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Episode 79: The Babe Magnet

Writer's picture: Kristin LindstromKristin Lindstrom

Updated: Feb 27, 2023

Many apologies for my absence over the last three weeks. I had a knee replacement two weeks ago and have only just emerged from the fog of surgery and pain killers. I hope you enjoy my new story.


It’s hard to believe our friend Xerxes has been gone more than 30 years, a victim of a rare cancer that, at first, seemed like it didn’t stand a chance against him.


I met him in the now defunct Britches men’s store in Ballston Common mall. I was looking for a present for Perry when this very dapper, very tall, and very dark man offered to assist me. His skin was very dark and his smile against it was dazzling. Perhaps it was because he knew he was about to sell me a bunch of stuff I didn’t know I wanted. We ended up talking quite some time, while he piled up more things for me to buy. Turned out this was a second job for him; he worked full-time at Fairfax County Department of Transportation.


He waved goodbye as I dragged all the boxes to my car.


A week later Perry and I were sitting at the tiny bar of a restaurant recently started by Jacques, an ambitious man, who had closed his very popular and much smaller restaurant a block away to undertake a huge restaurant in the lobby of an office building. How he had any success as a restauranteur at all was beyond me. Jacques had very little charm needed to spread around a successful place. Unlike some restauranteurs we knew, he had no facility for names, and greeted people entering the dining room with a frown and a small, yellow smile.


As Perry and I were tucking into our wine one evening, I looked up and saw Xerxes coming in, looking like he was humming a tune. He was, and he was heading straight for the bar. Unlike our host, he recognized me immediately and sat down. He was there to celebrate the end of his radiation treatment for a cancer related to Agent Orange.

Ulysses Xerxes White Jr. This is one of only two photos

we have of him.



It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


The three of us were bar flies though Xerxes took it to new levels. As Perry said at his funeral, Xerxes loved bars (his father cringed in the front pew) but we never saw him drunk. His spirit of choice was people. Uh, particularly women.


Xerxes was a clotheshorse, something that irritated his father no end. Once when he and I had lunch, he asked me to drop him at the dry cleaner, then planned to take the bus home. Home wasn’t far so I offered to take him. When he came out of the dry cleaning shop, he had a huge armful of shirts on hangers. When pressed, he admitted he was carrying 26 shirts!


Ulysses Xerxes White Senior came by his name in an unusual fashion. He was born in Florida; his mother was attended by a midwife, and he was never given a formal name. For many years, everyone simply called him Jelly Roll. In sixth grade or so, the teacher, bless her, took him aside and said this wouldn’t do. The class what studying Ulysses, the Roman version of Odysseus. Jelly Roll thought that was a good option and took it as his own. In a much later class, students were learning why many black folks don’t have a middle name, due to the slavery system, so Ulysses chose Xerxes. (Xerk Senior, I hope I have this right).


When Zerk Senior wanted to join the army, there was no birth certificate to be found. An army sergeant drove with him to Florida where they were able to locate the now very elderly midwife. She found the handwritten entry in her ledger announcing the birth of Jelly Roll. He was in like Flint.


Xerxes was full of ideas for his future. He wanted to get into the export/import business, and he was teaching himself Chinese, with an eye to trading in China. He had his first deal set up, medical equipment to sell to a contractor in Saudi Arabia. Just as he was about to pay his contractor, a small regional war started up in the Middle East. His deal crashed and burned, but he got out of a significant financial debt by the skin of his teeth.


After a round of chemotherapy, Xerxes’ father had to shave his head for him as his hair was falling out.


Unintended consequence: Xerxes was transformed into a BABE MAGNET.


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