“Yeah, I know.” Zwena sighs, conspicuously wiggling her still-not-refilled wineglass. She knows this is not the time I’m going to rise above my anguish over Simon and become my own better human.
After trolling the personal development porn on Simon’s website, Zwena shuts down my laptop and turns up her latest Spotify playlist of African rappers as our night takes a spontaneous dance party turn. Zwena loves Sho Madjozi, and the best parts of Zwena come out when she gets her groove on to Lady Sho. Her smile grows ear to ear, turning up as her hips move north, south, east, and west to the rhythm of her homeland. When Zwena dances, I don’t see her as thetwenty-eight-year-old woman she is, but spy the smart-talking, quick-footed child who was considered the neighborhood entertainer and her family’s beacon of light. Her zest for music is infectious, and I hop up to join her. Krish slyly moves the coffee table out of the way to give Zwena and me more room to enjoy ourselves and then sprawls out on my couch to hype up our dance moves while finishing off the last of the quesitos.
When we take a second to catch our breath, Krish puts his hand out for Zwena’s phone and his turn to play DJ. She trades her cell for a spot on the couch, and Krish puts his fingers to work. I limp off to the bathroom, my knees not as nimble as those of my young friends. When I return, Krish is busting out bhangra dance moves to rival anything Zwena had pulled from her past or I learned from Gloria. Limbs loose from alcohol and muscle memory, Krish shows us up on our makeshift dance floor, legs flying through the air, briefly touching down only to power back up. All the while doing it with style in stiff denim.
I have only seen Krish in his alter-personality as a sought-after DJ at prominent Indian weddings a time or two that I managed to slip in as his plus-one among the colorful saris and sherwanis. By day, Krish may work as a United gate agent, but at night he comes alive as DJ Sangam, a Hindi word that meansconfluence. The moniker is a nod to his family roots in the land of five rivers in the northwest Indian state of Punjab. While I call him a badass for figuring out how to both hold a responsible job and build a dream, Zwena likes to needle Krish by referring to him as the MCMD because his parents wanted him to be a surgeon. Tonight Krish shares with us that, after fifteen years at the counter, he thinks he has saved up enough money to make a go of being a music producer full-time.
More than once I have marveled that Krish stayed so long in a thankless job. I am guilty of dishing out advice he never asked for—that, without the responsibilities of a spouse, kids, or home ownership like I have, he should have left his job long ago to focus on his love of hip-hop, a far more interesting pursuit. Krish has the freedom todo what I always wished I could, but unlike me, he never complained about his time at the airport. Every shift, Krish showed up to SFO with a smile on his face and a willingness to be in service to, at times, the rudest of humanity. And after fifteen years of humility at the hands of demanding customers, Krish has established a way to gracefully prioritize his music career full-time with both security and certainty. Both of which I wish I had. To say I’m not a little jealous of Krish would be a big lie.
“To your last few weeks at SFO!” I sloppily toast, raising my glass and my voice to honor Krish and his new beginning.
“To me!” Krish meets my green-eyed enthusiasm and puts out his hands for me and Zwena to join him on our tiny, improvised dance floor. While I hop up, Zwena rises reluctantly. I notice her smile fading.
SATURDAY, MARCH 9
8:45 a.m. (Krish)
I don’t know how you women drink your feelings and then function the next day. I want to nap on my keyboard, but I have 15 flights to get out.
8:46 a.m. (Toni)
I’ll bring you some Tylenol when I get there around 4.
8:47 a.m. (Krish)
I may be dead by then.
8:48 a.m. (Toni)
That would be a waste of perfectly good wine. Go get a cheeseburger from Z, it’ll make you feel better.
8:49 a.m. (Krish)
Already tried that.
With last night’s spy fest, my Simon curiosity is satiated for the time being and my mind is ready to focus and get to work. I’m only alert because Zwena refused to spend the night, claiming she needed at least forty-eight hours before talking about Simon and his pretentious pulpit again. On her way out the door with Krish, Zwena informed me, “Ukupigao ndio ukufunzao.” What beats you is what teaches you. That if I also want my own company, don’t waste time fixating on Simon and Best U Man, get busy on my own ideas and make some money. That way if I ever wanted Simon dead, I could afford to hire a hitman. Unusual motivational speech, but it worked.
Today’s first order of business begins on my couch, so for added inspiration and some background noise, I search for my favorite reality television show,Innovation Nation. On each episode, three ambitious novice entrepreneurs in their first year of incorporation get eleven minutes to pitch their product or service to tech, wellness, retail, and financial titans of industry, or as the show calls them, Iconic Investors. The newbie founders are called Embryonic Entrepreneurs, which I find pretty distasteful, but I get that it’s difficult to rhyme withentrepreneurs, so the producers had to go with an alliteration that would describe how clueless each contestant is.
At the beginning of an episode there is a bonus recap on how a past participant and their venture is faring in their second year of operation with the infusion of prize money. I realize the show only highlights success stories, not the CEOs who have burned through their capital and are now back working at Chipotle, but the high that the previous seasons’ Embryonic Entrepreneurs ride keeps me hopeful that I may get one of my products off the ground someday. I certainly would never have guessed that the world needed a retail company dedicated to holiday aprons, but turns out it did, to the tune of $110 million in sales to date for one of the show’s winners.
The high-net-worth innovators turned investors grill each novice entrepreneur who is desperate for their first official seed funding in exchange for a percentage of the company. Seed stage is defined as afully fleshed out concept, barely any sales, and operating in the red. In other words, being broke as a joke. I’m a third of the way there, living paycheck to paycheck. I love to daydream about what I would wear on the show, and more importantly which one of my products I would try to convince the judges to take a chance on.
If all four investors want in on an idea, often talking over one another on the show to become the first funding partner to the newbie CEO, the entrepreneur receives an extra $100,000 for pitting the judges against one another. It’s all wildly entertaining because it never occurs to rich people that they might actually lose at something. When you’re poor, the opposite is true: it never occurs to you that you may win. It’s why I don’t spend too long thinking about what shoes I would pair with my presentation versus how I’m going to afford a new water heater.
Dwayne Washington is my favorite judge on the show. He’s the only investor who has swag, and byswagI meansexywithagorgeous nutmeg complexion. I feel like Dwayne and I would be friends, or at least understand one another. The oldest of four boys, at eighteen years old he started the urban clothing company Jus’ Dope, slinging cheap fisherman’s skullcaps on the streets of Harlem to help his mom make ends meet when his dad split. With a backpack full of hats, he established himself on the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and West 125th Street to engage customers coming in and out of a popular soul food restaurant. When his signature skullcaps started selling out within an hour of setting up shop, he moved on to logoed three-quarter socks, all while working full-time as a cater-waiter and making sure none of his brothers dropped out of school. Jus’ Dope is now a $5 billion business, and all three of Dwayne’s brothers are college graduates and vice presidents at the company.
The new season ofInnovation Nationdoesn’t come out until the end of September, and I have watched all eighty-two aired episodes of 246 Embryonic Entrepreneurs baring their company’s soul for an infusion of cash. I select my favorite one, where Dwayne and another male investorduke it out over a new-fangled, high-speed breast pump while the two female judges look on in amusement.
Fisting a Big Gulp–size coffee to perk me up after last night’s dance party ended four hours later than I intended it to, I crack open my notebook. I try to decipher the scrawl of notes I took as Zwena and Krish rolled up their pants and shirtsleeves to slather on the different cream consistencies I had worked out since Mrs. Eisenberg’s attempt to moisturize at the airport.
Something Zwena said last night stuck in my head. Chitchatting as she applied a second dollop of lotion to her neck and chest, she commented on how odd it is that, even back home where the majority of people are some sliding scale of black, everyone applies lotion that’s white. She casually commented that lotion in Africa should come in various shades of brown to black, since that’s what the people are. Shrugging off the random thought, Zwena called it ano-brainerbefore asking me to grab her a beer from the fridge. In my buzzed scrawl I managed to write down, “Why can’t lotion be brown?” right below this profound query from Krish: “Can this lotion safely double as lube?”
Considering Zwena’s musings, it seems not only obvious for women in Africa, but for women of color everywhere. Why is lotion white? Doesn’t have to be. There must be natural products that can tint my lotion various shades of brown without introducing harmful chemicals. Setting my notebook down, I pop open my laptop to get to work researching possibilities. Before clicking on my browser, I already have the answer.
The bags of powder David sent from Puerto Rico are stored with my dozens of backup rolls of Charmin and Bounty. I have an unfounded fear of running out of either, so I’m stocked up at all times Costco style. My mom, Krish, and Zwena have declared they are coming straight to my house in the next great earthquake. But until that time comes, my preparedness is a source of ribbing by all three.
As chatter emanates from the TV about percentage ownership and production costs, I pull out the bags of brown powder and a couple of jars of my lotion. When I peppered David with more questions aboutwhat the stuff was, he was little help, only saying he bought it at an outdoor market following an all-nighter and killing time before his flight back to Pensacola. That was some night he must have had with his latest female companion, who, when I got in his business, he grudgingly informed me was not sister-in-law material.
