King of Her Desire

35

So, the next big "Net breaker" was a Tiktok of me dancing to that old SWV song, I'm So Into You, the very next day. It hit, like...millions of views in a few minutes.

I know, because Abra sat there on the set watching her cell and texting Matt like her life depended on it. Or a raise or something, maybe. Who knows?

But like they say, what had happened was...there was another weird run of technical difficulties. So Patrice put on this 90s Accuradio station because they'd found out how behind the times I was—couldn't identify any of the new artists they were so into to save my life.

And what amazes me is how everybody gets on the good foot when they hear that music. Doesn't matter what generation you're actually from, those songs'll get you wiggling. Or trying to.

So, I was just coming out of my trailer when that one came on, and it just went straight to my feet. So Abra grabbed her cell—a few people did—and shot me dancing my way past all the techs and things.

And Wanda, one of the makeup artists, got right into it with me for a bit, too. I loved Wanda. She'd been making people's noses look smaller and lips look bigger for a couple of decades at least, but she had absolutely no interest in the business beyond that.

In fact, she couldn't stand most of the people in it, and made no effort to hide it. I was lucky she liked me because she had no filter at all. If you pissed her off, she didn't give a shit what was written on the back of that canvas chair you were sitting in, she was going to read you out loud for all to hear.

And she was the first one that proved Elliott right. The less of a shit you gave the more shit they'd take from you. And she liked me because she could tell I was mostly just trying to get through the week so I could go somewhere far, far away from it all.

So I got first dibs on her famous soul food—oh my God, the woman should've gone into catering instead of makeup. People swarmed like vultures when she brought in leftovers from the weekend.

Begged her to take orders, even, but she told me, "Three generations of women in my family cooked for white folks so us kids could go to college and never have to do that. And I never will, goddamn it."

But she always made me a plate or two and said, "Put that in your trailer, pretty," as she handed off to me. Flashing her eyes as if to let everyone know they'd better not go in there after any of it.

So we put on a show to that song, I'm not kidding. It was like those "Evolution of Dance" videos, but a little more laid back and with more winding and grinding than hopping and bopping.

Patrice gaped and went, "Oh damn," at one point, in fact. And that's when we laughed and sort of danced on away from each other.

But people swarmed all over those videos like vultures, too. Made videos of themselves dancing like us.

Which is also why they put on music for me that Saturday, BTW, at the shoot. And told me to just, "Do...what you do." Between the skating and the winding, they'd decided that was the way to get what they needed from me.

Which was probably true, because I would never have been able to just strut or stand there staring into some camera. It was better to give me something to strut to. The expressions and whatnot would just show up, most of the time, if the music was working.

But I'm ahead of myself—back to the show. I had speaking parts that day. I'll only give you a little taste of one scene so you can see how lame the "talk talk" was. That was Remy's name for dialog. She'd say, "Lotta 'talk talk' on that page," when we ran through the scripts.