Peter Bradley
I picked up a magazine from my roommate's cabinet last night as I was heading to take a shit. This morning I rediscovered the periodical in the bathroom and stumbled across an article on the legendary Miles Davis. I scanned the images of the jazz trumpeter for traces of my college buddy G., who was his granddaughter, and found some vague resemblance, obscured by two generations of new blood and life experience. More prevalent was the similarity between Davis and her father, Peter, one of four children. Well, the article claimed he had 4, but I seemed to remember a Wikipedia article claiming he had several more illegitimate ones, though the Movies Rock piece didn't differentiate. I thought back to the only time I got to chill with Peter, G., and his wife, a slight white woman with dyed hair and a hat whose name I didn't remember. She seemed kind of nervous and when she spoke it seemed to be some grab for attention, and i don't remember her name. Perhaps it was because Peter's personality was even bigger than his Don Kingesque tuft of electric white hair, accompanied by neon purple sunglasses and a soft grey sweater over a button-up with the collar popped, i seem to recall, and paunch unabashedly prominent. Maybe it was my chubby stoned shy collegiate face or manner of speech, but he seemed to tolerate me as one would a small child, with my slightly offensive questions and frequent laughter. I remember him taking a picture of the gathering, pleased with the success of his humongous horse-like hound dog and the sudden unannounced appearance of Tanner Imes, our resident eccentric Mississippi princess, who bounded around the garden with the enormous dog as though they were long-lost siblings. Proud of the picture, he passed the camera around for approval, and I noticed i had been cut out of the scene entirely. Oh well, I was the ugliest and fattest and least charming of my five friends. At least I wasn't the shortest. I was also probably the dumbest and definitely the youngest. So far from being offended, i almost felt it was appropriate. He didn't like me; I found him fascinating. I'd been there before. Peter entertained me endlessly with his frequent interruptions and egomaniacal proclamations, such as "I am the new face of Black America," and rebuffed my inquisitions. Despite my efforts to provoke him, these spontaneous ejaculations were completely unpredictable and prefaced with long stories full of suspect truths told in a voice that I cannot describe. It was both soothing and rough, like a grandfather who smokes, and you know that his voice is as close as you'll get to being intimate. Unfortunately my inquisitions were rebuffed with a scornful tone that broke this spell, so I decided not to pursue it. The one useful bit of information I managed to elicit was that the purple sunglasses were not limited to one color; he claimed to have many different shades which he hadn't brought. i imagined him with neon plastic primary colors and various other hues, and thought purple was an excellent choice, probably the best among them, for a 60+ heir of Black Cultural royalty.