Pinterest 1973 Dabney Street

Friday, August 23, 2013

When I got back home, it was like nothing changed. First of all I was home. In my grandest dream, I thought I was going to have to send for my husband and cats. We were going to have to set up shop in Salzburg because I was offered work singing somewhere in Europe. As it turned out, sometimes dreams turn into nightmares. The festival was a great disappointment which led to a depressing 16 hour plane ride home to depression. I had one gig to look forward to. In kind, I agreed to cover the Soprano in a Beethoven 9 concert with a local orchestra. I was excited about this initially. When I came home it was all I had. I took the one recording we manage to get from the whole event, and create a video for it to shop around to various Opera companies and orchestras. I figured I put all that work into training my voice at the highest level , somebody should bite. I got nothing. Not even an “come in and let us hear you sing”. When we began rehearsing for the concert, I was confident in how I prepared myself, even though my heart wasn’t fully into it. I walked around the world like I had been battered and bruised by a heart breaking experience. My coach who helped me with my preparation dealt me a harsh blow when she said I should have been cast for the concert but I looked too old compared to the others. It hurt. Myself image was taking a bruising in the weeks after Salzburg. It was as if the world had changed right under my broad nose. Here I am, undeniably black, and I don’t fit in. Being the Christian woman I am I kept pushing. My duty now was to get a day job and continue with voice lessons and auditioning. The day job was proving more and more difficult to come by. After all, Los Angeles is one of the cities with the highest unemployment. I was able to sign up with my 10th temp agency. They were sending me out on assignments here and there. By this time I my hair was beginning to flourish again. I had braided it with some box braids and it looked okay. The hair that I used was so cheap it would unravel and the braids would tangle leaving me with a mess. I took them down and sported my signature twist and tuck. It was a neat hairstyle that I could undo into a nice textured afro! It was my go to “protective style”. Now at this point I was not so hip on the entire Natural hair lingo. I had gone natural in 1991 and all we had was Caesar cut and braids! Those were the terms we used.
As the subsequent days rolled by, I kissed my husband good bye each day and remained home slightly depressed from the lack of work and prospects I would send out two sets of resumes to opera companies and regular companies for receptionist jobs. I got one call to audition for San Francisco opera’s chorus. I get that one every year. They put me on the wait list and leave me hanging for never. Then I got a call from Long Beach Opera asking me to help them out with the School program they put on for the schools. I thought his would be great to do. I was excited to do it even though they were only going to pay me $50 to do it. Then I had a recital for the Music club I belonged to and another Christmas gig paying $200 at my church. So I was set up for the holidays! I began to heal. The temp agency called me as well. They had a job downtown covering for the receptionist who had lost her mother suddenly. I was excited, real work! Since my hair was growing out, I still wanted to look professional and not do too much to my hair. Plus they called me at 9 am I had to do something quick to my hair. So I pulled out one of my pixie wig and wore it to the assignment! This proved to be a smart but incredibly dumb move. Smart because I got tons of compliments on my work, they were impressed at how quickly I caught on to the office culture and how well I worked the front desk. I looked professional and pulled together with my little pixie wig on.
I wore the wig for a couple of weeks and occasionally switched it up with another short wig. I got tons of compliments on it too. One lady screamed out I like your hair! I walked back and said thanks it’s a wig! Winked and kept going. She came to the front desk and marveled at my wig. The next day, she told me she went to her hair appointment bragging about it and how she wanted my hair cut. The beautician talked her off the ledge. There was one girl who would cover my desk for lunch and she would go on various blogs but one she would go on was BGLH or Black Girl Long Hair. I thought that was interesting. I didn’t know what it was about so I told her to write it down for me. I would look at it later. She had long hair but I think it was a weave. However there was another girl who covered for me who had very long hair. She too was black. This was not a weave. It was hers ALL hers. I thought like most people “she must be mixed with something. I never went back to the website. I thought it was a site for girls who were somehow more blessed than us ordinary girls with ordinary black hair. When I got home, I looked at myself in the mirror as I took my wig and make up off. I undid my little twist and tuck buns and began to think, what if I just not wear the wig tomorrow. Just undo my hair, fluff it out and dress really nice and go into work like this? The next morning, I began operation phase out. I put on a very sleek outfit, and fluffed out my twist and tuck and went in to work as is. I got compliments on my thick hair from some the other said the phrase I dread, “You Changed your hair”. How many of you have heard this phrase? I always think when someone says this it’s their way of really saying, “I don’t understand why your hair is like this, but if I don’t say something you will think I hate it, I actually don’t like it but you caught me staring so I have to say …You changed your hair!” insert slight smile. The head of the company even began to look at me differently. I thought to myself “uh oh”!
I had spent two months working there when the powers that be decided to promote the old receptionist and hire me on as the new receptionist. I was through the roof! I thought “My hair won”! And I got a job! This is great! Prior to taking on this job, I had informed my temp agency of the days I would need off for my various side gigs and to fly up to San Francisco for my audition. They were in total agreement with this and would work around my schedule. The first week I worked on my own as the temp to perm receptionist, I informed the H.R. assistant of the days I would need off. He immediately rushed to my desk and said he knew nothing of this. A slight warm feeling came over me, then immediately my blood turned cold. This was not good. I went to lunch and called my temp agent and told her what had happened. When I came back from lunch, the other receptionist told me that another rep from my agency came to see me. I was thinking all of this was bad, bad, bad! I immediately, started canceling my gigs; I needed this job, and was prepared to sacrifice my reputation as a musician for a day job. The following week I was on pins and needles. Christmas was coming upon us and I was doing anything and everything they had asked of me to keep this job. Then something happened, I answered a call about the Receptionist position that was available. I went cold. I called my temp agent and she broke the news to me, they are rescinding the job offer, they are looking for another receptionist. I was to stay there until they found someone else. Well as luck would have it, that weekend I got food poisoning. I didn’t make it to Monday and they told me not to come back at all. The next thing I did was try to get my gigs back. I got the one!

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