The Goddess Effect Act III, part nine
more adventures on the island of Lāna'i
I’ve sat on this one for a while. As I’ve mentioned, for several months of last year, I didn’t feel up to sharing much of anything, least of all my unedited, very vulnerable work. Also, this chapter of The Goddess Effect … let’s just say it’s for the best that it got lopped off.
It makes me uncomfortable. If you follow pop culture at all, you’re not going to have a hard time guessing who inspired the rapper. It reminds me of I Am Charlotte Simmons. What business did Tom Wolfe (who was in his late 50s when he wrote the book) have trying to embody the psyche of a collegiate woman?
At the same time, I enjoyed that book enough that I recently repurchased it (no clue what happened to my initial copy, probably lost or donated in some move or the other). So maybe there is something to be said for trying to inhabit the mind space of that which you are not.
If you’re catching up, might I suggest:
27
“Yo, I got one. A-yo white boy, write this down, okay?” Cake cleared his throat.
They say ‘fuck it,’ they put you out on the street
Leave you scrounging for something to eat
Fend for yourself, it’s the American way
Fight through the night so you can battle the day
Draymond tipped backwards in his chair and nearly fell over, exultant. “Cake you just killed that shit! Damn, man! That is why you the illest.” He clapped loudly, lest he not have already made his point.
Cake said nothing, leaned back into the plush cushions of the couch, lifted the blunt balanced between his pointer and middle fingers, and inhaled. It was hard to tell what he was thinking given the extra dark sunglasses he had taken to wearing these days, part of the new image he had assumed for his upcoming album, The Streets. The research for it had been particularly intense, not least for Aaron, Cake’s assistant, and owing to his nickname, the only non-Black member of Cake’s crew.
Cake had wanted to get out in the field, find out about the problems plaguing the people. His last two albums had gone platinum; he had sold out stadiums from New York to Nairobi. But he felt, as he told Aaron, “disconnected from the streets.” “I rep Detroit,” Cake had said. “Gotta know what it’s like out there.”
Cake had actually grown up in Bloomfield Hills, an affluent suburb of Detroit, and went to a private school that made its students wear uniforms with sewn-in tags bearing their full names. (His: Clay Thomas Andrews III.)
Cake’s father was a cardiothoracic surgeon. His mother was an enthusiastic home baker who liked to test out her culinary creations on her son, which is how he got his nickname and a belly that strained the buttons of his school-issued emerald green blazer by the age of 10. Around that time, he discovered the school’s robust theatrical arts program, and after landing the lead in Newsies, fell in love with performing, enrolled in acting classes and hired a vocal coach. By 14, he had lost his baby fat and scored a role as the token person of color on an after school sitcom. The job required him to relocate to Hollywood and be homeschooled by the mother who back burnered baking and learned a great variety of ways to gussy up grilled chicken.
Acting turned out to be a phase, at least professionally. By the time he was old enough to vote, Cake had developed an affinity for strip clubs and tattoos. He had parted ways with the vanilla television franchise on the grounds that he could no longer convincingly play a high school choir leader, nor did he want to. But he still had drive, intellect, and that voice, as well as a following. This, it turned out, was the ideal foundation for a musician in the twenty first century.
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