The Many Lives of James Brown’s Capes by Patrick Wensink
JAMES BROWN DIED at the age of 73 on Christmas Day, 2006. The Godfather of Soul left a legacy of hit records, sold-out concerts and gallons of sweat.
Brown also left a sizable debt.
A year-and-a-half after his funeral, the majority of his South Carolina mansion was auctioned off in New York to pay his creditors. Over three-hundred personal items—from costumes, furniture, dinnerware and even his hair dryer—were available for bidding. Men and women filled the auction house that summer day and flicked their bidding paddles through the air for a piece of the famed entertainer’s life.
Lot 72 Sex Machine Belt (Estimated sale: $2,000-$3000/ Actual sale: $4,750)
Mister Xang stepped into the restaurant with his head held proud. The dinner crowd was paying dearly for the honor of filling up on beef cheek gnocchi and endive pudding at New York City’s hippest restaurant. Not a face lifted and not a conversation broke as the small man from China nervously waited for the maitre’d.
Xang kept his black suit jacket on. “The time is not right to unbutton,” he thought.
“Savor the moment.” He smiled as a couple, who spoke English too fast for him to interpret, walked past. “It’s yours. It’s yours. You are victorious, and these moments are rare,” he reminded himself. “You need to appreciate it.” He snuffed his nose as a feeling of happiness rushed through his body like he hadn’t felt since that day in 1976. “They’ll get their show soon enough.”
His plan seemed like a gift to this crowd. Just like James gave every night on stage.
Xang ached at the thought he would never see his idol singing in person. James Brown played for thousands upon thousands of audiences, but never in Xang’s home province back in China. In fact, Western records like Brown’s were illegal until just recently.
“. . . A weighty sadness fell over his body as he learned, standing before an unamused group of diners, that making no impression is a far more lonely feeling than making a bad one. . .”
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But now that Xang could buy Live at the Apollo down the street, his urge to listen to the Hardest Working Man in Show Business had flat-lined. That music didn’t feel special anymore.
This belt, though, made him feel special. Possibly, he told the butterflies kicking violently at his abdomen, even better than seeing the Godfather in concert.
“Can I help you, sir?” A man with no hair and a white mustache looked down at Xang. It took a moment to answer. Xang’s English was fine, but he was self-conscious. He calculated even the smallest public whisper, never wanting to leave the wrong impression.
The maitre’d’s question hit the shy Chinese man like a spotlight from the rafters. In Xang’s mind he’d walked out on a dark Apollo stage and the emcee announced him as the hardest working man in show business. He stepped to the center of the room and heard the clattering silverware pause and saw the buzzing wait staff halt. “Where do the Sex Machines sit?” he announced and flapped open his suit.
The belt buckle weighed as much as one of the restaurant’s serving dishes. Oval-shaped and carved with sharp right angles, the buckle’s rhinestones glimmered above the lipstick red paint filling its background. Lifting out from the metal, like hands grasping for attention, were the chrome words: SEX MACHINE.
When the bidding began and it sparkled under the bright lights, Xang knew he couldn’t return home without it. He’d never felt a love this storybook perfect, not even when he first met his wife.
Xang’s audience, who paid $500 a plate for dinner, not a show, gulped in silence. A few snickered. But most just kept on eating and talking. Xang knew not everyone would get the belt buckle. But he thought it’d be fun to kick up some trouble in New York while he was there. He was considered a dangerous political misfit back home and felt a compulsive need to leave his stamp on Gotham City. A weighty sadness fell over his body as he learned, standing before an unamused group of diners, that making no impression is a far more lonely feeling than making a bad one.
The buckle’s secret newness had worn off, just as James’ records did once they were available to the public. When Xang acquired a bootleg copy of the Sex Machine album in 1976 and played it low, so no one would suspect he possessed an illegal item, those butterflies first became his friends.
Now the butterflies were gone. Out on the sidewalk, looking at his waist, the chrome letters didn’t seem to shine as bright as they did under the auction house lights or even from behind the dark curtain of his suit coat. He wondered if anything ever would again.
- Excerpt from Sex Dungeon For Sale! published by Eraserhead Press.
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Patrick Wensink is the author of the story collection, Sex Dungeon for Sale!. He lives in Louisville, KY, not a sex dungeon.
Read our interview with Patrick here.
© 2010, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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