They came to reconnect with specific people and dig on a collective nostalgia. I came to honor them and acknowledge their part in my debt.
The debt was large. J.B. was my first testing ground. I learned to compete there. I nurtured a perverse self-sufficiency. My warped little world meshed with the real world–for “one brief shining moment.”
L.A. was hot and smoggy. I was wiped out behind all my time travel and the clash of old/new people. I took a ride with Tony Shultz.
It felt like my seven-millionth hot L.A. day. Tony was digging it. He ran a riff on the NEW L.A.–immigrant cultures and wild cuisines and big rejuvenation.
We drove down to Howard Swancy’s church. We made the noon service ten minutes early. The joint was jumping jubilantly high.
A six-piece combo backed up the choir. Sixty loud voices praised God. They soared over loud air-conditioner blasts and woke me up like six cups of coffee.
The church was SRO. Howard saved two pew slots near the altar. The congregation was 99.9 percent Black. The people were snazzily dressed and ran toward the plump side.
I hit the Pause button on my life. Fast-Forward and Rewind clicked off. I got choked up behind a big blast of gratitude.
The service commenced. I sang hymns for the first time since First Dutch Lutheran and shared smiles with Tony. I felt intractably Protestant and unassailably un-Christian. I grooved on John Osborne’s Luther. He slayed the Papist beast because he was constipated and wanted to get laid.
The collection plate went around. Tony and I fed the kitty. Howard hit the altar and introduced us. We stood up and waved to the people. They waved back.
Howard launched into his sermon. He was main-room talent in a southside carpet joint.
He strutted. He stalked. He banged the pulpit and shouted over a four-octave range. The crowd went nuts.
He sustained a half-hour roar. He sweated up his vestments and blew out his lungs with the word on salvation.
Go, Howard, go!
It was a New Testament Greatest Hits medley. It was a deftly etched exposition of your alternatives: embrace Jesus or fry in Hell forever. It proclaimed the restrictive housing law in Heaven.
I wouldn’t want to buy a tract in that development. They wouldn’t sell to pork dodgers or skeptics or that Moslem guy at my favorite falafel stand. They’d exclude the bulk oftheJ.B. class of 1962.
Howard cranked it out. My mind wandered. I dipped thirty-six years back and thirty-six years into the future. I wondered how many bonds would rekindle and flourish in the wake of three effusive evenings. I thought about a survivors’ bash in 2034. A collective senescence might color the proceedings and distort recollections for better or worse.
Let’s Twist again, like we did that summer.
It’s a teen dance party at the Mount Sinai Nursing Home. A boss combo rules the bandstand. It features all my old heartthrobs on skin-flute.
Jack and Jackie appear. The kids go nuts.Jack nuked Castro just last week. He’s on a flicking roll.
Jack cuts a rug with Leslie Jacobson. He eyeballs Donna Weiss and Jill Warner. He can’t commit to an image. He doesn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
Somebody slips LSD in the punch. The J.B. dead resurrect. Jackie goes down on the Great Berko.
Howard cranked it out. I looked around the pews. I locked eyes with a tall black kid. He looked bored and agitated.
I winked. He smiled. The Apostolic Church of Peace turned into the Peppermint Lounge.
I sent up a prayer for the kid. I wished him imagination and a stern will and lots of raucous laughs. I wished him a wild mix of people to breeze through and linger with over time.
November 1998