Flavor of Harvard — Day 1

Randi Pink

FLAVOR OF HARVARD

Bridget Jones Diary meets Flavor of Love

Mama named me after the character in The Color Purple. You know the one that Oprah should’ve won the Oscar for portraying in the movie version. My mama never sat through the movie though. The book was better was printed on her favorite sweatshirt, ink pen, and coffee mug.

So, we read. All five of us siblings only left our designated reading nooks to tend the backyard farm, prepare food, and cleanup after meals. We read voraciously in a quiet, sweet-smelling house in the train depot town of Irondale, Alabama.

Then, one after another, we all went off to the ivy leagues. My oldest brother to Brown for pre-med. Second and third – inseparable twin sisters – to Yale for engineering. The fourth to Princeton for psychology. And I just finished my first week at Harvard. I credit Mama for that. She homeschooled us with the ivy leagues as her singular goal. An incredible feat for a windowed single mother in small town Alabama. I missed her terribly. The farm, too. I missed my simple existence of knowing what to expect and when.

“Sophia?”

I felt my shoulders jump at the sound of my name and wondered how many times my creative writing professor had said it. Looking around the workshop seminar, I’d guessed it was a lot. Everyone gaped at me, and I sunk a bit in my chair. I loathed seminar.

Every single one of my classmates spoke like they were from somewhere phenomenal. The red-haired boy who was so tall he had to duck to get into the class had a strong Canadian twang that made me think of cool crisp weather. The thin, dark-haired girl who wore uninterrupted black sounded more New York than New York. And the remainder of the class was pure Bostonian. All Mass Ave and bursting yewies and riding the T after midnight. All of it made me want to close my Mason-Dixon mouth forever.

I cleared my throat. “Ma’am?”

Everyone laughed for some reason. All except the boy in the hoodie. He was the graduate assistant and he glared at them. “I don’t see anything funny. Clowns, all-a-yas.”

His smiled an encouraging grin my way and spoke in thick northeast. “The teacher’s asking you all to read your flash poems about childhood aloud. It’s your turn.”

He pulled back his hoodie and black chunky curls fell into his face. His eyes were sleepy, half-opened like Marilyn’s. He tilted his chin down and looked up at me with his eyes and I slunk a bit further in my chair before peeling my own eyes from him.

I rustled the blank pages in front of me, lifting the first, second and third for anything I could read to fill the silence and make myself look interesting or interested. I found a poem scribbled on the edge of the back of my notebook. It was written in crayon, so I must’ve been stream-of-consciousness. I took another glance around and my seminar mates still stared back at me like the feral cats on the farm at dinner time. I couldn’t remember what the poem was about or where I’d written it, but everyone glared, so I read it.

“Lame, bizarre, same, bored, horde of aspiring perspiring writers…”

I ended the first stanza in upspeak realizing I’d written this poem on the train the night before. And of course, it was about all of them.

“Oh,” I said before stealing a glance at the boy in the hoodie who nodded approvingly and winked. Suddenly, the red-haired boy snatched the paper from my fingers.

“I’ll take it from here, thank you,” he said as he stood and paced the room. As he paced, I recognized the crown on his watch and the shine on his shoes. He emitted a stiff aura of trained poise like Mr. Bennet or George Wickham did in my mind. He walked, talked, and held his head like money. He began reading my secret words…

“No talent gallant idiots,

Rhythms and rhymes,

Couplets of stupidity,

Broadly published,

Widely praised,

Daddies’ money old,

Makes young sonny mighty bold.

Lonely girl poet,

Weave yourself in woolish thick,

Protected from the wolves!

Treat of treat nor treat or trick.

Saliva falls at their frowns.

Coveting stories.

Of a country girl brown,

Of words and books and solitude.

Strip her nude of her wonderous words.

“Call me sinical, guys, but I think we’re the stupid idiots in this poem,” said the red head boy before balling it up and tossing it in the trash.

As I ran from the room, I heard the boy in the hoodie calling after me about my belongings. I could’ve easily walked from my class to the dorm, but I did not stop running until I reached the train.

***

The train was confusing and smelled like exhaust. I was used to clean; fresh Irondale air and I wished I could crack a window. But I enjoyed watching as the world zoomed by like my hen, Annie. She was the fastest of them all. And the kindest, too. She’d tuck herself as close as possible to the meat chickens as if to comfort them before the inevitable. I wondered what she was doing as I was crying on the train. I wanted to hug her, and my mama and my siblings and all of them. Now there was only me on a packed train for the third time in my life. Crying alone.

We were homeschooled. Every day, mama would wake us up at six-thirty to farm our .732 acres in the whistlestop district. Mama never called this a lesson, but it was. Pick your own peppermint leaves, grind them to bits and steep them into tea with your own hands. Then, eight-fifteen sharp, sit in your designated seat at the thick wooden table at the edge of the yard. Outdoor breakfasts in all-weather. No exceptions for rain, sleet, snow, even wind. Fresh bread from the night before, however many eggs our finicky hens decided to lay and tea from the herbal bed.

Then, clean your hands, wash your teeth, and prepare reports of the weather you’d just experienced first-hand. If the weather was bad, how did you protect yourself properly from the elements. Youngest to eldest, stand on the circular carpet in front of the fireplace and report your findings. I fell first in the lineup and always dreaded speaking in front of my older brothers, sisters, and Mama. But the love there was endless and gentle. Respect surrounded me like a thick cloth and there was no better life than the one Mama gave us.

But it was more than that. Each day on the farm, we learned to stand on our own. In the littlest lessons that she didn’t call lessons, there were miniscule bits of self-sufficiency and strength. And here I was—broken in two by my first inconvenience in a creative writing workshop. They would all be so disappointed.

The thought only made me cry harder and I noticed others on the train staring at me. Many pressed the strip to announce their exit and I wondered if it was to get away from me. I couldn’t blame them, after all, I was a mess of snot and sniffles and hiccups and red eyes.

Then, as the crowd thinned, I felt a small tap on my shoulder. I turned to find a very short elderly woman, not quite five-feet tall with silvery streaks in her hair and skin like layered cake. I wanted to gasp at the sight of her. She looked like she belonged on the cover of a book about wise witches or soothsayers.

“May I help you?” I asked between dramatic cries.

She smiled showing all her beautifully in-tact teeth and said, “You cry in a country girl from Mississippi accent.”

“Alabama,” I corrected.

Instead of replying, she reached deep into her satchel and pulled out a hard-cover case that looked like a thin plastic book. I recognized it as a DVD case since, on special occasions, Mama let us check a couple out from the library and watch them on the small television behind the bookshelf in the kitchen. On the cover was a small unattractive man wearing an oversized clock. He was surrounded by beautiful women—some tall some short like him. The title at the top of the case was Flavor of Love. I’d never seen or heard of such a thing before. Mama rarely exposed us to pop culture or anything other than books or occasionally the five-thirty news with David Muir.

“What?” I started before flipping it over to see mini scenes of this unattractive little man kissing many of the beautiful ladies on the lips.

I could not understand the concept nor why this elderly woman would hand me such a strange case. When I looked up, I realized the woman was carefully exiting the train.

“Ma’am!” I yelled after her. “You forgot your…”

As she reached the platform, she lifted her hand into a frozen wave. “You need it more than I do,” she spoke slow and with a comforting New Orleans accent. “Good luck to you, Child.”

“Who are you?” was all I could think to ask the strange woman.

“Why, I’m your fairy godmother.” As the doors closed, she yelled, “Flavor Flaaaavvvv!!!!”

***

I’d stopped crying when the train reached my stop. Tears on the public street was where I drew the line. I’d read about the freshmen blues. Supposedly, it took a full semester to acclimate to the world outside from one’s hometown, but that was written for people with regular upbringings. I’d rarely left the protection of my small farm. The grocery store was much too much social interaction for me, so I tended to stay behind with Annie the hen and the books. Realistically, it would take me at least a year to get used to Harvard. I had a suitemate – a kind girl from Providence, Rhode Island who intended to learn German this semester as a fun extracurricular. I met her on my way to class last week. She was very colorful and lovely, but I couldn’t remember her name.

I lived on the fifth floor of Pennypacker. The dorms had no air-conditioning which shocked me for such as expensive school. In the south, no A/C was not an option, so I couldn’t believe it was an option anywhere else. It was muggy and stuffed up, so on the way up the stairs, I dreaded entering the suite. Approaching, I pulled my purse around to find my keys and heard a male voice whisper, “Hey.”

The sound nearly made me tumble down the concrete stairs and the contents of my purse splayed across seven steps.

“Oh,” he said. “My bad, I’m so sorry.”

The guy from creative writing seminar stood at my door holding the backpack I’d left behind. “Address was inside. Thought you’d need this for morning classes, sorry.”

I kneeled to pick up my items and so did he. He casually grabbed a handful of six super plus overnight sanitary pads as if they weren’t embarrassing at all. I appreciated him for that, but I felt embarrassed. I hadn’t interacted much with guys aside from my brothers who were grossed out by any mention of menstruation.

“I’m Wesley,” he said with the same chin-down-eyes-up way he’d looked in the class. “Don’t pay any mind to Deacon, the red-haired guy from seminar. He’s been a douche since Exeter.”

“Sophia,” I told him worried about tear streak tracks running down my face. And snot, oh God, was there snot remnant.

He picked up Flavor of Love and looked at it. “My mom loved this show.”

I kept my mouth shut as not to look too sheltered or clueless. Hoping he’d continue talking about give me a hint as to what it was all about.

“Flavor Flav?” he asked smiling. “A whole ass legend. He’s a rapper from the 1980’s and early 90’s. A hype man, really. And a prodigy. Most folks don’t realize he plays like a dozen instruments.”

“What’s the show…” I started. “I mean, who are the ladies?”

“Flavor of Love is a dating show,” he stepped back as I went toward my dorm door. “He’s dating all these women to find the love of his life. It’s on HULU, though. The DVD is unnecessary.”

I stayed silent but made a mental note to find out what HULU meant. I took my backpack from his hands and stood blocking the entry to my apartment. He stayed there for a moment, lingering and I thought he wanted to come inside. I parted my lips.

“If you need showing around,” he said peeking through his lashes. “I wrote my number on your notebook.”

“Thanks, uh.”

“And I wrote a little something else on there, too,” he whispered through the crack in the door. “See you in class next week.”

As soon as the door closed, I cupped my hand over my mouth and slid down to a seated position. The notebook tip stuck out of my backpack and lifted it to read his note:

I’m Wesley, but my friends call me Wes. I like your style. I like your voice. And I really love your poetry. Professor Galltney makes me read them all and grade them myself. She’s not a very good teacher, Professor Galltney, but I’m sure you’ve noticed. Everybody notices. She’s mostly drunk. But I read your first assignment, and I can’t stop thinking about it. You’re a talent with words, I can already tell. And I can’t wait to read more. Lastly, I’d like to let you know you’re not wrong about the rest of them being idiots. Compared to you, I think we all are.

Wesley –55579762—Call or text or whatever whenever.

I held the paper to my chest and breathed it in. Then, I leaped to my feet and stuck my head to see if he was still in the hallway. He wasn’t.

I quickly grabbed my jacket and headed for the library to find out what HULU was.

***

The next day, I called him.

“Hello?” he answered.

I held the phone for a moment and then, “Hi,”

“Sophia!” he exclaimed. “You’re calling from a campus number. I thought I was in trouble with my counselor of something.”

“How’d you know it was me?” I asked.

He let out a sweet chuckle. “Your accent, love.”

I bit at my upper lip at him calling me love. My stomach ached and whispers flew around inside like tiny butterflies. I’d felt this way about books. Lovely ones about boys loving girls correctly, but never in real life.

“You there?”

“Oh,” I stuttered. “Yes, I am. Here, yes.”

“I haven’t talked on the phone in forever,” he said having to yell over what sounded like a crowd. “I mostly text.”

“Sorry, I---”

“No need to be sorry,” he said. “Let me step outside a sec so I can hear you.”

I waited for the chatter to lessen, and when it did. “Hi,” I said again.

“You said that already,” he chuckled. A scold or a tease or something without malice for sure. “I’m glad you called. Your voice is, I don’t know, a comfort.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

“You’re welcome,” he replied. “You called me, Soph. So how may I help you?”

I did call him, but I didn’t think too far past the initial call. Dialing his number was hard enough. I pressed each of the seven-digits with an index finger and the last of the seven was nearly impossible to press. Then, I let it ring twice, promising if it rang a third time, I’d hang up. But he answered in between the second and third one.

“I wanted to say thank you,” I spit the words out like raw lemons. “Finding my dorm, writing that note and liking my voice. I never knew my voice was a comfort. I read mostly; you know? And that’s a quiet activity. I like to go for walks and hang out in the coop, but grocery shopping trips were never my thing. I realize I should have done more. Going out, I mean. Farm to Harvard is a tricky thing for a girl. Smart does not mean street smart or anything. So…”

After a long pause, I shut my mouth and promised myself I’d never open it again as long as I lived. I was a moron to end all morons. The knit whit queen of Pennypacker. I’d blown it and his silence was confirmation.

Then he cleared his throat and said, “Started Flavor of Love yet?”

“Well. No.”

“Okay then!” he exclaimed. “That’s our first show. Do not dare start it without me. I’ll be over at, say, seven tonight? I’ll bring popcorn and chocolate and coke, do you like diet or regular?”

“Regular, I think.”

“Regular it is.”

“Wesley,” I replied slowly. “Wes, I mean.”

“Yes, Soph?” he asked. “And you don’t get to say no, by the way. It’s our show and we’re starting it tonight.”

“I—I,” I said. “I wasn’t going to say no. I was going to say, well, I don’t have Hulu.”

He laughed. “No worries, we can use my password.”

“No, great, but I don’t have a television either.”

Pause again.

“When you said coop,” he said. “You meant chicken coop, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“And when you say you don’t have a tv, does that mean you never have had one ever?” he asked carefully and without judgement.

“Not technically, no. Only books.”

“Ah,” he said. “I’ll bring everything then. Flavor of Love as an introduction to all things pop culture, perfect. See you at seven?”

“OK,” I said before hanging up the phone and running to the bathroom mirror. I hadn’t twisted my hair the night before, so one side of my afro had dented into a clump. My eyebrows had overgrown from lack of plucking, and I didn’t own as much as a tube of lipstick. It was quarter to five and I had two hours to make myself look like less of a nightmare.

I heard my suitemate in the next room, and I knocked on her door. I didn’t know if she’d be willing to help, but I had no one else to ask.

“Excuse me?”

“Hallo?” she asked in a German accent through the door. “I mean, hello?”

“Sorry to bother you, but do you know how to prepare for a Flavor of Love not-date with a boy you like? I don’t get out much.”

She peeked through with German Rosetta stone playing in the background. “My mom loved Flavor of Love back in the day,” she said with four tiny star stickers on her chin and cheek. “Is it the cute one waiting at the door yesterday?”

“Yes, him.”

“Ooo,” she replied. “He’s coming here tonight?”

“Two hours, yes.”

She opened her door. Her room was all bright colors. Pink comforters and yellow striped blankets with see-through fabric pieces over her lamps. She wore a beautifully picked afro with a green scarf wrapped around, and thick glasses crooked on her nose.

“I don’t get out much either,” she said walking toward her vanity. “But I love a challenge. Between us and YouTube, we can figure this thing out together. Come on.”

I took a seat at the mirror and nearly scared myself. “Why on earth is he interested?” I asked. “I’m hideous, ow!”

She tugged at my dented afro with a too-thin-toothed comb for my compact hair. “Sorry, I’ll wet it first,” she said. “And hideous you are not.” She turned the chair away from the mirror. “Give me and YouTube an hour and a half, and you’ll be a ten for sure.”

“Thank you, um,” I said. “I am so sorry, I forgot…”

“Iris,” she told me. “And that’s okay because I forgot yours, too.”

“Sophia,” I said. “My friends call me Soph.” Really just he called me Soph, but I liked it. “And can I ask you another thing?”

“Shoot.”

“How does Flavor of Love work exactly? The guy looks very strange, and the girls look excited to date the strange looking guy. Why do moms like it so much? And why would a lady give it to me on a train?”

“I don’t know about the lady on the train, but here,” she typed a few prompts in before handing over her phone. “Watch the first couple episodes before he gets here.”

“But…”

“He said don’t watch without him?” she asked correctly finishing my sentence. “Not sure what you did to this dude, but he’s very interested. Now hush yourself while I try to get through this hair of yours.”

“Ow!”

“Sorry.”

***

“He’s so small and skinny,” I said as Iris finger twisted my afro into dangly chunks. “I don’t understand why they’re so excited to date him. Is it because he’s rich?”

“Keep watching,” Iris replied.

A few moments later.

“Why are there only fifteen beds in the house?” I asked. “And twenty ladies.”

“Keep watching,” Iris replied.

A few moments later.

“Oh,” I said. “He’s sending five girls home on night one. That’s kind of cruel though, isn’t it? No time to get to know him.”

“Keep watching.”

A few moments later.

“He’s renaming them?” I asked offended for the ladies. “This is ridiculous and insulting.”

“Keep watching.”

A few moments later.

“He’s way too handsy with the nametags,” I said expecting Iris to tell me to keep watching, but that’s when she stopped. She must’ve sensed that there was no going back at that point.

“I like Hoopz.” I spoke.

“Me too,” Iris replied. “But New York’s my fav.”

“I don’t think I remember her,” I said running their nametags through my mind.

Iris laughed for some reason. “Don’t worry, you will.”

“Wait! He has six kids. What is he doing on this show? How old are the kids while he’s galivanting around?”

“That, I do not know,” Iris started. “But I do know, this twist out is going to be gorgeous. While it sets, how do you like your makeup?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ve never worn any.”

“Okay,” she said tilting her head from right to left. “Tilted moisturizer, tweeters and lips stain, it is.” She held her forearm to mine. “I’m a tad darker but I think I can mix in a touch of concealer, and it’ll be fine. How long do we have?”

I looked at her phone’s clock. “An hour before he gets here.”

“We can do that,” she said. “Press play.”

The next forty-five-minutes was filled with many scantily clad women bouncing and prancing around Flavor Flav’s mansion. Followed by Goldie falling asleep on the couch and throwing up on his living room floor. Another woman vying for the world record for wearing red every day which struck me as a strange thing to seek a record for. And so much profanity. I didn’t mind, of course, I was used to it because Mama never restricted my books. I could read from any genre or age-group. She didn’t believe in those types of restrictions. I could read erotica and romance at the age of thirteen. Pumkin and Smiley on Flavor of Love had nothing on paperback library books with men on horses donning the covers. When elimination came, I felt my butt cheeks tense up with anticipation.

“He kept Goldie!” I said louder than I’d intended. “I’m sad he let Picasso go. She seems to really like him.”

“I thought that was a mistake too,” Iris said.

Another five minutes passed, and I began to understand Iris’ New York comment. Because wow.

“She really is reality television gold,” Iris said as we watched New York creatively, hilariously manipulate her way through every room of that mansion. She would have been my favorite villain in a book for sure.

“Are they all like this?” I asked her. “The reality shows, I mean. Because if so, I’ve missed a lot.”

Iris laughed. “There’s only one Flavor Flav and only one Flavor of Love,” she replied. “Now stop the show and check your makeup while I untwist these.”

The chair twirled slowly toward the mirror and my reflection reminded me of Marianne from Sense and Sensibility. I’d imagined Marianne with a mess of curls framing her dainty face, and a touch of color in her cheeks. As I read her character over and over, I saw her skin glowing with hints of freckles trying to peek through and tiny splotches of redness covered with the faintest layer of foundation. Her decolletage perfectly bordering her shoulders and neck creating a shelf for her golden necklace. I blinked at myself to make sure it was me.

“I look…” I blinked again and my eyes began to water until I realized I was crying a bit. I patted at the corners of my eyes. “Sorry.”

Iris squeezed my shoulders and spoke. “Never apologize to me, friend. Now! What will you wear for this dreamboat?”

She darted to her closet and grabbed an oversized sweatshirt with the Harvard’s logo on the front and a very sexy milkmaid dress. “What do you say—Hoopz or Smiley?”

“Definitely Hoopz,” I said taking the triple XL sweatshirt. “But what else?”

“Oh no, Girl,” she said with a wink. “Panties if you want, but nothing else.” A knock at the door startled us both. “It’s him,” she whispered. “Have you shaved your legs?”

I shook my head in response, and she grabbed me by the shoulders to lead me into our shared bathroom. “Shave your legs all the way up, brush and floss your teeth and spray a very quick spritz of my cologne on your left upper thigh. I’ll let him in and help him set up your date.”

“But I don’t have any cologne,” I told her hearing a shakiness in my voice.

“Behind the mirror,” she said. “You’re welcome to use anything of mine.”

“Wait,” I said staring her in the eyes. “I’m scared.”

“I know, sweet girl,” she told me. “But you’re also stunning. Do what I said right now and leave that fear in the bathroom with the rest of the ˈnänˌsens.”

“What?”

“Nonsense.”

She shut me in the bathroom, and I did exactly as she said. Ten or so minutes later, I stood with my hand on the knob, ready to twist.