I bumped into my dude Mos Def at the Afterdark Café on 156th and he started telling me about the way things were playing out with his latest obsession, Sherice. Mos tells me that Sherice “has all the right weaponry/designer fabrics, shoes, and accessories/Chinky eyes, sweet voice” and that she’s loving on him mentally. At this point I tell Mos that he doesn’t sound quite like himself over this girl, and that he sounds like another homeboy of mine, Wong Wan-Lee, who had stumbled into a young lady that had him second guessing his every step. Mos assured me that he wasn’t second guessing himself, that he was really into Sherice, whom he was calling “Ms. Fat Booty”—at which point I asked him if he was sure he was honoring her and if she were honoring the culture; Mos breathes that brand of conscious Hip Hop that gives you pause to think all the time, so I want to know if she’s fanning the flame or if she’s fly-by-nighting him and not taking him or his craft seriously, but letting him do the same thing too.
I told him that Wong Wan-Lee had brought Pearl Chang, his boo, to the Spring Festival a few months ago, and where Wong Wan-Lee saw a real lion dancing in a cultural celebration, Pearl only saw a tired costumed charade. Of course, the perspectives were different, I allowed. Pearl was of mixed ancestry and, born in the United States, also had a more Western lens of reference. So she probably wasn’t even aware of how dismissive and diminishing she might be to Wong Wan-Lee. Mos waved me off like, Nah, that’s not him.
I smiled because Wong Wan-Lee had told me the same thing except that in one conversation he actually said “he dared not” do one thing or another like seven times, which let me know that he had become so focused on what Pearl thought, and she might see him, that he was starting to ambiguate and side-glance his own history as if it were suddenly something less than part of the sum pieces that made him up. Each, I thought, echoed the other’s words and I shrugged, accepting each at what they were saying and feeling.
I asked Mos how was work coming along. He grinned and said, “I know I can’t afford to stop for a moment/that it’s too soon to forget” where he was hustling so hard to come up from. We clinked bottle necks, honoring the struggle, and I looked up to see a familiar, good-looking couple walk in through the haze surrounding the Afterdark’s entrance. It was Pearl, and her arm was slung through Wong Wan-Lee’s. I nodded and gestured, telling Mos that this was my dude and the girl he had fallen for. Mos turned around to get a look and said, “What?! A-yo that’s Sherice!”
Damn.