from the studio to the train station: the fallen star

as some of you know, i live in atlanta and i grew up in college park. back in the day (thousands of years ago) i developed a crush on one of the members from the nineties r&b kid singing group another bad creation. i'll just call him memberx. i've always been a music nut. i'd buy all the magazines like "fresh," "word up," and "right on" and post the pictures on my bedroom wall. i even remember the supposed "beef" between abc and kris kross.

so imagine my total shock when i started high school at banneker high and discovered that 2 members of the group another bad creation went to my school. the members were memberx and his cousin roro. it took a few months before i even realized that the goofy kid that sat in class drawing dirty pictures was roro. his real name is romel.

i decided that i'd act on my crush to memberx. how many young girls drool over their favorite celeb and then end up going to school with the guy? i knew i had to take a chance. so i slowly did things like give him my candy from halloween. i'd compliment him. i wanted him, but like i posted all over my blog, i was a fat nerd (okay, a chunky nerd) in high school, memberx had no interest in throwing game my way. i guess i don't blame him, in our school he could have dang near any girl he wanted. i gotta admit though, i was kind of crushed when i learned that he started trying to talk to a girl named tisha. tisha wasn't just ghetto, she was HOOD. her hair color changed all of the time, she was loud. sorry but she wasn't that cute. so here i was a woman that knew memberx's birthday from the mags i read on him and he wants the ghetto girl. granted i did reek of "virgin" and he probably figured that he'd go for the girls that seemed most likely to give it up. and tisha was that. it was what it was. i decided to write memberx a letter letting him know that i dug him as a person and not as a "celebrity." that sonuvabitch SHOWED the damned letter to people. bastard. it eventually dawned on me that memberx and i weren't going to be, so i moved on with what dignity i'd had left at that point.

in the middle of my sophomore year i moved to decatur and changed schools. no more memberx, no more roro, no more homegirls. it all changed. i slowly forgot about that awkward time at banneker and i transferred to southwest dekalb high, where i continued to be rejected for girls that were more likely to give it up.

post high school, late one evening i found myself flipping through the tv when i see another bad creation (all grown up) performing at a club on television. they looked and sounded terrible. they had no kind of choreography, they rapped (if that's what you want to call it) all over eachother, the sound and picture was terrible. despite my experience with memberx, i really wanted to see them doing good, so i wished him the best in his attempt to make a comeback.

a few weeks later i was on my way to school and i was at the train station and who do i see? memberx. memberx wasn't just there, he had the spray bottle and rag in his hand. he was working CLEANING THE TRAINSTATION. what the FUCK?! how the hell do you go from being in a michael jackson video, a robert townsend movie, touring the world, covering magazines, and signed to motown, one of the biggest music labels ever, to working at cleaning a damned train station? wow. i saw him and we embraced. i asked how he'd been (as if i couldn't see). he told me well. i asked how ro was and he said that ro was doing good also. i told him that i'd caught his performance the other night. he asked how he'd done. i'm not one to crap on anyone else's art so i told him that he'd done well. his eyes lit up and he said "really?!" now, i'll take this time to tell you that i'm a terrible liar. i guess its another gift/curse because you can always depend on me to give an honest opinion when you ask for one, whether you want honesty or not. if only he hadn't asked. i could have glossed over his performance but now i had to elaborate on a lie. my brain just isn't wired to tell you that your performance was deserving of an award when truthfully i think i could train squirrels to do a better job than they did that night. so when i heard "really?!" i just replied with "well- i've seen y'all do better." that way i preserved his dignity, while not lying. i have seen them do a lot better. that wasn't a good performance. AT ALL. he went from being on top of the world and making girls scream, to being a janitor. i'll interject that i don't see any shame in his job. hell, i've prayed that i didn't come across people that i hate while working at a department store, knowing that they made far more than me. but we gotta eat. no shame in honest work. but damn dude, you were on top of the world. memberx wasn't a bad guy. i never thought so, even though he did show that damned letter to others.

later that night i hung out with my homeboy, dj scorpio. scorp was in a bit of a reflective mood and he said to me "malika, do you realize that i'm in a business where so many people are grinding to make money in music, while here i am doing it and making a decent living. do you know how lucky i am?" yeah, i knew how lucky he was. i'm sure memberx could have told him how lucky he was too.