Just cause

Just cause it’s not rated don’t mean it aint good

Just cause its uncharted dont mean it’s wothout reward

Just cause they don’t like you don’t mean you aint shit

See its flying over the cerebral regal one, he say shit like that to me

Playing heart attacks and seducing strokes of gratuitous misfortune

I play em close , rewind , repeat , the mantra set in cement and the mission is failed

i envy those who dream of big things and good things and know that theirs’ is a cushion

of conditional, traditional pangs of sin-ship and kin -ship and split hits and sweet shits

sealed by blood and bond

Been wronged, still rung , never give up , no where else to go ,just maybe we stick around

take that , hit this, give back

About the bathroom

I often feel like the dominance of bathrooms and sports teams in discussing transgender rights is simply to dumb down our movement. There is something so insidious and insulting when the powers that be make our struggles seem so trivial. And this is not to take away the weight of bathrooms or trans athletes. But at the heart of it is America exercising its’ edict to oppress people. To uphold arbitrary forms of second and third class citizenship while simultaneously representing itself as for the people. It is hypocrisy and a falsehood. It is double talk and it is wrong. Trans people need more than access to bathrooms that align with our identity and inclusion in athletics. Trans people need to be respected as much as any other protected class in this country. It does not bode well for America’s image as leader of the free world to so liberally uphold conservative tenets, to end up with statistics for trans people that rival those in lesser developed nations. That is what happens when you shut people out and deny them their right to exist . To enact laws to de-humanize people. What is always so interesting to me and that which I see over and over again is these usually old Scotts in power who fall. And they fall hard with this scandal or that one. And yet they obtained their power and positions by bellowing calls of conservative Christian values. They have positioned themselves as Ivory towers of righteousness and the rightful authority on everyone. And they turn out to be the dirtiest assholes while oppressing marginalized people to maintain power. Absolutely amazing the way this machine works. Trans people want warm homes. Trans people want to be safe. Trans people want to go to boring jobs. We want to take vacations. We want to start families. We want Saturday night dinners and Christmas get togethers with loved ones. We want to know our dentist by name and we want to be able to send them a thank you card. And yeah some of us want to play sports. And we all want to fucking piss. So like get a grip, ole righteous spiteful ones wagging your hypocritical garbage as self hate for your failure to own your own savagery.

Queenie : Black British woman gone mad

Queenie by Candice Carty Williams is a riot of a read. It is at once humorous and sad as fuck in many ways. I’d wanted to read it for so long. It’s the first book I read that spoke in the voice of a Black woman from England. I found there to be so many moments of relatability, so many moments when I crushed for Queenie and her struggles, so much of it that I understood. I think that what was underappreciated by me but not totally in oblivion were the obstacles and denials of Black women to love and romance. How often our stock in the dating game gets tarnished with the weights of fetishization, ostracization, straight up hatred. There are times in her interactions with the white and Asian guys that she has interactions with where you can tell they do not even really see Queenie as a woman. Definitely not on par with White and Asian women. There’s this attitude from these men like as if Queenie doesn’t have any worth at all, like she is not even human. Now I think this was a particularly British nuance to the story because she was just so meek. I think a sista from the States would’ve spoke up more for herself. Unlike in the UK with its’ so called ” polite racism”, this policy of being “color blind”, no Black woman in America can even cleave to such an absurd notion without knowingly lying to herself. We know there ain’t shit polite about racism and ain’t nothing about color that will blind another. But I’ve been there when you swallow what they say, when you make it your mission to not be like the others, when you don’t confront your oppressors. It brings up a lot of thoughts about interracial relationships. That’s a whole other piece but it reaffirms to me that these relationships are not historical and contemporary baggage -free. No matter how well intentioned and informed, we do not exist in a vacuum and it’s pure foolishness to think someone of such immense privilege can ever truly empathize with you. I finish Queenie and see her better but not evolved. I think that she goes on looking for her shiny white prince who will love her , someone who blocks out the noise, someone who allows her in the cold London air to believe in color blindness. Queenie reminds me of a writing tradition of Black women finding themselves, of learning to assess their environments, move accordingly and discard or conceal parts of their makeup to survive, to find love. It is a good read and I definitely recommend for anyone who ever wondered about Black girls and love across the pond.

Rambling

Someone close to me died recently. Interesting thing that death is. That final act of someone’s life. I think that I prepared myself for a long time for this day. That incessant anxiety of knowing something will happen years before it does. You spend life waiting. So in many ways I prepare for everyone’s death even my own. Our time here is short while the longest bit we’ll ever know. I think often of how there’s that formula that people are given. It says something like grow, learn, work, reproduce, keep working and then you’ll go, let out of your life lease. That’s what our lifetimes are; leases that we pay on, that we’re allotted for an indeterminate amount of time then it’s done. Poor human bastards we are, trying to make the most of it, to stuff as much shit as possible, to do all these things, to exhaust ourselves silly in trying to live. It reminds me like when I read stories of people who just graduated college or just started at some really prestigious job and they drop dead or get killed or stricken with some tragedy or another. It’s all such a cruel joke I can’t help but think sometimes. That person in question would’ve been better off just partying and not doing nothing if the outcome would be all the same, their demise. We sell ourselves this idea of life and especially here in America there is a subscription to ‘happy’. And this absurd thought that one should be ‘happy’ at every facet of their life. It sounds nice and who doesn’t want to be happy but I believe it’s just as transient as everything else and very often by chance. It’s a fleeting state endorsed by a guarded superficiality. It’s like seeing the pretty field of yellow flowers but smelling nothing but dog shit and grinning like you’ve won a prize.

If I could say anything about this damn pandemic ,it would be that it forces a constant view on mortality. One has to face all the time just how easy it is to expire as they say in hospitals. The media makes sure we never forget amidst the reports on the anarchy brewing, the hot mess that can no longer be contained. It is quite the time to be alive. To quote Sir 50,” Death gotta be easy cause life is hard”. He drops his jewels for sure and you can’t help but wonder , hell hope that this is true.

10 years old

This year I will approach having lived ten years in my truth. That’s a remarkable number to me as they have always been. Like when I acknowledged 6 months and 1 year then 4 years and 7 years and so on. Each bench mark ,it comes back to me that for ten years I have undergone massive changes , for 10 years I’ve had to learn and unlearn and relearn so many nuances of gender and myself. For 10 years I have said to myself and the world, I know myself best.

I have an image in my head from 10 years ago . I was at my supermarket job and had been assigned to do carts. I recall that I had debated with my boyfriend whether I should keep the nail polish on my fingers that I had applied. He told me ,” Baby ,you are a woman”. And I kept my polish on. It was orange polish and I had applied it the first night in my new room when I left my mother’s home. It is such a little thing , nail polish. But I had not the foolishness or heart to have ever worn it before I left home. Keeping the polish on at work was my first real step to being myself in public at all times. This doesn’t negate the wearing of eye shadow and mascara, the feminine hairstyles I adorned, or the nights of leaving work in sleepy suburban towns dressed in feminine attire before I kept the nail polish on. But it did begin a more deliberate nod to transwoman and less gender fuck. I was a girl blossoming in the shadows, in quiet, in dead streets and serene Connecticut nights. This of course, was only the beginning, those first little new born/ infant steps. Cause identity is far greater than the physical form or any adornments. And it is a wonder, how I managed for two years after that baby step to grow under the weight of my publicly old name, my old life? If I could offer any advice to transwomen ,it is to move away if you can. In a better world, we could be allowed to be ourselves and grow up amongst and remain where we are from and people would respect us and see us how we see ourselves. But there is just something that is just so impossible at times and that is for people to un-see us how they have known us. Those slips of tongue and inability to call us as we are is not always malicious even though it hurts. People’s wiring just be slow to catch on.

That first year was about learning. It was very much infant stage but like as though I had been here before. It was my first weave, the establishment of a wardrobe, buying female jeans(i’d started out wearing skirts ), dismayed by Payless being the only place to have women’s shoes my size. And then to be even more crushed by the poorly made, ankle damaging options that there were. It was cheap wigs brought from the Beauty supply store and wearing them till their texture changed. It was the first weave put in my head by a customer from the store I worked in for free. I still recall her words till this day, “Switch ya shit up” ” And I like mines wild”, to describe our shared affinity for curly tresses. It was men actually talking to me in public, public flirting, public kissing. It was the elation and the feeling of finally when someone told me I was pretty or sexy. Woman was very familiar but still so unknown and so esoteric. What I couldn’t know and maybe should have known was that ,I do myself a disservice by trying to align with standards. The looks , ways and attitudes of cis women could and should never be my objective because I am uniquely created. It was a lesson that came to me in doses and growing acceptance as the years go on. Woman means many things.

I’m not sure when I got the idea or directive really that I should pursue hormonal changes. I do think the roots were planted on nights in the Village and seeing other transwomen with feminine bodies. I was surprisingly confident about my body pre-hormones. I think there was just this immense euphoria at seeing myself with a feminine hairstyle, in feminine clothes, that matched my inherent fem-ness. I won’t lie, feedback from men gassed me up. Had me feeling that I was a hot lil mama, I wore the shit outta some skirts. I didn’t know what great legs I had till I wore them . Everyday was mascara and eye shadow and wigs or braids. But I was self conscious and aware that I didn’t have big breasts. My soul food- fed lumps helped a bit but I knew I wanted breasts. I also didn’t want facial hair. Hormones were the way it was going to be.

I remember watching videos on Youtube with transwomen marking their time lines and talking about their body differences at different times. While I can appreciate them for their worth, I found it a bit obsessive as well. I decided to just let the hormones happen to me versus obsessing over them and my changes. To be on them is not to become a new person but more like an enhancement, a more pronounced way of being comes out. Feelings became much more important. And I noticed women more and femininity which even to me sounds weird sometimes. But truly it probably inspired a sort of endless gravitation towards other women. And looking at myself and wondering how I measured up, how well did I appear to be apart of the tribe, what is she doing so delicately and much more “nicer” than I? Over time I have also looked at other women and sized them up how I’d imagine a man would. And of course my internal said ,” She’s better than you. She has a bigger ass and bigger breasts and longer hair and a vagina. ” It was a brutal internal conversation that I confess at times still having . I know that the roots of these thoughts are not just the ramblings of a hater but of someone who has been conditioned to embrace her self-hate by a society invested in my demise.

It’ll be 10 years of living in my truth this year. I love the woman I see in the mirror. I know that this is my ultimate mission. To keep loving myself and taking the best care of myself that I can. Transitioning hurts like hell. Don’t let no one tell you any different. It’s such an esoteric experience and while similarities abound, no person’s transition is ever the same. I often felt in the past like I physically didn’t do enough. I feel like my face is still very much the face I had 10 years ago. My smile is unchanged. My eyebrows look the same albeit slightly less bushy. But I had this understanding moment then because while physically maybe I still did look like me of before, but emotionally , mentally and socially these were different versions of the same person. It’s exciting to me , to reach these milestones when I think of where I was and where I am. When I remember those portions of my journey that are buried by other noise and faces once meaningful that have been forgotten. I always think of life like one’s own movie. And how it develops, how you get different plots, different casts, different voices of the protagonists and different antagonists at all these different points. There’s a million little sub plots and twists and turns. I look back on these 10 years with pride and awe. I know that I was joining a legion of bad assed renegades, that T tribe , those tough ass, torrential energy bringing trans people. I look forward to the next 10 years and stay tuned to the direction of the plot.

Temptation or tired trope of “bad” women getting their due

Tyler Perry creations are notorious for their commentary on sexuality and relationships of men and women in the Black community. Familiar anchors of Christian down home wisdom and a “good girls go to heaven” theme dominate his works. His 2013 film Temptation follows the familiar formula down to a tee. The story is told through a psychiatrist to a client about her sister. Conventionally attractive Judith is in a loving marriage with her awesome pharmacist husband Brice who she has known and loved since childhood. Judith is bored as hell in her marriage and increasingly under the pressure of identity crises. A daughter of the rural South transplanted to the big bad city who has the remaining tethering of her Christian mother’s dominance, her insecurities are ripe for exploiting. At her job as a counselor with a Matchmaking firm ,she finds herself drawn to the irresistible charm and sexiness of a rich , handsome , he- devil Harley. The sexual energy from these two are off the chain from rip. She’ll leave her good husband and get with rich man who sexes her, woos her, introduces her to the finer things in life all to the horror of her Christian mother and boring ass husband. They warn her of the impending doom of stepping away and out of her shell. It’ll come out through a typical Tyler Perry connection that her husband works with a woman who is the abused ,fearful HIV positive ex of the rich man. Brice will rush to save Judith from herself and find her beaten and in a drug induced stupor at the rich man’s house. He predictably beats Harley’s ass and seemingly saves the day . We’ll learn in the end that the Judith is HIV positive and she gets her medicine Brice every month. We’ll see him having a wife and young child and seemingly happy. Judith walks off with a noticeable limp and deflation about herself. It is the saddest walk away ending, she is so broken and yet almost too passive about it all. At the end, we find out that the psychiatrist and the “sister ” are one in the same.

I finished the movie thinking how sort of cliche’ it all is. How simplistic and predictable and really limiting of a tale. It reminds me of the Adam and Eve story, it reminds me of the Jezebel tale, it reminds me of every piece of media that promotes “a woman’s place” and the crux of pain for a woman is in seeking pleasure. At the end of the movie, I feel so bad for Judith who was not able to find happiness. Her husband had forgotten her birthday two years in a row. She retained so much love for this man , had played the role of good wife , had only ever had sex with her husband and it got old, it got stale. But I think there is a disservice done to women when a story says essentially ,” Don’t be a whore and you can have a good ending”. It is framed like if Judith had just suffered in silence, in her unhappiness, under the yolk of the Christianity and been a good girl, that all would work out. But silly Judith chasing an orgasm, enticed by a sexy, attentive, albeit dangerous, abusive wolf in sheep clothing deserved to be so broken at the end and HIV positive to boot. It also frames one becoming positive as a punishment for so called ‘immoral behavior”. Good ole Tyler is definitely a scholar of the Black Christian south . He knows what sort of plot lines will resonate with self flagellating audiences invested in an upholding of oppressive structures like marriage and love.

I watch Tyler Perry’s work for entertainment purposes and shout out to him for keeping so many Black folks working and accessing their thespian dreams. I don’t watch it as grand masterpieces that will comment realistically on Black Southern life. But I think that he can do better with his messaging sometimes. It just seems so reductionist at times, it doesn’t allow for nuance, it doesn’t humanize characters like Judith as being more than good or bad but human. What if a Black woman who was unhappy could reach out and grab happiness without incurring the wrath of the gods from deviating from the script? What if Judith could have explored dating and love in a healthy , non- judgmental, non- by the book type of way? She rightly points out several times throughout the film how long she and her husband had known each other. It is inevitable that one is not the same person at 15 as they are at 25 or 35. Shout outs to all those who do get married at 18 and remain happily married. But it is not all that common and it is normal for people to grow up and grow apart. What if on -screen a Black woman could have pleasure without the requisite pain? What if so -called “bad girls” could be happy and find peace in their “bad ways”? What if men were ever forced to be good and do the work in these films and stories? Why does it feel like for Black women that we have to “earn love” vs being loved for who we are and not how the world feels we should be? And contending that even when we behave happiness is not a guarantee.

The D word

I live with Depression. As I write that I already hear in my head a voice saying “Don’t go there”. I had this weird thought earlier about how I feel in America, there’s this idea of emotion being bad. That one should somehow lessen their emotions, make them palatable to a very dry ass environment. That phrase reading the room could only have been crafted here in the states. I think most people hear depression and think of it as this person who sits in a dark room, unwashed, crying their eyes out. And while those sort of moments can happen, it is not necessarily a constant simply because people with Depression are like everyone else. We still have to shit grin at assholes with position and deal with long ass commutes and take all the detritus the world throws at us. If I speak for myself and perhaps what I can imagine as a connector for people who live with Depression is that alot of time is spent trying to actively avoid emotions, alot of time is spent putting on faces and putting that best face forward to face the world. You may be in the deepest of waves, at your lowest and you still keep trudging forward. Or at least that has been my experience. It’s this very personal occurrence that sets the stage usually unbeknownst by others. I find it my own personal irony that I have not utilized my therapist as much during this pandemic. There’s a point when you just get tired of crying, it can feel sometimes like you’re a broken record and it is irritating to feel no relief. It almost makes the work that one does in therapy that extends to the world feel like nothing. Like I’m little engine-ing myself I think I can and nothing is working out.

I’m a Black transgender woman. My life will always have this particular level of obstacles to navigate at the expense of me always feeling like I’m losing or running in place. I’m part of a tribe that gets shitted on by everyone. Our survival seems to always be up for question and when you facing all the isms, all the phobias, all the lack of’s and all those pesky statistics, how the fuck could one not be depressed? My life expectancy is 35 in the so called ” Greatest nation on earth”. That shit weighs heavy on me. Violence , all kinds of violence follows my experience even when I’m dead. Shout out to all them actresses and writers and politicians even of my ilk who have made it. They are those icons we should all aspire to be. But the reality is that road while filled with hope is always full of these poisonous, eroding potholes and too often that journey comes to an end. I think we die in so many millions of small ways before we actually get there. I know that I have. I’m of that Sequoia lineage though, Dark and large and majestically beautiful. And they’ll keep hitting and trying to knock me down. And I don’t go or I may fallow a bit but never completely hit the ground.

This way

It was meant to be this way

The arrogance

The humble

The roars and the rumble

Every tear shed, every insult uttered, every fist that flew

The solitude

The misunderstanding

The chanting and the dancing

to thine own song she be true

Alotta scars and thousands of bruise

Bruise on heart and mind, bruise on sight and sound

bruise on joy and bruise on pain bruise on painbruise on pain

It was meant to be from birth, fighting battles armless,

walking miles with dead feet, with only crazy to eat and delusion juice

was a treat , an indulgence allowed once a week, in those escapes with those heartattacks

always more than white hot eruptions, these were sessions of spent emotions

and that ugly girl thought she was cute

Time take you away to new scenes and you think it’s all left behind

but you seen that before and know the cast too well

and assume your star role in a free for all hell

Days when delusion juice can’t be found

and the truth elusive, abusive

It was meant to be this way

Christmas: A time to remember

If I could be 5 again just to enjoy that immense magic both that word and day used to signify to me. It was always bigger than the gifts, Christmas always had this feel. This warm, rich, cozy, decorative , happy feeling that enveloped the rest of the winter with this airiness, with this sense of everything being alright in the world. I ,of course as a child couldn’t appreciate all the hard work, efforts and hustles of the “Santa Clauses” in my life. The hard working ,poor Black women and men from Harlem who loved me and raised me and who made it their mission that time of the year to shield us from the poverty that pervaded our psyches and realities. Christmas was that time to shine. It’s when that Harlem mantra of “Never looking fucked up even if you was” came to life. You balled outta control on your kids and yourself to hide the pain of poverty, the limitations of it on your destiny and as an act of rebellion on a White man’s day to show you could play the game too. That you too ,could provide for your families and give your kids whatever material trinkets their heart desired. There is a pressure like no other in the hood around this time. I’m sure the same energy and mantras still exist , in fact it’s worse now with this social media age and this self imposed edict by the public to post every damn detail of their life, the more , the merrier. There are women who will fight after this day because one talked about what the other had or what the other wasn’t able to do for her kids. Men who been best friends since childhood will end up trying to kill each other over matters of respect usually related to money and one trying to shit on another for calling his bluff. The lists are long and damn it if every body and they momma won’t be doing anything to put up a good face.

You look at shit differently as an adult. This time of year and this day in particular I’m reminded only of the past. The past in so many ways just feels so much fucking better than this present. I don’t even give too much thoughts to the future. On Christmas’ now like a true American, I engorge and I’ve spent. I’ve bought and I’ve consumed. It’s all the richest, the most exquisite, the most period on this day. I don’t think of the credit card bills, I don’t think of other bills, don’t think how I could’ve been like this group or that one who doesn’t spend money. Or think of my attempt to weld weightless privilege. I am grateful though. So grateful. I know that for many this day is more painful than anything. Many of us are alone. Even while with people. I won’t even begin to insert the Covid bullshit into the discussion. So maybe that is what Christmas is to me now, a time to reminisce on the good times past and recreate them in whatever little ways I can ,never forgetting ,” Never let them see you fucked up!” Merry Christmas!!!

12/20/21

It’s a really weird time to be alive in this world. Everything holds a weight, a meaning , a price tag not equated with money. Currency as more than, as capabilities, as options, as opt-outs. Imagine in 5,10 or 20 years when those movies and tv shows come out about this time, we’ll all imagine like the fiction we’ll watch, why didn’t we do more? We’ll through the heartbreak, triumph and lessons of our heroes or heroines find value and lessons in loss beyond measure. It’s all so stale now. It has exhausted the reserves of fucks to give and new variables to tee in to incessant anxiety. Its been overate, over drank, over smoked, over fucked , over traveled and over thought. It has consumed and resumed and paused but not really and it continues to use and abuse any shred or sense of self as an individual organism of nothing. It’s scattery and meaningless, the language being incomprehensible and deliberately moronic and stifling and double talking and shaming and pervading and infecting and dissecting the whole bloodlust lot of it all. I call and order a tall order of bullshit soda and fear fuck me salad.