SMILEY’S DICE ON THE JAMMERS

 

 

 

PIPER JO AT ROCERS

 

 Free your

 

 

mind and the rest will follow; the words from EnVogue’s latest release played all day on the radio. Every time I got in the car to hunt up listings, I heard that song.       

PIPER JO AT ROCKERS

  

  I worked in an industrial building along an industrial highway in San Diego. I shared a warehouse with twelve men, eleven of them tall, weight trained football on Sunday guys, who ate at expensive restaurants amongst a club of commercial real estate agents. They were pretty decent guys, except the partners who each had a severe case of ego malnutrition and competed for attention like two tottlers. Greg was the only short one in the bunch, and he wore a rug, manicured his nails, and surfed on the weekends. He was always talking about his Karate black belt, and how he knocked guys out. He rarely laughed and when he did he sounded like a chirping bird. Greg used to give me his wife’s unworn clothes and waited in my living room while I tried them on. It was sort of strange, but he never played the trump card and asked for anything in return.

One day in the summer of 1992 I called the office secretary.

“Gail, I’m not coming in for awhile. Will you forward my calls to my home?”

     “Are you all-right?”

     “Oh yea. I’m fine.”

“What should I tell them?”

“Tell them I’m on leave of absence.”

I lived in a little cottage house in North Park. It was all white with a picket fence and a squared grass yard where my dog played. The front room was small but the carpeting was new, so I could curl up on the rug and watch the clouds from the windows.

  

I threw my nylons and navy pumps in the garbage, and folded the business suits into boxes. I knew I wasn’t going back, but where I was headed was a throw of the dice. Mornings I ran through Balboa Park before the crowds arrived, and got to see the zoo keepers feeding the animals, and the actors going into The Old Globe Theater. I filled my senses with virgin light and morning silence; unfamiliar sensations to office workers living with florescent lighting and partition walls.  In the afternoon I lounged around in sweats watching music videos, reading magazines and dancing. A few days later, I watched some new music videos, maybe EnVogue or Bobby Brown, and tried to imitate the hip-hop moves on the carpet. It was like watching a cat in the snow. I called all the dance schools, and no one was teaching hip-hop. I didn’t know back then my mother was dancer; so this impulsive and implausible scheme to start a dance troupe startled me as much as everyone I told.

  

The last lease deal I closed was for a group of soccer players from Jamaica. They needed a space to open a reggae dance club. I found a disheveled warehouse and struck a deal for them. They fixed up the place themselves; with colored lights, and some tables, but Rockers was really about the dancing. I walked into the club one night, and they were all doing their part; greeting customers, spinning vinyl, and serving drinks. I danced with Leroy, the leader of the group, and watched him unfold from the waist down. He danced so low to the floor, he appeared boneless.        

 “Leroy, I’m going to start a dance troupe. You guys inspired me.”

     “What kind of dance?’

     “Hip-Hop and jazz funk.”

Leroy covered his mouth with one hand and laughed.

     “What’s so funny?”

     “You’re a business woman; I didn’t know you was a dancer.”

     “Well, I took lessons a long time ago.”

     “Hip Hop?”

     “No, Jazz. I’m going to find the dancers to teach. I know they’re out there.”

     “Yea, they out there all right; lots of them.”

     “We’ll see! I’d like to use your space, pay rent of course, when you’re not open.” 

     “Well that’s all right. You don’t need to pay me.”

     I hugged him, and he shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much money in teaching hip-hop.”   

  

 At the community college I posted a sign for dancers, and observed some classes.   When I got the call from Piper, he asked me to come see him teach at the Church. I drove over  and found Piper in a little room upstairs, teaching Jazz-funk to one woman. He was tall and lanky with a smile that creased his whole jaw. He came over, shook my hand, and said, ‘How you doing?  I’m Piper.’ He wore an immaculate shield of confidence that defied his nineteen years. He moved at the intersection of Michael Jackson and James Brown. The groove spiraled through his body.

Piper Jo at Rockers.

  

“I’ll help you get it started; if you’re not a trained dancer you need help.” So Piper and I met every week and finally landed on a group that incorporated Jazz-funk, Hip-hop and Afro-Cuban. I named it United Steps Dance Productions, and the Jammers.

  

I’ll never forget the look on the partner’s faces when I told them I was starting a multicultural dance troupe. They just stared at me blankly.  Then within weeks all five of my unclosed lease deals were signed at the same time.  I walked out with enough money to live three months. That was real security in my mind. 

  

Piper and I held our first audition at Rockers.  When I opened the doors that morning, dancers were already lined up outside. They came dressed in street clothes;  wearing scarves, baseball caps, loose pants, and tank tops.  I watched them leap, kick, split, and turn inside out for the job. I knew that I was in the right spot. One dancer walked out, stood still for a moment, and then leaped into a break-dance pop-lock routine that silenced the crowd.

     “Him Piper, definitely him.” 

     ”He’s bad, yea he’s real bad.”  At the end of the auditions, Piper mocked me.  

“Lue, we can’t sign every dancer just cause they hip-hop. Anyone can do that.”

I can’t hip hop and it’s my company.”

“Yea, and you’re crazy. I swear, Lue you’re crazy.”

We agreed on pop-locker Vince-MasterJam, and Monique, a young Afro-Cuban dancer. That was the beginning. 

 

When Vince and I met, he told me he lived in Escondido.

“But that’s an hour away.”

“It’s cool, I’ll be here. Just give me the chance.”

Vince showed up twice a week at night for his class. Many times, we sat in the cold damp club, listening to music and Vince tried to teach me to pop-lock. I apologized for not having students and he looked at me, and said, “ Don’t worry Lue, will get it going on.”

  

 Our first performance was at the Red Lion Hotel. I hired a video tech to record the performance. We got a free dinner and a hundred dollars. We had a good crowd, and everyone loved them.  Afterwards in the dining room, they were talking, laughing and elbowing each other. Piper was ranting about Monique taking too much time, and Vince was telling Piper to chill because she was so talented. I sat there just listening, with a big smile on my face.

  

 The Jammers belonged to the no smoking, no drinking, no drugs group.  For the first few months, they taught on tiled floors under a leaky roof, without any heat.  But they kept coming back to teach and their dedication moved me to find a better location.  We relocated to a well-heeled Health Club downtown San Diego and the classes filled up with students, dancers, and office workers searching for a new lunch.  They came from all different races and ages. I danced with the classes and promoted our troupe. The Jammers laughed at my attempt to be a soul sister, and I laughed with them.  We were reviewed by KPBS magazine, and a photographer took pictures of us and featured us in the magazine.

  

Searching for gigs proved to be an exasperating struggle. I called department stores, festival producers, shopping centers, nightclubs, hotels and everyone had the same line, “I don’t think hip-hop is right for our clientele.”

  

When I ran out of money I took a job managing a condominium project, where I lived rent free. After a time of observing the Jammers self expression, I asked myself, what is mine?  I still refused to get on stage.  Vince used to bawl me out because I made Piper introduce the group.

 

After two years Piper moved to Los Angeles to launch his dancing career, and I let Vince take the troupe where he wanted it to go. He turned it around, adding twelve dancers and broke more ground in San Diego. Monique developed into a serious stage actress and  we all lost touch. They were the sparklers in my life; like that star you think you’ll never hold.  I left the Jammers a different woman. They put the rhythm back in my spirit and soul.  

  

 When I recently located Vincent on an Actors website, I called him right away. He is a missing link in the chain of my life. Without that adventure, I might still be imitating the kind of business woman I wasn’t. We met in Los Angeles, and watched Vince perform in a club. He kept his vision and now acts on television and video. “ Lue, now you have to find Piper.”     

It was Piper, who said to me one day after reading some of my poetry, “ Lue, you’re not a dancer. You’re a writer.”  

Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADVENTURES IN LOS ANGELES

  Luellen Smiley   

The throw of the dice this week lands on livingness of Los Angeles.

Standing on the curb of SWA Ticket counter in Los Angeles, waiting for John to pick me up. The caustic culture shock from Santa Fe is still feeling like I’m the dart board, and they are all throwing darts at me.

“Can’t stand there, get up on the curb.” I thought the Police Officer was joking, but he looked like he was ready to aim and shoot. 

John scoops me up before we get one-sided by much bigger and more important limousines.

“You want to have lunch first?”  

“I’m starved, How about that Deli, Jerry’s, it’s close by isn’t it?”  

“Right down the street.”

I knew John wouldn’t argue. He’s the most agreeable man I’ve met. John is a screenwriter; a dinosaur from the forties, when writers loved their subjects, and courted them while they inhaled all the tidbits that would fit into the story. I came to John by way of a childhood family member, not the biological family but the other one that Dad belonged to. I still don’t know what to call it. It’s not the Mafia, and organized crime is a government term, and the thing is a Hollywood stunt, and what the guys on the inside call it, is family.

John was writing a script for JF and got half way into the script and JF backed out. It was about a famous Mafioso, his Uncle Johnny. I trusted John when he said he liked my story enough to start a script and asked me to write it with him. That’s why he was picking me up in LA, so we could meet.

We sat in a vinyl booth and our waiter, a part-time performer in a gay club, lips still red from last night’s make-up, saunters up, “ You know what you want sweetheart?”

“Tuna Melt and fries.”

“Perfect, and what about you?”

“I’ll have the Cobb salad.”

I was home, I could feel it in the thickly tempered air, and in the light, the rush of traffic penetrating through the windows, and the other customers, talking and eating without time to do either one, because the phone rings, or someone walks in, or there is a news flash on the television.

We drove to the hotel, and I unpacked, and then John and I talked in the alcove, while Yogi’s tiptoed past us, and bowed or prayed silently.  I was home; across the street was Santa Monica Hospital where my Aunt worked for years on the switchboard, and on the other corner, the Funeral parlor where mother lay before the funeral.  I had already booked the three nights so I opened the refrigerator and a bottle of wine. Then I called my therapist, Ann. I hadn’t spoken to her since 1999. The phone was disconnected.

I remembered Ann, her voice, and watery blue eyes, the way she tilted her head when I cried, and the impending but softly stroked, “I’m afraid our time is up”, and how she led me back to my childhood and into the vacuums I had plugged up. Ann appeared after a desperate attempt to find help, she was practicing at the Emergency Physiological guidance center at UCLA.

Every week for five years I went to Ann, and we unwrapped all the knots I’d been tightening for years. When I left, I was not all healed and ready to beat the world, but I wasn’t tied so tightly. Just after leaving her, is when I decided to write my way home. 

In the morning, I walked along Wilshire Boulevard and almost drown in memories, of high school, and later when I was a young adult, and then later when I was an adult working in commercial real estate. I walked knowing where I was going without even looking at signs. John and I met up later and strolled along Ocean Avenue, and talked about writing a script. It was more than irony that fourteen years ago, this is where I broke down, and knew I needed help. At the corner of Barrington and Wilshire is where I made the call to UCLA admitting I needed help right that minute. I wasn’t suicidal, and I didn’t want to get there, but the aroma was drifting dangerously close.  I was at a public phone booth, and there was a man next to me shouting into the receiver, “ I have the script, it’s finished.” Something along that line, and I’m shouting, “I think I should be committed.”  

So when the next morning the window filled with those old memories, me and Lizzie cruising down Wilshire singing ‘Hey Jude’ on the way to the beach, the face of home was right there, and I loved everyone, even the unconscious people made me chuckle.

That afternoon I met my distant cousin Paula,for the first time. We exchanged a familiarity, and instant trust and awareness. She is related to my father’s side of the family.

“Did you know about my father?”

“My mother told me in clipped unfinished anecdotes; we have a gangster in the family.”

I chuckled, because now I can, it doesn’t make me bow my head in shame. Outside on the Venice Boardwalk, a passing stranger noticed John’s gold guitar medallion around his neck.

“Are you a musician?”

“Well, yes, I am. Not famous, but I sing and record.”

She told us she was one too, and asked for his card, and seeing her embellished in joy at being noticed, I could have applauded right then. More was to come that night. John, Rudy and I were on our way to see Master Jam, one of the original Jammers, of my dance troupe. I hadn’t seen Vince in fourteen years. To be continued..

THE HURT LOCKER

For all of us that claim we honor support and appreciate the troops, take a look at what your supporting. For someone like me, who has never experienced combat, and known very few who did, I bow my head. This film is a book, a documentary, a closeup photograph and everything that it takes to get the point across. 

Katherine Bigalow is right-on.

The