Officer Clemmons: A Memoir by Francois Clemmons

Author:Francois Clemmons [Clemmons, Francois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948226707
Google: nFllyAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1948226707
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2020-05-04T23:00:00+00:00

I AGREED TO ANOTHER CONCERT FOR THE OBERLIN Alumni Club with Ron accompanying me, and the Beechwoods and Logans came to hear me sing. When it was over, the applause was long, loud, and intense. My heart filled and overflowed. Soon there was a standing ovation. It felt as if I had the most supreme gift possible from an appreciative audience. I kept blinking and turning my head to keep from falling into an all-out cry. When my high school principal, Mr. Tear, walked on stage to present me with the flowers, I lost it. The tears took over, and he seemed to fully understand. He gave me the flowers as he put his arms around me in a warm, fatherly manner. My soul felt cleansed and justified. Ron joined us, and the audience seemed to move closer and closer as they continued their applause. Everything seemed to flow right into the informal reception. People were talking among themselves, gesturing and laughing. I felt pulled in all directions at once. I was happy so many of my high school buddies had heard about the concert and showed up.

At the reception, I was shocked when my mother walked up to me.

She didn’t hug me or stand too close. She didn’t mention how well I sang or how good I looked in my new tux, or even that she was proud of my accomplishment. No! She told me, “I spoke to LaTanya Mae, son, and I’m glad you two are talking again. She certainly is a lovely girl.”

That was the sum of the evening for her. Her dutiful Christian son was playing the straight role again! She could hold her head up high in the community and go to church on Sundays and talk about her “answered prayers.”

As much as I resented my mother’s words, I did like LaTanya. As a good friend. And Michael adored her. One evening, Michael invited her to dinner at the Beechwoods’ home, and as the night went on, it was clear that LaTanya was interested in me romantically. This made me deeply uncomfortable, but I thought we could keep things as they were if we didn’t talk about it. I felt Michael was a safe buffer, although I didn’t quite understand why he was encouraging the relationship between LaTanya and me in the first place. I would have thought that he would be jealous and possessive. Nothing made sense!

LaTanya kept up her pursuit, and I kept managing to evade her. Instead, I tried to lose myself in my new recording of Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (Summer Nights) with soprano Eleanor Steber, and I was madly in love with it all: the song cycle, Berlioz, and Steber. That’s what I could handle. Steber was the great American diva who had sung Mozart, Puccini, Strauss, and Verdi in all the European opera houses and come home to the Metropolitan Opera a national hero. She appeared often on the The Bell Telephone Hour and other seasonal TV variety shows that showcased operatic talent.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.