Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
“When he started opening up to Taylor at work about a year ago, it was natural for us to then take him under our wings, so to speak, and help him find a good and mature queer circle that wouldn’t take advantage of his newness on the scene. We can tell his head’s on straight. Not that way straight.”
“I can tell.”
“He’s not one of these forty-something newly out gays trying to live like he missed his teen years.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Dustin and I continued to pivot and turn and kept our conversation going.
“If, and that’s a big if, anything happened between Brent and me, you think Taylor would mind? I mean, since we work on the same campus.”
“You know that’s how Taylor and I met? Working on a project together at the university.”
“So a true workplace romance.”
“Yes sir.”
“I see.”
“If it gets to that point with you and Brent, just be open and honest with Taylor and with the HR department. Better to let them know before the wedding than for them to learn about it at the messy divorce stage, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Thanks.”
Minutes later, just when we were warmed up and in sync with Janet’s grooves, the DJ transitioned into Tamia’s “Can’t Get Enough,” and the people stayed on the dance floor to start the Tamia line dance.
“And this is one that I know and I wanna do with my man,” Brent said as he butted in, and he and Dustin swapped places to dance with me.
“Your man?” I asked Brent as we started moving back and forth with the crowd.
“I ain’t stutter and I ain’t tipsy.”
“I thought I was the man formerly known as your guy.”
“You know what I mean, Renny,” Brent said, smiling. “I’m having fun.”
I looked over at him as we turned around together, and I said, “I am, too. Now, let me concentrate on getting these moves right. This one is a little more intricate than the others.”
“I want you to concentrate on these lyrics that Tamia is singing,” he said, lowering his eyes on mine, moving one foot in front of the other and pivoting. “ ’Cause they are saying everything that I feel about you. Things I’ve always felt about you.”
I loved how free and open Brent was with his feelings.
As we danced, I realized that other than the hotel bar during the Missouri reunion a year earlier, this was our first time being out together in public on a date that wasn’t a date.
In college, all we could do was meet in my room since I had a single and no roommates, get together in empty gyms or restaurants, pretend like we didn’t really know each other when we did run into each other on campus, and make up code names for each other in our phones. So much secrecy back then.
Now, as single and grown adults, things could be different.
And being at this party, seeing how Brent was making friends and embracing being part of a queer community, gave me a lot to think about.
Maybe we could get something going. Maybe what was once impossible for the two of us back then could be possible now.
Maybe we could work and get it right at this stage of our lives.
I marveled at how good Brent was on the dance floor, height and all. When the song ended, we hugged and stared at each other long enough that I could tell he was about to lean down to kiss me. Until the DJ interrupted.
“And now a couple songs for the Carltons out there. You know who you are.”
“No you didn’t, Brent,” I said, bopping him playfully on the arm.
“I wanna see those Larenz moves from back in the day. I know you still got it.”
For the next few minutes, we all nerded out, swinging our arms and kicking out our legs to a quick medley of “It’s Not Unusual” by Tom Jones and “Love Is a Contact Sport” by Whitney Houston, with me at the head of the dance floor.
“Haha, you got me,” I said, grinning as we left the dance floor. “Joke’s on me.”
“I was thoroughly entertained. You’re just as good now as you were back in college,” Brent said. “Now, we need to get some food and sit our old asses down for a bit and rest.”
This time, I led the way to the buffet and had no plans to let music, swimming, dominoes, or spades get in the way of our opportunity to grub. Taylor and Dustin had spared no expense—high quality compostable disposables and a food buffet setup that went as far as the eye could see.
My mouth watered at the pans of golden fried catfish and snapper filets, mounds of perfectly smoked ribs, pulled pork, and hot links on the meat table, with a rich and succulent looking burgundy-red barbecue sauce bubbling on a hot plate.
My eyes lit up at the sliced tomatoes, onions, radishes and peppers, along with collards and black-eyed peas on the vegetable table.
My cravings grew more when we reached the casserole dishes of baked beans, bubbling macaroni and cheese, Ro-Tel dip, potato salad, green beans with hunks of smoked turkey and cut-up potatoes, and hot-water cornbread.
Lastly, I felt my sugar going up previewing the desserts table, filled with more types of cakes and sweets than I knew we’d all be able to eat during this Juneteenth Pride celebration—red velvet, lemon, chocolate, coconut, sock-it-to-me, two different pound cakes, a peach schnapps cake, monkey bread, sweet potato pie, a deep peach cobbler dripping with a brown sugar glaze, and bowls of homemade vanilla ice cream and banana pudding in a portable look-in cooler.
“We have burned enough calories to earn these calories and the nourishment we’re about to receive, amen,” I said, as Brent and I blessed the food and clinked our cups with our second dark liquor red punch of the day.
“Amen to that,” Brent said. He laughed as he looked at the mounds of food on the two plates in front of him. “I don’t even know where to start—with the meats or the sweets.”
“Baby, you could start by showing me that hunk of peach schnapps cake on your sweets plate.” I looked over at the end of our table, where two elderly Black women with short silver naturals sat.
The other one said, “Because it sure looks good, and I sure did miss it on the dessert table all the way over there, mm-hmm. Happy Juneteenth and Pride, by the way.”
I chuckled and got up to introduce myself, which was something Brent and I should have done before making ourselves comfortable at their table. I knew one of us would eventually get up and grab cake for the elders.
“Happy Juneteenth and Pride, ma’am. I’m Renny Ross, and this is my…”
“I know good ol’ Brent King,” one of the elders said, flinging her hand in the air in dramatic fashion.
“I’m Dr. Fiona-Sheree Weatherspoon. I wanted to hire him as the athletics director at the Lake Merced campus a few years back when I was the campus president.
He went with the Oakland campus and President James instead.
And now look at him and Taylor. Working both campuses after the system merged the campuses.
Double the work for almost the same pay.
I got out the C.U. system just in time.”
Both women let out a cackle as Brent stood up, nodded, and put his hand over his heart. “President Weatherspoon. So good to see you again.”
“How are you? Your family?”
I was glad she had the couth not to ask specifically about Macy and his divorce, though I’m sure as a campus president, she knew the who, what, when, where, and why of many details about the lives of Cal U system leaders.
“Just dropped off my youngest at Michigan State, and the eldest is starting her second year of law school at LMU in L.A. Enjoying retirement?”
Brent sat back down across from me as the women scooted closer to us.
“I sure am,” she said. “There’s nothing like it. And so is my soror here, Taylor’s mother, Dr. James.”
“Well, what a way to start off my new life in the Bay Area,” I said.
They both looked like the kind of women my late mother would have enjoyed hanging out with at a gathering like this.
“Meeting a former campus president and the mother of my new, well, soon-to-be supervisor. Nice to meet you, President Weatherspoon and Dr. James. Retirement looks good on both of you.”
“Nice to meet you two, as well,” Dr. James said. “You just missed Taylor’s father, but he had a little too much red drink with dark liquor and needed to rest his eyes.”
We all laughed before she continued.
“Taylor and Dustin must think highly of you both as a couple. They don’t open up their home to just anyone. Consider yourselves lucky.”
I explained I’d been friends with Dustin since meeting him in Chicago shortly after the pandemic when we both lived there. Then Brent jumped in to explain the two of us.
“Actually, Renny and I met in college over twenty years ago, and we had a chance reunion a year ago at our alma mater. And now, here we are as friends again and working at the same university. Well, he’s about to start. I’ve been there, as you know already.”
President Weatherspoon and Dr. James gave each other the eye, a look that said nothing verbally but said a lot with a glance.
“We really are friends,” I said, blushing, either from lying, the heat, or the dark liquor. “Anyway, should I get you both a piece of peach schnapps cake?”
“We might split a piece later,” President Weatherspoon said. “We were just signifying you about how good that cake looked. I might be ready for a nap, the way they fed us so good today.”
Dr. James said, “But I wasn’t signifying about the two of you as a couple. Me and Fiona-Sheree noticed that spark between you two as soon as you walked in.”
“That spark, huh?” Brent looked at me and smiled. I smiled back, mainly out of courtesy and not wanting to disagree with or disrespect the elders.
“I won’t belabor it,” Dr. James said. “But whatever brought you two together after over twenty years, don’t let another twenty pass you by. You don’t want to be in your senior years with a bunch of regrets.”