Show 7: VIP 1st date w/ Beyoncé + a double date w/ Alicia Keys & Swizz Beatz

1 out of 13.

7.69%

It seemingly has been the odds in so many aspects of my life.

1 out of 13 seems like the daily probability of not having been bullied during any day in junior high school. 

7.69% feels like the daily chances of getting shot or robbed as a teenager walking the streets of Hollis & Jamaica, Queens or Harlem. 

That number strikes me as the same odds of being randomly being stopped by police or ICE since 9/11 while simply commuting around the city. 

It’s the chances now that I will have the two $1 bills needed to buy candy from a migrant child or mother on the 7 train subway. 

A 1 out of 13 life is what I have had to live. 

A .0769 batting average also feels about right for my dating life. Out of 13 dating swings, 12 outs- mostly in the form of ghosting, friendzoning, and two rare instances of swerves from an attempted kiss. That’s a lot of heart-numbing strikeouts. 

But when I connect, that 1 measly time out of 13 tries, it’s usually unforgettable home run. To quote a famous Nike baseball commercial, chicks dig the long ball. 

And there was no better place than a homerun than at Citifield, home of my New York Mets, in June 2016. I cashed out the 1 out of 13 odds I created for myself the moment Beyonce reached down to hold my hand. 

Earlier that year I was finishing my tenure as  an associate board member of a non-profit called America Needs You [ANY]. On the board, we have the responsibility to contribute to fundraising efforts. And one of those efforts was a raffle for Beyoncé concert tickets. 

Yes, I’m a Beyoncé fan- since Destiny’s Child, “Writing’s On The Wall”, Bey. But was I Beyhive level fan? No, no, no, no, no. 

So I didn’t enter the raffle. 

Times were especially difficult back then.

My immigrant math calculated that the money I needed to donate to enter the Beyoncé raffle were more than a dozen orders of chicken wings and fried rice. 

No, no, no, no, no.

But there was something missing: The denominator. 

“WAIT! So how many people entered the raffle?”, I wondered.

I asked, and learned it was 12.  

“WTF is wrong with people?” was my first reaction. Sure, most aren’t avid concertgoers like me, but c’mon! This non-profit had a lucrative network and I couldn’t believe only 12 people donated for a chance at Beyonce tickets. 

And so I made it 13. I waited until the last day to donate so I that had a good idea what the denominator would be. My risk-reward calculus, my immigrant math finally said “Yea, yea, yea, yea, yeah.” I have already lived a .0769 kind of life. I’m used to these odds.

I not only found the denominator. I made it so.

A week later, I saw a picture of ANY staff members Morolake and Chika hold up a yellow piece of paper, with a vertical crease down the middle, with my name written in print. 

Another week later, I took the 7 train to Citifield and met with the generous donor of the tickets. She hands me physical tickets (yay, stubs!), and I look down to see VIP. 

My Asian immigrant math then guided my eyes to the price on the stubs.  That’s when I found out a pair of Beyonce VIP tickets cost 240 orders of lunch special chicken wings and fried rice. 

Wait, there were two tickets. Whom was I going to take? I was single and not mingling as much as I wanted. Again, my batting average in many aspects of life, especially my love life, had been about .0769.  

But I had been checkin on it- on her. She had a track star body complemented by a cute, large smile. Most of all, Mimi felt light- emotionally and otherwise. I valued that because my personal and family life had felt so heavy for so long. 

In conversation I found out she already had tickets to Beyonce’s Formation tour and that she would be there with relatives. I asked where they would be seated. They were high up in the nosebleed sections. 

“How ‘bout you let me upgrade you?” is one hell of a way to ask out a woman. 

The VIP section of a Beyonce concert is one hell of a venue for a first date. 

Months later she revealed to me that she was talking to another man at the time. I had pried her away. Finding that out temporarily gave me such a big ego. 

But my ego was nowhere near as big as the hats worn in the Beyhive section. Two fashionably dressed gentlemen apparently did not get the memo that me and Mimi would be right behind them and if you stacked both of us on top of one another, we would barely see over their hats. Do you know how disrespectful it is to be that tall and wear a hat with a brim that feels like it’s 13 feet wide?! 

And so we angled our way away from the wide brims, to a section beside the elevated runway that allowed us to pivot from where Beyonce would appear stage left to when she would walk the runways to bless the crowd with her proximity. We were by an intersection of the runway platforms. 

This occasion deserved better than the outdated, battery-damaged iPhone 6 I still had, so I had brought in an old Panasonic Linux point and shoot camera that was great at recording. I placed it in my VIP swag drawstring bag, which included sunglasses, a sunglasses case, a wristband, a VIP access card, and a white towel I wanted to swing at the gentleman in the wide-brim hat. 

And then she appeared, in an all black. with her own wide-brimmed hat- and with all her dancers also wearing the same wide-brimmed hat. Ok, I can’t be that mad anymore.

They walked down the runway. They proceeded to go off.  Bey just opened with “Formation”. She came back to the stage and threw a towel into the crowd. I missed it. “Sorry” was sung next. 

And for next five minutes, the hearing in my left ear disappeared as well. A young “Becky with the good hair”-looking fan a few inches shorter than me had just uttered the most piercing shrill directly in my left eardrum. I turned quickly in annoyance and saw an uncontrollable, ghost-faced standing corpse. She died a little bit when Beyoncé got that close to her. Bey be killin’ ‘em. 

So is this what the Beyhive is like? Obnoxiously brimmed hats and deafening, painful screams? The sound was awful because you’re right by the massive speakers. There was so much screaming that you couldn’t hear the songs. People pay $1000/ticket for this? I didn’t bother to record much of the experience anymore. I chose to stay present, but at that present moment, I was annoyed.

Then came the first wardrobe change. Beyoncé reappeared in a cream-colored, bedazzled outfit with knee high boots. How she was able to do the choreography to “Baby Boy” in those boots I will never know.

She then got to one of the songs on my wish-list for the night, “Countdown”. She killed me softly with that. Beyoncé proceeded with a ballad version of “Me, Myself and I.” That might not be my favorite song, but it surely the one that resonates the most when I consider the arc of my life.

Then Beyoncé knelt and sang “All Night” to us. Correction- she sang just to me. Our eyes locked. Mid-tempo & ballad Beyoncé has always been my favorite version of Beyoncé and I’m entranced.

And when she finished singing to me, she gilded down the elevated runway intersection onto the middle of the crowd for about two minutes. She made her way back slowly to the intersection, where she turned left. Mimi and I pivoted towards the very edge of that portion of the runway. With Beyoncé holding the mic in her left hand, I raised my hand to hold her right hand. 

Correction, Beyoncé held my hand. 

I have never liked holding hands. There’s something infantile about it. Whose hand goes on top anyway? And does that positioning really say something about a relationship? 

Then came the second wardrobe change. Beyoncé looked like a grammy statue in her gold outfit. And in that outfit, she told all the girls that they run the world. “Drunk in Love” came next, and it was a crowd favorite.

Then came the third wardrobe change. In black and gold, kneeling like an empress presiding over her subjects, she did a cover of Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones.” There came a transition to “Purple Rain”, and she vanished. Citifield goes dark, and the crowd puts the flashlights on their phones. At that moment, I was reminded that my idol, Prince, had died less than eight weeks earlier.

The fourth wardrobe change came in red. The theme of knee high boots remained, but this time, they looked like patent leather red boots. An ominous, rock version of “Crazy in Love” then started as Bey and her dancers emerged from wooden locker-like partitions. She even put on a red fur jacket as she strolled down the platform, teasing the crowd with her smile and a quick rendition of “Bootylicious.” She later sang “Party”, and walked back to give my area high fives.

I did my best to stay in the moment, not just for Bey, but also for Mimi. I didn’t record much of the concert on video. But I was still processing so much stimuli at once and I had so many questions.

Did Beyoncé’s stylist freshly skin a tiger for those striped knee-high platform boots? And how did her hairstylist get her mane precisely Grammy-colored gold? Who could  look more regal in black and gold? Why you Hov, and not me? Sorry, Mimi- but these were the questions that had to be asked. 

But the one question I didn’t ask at the end of the Beyoncé experience was whether I chose the right person to take. I guess I could have sold the second ticket for $1000, but over the course of several months, Mimi and me shared some more good times.

As someone who batted .0769 in the game of love, here’s the only dating advice I’m qualified to give: Don’t be undocumented while you’re dating. 

But I didn’t take that advice. I keep trying. And I kept trying for Mimi. Since she appreciated art, I later secured access for us to attend the No Commission art fair, commissioned by Swizz Beatz. Swizz is Mimi’s biggest crush. And so trying to be a good boyfriend, I wanted to find a way to have her meet him. What were the odds of making that happen?

7.69% of the time, I make it happen every time. And there she was, with her lifelong crush, giving her treasured poetry book to him.

We later walked to another wing of the exhibit, and we watched a video installation projected on a screen. A few feet in front of us were Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz holding hands. I officially counted that as a double date.

Afterwards, we had lunch at Charlie’s across the street- and we were seated next to Swizz Beatz and his table.

Odds are, I make things happen- except when it comes to love. Mimi and I didn’t last too long after the good times at the art exhibit. Neither Beyoncé, nor Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys could help keep Mimi and me together for many years.

Maybe I don’t like holding hands because my grasp has never been been strong enough to keep anyone for years on years. Hand-holding is better for the fleeting moments of life, like a 1 in 13 chance I could get access to a June summer night full of piercing screams, bass-heavy super speakers, knee-high boots, and wide-brimmed hats while you reach for Beyoncé’s outstretched hand.

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Concert access + more:

1. For those interested in Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour, here are the key dates:

   • BeyHive presale, Tuesday, 2/11/25, 12pm EST

   • Citi + Verizon presales, Wednesday, 2/12/25, 12pm EST

   • Artist presale, Thursday, 2/13/25, 12pm EST

   • General onsale, Friday 2/14/25, 12pm EST

2. For Black History Month, if you’re in NYC, sign up for free community screenings of these amazing movies. I’ll be at the Mudbound screening to see Mary J. Blige on screen:

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Los Angeles fire relief:

1. Adobe, aside from donating $1 to relief efforts, is matching donations to the Entertainment Community Fund and California Community Foundation: Wildlife Recovery Fund

2. SBA disaster assistance is now available to Southern California businesses, homeowners, renters and private nonprofit organizations This covers Los Angeles and the contiguous counties of Kern, Orange, San Bernardino, and Ventura. Applicants may apply online and receive additional disaster assistance information at sba.gov/disaster. Applicants also may call SBA’s Customer Service Center at (800) 659-2955 or email [email protected] for more information on SBA disaster assistance.

3. MusiCares Foundation is offering $1,500 in financial assistance, $500 in food vouchers for music industry professionals: [email protected], 1-800-687-4227

4. Here’s a GoFundMe list to help the families rebuild in Altadena, CA

5. FEMA Assistance is available for residents impacted by LA County wildfires. Apply online at DisasterAssistance.gov, the FEMA app, or the FEMA Helpline at 1-800-621-3362 (Calls are accepted every day from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. PST)

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About the author:

C. Mercado is the award-winning Founder & CEO of GrantAnswers, an NYC-based data, strategy & consulting firm founded in 2013. His journey from undocumented immigrant to award-winning entrepreneur & immigrant rights advocate has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MTV, and Forbes. He has helped +1000s launch careers in tech & secure acceptances to top colleges & programs. His speaking engagements for the likes of Teach for America and the US Chamber of Commerce encompass immigration, career development, entrepreneurship, and tech diversity & inclusion. He is also an avid concertgoer for +25 years and counting, and likes to tell stories about it.