What it feels like...

This is Sean

Sean (young black sexy male, hustler)

This white guy told me I had the eyes of a hustler. I didn’t understand what that meant. Maybe I’m too sexy for my own good. Maybe I’m sending messages that I don’t understand. My eyes are a boy whose father got himself killed when I was too young and I’m desperately figuring out how to be a man. Maybe I’m looking for a Daddy with every twenty dollar bill stuffed down my pants. But when he told me that I had the eyes of a hustler, I knew what he meant. Boys like me weren’t meant to be loved. Boys like me were meant to be understood because I carry sex like a weapon. I don’t know what having eyes of a hustler means; maybe I’m just too honest. I have nothing to hide. Nothing to fear. Don’t think I’m anything special but my survival. Maybe that’s what he meant, I’m trying to survive.

I don’t believe in underwear. I like the touch of raw fabric against free skin, nothing holding me up or hostage, free to hang. I like only having to slip out of one layer to let hands touch sweaty pockets of flesh or feel the kiss of a warm mouth on a cold night. I like to wear my jeans dangerously low on my flat waistline, reveal the kink in my trimmed pubic hair, make men think of must, then lust, my dick, then heat. I like to wear my shirts tight, a wife beater, but I prefer no shirt at all. I like the dangerous look, so I wear my baseball caps low on my eyes, or to the side, or cocked sideways. I stomp in my timberland boots. I’m silent. I got out alone. I have a thing for biting my bottom lip. I have thing for drinking too much. I always have sex in my eyes and on my mind. I don’t like rules. It’s because I’m young, dark skinned and often look like the channel five news that I’m mistaken for a hustler. Shouldn’t I not let white men buy me drinks? Shouldn’t I not let white men call me beautiful? Shouldn’t I not let white men take me home? Shouldn’t I not let white men pay for it? He offered me a thousand dollars to suck my dick. Shouldn’t I not let him believe in the Mandingo fantasy? I don’t have a big dick, but you wouldn’t kick me out of bed.

There was a time I couldn’t possible fathom a white man climbing on top of me. It was too political. There was a time I couldn’t let a white man fuck me. It was too emotional. Slavery was a bitch and it’s still fucking with people’s mind. There was a time I thought if I let a white man fuck me, I knew in his head he was calling me a nigga. Sex is power. I didn’t want to give mine up so easy. Some white men get off on that false sense of power. But white men have money. White men have the good drugs. They live in better neighborhoods. Shouldn’t I not let a white man take care of me? Growing up black and poor nobody in my family and neighborhood thought I was about shit. They called me ugly. I was too dark. It was a white man the first person to call me beautiful. Should I not let white men worship me? Shit, sometimes a nigga just needs to be loved.

Sex sells. I flirt with the bartender. He stopped giving me free drinks when he realized I was never going to let him see it or fuck him. I use it. I use my sexuality. I use the fantasy and allure of my black jungle skin. Shit, why shouldn’t I not let white men pay for being fools?

Based on a true story

When I was much younger, I wanted to live a life of adventure so that when I was old  and gray and being molested and beaten by a fat middle aged balding nurse, I could go to my happy place of the memories from my youth; when I was a fool who liked to fall in love.

It was summer, three o’clock in the morning, an ordinary Wednesday night, I was staggering home from the local bar. I hadn’t had that much to drink, was just feeling good, which meant my shirt was most likely off because I liked staggering home almost naked, it either attracted attention or caused trouble, either, or, meant a good time.

He was a stripper at the local bar on Wednesday nights. We sometimes flirted, I think I tipped him a couple times. The local bar wasn’t known for the best looking strippers, more strippers on a budget, most of them were plain looking but friendly, aging party-boys, escorts who fell on hard times or high school drop outs looking for extra cash. He was in-between, a little older than the high school drop outs, too nice to have ever been an escort and his pretty green eyes were too white and alert to have been a hardcore party boy. He wasn’t money hungry for tips but always looked as if he enjoyed being on the stage in his underwear in front of strangers. He was cute, probably in his thirties, very slender, shorter than average but he made up for it with his smile. I liked that he often made eye contact with me, but then again, I didn’t figure myself anything special because he was a stripper, a sexual entertainer, which meant he flirted with anything that looked like it had a job.

There are times in life when the most unexpected renews your faith in the impossibility. I was no more than a couple of blocks from the local bar when I saw him. Or maybe he saw me. He was getting out of a car. Maybe he changed his mind about the person he decided to go home with that night. Or maybe he was an escort and just finished his business, letting the guy suck his dick for a hundred dollar bill and was being dropped off at the nearest corner. I didn’t know or care. I didn’t ask questions. It’s always weird seeing strippers out in real life. I once saw this stripper who could bend over and suck his own dick buying a “The Purpose Driven Life” at Borders Bookstore. I thought he had found his purpose. I’ve dated a stripper. He didn’t seem so sexy in his g-string yelling at me that I forgot to flush my shit in the toilet after I used it. He was a control freak. I guess strippers are people too.

I saw him get out of the car. We made eye contact. I smiled and kept walking. I didn’t expect him to catch up to me. He said he just wanted to walk with me because we were going the same direction. As we walked he told me he had a crush on me. I laughed. It’s so hard to take strippers serious. I made a joke that I didn’t have any single dollar bills. He hit me in the arm. I hit him back. We kept walking. I asked him how long he’s been stripping. He told me he just got started but was thinking about quitting. He hadn’t planned to stay in DC that long. I was drunk. And when I’m drunk I usually think I’m a psychic, it’s psychotic. So I asked if I could read his palm, get to know him better. He agreed to my insanity, which meant he was a fool and probably looking for answers that were elusive as the wind blowing through the trees. We stopped, I took his right hand, looked into his eyes, ran my left palm across his palm trying to absorb his energy and then I begin to read his lines. Most hands have an “M” shape and depending on the deepness of the “M,” supposed to be an indicator of that person’s love, life and career. The creases in his hand weren’t that deep and telling by the sadness in his eyes, his life was in trouble. Again I was drunk, and despite the advice of my parole officer, I was listening to the voices in my head, so I told him with tears in my eyes that he was going to die soon. I expected him to snatch his hand back or cry, but he just smiled. He believed me. I hadn’t had anyone believe my inebriated visions about their lives before. When I called my sister at three o’clock in the morning and told her she was fat and a bitch and her husband was going to leave her, she never believed in my gift, instead she usually cursed me out and hung up the phone.

We started walking again, but we didn’t let go of each other’s hand. Suddenly the night came alive and we had all the time in the world. We talked about deep shit, he told me his brother just died, and I told him about the problems I was having with my boyfriend at home, that I was planning on leaving him, so we kept walking, just two souls that at the beginning of the night had decided to hide our sadness in liquor but had found comfort in each other’s loneliness in the early morning. We stopped. He kissed me. I kissed him back. We somehow found ourselves in the middle of the street. I think we were going to cross over, avoid a block section, but we stopped, as if too breathe, then we just started kissing, and the street was empty like we were the only two people in the world, and we didn’t stopped kissing. We fell to the street and if it was mid-day, traffic on that street would’ve been backed up, but it was early morning and not a single person disturbed or groove, the traffic light turned green, then yellow, then red, then back to green. We fell to the street, he ran his hands across my naked chest, I took off his shirt, he went to unbuttoned my pants while running his hand down my crotch, I unbuttoned his pants, slipped my hand down his back into the crack of his ass, then played with the tip of his hole, but we kept kissing, dicks rock hard and we tugged aggressively at each other’s heat. We didn’t stop, didn’t care about time, if the sun was rushing to awake, if somebody had saw us and decided to call the cops. We didn’t stop kissing and we must’ve been in the middle of that street for almost a hour, grinding in each other’s sweat and saliva, pants pulled down, dicks rock hard, our minds trying to decide how far to take our passion, seconds away from penetration when the tiniest rock I was laying on begin to work itself into my flesh and release blood. The rock was like the pea in the mattress, it brought us back to reality. But we weren’t finished yet. We saw an empty alley, he gave me a look, I knew what he meant, so we pull our pants completely off, leaving them in the middle of the street, stripping ourselves completely naked except for our socks, not caring if anyone saw us, not caring at all, and we ran like school kids to the alley, falling against the wall, I grabbed him and we started our lust again, letting our nakedness breath in the early morning breeze. We fucked. Our bodies collided like a wave throwing itself on the beach, each moment more intense than the last, each wave of heat more devouring and crashing on top of each other, our flesh melded into ecstasy, we became one, so sure of ourselves, I thought I might drown in the intensity.

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as sex with no strings attached. When two bodies come together, two souls, no matter if it’s in a back alley, bathhouse, internet hook-up, or a drunken one night stand; something is exchange, and I’m not talking about sexual transmitted disease, but an emotion, memory, because the revealing of one nakedness is an emotional act, and that night, the emotion was freedom, two souls just needed to believe in a life beyond pain and misery, maybe death. After lust, we picked up our clothes from out of the middle of street. We dressed. Nobody caught us. Nobody got arrested. He walked me home. I saw him get in a taxicab. We kissed goodbye one last time. I loved him that night, in that moment, I loved him like I had known him my entire life. I didn’t hold anything back from him, gave him my soul. But we were dealing with separate realities. I never left my boyfriend. He never died. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss. I saw him two weeks later dancing on the stage. I wondered what I would say to him. He was part of me. I just smiled. We flirted but neither wanted anything more. Love was an emotion that chooses without fear, but happiness was a responsibility. When I’m old and gray, sitting up in a retirement home, I know I will remember him, and the life we spent together that night. So I just smiled to let him know I would never forget him.

Coming out of my underwear

I discovered my hard dick at twelve years old in the Sunday newspaper, the middle section, between arts and entertainment and the metropolitan, the part that fell out and spilled onto the floor if held incorrectly. It’s the part only important to bored housewives, the consumer section, filled with coupons to get ten cents off green peas or a bucket of chicken free if you buy a cake and large soda. I learned to read when I was four years old, or at least I learned to recognize certain words, so I anticipated the Sunday paper for the cartoons because I liked the funny colorful faces, but it wasn’t until I was nine years old that I started paying attention to the department store advertisements: average looking people wearing average looking clothes that were half off for some dead President’s birthday. Maybe it was just curiosity, maybe I was looking for a new toy when I first opened one of the department store advertisements and flipped passed the pictures of dull jewelry, plain looking women looking bored, little boys and little girls trying to appear happy, towards the back, where at first rugged men posed in khakis and business suits, but as I flipped further, the clothes lessen, first to short shirts and jeans, and then finally, the men’s underwear section.

As I stared at the page, I felt different but I didn’t know what it was, the heat, why my stomach felt uneasy, why my heart quickened and thrust in its cage, why I stopped and studied strange men with defined lumps for a stomach, hard nipples, smooth slender arms, and muscular legs protruding confidence. Their glistening almost naked bodies were curiously appealing but it was the underwear, not so innocence that clung to masculine hips like a tightly gripped fist hiding a secret. It was the same mystery of neighbor’s Ken doll, how I stripped it bare hoping to find something I needed, but there was nothing, just smoothed over lust. Staring at the page, it was different than the Ken’s doll, no longer plastic but flesh and alive and seemly calling me to its rabbit hole. I found myself touching the page with my left hand, and my right hand suddenly with a mind of its own slid itself down my pants, and as I ran my twelve year old hand across glossy teasing hoping to absorb a feeling, find its secrets, I realized that I was different, and the discovery frightened and excited me.

I wasn’t like most growing boys; I wanted underwear for Christmas and my birthday. I loved going shopping with my mother so that I could gently pull my hand from her when she saw a pair of shoes or purse she had to have, and sneak over to the men’s section. It was there that Sunday newspaper came alive, not just men in one type of underwear but men in various type of underwear: bikinis, thongs, briefs, boxer briefs and jocks. I liked the Designer labels because the models were raw with sweaty slippery skin and seductive penetrative glances. I started buying my father underwear for his birthday and Father’s day. My mother thought it was strange for young boy spending two months of his allowance to get his father a Calvin Klein mesh bikini or a leopard thong. I would ask her why it was strange, hoping she would reveal the secret I was so longing to hear, but she’d just smile as if she knew that I didn’t know what I was doing like a baby cursing manically, just repeating what he heard. My father was a military man, hardly spoke and demanded quiet children, so when I handed him his birthday and father’s day presents wrapped in the Sunday cartoons, he’d open it casually, shake his head in disbelief and throw the box in the trash. It was exactly what I wanted him to do. And when everyone was sleep, I would sneak from my bed, rummage through the trash, pluck out the box and dust it off. I would sneak back to my room and with a pair of plastic scissors I cut the picture out and place it at the bottom of my drawer. My allowance increased as I got older, and I had a part time job with the church cutting grass and also delivered the paper in my neighborhood, so soon my father’s presents became cliché, a tie with a frog on it or a coffee cup that said “world greatest dad” and I started buying the underwear just for me. I also bought me a lockbox to keep my hobby protected.

When I was a sophomore in high school, my mother started needlessly interrupting my life. She was bored, my older sister started college and my father had been shipped off to

Korea

to train soldiers to be sent to the Gulf War, so it was just us and she had no job. I stayed in my room with my door closed and demanded to be left alone. She didn’t. One weekend she decided to invite her sister and her rowdy kids to come visit us. She didn’t even ask or warn me. I just heard the door bell ring, screaming, and suddenly two cousins I hadn’t seen since I was five years old were sleeping in my room. Derrick and Derek were fraternal twins and a couple of months older than me. They barely looked like brothers. Derrick was short, stocky and insecure about both so he overcompensated by being extra belligerent. He was a red-blooded thug. Derek his younger brother by two minutes was the complete opposite. He was tall, slender like a slice of grass and almost as fragile. Derrick voice filled a room but Derek often whispered if he spoke at all. Yet, Derek was Derrick’s sheep. He followed his older brother blindly often to juvenile detention centers or getting kicked out of schools.

I somehow managed to avoid all human contact even at school. I had no friends and felt comfortable living in my head with my science fiction books, underwear hobby and the television. All that changed. My mother felt I needed to hang around other boys my age. She didn’t understand other boys my age didn’t like me. She didn’t understand that she was offering up a seductive rabbit to ravenous wolves that liked to play with their food before they killed and ate it. I somehow had managed to avoid the bullies at my high school and my mother moved two of them into my room. The twins didn’t read books. They brought with them a bb gun, basketball, football, and a stash of porn.

At first I tried to fit in. I tried throwing the ball around with them. I tried staying up all night watching violent movies like Scarface and The Godfather. I tried to seem interested in their dirty magazines. I’d watched the two twins sit up late at night and flip through their stash of busty women in bad lingerie and even worse make-up, how the heat in their underwear would rise but mine stayed cold. I didn’t play sports nor did I care about Hustler and Playboy magazines. It was the first time I was around real boys. I somehow managed to avoid gym. The twins seem so free with their bodies. If I was taking a shower, one of them would just walk in and start using the bathroom. They seem to know no boundaries. I slept in my pajamas, they slept in their underwear. They always seem to be almost naked around me. It confused me. I wondered if all boys were like the twins, so free with their bodies. They figured we all had the same equipment so it was no need to hide it. I encouraged such thinking.

Yet, however hard I tried, the harder I failed. It was clear that we couldn’t be friends. I was just too flimsy for their taste. I didn’t like the unsolicited punches in the arm, twisting of the nipples or sometimes sneaky blows to the nutsack. I complained about everything. The twins decided they didn’t like me and made it very clear they were going to beat the shit out of me the minute we were alone. I hated my mother. I hated her more when she decided to take a spa day with her recently re-discovered sister. I was left alone with Derrick and Derek. Three hours later I had locked myself in the bathroom because Derrick had gotten out his BB gun and shot me in the arm while I was washing dishes and again in the back of the neck. I was scared for my life. If I had gotten access to a phone I would’ve called the police. I decided to stay in the bathroom until my mother returned. I was going to show her my blood and demand their eviction. It was Derek, suddenly the kinder of the twins, who begged for me to come out of the bathroom. He promised that his brother was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. I ignored him. And then I heard a loud scream, Derrick screaming for Derek to come see what he found in my bedroom. I immediately knew the bastard somehow opened my lockbox and found my hobby. I snatched open the bathroom door, not caring for my life anymore but the secret I had promised to take to my grave. And just like I thought, Derrick had found my stash of men, cut out pictures from underwear boxes and Sunday advertisements. It was almost three years worth, the older pics beginning to fade and tear at the edges, the newer pics shimming in their glossiness. “He’s a real faggot,” Derrick laughed. I knew immediately what he meant. I liked men more than just friends. I wasn’t as horrified as I imagined I would be, because finally my heat had a name which meant I had an identity and there were others like me. I raced over to my bed, swung at Derrick and hit him in the face and knocked him off the bed. He stared up at me with intense surprise, his nose started to bleed and when I went to hit him again, Derek caught me, but not to hold me down, but stopping me from killing his brother. Derek helped me put my secret back in its box. Derrick ran out the room.

I thought he was going to tell. I thought as soon as our mothers returned Derrick was going yell at the top of his lungs what he found, but he didn’t. He stayed quiet. Yet, he didn’t say another word to me the rest of their trip, and I didn’t know if it was because I’d hit him so hard or because I was gay. He even stopped sleeping in my room. He slept in the living room on the floor by the big television. At first Derek also slept with him, but one night I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and there was Derek standing there in his underwear and his heat. His underwear was the domestic kind, the ones that came six in a box and the same color. His underwear hung from his narrow waist, a delicate cotton white, almost transparent, with a yellow strip, the elastic band a couple of more washes from retirement. “Do you want to?” I could barely breathe. I knew what he meant. Derek didn’t say much, but when he did, he got straight to the point. It was the first time I realized his face, so young and gentle, his eyes a shimmering hazel, his curly brown hair, he wasn’t drop dead gorgeous but comfortable. In my next breath, as I mouthed the word yes, he was no longer my cousin, tormentor, he was now my lover. He grabbed my waist and kissed me as he pushed me into the room. I closed the door and locked it. We didn’t even speak. I usually slept in a t-shirt, underwear and a pair of old shorts. Derek pulled my arms up and slid my shirt off. And then he unbuckled my shorts and they fell to my ankles. I also found myself falling to Derek’s nipples, then belly button, and finally the tip of his impoverished underwear. His stomach was so small, soft and flat like a deflated balloon, not at all like the pictures of the men on the underwear boxes who stomachs look as if it was chiseled from marble. At the tip of Derek’s underwear, there was a faint sense of must, he was sixteen years old, his pubic hair seemed new, almost wet. I slid Derek’s underwear down, and it was so natural, had never done anything thing like that in my life, and I found what had been missing in the pictures, his dick. It was no longer just heat, but flesh on a mission. It stood before not defiant or cocky but almost vulnerable and begging for touch. I grabbed it with my right hand and squeezed, like I had squeezed my own, and I felt Derek’s body slightly convulse, and he pushed his pelvic towards my face, I opened my mouth, at first tasting the tip with my tongue as if sticking my foot in a water to see if it’s warm and safe before I plunged into the deep end, and then I slowly slid Derek’s hard dick in my mouth, past the tongue and towards my throat. He wasn’t even in for two minutes before he unloaded; his knees buckling like a fallen horse. He pulled his underwear up and left my room. I swallowed what he left behind in my mouth.

***************************************

The twins and their mother left the next day. I didn’t say goodbye or saw Derek again. I did steal a pair of his dingy underwear from his bag. I also noticed that a couple of pictures from my treasure chest were missing. A decade and half had past and I’d forgotten all about Derek. I wondered what happened to his life. I wondered what type of man him grew up to be. Did he have a mustache? Did he get fat? Had he learned to last more than two minutes in bed? I did hope at least he gotten better underwear

A photo essay on Dumb Donald

Growing up I caught Fat Albert in reruns on Saturday mornings before the good cartoons. It was a cartoon before my time, when Negroes were jiving, but one character always stuck out to me, Dumb Donald. He was the dumb blonde of the group and everyone picked on him. As a child, I identified with him the most, so I decided what if Dumb Donald grew up to be sexy. I thought it would be a creative idea for a photo shoot. This is my sexy Dumb Donald. This is a photo essay.

 

the fallacy of high school reunions

"Fat chicks don’t get skinny over night. But fat chicks must first want to be skinny. " --Michael Whitley

It’s so easy for me to become somebody like Wonder Woman spinning in place to change into something more skanky; or Superman running into a phone booth, undoing his tie and yanking open his shirt. It’s so easy for me to become more than my reality, it just takes a bottle of rum, a pair of tight jeans with no underwear, a flat stomach, my green contacts and a naughty smile. The boys at the club don’t care if you can read or write if you’re face is cute and your dick print is tempting. In the Land of Oz,  a man can put on his mama dress and become a star. But none of it’s real, just an alter-ego and in the morning there’s always sobriety, another stranger to get out of the bed and the hangover.  In the morning, I always have to go back to Clark Kent, just a clumsy nobody that everybody ignores. I have to put back on those damn glasses, tuck my secret back into cheap cotton and put back on that suffocating tie.  I don’t want to be Clark Kent anymore. I want to be fucking superman everyday.

It couldn’t had had happened on a worse day. The weather was miserable, wet and cold like waking up in your own piss after a night of too many tequila shots at the local Mexican bar. It was a Wednesday and I was hung-over, thought about just quitting my job because I didn’t feel like coming up with an excuse to call in, but I forced my pathetic existence out of bed and staggered in the rain to work. It was one of those days that irritated like dirty dingy holes in the "nut sack" part of the underwear because I was too poor to wash or buy new ones despite the suspicious rash. It was a day that I remembered I was still a temp which meant also I didn’t have Dental insurance so I ignored that tooth rotting in the back of mouth, and I didn’t have health insurance so I prayed my dark urine was because I didn’t drink enough water and not because I drank way too much rum. I hated all my co-workers just because they could pretend to be happy better than me. I hated my boss just because she was my boss and had the receptionist log my work hours because I was known to lie on my timesheet. And when I turned on my computer to check my email, in bold letters was my world crashing down on me. The subject line read: It’s that time. High School Reunion. I almost vomited on the computer screen and not just because I was extremely hung-over. Against my better judgment I clicked on the link and read further.

It was true, ten years had passed, and like a court hearing, I was about to be held responsible for my life. I needed a good lawyer. I hadn’t done shit. I had such bad credit that I needed a co-signer to use cash. I didn’t have a real job. I was broke. I was one more drug and alcohol binge from a court appointed mandatory rehab.  Of course I didn’t go to my high school reunion. I was turned off by the questions: are you married, do you have any children, did you graduate college, where do you work, and are you somebody yet? What the hell did that mean, am I somebody yet?

The only thing I had to show for my life was that I didn’t get fat, so why wasn’t that one of the questions? I had my own questions like: how much weight have you gain/lost, did you finally lose your virginity, did you become a porn star, have you been convicted of a felon?

The only special thing I had to show for my life was that that DWI charge in 97 didn’t stick. I had a good lawyer who played the race card. It was one of the few times it was good to be a black man. “If the shot glass doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

When I got home, I tried to remember high school, who I was, what I wanted to be, who those people were in my class photo because I could barely remember being that young.  I decided to dig deep into my closet, and underneath my college degrees, bartender license, massage license, high school diploma, was my high school senior year book. I wiped off the sticky film on top probably from a spilled cocktail and opened lost memories. The first thing I found was a “suspension” letter. Apparently, I was caught in the hallway without a pass and when I was asked for it I became belligerent and called the teacher a “Nazi Bitch.” I suddenly remembered how much teachers hated me in high school. I was what was often referred to as an “insubordinate smartass.” I wasn’t a dumb kid, got straight A's my entire education, I just needed special attention. I even made one teacher cry. I thought everyone knew she was having a lesbian affair with the female gym teacher. High school was rough for me. I’m surprised I made it out. The second thing I found in my senior high school book was the bill for the book, of course I never paid it, hence the future bad credit.

As I flipped through the pages of memories passed, I scanned over old report cards, plays I had acted in, bus schedules I once needed, my student council card, my national honor society card, my toastmaster card and lost hallway passes. It wasn’t until I read my “Dreams and Goals” pages that I remembered my innocence. I almost laughed reading it. In horrible writing I imagined the seventeen year old me scribbling such bullshit: “After I finish exploring my other life, I will settle down, get married and have about four kids. I would also like to live in a five bedroom house with a pool.”

I like how I tried to gay code “other life” like anybody with a first grade education couldn’t figure that out. But it was more important for me to remember what I was, wanted to become, what did “somebody” mean to me when I was seventeen years old. I obviously had heterosexual fantasies. I still thought being gay was a phase. I knew I was going to experiment in college but never thought it would stick.  I suddenly remembered a Will and Grace episode were Will was instructed by his psychiatrist to write a letter to his inner child and apologize for growing up and being such a pansy. It was suppose to be funny, but I thought it was a good idea. If I was a write a letter to my seventeen year old self, what would I apologize for, shit there was so much. I would first apologize that when I was eighteen years old, my freshman year in college, I didn’t sleep with Damien, he was tall and fine and his dick was so hard that night we were kissing in my bed, and I so wanted to give it up to him, but I chickened out. I should’ve at least sucked his dick. I would apologize for it taking me so long to discover liquor and weed. I would apologize for that year I accidentally found myself in a relegious cult because I was lonely and fat. I would apologize for not going to my college graduation because I didn’t want to pay for the gown. But that would be pretty much it. I didn’t want a linear life, even if I thought it might be an easier life.

The High School “ten year” reunion is bullshit. Who can figure out there life in ten years after graduating high school? I just started to trust that voice in my head that told me not to do the stupid shit that got me arrested. Of course everyone wants to cling to the fantasy that they would be fifthly rich, extremely beautiful, and socially well adjusted. That only happens in movies. Why can’t the fantasy be that I ventured out into the world and survived, that the lions didn’t eat me, that I didn’t get caught up in life traps, and I am still alive one more day to figure out my happiness. Why weren’t the questions: are you satisfied, do you still believe in hope, have you given up on your dream, are you still fighting to be your own somebody?

Societal queues can be so grueling. My birthday shouldn’t remind me that I’m a year closer to death, and Christmas shouldn’t make me want to burn Christmas trees and kill Martha Stewart because my life isn’t a Norman Rockwell painting, and Valentine’s Day shouldn’t make feel lonely and call my ex-boyfriends on the phone and beg them to come back to me and then break up with the next week again.  And finally my high school reunion shouldn’t highlight everything wrong with my life, but remind me of my journey, and the long road I still have to go. If high school reunions were about getting together to talk about what we’ve learned for the better or worse and not comparing accomplishments or materialisms, I probably would have gone. Shit, I already have my family to make me feel bad about my life, so I didn’t need niggas I forgotten about and wouldn’t be able to pick out of line-up to make me feel worse than the rotting tooth in back of my mouth because I have no dental insurance. Fat chicks don't get skinny over night.

My ode to dark skinned black women

"I spent so much wasted engery worried about what i'm not, instead of celebrating what i am. That changes now."

If I had a daughter and her skin turned out to be as dark as mine, I would tell her everyday that she’s beautiful because I know when she turned on the television or looked through fashion magazines, she probably wouldn’t see herself. I wouldn’t want her to look at Beyonce and think she can’t be beautiful. I would want her to see Rosumba and Tomiko or even Yaya and know that she is fierce. Dark skinned girls are the most dramatic contrast to white standard beauty. It’s an uphill fight, but I would tell my daughter, the world doesn’t decided if you’re beautiful, you first decide and then you recreate the world in your own image.

Growing up a simple southern dark skinned boy, if I would’ve seen Alek Wek on the cover of Vogue, it probably would’ve changed my mind about the world, myself. As a simple southern boy, I often fell in love with simple light skinned southern girls. The first girl I thought I loved was Nicole; she had long straightened black hair, and very fair skin. It was probably due to my grandmother who once told me that I should marry a light skinned girl or white girl so that my children wouldn’t be as dark as me. The issues of color was a big issue in my childhood, I once thought I hated light skinned people, but I just really loathed my grandmother and her relatives for making me feel like a jungle monkey because I couldn’t pass a paper bag test. I never considered myself less than, and it took me a long time to diminish that subconscious indifference I had towards light skinned black people.

I remember talking to a friend, he’s that Louisiana type of light skinned, and I remember getting so pissed at him because he told me one of his friends wouldn’t like me because I was too dark, and I took that as him telling me that light skinned was better, and not that his friend was an idiot and I don’t want anybody who doesn’t want me. But I guess I was still dealing with my childhood pain, that because I’m different often meant discrimination, and nobody likes rejection, but I had to ask myself just because I was taught as a child subconsciously that light skin was somehow better, prettier or closer to freedom, did I believe it. It only hurts if you believe. But I know it’s a lie. We are all beautiful. Lighter skinned black people aren’t freer than me, just because I’m darker doesn’t mean I’m closer to slavery. Yes, lighter skinned black people are closer to white, and maybe they do get some extra benefits from white people, that lighter skinned black people blackness is polished and the fear of the dark skinned salvages is diminished, but that is so not true. Light skinned blacks sometimes have it harder. NONE OF US ARE REALLY FREE. My ex-boyfriend was mixed with German, and he had just as hard of time catching a cab just like me. And I hate words like diluted, and yes Mariah Carey back in the day could’ve passed for white or Latino, but does that mean her blackness is diluted. Do anyone notice that it cartoons they make Halle Berry darker. She’s only lighter on black magazines. It makes you think, hmmmm. Have anyone ever notice that in comedy sketches like SNL and Mad TV, they make Beyonce more ghetto and a sassy hoodish diva.

As a black person I like to respect the spectrum where Beyonce can be bootylicious and Alek Wek can be pure elegance. No disrespect to my light skinned sistas, I love you, but I wanted to dedicate this page to all my beautiful dark skinned sistas who probably didn’t get that much love growing up but changing the world with their beauty.

a new year, a new man

i kept thinking what i wanted to do a midnight, and yes i could've been at some club kissing on some stranger when the clock struck midnight but that was Tuesday, and i could've been at some sex party but that's later, or i could've gone to PA with my friend Tyler but i'm not playing the good guy in 2006, or i could've been at an ex party but i'm not playing the "pretty boy fucked" card in 2006. so i decided to be home at midnight working on my life, thinking about my life, trying to make my life better and writing my blog, that's what i wanted to do a midnight, because they say what you doing at midnight you will be doing for the rest of year, and i wanted to be writing and publishing. even if it's self-published.

this year, 2006, I decided to stop asking for permission. Some mornings I worry my self crazy how I am going to make it, how I can make them love me, how I can make a living, how I can make a dream a reality, but for now, I’m going to stop asking for permission, stop asking the universe to choose me, stop asking and start living, just for one year, I want to be who I know I am, I want it rise to the surface and overflow, I wont be ignored. This year I am not going to ask for permission, do whatever the fuck I feel like, don’t care about reputation, don’t care about it coming back to hunt me, because this year I’m wearing my heart on my sleeves, and I am going to believe in the good in people. this year will be beautiful.