Anthony Owens (Part IX)

Della wasn’t lying. She was stuck inside of her bathtub. She used a burgundy, terrycloth facial towel to cover her most sacred body part when Anthony walked into the room. He wasn’t sure what to expect. New York City is flooded with perverts. It would not have surprised him if she was going to ask [...]

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Queen Anne

Bradley named the calico that has been living in the basement of our Bed-Stuy brown stone ‘Trinity’. She spent the winter under our apartment. I thought I was imagining her.
 
“Bradley, come here quick—that cat is out there again,” I shouted in a whisper. By the time my lover made it to the spare bedroom [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part VIII)

Anthony scrubbed the claw foot bathtub with a Brillo pad that was without suds. The pink soap that had once covered the steel wood had all been used by the man who lived there before. He found the rusted scouring pad in a soap dish in the small room with a toilet.
“You were one [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part VII)

Maya Angelou paid Della for ‘inspiration’ and ‘spiritual guidance’. The Harlem writer was not particularly concerned about the events of the future, but rather, came to Della’s psychic center for ‘energy work’ and ‘channeling’. Della stopped short of offering full-body massages with release for clients like Maya. “Oh, God girl, bless you! A little to the [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part VI)

 
Harlem lost its dark-roast ‘flava’ fast. Before the first scalding breath of high-pressure steam raced through the frothers at the Magic Johnson Starbucks on the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, the hood had already taken on a white a bubbly surface. Rockafeller wanna-be’s were buying the once abandoned brownstone buildings at unbelievable prices [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part V)

 
The Magic Johnson Movie Theater and Starbucks coffeehouse ripped the soul right out of Harlem. In the spirit of commercialism, a Black basketball player with HIV brought negativity to the once thriving economy of northern Manhattan. Shortly after Mayor Rudy Giuliani chased away the street vendors on 125th Street and stripped the neighborhood of a [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part IV)

Anthony did not have much to unpack when he moved into 1211 Lenox Avenue. He managed to bring everything he owned in the trunk of a taxi. Della told him he could use the bed that her former tenant, Ryan West left behind after he disappeared into a crack house on 132nd Street and was [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part III)

Della did not realize that she was psychic until she moved to Harlem. Her third-eye remained closed through her youth. She did not blink and see the light until she was 33.
Her father had ‘the gift’ too, but was able to channel the energy through his music. In 1923, it was not glamorous to have [...]

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Anthony Owens (Part II)

Della’s New Age boarding home was run down and in need of major renovations but there simply was not enough money available to make the building modern. The young men who lived there didn’t seem to mind the musty, mildew smell in the stairway or the holes in the walls. Roaches were only bad in [...]

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Anthony Owens

 
Central Harlem offered Anthony Owens the fast paced lifestyle that he craved. The busy streets lined with vendors selling incense from card tables was far more intriguing than expensive neighborhoods in lower Manhattan where storefronts adorned with sophisticated manikins reflected the realities of a world out of reach for a young man on the wrong [...]

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