miss brick house
At nineteen, in 1975, I was selling advertising for the OSU college newspaper, The Lantern, and submitting stories and getting published in the “fringe” student newspaper, Our Choking Times. The one where I earned his respect as a budding radical, then flew over the lines of professionalism to dating Gil Scott-Heron.
Not only did I write about the oldest, coolest radical rapper from another world, I put caution to the wind from my hometown, hit the road with him, and well, you know. Leaving college for almost a week, I boarded a tour bus with Gil, soaking in his celebrity and smirking as other girls looked on with hungry eyes. Most of all I saw him read and read and read.
Now he knew why his lyrics were so intriguing. She devoured magazines and news books, speed reading, thoughts on fire. I tried to be ready with a clever comment or quip, keeping the goal of my article in mind.
“I like talking to you,” he once said approvingly, his eyes smiling as he looked up from US News and World Report. And well, my heart skipped a little as the bus moved on.
In 1976, I would have flashbacks to our recent time together: Gil, handsome, angular-faced and charmingly tousled, sat backwards in a chair across from me, while I lay in my robe on his hotel bed and dreamily sipped wine. He enthusiastically entertained his audience of one. I alternated between laughter and amazement, as he tossed off brilliant dialogue and finger-up humor, interwoven with his trademark political rhapsody and crazy, tousled, carefree afro.
My joy was only slightly tempered by a dark sense of foreboding as Gil made sure to take frequent “artistic time-outs” to do copious lines of cocaine from an album cover in the powder room of The Holiday Inn hotel. Thanks to him, he didn’t corrupt me with his coke, which I had refused the first day. He was still terrified of cocaine, then. And he happily let me stay “in my glasses”, replenishing my drink reserve at each rest stop. In those days, a man who never let my drink run out was the epitome of a gentleman to me, making it hard for me to focus on diamonds and more luxurious comforts.
Stepping away from that date for a while, I became the sometimes fake, often truly dedicated student again, and immersed myself in my college classes for a year or so.
I mostly wrote from the soul, without getting intimately involved, all in preparation for my next career in broadcast journalism. That was until I strayed again, but at the time I was twenty-one years old. Hey, it was already big! But my adult self was falling a semester behind on my scheduled graduation date. My title had to wait for periods of heavy drinking, the local party scene, and manic depression hovering in the wings.
At least school was out for a while, because it was the hot summer of 77″! A friend of a friend, concert promoter, pretty much a dirty old man. (He was 40, which at 21 seemed pretty old.) This guy submitted my name to a contest, then told my friend that I would be perfect with a little training and could probably win.
It was a beauty pageant, but something concocted for publicity purposes to launch Lionel Richie and The Commodores concert tour and promote the hit record of the day. The song that skyrocketed up the charts was “Brick House,” which helped make The Commodores one of Motown’s most popular groups. The pageant went to Miss Columbus (Ohio) Brick House.
The national winner was promised to also land a movie role with the extremely cool Billy Dee Williams in his next film. He was excited beyond rhythm and blues. Fifteen girls competed at “Ciro’s”, the popular Columbus dance club, sort of Miss America style, in bathing suits and heels and then revealed their “intellect” or “wits” when asked a serious question.
To be honest, there was a girl who was a Brick House bombshell, with a sensational and striking figure, judging by the collective stars of the men in the audience, but the darling bombshell looked dumb as a bag of hammers! (She wasn’t, just shy.) I was pretty adept at putting a sentence together, and she fumbled for her name. Since they wanted some kind of speaking winner, I won.
Sandi the Bombshell came in second place and we quickly became friends, because at that point, The Commodore management closed the contest and chose the two of us to tour with the group.
We win gift certificates and free trips, limo rides, meals, money for clothes. We stood behind record store barricades in bathing suits, high heels and fake fur and signed autographs, along with The Commodores. I always wore a pair of pants over my bathing suits in public when I was offstage, because I didn’t want to look like a bitch. Actually, I was looking for something sophisticated, sexy and exclusive. Years later, Beyoncé did it.
Sandi and I hung out together, laughing, gossiping, and sipping champagne as we traveled to Philadelphia, Hartford, Connecticut, Boston, and made a pit stop in Dayton before the tour had a big concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
It was to a packed stadium in Philadelphia that I was “crowned” the Official Dancer of the tour and I was ecstatic to be on stage with Lionel Richie and The Commodores.
“She is a brick house, she is powerful, powerful!” they sang in skintight, shiny military-style suits, a sight for testosterone-deprived eyes. And she’d do a funky but girly wham-bam, hip thrust as I finished my provocative dance to put me between Lionel Richie and William King.
“AAOOW,” he would think as William Orange sang it.
I was seriously falling in love with Lionel, but I was trying to dominate him every time his beautiful wife, Brenda, on stage left, arms folded, looked at us, sullen from the sidelines. The road manager told me that he had been doing that for the last two years, but now he seemed definitely directed at me. That heady angst and emotion became a combustible mix that changed the routine of the show during a concert.
The routine was that Sandi would dance solo from stage right and I would dance solo from stage left. Once during a concert the air was charged with antimatter, the routine was interrupted at the pit stop in Dayton. There was a crack, a crash, and then a clamor and utter chaos.
Suddenly, a “boo” erupted from behind. What had started as a small disturbance quickly turned into something monstrous. The 10,000 people packed into the arena began to boo in a great roar for nearly a torturous full minute.
I was mortified, spinning giddily when I finally stumbled offstage as the song ended, almost tripping over my sky-high heels. Try to hide yourself by wearing a neon orange swimsuit. I ran into a photographer who was next to the stage, who became one of my best friends over the years.
“Why did they boo?” She burst into girlish sobs, gasping between words, “I was thinking I did my best Chaka Khan dance moves.”
“I was in the back of the arena earlier,” Chuckie laughed, “and I heard this crazy loud protest, people were complaining: Miss Brick House is white! Miss Brick House is white!” Then everyone started booing, not even knowing why they were booing,” he said. “Really stupid.”
“But I’m not white!” I lamented, “I’m a black woman, a light-skinned black woman.” (African American was not yet in style.)
“Oh, of course I can see that,” said Chuckie, “but in the back with bright lights that lighten your skin tone and the fact that sometimes you wear that slicked back hairdo that looks like Farrah Fawcett…well I guess they just couldn’t tell.” Tears of laughter filled Chuckie’s eyes and he wiped them away with his knuckles.
I found it hard to laugh with him or even laugh. Being booed by 10,000 people in a roar of disapproval back then, made me wish the earth would shake, open up, and quickly consume me, no matter the reason.
The next morning, back on the road, I had washed, curled, and curled my hair, letting it dry naturally. But I kept whining about last night. However, it seemed to bother no one but me, which I found amazing. I thought they would send me home. Then I remembered the artist’s mantra:
“The show must go on.”
I also thought of Lionel Richie’s smile. Did I care that he was married? Only when I looked into his wife’s face did I feel a surge of guilt. She seemed so miserable by the nocturnal crush of women. I wasn’t a groupie though, I sniffed to myself. ‘Hello, I’m Miss Brick House! I’m not just with the band, I’m in the show!’
That sense of entitlement combined with the bittersweetness of an early smile in the hallway smiled my way. And a light conversation between me and Lionel, and I only cared about my own selfish joy.
That summed up a 21-year-old woman-girl, in a dusty Bible and a neon orange bathing suit, strutting across the stage each night with a supergroup, led by a friendly, incredibly talented, rich and famous man. She was dancing a dream and everything seemed possible. And so I danced.