Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [7]
“I don't know if we have it. Who cut it?” I smiled. “Cut it” showed that I was so much a part of the record business that I wouldn't say “Who recorded it?”
The man looked at me and said dryly “Charlie Parker.”
Although I lived in a large city, in truth I lived in a small town within that city's preserves. The few whites I knew who were aware of Charlie Parker were my brother's friends and were wrapped away from me in a worldly remoteness. I stumbled to get the record. When I shucked the jacket off he said, “You don't have to play it.” He went on, “I'll take ‘Well You Needn't’ by Thelonius Monk and ‘Night in Tunisia’ by Dizzy Gillespie.”
My brain didn't want to accept the burden of my ears. Was that a white man talking? I looked to see if maybe he was a Creole. Many Negroes from the bayou country could and did pass for white. They too, had hank-straight black hair, dark eyes and shell-cream skin.
There was nothing like a straight question: “Are you from Louisiana?”
“No, I'm from Portland.”
There is a textured grain that colors the Black voice which was missing when he spoke. I wrapped his selections and he paid for them and left. I wondered that he had been neither amiable nor rude and that he didn't remind me of anyone I'd ever met.
My two employers and Louise's handsome friend, Fred E. Pierson, cabdriver and painter, were the only whites I knew, liked and partially understood. When I met Fred, his friendliness had caused my old survival apparatus to begin meshing its gears. I suspected him (perhaps hopefully) of being personally (which meant romantically) interested in me. He helped me to paint the seven downstairs rooms at Mother's house and told me of his great and sad and lost love affair and that he liked having me for a friend.
The next weekend the sailor returned. He browsed for a while, then came to the counter and interrupted my preoccupation with papers.
“Hi.”
I looked up as if startled. “Hello.”
“Have you any Dexter Gordon?”
“Yes, ‘Dexter's Blues’.” Another Negro musician.
“I'll take that.”
I asked, “How about a Dave Brubeck?”
“No. Thanks, anyway.” Brubeck was white. “But anything by Prez? Do you have ‘Lester Leaps In’?”
“Yes.”
He waited. “Do you know of any jam sessions around here?”
“Oh, you're a musician.” That would explain it. Members from the large white jazz orchestras visited Black after-hours joints. They would ask to sit in on the jam sessions. Black musicians often refused, saying, “The white boys come, smoke up all the pot, steal the chord changes, then go back to their good paying jobs and keep us Black musicians out of the union.”
He said, “No, I just like jazz. My name is Tosh. What's yours?”
“Marguerite. What kind of name is Tosh?”
“It's Greek for Thomas—Enistasious. The short of it is Tosh. Are there any good jazz clubs here. Any place to meet some groovy people?”
There was Jimbo's, a blue-lighted basement where people moved in the slow-motion air like denizens of a large aquarium, floating effortlessly in their own element.
Ivonne and I went to the night spot as often as possible. She would take money from her catering business and I from my savings; we would put on our finest clothes, and hiding behind dignified façades, enter the always crowded room. Unfortunately, our attitudes were counterproductive. We projected ourselves as coolly indifferent and distant, but the blatant truth was we were out to find any handsome, single, intelligent, interested men.
I told Tosh I didn't know of any places like that in my neighborhood. When he left the store, I was certain he'd find his way to the downtown area, where he would be more welcome.
Louise continued encouraging me toward Christian Science. I gingerly poked into its precepts, unwilling to immerse myself in the depths because, after