Soundtrack — A Black Music Month tribute to the songs that shaped my memories — “Cold Blooded”

“Cold Blooded” is a funk song written and recorded by Rick James in 1983. James wrote the song about his relationship with actress Linda Blair. Fun fact: Linda Blair is best known for playing the possessed child, Regan, in the horror film The Exorcist.

In the age of ringtones, I stood twisting my bra around my back in the bedroom of a man I ended up loving too long.

“What’s my ringtone,” I asked.

“Hmmmm, ‘Whip Appeal,’ I ain’t mad at that,” he said scrolling through my phone looking for his name to see what I heard when he called. “It’s ‘Cold Blooded,’ he finally answered me.

“Rick James? My ringtone is a Rick James song,” I asked, not sure whether I should be offended or flattered. “Let me hear it.”

Girl, I think you’re so (sexy, sexy, sexy)

Cold blooded

What more can I say (Sexy, sexy, sexy)

Cold blooded

Nineteen and so new to the world, I accepted the compliment I perceived I was getting and continued to get dressed.

In the age of ringtones, you could pick a song to represent the caller. Something that would alert you to who was trying to reach you without even looking at the phone. Our ringtones for each other signified lust, but our phone calls didn’t always go that way. So, we flung around each other for four years in a friendly, not-friendly, loving, not-love kind of way.

In the third year, we more friends than anything else, spending hours sitting on a used sofa listening to old music in weed-scented forced air. Hours often turned into days that I was never asked to leave, only departing when I had worn my clothes to stench. Sometimes returning shortly after refreshing.

“I met this girl. The sex was perfect — We came at the same time. I’mma marry her,” he told me.

I rolled my eyes. Somehow, ‘I’mma marry her’ sounded like ‘nothing serious’ to me. It wasn’t unusual for us to ensure each other we weren’t in a committed relationship by reveling in stories of sex with other people. But he was on my time and I just didn’t want to believe his heart was with anyone, especially if I couldn’t have it. Even still, in all the years I knew him, I thought we were serious.

Flash forward to later that summer, or the part of the story I can’t relive without wanting to cry. So, I can’t tell you everything.

Cold blooded

We sat in the same spot we had sat so many times in the same cloud of smoke and surround sound funk as every day before. I had been there for more than 30 hours when he leaned towards me and spewed a comment that he knew would infuriate me.

“Man, fuck you — I’m out,” I said giving him the response he so obviously wanted.

In my haste to run out if the door I left something behind. I was no more than a block away when I circled back. His windows were open, so I could hear Rick James sing as I called several times.

If we talked

After several choruses I started banging on the door. When I realized the door was unlocked, I let myself in, as I had done many times before. He emerged frantically to lock his door, then passionately grabbed me.

I found myself in a place I hadn’t been in several months submitted to lust I hadn’t known in some time. Then the scene replayed, but it wasn’t me. I heard banging at the door then John Legend started singing. I mean his phone rang to the tune of “So High (Cloud 9),” and there I was (sexy, sexy, sexy) … (sexy, sexy, sexy) … (sexy, sexy, sexy). I had walked through the door that was left open for someone else. And all I could do was credit myself for being irresistible.

John Legend nearly finished his song by the time I understood what was happening. I felt my head spinning in a monstrous way as if a demon was trying to escape. Then all of the outside noise halted, and I was able to break the chains of the arms wrapped around me meant to keep me from confronting the concept of “So High.”

I’m the only man that handles you (You’re too much)

I sat down, exhausted from disillusion, caught my breath, and asked a bullet’s worth of rhetorical questions.

Who do you

…who do you belong to?

I left enough tears in his house to float myself away, but I never undocked.

If we try

You couldn’t trade me for another

I am not ashamed to say how many more times I lived that night, because I owe a part of who I am to this ringtone affair. I do not think of him when I hear “Cold Blooded,” instead I remember the young woman who wore her cold blood in a different way smearing it across my memory for passover-style blessings.

Don’t you know you’re like a candle

Just burn me up