flipping through the Classic Rock section intently, although having no real intention of buying anything.

I had told him about my encounter with the older gentleman, and of course he had an opinion.

“The key is confidence,” he went on. “The same way you go after what you want when it comes to music... is the same tenacity you need to have when it comes to guys. A woman that knows what she wants, whether she’s 50 or 15, is always a turn on.”

“You’re turned-on by 15-year-olds?”

“You’re missing the point,” he said. “Men aren’t as intimidating as you make us out to be. We’re really not even that sophisticated.”

“You’re missing the point,” I said. “I’m not really interested in older men. Not that much older, anyway.”

“How old we talkin’?” he asked.

“I don’t know—40 something.”

I looked at him for a response of some kind, but he just kept flipping through records like I hadn’t just said something outrageous.

And then he offered, “I can see you with an older guy. The entertainment business can be very demanding. An older man may be more settled and apt to understand and accept your schedule and pace.”

I’d never even thought about that.

He went on: “We become a little less selfish as we get older, I have to admit. I think an older man might be better for support and stability.”

Sometimes Stax would say things so profound and insightful that it would change my entire outlook on an issue.

“Awe, shit! Look at this!” he screamed.

He pulled the album completely out of the holder and handed it to me: "Tequila" by The Champs.

“You remember Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? Dancing in the bar...” He began doing the dance from the movie and whistling the song.

And then he would do something to remind me that he was a 27-year-old guy who still indulged in video games, and collected comic books, and preferred animated sitcoms over ones with actual people. If it wasn’t for his active sex life and full-time job, he could easily be mistaken for a 12-year-old boy.

I watched him as he stood there laughing and doing the Pee Wee dance, and I began to think: if this is what I should expect from men my age... maybe I was past reinforcing my wall. Perhaps it was time to consider taking it down all together.

 

While I was contemplating the structural integrity of my dating life, Ty was entertaining the thought of rebuilding hers.

She was technically a doctor already; she had her PhD—after having completed graduate school, her practica, dissertation, and internship—but she wasn’t licensed to practice just yet. She was in the middle of her postdoctoral fellowship, basically supervised training and mentorship in her field, to help prepare her for her specialty.

She worked at an office in southeast where she had quickly made nice with almost everyone who worked there, from the partners who were big-name doctors—some of whom had made the Top Doctors list for DC—to the grounds people who kept the place clean and running. She knew something about every single person working there, and they felt at ease with revealing very personal things without her even asking. She made it a point to get to work a half hour early every day because she knew she needed extra time to engage the people she crossed paths with.

So that day, as she was preparing to leave the office, she smiled as she approached the girl sitting at the front desk, Shawnice, as she headed toward the door.

“Good night. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night,” replied the girl. And then she remembered, “Oh, Dr. Aldridge? Someone left this here for you.”

She was pointing a small white envelope at Ty, who curiously walked back to accept it. She immediately opened it right there without hesitation and revealed: “It’s another card.”

“That’s the third one this month,” Shawnice said. “From Mr. Petigrew?” she asked.

Ty simply looked at her because it was, in fact, from Mr. Petigrew.

“Maybe you should call him,” Shawnice said.

“Technically, he’s a patient. I can’t fraternize with a patient,” Ty said.

And Shawnice raised one eyebrow, obviously keeping most of her thoughts about Ty’s rule to herself. But then she finally did say, “He’s also a fine-ass, single dietitian with a cute kid… who’s technically the patient here.”

Ty got the implication, smiled, and said, “Good night,” again before walking off.

 

 

I learned very early on that my job overseeing the careers of musicians often blur the lines of professional and parental.

That evening, I made my way across town to check up on Lucas. For most people, the common cold was just a few irritating symptoms and maybe a good excuse to take off work. For Lucas, it was a matter of life and death.

He rented a room in a house shared by I don’t know how many people. So after one of his roommates let me into the front door, I found myself knocking on the entrance to his room.

I heard the guitar stop and the shuffling of feet mixed with coughing coming toward the door before it opened, revealing a zombie-like version of my boy. Dressed in pajama bottoms, a tee shirt and a robe, he made himself look even more pitiful once he saw me, perhaps to draw my sympathy.

“I feel like shit, Kenya.”

He coughed away from me and into his arm, and I covered the bottom half of my face with my coat, so I wouldn’t breathe in his germs.

“Good afternoon to you too,” I replied.

“You have a key for a reason,” he said with slight irritation, having had to get up out of bed to get the door.

“Hey, I don’t know what I might be walking in on,” I said.

While groaning, he walked back over to the mattress on the floor and collapsed onto it, apparently where he’d been before I came in.

The room was more like a little makeshift apartment. Unlike all of the other rooms in the house, this one did have its own bathroom and little kitchenette, all within approximately 300 square foot space.

The place was a mess: clothes everywhere, loose papers all over the joint, food packaging on the floor, actual food on the floor...

“Have you read the ASCAP stuff I sent to you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

The only thing to sit on was a milk crate, so I grabbed one, slid it close to him and sat down waiting for my answer.

“I’ve been writing and rehearsing all day... Man, I think I have liver failure,” he said.

“So no, you haven’t read it,” I concluded with a deep sigh, because here’s the thing: every biopic, biography and “Unsung” story about musicians have a common denominator—ignorant artists who either didn’t know or didn’t bother to educate themselves about how their business should work.

ASCAP is what you would call a performance rights organization (PRO). There are three significant ones in America; BMI and Sesac are the other two. Every artist, regardless of skill or professional level, should affiliate with one. When you hear a song on the radio or in a public place, that place is responsible for paying to use that music—that money is called royalties. A PRO’s sole purpose is to appropriately collect these royalties for the copyright owners of music, which in Lucas’ case would be Lucas because he writes his own music.

The truth is: I had filed the ASCAP papers for him months ago, but he didn’t know it. I still wanted him to go through the process. I didn’t want stupid artists who would later question whether I had anything to do with their financial situation, if of course it was a bad situation.

“You hear me? I Googled liver failure and I think I have it—”

My sigh cut him off because this was the most ridiculous assumption he could make. I reached over and used my thumb to lift his eyelid.

“Hey!” he yelled, backing away.

I then lifted his shirt to see his chest. “Does this hurt?” I asked, pressing his chest.

“No! But stop. What are you doing?”

“You don’t have liver failure,” I informed.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Because. Acute liver failure causes jaundice of the eyes and skin, and tenderness of the chest.”

“Why? Why do you know that?!” he asked.

“Aside from my father being a nurse?” I asked rhetorically, which had nothing to do with me knowing this about his health, but made for a good argument. “It’s my job to know it when I have babies for artists who avoid exercise like it’s the plague and won’t eat what I tell them to eat…”

I picked up an empty fast food bag and tossed it at him.

“And don’t read the performance rights organization stuff that they need to sign…”

He cut me off with a sigh and said, “Aren’t you supposed to do that kind of stuff for me?”

“You should know what it is, Lucas.”

He rolled his eyes as if to say that I was annoying him.

But I went on: “You want your music on the radio, right? On TV. Clubs, bars, DJs everywhere? Well, who do you think is going to make sure you get paid when all that happens? Any worthwhile musician is with one of these organizations. We have to choose one for you, alright? I can do it, but I want you to be a part of the process. And I want to get it done today, so stop trying to diagnose yourself and get to it. Your immune system’s just depleted—”

“Do you think I need to go to the emergency room?” he asked, more concerned with that than what I’d just said.

“Oh no. I’m not sitting around there all day only to have a doctor prescribe rest, vitamin C and soup.”

I stood up.

“You’re leaving?! No! You can’t go,” he pleaded. “Kenya, please!”

“Lucas—”

“Kenya, please. You just got here.”

As I looked down into those watery, puppy dog eyes, in that very moment it became clear—even though I wasn’t a parent... I still had a baby.

“I’ll be back later. I promise.”

 

Meanwhile, it had been nearly two weeks since the Kennedy Center event and Tk still had not gotten that rapping teacher out of his head. It wasn’t that the guy couldn’t rap. He actually wasn’t bad. It was, however, the fact that he was well into his 60s. Something about that just didn’t seem right to Tk. And he wondered if in 40 years that might be him: Teacher of the Year, who, oh by the way, could also rap?

He was consumed by all of this mentally, while physically surrounded by the obnoxious sound of rowdy teenagers during his fourth period class, who should’ve been completing an end-of-the-semester final. Instead, they had become rambunctious and he hadn’t even noticed.

“Mr. Rahman, he hit me!”

He looked up and saw the girl who was complaining, but he didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Instead, he just sat there contemplating the question: When do you stop? When do you finally admit to yourself that you’re too old to be a rapper and just stop?

And right then, his trance was broken by the sound of the bell indicating the end of the period.

Less than an hour later, before the lunch break was complete, Principal Marx found himself sitting behind his desk, staring at a typed letter instead of the tuna sandwich that was getting warm as the smell consumed the room. A box filled with miscellaneous items took one of the chairs opposite the desk in front of him; the other chair was vacant because his World History teacher, Mr. Kamal Taj Rahman, preferred to stand during what he hoped would be a brief meeting.

Principal Marx folded the letter down back like it when he received it, took off his glasses, but did not look up to make eye contact with Tk. Instead, he kept his eyes on his desk as he said, “Kamal, you know what? I’m going to do you a favor.”

He looked at the letter again, and then he looked up at Tk for the first time since he’d started reading. “I want you to go back to your classroom. Put your things back on your desk and back on the shelves. And then I want you to go home. Hug your son. Kiss your wife. Eat the dinner she makes. Drink the water she pours. Maybe... you even make love to her tonight. Take yourself a nice hot shower. And you come in here tomorrow morning ready to educate these kids. And at the end of this month, and the end of next month, and the month after that, you’re going to pay your rent, your electric, gas, water and telephone bills. You’re going to buy food. The fresh kind, not processed. You’re going to take your family out someplace and have a nice time. You’re even going to have a little money to put into that ah... music thing you like to do. But the reality is: teaching World History enables all that. It enables it because it is a job. It allows you live and to eat and to take care of your responsibilities as a man. Rapping?” he said as if this was something utterly ridiculous, “It does not do that.”

Tk dropped his head, considering what he’d just heard. Principal Marx was someone he admired. He looked up to him, in fact. He himself was a poet, and they had shared many a lunch hour talking about the art form and its influence on the culture—not just the Hip Hop culture, but American culture. Principal Marx was the guy who gave him his first job out of college, and even hired him again here at this school. He thought Tk was very bright and could someday be where he was… if he just stayed focused.

“So tonight,” he went on, “when your wife asks you how your day was, you tell her whatever you tell her every other night. And believe me, you’ll rest assured that when you flip that light switch, that bulb inside is gonna fire up. Because the favor I’m giving you is the chance to walk out of here as if nothing happened.”

He pointed that folded piece of paper at Tk, who stared at it for a moment before reaching out and reluctantly taking it. He then picked up that box full of his teacher stuff and left the office.

Principal Marx took a very deep breath considering the bullet he just dodged and the good deed he felt he’d just done. And then he looked over at that sandwich that was looking back at him, and he finally picked it up and went to town on it before he could be unexpectedly interrupted yet again.

But Tk left pondering a new question…

And at an open mic that night, he tested out a new poem about this question. It was called, “When do you start?”

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When Gideon asked me to meet him at U Street Music Hall, I was curious what business a guy like him had at a place like this. Knowing the spot well, I figured I’d dress the part: rocker-cut black jeans, Chuck Taylors, a vintage tee, and black-rimmed, nonprescription hipster glasses for good measure and accessory. I even plucked my hair out even more to make the curls in my fro just a bit more untamed.

Before I could get out of my ride-share, I was confronted by a massive crowd—doing a piss-poor job of creating a single file line—standing outside the place along the street. I spotted Gideon, who was already in line, and walked hastily toward him.

“You have to believe me when I tell you,” I said before greeting him, “I’m not usually late.”

Oh yeah, he said to meet him at 6:15 and it was 6:54.

“Look, I was once a young business owner myself. I know how it is. So... you’re actually right on time,” he said, smiling.

My mouth fell open. “You knew I would be late, so...”

“So, I planned to see the whole show,” he finished, still smiling. “Doors open at 7:00.”

“But for the record,” I said, “I’m usually always on time, okay?”

He just said, “Okay.” And ended that conversation with a smile. He had a really nice smile, and I’d bet he knew it, which was why he used it so much. It was nice enough to get him out of situations. And maybe into others.

He looked over at me and said, “You look good. I like this get-up. It’s really... cute.”

I thought about that. Cute. That was a step up from “nice,” I suppose, which was the usual complimentary word I got from guys. I still hadn’t made it to “hot” yet. And “sexy” might still be a ways off.

I responded, “Thanks,” while looking down at myself to remember this ensemble for later use, perhaps. Fashion is not—and never has been—my strong suit.

Although I didn’t feel the need to return the compliment, I did notice that he wasn’t wearing his shirt tucked into his jeans like last time. That was an improvement.

“So. You like Balkan Beat Box?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah!” I said. It was one of my favorite bands. In fact, I’d seen them the last time they were in DC. Then I quickly remembered the style of music they did—high energy, Isreali fusion of Reggae, Hip Hop and Klezmer—and I looked at him in shock and asked, “Wait, you like Balkan Beat Box?”

“I’m a man of diverse tastes,” he said. “I learned about their music during a trip to Tel Aviv a couple of years ago.”

“Tel Aviv,” I said. “Wow.”

“Have you been?”

“I’m sad to say that I don’t get out of the city much.”

“How come?” he asked.

The fact that I still lived at home with my father should’ve been evidence of my current financial status.

But I responded with: “Time.”

“Yeah,” he said, reminiscently. “Those formative years of entrepreneurship can be a bitch, can’t they?”

I simply smiled. He understood without my having to explain. I liked that.

The line began moving and we continued to talk as we made our way into the club. Come to find out, this was a small, exclusive performance in DC to celebrate their new album release, which explained why it wasn’t at a bigger venue considering the band’s popularity. Gideon later mentioned that his close friend from Tel Aviv was the band’s attorney. Who would’ve guessed?

It was standing room only inside, and the excitement began right away. Before the end of the first song, we were both jumping around like kids in one of those fast food restaurant jungle gyms.

That evening, age went out the window… and we bonded over bad dancing and Balkan Beat Box.

 

While I was letting my hair down, J was letting her guard down.

Mason had taken her to a party near Catholic University that was anything but holy. Things started out normal—music, drinks, conversation… But some time between her second spliff and her third Stella Artoir, the entire place had gone totally dark—the lights turned black, giving an ultraviolet glow to everything and everyone; the music changed from radio friendly EDM to garage dubstep; the drinks were stronger than anything Anheuser-Busch would make, and hookah stems were an extension of nearly everyone’s mouth. No one seemed to be talking either, but they were connecting in other ways far more intimate.

This could’ve been a frat house and this could’ve been a frat party, which meant Mason could’ve been a frat boy. But none of that even mattered to J as she sat on a couch practically on Mason’s lap, sharing smoke from a multi-stem hookah pipe as they could barely see through the cloud of smoke all around them.

She didn’t know what it was about Mason that had her so hooked—perhaps his British accent, his caramel skin, plump lips? All of that was just icing; the cake, which was the real reason why she looked forward to a text from him everyday, was his unusual ability to make her cum in the messiest of ways and faster than she could even do it herself!

No man had ever done that so consistently, so the fact that he was technically still just a boy was utterly remarkable. Therefore, in her words, she gave “zero fucks” about how old he was because he was sexually skilled far beyond his years.

So she indulged in hookah for the first time in years with Mason. And as he took the stem from his mouth, turned to her and blew smoke into her face, she laughed and lost herself in the moment as they then began making out.

J hadn’t done things like this since... Well, since she was Mason’s age.

Suddenly, he pulled away, reaching into his pocket. “Hey, look what I found,” he said, pulling out a handful of pills, some pink and some blue.

“The pink one is for me. And the blue one... I’m taking that for you. You’ll thank me for it later,” he said as he stuck his tongue in her mouth for five more seconds of action before he pulled away and began laughing suggestively as he popped one of each pill and downed them with her beer.

Grimacing, she said, “Hey, should you be mixing the two of those? And with beer?”

He laughed and said, “What are you, like, my fucking mum now?”

This statement quickly made her self-conscious. She even looked around to make sure no one heard him, lest she be found out for being older than everyone there.

“Here,” he offered, trying to stick one of the pills into her mouth.

But she dodged it and tried to rebound by saying, “I don’t need pills to have a good time—”

“Ooo!!! You know what would be fucking dope right now?” he said, already on another topic. “If you gave me head.”

“What?!”

He didn’t even seem to interpret her outrage as a “no,” because he was sitting there smiling and apparently waiting for her to start.

“No. I’m not doing that shit right here.”

“Nobody’s paying us any attention,” he said. “Come on.”

But she said, “That’s not the point.”

Even with Mason Dixon... there were just some lines even J wouldn’t cross.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll just give it to you.”

However, there was always room for compromise.

He moved down onto his knees in front of her and spread her legs. Before she knew it, she could barely speak.

The show ended just before 9, so Gideon and I figured we’d try to find somewhere to eat before it got too late. But after strolling and talking, and eliminating every restaurant we passed, for one reason or another, before we knew it midnight was approaching and our options were becoming even more limited. Fortunately, we stumbled onto the Diner, which was the actual name of the diner, and lucky for us it was open 24 hours, so in we went.

Talking with him came easily and I enjoyed listening to the many stories of his travels and other adventures. I learned that Gideon was originally from Memphis, had been in business for himself over 15 years, loved Jazz, and in fact he’d played tenor saxophone since he was six.

I’d ordered pancakes, which for some reason Gideon found “adorable.”

“I almost never pass up breakfast food if it’s an option,” I admitted. “I don’t care what time of day it is.”

“Or night,” he filled in.

“Or night,” I agreed.

But as the conversation progressed, it somehow had quickly gone from light-hearted tales about his worldly experiences with foods to loaded revelations about who he was and what he wanted out of life.

“Because you know, your priorities start changing after while,” he explained. “I’ve traveled all over the world, my business is doing great... I was young when I married—22. Big mistake. So... now I have an ex-wife. I don’t want another one.”

I simply nodded while purposely avoiding eye contact as I tried to finish the pancakes, knowing that I didn’t stand a chance.

“I’m ready to do it for real this time,” he added. And I could feel him look at me when he said that, but again, I just nodded and made sure not to lock eyes.

But he went on, “And no kids. Not yet anyway. What about you? I know you’ve never been married but... is that something you’re looking forward to?”

My mouth was full, so this gave me the perfect excuse to take my time to answer him. But between you and me, as much as I might’ve considered a more domesticated life someday, in reality, it was the furthest thing from my mind at that time.

“Ah... Maybe,” I responded.

He smiled, but also grimaced and repeated with a questioning inflection: “Maybe?”

This time, the waitress was at the table refilling the water in the glasses, which again, provided me a little time before I had to respond.

Most of the men I met expected women, even my age, to be on the lookout for a husband. When I said I was not, it immediately drew the conclusion that I was doing what my friend J was doing. And I wasn’t. But to say that I was thinking about marriage might’ve implied that I would jump into it in my 20s like Ty did. And I wasn’t doing that either.

The waitress walked off, so I said, “Yeah. Maybe.”

“So you don’t know if you ever want to get married?” he asked.

“I might. Eventually,” I added.

“You might,” he repeated. “But... right now you’re just out to have fun?

“No, not exactly. I mean, yeah, I wanna have fun, but...”

I could see the look on his face was both a look of confusion and a look of intrigue, so I quickly added: “Not that kind of fun.”

“Not what kind of fun?” he asked.

And I thought to myself, How do I explain this?

“Like... how most single people prefer to live. I don’t,” I said.

And I thought that my explanation was very clear, but he came back with: “Okay. So, you don’t want to get married, but... you don’t want to be single. So what are you doing?”

Honestly, at that very moment, I wanted to be doing something—literally anything—other than talking about this. I hate feeling like I have to explain myself, but I hate being misunderstood. So it was always a weird, uncomfortable situation wishing people just got me without me having to give them anything to get.

“I’m just...” I sighed and started over. “I guess I’m trying to live in the moment and not... not focus too much on a future that may or... or may not happen.”

“Why wouldn’t it happen?”

“I don’t know...”

“Do you have a plan?” he asked.

“A plan?”

“Yeah. Like a five-year plan,” he explained. “If so, it would lead you into your early 30s and... if you plan to have kids, it should probably be a part of that schedule.”

My pancakes—or what was left of them—had become extremely important right then. But the truth was: I had a plan—a business plan, which had nothing to do with a husband or kids or any of that. So in fact, I had a better idea of where my company would be in five years than I did my own life.

The waitress came to the table and picked up Gideon’s empty plate, and before she could get away he said, “Check, please.”

Those past five seconds of silence was more deafening than the concert we had been in for two hours. And the funniest thing of all was that at that very moment, I would much rather have been discussing the bar scene from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure than sitting at that table.

We said our goodbyes and headed in separate directions. But I couldn’t go home because I had promised Lucas I’d be back. I managed to make it to a store before closing time to pick up a few things to aid in his recovery, and this time I bypassed knocking and used my key to come right in.

“What took you so long?”

“Again,” I said, “hello to you too.” I was hell bent on breaking his habit of not formally greeting me.

I sat the grocery bag of stuff down on a table and took off my coat.

“Oh, wow, you look cute,” he said.

I handed him the cup of tea and said, “Here. Drink this,” before responding. “And thanks,” to his unexpected compliment.

He sat up on the bed to drink. After a few sips, he said with a devilish smirk lingering on his face, “You saw a boy tonight, didn’t you?”

As I sat on the milk crate, I tried to look preoccupied with setting up his laptop to handle business. I was in no mood to start discussing my personal life with Lucas.

“You did! I can tell,” he said. “Who was he? Is it someone I know?”

Again, I just shook my head and focused on the screen. His insistence caused me to want to laugh, but I held that back as well.

“Tell me!”

“It wasn’t a boy. It was a man,” I revealed.

“Ohhh! Okay. A man,” he said, teasingly. “Well, are you going to see men more often?”

I made him wait for my response. And then to amuse him, I said, “Can’t. I have to take care of you.”

And of course, he replied, “Good. ’Least you know where your priorities lie.”

“Just drink the stuff,” I insisted.

He could see that I was pulling up the ASCAP website, so in an effort to distract me—or distract himself—he asked, “What is this?” referring to what was in the cup.

“Tea,” I told him.

“You drink this? Is this why you never get sick?”

I reached over and picked up the same fast food bag from earlier and tossed it at him again. “I don’t eat this, so that helps.”

“Hey, I promise I’m going to do that performance stuff tomorrow—”

“We’re going to do it now,” I said. “Even if I have to read it to you myself.”

He began strumming a melancholy tune on the guitar.

“I finished that song I was writing,” he said. “I might change the bridge, but the hook is tight, and the verses are there. But... I guess you’ll be the judge of that, right?”

I simply smiled, but I was glad that he was starting to understand the order of things.

At 1:34 a.m., young Lucas was too sick to run, hide, avoid me, or find a way to put off sitting down and completing a process that would later be very beneficial to a financial part of his career. So, in his mind, it had finally gotten done.

I looked around at the mess still all over the place and I desperately wanted to clean it up, simply because it should’ve been clean. This was an adult’s room after all. I’d even started by picking up that fast food bag I’d thrown at him and putting it into the trash.

But I couldn’t do it. Despite how he acted most of the time, Lucas was a grown man. And despite how I treated him most of the time, I knew I needed to start insisting that he become one. Making him go through his ASCAP application was a start.

But as he slept now and I stood there preparing to trek back to Capitol Hill from Columbia Heights at this God forsaken hour of the morning, I had learned a valuable lesson—although I felt like I needed to take care of Lucas, I wouldn’t be able to do it for the rest of his life. The tea and soup and other medicinal gifts I brought that night were fine, but there was a line that needed to be drawn.

So, I drew the line right then. I wasn’t a mother. I wasn’t a guardian. I was the head of a label, so it was time I started accepting that despite our loving relationship, I was in his life for business reasons. That’s it. So, I looked at the mess around me, and then at the boy fast asleep in his bed on the floor… and I left.

By the next day, Lucas was feeling a whole lot better.

Unfortunately, however, the same couldn’t be said for J.

“I feel like shit,” J exclaimed with exasperation, as she gingerly slid into the booth beside Ty.

We were back at that little coffee shop we’d come to the week before. Ty liked the Ethiopian brew there. And she and I had already been there for almost an hour that afternoon when J came in walking funnily and stepping softly as she made her way over to our table—a window booth.

She didn’t look like her normal camera-ready self either, which was probably why she was hiding behind sunshades on this rather bleak, overcast day.

She covered her face with her hands, and then picked up Ty’s coffee and began drinking it.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did things go south?”

Again, Ty got my bad Civil War pun and simply smiled.

“It just... That energy he has? It’s because he’s a fucking drug addict. So yeah, no, I can’t deal with him anymore. His head game is epic as a motherfucker, but—”

She stopped as soon as she noticed that same Barbadian waitress from before, as she topped off the mugs on the table.

“Can we get another cup of coffee here,” Ty asked, no longer interested in the one J had stolen from her.

She nodded to Ty, but then gave J another one of her infamous eye-cutting judgmental glances before walking away.

“The sex is bomb,” J continued, “but I’m getting too old for this! Can’t be poppin fucking pills and smoking all kinds of shit all the time. I’m an adult. Damnit, I pay taxes!”

I laughed because this was a prototypical “J” comment in which we would all normally find humor at her expense. But I noticed that Ty was distant.

The reason that she was remaining quiet without an ounce of judgment toward J was because last week—on a day when her hormones conflicted with her worst hair day of the month, and she was forced to go to work instead of stay at home in bed—she’d gotten a bit of a surprise of her own.

“Doctor Aldridge... I can no longer use my father as my intermediary. The cards... Those were from me.”

Ty’s mouth fell open as she sat adjacent to her 3 o’clock—a 7-year-old boy named Teddy, who had begun seeing her a few months ago after the loss of his mother the year before.

She quickly realized that she was probably revealing her shock, so she straightened up in her chair to allow him to comfortably continue.

“I think you’re pretty. And you’re really nice,” he said. “And you listen to me so... I think that makes you even more prettier.”

“Thank you, Teddy—”

But he wasn’t done: “Dr. Aldridge… I’m going to marry you when I grow up. If, of course, you’ll have me.”

She couldn’t help but blush. She would never forget the feeling she felt when that 7-year-old boy—albeit, in her words, a “mature 7”—professed his love to her. In fact, she immediately thought of J and made a personal vow to never again harass her about the ages of the men she dated. Or the boys.

 

At my ripe age of "old enough to know better, but too young to care," I was learning to accept that age is more than just a number. It’s life’s way of counting you in... or counting you out.

Tk learned this the hard way and lived to tell me about it that evening when we met for dinner at Bus Boys & Poets.

“Hungry?” he asked, probably rhetorically (and probably sarcastically), as he watched me for a moment as I tore into the meatless sandwich, made with a Portobello substitute, in front of me.

“Oh god, yes. I’m starving!” I revealed anyway. “I was running around all day scouting locations with this new director for your video shoot next month, which is going to be amazing, by the way. Then... I got the contracts back for a couple of big shows in the spring, which I was able to negotiate double what our asking fee was for this year. You can thank me later. And then I had to finish up some boring stuff, you know, the usual: phone calls, emails, tweet this, Facebook that… So. Busy day, but that’s everyday. How about you?” I asked, finally.

And he took his time, taking a deep, contemplative breath before saying, “Well… I didn’t quit my job today, so…”

Wait. Was I missing something?

I said, “What? I don’t understand. Were you supposed to?”

He thinks about it—or thinks about how, exactly, he’s going to put this—and he said, “It’s that rapping teacher. I can’t get him out of my head. I get it. I know that this takes time but... I don’t have that kind of time.”

I snickered because I figured he was still thinking about that guy.

“So at first, I kept asking myself: When do you stop? At what point? Is it 30? Is it 35? I can’t imagine still trying to make it as a rapper when I’m 40, 45...”

“If it’s your dream, you never give up. Ask the rapping teacher,” I teased.

Too soon, perhaps, because Tk’s expression said that he didn’t find this funny.

“So,” he continued, “I went to the principal last week and handed him my resignation letter, and instead of just accepting it… he gave it back and reminded me why I was still working there.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“I’ve been working with you, doing music now for what—4, 5 years? We’ve had some moderate success, but music is still what I do in my spare time. I haven’t truly committed to making music the thing that I do with my life. So... I couldn’t quit my job. And now, that’s what I’ve been thinking about ever since: When do you start? When does everything else become secondary and you start being who you say you want to be?”

“Who do you say you want to be?”

“That’s the thing: I’ve never said it. I’ve just been doing music but I don’t know if I have a vision—”

“You have a vision,” I interrupted. “You’re just scared because you know it doesn’t include standing in a classroom, but that’s all you see everyday. It’s what you’re used to and what you’ve relied on for security. It’s safe. But sometimes,” I said, taking a sip of water first, “security can be overrated. But… I can promise you—you won’t be in a classroom when you’re 30.”

He sighed with a smile, feeling more sure about this now that I’d said it. It was as if hearing me provided some type of confirmation for him.

I guess that’s what I was there for. That, too, was part of my job.

“Honestly? I see myself being one of the greats,” he revealed.

“And so... now that you’ve said it... Start,” I told him. “Start being great.”

He stared at me while I just continued to eat. Maybe he wanted a little more. Could it really be that easy? was probably what he was thinking.

No, it likely wouldn’t be easy. Greatness is the result of process. True greats, whether in sports, arts, math, science… all embrace the process—the practice, the rewrites, the redos, the failed attempts, the misfires, the miscues, the studying, and long nights, and bad days, and so on and so on—and they then become great as a result.

No one gets to seven Super Bowls and wins five, and becomes the greatest of all time without being a “process guy!”

Tk’s eyes glazed over as he stared into the table, contemplating. I could see him mentally processing the idea of our discussion, perhaps visualizing his starting point.

First thing Monday morning, Tk will walk back into Principal Marx’s office, sit down and inform him of his plan to finish out the semester teaching world history… but that it would be his last.

It was John Lennon who wrote: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

He was 20 when he sang that.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if he was talking about all the plans we’re allegedly supposed to make in order to become a proper grownup—business plans, or family plans, or career plans, or contingency plans. Or even life plans!

I was trying to adopt the habit of letting life be life, because I would hate to think that real, untethered living only comes with youth, and that with age all you have is plans. There was so much I wanted, so much I wanted to achieve—such a specific “me” I desperately wanted to be.

Of course I had years to accomplish all of that, but I always felt like time was running out on me, and that other folks my age were light years ahead of me—that I hadn’t accomplished and hadn’t made the right plans to accomplish all of what I wanted to be. Hence… the plight of the typical millennial.

My Portobello sandwich and fries were gone. And as I sat there thinking about all of this, I couldn’t help but notice all the people all around us of all ages—all of whom were once babies who didn’t give a care about any of the things I pondered, and many of whom would grow old, and again, not give a care about any of this stuff.

That is the cycle. And somewhere in there, we can only do our best to make a life worth telling stories about—with people worth making stories with.

Right then—perhaps one of those inexplicable clues from the universe—I was suddenly consumed by the intoxicating aroma of chocolate…

So Lennon was definitely onto something: Life can’t be planned. And since that’s the case, the very same might be said about love.

END of TWO

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