We met at my house over pot roast. I ran a salon in San Francisco where I would cook a big family-style meal for each event. Tyrone came to town and was reading that night along with two other poets, but the reading was based around him as the special guest. We didn’t really know each other, even though he taught at Xavier University in Cincinnati and Cincinnati was my hometown. We had only emailed a few times about his visit. I had “cold called” him, so to speak, to read at my house where I had begun curating my version of old-fashioned artist salons, the type of artist gatherings I had only heard about but wanted to manifest. He was early and I was still lighting candles and shuffling around in the kitchen trying to make sure all the food was on platters. There was an open bar, as always. I set him up with a drink, thanked him for coming, and introduced him to the dogs, one of which was our brand-new puppy, Leo, who would go on to climb all over and harass Tyrone the entire evening.
Even though Tyrone was in my house, at my invite, I was scared to talk to him. He seemed almost bigger than life to me. He was A POET. I was more in awe of him, humbled by his presence and decision to read at the series, than anything else. I kept myself busy in the kitchen while he sat in the living room. We made small talk between the two rooms. I think I might have given him a lighter and asked him to light the rest of the candles. People started arriving. I fixed Tyrone a plate, my mother’s pot roast recipe with all the fixings—potatoes, carrots, peas, those cute little pearl onions, gravy. After dinner and the reading, folks lingered and left, and I finally, wine glass in hand, sat down with Tyrone. We sat on the couch in my living room, the windows open, the candles burning themselves out, and talked and laughed about everything—poetry, people, Ohio. He told me how much he enjoyed the event and that I had really “put my foot” in that pot roast. That familiar black colloquialism, the way he said it, put me so much at ease. We knew each other. It felt like family.
Tyrone met my estranged “real” father. During one of my many trips home to Cincinnati to visit and care for my mother, he arranged a reading for me at Xavier. My book, mary wants to be a superwoman, for which he penned the forward, was out and it was an opportunity to do something to support it in my hometown. He was there for me so much during the years my mother was ill, and even after she passed away. Whenever I came home, he would scoop me up and we’d get pie or have lunch at our spot. I have no words for how much his time and generosity meant to me. Out of the blue, my father decided to attend the Xavier reading. He came up to talk to me afterwards and as soon as he left, Tyrone said, “Bring me the papers, I’ll sign them, I’m adopting you.” From that moment forward I called him “dad,” and he called me “kid.” We talked often. I looked to him for advice, both personal and professional. He cheered me on and convinced me how much my writing meant for the ancestors and to the culture at large. It was incredibly meaningful, even in my adult years, to have a constant male figure with so much integrity, dignity, and kindness in my life. Tyrone was my mentor but also one of my closest and dearest friends.
Our last adventure happened after my mother died. After spending six months in Cincinnati burying my mother and handling her affairs it was finally time to go back to my home in San Francisco. Tyrone agreed to take me to the airport. For some reason we decided to use GPS to map our way even though we both knew the way to the airport like the back of our hands. Due to traffic or some other roadway nonsense our directions rerouted us to back roads and byways we had never traveled. We were by the river and then in a deserted looking town with dirt roads and four-way stop signs on every block. We thought for sure someone had to be filming us because it was all so surreal and absurdly cinematic. We were on the lookout for Boss Hog and the General Lee and trick speed traps. I thought of the scene with Whoopi Goldberg in the early eighties film, Jumpin Jack Flash, where she was trapped in a telephone booth being dragged by a tow truck through the city. As we drove along in his Subaru I said, “We’re just a couple of little black people trapped in a big silver box driving through Kentucky,” to which he responded by singing the banjo song from Deliverance. We cracked up and kept driving, doubting whether we would ever make it to the airport in time for my flight. In a way, it didn’t matter. We were having a good time. During all the antics, I got a text that my mother’s house sold. We laughed at that, too, because it felt like the universe or my mother or God was kicking me out of Cincinnati, cutting me loose with the ultimate “keep going forward and don’t turn back.” We made it to the airport. Little did I know that our road trip hijinks would be the last time I would ever see him.
What I know now that I didn’t know then was that Tyrone was everyone’s special friend. He simply made everyone feel so special. It was always an adventure when we got together. We were always laughing or crying, and that is how I will always remember us.