Excerpt
When the Music Hits
It was only mid-May, but it was already hot enough to make the shorts I’d worn under my dress stick to me like a spy suctioned to a skyscraper in an action movie. As soon as Alicia and I got into my apartment, I threw both living room windows open and hoped the breeze would cool our sweat-slicked skin.
The familiar afternoon sounds of my block cut through the transitory quiet. Ambulances blared down Grand Concourse as they raced toward certain tragedy. Old island-born men slung spitfire swear words at one another as they slammed dominoes down on plastic tables. High schoolers fresh out of class lobbed endearments loudly—
stupid, big head, my heart, primo—like water balloons. To my neighbors, this day was as regular as the next. But for me, this day—one I had been waiting on for a long time—felt morose, bereft of the joy I’d hoped would mark the occasion.
At my celebratory lunch after the ceremony, Mama had called me lucky. Lucky for being the first one in our immediate family to successfully navigate undergrad and, now, grad school. Lucky for emerging from academia triumphant with two shiny degrees in music in tow. But I didn’t feel lucky. I felt late and broke.
After lunch, Alicia and I stopped by Mama and Marvin’s for a few minutes. Marvin, Mama’s boyfriend of the last eleven years, hadn’t been invited to the graduation festivities. There weren’t enough tickets left for him, so Mama said he’d hang back and give me a gift at the house.
As we entered the two-bedroom prewar apartment, I could see him lying on the beige carpeted living room floor in front of the suede sectional, snapping pistachio shells in half. The opening credits for
American Gangster flashed on the flat-screen. A half-empty two-liter bottle of Pepsi sat beside him.
Alicia had waved at Marvin, taken a seat at the small wooden table between the sofa and the kitchen, and busied herself with her phone. I waited by the front door. I didn’t want to be there longer than I needed to.
“So, Billie,” Marvin said. He stood up and gave Mama a kiss, then reached into the pocket of his sweatpants and pulled out a pink envelope. “This is just a little something for graduating. Congratulations.”
I accepted it gratefully and secretly hoped he could read the contempt in my smile. I opened the envelope and pretended not to notice the fifty-dollar bill that fell out of the greeting card and floated to the floor as I read. I swept the bill closer to me with my foot to pick it up later. “Thanks, Marvin.”
“What you gonna do now that you’re finished?”
I’d grown to hate this question. Over the years, too many random people—fourth cousins and great-great-aunts, nosy customers at the CVS where I worked, neighbors—had felt comfortable sharing their opinions on what I should do with my life. But the answer was simple, really. I had wanted to work in music since I was thirteen years old. Music had always found the empty grooves of my body and filled them in with strings and woodwinds, brass and percussion. Nothing but the poetry of words and the rhythm made me feel so thoroughly whole and understood. Everything I’d done so far was supposed to lead me to the career of my dreams. But the road to gainful employment in the industry of my choice was littered with bullshit. I was thousands of dollars in debt. I had taken a year and a half off school to work, stringing multiple part-time jobs together to help support Mama. And I had no full-time job prospects in sight.
I had interviewed at so many different imprints at labels across the city over the past couple of months, trying to line up an entry-level job in A&R, but I had yet to be picked. It was the same story as when I finished undergrad. HR had told me in emails,
We are so impressed with you and would love to keep you in mind for future positions. Unfortunately, we have decided to go in a different direction. Later, on LinkedIn, I’d see that someone else got the job instead, someone they thought might fit into the culture better and who happened to be an Ivy League frat boy or the bleached-blonde niece of some executive.
“Well, um. I’m still trying to get a job at a record label. I had an interview at Lit Music Productions a couple weeks ago, so we’ll see.”
“Well, good luck. And hey, if it don’t work out, try something more practical, like a city job. I heard the tests for the MTA is opening up soon. That’s a better move anyway, with the stability and benefits.”
At my place, Alicia and I sank into the run-down sofa and silently scrolled on our phones, worn out from all the talking and smiling and cheering of the morning.
But I couldn’t deny that Marvin’s comments had f***ed with me a little. I checked my email, just in case an offer from Lit had miraculously dropped into my inbox, but there was nothing.
I sucked my teeth, went to the kitchen, and returned with two cans of margarita-flavored hard seltzer. I placed them on the scuffed faux-walnut coffee table in front of us. I popped open the tab and took a sip, instantly regretting it as the salt-and-metal flavor slid down my throat.
“Do you think Marvin was right?” I asked. “Should I look for other jobs? I mean, I do need to pay my bills, and it’s been, like, weeks since I’ve heard from Lit. It’s crazy because I thought it went well, you know? I talked about my passion, mentioned some of the artists they signed that, like, helped form my musical taste. I talked about my internship experience. And still nothing. I don’t know what more they want.”
“Forget what Marvin said. I don’t want you to focus on Lit or any other label either. This day is about you and the fact that you did it, Billie. I’m so proud of you, girl! I know it’s gotta feel good to be done after all them years of school.”
My chestnut-colored skin collided with her sunbaked sand as I plopped down on the couch next to her. She nudged me back playfully with her shoulder, then slipped off her heels, relaxed into her seat, and slid one leg beneath the other. Awkward as the pose was, her posture was perfect. Years of hip-hop and ballet classes had made her lithe, her muscles taut.
If I was lucky for anything, it wasn’t the education—that was all hard work, two or three shitty part-time jobs to survive, and sneaking into late-night artist showcases at bars in the Village, Uptown, the Lower East Side, deep Brooklyn, Flushing—it was that I had a forever best friend who understood me and who had also given herself over to the same thing I had: music, art, the power of our bodies.
“I don’t know if
good is the right word,” I said.
“Since when is graduating with a master’s not good?” she said, laughing.
“I guess . . . I don’t know. Like, I’ve been giving my all to this, and I thought I’d be further along by now. I’m twenty-four, Leesh. Twenty-five in three months. So no matter what label I end up at, if I even end up at one, I’ll be the oldest assistant there. And then it’ll be, like, at least five years before I can save enough to move out of this bum-ass apartment. Years before I can make a name for myself. It’s all so f***ing bleak.”
I took another sip of my drink. Despite the taste, I needed the buzz of alcohol to ward off the sense of hopelessness attempting to set up camp in my body.
“It ain’t been but six hours since you graduated, and here you go thinking about five years from now.” Alicia waved her manicured fingers at me. “You need to loosen up. Celebrate your wins for once instead of worrying about the next thing.”
She had a point. I was used to preparing for some future something—music-industry networking events where I could hand out my business cards to executives from the big three, trips to shows where I could try to get an interview with the artist for my growing social media pages and my dream career plan that outlined my trajectory from A&R assistant to director of A&R.
I first learned about artists and repertoire in middle school. For a presentation ahead of career day, my teacher had asked the class to research careers we wanted to explore and to find out what we’d need to do to pursue them. In my investigation, I learned about what A&R did—how it discovered new talent, helped create new sounds, cultivated and provided guidance to musicians who eventually made an indelible mark on the world. I had been fascinated by the idea of working in A&R ever since.
Alicia said, “Why don’t we go out tonight? Let’s go to Avia, where we can dance. Once you let that loud music get in you, I know it’ll cheer up your depressed ass.”
We’d been going to Avia most weekends since it opened a few years ago, and each time it was an adventure. Because their music game was unmatched, Avia was one of the only spots in the city that made people feel comfortable enough to let loose instead of performing thirty-second routines for the internet. They’d bump Top 40, basement house, endless amounts of rap and hip-hop, alternative R&B and EDM and Afrobeat. Underground joints that only a few of us dispersed throughout the space knew.
