Verwandte Artikel zu A Do Right Man

A Do Right Man - Softcover

Tyree, Omar

 
9780684848037: A Do Right Man
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684848031 ISBN 13: 9780684848037
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The handsome and successful Bobby Dallas has everything a good man could ever want—except a good woman.

Bobby Dallas, a budding radio talk-show host, has no skeletons or kids in the closet. All that's missing is a talented, sexy, smart Black woman by his side. And that should be easy, right?

But after a shattering breakup with his first love, Bobby wanders for years between women and jobs, unsure about marriage, family, economics, and his overall stability. Having achieved his dream of becoming a highly successful radio talk-show host, Bobby is a man with the best of intentions not only in his career, but also in love. He learns, though, that being a “do right man” in this society is far from easy.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author, NAACP Image Award winner, and professional journalist from Howard University, who has written fiction and nonfiction, hard news and op-eds, screenplays and stage plays, and many other forms of writing. He is also an excellent lecturer who has been invited to speak at more than eighty American colleges and universities. His present and ongoing goals include the continuation of developing, writing and publishing great literary content, as well as adapting and producing exceptional films, music, and educational events worldwide.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter Two: In the Beginning

The roller-coaster ride all began in my senior year at Howard University in Washington, D.C. We called it The Mecca, the high ground of black American culture and education. I was surrounded by high-achieving brown students from every state in America, including plenty of students from the Caribbean and from countries in Africa.

As one could imagine, there were many different types of sisters and brothers to choose from to get hitched to. And the first people you were attracted to were usually in your same classes, whether they noticed you or not. However, just because you were there at Howard, surrounded by all of those beautiful black people, it didn't necessarily guarantee you a partner. Some guys had what it took to entice sisters romantically and some guys didn't. I was one of those guys who didn't. I was a nice guy, and a perfect gentleman from Greensboro, North Carolina. You know the type; "He's just a good friend."

There was this sister from New York named Pearl Davis that I'd had the hots for since our freshman year. We were both radio broadcast majors. Pearl was tall, fine, and intelligent, but her attitude was strictly New York. She carried herself like the halls had her name on them. With me being an unglamorous son of the South, Pearl hadn't paid me any mind for three years. I was the dirty tile floor underneath her brand new shoes.

I remember when I first got her attention. It was late September, 1985. I had finally secured a morning DJ spot on WHBC, Howard University's AM radio station. I was wearing a blue silk shirt and had just gotten a fresh fade haircut. Cheap silk shirts were the things to wear back then and all of the guys wore their hair in fades. I was trying my best to keep up with the Joneses. Howard had a long reputation to uphold, which included campus fashion.

Pearl strutted into the studio and asked me, "What's up with all this Trouble Funk and this go-go music shit?" I got off the air at eleven o'clock. Pearl was on after me. She paced impatiently inside the studio lounge area for ten minutes. I watched her.

"It's on the playlist," I told her with hunched shoulders.

"Yeah, but shit, you have to play it twenty damn times a day?" she ranted. "That shit is so whack, man! I'm tired of hearing that shit!"

I was thinking, I wonder if she knows any words other than shit. "This is D.C.," I reminded her. Go-go was their homegrown music.

"So! This is our radio station! We should be able to play what we wanna play!" she responded to me. "I know I will."

I smiled at her. She knew better than that. "If you do that on a real job, you'll end up fired real fast," I told her. Messing with the playlist was a definite no-no in the radio business.

"Yeah, we'll see," she said. Pearl slid her tall, slim frame into the recording room in blue Jordache leans. She looked damned good! She had a smooth, angular face with rapid roving eyes that caught everything. To tell the truth, I was intimidated by her.

I grabbed my things and headed for my next class. Faye Butler, my sophomore friend, was waiting for me down the hall. Faye was a fellow southerner, from Macon, Georgia. She was a television/film major with the soft, rounded, baby-face features of a good girl. She was the kind of young, good-hearted soul that knowing mothers liked to fix their sons up with. And although Faye was fully developed with all of the right curves, since her freshman year we had only been friends.

"Hey," Pearl Davis yelled down the hall to me, "I like your shirt! That shit is stupid fresh!"

Faye frowned at me and shook her head in disgust. Even graduation-bound New Yorkers spoke with the street slang of the day, no matter how ridiculous it may have sounded to the rest of the world. Nevertheless, it was 1985, so it wasn't that peculiar.

I was an easily pleased sucker from North Carolina. I smiled back at Pearl wider than a circus clown with a painted face. I looked into her caramel-colored mug, viewing her reddish-brown, wavy hair, and was infatuated. "Thanks" was all I could say at the time. After that incident, though, I couldn't get her off my mind. My smile didn't last long. My friend Faye read my gleeful expression with horror.

"You like her?" she asked me. Before I could respond she spat, "I can't stand that girl."

There was nothing I could say to that.

"I don't know who gave her the key to the world, but she needs to check herself," Faye added.

Like the saying goes, two is company, three is a crowd.

As fate would have it, since we were seniors, Pearl and I had to show our faces at a lot of the campus events to stay informed for radio. At every event, Pearl would pick with me for the hell of it. I actually felt privileged to finally gain so much attention from her.

"Here, 'Big Bob,' wear my chain. I can't have you in here looking like a country bumpkin," she said to me at an October party. It was rumored that Def Jam's Run DMC would be performing. They never did show.

Pearl wrapped a thick rope chain around my neck. I was too much in awe to resist. She and her New York girlfriends then proceeded to make me their entertainment for the night.

"You call him 'Big Bob,' hunh?" one of her girlfriends asked Pearl with a grin. Pearl liked to make fun of my six-foot-four-inch frame, especially since I wasn't much of a basketball player.

"Yeah, look at his feet," she responded to her friend. "You know what they say about brothers with big feet, y'all."

"Oh, shit, I need to borrow him tonight then, 'cause my man got little feet," another one of her New York girls commented as they laughed at me.

"No you don't," Pearl snapped with a smile. "I found him first."

"Yeah, well, tell me what woods you caught him in, so I can go big-foot huntin', girl."

It's embarrassing to even think of it. I wasn't too good at defending myself back then. Compared to my plain and practical Volkswagen Bug mentality, Pearl Davis was a red Corvette at a car show.

"Where do you live?" she asked me later on that night. It was nearly four o'clock in the morning. We were all leaving out. No one was particularly hurt that the Run DMC thing was only a rumor. It was still a lively party.

"I live in Slowe," I told her. I was a bit nervous about it. Why is she asking me where I live? Oh my God! What does this mean? I remember thinking. At that time of night, a where-do-you-live question could have been easily construed as a possible sleepover.

"You still live in the damn dorms? Shit, man, get a life," she told me with a half frown, half grin. Then she had to tell her girlfriends, who were all climbing inside of a black Honda Civic. "Hey y'all, Big Bob still lives in the damn dorms. I told y'all he was country."

pard

I smiled and began to take off her gold chain. I wanted to say, "It's cheaper to live in the dorms," but I kept it to myself. I don't believe I would have won any brownie points with a comment like that one.

"You don't have to take it off," Pearl told me. "I might be coming with you," she teased, or at least I thought she was teasing.

My heart leaped into my throat. "Hunh?"

Pearl was loving it. She was absolutely the aggressor. "Hey y'all, should I go over to Big Bob's barn tonight?"

"Yeah, girl, go choke yourself some chickens! " one of her friends yelled out from the laughter.

"Well, I don't have room to take both of y'all. And you're not sitting on that big nigga's lap in my damn car," the owner of the Honda huffed.

"He only live at Slowe. We can walk over there," Pearl shot back. We were at Ninth and T Streets Northwest. Slowe Hall was less than ten blocks away on Third Street.

"Well, get to walking," her girlfriend told us....

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684848031
ISBN 13 
9780684848037
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande