Where a Man Stands: Two Different Worlds, An Impossible Situation, and the Unexpected Friendship that Changed Everything - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carter Paysinger has served Beverly Hills High School for over thirty years as a teacher, coach, department chairperson, athletic director, and principal. In Carter’s first year as the principal, Beverly Hills High School earned its highest API academic ranking in the history of the school. Carter is currently also the president-elect of the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section, the governing board of high school sports for the entire state of California. Carter lives in Los Angeles with Karen, his wife, and their son, Chandler.

Steven Fenton began his career in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency and worked in Hollywood as a talent manager for over twenty years. In 2007 he ran for the Beverly Hills Board of Education and won by the widest margin in the school board’s history, eventually becoming the youngest person ever to be elected president of the board of education. He currently partners with his wife, Leeza Gibbons, running their production company, Leeza Gibbons Enterprises. They live in Beverly Hills.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Where a Man Stands

CHAPTER

1

Beverly Hills, California

1972

I PRESSED MY FACE against the car window and watched my world disappear.

We were rolling down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was buckled in the passenger seat of my family’s big powder-blue Mercury Montclair, next to my mother, Lessie Paysinger, who was driving. My mother sat bolt straight, same as she always did, both hands firmly on the deep-dish steering wheel and eyes never leaving the road, even when she talked to me. She was still wearing the blue floral dress and white shoes from her job as a school cafeteria worker. Her hairnet was tucked inside her purse.

“You know, Carter,” she said, “Beverly Hills High is a very special place. This is your chance to get a great education.”

“I know, Momma.”

“I have no idea what they’re going to ask you. But you just answer them as honestly as you can, you hear?”

“I will, Momma.”

I was fourteen years old, and this was the most important day of my life.

Where I lived, in South Central, Los Angeles, we had low-slung houses and chain-link fences and lots of giant billboards. But as we drove down Santa Monica, those gave way to spacious homes, majestic lawns, and men with rakes and hoses fussing over sidewalks. Where I lived, we had more electrical poles than trees, but now the poles became swaying palms and stately eucalyptus. Block after block I saw exotic, unfamiliar sights—flowering vines spilling over wooden fences, rows of elegant Tudor homes, birds prancing on privet hedges.

In South Central the sun is unblocked and merciless, beating down on the asphalt all day long. But in Beverly Hills the sunlight flickers gently through leaves and fronds.

I felt like my childhood was receding in the rearview mirror.

We were driving to Beverly Hills because, just three weeks earlier, my mom had a talk with the mother of one of my Little League teammates.

“Lessie, do you know about the multicultural permit?”

The multicultural permit allowed a few minority kids from less privileged parts of Los Angeles to attend the exclusive and predominantly white Beverly Hills High—which normally was only open to kids who lived in Beverly Hills. Each year several hundred students applied for the permit, and only a couple of handfuls got one. If you won a permit, it was like winning the lottery. It was the golden ticket.

Back then my options for high school were limited. Most likely I’d wind up where nearly all my friends were going: Crenshaw High School in South Central or University High in West Los Angeles. These were not terrible schools, at least not then. But my mother wasn’t the type to settle for “not terrible.”

So, one day after speaking with my friend’s mother, Momma sat me down at the kitchen table and spread a bunch of papers in front of me.

“We’re going to apply for a permit for you to go to Beverly Hills High,” she announced.

I was confused. Me? In Beverly Hills? It didn’t make sense. If all my friends were going to Crenshaw or Uni, why weren’t those schools good enough for me? Why did I have to go somewhere I didn’t know and didn’t belong?

Of course, it didn’t much matter what I wanted. Issues like these weren’t open for debate in my family. Once my mom decided I was going to Beverly, good luck to anyone who got in her way. And that included a neatly dressed, perfectly groomed man named Mr. Hoag—Beverly’s acceptance officer.

The man my mother was driving me to see.

AFTER JUST A FEW MINUTES my mother pulled the Mercury onto the campus of Beverly. It sat on some nineteen rolling acres on the west side of Beverly Hills, on the border of Century City and around the corner from the LA Country Club. I saw gently sloping hills and classical white buildings, and behind them the awesome high-rises of Century City. It all looked like a movie set to me.

“Now remember, Carter, it isn’t certain you’ll be able to go to this school,” my mother said. “It all comes down to this interview. So don’t say anything we’ll both regret later.”

“I won’t, Momma.”

“I know you won’t.”

A security guard pointed us toward the school’s garage. I will never forget what I saw next. Rows and rows of Porsches and Mercedes and BMWs and other sleek, shiny machines lined up in orderly parking spaces separated by crisp white lines.

I’d never seen so much luxury in my life, and certainly not all in one place. It was just breathtaking. My mother found a spot and parked the Mercury, and for the first time I felt nervous—like someone had kicked me in the stomach. My legs were rubber as I got out of the car.

“Carter,” my mother said, sensing my nerves.

“Yes, Momma?”

“No matter what happens, I’m proud of you and I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Momma,” I said. “I love you, too.”

WE WALKED DOWN A WIDE hallway and entered a room with creamy white walls and red carpets. There were shelves crowded with plaques and trophies and walls plastered with posters for school productions of 42nd Street and Singin’ in the Rain. I thought of the only posters I’d ever seen on the walls of Emerson and how they all began with the same two words: “DO NOT.”

My mother and I sat down and waited. Before long a nice woman came over and nodded at me.

“Hello, Carter,” she said. “Mr. Hoag will see you now.”

I stood up slowly and looked over at my mother. She got up, too, and together we walked toward a closed door in the back of the office.

“Only Carter, Mrs. Paysinger,” the nice woman said.

I looked up pleadingly at my mother, who smiled and narrowed her eyes and gave me a tiny nod. I’m not sure anyone else would have noticed that nod, but I did, and I knew just what it meant. My mother and I had our own language made up of looks, smiles, frowns, and nods, and this particular nod meant a lot.

My mother was saying, Carter, it’s all up to you now. This is your moment. This is your future we’re talking about. You have to find a way to make this work.

Carter, you can do this.

Slowly I walked toward Mr. Hoag’s office. Picture a thin, lanky kid in tan pants and a tucked-in, button-down shirt, trying not to trip over himself. The nice woman opened the door and motioned to me.

I leaned forward and peered in. The office was filled with framed photos of Mr. Hoag and his radiantly blond wife and their two blond sons smiling on sunny beaches and snowy slopes and silvery boats. And there, behind a huge mahogany desk, sat Mr. Hoag himself.

“Come on in, Carter,” he said, standing up. We shook hands, and he settled back behind his desk. He had a deep tan and styled hair. I sat in a chair that was too big for me and so plush I felt myself sink.

“So, Carter, you’d like to attend our school,” Mr. Hoag began. “What is the most important reason you want to come here?”

My mouth felt dry. I gripped the arm handles of my plush chair. Mr. Hoag waited for an answer.

Carter, this is your moment.

“HOP ON UP IN THIS chair, son.”

I was seven when my father took me for my first haircut at Tolliver’s Barber Shop. It was a small, square store on Western Avenue just a couple of...