Stevie Wisdom #1: boys don't dress like Kitties

For all of you, who, for some reason, don't know yet, I have a 7-year-old brother, named Stevie. He is my world, my fucking life. No joke. When people offhandedly ask on facebook "hows your life," I'm like "he's good, he's learning to tie his shoes." Since he is seven now, and apparently into all sorts of big boy shit like multiplication and baseball he has requested that me and my family start calling him "Stephen." This name, he believes to be more sophisticated, more worthy of a boy (pardon me, young man) who is transitioning out of velcro shoes and rolling around town on a two wheeler (no training wheels...thats right bitches.) Anyways, "Stephen" will occasionally drop some knowledge on me, out of nowhere, like from the sky, like from some place deep inside his little boy pockets hidden among pennies and crumpled up fruit by the foot rappers - and these observations will either rock my world, make me poop my pants in laughter (only a little poop), or a strange combination of the two. Today's gem of 7-year old wisdom goes like this:

We were sitting in the dinning room, thumbing through a the Oak Park news letter - this is what we do in our spare time - you know one of those, "old lady williams will be having a yard sale sunday; the skating rink will be offering free lessons this thursday through saturday; lets hear it for the Oak Park tigers for winning 5th place in the west suburban little league extravaganza" kind of home town newsletters. Pointing to a picture of a precious little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, dressed up like a kitten, i aks my brother "is that a picture of you?"

He punches me in the arm. And then returns to sipping cran-grape juice from a straw. (He is stronger than he looks)

"What" I ask, "That wasn't you?, turn back to the page, lemme see"

"Boo!!" he yells - he has stopped sipping now and has a ring of purple around his mouth - (he calls me Boo, not becuase we are or have ever dated but because when he was a baby, my parents, wanting to take full advantage of his incredible baby sponge-like language acquisition abilities, had my polish speaking aunt teach him a whole bunch of words in polish. On of these words was Broodah, polish for brother. Because babies have small mouths poorly suited for pronouncing r sounds, this word came out "Boo..." And it stuck. I hope it continues to stick until we are both old old men incapable of making few other intelligible sounds than this. Sometimes he'll address me as CJ, and I will pretend like I have no idea who he is talking to"

- "Boo!!" he is still half yelling (he gets furious when he feels as if he is being seen as effeminate or baby-like)
"Thats a girl!!"

"No way" I say, "how can you tell?"

"Boys don't dress up like kitties" - He says it with conviction - like it is one of the few things in this world that he KNOWS in his heart to be ture.

"Come on, what about on halloween"

"Boo," he is now serious and speaks slowly like he is explaining to me where babies come from "All my friends are boys."
He pauses to let the comment sink in. "None of them have ever dressed up like a kitty"

"Huh," I say, "I guess you are right." And I am picturing a group of boys dressed in their holloween best. A boy with a fake axe in his head, stawberry blood and latex brains coming out of the side. Another boy dressed like a power ranger. 5 different spider men. And among them a boy dressed like a precious little kitten. What an ass kicking costume that would be. The boy who dresses like a kitten would be the envy of all the other boys, I am sure of it - a god even.

And stevie has noticed me smirking to myself.

"What?" he asks suspiciously

"Oh nothing, I say"

I know the exactly what costume I am gonna get him next Halloween.

It is going to be fucking hilarious....

Nigger in a Suit (Part2)

The Story:

I work in an office. I have my own cubicle. Every day I put on a shirt and slacks and ride the train into downtown chicago (the loop) along with a hoard of unhappy-looking men and women: suit-and-tie-pinstripe-skirt-white-ipod-earphone-wearing-starbucks-sipping-blackberry-wielding type of folks. My office building has a straight shot marble hallway from the glass door to the brass elevator. Every day I ride up that elevator to the 13th floor where I work: making copies and phone calls and fiddling with ungodly excell spreadsheets for a charter school nonprofit.

Tonight I am working late. I plan on working on a memo until maybe 10 or 11pm. So I take a break from my computer to join my good friend Jon (visiting from out of town) for a bite to eat. I come back at about 8 to find the inner door to building locked. So I am standing in the "breezeway" as some call it - the awkwardly small space between the street and the door to the marble hallway. I often see UPS men here, cart half in the door, balancing packages precariously on thier hips while they search the glass-encased directory to find the offices they are looking for. And of course, of fucking course, because I am an intern at this 13th floor office, i do not have a key to the building.

So I am waiting there, pressing my face up to the glass like a little puppy (buy me please?). You can see through this glass door all the way down the hallway to elevators. And I am waiting. Someone please come and see my little puppy face and open this damn door. And I have been there maybe 3 minutes when finally the elevator doors open and an old white lady (maybe 60) steps out into the hallway.

She is in going home mode, checking to make sure she has not left anything up in the office, patting her pockets for keys. And then she looks up and sees me. Sees me standing there - no longer looking like a puppy really, but simply calmly standing in the breezeway.

And all of a sudden we are on the discovery channel. She stops in her tracks, in mid-pocket-key-pat. Like a gazelle when it realizes that it is surrounded by lions. Like they say deers do as you speed toward them on the highway (i have never seen it actually happen). And I am wondering the whole time, what the hell is she looking at? But, deep down, I know. I know exactly what she sees through that glass. You know every time, but pray that you are being irrational, that maybe she is wondering if it is raining out or wondering if she has left her inhaler up at her cubicle. And then she begins to back up - carefully - like you do when you come across the path of a skunk. No sudden movements. And she disappears around the corner. Only I know, just as well as she does, that there is nothing around that corner but an unmanned security desk (security goes home at 7) and a well potted orchid (for color). There is no other exit back around that corner. This is the only way out. And I am trying not to believe what is happening. Please please be blowing things out of proportion. And then I see her poking her head out to see if I am still there. She is hiding.

And so give a polite knock. "Hello, Im locked out."

And after a few minutes she comes back into the hallway. Hands at her sides, just staring at me. Like if she stares hard enough the stare will push me out of the doors and back onto the street. And I am confused as to whether this is a shoot out or not. All we need is a big clock tower and people watching from behind barrels and saloon doors. And finally she decides to walk toward me. And when I continue to stand there, she finally draws, "No No" she yells. It explodes from her. I didn't think she spoke. She is shaking her head "you can't come in." "I work in this building", I exclaim, "I was locked out". "Where is your ID." I have no fucking idea what she is talking about. No one in the building has company ID's. "I work at the illinois network of charter schools, suite 1300...please" "No way" And I see how terrified she is of me. She doesn't know where to look, what to say - she's frozen. And that terror somehow turns the glass of the door into a mirror. I am looking at her. And she is looking at me. But as I look through the glass at her, reflected onto the glass is another image - I see myself through her eyes - the dark terrifying rapist behind the glass. Just waiting for her to open the door so I tear her to bits. Rip off her clothes. Sort through her wallet (taking everything of value - to later use to purchase crack) and find the addresses of her family. I see the beast she sees - waiting to take everything that she holds dear.

"Do you have work here?" I ask. "Yes, on the third floor." "Where is YOUR ID?" I say. And she is silent.

And I want so badly to put on the show for her. To put her at ease by using my best ivy league accent. Look at these clothes I am wearing for godsake! Rapists don't wear these clothes. I want to press my Brown University Student ID (I am carrying two in my back pocket) and tell her everything about my office and how I belong there. I want to prove it. But I know even that - even if I could convince her to let me in - it would be by convincing her that I am one of the good ones. I am not one of those. I am not from the street. 'I know you think my people are violent, but look at this card, I am one of the good ones, the nice ones, i have proof' Look at my pressed shirt and 100 dollar shoes. I am no gangster. I am no nigger. Let me soft shoe for you. Let blacken my face in burnt cork so that the brilliance of my smile is highlighted. Look how gentle I am. Look at these clothes damnit. Dont see the blackness beneath, see the kahaki's and be impressed by how well they are ironed. Please' mam.' See me. See me.

And I am breaking. Everything inside is falling apart, coming loose. And I can feel something waiting in me, something damning up, waiting to spill. And I am afraid of my own anger - afraid that I am loosing control and will (am) becoming exactly what she wants me to be.

"Have a good day" I say smuggly and storm out and on to the street. Over my shoulder I see that she has entered the breezeway/nigger screening room and is now checking the directory to see if I was telling the truth.

I take a walk and come back 15 minutes later. CJ, lets just get up to the office, forget about this bitch, and get the memo done. And as I am standing in outside, once again looking down the hallway, the elevator doors open. Out steps another white women. Younger, maybe 40, late 30s. She is dressed in pink. She sees me, outside on the street, holding the door and she hesitates. Reverses. And I know where she is going. And I am not going to wait for her to emerge from hiding behind the desk. I am not going to put myself through that again - allow myself to be changed by her. I don't want to deal with any of it. The fucking memo is not worth it. I go home.

My step mother reminds me to see it from her point of view. (I feel like I have done already). "You are a man", she says, "standing outside the office building at 8pm." Its still light out, I want to remind her. "If you worked there you would have had a key." "Im not justifying her," she continues "I'm just saying try to see it from a woman's point of view - you are a strange man waiting outside of a locked building."

And I want to believe her. I want to eat up all that rationality and explanation and think that the color of my skin had nothing to do with it at all. Please be blowing things out of proportion. But I cannot help but think that things would have been different - that the clothes would have been more convincing had there been white skin beneath. If only the man at the door looked more like her son or husband once looked. Trust worthy. Responsible - like he belongs in an office building.

And that, that thought process right there "maybe I am being unreasonable" was why I wanted to write this blog entry. Racist bitch bars black ivy league student from entering own building. Thats been done. Clieche. If you even see it as racist, the most it provokes is a "shit, that sucks."

What is far more interesting, however, is the feeling of being so hurt by something - so affected by something that seems to you to be so obviously racist - and then have to question it, have to think "am I blowing things out of proportion"? That right there speaks to the core of what it is to be a person of color in america. Black especially. We are confined to a role as the madman, the one outrageous one who sees racism everywhere. You know you have thought it before. "I have this black friend, she is way too sensitive about things?" "Why do black people think everything is about oppression." We are the unreasonable ones in the same way that feminists are branded as penis-hating militants. Just as we think in the case of young children and old people with imaginary friends, those who talk about that which we cannot see, must be delusional. After all, if it was real, we would see it right?

Same thing with microracisms. Because it is invisible to you, we are crazy for believing in it. That is the burden of being black or brown or anything not white. Every time our raised hand is skipped by a professor in class, every time someone switches seats on a train, locks their door at an intersection, grasps their purse as we walk by we cannot help but wonder if it if that action has been initiated by the color of our skin. It certainly could be a harmless coincidence. Maybe it is 50% of the time 75% of the time. But our burden, one a white person never has to deal with, is the thought, maybe that wasn't harmless. Our experience has taught us better, has taught us to expect to encounter fear, distrust, and low expectation.

And as I was riding home, having left my office work behind, I thought to myself, how many times has this happened. Ahh fuck it, its not worth it. How many times a day does a non-white person decide to not go into that bar, to not try that shirt on. I think about all the times we try to be less threatening, make ourselves look smaller than we actually are. Thats exactly what we are doing, making ourselves smaller. Never open a backpack in a store. If a waiter brings the credit card back declined do not ask him to run it again; everyone is already looking and has decided who you are. Carry two ID's, just in case. Be smaller. Be quieter. Make them feel at ease. Buy a suit nice enough and black enough for them to forget what color your skin is underneath.

And if anyone ever says, "come on, you are blowing it out of proportion," you better damn sure agree with them. "Yeah, maybe your right..."

Id much rather be crazy, you think, than right.

Nigger in a Suit (part1)

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness - and american, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
- W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

I am often asked if I have ever been called a Nigger. My response: "Only once...to my face."

Almost every conversation I have witnessed between black and white people on the subject of race and racism inevitably degenerates into an injunction to the black person to quantify and qualify the existence of racism by recounting all or at least the most violent/ shocking racist encounters he or she has ever experienced. The subtext reads thus: Prove It. Tell me about the time you were called a nigger.

And every time one is put to the task of "proving it," it feels as ridiculous and insulting as a man asking a women to prove the existence of sexism by recounting every instance in which her body has been made into an object. How common can violence against women be, really? Why don't you paint a picture for me: tell me about the time you were raped. If you had to count them all up, how many times, roughly would you say it has happened to you? Where, EXACTLY did he touch you? Come on. Just tell me - just dig down into those memories that you hoped to lock away and recite to me details without pain - like telling me what you had for breakfast, or who your first kiss was. Tell me, please, what did he whisper in your ear? Tell me so that I can believe. So that I can maybe empathize for a second and take your word that sexist bullshit and violence against women really does exist in these modern times that we live in. Tell me so that I know you are not blowing things out of proportion.

You (dear reader) have almost certainly been on one or another side of this conversation at some point in your life. For those of you on the inquiring side, that is EXACTLY what it feels like to be on the proving side. But even if we, the provers, (non-white) can dredge up the most horrifying tear wrenching story - the time we saw our father spit on in the subway, every unnecessary encounter with the police, the way our dark skinned parents were thought to be kidnappers when trying to pick our light skinned little brothers up from day care - all that, all the Crash's and Higher Learnings and American History X's that you can fit in to a DVD box set cannot even touch, cannot begin to portray to the micro racisms - the mini encounters that happen day to day and how close you sometimes feel to breaking after a 5 day week.

...if you are still interested in what actually happened today that made me go off on this shit, check out "Nigger in a Suit part 2" - i'm doing it R Kelly Style

get it before its gone

Wow. A month has passed and look how many letters I have written. It shows just how good I am at writing to people. Nice one, CJ. So I am home now. Back in my parents house - our little suburban street - oak branches hanging over the sidewalk. And as much as I want to say that "being back" feels so jarring and different, I can't help but notice how normal - how ordinary it feels. Its like nothing has changed. My little brother (7 now) still wants to play baseball every free minute he has (more of a mans man than I will ever be), my dad still starts his day at 3pm and ends at 6 am, and my step mom (marj) still sacrifices much desired trips to whole foods because they don't carry that certain brand of fruitsnacks or juices that my brother and dad like. There are so many little things - the sight of soggy cookie crisp in the sink, left in the wake of my brother's early morning dash to summer camp or school; the sounds of creeky floorboards and flushing toilets as my dad shuffles around upstairs in the wee hours of the morning ; the way the tile floor of his bathroom ("office") is always covered in books and prolific scrawlings and scribblings of genius on yellow legal pads; i'll come up to bring him a drink and he'll look up from his writing and, suddenly thumbing through a book at his side, say "hey Ceej I have something I think you should take a look at - so many little things like this that I missed about home. But they are the type of things, so little, so ordinary, that you don't know you missed them until you finally return and are like "oh yeah...i remember this."

I thought it was going to be heartbreaking. I imagined that I would spend weeks in mourning over the fact that I was no longer in cape town. I imagined that I would go back to mundane routines - getting dressed for work, heading into the loop on the L, and somewhere within these routines, most likely on the walk from my house to the L stop, I would fantasize that I was back in Cape Town. I would pick a stretch of the walk - say the sidewalk between here and the end of the block - and close my eyes, imagining the whole time that I was back in mowbray, doing the walk up from bollihope (our real-worldesque house of americans) to the UCT campus - down cecil road and past the fields and around that dusty corner. I imagined that after locking up my house for the night in chicago, I would lean against the door frame to my room and picture I was back in bollihope, in the doorway of Brooklyn's room - "tell me the best part of your day." I imagined that I would turn the boring walk from the adams L stop to my office into that sweetly familiar trek down to rondeboch to checkers because they carried dried mangos and coconut milk. In my head I would fantasize about hearing the minibusses scream by, honking, the caller leaning half out the window "wynberg...wynberg" "caaype tee-yown."

But for some reason none of that has really happened yet. Maybe it just hasn't hit me. Maybe it never will. Its like being at some meaningful event - a memorial service for a recently deceased faculty member at your school, a 911 commemoration and feeling so strongly that, given the moment, you should be crying. But you don't feel it. You don't feel like crying. And the nearest emotion to you is guilt - for not being sensitive enough to cry at a time like this.

The feeling that I do feel is just "blahh" - like waiting for a bus. Nothing spectacular. No extremes. If someone were to ask you how you were feeling at that exact moment, you would, by default, having nothing better to say, respond: "im fine, how are you." Everything is so familiar in fact that it is easy to forget that the last 5 months ever happened. And I would never want to forget something like that. I think it must be a defense mechanism. You move on real quick, get new priorities, box up and store away old memories so you too save yourself the sadness of coming to grips emotionally with something that for all intents and purposes is OVER. Has PASSED. (and therefore) Is PAST.

So what is left is a strange strange feeling of brooding panic. Like the entire 5 month experience in Cape Town is disappearing - evaporating before my very eyes - like in the oh-so-common movie trope of someone (usually just dead) disappearing in front of their loved one - like Patric Swayze fading into "the light" as Demi Moore waves goodbye. Cape Town is giving me that slow wave and, looking up over its shoulder, as if it is being summoned by the beyond, and whispers to me, in that deliciously melodramatic way, "looks like I have to go now..."

So, like something rapidly turning into a ghost I find myself frantically trying to materialize cape town. Trying to bottle the experience up - preserve it for later. From zippers, pants pockets, wallets I am pulling scraps of paper, wrappers, matchbooks - anything I can find loosley related to any memory in capetown. I have this big plan to put them into a scrap book. I have other plans like filling the rest of my cape town journal and printing all my digital pictures, and making this blog incredible. But it just strikes me that all these plans derive from one single silly belief: that the memory of cape town can be preserved - kept from disintegrating by saving little scraps of receipts and ticket stubs and pressing them between plastic pages. In the search for memorabilia it just struck me how silly it was that I was taking these things - that I would normally consider to be trash - and trying so so desperately to assign a meaning to them. Usually the meaning or memory that I staple to the object has very little to do with where and what circumstance the object actually came from.

I am left wondering why we must collect, why me must pin down - how we turn memories into objects because we think that makes them more real - gives them a longer shelf life. We gather the scraps intending to turn them into a scrap book. And more often than not we move on to something new and more pressing before we can finish our pressing. And maybe 4 years later, on your way off to some vacation or far off destination, you pull out an old suitcase - and upon discovering a forgotten pocket - you stumble upon a handful of receipts and business cards that you barley recognize. Things you saved from the trash because you packed them full of memories that now you are grasping - straining as your mind reaches - trying to remember what the hell "Madame Zingara's" was. A restaurant, you think, Maybe you ate there. You wish you had put it in a scrap book. Then you could just read the note and remember.
Funny huh? That what this blog is: an attempt to make a memory into something a little more lasting -a place to put the scraps.