Standing at the Heels of Greatness and Staring up the Dress of the Statue of Liberty

My husband and I needed to get out of the house. We were tired and needed a break, and this month is our anniversary. So we called up my sister in law to take Hopeless’ kids, dropped my girls off at my mother’s and headed off to New York City.

We had a great time. We stayed right off Broadway in a quaint little hotel, with an equally quaint LITTLE room. Jerome and I stood in the middle of the room, holding hands, side by side, and each touched an opposite wall. I think he could have stretched out on the floor (if the room were big enough), and from toe to fingertip, he may have actually been longer than the room itself. The people in the next room sneezed once, and we thought that we were actually witnessing the first earthquake in New York in a hundred years.

Of course we did all the touristy things. We saw the Statue of Liberty, where my husband proceeded to take a picture staring straight up her dress. I asked him why he’d taken it, and he said “bet not many people can say they have a picture of that.” OK.

On Saturday night we attended Nick Kaufman’s birthday party. It took us somewhere around three hours to get there, but a fun time was had by all. We left about midnight, I think, which was a good thing because we ended up catching the very last train to NJ (where we stayed the 1st night).

We went to Harlem, shopped and saw the famous Apollo Theater. Inside I snapped pictures with some of the best talent the world has ever seen. I stood at the heels of greatness, staring at the camera smiling like and idiot, touching the glass wall which held the pictures and felt humbled. These people chased dreams that most of time seemed impossible and daunting, during a time when they were allowed to perform ON the stage, but couldn’t actually patronize the establishments.

I want to get my book published.

I looked at the pictures of Aretha Franklin, Richard Pryor, Flip Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and all the others and thought, “Yeah, I can do this.”

I came home Wednesday to an acceptance letter to Dark Dreams III. On Thursday I received a phone call from an agent offering to represent me; comparing my writing to, “It’s like if Toni Morrison were to write Waiting to Exhale...”

Yeah…I can do this.