gf
by GABRIEL JERMAINE VANLANDINGHAM-DUNN
in Fall 2018
Rita Harper, "Food Court, Greenbriar Mall," 2018
He wanted to leave the house early. It was the first day of the seasonal flea market, and since his travel plans had been canceled, his Saturday was open. The halting of the trip left him miserably stuck in Philadelphia for the holiday weekend. The unseasonably warm weather was the only silver lining. In the cramped kitchen, he cut a grapefruit into four parts. Mary, his grandmother, had always spooned the fruit, but Brown found it easier to consume it in quarters. Since her death, he hadn’t thought that much about her, save for mentioning her and his grandfather Mason, in a few essays he composed concerning Black life in the old South.
But the fruit symbolized something new for him. He thought about the first time he ate grapefruit with Red and his hunger couldn’t mask the taste of sadness. Sugary bitterness had been with him for a month before he took that first seasonal bite. He finished his breakfast, basined his dish, and boiled water for tea. With matcha in hand, he walked into his bedroom only a few feet away and closed the door behind him.
This was the loneliest place in the world.
Faded teal walls bled from the high ceiling down to the dusty, rarely swept floor that could give way at any moment. Brown flipped through a stack of records. The majority of his collection was in storage, while everything at his disposal had been acquired after moving into his tiny living space. In fact, many of these had been selections from his last trip to Toronto with Red. He hadn’t used his turntable much in the last few months.
Young at Heart/ Wise in Time was the selection that found its way out. He admired the record's sleeve. On it was an image of Richard Abrams and his small Black child. Brown thought about his current state in relation to the piece in his hands. A child. He sank a bit knowing he’d spent his prime years trying to fix the mistakes made by those before him. Jardin, his mother, raised him to be the unattainable ideal she never found in a man. Her visions for Brown were rooted in her pain, but not in his reality. Those lessons in softness left him feeling defenseless when it came to his surroundings and relationships. The cover reminded Brown of the void left by his absentee father. This, coupled with his pursuit to not be like the distant elder, kept the young man from pursuit of those he desired. This combination often left him thirsty for the waters he was promised, but not owed.
Unease cloaked the room.
In the corner was his bed, barely new. He hated how small it was, yet the truest discomfort was the mental anguish it levied on him daily when he thought of Red. He bought it thinking he would only be in the apartment for a few months since he was planning on moving to be with her. The cheap rectangular resting place was an extension of the coldness encasing the room, the house, and his heart. Brown grew up thinking that beds were a place that his powers would have commanded great admiration, but the presence of it just reminded him of how lonely he truly was. The years he thought would be the greatest of his life were full of lonely nights and the anguish at the thought of further rejection. When he met Red, it seemed that his search for an understanding soul ended the night they locked eyes. She reached out to him, and he immediately accepted her as an offering from the Supreme that had watched him struggle to feel like the man that he knew he could be. He wanted so badly for this part of the journey to be over, yet it would only last a short while. She left with little warning, and he was reminded of it every single time he looked at that goddamn bed.
The clouds soon moved in over West Philadelphia, covering the Saturday sun as the first half of the Chicagoan-led recording ended. Brown tried not to think about the latter city nowadays, yet it happened the longer he starred at the image of Abrams cradling his child. Brown felt himself a failure at thirty-six, as he had still not attained his university papers or been able to advance in the host of careers that seemed to change with the calendar. The music he created sat unheard with the rest of his belongings in storage. The things he once loved became passing interest to him. Throughout his adult life, his mornings were filled with anxiety and sadness. The breakup clearly didn’t help. It reminded him of all of his shortcomings while his threshold for forgiving himself grew thinner than the cheap sheets on the mattress.
Red was unconventional, even adventurous. She traveled eight hundred miles to Philadelphia after conversing with Brown only a few weeks. Her spirit transcended all of his preconceived notions of what he thought love could be. He was reminded of that feeling as he put on his favorite sweater (they first hugged while he was wearing it). The reality of it all only furthered the blueness he felt as he put on his shoes and reached for his vest.
In the vestibule was his bicycle, barely touched since the temperatures dropped. On top of that, the sight of the big Blue bike reminded him of her. Red was the first avid-black-women-cyclist that he’d ever met. At this point he feared that she would be the last. They’d only ridden together a few times when she came to visit him during the previous summer. He silently sighed, remembering difficulties finding handlebars to complete the bike she kept in Philly for her visits. He inhaled, then released slowly, wishing that such sensations still existed for him. For them.
Brown felt cemented in the relationship when Red gifted him a new pair of wheels for his birthday, telephoning in the payment and coordinating the surprise with his bike mechanic. It was set up perfectly. When he got to the bike shop there was the usual banter. Being a former employee himself, he knew everyone well. He took Red there during that visit and there was even talk of hiring her if she moved to Philadelphia. Brown was excited about his new wheels but concerned about the price. It would’ve set him back a few weeks on bills, but he’d been without a decent set for over a year. He was handed the total on a scribbled receipt and at the bottom was $0.00. This confused him and asked his mechanic what was going on. His mechanic reached out with another receipt, this one a credit card version. At the bottom “Happy Birthday from Red S. Morgan.” His heart beat with joy in the moment, yet the memory now makes him tear up.
The cost of those wheels equated the price of his plane ticket for Thanksgiving weekend.
He locked the door and climbed down the steps. As he walked down the street, he passed the coffee shops filled with folk he imagined had made their dreams come true. There was a time when harshness would’ve filled him, yet that was replaced with a tender longing. Brown thought about an oxford Red once showed him while visiting her. She’d been getting rid of clothing and pulled it out and told him the story behind it. It was the shirt her mother was wearing when they brought her home for the first time. There’s even a photo of her mother wearing the shirt, beaming from ear to ear while holding the sleeping baby girl whose resting facial expression hadn’t changed much since she’d become a women. As he walked away from the last shop he thought about the families, then her. He missed touching her face, hearing her voice, and pulling small pieces of lint from her long curly crown.
Before the flea market, Brown thought it best to stop and grab a few things from the grocer. Tea, various greens, and foods for breakfast were on his list. He picked up granola and almond milk first, then Black tea. He also remembered he was out of fruit. Walking towards the produce section, the first thing he saw on the left were strawberries, bananas, and grapefruits. He paused. It was almost 10:30 am.
Gabriel Jermaine Vanlandingham-Dunn is a dj, writer, and ethnomusicologist from the Park Heights neighborhood in West Baltimore, Maryland. An avid Jazz historian, he has most recently been a writer/ content curator at jazzrightnow.com. His work focuses on the music(s) of the Western Hemisphere (post-Atlantic Slave Trade) and mental/ emotional health of Black American men. gf is the first release in a series from a soon to be finished short novel.