To
Rashawn Brazell
B K - 7 6
8
By Troy Longmire
And
my heart owns a doubt
Whether
‘tis in us to arise with day
And
save ourselves unaided.˚
In
1992 I had been involved with a psychiatrist who needed a psychiatrist, Gavin
was his name. We are still friends but
he moved from Long Island to Washington,
D.C. to work for the Veterans
Administration. We both had friends who
had relocated from various places to the D.C. area and so I was in and out of
there a lot during that time. One of our
friends, Michael, had a boyfriend and they were known to pick up rough trade
and take the guy back home for a threesome.
They came to town for Gay Pride weekend and we all had a festive time
dancing at Sound Factory Bar, Sugar Babies—a dive in lower Manhattan
known for its great house music, and partying in Brooklyn at the Oxford Tennis
Club—our latest haunt located across from Fort Greene
Park.
About
a week later Gavin called to say that Michael’s boyfriend was dead, he was
nineteen years old. “And it was not the
virus,” Gavin said in his snobbish tone.
Michael’s boyfriend had been murdered by a trick they had picked up,
Gavin believed, in New York. No clues as to who the murderer was as Gavin
was not home when the murder took place.
The only description was that of a tall dark Jamaican man. Gay men murdered by anonymous tricks, so what
else is new? Except for the fact that
Michael’s lover had been murdered, dismembered and put into large black
industrial strength garbage bags this was otherwise a routine case for the
police. To this day it remains an
unsolved murder.
Tasha
now lives in Chicago and is a professor of
journalism; her family still lives in Crown Heights. On a visit home one late spring, she asked me
to meet for an early dinner at our favorite eatery Le Gamin, a most charming
French restaurant at 556 Vanderbilt Avenue
in the Prospect Heights
section of Brooklyn. I had the apple crêpes and they were
delicious. Feeling good we strolled on
over to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and marveled at the cherry blossoms,
then we sat outside the Brooklyn
Museum and talked about
our lives while watching traffic along Eastern Parkway. It was like meditation. I walked her to the train and we embraced and
parted.
Still
daylight, I decided to walk home and when I got to Dean
Street right at about 5th
Avenue I paused to look at some books in the
window of a bookstore, I am a bibliophile.
It felt good looking at used books.
I turned around to head for the curb and right in front of me was a
telephone pole and affixed to it was a N.Y.P.D. poster offering a reward for
information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible
for the murder of Rashawn Brazell, he was nineteen years old. Case No. BK-768. My memory jogged, I vaguely recalled hearing
something about this on the local news and I could remember seeing such a
poster on Christopher Street
in Manhattan. I just had not paid any attention to it until
now. I rushed home and got on my
computer to learn more. The police think
that he may have met a man over the internet, in any event he was last seen
alive on St. Valentine’s Day. All of a
sudden I found myself haunted by the details of this murder and the photograph
of Rashawn Brazell. At about 11:00 P.M.,
restless and unable to get to sleep, I decided that I needed to take a
ride. I left my apartment at 335 State Street in
the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn and walked
over to Hoyt and Schermerhorn where I got the “A” train to Nostrand
Avenue. It felt kind of
weird, I mean what was I doing? I got
off the train and decided to have a look.
Like some lay gumshoe I wandered the platform looking down into the
tunnel. I thought this is crazy man I’m
getting out of here. And then as I was
leaving it struck me suddenly, there to my right was the stairs to the lower
level platform. By now it was midnight and I found myself very much
alone eyeing a flickering light bulb. I
thought this creepy feeling could be manufactured in my imagination as I walked
to the end of the platform. There on top
of a maintenance container covered in dust and silt were rolls of large black
industrial strength garbage bags. I
could here train service up above but nothing or no one down here, eerily
vacant. I turned around to peer down
into the dark tunnel devoid of light, oddly stilled, oddly quieted. I began to get a little nervous and thought
it best to leave. I stopped and thought
this is where they found Rashawn Brazell, BK-768.
I
decided to take the long walk home. It
was nice and warm outside, the moon was full.
I walked to the center of Grand
Army Plaza
and found myself sitting in the small pond beside a dolphin sculpture. It was my private space for the moment, no
one else was there but a sweet scented fragrance did linger in the air. As I looked up at the visible starry night
sky and full moon, I looked up at the sculpture commemorating The Grand Army of
the Republic in the Eastern Parkway
roundabout in front of the entrance to Prospect Park. I, ironically, harkened back to my childhood
in the late 1960s when we would watch The
Patty Duke Show on television. There
is an episode when Patty—who has only
seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights—is in the car with her
family and they are riding down the street, it is a bright sunny day and all is
right in her TV world, and through their car’s rear window receding into the
distance is The Grand Army Plaza and the tall victorious statue of The Grand
Army of the Republic stately atop its proud arch. Sitting there amid the peace I thought about Paris, I was just there
and fell in love with the city. In my
mind I compared the statuary in The Grand Army of the Republic with the Nike of
Samothrace in the Musée du Louvre. I
thought I could move to Paris
and not be alone, embarrassed or ashamed or worried.
Reality
set in. I was feeling sad. The murder of a stranger had taken hold of
me. For some odd reason, I know it
sounds strange, I felt the murder of Rashawn Brazell was an insult and I took
it personally. Black gay men have been
through too much in this city and enough is enough already. Here one might ask if I am naïve or have I
been hiding under a rock? I would
answer, no, I am fully aware that death does not take a holiday; furthermore
according to the gospel, He maketh his
sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on
the unjust. I thought about the
number of friends and family I had lost to A.I.D.S. It took me back to the 1980s, when I lived on
Eastern Parkway across from the Brooklyn Museum with André, Keith, Hilario,
Norberto, and A-B, close friends who had come to New York from all points with
big dreams, big plans; some had gotten bit parts in major Broadway productions. Shows like “Timbuktu,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “The Wiz,”
“Dreamgirls,” and “Sophisticated Ladies.”
Like the promising spring rain, they had awakened my own imagination at
the most opportune moment. We shared our
lives and our youth in such a way it gave friendship a really special sense of
place. It is true that love that knows
no fear, for we were fearless back then.
Some
of these friends went home in body bags; parents came to town to collect their
sons and for many that would be their only New York story. Of my many roommates in the humble place we
called home on Eastern Parkway was my closest friend and ally who with only the
knowledge that love provides completely empathized with his shy friend’s lonely
childhood in abject poverty born the youngest of too many children without any
field to plow or cotton to pick or tobacco to chop but born too black and too
skinny with a big nose and called fag and punk much to the disgust and disdain
of the God that he worshipped. He overlooked
my awkward bookishness to become my animated muse and we called him A-B like
the first two letters of the alphabet, it was short for Abraham Bates. I must admit at first I had reservations,
based on my own insecurities, when he pulled up in his Volvo that still had Texas license
plates. A-B had come east to attend Howard University
maintaining a family tradition that began with his great grandfather who was
among the celebrated men who chartered the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. A-B hailed from a long line of Baptist
preachers out of Houston, Texas.
It is hard to explain the fact he degenerated right before my eyes but I
could not see it. He knew that the
severity of his illness was not registering with me and would remind me that
the astrologist had said there was no Earth in my zodiac. He would try to tell me to take it easy. I used to intercede on his behalf with his
parents and I thought if I had parents like them, I would have never have left
home. They were so nice and sober and
together.
Once
the doctors gave his mother the prognosis that A.I.D.S. was incurable, A-B consented
and his parents came to take him back home to Texas.
It still had not clicked in my head that my closest friend was about to
checkout. We packed him up and we all loaded
into his dad’s rental car and I promised A-B to not say goodbye when we got to
the airport. He’d put his index finger
to my mouth when it came time to leave.
“Oh, no trouble Deacon and Sister Bates, I can take the train back home
from the airport once you drop the car off at Avis,” I said to his parents reassuringly. With his wife by his side, the Deacon settled
in behind the wheel of the big shinny Buick, “All right we’ve got to go east,”
he said. Silence. Then turning to look at me, “What’s the
quickest way to the highway?” asked the Deacon.
“I have no idea,” answering so quickly that A-B laughed and for the
first time the Deacon and Deaconess let out a laughter that was more relief. In the backseat with A-B I reached in my
pocket and pulled out an envelope. I
opened it so that A-B could see the invitation the cover art depicting, “The
Sands Of Time,” in it read a brief personal letter from Michael Brody
announcing the final weekends of the Paradise Garage. A-B absorbed short missive and turned his
head toward the window and we remained quiet.
During the ride A-B grabbed my hand and held it tight. I knew the invitation from the Paradise
Garage would get him and the subtle way his parents communicated with one
another during the ride, I thought was so sweet. My mind was adrift a million miles away. When we got to the airport, I noticed the
Deacon pulled into a parking lot for long term parking. I did not want to wake A-B but it did get my
attention when I thought the Deacon was coming around to open his wife’s car
door and instead he opened mine as she sat there motionless. The Deacon reached for my right arm and with
my finger raised slightly I said softly, “Wait, he’s asleep.” The Deacon said gently, “It’s all right now, Troy, you can let
go.” I looked at him like, What you talkin’ ‘bout Willis? And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. A-B was dead.
Friends
were leaving me, dropping like flies. I
had no place to go to no place to run and hide until the storm passed
over. I would have to stay here in Brooklyn and let them see in me the last man
standing. I pledged to my dieing
comrades to fight the good fight and I pledged to God that I would praise Him
no matter what. This goddamn disease
cannot win it cannot kill us all, I thought in anguish as I returned home from
the airport on the “A” train to a fugue.
The
wafting fragrance heavy on the night air hastened my return to the present,
where I sat in the center of Grand
Army Plaza
feeling alone, crushed by isolation. Finally,
at long last after so much remembering and thinking about Rashawn Brazell, a
life cut so short, the tears began to flow and they did not stop until sunrise. I thank God because in my mind I had stopped
feeling and the tears reminded me that I was indeed a human. The sweet scented fragrance that had sat there
with me was right under my nose all the time.
Someone had planted white gardenias in full blossom beside a park bench
with an inscription on it that read, In
Loving Memory of Anton Edgar Melton 1960-1987. I did not recognize the name but I thanked
him nevertheless. And I thanked Rashawn
Brazell for helping me to acknowledge the fragility of life once more.
The
iconic clock high atop the old Williamsburgh
Savings Bank
Tower silently chimed a
new day’s dawning. The young boy riding his
bicycle did not get my attention right off.
He looked between the ages of ten and twelve years old. He did not catch my attention until he
hesitated. He wondered at the sight of
the hearse. He rode his bicycle slowly closer
and closer, wondering. He circled it
slowly, like a dog sniffing at something.
He peeked inside the hearse and saw that it was empty. He studied the situation and the men dressed
in black gathering at the door of the stately old Baptist Church
on the corner of Third Avenue and Schermerhorn. The young boy seemed puzzled. He was not surprised, but he was
curious. For him life was all he knew, death
a strange-looking car parked along the curb ready to go.
The
End
˚Poem by Robert Frost, “Storm Fear”.
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