Cold Drank

Dear Air,

The air down here feels even hotter with you gone. 

In the Spring of 95, after I was suspended from Millsaps College, I went to Jackson State University. You destroyed us that year, 52-34 while completing a freakish 29 of 34 passes for 533 yards and 5 touchdowns … but don’t front! You know that the Sonic Boom of the South eviscerated Alcorn’s band.

Air, I guess I should get on to saying what I need to say to you. See, you were one of the best football players to ever play, but I just don’t think you were as tough as you needed to be. The sickest thing about it is that I didn’t really care. I always assumed that you, like Baldwin, Ali, King, Jim Brown and almost every other black man I know needed drugs, manipulative sex and/or spectacle for security.

When I look around the walls of my living room, I see a picture of James Baldwin with the words, “Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” To the left of that picture is a life-size picture of Muhammad Ali. Across the room from that is a Zimbabwean sand-painting of a young woman with fruit on her back, a baby in one arm and a shield in the other. Across from that is the top half of a life-size picture of you that cuts off at the waist. The bottom half of your body is pasted across the door of my office on campus and it’s been that way for years.

You’re up on my wall with Ali and Baldwin because, among other things, I trust your toughness. In your death, though, I see what I should have seen a long time ago. Toughness ain’t survival or cunning. Meaningful toughness entails willing yourself, no matter the costs, to make healthy imaginative decisions for your family, your team, your people, yourself. For example, your meaningful toughness saved hundreds of lives during Katrina, while my spineless ass stayed up here safely wiring money to Mama and them.

I’m still a fan, Air, and you’re still the hero you were when we met in high school. A few years after our second meeting Mama and I watched the draft of 95 with absolute pride as you were the first black Mississippi quarterback to really be given a chance to lead an NFL team. Folks from other states watched and heard the announcers talk about how you “made it despite humble beginnings.”  But Mississippi black boys and girls knew the contours and sounds of those beginnings. We knew that you went to Alcorn partially because none of the bigger, whiter schools trusted your black All-American ass to play quarterback.

When you walked across that stage, we knew what you knew. You knew that Walter, the greatest running back ever, came from Mississippi and went to Jackson State University. You knew that Jerry, the greatest receiver of all time came from Mississippi and went to Mississippi Valley State.  You knew when you crossed that stage that Mississippi and the SWAC had already produced the greatest college quarterback to never get drafted in Willie Totten. You remembered 1984 when Willie threw for 58 touchdowns, 28 of them to Jerry Rice.

We were barely 9 and 11 years old when the NFL disrespected Willie.  We learned then that quarterbacking was different than running or catching that ball. The quarterback’s decision-making and toughness mattered more than anyone on the field. The Bears and the 49ers didn’t draft Walter and Jerry to lead their teams to the Super Bowl, though they both did. They drafted them to help get their teams to the Super Bowl.

Warren Moon would later work his way into the league as a black quarterback from Canada Football League and his success with The Oilers made their drafting you in 1995 more likely, just as your eventual success made Vince Young’s drafting in 2006 a reality.

If you were alive, I’d bet you a cold drank that Vince won’t make the same mistake you made. I don’t just mean the mistake of falling asleep on a couch in the presence of an angry woman. I mean, Vince will no doubt really think about how to transition from NFL star to retired quarterback when he leaves the game. He’ll be more aware of the destructive possibilities implicit in emotional and physical insecurity.

Here’s where it gets tricky though. Your murder is an opportunity for Vince and all of us to reckon (though far too many of us will see your death as simply as a femiphobic warning to black men to stop cheating on our wives with young reckless women).

The warped thing about all of this is that we’re acting like your murder should be more eye-opening than our STD rate, more tell-tale than our HIV rate or the rising rate of HIV in black women or the tinny miasma we hear and see when we close our eyes and really listen to the sounds of black men killing each other over and over again.

Our lack of toughness destroys lives. And again, we pay a price for the decisions we make and we pay that price with the lives we lead. Black men aren’t the only human beings striking unhealthy poses and sucking down unhealthy amounts of suspect sex, drugs, violence and spectacle but I swear that I can’t figure out why our affliction and dependency on drugs, manipulative sex, violence and spectacle seem to be so much more destructive.

We loved you so much, Air. We did. But the truth’ll burn a hole in a cup of water and the truth is that you died too soon. I wish your living legs, eyes, mind and heart were back in Mt. Olive, Mississippi given one more chance to tough it out. I know you wouldn’t let yourself, your wife, your sons or us down. The big question, though, is how many of us down here sucking up air will be tough enough to reckon with our own spinelessmess in the life we have left.

Ether.

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