General Board

Barry White- A Manifestation of the Sacred

Posted By: evoc (68.46.101.244)
Date: Friday, 4 July 2003, at 7:36 p.m.

In Response To: Rest in Peace, Barry White. (Mindy)

Many moons ago, I left a little piece of my heart in San Francisco. It was in the 5th floor Japantown apartment of the most beautiful brown skinned man you can imagine.

WT was a good sized man, maybe 6 feet and 300 pounds, but not sloppy -the kind of man other black men raise a fist to and say, "Solid" (really!) when they see him walk by. He raised my own bar about the handling of *my* size, just by walking down a street: confident, tall, intent on grabbing the world by whatever it took to squeeze a little life from it.

In an Armani suit, over a fresh loaf of sourdough, with his calf grazing yours under the table, WT just had the way to make a pudgy East Coast girl feel as languid as warm molasses. While he "liked the bigger girls", he never declared himself part of a movement- just loved who he loved, openly, sensually, and could light up a room with his own fire. The kind of man who would (and did) put the drinks on his gold card, offer you his coat in a cool drizzle, and passionately kiss you goodnight against a wall in the crowd at the Bart station. I left with weak knees and a longing I haven't known since.

WT never identified strongly wth his "blackness" - having grown up largely in a Long Island private school, he never much identified with his "race" as a child-- and was just discovering it, and what it meant to him, when we met and fell in love.

Most of what he would take with him, of what his black masculinity would mean to him, he found in men like Barry White. A man of his father's era, Barry represented a slow, confident sexuality that had all afternoon- all weekend if you liked- to build. While Barry seemed campy to WT at first, almost too too much, he came slowly to appreciate the lower register of that voice, the subtle use of the heft of a breath, the tense dark silences in Barry's delivery- and adopted them as his own. Half kiddingly, he'd point to the stereo and say to me, "Now, THAT, my dear, is a black man." And we'd laugh, and spend another long late summer afternoon between cool sheets, eating fresh berries, listening as he and Barry told me, "It's here- right here, my dear- I don't want to search no more." I was home.

I have never been so loved, inside and out and clear to the bone, as I was in those moments. I have never blushed so hard, clung so tight, or felt my flesh give way so easily, before or since. Seems silly to say so, but Barry White was no small part of that.

With WT (and Barry) I learned about more than spirit and wisdom, I learned about soul: that elusive grindy bassline from which much sex and magic can be made. For this reason, all cheese and camp and Ally McBeal aside-- Barry White is inextricably woven into my sex, my love, my interest, my dreams. And while, like most good things, that relationship came to an end-- in that time, WT was a man you really believed in that moment when he told you he was "never, ever gonna give you up." And Barry gave him a good deal of that "street cred". It was years before I could play his music again without sobbing.

They both, as Barry sang,"gave me all I need, and more than I can stand." My heart hangs a bit heavy for Barry, and also for the part of me that once awakened has not yet been put to sleep-- my soul.

-S.

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