Big Sis

As a young man Michael A. Gonzales collected honorary sisters, but in his recollection, one stands out.

Sylvia Rodriguez in 1983. Photo by her son Akil Browne.

Years before I knew where babies came from I asked my single mom, who was already raising me and little brother Carlos, for a baby sister. Mom laughed as though she’d been watching Redd Foxx on stage at the Apollo instead of sitting in the living room of our Harlem apartment. “You won’t be getting a sister out of me,” she said between guffaws. After asking a few more times, I realized there was no wearing her down on the subject. If I was to have a female sibling, I’d have to figure out how to create one on my own.

Afterwards I came to the realization that I was surrounded by girls who were almost sisters, and began developing deeper friendships with them, adopting them in a way.

The first was my next-door neighbor Jackie Lawson, who, along with her brother Darryl, had been a friend since childhood. As we got older, Jackie and I both became interested in writing, reading and music. We’d talk about the books that we read, or chill in her older sister’s room listening to funk songs by War and Earth, Wind & Fire, or any number of random albums stacked beneath the stereo. Though I do recall my GI Joe having sex with her Barbie, our pre-pubescent selves remained platonic.

Having never been “a boy’s boy” who liked being out in the streets playing stickball or skelley, or throwing soda bottles at water rats on Riverside Drive like my brother, I always preferred the company of girls (and later women). They never teased me for being chubby, would rather talk than fight, and weren’t trying to watch baseball, Westerns, or war movies on television. Being around girls was comforting, but of course hanging with them led to more than a few people believed that something was “wrong” with me, or that I was a “sissy.”

In the summer of 1973, when I was 10, while visiting my grandfather’s house in Hagerstown, Maryland he snatched me by the hand one afternoon when I was in the kitchen with mom, Aunt Carrie, and Aunt Evelyn, who was my sweet step-grandmother. They would sit in that room sipping iced tea or lemonade while talking about this and that. “Why you always hanging around your mother like that?” Granddaddy asked as he pulled me towards the side door. “Come outside with me.”

Having never been “a boy’s boy” who liked being out in the streets playing stickball or skelley, or throwing soda bottles at water rats on Riverside Drive like my brother, I always preferred the company of girls (and later women). They never teased me for being chubby, would rather talk than fight, and weren’t trying to watch baseball, Westerns, or war movies on television.

We stood on the lawn watching the cars drive by while across the street a few girls jumped double-dutch. Minutes later my mother’s cousin Jackie, the one out gay guy in the community, walked by the fence. “Hi, Mr. Mosby,” he said in his high-pitched voice. Granddad growled a greeting and when Jackie was out of earshot he yanked me. “See him? He used to be up under his mother all the time too.”

Eight years later, while attending Long Island University/Brooklyn Campus in the early 1980s, I became good friends with Sylvia Rodriguez, the older sibling of my best friend Jerry. The three of us hung out at school and later at the massive apartment she shared with her older sister Jeanette and their children. Six years older than me, she was a Puerto Rican cutie with naturally curly hair and a soft voice.

Freshman year I was dating my first girlfriend while Sylvia had already been married, divorced, and was raising children while going to school full-time. I loved her kids—a wild but sweet boy named Akil, and his darling sister Aisha—as though they were my own. One time when Sylvia recruited me to babysit them at Jerry’s apartment, a one-bedroom crib within walking distance of her own, Akil somehow stuffed Lumet, Jerry’s cat named after the famed film director, into an empty bamboo birdcage. Though I was able to get him out without incident, the poor animal was skittish for a week.

Sylvia was a serious person who had no problem being silly. One of her first excursions with me and Jerry was the three of us trawling downtown Manhattan, trying to find the Mudd Club, but instead stumbling on something more sinister. We should have thought it weird when they asked us to sign a release at the door, stating that we weren’t police.

As we went deeper into the venue we caught view of men being whipped by leather clad women, and realized we stumbled onto an underground S&M club. We didn’t participate, nor did we leave. As Flock of Seagulls and other new-wave bands blared from the sound system, we transformed into fun-loving voyeurs. Hours later, back in Brooklyn, we followed-up that night of witnessing whips, chains, and leather with burgers at George’s Diner, where we recounted our adventure and Sylvia ate fries off our plates. The three of us talked until the morning light.

Sylvia Rodriguez in 1986. From from the Sylvia Rodriguez Archives.

Sylvia’s older sister Janette was also a L.I.U. college student with a kid. They lived on Ocean Avenue, in an apartment where I was often a guest. Both of the Rodriguez sisters could cook and dance and tell stories. Over dinner they told me tales about their teen years going to salsa clubs with their older brother Gil, who was the best dancer in the family. Afterwards, Sylvia pulled out various albums by Latin artists, introducing me to the music of Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe, Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri. She showed me a few salsa steps and allowed me to be clumsy with her on the dance floor that was her living-room.

The Rodriguez clan was huge and their family soon became my own. Gil, who converted to Islam years before, had changed his name to Malik. Tall and lanky, he was the king of cool. Their nerdy bro Antonio turned me on to jazzy rock albums by Steely Dan and Rickie Lee Jones. Sylvia, who was politically active, educated me on the problems of the world and schooled me in the work of filmmakers like Costa-Gavras, whose revolutionary 1969 movie Z we saw at a midnight show at the Waverly Theater in the Village.

Raised in Harlem by an apolitical mother, I rarely thought about politics outside of the headlines. But in the years before rap groups like Public Enemy and X-Klan talked about nationalism and the Black Panthers, it was Sylvia who introduced me to the writings of John Reed and Frantz Fanon. She took me to my first (and only) public demonstration where in 1982 we protested against South African apartheid in front of the United Nations.

While attending Long Island University/Brooklyn Campus in the early 1980s, I became good friends with Sylvia Rodriguez, the older sibling of my best friend Jerry. The three of us hung out at school and later at the massive apartment she shared with her older sister Jeanette and their children.

Though I was 19, my only connection to the subject was head-nodding to the jazzy funk of Gil Scott-Heron’s classic “Johannesburg” when he was on Saturday Night Live in 1975. But seven years later I learned about the brutal, racist system, as well the work of Nelson and Winnie Mandela. Holding my FREE SOUTH AFRICA hand-painted sign high, I was nervous about demonstrating, but stayed close to Sylvia and her friends. For the first time I felt as though I was a part of something that mattered.

“Thank you for getting me on an F.B.I. watch-list,” I joked at the end of the day.

“Just hanging out with me, you might already be on a list,” she quipped.

Check out the album…

Two weeks later we went to a Greenwich Village hippie record store on 8^th Street. Looking through the bins, I saw The Byrds’ disc Preflyte, which featured a cover by Barry Windsor-Smith. I could’ve cared less about the band, but Windsor-Smith, a comic book artist who used to draw Conan the Barbarian, was one of my favorite illustrators. Sylvia, too, was a terrific artist, so I showed her the image of the band dressed as astronauts.

“You going to buy it?” she asked.

“I don’t have enough money?”

“Do you want me to steal it for you?” she went on. “I used to be good at shoplifting when I was a teenager.” Nervously, I laughed. While nothing says lifelong friendship more than someone willing to shoplift for you, I passed.

We spent many days and nights together, some of them memorable for funny reasons—like the evening I took Sylvia to Dojo’s on St. Mark’s Place for a birthday dinner, but totally forgot I was supposed to be escorting her to the surprise party Jerry and Antonio were throwing for her 30th. By the time I got her back to Brooklyn, we were two hours late. The brothers were mad with me that night, but Sylvia just thought it was hilarious.

The Rodriguez clan was huge and their family soon became my own.

Not long after that I experienced my first heartbreak. I discovered that my girlfriend had been cheating on me with a close friend. Devastated, I moped around for days until Sylvia helped me out of my funk in a Chelsea restaurant where the male bartender and the female owner both had crushes on her. Over very strong Long Island Iced Teas, she propped up my ego, gave great advice, and helped me as I staggered to the 7^th Avenue subway station.

Months later both Jerry and I dropped out of college and got jobs working at a New York City shelter. Sylvia’s sister Janette, who’d graduated in 1983, was the big boss and she hooked us up. We worked the 12am to 8am shift, and some mornings when work was over we’d call Sylvia and she’d invite us over for breakfast. She was already up, having gotten her kids ready for school. Once we got there she made us banana pancakes, eggs, and a couple pots of Café Bustelo as The Police or Prefab Sprout played in the background.

“Jerry, Sylvia in me in 1999.”

It was around this time that Jerry started a theatre group that consisted of young, talented performers from The Actor’s Studio. He and I became the company’s playwrights (Jerry was also the main director), and Sylvia was recruited as the all-purpose backstage woman. Though she took the title “stage manager,” she was much more than that, often helping with everything from rehearsals to make-up to costumes. Though I’d soon drop out (working with demanding actors drove me batty), Sylvia always stayed until the last curtain call.

From the mid-to-late 80s, like a few other friends, Sylvia was no longer around as much. She remarried very briefly, and was going to graduate school. As they say, life got in the way. But she contacted me when her father died in 1988, and we reconnected. The next few years were a transitional period for me that included taking myself more seriously as a writer and wilding out romantically before falling in love in 1991 with music publicist Lesley Pitts—a woman who most people, including Sylvia, truly liked very much. That year she moved in with Gordon, who in 1998 became husband number three, my favorite of the men in her life and the one who lasted the longest.

It’s been 45 years since we first met, and in that time the many hours we’ve spent together could supply countless stories. Of the celebrations and deaths that include my girl Lesley in 1999, her brother Malik in 2000, and her baby bro Jerry in 2008; of the many holiday seasons I’ve spent sipping the Christmas Coquito that she made the month before, and of posing for the family picture in her brother Phil’s yard oh the 4^th of July. Of that time shortly after her 50^th birthday when Sylvia decided to get her driver’s license, and I was the only person (besides her husband) who’d ride shotgun. Though we took a few wild turns and abrupt stops at red lights, I never feared that she would kill me.

Then there was that time when Jerry, who became my roommate in 2005, was in the hospital receiving cancer treatments in 2007 and I found his ferret dead in the cage. It was Sylvia who instructed me to come over and bury the furry critter in her backyard. “Just put him in a shopping bag and take a cab over.” A year later, when Jerry too died, the night before my June 23^rd birthday, it was Sylvia who phoned me from Sloan-Kettering to tell me that he was gone.

It’s been 45 years since we first met, and in that time the many hours we’ve spent together could supply countless stories. Of the celebrations and deaths that include my girl Lesley in 1999, her brother Malik in 2000, and her baby bro Jerry in 2008; of the many holiday seasons I’ve spent sipping the Christmas Coquito that she made the month before, and of posing for the family picture in her brother Phil’s yard oh the 4^th of July. Of that time shortly after her 50^th birthday when Sylvia decided to get her driver’s license, and I was the only person (besides her husband) who’d ride shotgun.

In November, 2011, when I was shot three times in a case of mistaken identity, most of my sister-friends were around my hospital bed, bringing me food, connecting the telephone, and keeping me company. But it was Sylvia who was my medical proxy, talking to the nurses and doctors, and explaining everything to me. Having spent years in the hospital with rheumatic fever when she was a child, she knew how to talk to the white coat posse as though she was one of them.

After a few weeks of couch surfing because I was scared to return home, not knowing who it was who’d tried to kill me, work was slow. Though I had paid the rent and most of my bills, I lacked a few basic necessities. One evening I got a phone call. “Come downstairs in five minutes,” Sylvia said. “I have something for you.” When she and Gordon pulled-up, the back of the car and some of the trunk were filled with groceries. I was shocked. “You didn’t have to do that,” I mumbled as I gave her a hug. “Thank you.”

In the fall of 2012, a year before I moved out of Brooklyn, I was spooked by the forthcoming doom of Hurricane Sandy. The weather people on television made it sound like the end of the world. Not wanting to die alone, I called on her. “I’m scared,” I blurted. Without missing a beat she simply replied, “Pack a bag and come over here.” As she had done many times in the past, big sis Sylvia looked out.

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Check out all of Michael A. Gonzales’s contributions to Oldster Magazine.