Pour a Lil Sumtin For the Brothas Who Aint Here

“This is for the brothers that ain't here!” As witnessed in the movie Cooley High. Cochise pours a few drops of liquor out the bottle before he drinks from it.

How do you celebrate the life of someone who loved to drink? You get drunk. A week later I am trying to put my sober thoughts down to purge the feelings inside. It started with the call early Saturday morning on the way to a photo shoot.

“Dale, I know you guys had not spoken in over 10 years, but I knew you would want to know, Eddie Jones was shot shortly after leaving the Eagle bar at a bus stop. He died at the hospital.”

It’s true, the last time I spoke or saw Eddie Jones it was 1999. We had spent two intense years in a relationship. One of the major reasons I moved to Los Angeles was to break the unhealthy cycle of being an enabler in a relationship with an alcoholic. He actually broke it off with me, the final straw was attempting to intervene on behalf of his health to his mother. He said I had crossed the final line. It was during the Baltimore Gay Pride festival of 1996 that I first saw Eddie Jones from across a crowded room and fell in love. He was short, freckle-faced, , knock-kneed, and balding, with the most beautiful teeth I had ever seen. He also had that thickness around his waist that I found very sexy. I snapped a photo of him because deep down inside I felt that we would meet again; and we did. Two weeks later, I saw him crossing Liberty Heights Avenue, walking his dog. I gave him my number. When he called the following week, I invited him to see the movie Stonewall, because I was in a brief scene or two. He spent the night and we held each other all night long -- without having sex! When he saw my Diana Ross & The Supremes memorabilia collection, his mouth dropped open. He suddenly turned to me and kissed me, as if he had found his “Supreme” soul mate.


I had bought my first computer and the internet connected Eddie and I to other Supremes enthusiasts. We joined an online Supremes fan club and ordered old performance videos from other collectors. Our typical Saturdays included rummaging through thrift shops and used record stores, looking for old Supremes albums. In 1997, Eddie and I attended the Supremes Fan Club Convention at the Motown Café in New York City. Only two of the eight Motown Supremes showed up, Scherrie Payne and Lynda Laurence. I wore my Mary Wilson t-shirt and Eddie wore a Diana t-shirt. We took pictures with Scherrie and Lynda, who at that time were billing themselves as the FLOS (Former Ladies the Supremes).

Later that year, we caught Diana Ross performing at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Eddie and I were the ultimate fans, wearing identical Diana Ross t-shirts and talking to all the other “Rossaholics” seated near us.




Eddie and I spent quality time in bed early in the mornings talking about funny or odd dreams we had experienced the night before. I was a morning person and, to my delight, he always seemed to wake up with a smile on his face. I found it pleasurable to kiss him before he brushed his teeth -- I loved the way he tasted. In 1998, ABC aired the television documentary special Motown 40: The Music Is Forever. We threw a Motown party and Eddie designed a cake with the Motown logo. He was the perfect date. Everybody liked him because he was so sociable and non-threatening. I remember Eddie surprised me when a former QVC co-worker invited me to their wedding; when I showed him the invitation; he reached into his closet and pulled out a wrapped present! He would buy gifts and store them until the right occasion, always ready for a party! We took many trips together. Our trips away from Baltimore usually took us to Washington, D.C., Atlantic City, or New York.

 
 We constantly took photographs and made a huge collection of photo books. Our favorite pastime was taking pictures of ourselves in front of places that had our names in them. It felt like a good luck omen whenever we took a trip and ran across a place like the “Madison Hotel” or the “Eddie Jones” store. I had suffered from migraines as an adult and, even though their occurrences had decreased over the years, I could still get a doozie from time to time. When one would hit, Eddie would hold my head in his lap and stroke my forehead until I fell asleep. We connected in so many ways, but familiar problems from my past relationships began to surface. Eddie loved alcohol. Of course, his drinking only became an issue if I was feeling angry or rejected. As long as I was getting what I wanted, I was completely happy to be in denial especially since when I looked back on it, Eddie treated me wonderful when he was drinking. It was to my advantage to keep him intoxicated. It was when he was stone cold sober that his words could be so cutting. He said something to me in jest that has never left me:

“I am not an alcoholic! 

I am a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings!”

 
I convinced myself that we were perfect for each other. We looked so good together. People told us so. We were laying in the sand at a beach in New York once and a perfect stranger walked up to us and said what a great couple we made. Eddie thought I had paid the guy to say it! We tasted good together. We smelled good together. We even communicated in our own special language, our own private code. Eddie used to say that my life was like a television movie, and we would spend countless hours laughing over the casting of famous singers and actors as our family and friends. We’d then reference people, (including ourselves), by using the celebrity names we had chosen. In the movie of my life, Blair Underwood would play me, and Freddie Jackson would co-star as Eddie.

He made us laminated cards that identified us as members of “The Ross Gallery.” We were co-curators for the Ross Gallery, which probably housed one of the most extensive, (and unique), collections of material on the Supremes and Diana Ross to be found anywhere. (The Ross Gallery was really just my living room filled with my Supremes memorabilia.) Nobody could convince me that I did not have real love, except Eddie.

One Sunday after our weekly sexual ritual, Eddie lay naked across the bed and calmly told me he thought, “Whatever we had” had run its course. He explained to me that I needed to prepare myself for the ending. “I have always told you I was not in love. I’ve always considered you a special friend. I have always enjoyed spending time with you, until you made it feel like an obligation.”

“Why can’t we try again?”

“Dale, you have always tried to make this deeper than what it is. I don’t want to be in a relationship and that is what you have tried to make this thing we have.”

“No matter how you look at this, Eddie, this THING we have shared has been a relationship for two and a half years!”

“And I tried it your way. Now you need to accept what I want and let me go.”

Every effort to hold on to him only pushed him further away. I was like a heroin addict going through withdrawal. Meanwhile, whenever we would talk or whenever I saw Eddie on the street, I would beg for another chance. I was losing my self-esteem and Eddie’s respect.

Before we separated, I had noticed that his ankles were swelling, and I worried about his drinking and his health. After our break up, he started on medication for a diagnosis of high blood pressure. I kept thinking that I could save him and protect him from himself. I told his mother that I was concerned about Eddie mixing his alcohol with his prescription drugs. When Eddie learned about my little talk with his mother, he was infuriated. Whatever level of friendship I had maintained with him, I destroyed.

Gay church and Iyanla Vanzant tapes got me through those rough first few months. I finally decided I needed to find a way to heal from the breakup. I decided to do something really different. I decided to have my nipples pierced. After all, how else does a gay man really get over the love-lust of his life? I thought that the pain / pleasure of sterling steel through nipples should do it. I promised myself that the pain of losing Eddie would leave once the pain in my nipples stopped. However, in that moment, I gave myself permission to cry and wallow in my own hurt and depression.

When the opportunity arrived to produce my play in California, it was just the change I needed. I immediately packed my bags, because I was more than ready to close the Baltimore chapter of my life and see what the west coast had to offer. I was leaving “Charm City” Baltimore, a city I loved, and I needed to grow up, love myself, heal, and accept a failed relationship not as a mistake, but as a learning process that would make me a better person. The nipples healed, the pain ended. I did find a man who loved me as much as I loved him. I was a better partner to him because of what i had learned from my mistakes with Eddie.

When the news finally hit me that Eddie was really gone, I opened a bottle of vodka and started drinking toasts to him. I took out all the picture books I had of him and listened to all the Diana Ross & Supremes songs we loved so much. That following Monday I was scheduled to do a performance at a gay theater showcase in Santa Monica. I dedicated it to him. The irony of the lyrics did not even hit me until that night. I was doing a monologue about the church, homophobia, “real” hetro men versus gay men. The lines were written for me 15 years ago:

I was born gay. But what is my real crime? I'm not robbing people on the streets or selling drugs. I'm not a father who misses support payments. I've never killed anyone. I pay my bills on time; rent, taxes, car note. Hell, I'm employed. And you say I am not a man. Because of who I choose to love.

Eddie was shot on the streets of Baltimore by a “real” man, a real robber and a real killer.

BALTIMORE -- Baltimore police have arrested a man in two separate killings from last week. Isaac Truss, 23, faces several charges, including first-degree murder. Truss is accused of shooting a man to death inside a senior assisted living facility on Conway Street on Thursday and for killing another man at a bus stop on Fayette Street on Friday afternoon. "Homicide detectives caught up with him within hours after he committed his second murder in 24 hours. He was arrested. He confessed to those murders. The ballistics matched," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. Police are looking at robbery as a motive in both cases. They said they identified Truss using CitiWatch crime camera footage.

 

Hey Eddie, like the guys in Cooley High, I'm pouring a lil sumtin for the brothas who ain't here!