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May 25, 2007

Shorty & Mercy in NYC Part 1

My girlfriend just stopped by around 8 to say hello. We each had a cocktail because I have so much alcohol left from the party I hosted last month. And I got to thinking that I have all these words floating around about the past month and I should probably get them down, share a bit. Write something already.

Shorty and Mercy came to visit and so I decided, at the last minute, that it might be a good idea to have a mini cocktail party. A nice little mixer to see how interesting it would be for all the different worlds to collide. We have all kinds of friends. Some are tattooed from neck to knuckles. One's a geologist. One's a real live model, like an Abercrombie one. One is that cool music teacher you wish you had in third grade. Then there's my girlfriend that's 50-ish that is a member of Hadassah. And of course, you throw Shorty and Mercy in the mix and it's a little crazy. And I like crazy and I want to see crazy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my life as an “our life” and I decided that I want it to never feel stuffy and stressful and “on the edge of my seat” with concern that something might go wrong, something inappropriate might be said. I’m like, this is who we are and we should roll with it. And to make the night of the cocktail party (better known to the universe as wedding) even more fun, I said Let’s let the key players meet in a casual setting. This way, when the ink dries on the marriage certificate and we are all together for the official union of me and J, with the whole family – I consider friends family too – that we’re actually excited to see these people again.

They came in on a Thursday. Little did they know, Coral was coming in on Thursday night too. Kismet, I’m telling you. She had a job lined up in the city. It couldn’t have fallen into place more amazingly.

I told her that Shorty and Mercy would absolutely die to visit her on set. That’s a big deal for two cuties like them. They are country folk. They are enamored with all things Coral and Melissa and J. My father rocks this Glassjaw shirt under his post office clothes. He is feeling that shit. Mercy makes Coral sign headshots to her dying patients in the nursing home. It’s one thing that I have to do it, but it’s like even better to my own mother, that Coral will do it for her. She once tried to sign one, "Ethel, stay up! Love Coral" and I was like but Ethel is always lying down, that's the thing.

When I said that we should visit her on the set, Coral was like, “Duh.”

She even ordered them a barbecue lunch. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So my parents came in Thursday. When J and I headed to the airport to pick them up, we stopped at the fish store in Queens. J has a thing with aquariums. This is not a phase. This is not a hobby. It’s on some lifestyle shit. Put it like this: When he’s away, I have to feed these fish a block of frozen worms which stay, hugged up in my freezer, next to my Boca burgers and somehow, I’ve gotten okay with this.

Anyway, J wanted to pick up a couple of new fish for his tank at his office. Yes, an office tank and a home tank and he’s fixin’ to have an outdoor tank and I’m about to break the news that, actually, he’s doing no such thing. We picked up the fish and headed to the airport.

Shorty and Mercy were at the taxi stand just as I had asked them to be. (!) You don’t understand. This is huge.

When it comes to airports, the both of them go plum out of their damn minds. They get lost when there is no need. They wait in lines that they have no business waiting in. They just get foolish at the sight of an airport. Did I ever tell you about the time I came home from LA after a long stint of not visiting and my mother was honking outside while I was at the baggage claim 5 terminals away? And when I waited on the curb for more than an hour, dialing my parents’ home every five minutes, getting more and more furious by the minute, it dawned on me that it’s absolutely ludicrous that my mother is not yet comfortable using a cell phone. I had to call my father who had no way of telling her where to go anyway. And I’m like, Why aren’t you with this woman? Come help your wife, please.

Regardless, I didn’t respond to her honking because how the hell could I know she was out there honking when I was light years away, getting baggage like any other traveling human would be doing? She went all the way home, thinking I just didn’t show. All the way from Los Angeles, Mercy? I just don’t show up? Who do you think I’ve become? I am not that cute, damn.

I got her on the phone and said, “Um, I’m at the airport like we discussed 90 times.” She came back to get me, after I gave very explicit instructions. I waited on the curb for four hours. Get there.

So they are at the curb like I asked. Yessss. J and I swoop them up and we decided to take them to visit J’s business. I talk to them about what he does. And they understand, but not really. It’s like, he has this business but they don’t really get it. So we take them to the warehouse and everything.

Before we get out of the car to tour the office, Shorty asks my mother for her pack of gum. He does not use words. He just slides his open hand in her general direction and she gets to digging in her bag. She pulls out the pack of gum. He pops a piece out of the foil pack for himself and proceeds to pop one out for her. I’m in the front seat, sorta seated toward J, the driver, so I could look back at them and talk and then face forward at the same time. I am thinking, That’s adorable that he would be so thoughtful.

Before I could even finish that thought, Shorty hands her the gum and says, “Slay that dragon.”

I keep my (uproarious) laughter to myself just in case it would further hurt Mercy’s feelings. She appears to be oblivious though. At least we have that.

We go inside J’s office.

Shorty is feeling this shit. He’s walking around the warehouse, giving J tips on how to run it. Oh yes. Unsolicited advice from Shorty. “Son, do you keep a maintenance log on these machines?” To which J would reply, “Yes sir.” And Shorty would say, “Okay because I know a thing or two about running this kind of operation, you see…”

He does?

“Right here, I’m afraid you have insufficient lighting…”

Advice and more advice, and it was really cute to see them bonding, I guess you could say.

So they got the full tour. Shorty told a guy in the art department that he looked just like “Old boy, that actor that always be protesting and shit.”

“Damn, who was it?”

The entire office is shouting out random names of actors.

Finally Shorty blurts out, “Emilio Estevez, yeah.”

Okay? He looks nothing like him, but okay.

So as we’re leaving, Shorty notices a box of printed shirts in J’s office. He starts rifling through the boxes and chooses a Lil Jon shirt (no longer available ie collector's shit) and a Glassjaw shirt. He says, “I’m fixin’ to wear these with my Nikes and my dungarees.” Dungarees, people. Jeans. And the Nikes? Well, he designed them on the Internet. They are navy blue and white. In gold print, on the side of the shoe, they each say MO55BLU. What is MO55BLU? I don't know, but he tried to get it as his screen name and it was taken. So he tried POSTMAN2007 and that was taken. He tried MOTERROR and that was taken. He got pissed and said, "I'm gonna try OCTOPUSSY in this bitch and see if that's taken, I mean Goooood damn." And yes, Octopussy was taken. This was a whole different day and I just went off on a tangent. There are so many amazing things about the man, I can't help myself.

He proceeds to yell a la Lil Jon, WHAAAAAAAAT? and OKAAAAAAAAAAY for the rest of the weekend, mind you. Just wait. It gets more amazing.

Moments after we’re all buckled up into the car, Mercy taps me on the my shoulder.

“Meleesa, Justin porget dose peesh.”

“What fish?”

He porget dose peesh inside his job.

Wow.

I had to break it to my mother that those fish were tropical fish for his tank. Not fish for our dining enjoyment. I was like, “Mom, those fish are for his tank.”

She replied, “Last time I come, he pick me up dose big peesh. Remember, we eat dat one?”

And yes, last time she visited, J was a total sweetheart and got her this huge spiced and marinated white fish from this Indian restaurant he frequents and she loved it. She couldn’t have been happier. J and Mercy threw down on that fish all weekend. So I guess she just assumed he’d be hooking her up on the fish tip for every visit, but alas this was not that.

To make it up to her, I told her we’d get some crab legs this evening.

So Thursday night, I told them I’d take them for seafood. They love seafood. The both of them – fools for seafood.

So we’re sitting at dinner and J and my dad get to talking.

My dad is telling J what kind of people we are, what kind of family he will become a part of.

He says, “Listen. I’ll shoot you straight. That’s the kind of man I am. If you got black toenails, I’m going to let you know ‘Hey, you got black toenails…’”

J is trying to follow. And shit, so am I. Black toenails?

“You ain’t never seen black toenails, Jason?” he asks.

“Justin,” I snap back.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It was an accident,” Shorty says.

Here’s the thing. It really is an accident. My mother called me Marlene for half the damn trip. When my name’s not Marlene, it’s Lisa Marie. When it’s not Lisa Marie, it’s just Lisa. And so Justin became “son” and “Jason” and occasionally Justin. P.S. My ex’s name was Jason. I was mortified that my father called my future husband by an ex's name for four whole days.

He goes on to explain that black toenails look like a “walnut” or “Perhaps, you seen a Brazil nut. I don’t know, like a raggedy black toenail. It’s all hard and shit…”

[Crucial part of this conversation deleted due to recent controversy surrounding the N word, but the one ending in –gga. My father does use that terminology. I’m just keeping it real. It’s a part of a being a fifty-something black man from Baltimore. He means no harm, I assure you. But I don’t want this entry to go a whole ‘nother direction because my father described the "toes" further in detail, which is how we stumbled upon that word.]

J, wide-eyed, is like, “Yeah, okay. Right, you’ll shoot me straight…”

We make it out of dinner without incident. I mean, if you exclude the fact that my father asked the waiter if he could keep his beer glass because “damn, the whole beer fits in the glass, that’s nice. Sometimes you have a little bit leftover and it’s all warm and shit…”

He’s appreciative of good design. What can I say?

The next morning, J went to work and I got Shorty and Mercy up.

Actually, Shorty woke me up. At 7 in the morning after J had already left 45 minutes before, Shorty comes busting in my bedroom in a bathrobe talking about, “I’m ready to rock and roll baby…”

We all got showers. And I took them to a diner for breakfast.

We are drinking coffee. I explain to my mother that I never really liked coffee until J.

She said she doesn’t like it that much either, except now she drinks it occasionally.

“I drink dees one sometime only. It’s good egg salad.”

Egg salad?

“Yeah, egg salad,” she says.

It’s good with egg salad? What? What are you talking about? You ordered French toast.

“No Meleesa, ees a good egg salad.”

Please understand. I understand 98% of the words coming out of my mother’s mouth. I truly understand her, but when that 2% of misunderstanding rolls up, I get frustrated very easily. It’s not that I’m mean to Mercy. I don’t mean to lose my patience, but now I’m getting pissed.

Mom, you ordered the f -- (catching myself before I say the F word) French toast. How is the coffee good with egg salad?

Keep in mind, Shorty is across the table chomping away. Paying no mind to us.

Annoyed with me, Mercy rolls her eyes, lets out a big sigh and with deadpan delivery says, “Meleesa, issa good egg salad. You know, make you go doo doo.”

I explain to her that it’s called a laxative. That EX-LAX is a brand name. If you’re not using the brand name and you want to talk about that particular product, you say laxative.

She brushed me off.

She has issues with brand names replacing generic names. Like, it’s not toothpaste. It’s Colgate. It’s not tampons. It’s Sanitex, a mystery brand of feminine hygiene I have yet to find.

After that, I took my mother to get a manicure at my nail salon. Shorty came in with us and I said what the hell.

“Daddy, do you want a pedicure?”

“No no, I’m good. It’s okay. I’m all right. Y’all go on ahead…”

But he kept on saying these four sentences over and over. He so wanted a pedicure.

Daddy, it’s all good. Men get them all the time. I know your toes are fucked up. I know you got [extracted] toes. It’s cool. I am not judging you. Relax, this will be a nice thing for you and mom to do together. Go ahead. Go. Go.

Really, I wanted him to have one at the same time as her because I wanted to go back to my house while they were getting pampered so that I could run the dishwasher, make beds and do other host-y stuff. I live super close to the nail salon, don’t trip.

I went back to pick them up and it was like they were now holding the key to the town. Everybody loved them. They were chatting people up. And those nail ladies don’t even really speak to folks. Shorty was chatting fools up. Throwing out Japanese, Chinese and Spanish and they were all cracking up. Like, three Latina girls, one Korean lady and one other Asian lady who is always speaking Spanglish, my father and my mother were all in a conversation about what, I don’t know. But they were like, friends. And I know this because when I went back the following week, everybody was asking about my parents and saying how great they were and how funny he was and how they were such a fun couple. Keep in mind, I go in there every week for straight up two years and I get, “Hi Meleesa! Which color?” and “Thank you bye bye!” Granted, it’s all said in the nicest tone ever but they don’t really talk to you.

I just realized this story is getting long. This will be Part One.

So after that, because I like Mercy to feel all glamorous like when she visits me, I took her to get a blow out. Before she visits me, without fail, she will go get herself a “permanent.” And it always comes out like this. Why, mom, why?

She’s yet to ask me why I am essentially offering to destroy the work her hairdresser just did. She just goes with it so we do it every time.

It’s raining out so the hairstylist offers my mother a rain bonnet. It’s plastic, clear and ties at the neck and looks exactly like this. Mercy will not remove this bonnet until she gets all the way to our destination.

I get them loaded up in the car and I head to the train station.

They have no idea why we are going to the city. Coral and I have decided we will just surprise them. At the train station, Coral called me to tell me which side of the building to enter and who to ask for. My mother, always ear hustling, wanted to talk to Coral so she is bugging me to hand her the phone.

Coral tells her she’s so sorry she didn’t get to see her this time around. San Francisco is really nice today. All this bullshit to make Mercy think she’s far away.

Then Shorty gets on the phone with her.

“Yeah, Coral? Hi. This Shorty.”

Yeah dad, she knows that.

He asks her how she’s doing. What “do” she have going on? Wish she could come out to “the big apple” and everything. He says I love you and hangs up.

Yes, Shorty and Mercy end their phone conversations with Coral with “I love you.” Could they be more adorable?

We ride the train. They’ve never been on the train. They’re looking around.

“Look Shorty, issa Queens,” Mercy would say.

“Damn, they sure do like to fuck a building up with all that damn graffiti. Kids don’t have no respect for shit out here in the city, boy,” Shorty would say.

In Penn Station, I ask my father to just please hold onto Mercy. He doesn’t really want to do this because he sucked his teeth.

I’m like, “Daddy, look around. She can’t keep up!”

He holds onto her and I lead them out of the train station and to the taxi stand. I said, “Wanna hail a cab, Daddy?”

He looked at me like this would be totally unreasonable. Like we should just make it easy on ourselves and have me, the fair-skinned one that speaks good English, do it. He did like head pointed down, looking up at me with his eyes, pursed mouth thing. I know race was a factor in this expression on his face. He has really old-school ideas about Manhattan.

For example, when we were leaving to walk back to the train station, I said, “Daddy, look up when you’re walking around. You’ll miss lots of cool things about New York if you don’t look up.”

He said, “Girl, why in the hell would I look up? That way all these m’fuckers know I ain’t from ‘round here and get to stabbing me? Oh hell naw. I’ma keep my eyes looking straight ahead of me.”

Which he did, and he proceeded to walk all aggressive like through the streets of TIMES SQUARE so as to appear like a New Yorker. He even had the nerve to tap on the hood of a cab, talking about, “Mother fucker!” And yes, he left Mercy and I in the dust. Mercy was about two feet behind me and I was about three feet behind him. He was not trying to wait for us.

Anyway, I’m ahead of myself again.

We get to the MTV building. Coral happens to be shooting on the set of TRL.

This producer woman comes out and greets me and is like, “You must be here to see Coral.”

In my head I’m like, fuck lady, you just ruined the whole surprise. Luckily for me, my parents are oblivious. They’re looking around like they’re in Tokyo and shit.

I get them all checked in with their little name tags and everything, which they love. My mother is delighted that the security man recognized me from Real World, but it's like, Mom, we're at MTV dude. Relax.

We ride the elevator up and I lead them to the makeup room, where Coral is getting her face did.

My mother takes a moment to figure out what’s going on.

She immediately bursts into tears and says, “Oh my goodness, you trick me! You say you San Pranceesco. Iss not San Pranceesco. Iss here! My God, my God, my God!”

Shorty was like, “Yeah girl. You tricked me too. Your phone sounding all far away and shit.”

She was using a cell phone. How could he deduce that she HAD to be in San Francisco because her phone sounded “far away”?

Oh, Mercy finally removes the plastic rain bonnet before sitting down to eat lunch.

They have their nice little barbecue lunch in the green room, the one where all the TRL celebrities wait and they get to milling about.

They arrive at the TRL photo booth. The one where all the celebrities get snapshots. Shorty goes first. You know how you get the set of four pictures. Shorty’s turned out amazing. Picture 1, he’s looking like he’s trying to work the machine. Picture 2, he backed up and did his serious passport picture face. Picture 3, he smiled really big. Picture 4, bigger smile with a peace sign in the air.

Mercy?

Girl please.

Picture 1, very confused. Picture 2, still confused but sitting back like maybe it’s not on. Picture 3, face closer to the camera to be sure it’s not working. Picture 4, face down and body halfway out the booth as though she gives up.

Why didn’t they take photos together? Mercy tried, but Shorty pushed her out the way and said, “Lemme go on ahead and get these pictures, girl. Don’t worry. You next.”

My father had to go to the bathroom. Of course I would not leave him alone here. He was lurking around the building with me when he stumbled upon a bunch of producer people. I had worked with most of them before so I started introducing him.

He immediately starts launching into pitches for a show.

“I think y’all should have The Shorty Show.”

Oh really, Daddy. What’s that about?

“You know, I just talk about all these hos.”

These hos? What hos?

“You know, the Real World hos, the Road Rule hos. Seem like to me all y’all got these days is a bunch of hos.” Road Rule (singular).

He’s not saying it like it’s funny either. He’s dead serious and a little concerned.

They reject that idea, but they are clearly into the conversation and ask him more about what he’d like to see on TV.

He says, “If you don’t want The Shorty Show, I also thought of this one. It’s called Shorty: The Nighttime Janitor.”

He goes on to explain that Shorty: The Nighttime Janitor is a show where, “After hours, I talk shit, while I clean up they shit, you see.”

I personally think the janitor show would be a fucking hit, but no one ever listens to us. So why would they listen to my father? Coral and I have been asking for our own show for four years. Two Bitches on a Couch, but noooo. They just don’t get it.

So we have to leave the set in order to make it back to Long Island for the official meeting of the parents. I figured, they should meet at dinner one night. And then the next night at the cocktail party, it won’t be so awkward.

The dinner went pretty well.

The parents got to talking about my and J’s academic careers.

Mama B, about J is like, “Oh, he hated school!”

And Mercy is like, “Meleesa? He lub school. He issa so smart, he don’t need to study. Just go out, and den straight A. He issa so smart.” Ironically, her interchanging of "he" and "she" is not inherent to a lack of education, the topic at hand. It's actually a Filipino thing. Find a Filipino and ask him. It's true.

Shorty chimes in, “I hated school too. Don’t nobody wanna do that shit. My favorite parts of school was lunch and sports.”

Even J’s dad laughed out loud at that one and he usually doesn’t find most things funny. Although we hear, J’s father was actually quite the comedian in his younger years.

Oh, we had Indian food because J knows the chef/owner and it’s quiet in there and just in case Coral finished up at the shoot in time, she could come and it wouldn’t be the Long Island Oh My God Were You On the Real World coming up to the table every five minutes. My father doesn’t enjoy Indian food but you know, whatever.

We got home late. They had a nice time. I put them to sleep early so that J and I could discuss all the amazing things that happened. He and I were in bed until 1 in the morning, whispering, cracking up like schoolchildren at a sleepover. Truly, not wanting to wake up our parents.

The next day – we prepared for the cocktail party. Which is where we’ll pick this story up next time. Included in this story will be details about how Shorty feels about women who wear mismatched lingerie, why my father wants an Aeron chair and Mercy engaging guests in the story of how she met my father (which I've told a million times because she's told it a million times.)

Come back.

Posted by melissah at May 25, 2007 06:19 AM