Matador Negro, "Azucar Ii"

By Odie Hawkins

I lit my fire, I greased my skillet with virgin pressed olive oil, and I cooked. Thats one of the statements Chester L. Simmons, Jr. made about his career as a Novillero/Matador in the art of bullfighting.
Its really weird that it should be called bullfighting. No reasonable person would ever think of fighting a bull who has been bred to fight. Would any reasonable person think of fighting a pit bull who was bred to fight?
But I have to ask, are bullfighters reasonable people?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504924948

Odie Hawkins

Odie Hawkins was a member of the Watts Writer’s workshop that spawned the Watts Prophets, a collection of spoken-word artists, considered the forebears of modern hip-hop.He is the co-author of the novel “Lady Bliss,” and the author of “The Snake, Mr. Bonobo Bliss, and Shackles Across Time. 2011 he was a panelist at the Modern Language Assoc. at the Hilton, LA Live. Additional information may be found on Facebook page, his website:www.odiehawkins.com., his blog, and/or just Google his name.

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MATADOR

NEGRO,

AZUCAR II

ODIE HAWKINS

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2016 Odie Hawkins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/05/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2495-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2494-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover art by:

Tony Gleeson, www.tonygleeson.com

Cover design by:

AuthorHouse Design team

Author’s Photo by:

Zola Salena-Hawkins, www.flickr.com/photos/32886903@N02

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Prologue: The Homies:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

DEDICATION

My thanks to Matador Diego O’Bolger, who suggested that an Azucar II could be used to resolve some of the problems in Azucar I. The mistakes rest on my shoulders

My thanks to Los Aficionados de Los Angeles for being there. And finally, to my best friend and the greatest wife in the world, Zola Salena-Hawkins.

PROLOGUE: The Homies:

Johnny Fox

"I could relate to where Chester was comin’ from, to a certain extent. You know what I’m sayin’? Like, if you wanna be good at somethin’ you have to practice. You know what I’m sayin’?

The problem I had with this thing is that he wanted me, his ace, to help him practice by pretendin’ to be a bull ‘n charge into this piece of quilt he was wavin’ around. I told him, straight up; ‘Hey man, you gotta pay me.’ You know what I’m sayin’?

Ain’t no way I’m gonna be actin’ like a wild bull unless I get paid. You know what I’m sayin’? If I had known that he was gonna blow up the way he did, I would’ve paid him to let me pretend to be a bull and charge that piece of quilt. You know what I’m sayin’?"

XXX

BoBo

Tell ya the truth, I thought the brother had lost his marbles when he started wavin’ these bath towels ‘n sheets around. Or whatever he was wavin’ around. I, we didn’t know absolutely nothin’ about bullfightin’, absolutely ‘n completely nothin’ …

Leo Anderson, a.k.a. Raul

"I could dig where Chester was comin’ from. I really could. After all, I had copped to the tango after seein’ an old movie starring somebody named Dexter play ‘Valentino’ about ten times. This lousy movie, featuring Dexterwhatshisname, struck a chord in me, just the way that seein’ this documentary about the great Spanish bullfighter, ‘Manolete’ lit a fire in Chester’s gut.

People laughed behind their hands at us, both of us; far as the folks in the ‘hood could understand it – the tango was a white man’s dance, the mambo was our dance. This was during that time when Perez Prado was stickin’ rhythms from Africa into Jewish Klezmer, stuff like ‘Bei Mitz do shite’ was being re-upholstered into high powered hip swivels.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I copped to the tango, I didn’t have the time or the chops to tell our folks that I had researched the tango, and found out that the Black folks were the originators of this dance, that this had been a Black dance form, originally.

I didn’t have the time or the urge to argue with anybody about where the tango came from, or where it was goin, or any of that nonsense. I felt the most important thing was to do my thang and that was it. I thought that Chester felt the same way."

XXX

CHAPTER ONE

Chester L. Simmons, Jr., formerly known as Matador Juan Negro, Azucar during his hellified year in the bullrings of Mexico, sat at the head of the oakwood boardroom table, looking bored. It was another meeting/audition time for the Simmons’ family owned Matador Corporation.

Chester L. Simmons, Jr., President/CEO. Chester, senior, Vice President/Exec., in charge of quality control. Mrs. Lillian Simmons, executive business manager. Dondisha Simmons, public relations. Louise Simmons-Hammond, psychologist/consultant. Harold Hammond, sister Louise’s husband, Matador Corporation attorney.

The audition section of their meeting was winding down. Mr. Percy Jackson was auditioning four of his latest inventions: a beautiful robot Chihuahua with a panting red tongue, a wagging tail and a musical bark. Plus big moon beam swiveling eyes.

A large robot calico tabby cat who purred and meowed, with is tail flashing up, who rubbed his warm body against friendly cat loving legs. And finally, a beautifully dressed African-American doll couple who held each other in a warm embrace and danced smoothly in a precise circle. They could’ve been Barack and Michelle.

And all of these figures are powered by tiny solar panels, as I said before …

Chester, Sr. stood to signal that the audition was over.

"Thank you, Mr. Jackson.

Each of these figures is environmentally positive, they require minimum maintenance. In addition, I would like to add …

"Mr. Jackson, thank you. We will examine your inventions and I promise you that we will be in contact with you before the end of the month.

And finally, I would like to thank the Matador Corporation for giving me this opportunity to present these inventions …

They all breathed a sigh of relief as the loquacious Mr. Jackson boxed up his wares and bowed out. Chester, Jr. doodled on a pad in front of him.

Mrs. Lillian Simmons, the executive manager/accountant, read the minutes of the previous meeting/audition – Sorry, Mr. Mixmatch, we’re not interested in gloryin’ the slavery era in America. During the reading of the minutes from their previous meeting, Louise Simmons-Hammond leaned over to whisper to her husband.

Doesn’t seem like the mata-dor is too much interested in how much money he made in the last quarter…

He’s been that way since he and your Dad got back from their last business/research trip to Spain.

Well, my brother has always been a bit spaced, nowadays he just seems a bit more so…

Mrs. Simmons, executive manager/accountant (it’s like takin’ care of a super house budget) glared over her Ben Franklin specs at her daughter and her son-in-law, a nonverbal command to shut up!

The meeting was winding down, with each of the participants offering updates of their specific sections of responsibility. Chester Simmons Sr., the vice president of the Matador Corporation, and the man responsible for the quality of the video products that they were placing on several boutique/niche markets, was not in love with meetings but he recognized the necessity of keeping everyone on the same page.

I’d like to start off by saying that our recently coined motto – ‘Playing with Technology’ – is resonating, our vendors like it. The public likes it and I like it.

Chester Sr. glanced around the table as though he was expecting someone to disagree with him. He took note of his son flipping page over on his doodle pad.

"Aside from that piece of good news, I would like to call out other pieces of good news. ‘Our Tango’ video is selling quite well in, of all places, Argentina. I will have to let our staff psychologist explain what the turn on is about a Black couple, a gorgeous Black couple, doing the tango. Some people have suggested that the Argentines are using the video as a super role model/instruction video. Whatever. In any case, our sales have gone up by 25% since the last quarter.

Ampée, the hop-shuffle girl’s game that Mrs. Betty Adule Kotey, of Accra, Ghana, helped us put together, is doing quite well in Scandinavia, Sweden and Denmark especially. They seem to like to see the dark-skinned girls jumpin’ up ‘n down."

A flash of smiles greeted his remark. They had talked about the impact that the sight of jumping African girls would have on the White male psyches.

"The Capoeira videos of both styles of Capoeira; Angola and Regional, continue to be well received in Brazil, and we’re receiving upticks in Israel, Palestine and Greece. Also, looks like a good year ahead for us in Japan.

Mancala/Wari, the African board/counting game, isn’t doing so well. We’ve flat lined after an entry surge every time; I think we should consider easing away from Wari/Mancala.

Finally, as you all know, me and Chester, our ‘Mata-dor Sugar’, have just returned from a week in Spain. The Spanish have definitely fallen in love with ‘Matador Negro’, Azucar."

Chester, Sr. smiled in his son’s direction, hoping to pull a smile from him. Chester, Jr./Matador Negro, Azucar stared out of the window opposite his seat, obviously more interested in what was happening outside than what was happening inside.

"That’s about it for the moment. I’ll be talking with our Mexican distributors within the hour. One of the things they’ve already told me is that they’re really glad that we locked up our video from pirates by adding that component that prevents the video from being duplicated. Uhh, Ches’, would you like to add anything to what I’ve said?

Chester, Jr. nodded no in an absentminded way.

Well, I guess that brings us to the P.R. section … Dondisha?

Dondisha Simmons glanced at her husband. Wonder what’s on his mind?

"Well, first off, I’d like to say that I completely agree with Chester, Sr., concerning the acceptance of our motto – ‘Playing with Technology’ – we’ve been able to convince a number of educational institutions that our ‘game videos’ are a great way to teach related subjects. I’ll give you two big examples.

Dr. Ruth Sykes at the New Math Institutes sent me a very complimentary note about how she was using the tango and Capoeira videos, Angola and Regional to teach the kids about intersections, geometrical precision, how the movements in the videos were making a number of problems easier for the kids to solve."

Well, I’m be damned…

Dondisha smiled at her father-in-law’s exclamation.

"It is exciting, isn’t it?! Aside from that Dr. Sykes is going to recommend to the Educational Board of Independent Teachers that they make use of our materials in their curricula.

Currently we are sponsoring four Capoeira Angola groups, from right here in Chicago, to two weeks in Bahia, Brazil and, as you all know, our Matador Corporation Tango contest is going into a successful third year.

We’ve already registered twenty-couples and we’ve engaged four tango experts, straight from Buenos Aires, to judge the contest. That’s it for the moment. Harold?"

They had decided, from the first board meeting, that there would be no foot dragging. The meeting would go from one to the other with the last speaker calling on the next. They were efficient and took pride in the quality of their accomplishments.

Harold Hammond, decked out in a dark blue 3-piece pinstriped suite and an ice-cube blue tie, pulled his Ben Franklin bifocals up on his nose and cleared his throat. He was proud to be the chief attorney for the Matador Corporation and it showed from the theatrical approach he made to his brief remarks.

"Thank you for that introduction, Dondisha. First off, I’d like to say that we’ve had a successful outcome of our court case Wang Hai Corporation was/is, indeed, guilty of an attempt to highjack, if you will, our architectural design game.

We’ve been awarded a substantial amount for the attempted theft of our product, but we’re not completely satisfied. We think that there are legal safeguards that should be established to prevent Wang Hai and other similar corporations from attempting any more chicanery."

Dr. Louise Simmons-Hammond stared up at her husband’s dark profile, at the broad nose and full lips that were so capable of explaining anything legal to anyone who would listen.

Finally, on a comical note, I would like to share with you a confidential e-mail that was sent to me yesterday by Mr. Deng Xiao Ping, vice president of the Wang Hai Corporation. I’ll skip all of the flowery stuff and get right to the point: Mr. Ping is suggesting that perhaps the Matador Corporation might be interested in making a deal to take advantage of their cheaper labor resources…

Chester, Jr. looked up from his doodling and showed some interest in the proceedings for the first time.

In other words, Mr. Ping is indicating that he can’t beat us, so he would like to join us. Our letter to reject his offer to outsource will be sent this afternoon. Louise, Dr. Simmons-Hammond?

Dr. Simmons-Hammond was beaming at her husband. Chester, Sr. and his wife Lillian exchanged coded looks. Good; after a couple knuckleheads and one persistent knuck-draggin’ Neanderthal, our daughter has finally wound up with somebody who is good for her and good for the Corporation. He maybe a little full of himself, but what the hell, he’s a good lawyer.

Before I get to my prepared remarks, I would like to make a casual remark, an observation, if you will… concerning the presentation that was just made by Mr. Percy Jackson. I’d like to have it clearly understood that I’m not making my observation basically on a clinical analysis of his inventions, but rather as a gut level reaction.

She paused for a theatrical moment. Once again, Mr. and Mrs. Simmons exchanged coded looks. She’s beginning to sound more and more like her ol’ man every day.

"My gut reaction is not totally negative. I can appreciate the imagination and skills that Mr. Jackson has utilized to create his inventions, but I’m wondering whether or not the Matador Corporation needs robots when we can dial into the real deal at any time.

As I said, this is just a gut level reaction. If I examine the inventions completely, from a clinical point of view and find that they will be beneficial to our interests, then I will certainly revise my opinion.

A suggestion was made earlier that we should consider easing away from Wari, the African board/counting game, because of flat lined sales results. I would advise against that step for three specific reasons: Number one, the Organization of African-American Math Teachers has given their endorsement of this game on more than one occasion. They’ve stated that their use of the counting game has given children in Kindergarten a head start in understanding a number of basic Mathematical principles in addition-subtraction-multiplication and division.

Number two, Wari, as an African based system of logic, offers people in general a more positive view of African/African-American intelligence. I don’t think I need to emphasize the absolute necessity for us to continue to remind the world that we built the pyramids, we invented and developed a number of world class spiritual systems, including Ifa divination and Vodun.

Number three, I don’t think we’ve been as aggressive as we could be, regarding the marketing of this particular video.

Perhaps we should give it another year of more extensive exposure."

There was a moment of silence. Chester, Sr. stood.

Well, looks like we’ve covered our agenda. If we’ve missed anything, or if anyone would like to add a comment, or make some comments on what has been said – now is the time. No comments? Good, we can all get back to work.

They all took notice of Chester, Jr. closing up his doodlin’ notebook and striding out of the door first.

XXX

CHAPTER TWO

Dondisha Simmons

"I’ve gone through a lot with Chester, Jr. and he’s gone through a lot with me. For example, when we first got together, what was it, six-seven years ago now? He was frustrated about not being able to follow his dream of becoming a bullfighter, a matador. And I was on my way to becoming a fatso. I can’t think of any other kind of way to put that.

One thing was certain, I was definitely more likely to become a fatso than he was likely to become a bullfighter. Like, how many bullfighters have you ever heard of who came from the south side of Chicago? He was 19, I was 23. He was working part time at the post office and I was a Kindergarten teacher.

I thought we would really be able to pull it together, you know what I mean? Become a successful couple, get married even. That all got kicked out of the door when they started showing the bullfights from Mexico, Spain, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia.

I just couldn’t believe it! This brother would plunk down in front of the T.V. on Friday nights and watch the fights like something sacred was happening. Every Friday, KMEX #38, from 8 to 10. I have to confess I ate a little more ice cream than usual on Friday nights.

I really and truly had no idea how deeply serious he was about this stuff until he came to me and told me that he was going to Mexico to become a matador. I thought he had lost his ever lovin’ mind. I got together with his Mom and Dad, to see if they could help me out. They couldn’t help me out because they were just as bewildered and confused as I was."

Dondisha, I can assure you, we didn’t raise our son to become a bullfighter.

Yeahhh, you got that right! I don’t know where he got that idea from.

XXX

Mom

"I have to give my son a big pat on the back, he didn’t hold it against us that we weren’t big fans of his fighting bulls down in Mexico, early on. When he came back up here, worked for his Dad for a bit and came up with his bullfight video, he just ignored all of the other past stuff, and pulled us into his business. We became the Mata-dor Corporation. He made me the money manager of the whole shebang.

‘Mom, I don’t know of anybody who knows how to handle money better than you.’

So that’s how I became the money manager of the Mata-dor Corporation. One thing I’ve found out – if you have money, it ain’t hard to make money."

XXX

Dad

"As everyone knows by now, I was coming to the bitter end of a hard ten years in Statesville Penitentiary, Joliet, Illinois, when Lillian started telling me something about Chester, Jr. becoming interested in bullfighting. Huh? Did I read that right?

He was about fifteen and I thought that this would pass, you know, like some boys want to be firemen. Or cowboys, or whatever, at a certain age. It didn’t completely register on my brain that this boy was serious ‘til I got out of the joint and started dealing with him, straight up.

On the honest to God level, I really didn’t know what to do with the situation. My son was telling us, telling me that he wanted to be a bullfighter, ‘a mata-dor.’

We had a whole bunch of yang-yangs about this situation before he packed his stuff and moved in with Dondisha. That was not exactly cool with me and his Momma, specially his Momma, because she didn’t approve of the idea of un-married people living together. Lillian has always been semi-old fashioned.

In any case, Chester Jr. was living with Dondisha, they both had jobs and we thought the problem had been solved. No deal. Soon after he moved in with the sister they started showing, on Kmex #38, old bullfights and recent bullfights from Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Colombia and a few other places. Dondisha was fit to be tied, she started leaning on me and Lillian to help her save her relationship with Chester.

What you have to understand is that this girl was in love with our son. She was in love up to the point of coming to us for help. What could we say? What could we do? Chester, Jr. wanted to become a bullfighter. It wasn’t against the law.

The doo doo really hit the fan when Dondisha told Lillian that Chester, Jr. had decided to go to Mexico, to become ‘a matador.’ I’m not gonna lie, I walked around in a daze for a few days after that, trying to figure out what I could do about all of this.

My only son was going to a foreign country, to Mexico, to become something that none of us could relate to – ‘a mata-dor.’ I couldn’t think of anything but negative thoughts about the whole situation. During my salad days in the drug world I had found out how mean and nasty the Mexican drug cartels could be. I had to believe that that same nasty slopped over into the bullring, or whatever.

I couldn’t lay all of that negativity on Chester’s head; I just gave him a grand, my work number and my cell number to call me if he ran into any snags. I found out, later on, that Lillian had sprinkled a few coins into his pockets too, he wasn’t going down to Mexico, no matter for whatever reasons, coin-less.

Dondisha was devastated. She really loved this fool. And what’s her reward? He’s telling her that he loves the bullfight more than he loves her. Me and Lillian had hours of pillow time discussions about the scene.

‘Chester, tell me the truth, do you think your son is crazy?’

‘Our son, Lillian, our son. No, I don’t think he is crazy, in the normal sense of the word. I just think that he has latched onto something that means something to him. It might not mean something to us, but it means something to him. I think we’ll just have to let it go at that.’

And that’s pretty much what we did, we let him go to do his thing. I’m sure it must’ve been much more complex between him and Dondisha, but at the end of the day he was off doin’ his thang.

He wound up with this crooked ass promoter/manager/drug dealer and went through a year of bullfight slavery. I call it slavery ‘cause he didn’t get paid for his work, that’s slavery. We didn’t know what he was going through down there because we didn’t really understand the scene. It all bubbled up when he came home for the Thanksgiving. Christmas holidays. He told us that he had crossed the Big Man and that he was going to be barred from bullfighting in Mexico, Spain, everywhere. Now what?

I saw it as a golden opportunity to bring my son into the Cyber world, computer and all. I used to go to sleep counting the bucks we were going to make, just doing ordinary stuff, designing websites and stuff. Chester, Jr. took it a step beyond, he came up with the ‘Matador Negro, Azucar’ bullfight video.

It didn’t overwhelm anybody for a couple years, truth be told, and then it blew up. Money started rolling in from every direction. And that’s when he came up with the tango video."

Dondisha

"After he came back we didn’t fool around, we got married. I have to say that going into Capoeira Angola while he was away helped me, helped both of us a lot. I was definitely not a fatso anymore and he took notice. Yes indeed he did. Taiwo and Kehinde, our twins, a boy for him and a girl for me, were born ten months to the day after our marriage. Some people thought we had to get married. But no, it wasn’t that way. We were just up and running right from Day One. So much was happening during the first three years of our marriage, mainly as a result of the bullfight video, but also the other products that we started bringing out. It was a really exciting time, so much stuff happening at the same time.

Did I mention his book? The book ‘Matador Negro, Azucar’ stuck a nerve. We began to see substantial royalties after it was on the best seller’s list for about six weeks. Gravy train rolled in.

Chester ‘persuaded’ me to take over the P.R./promotions section of our business. As a matter of fact he pulled all of us in, including some of his old friends. Yes indeed, we were riding a gravy train."

XXX

Dad

"We were about five years into it when I began to notice a funny thing happening with Chester. He seemed bored with everything. He had a beautiful wife, lovely twins; Taiwo, the boy and Kehinde, the girl, were a couple of charmers, a grandparent’s delight, cars, a gorgeous home, money in the bank, with more rolling in, but he seemed bored by it all. Bored.

The only time he got really excited was when we went to the bullfights, and we went pretty often because we had to. I have to say, I got to know a lot about the art. As vice-president of the Matador Corporation, and the guy responsible for quality control of our products, I had to check out the latest bullfighters, the moves they made, just to be sure that we were up to date.

It was nothing for us to trip off to Spain for a week, or to trip to Venezuela or Colombia for a week. We went back and forth to Mexico so often we were practically on a first name basis with some of the stewardesses on Mexicana Airlines. I got a real whiff of what was happening inside Chester’s gut when we went to Las Ventas, this bullfight arena in Madrid, to see this latest whiz kid matador that everybody in the bullfighting world was talking about.

We saw the whiz kid do his thing. What was his name? – El Hoochie Coochie or something like that. And as we were leaving the arena, Chester turned to me and said; ‘I’m better than he is, and I haven’t fought in five years.’

That’s all he said, but I saw a strange gleam in his eyes. Now what you have to understand is that my son, Chester, Jr., had settled into another life style – I thought. And then we got the word from Dondisha…

Chester is back in training, he’s planning to go back into the bullfight…

XXX

CHAPTER THREE

Chester, Jr. Matador Negro, Azucar

"My turn now, huh? Well, they never really understood where I was coming from, right from the beginning, so I’m not going to focus on a misunderstanding. Maybe it would help matters a bit if I wrote something about how I blundered into toreo. And blundered is the best word I can think of to describe what happened.

A friend of mine on the Near Northside of Chicago, brother nicknamed ‘Mouse,’ told me that he was giving up his delivery boy gig in the Carnegie Drugstore, the pavilion level of the Drake Hotel. I snapped it up and went to work the next day. The gig was simple: come to work, match up the paregoric/codeine/opiate based drugs that the wealthy drug addicts were ordering and deliver them for big tips.

It was really a hip gig. I was fifteen, street hip and down with all games. I made friends from different cultures in the hotel who were my peers. Let’s start with Jose Mangual, ‘Cantinflas,’ the pastry guy, who gave me the avenue to ‘Manolete’ and the corrida. I didn’t know anything about anybody named ‘Cantinflas,’ at the time.

All I knew is that Jose Mangual a.k.a. ‘Cantinflas’ was a dynamite pastry chef, and that he was willing to give some delicious pastries in exchange for these onion skin thin condoms that I was, uhh, ‘liberating’ from the lower left hand drawer in the back room of the pharmacy. That’s the way we started off.

Aside from the exchange we had worked out {one Bomba de Nata for two skins), I discovered that Cantinflas was a really hip, very intelligent guy. He was about thirty or so, but he had done a lot, traveled a lot; I lived for a year on this island called Mikonos, in Greece. And he was always reading something every spare minute he had.

Hey keed, that’s what he called me, ‘keed’; you oughta read Octavio Paz, he’s got some good stuff in his books.

Then one day, out of the blue – Hey keed, you wanna see this documentary about ‘Manolete’? My cousin work at the World Playhouse Theatre and he offered me a ticket but I can’t go, I gotta do a couple wedding cakes. You wanna go?"

Manolete? Who is that? O well, a free ticket to the World Playhouse? Why not?

Yeahh, I wanna go – thanks, Cantinflas."

And I went. Truth be told, I can’t ever remember seeing a whole bullfight before. Maybe I had seen a scene or two somewhere in some movie, but I had never seen the real deal.

My first time out and I was lucky enough, or privileged to see one of the masters of the art of fighting bulls at work. I really felt bad leaving the World Playhouse, thinking of the matador Manolete being gored by the bull Islero in Linares. I felt bad about the matador dying on the infirmary gurney, but I also felt something else. I felt that I had just watched something that turned me on in a way I would never be able to describe. I had seen a documentary about something I felt that I wanted to do. It was like some kind of worm had crawled up inside of me. From that point on I went to see every bullfight type movie I could find. And in between times I read every book I could find about tauro maquia/bullfighting.

Maybe I could say I became obsessed. I went around thinking about what it would feel like to be dressed in the suite of lights, to use my capote and/or my muleta to wave this huge bull past my body with graceful movements.

I think it was ‘round about this time that I started using home-made capes to practice. People thought I had lost my mind. Just about everybody, except for my friend, Raul, who had picked up on the tango. That meant that there were two nut brains out there now.

One wants to be a bullfighter and the other one wants to be a tango dancer….

What on Earth is them young men smokin’? When I think back on it, I guess we might’ve seemed like some kind of weird junkies to the people in our neighborhood; Raul with his tango and me with my bullfighting capes. What was I, about 15-16 years old when my Dad got released from Statesville pen after 10 years for drug dealing? I was glad to see him at first, that is, ‘til he started bossing me around. I really hated that.

Here’s this man I hardly knew giving me orders – Chester Jr! Do this! Do that! – like, hey, c’mon, dude, where’ve you been for the past ten years?! Needless to say, he joined the big chorus of folks, including my Mom, who were saying – no bullfights for you, buddy! Get yourself a job!"

So, I got on part time at the post office, but I was still waving my cape around as often as I could. It was really a bad scene, emotionally, between me and Dad. I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before we locked horns. I started plotting my way out of the situation.

I came up with the idea of getting a roommate, but that didn’t work out too swell. My homies – Johnny Fox, BoBo, Short Dog Bernard, Moose Head, Billie Woods, Dupper Dan – all came up with excuses of one kind or another. BoBo turned me down when I told him that I wouldn’t agree to having orgies in the apartment we were going to rent.

What will people think if we don’t have orgies ‘n shit; the single men, they’ll think we’re gay…

Leo Anderson a.k.a. Raul, ‘specially on the days when he was teaching the tango to these mostly middle aged, middle class Black school teachers/social workers/would be sugah mommas over at the Ida B. Wells Social Center, saved me. In a manner of speaking.

"I can’t be your roommate, Chester, ‘cause it looks like I’m about to hook up with this sister, looks like I’ll be leaving Bowen Avenue and moving into Lake Meadows, if I keep on doing the tango the way I’m doing it.

But I tell you what … if you’re willing to tango your ass off, I can introduce you to a couple ‘prospective roommates’".

So, that’s the way it started, Leo a.k.a. Raul pushed enough tango into me for me to come into his class as an advanced student who had tangoed in Buenos Aires.

Their names were Condizza LaForte and Dondisha Phillips. And Raul made it plain that both of those young ladies (22 yrs. Old/23 yrs. Old) were ripe for a relationship.

After a bit of double stepping and doing sexy back bends I finally settled on Dondisha Phillips. It was a hard choice to make because both of the young ladies were quite fine. Yes, quite fine.

Miss LaForte was a Creole from Naw’leans and she never let you forget it for a minute – I’m a Creole from Naw’leans.

She was a gorgeous sister, no doubt about that, with her drip down the back Japanese hair, her hour glass/Coca-Cola bottle shape, her light colored eyes and her ripe banana colored skin. But I was a bit turned off by references to her Creole background.

I didn’t feel too great an urge to deal with all of that racial craziness. Aside from everything else, she was always talking about how Catholic she was.

My great great great parents, on both sides, were Catholics.

Frankly speaking, what that meant to me is that she was into that Virgin Mary stuff and, at 18 and a half, with all of my hormones rantin’ and ravin’, I was not about to get down on my knees and beg for anything.

Dondisha was Miss’ssippi, Yazoo City, to be exact. And she was Earth, the complete opposite of Madam Creole. She had a gorgeous shape too, but anybody could see that her gorgeous shape was going to surrender to ham hocks, chicken, fried chicken, bar-beque, ‘Church cakes,’ buttered bisquits, syrup flavored ice tea, all of the stuff that people from the Delta considered semi-sacred.

I got to have me some hog maws ‘n black-eyed peas when the New Year come in …

I thought I could counter attack on that with my ideas but I wasn’t in a position to push my nutritional agenda nowhere. Here’s what went down. After a couple years of having my Dad try to place me under his thumb, I hooked up and moved in with Dondisha.

Mom was outraged – I thought we had raised you to be more than some common-run-of-the-mill-Tom-Alley-Cat. You oughta be shamed of yourself!

Of course, Mom and Dad, being loving parents, gave in to the reality that me and Dondisha were living together. But they still put pressure on me for that marriage.

So, Chester Jr., after you’ve had your ‘experiment,’ when’re you gonna get married? Me and Chester Sr. do not want illegitimate grandchildren. Am I making myself clear?

I was cool with what they were talking about. And so was Dondisha, who was dying to get off the Pill. And then, Lo ‘n Behold! They started showing bullfights from Mexico, from Spain, from Colombia, from everywhere that bullfighting is a part of the culture.

Friday nights/the bullfights/8 pm-10 pm/from Mexico/Spain/Venezuela/Colombia/Peru/Nimes – watching our large Sports T.V. screen to see what the KMEX people were showing. Friday nights.

Halleluya! Old grainy stuff from yesteryears – the re-look at Manoletes death made me cry. Dondisha stood off to one side, a bowl of Hagen Daaz ice cream cradled in her left hand, watching me cry. I had the feeling that she thought I was having a nervous breakdown. We had a whole group of those kinds of Friday/Kmex bullfight rights before I decided to go to Mexico, to become a reality of my dream.

It would be impossible to describe the stuff that was piled up on my head, as a result of my decision. The biggie was this notion that I had lost my mind.

He’s still able to balance his checkbook.

Has he shown any criminal interest in children?

Dondisha, look, I’m going to Mexico, to get into bullfighting, you want to come with me?

Poor girl, she cried all night. Chester, you can’t do this to us, to your family, to yourself. Please, baby, please, don’t do this!

There were times when I had to smile, even laugh at what I was doing. Who had ever tripped off the Southside, out of Black Chicago, to become a matador? It was obvious that nobody really believed that I was going to Mexico until we got to the airport.

I’ll fly into San Diego and take a bus down into Mexico City. I can still remember the expressions on their faces as they gave me last minute kisses and hugs. Mom slipped me five hundred and Dad slipped me a grand, and I had thirty-five hundred I had saved from my post office pay so I was well fixed financially.

I hadn’t even considered the possibility of coming back to Chicago, America. I was going to Mexico to become a matador, a torero, and that’s all that mattered. I had gone over to the Drake Hotel kitchen and gotten the names and an address from my friend, Cantinflas, the one who put the whole thing into motion with his ticket for me to see Manolete. He almost got down on his knees to beg me not to go.

Cheester, you young, man, lots of life ahead of you. You don’ wanna do this to you’self. Life in Mexico is berry different from here. Life is hard down there, man, hard. You gotta be reelly careful, som’body might keednap you. You know wot I’m sayin’?

He took a fifteen minute coffee break to try to persuade me not to go. And when he saw that I wouldn’t be persuaded, he gave me the address. "Tlaltelolco, everybody know these place. Not a good reputation. My cousins live here. I love ‘em but I gotta tell ya, they are not the best people in the world, you know wot I’m sayin’?

They smoke a lot of mota and drink a lot too…"

But they have space for me. It’ll give me a chance to check out the scene, you know, find out where the bullfight scene is.

Cantinflas gave me a very worried, very strange look as he wrote Tlaltelolco on a sheet of paper, and his cousins’ names.

‘Ey, good luck, Cheester. I hope every thing work out good for you. He gave me a warm hug and backed away from me, shaking his head, as he hurried back to his pastry station. Oh, don’t take your cellphone with you, one of my cousins will steel it from you.

XXX

Tlaltelolco and the cousins were an absolute downer. Being from Chicago, from one of the slummiest areas in Chicago, the projects and all, I knew something about ghetto life. I have to say that Tlaltelolco was right up there with the worse of the worse.

The building that I went to, where Cantinflas’s cousins lived, was a dope fiend-cheap wine-weed-crack smoking hangout. I was welcomed, of course, as Jose Mangual’s friend and because I could add a few more pesos to the rent pot.

It took me exactly one day and one night to realize that I was not going to be on that scene very long, China, Rudy, Lulu, Tio Pepe, Patricia, Candido, Conchita, Manuel, and whoever showed up to smoke weed, snort coke and drink all day and all night convinced me that I would have to split as soon as possible.

But, as my Mom used to say – if life throws lemons at your head, think lemonade. I put that to work. I got up every morning at six a.m. and went up on the roof to work out; I skipped rope, did five-hundred sit ups, used my capote and muleta to practice every pase I had ever seen or read about.

My crew thought I was half nuts or funny as hell. They fell out laughing about the Matador Negro who had come from the land of milk and money, all the way down