Meet Zora.
I have two major weaknesses, tall Black men and food.
But not necessarily in that order.
When I'm lonely, I eat.
When I'm bored, I eat.
When I'm horny and can't resolve it, I eat.
When I get excited, I eat.
When I'm depressed, I eat.
When I feel like it, I just eat.
When I smoked, I didn't eat as much.
But then smoking wasn't half as satisfying
as eating so I made a choice.
I chose food.
I had migrated up to a size 16 and that's
when I looked at myself in the mirror and couldn't stand it.
I said, just wait one damn minute here, Zora.
And along with some of the other flabby teachers
at the junior high school where I teach,
joined Weight Watchers.
I lasted about a year and I'm now down to a slender size 12.
Well, it's slender enough, considering I'm almost 5 foot
8.
Of course, I still got this damn cellulite
which drives me crazy.
I can feel the ripples other people can't see,
which is precisely why I went out and bought Jane Fonda.
Now when I wake up before I have my coffee,
I work out with Jane.
It's only been a few weeks since I've been doing it with her
but so far, I cannot see a bit of difference.
Weight Watchers turned out to be a drag.
It was just like going to the fit doctor a.k.a.
neurologist.
One thing I can't stand as people telling me what to do.
And out of all the years I've been
told what to eat, drink, and think, I got sick of them too.
So I quit when I thought I looked halfway
decent in my favorite Betsey Johnson dress.
Yes, I used to have fits.
And not the kind kids have when they can't get their way.
Real fits.
Seizures.
When I was little, I fell off a sliding board
and hit my head on the cement and I guess that's what did it.
But it's been almost four years since I've had one.
The neurologist calls it a remission but that's not true.
I stopped taking those stupid pills is what I did.
And started picturing myself fit free.
No one really believes in the power of this stuff
but I don't care.
It works.
It's worked for me so far.
As a matter of fact, when I started
visualizing myself less abundant and desirable again,
that's how I think I was able to get here to 139 pounds.
And no, I am not from California.
I just taught myself how to say no.
I cannot lie.
There are times when I have to say yes to chocolate.
But I try to minimize my intake.
And Lord knows I make the best peach cobbler and sweet potato
pie in the world.
But I've not only learned to share,
but also how to freeze things that
beg to be consumed in one sitting
except when it comes to men.
I've got a history of jumping right into the fire,
mistaking desire for love, lust for love,
and the record shows, on occasion, a good lay for love.
But those days are over.
I mean it.
Shoot, I'm almost 30 years old and I'm
about tired of starting over.
Every time I look up, I'm back at the starting gate.
And yes, I would like a man to become a permanent fixture
in my life for once.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not out here cruising with lasers
and aiming it at hopefuls.
My daddy always said, sometimes you can't see for looking.
So what I mean is that from now on, I'm not hunting,
not rushing to any more clubs with Portia
on a Saturday night, standing around trying
to look necessary.
No way, José.
I made up my mind that the next time
I'm out here, which just so happens to be right now,
it'll have to start with dinner, which won't be me.
And at least one or two movies and quite a few handholding
walks before I slide under the covers and scream out his name
like I've known him all my life.
Some flowers wouldn't hurt.
And just why do I feel like this?
Because some of them don't last as long as a Duracell,
no matter how much you keep recharging them.
And I've been tricked too many times.
Maybe misled would be a better word.
No, maybe falsely impressed would be even more accurate.
Then again, I'm just too gullible.
I believe what I want to believe.
Maybe I've been just too hungry.
One of my best girlfriends, Claudette,
had told me that my biggest problem was
that I didn't do my homework.
Find out the important things first, girl, she said.
Like what, I asked.
What's his family like?
Does he love or still have a mother and father?
Has he been to college?
Does he have a drug problem?
Interested in personal hygiene?
Does he believe in God?
And if so, when was the last time
he set foot inside a church?
Does he know that respect is a verb?
How does he feel about children and marriage?
Has he ever been married?
Does he have any idea of what he'll be
doing 10 or 20 years from now?
That kind of shit.
But I'm not into interrogation.
I prefer to wait and see if the image he projects
lives up to the man and vice versa.
Let's face it, all men are not husband material.
Some of them are just worth a few nights of pleasure
and some of them can make you get on your knees
at night and pray that they choose
door number one, which is the one you
happen to be standing behind.
It's not that I haven't been picked before, I have.
But some of them just weren't ready.
They wanted to play house or the dating game
where they picked the right damn door and then got scared
when they realized I wasn't playing.
You're too intense, one said.
Too serious, said another.
You take your lyrics to heart, don't you Ms. Z?
So I let them run, especially the ones that
needed professional help.
None of this is to say I'm perfect.
I just know what I've got to offer and it's worth millions.
Hell, I'm a good, strong, smart, sexy, Black woman and one day,
I'm going to make some man so happy,
he's going to think he hit the lottery.
And I don't care what anybody says.
Love is a two-way street.
So, yes, I'm sick of all this transient passion.
I'm interested in longevity now.
I want to see the ticker tape run out.
And by then, I hope to have gray hair, which is one reason why
I envy Claudette.
She is so normal.
She's a lawyer, married, has a daughter, and she's happy.
Her husband loves her.
They own their house.
They ski in the winter and spend weeks in the Caribbean.
On the other hand, Portia, who Claudette
can't stand but I love, has an entirely different set
of standards.
He's got to have hair on his chest and no skinny legs.
And he's got to have some money.
I don't care what color he is, but ain't getting around--
it ain't no getting around that empty bank account.
Portia's not all that educated.
She got as far as court reporting school
but I don't care.
I don't discriminate when it comes to my friends.
I'm more interested in the quality of their character
than I am with their credentials.
I know plenty of folks with degrees who are stupid.
They lack the one essential thing
you need to get by in this world, common sense.
I can't lie.
Sometimes I fall into that category too.
Because I don't know what it is about deep Black skin
and long legs that turns me on but some things
aren't worth analyzing.
It's taken me years to realize what I like
and what I don't like.
For instance, short men simply do not tantalize me,
at least none have so far.
And men who could stand a few trips to the dentist
can't ever kiss me.
Men who are afraid of deodorant knock me out.
Men who roll over, stick it in, and think
they've done something miraculous
make me want to slap them instead of shudder.
I can't stand vulgar men, dumb men,
men who think the word respect means expect,
men who don't think about anything except themselves,
men who don't vote, who don't read anything except the sports
page, men who think that the world can't survive
without them in it, men who care more about what's
between my legs than they do about me,
men who don't stand for anything in particular,
and men who don't take chances, who
are too afraid to stick their necks out
for fear that they will drown.
So I guess you could say that the kind of man I like
is just the opposite of these, which
means I like tall, smart, sensuous, aggressive men
with white teeth who smell good and read a good book every now
and then, who vote and want to make
a contribution to the world instead of holding
their hand out, and last, a man who knows how to make love.
I have not run into him lately.
Every man I have ever loved, and there has been 3 and 1/2,
or that I've cared substantially about
brought me to these conclusions in a haphazard way.
But I'm grateful to all of them because had I not experienced
them, I would not have had any.
When I was 16, there was Bookie Cooper,
whose skin shone like India ink and his fingernails
were yellow.
He had muscles.
He fixed the chain on my bike when
it broke then walked me home through the woods the long way
and gave me my first kiss.
Bookie used to whisper in my ear.
He had such a soft voice that I often stared at his lips
in order to figure out what he was saying.
He was the first boy that made me tingle.
And he taught me the power of kissing,
just how serious they can be.
But Bookie got killed.
He was crossing the street on his bicycle
when an ambulance hit him.
It took a long time for it to register that his absence was
going to be permanent.
I can't lie.
I had to teach myself to forget him.
There was Champagne, the college basketball star
who held my hand and stroked my hair while he
talked and forever smelled like British Sterling.
Even though I was a junior in high school,
he made me feel like a woman.
He made me strong promises too.
And after my senior prom with my very first glass of rum
and Coke, exaggerating everything,
talked me into giving up my virginity
on my real mama's birthday.
And I did it because I was tired of saying no.
And I figured if I got pregnant, at least
I'd be out of high school by the time it was born.
It was the first disappointment I experienced with him.
But I didn't care.
I still wanted him.
I used to lay beside him and dream about him.
We agreed to get married once we both finished college
and he was playing in the pros.
But what happened?
I won a music scholarship to Ohio State
and he went to a Big Ten university in Indiana
and never wrote so much as a word,
not to mention the fact that his fingers must
have been stricken with arthritis because he never
called either.
To hell with him, is what I said when
I met David, who was bowlegged, walked like Clint Eastwood,
drove a Harley-Davidson, and boxed.
He was so Black he was purple, and I
swear I could have eaten him alive,
especially after he lifted me up on top of him
and let me move anyway I wanted to.
And I liked it.
He taught me that there were no limits to passion
if you did not impose any.
So every time I felt like doing it, I would pick up the phone
and tell him I needed to see him.
David's body was my very first addiction.
It was perfect.
He would take me for a long motorcycle rides
and this was how I learned to appreciate adventure
and understood what freedom felt like.
But by the time David asked me to marry him,
I realized there was a difference
between wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone
and wanting to experience continuous moments of ecstasy.
So I said no.
And told him I was moving to New York City
to launch my singing career and live
a bold and daring life, which I assured him,
had been in my blood all along but until I met him,
it just hadn't had a good enough reason to surface.
I thanked him but he never did say, you're welcome.
By the time I got here, I decided
to take a short sabbatical for men, but not all that short.
It lasted about four months.
Men can sometimes be more of a distraction than anything.
Portia always says I take them too seriously
but I can't help it.
So I meet Percy, the plumber.
He was from [LAUGHS]--
[LAUGHTER]
I'm sorry.
He was from Louisiana and I didn't
learn until after he went down on me, and made me cum,
and then got me all strung out, that he did not approve
of my wanting to be a singer.
He wanted me to marry him, move to some little off-the-wall
town in Louisiana that I never even heard of, and run a farm
and have babies.
And he was serious.
I told him he was out of his mind, which
is why when I found out I was carrying his baby,
I rushed down to the Women's Center and did not tell him.
I blacked out his name in my phone book
and changed my number to unlisted.
And Dillon.
He was a DJ who wanted to become a record producer
and I thought we had something in common.
He was, as I later found out how to define
it, a premature ejaculator.
He would give me 10 or 15 minutes of pleasure
and then it was all over.
He just kept telling me that I was
so good, that I should be grateful I
could make him cum so fast.
Dillon also had a ton of energy and ambition.
As I later found out, cocaine had a lot to do with it.
He also loved me fat and swore he'd give up coke
if I stopped losing weight.
Naturally, he was crazy as hell.
And our goodbye was quite ugly.
There have been others, but they're not worth
mentioning because none of them made me feel the Earth move,
for lack of a better cliche.
I know I may sound fickle but I'm not.
I do not stand in the mirror anymore,
holding these 36Ds in my palms, and praying that someone
was there kissing them.
I have learned how to satisfy myself.
Although, I can't lie and say I make myself feel as good
as a man could, but like my daddy always said,
work with what you got.
What I've got is a good set of lungs and vocal chords.
Mount Olive Baptist church used to be standing room only
when word got out that I was doing a solo.
I used to make people cry, speak in tongue,
and those fans would be swaying so fast,
you couldn't even see the name of the funeral parlor on them.
There is no greater feeling than singing a song that makes
people feel glad to be alive.
And Marguerite-- that's my stepmother--
has always accused me of being too idealistic.
You always reaching for what you can't see, child.
My real mama died in a car accident
when I was three years old, which
is how I got stuck with Marguerite as a replacement,
not that she hasn't been a good stepmother,
but I've never had anything else to compare her to.
Marguerite did teach me how to cook,
how to shave under my arms and legs,
and told me when to douche.
Daddy married her when I was 13.
She's taller than him, flat-chested
with an ever-growing behind and has hazel eyes.
Every six weeks, she dyes her gray hair black
because she says, I ain't got no time to be looking old.
My daddy looks old.
But I guess if you work for the railroad for 36 years
and marry someone who insisted you take all the overtime you
could get, then snatched your paycheck every Friday
and lived at Sears, gave you an allowance,
and only closed the bedroom door on Saturday nights,
you'd probably look old too.
When I told my daddy I was moving to New York
to sing, he just blew a cloud of smoke out of his cigar,
tapped off an inch of ashes and grinned,
that gold tooth just sparkling and said, you go ahead, baby.
Life ain't nothing to be scared of. 'Sides,
the Lord'll follow you wherever you go.
The problem is that I have been influenced by so many folks,
that I sound like a whole lot of them all rolled up when I sing.
This has bothered me for the longest because I don't really
know what my real voice is.
But every now and then, I've heard myself with such clarity,
with such precision that I get surprised, even a bit scared.
Because what I heard sounded like someone I envied.
But it's not consistent.
I can imitate just about anybody I admire.
Joan Armatrading, Chaka Khan, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro,
Aretha and Gladys too.
Sometimes, I stay after school, since I owe $300 on my piano,
and compose.
I sit there with my eyes closed and when
my fingers pressed against the keys and I start to sing,
the room often moves.
My heart opens up and lets in light.
Writing songs lets me change what's wrong and make it right.
When I'm singing, I'm not lonely,
just overwhelmed by desire.
I'm not looking for a man, I found one.
And by the time I usually finish,
I'm perspiring something awful and don't even
realize how much time has passed until I walk outside
and see that it's dark.
As it now stands, I do most of my singing in the shower.
I get clean and let out pain at the same time,
watch it go down the drain.
And not just my pain, but everybody else's
that I've known who's ever known or felt hurt
and there are a lot of us.
Right now, I'm looking for a voice coach
because I need someone to help me find my center,
help me pay attention to what I feel in my heart
so that it comes out of my pen and then my mouth, instead
of screaming inside my head.
I don't care if I'm never as famous as Diana
or Aretha or Liza or Barbra.
I don't have to make Billboard's top 40 either.
I'd be just as content squeezing a microphone in my hand
in some smoky, quaint club with an audience who
came to hear me sing.
Sometimes, I get scared when I think
of myself being in a world where I don't make
a bit of difference, where I could die
and the only people who would even know I was here
would only be friends and relatives.
I want to affect people, which is
one reason why I teach music.
But that's not enough.
I want to make people float.
And in order to get there, I need training.
I want to learn how to control my voice.
As it stands, the only way I'll ever
be able to afford a voice coach is
by moving out of this expensive apartment in Manhattan--
out of this expensive apartment, which
is precisely why you can have Manhattan and its Upper West
side.
I'm going to Brooklyn where they say you can at least get
your money's worth.
Three years is long enough to test the waters.
Now I'm ready to go ahead and dive in.
My daddy always said, you got to give up something
to get something.
I'm giving up roaches, water bugs, mice, $652 a month,
and a view of a brick wall.
Right now, I'm staring at the ceiling
and I can hear birds chirping.
This is a good sign.
Yes, I'm lonely and yes it's been almost six months since I
slept with a man, but so what?
I'm more patient now and less anxious.
I've got lots of things to look forward to, learn
how to pump my own music from this organ
inside my chest for starters.
And if there's a man out there who's
willing to ride, or walk, or run, or even fly with me,
he'll show up, probably out of nowhere.
My daddy always did say, there is
nothing wrong with chasing dreams,
baby, because you might just catch one.
And to that, the only thing I can possibly add
is that for once in my life, I'm going
to finish everything I start.
That's all.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.