Big Black Trans and Beautiful

Tripping

Tripping. My mind operates in waves and ripples of smells, touches, sounds and scenes. In it, I
am a receptor of many different elements. There’s rage, there’s lust, there is pride and there is shame.
My mind is at one minute in peace, another minute in turmoil. And it’s all because it’s a daily struggle to
be. If it’s not the fear of being read, it’s my self -critique. How you leave the house on 10 and by the time
you arrive at the train you at a one?

I guess it’s time for a formal introduction of sorts. My skin is the color of a Hershey bar flecked
with gold hints and period of blackness. I stand 5’10 tall. I have the frame of someone who doesn’t miss
a meal but retain a structure that downplays my girth. Did I mention my large thighs, my cute Estradiol
fed breasts A’s ,I think. I ’ve never been fitted. My almond brown eyes, accentuated almost daily by
mascara and adorned on top with pretty colors that make them more fascinating than they truly are and
adds some allure to my four eyes. In another time, society, land I might be regarded as beautiful. But in
my homeland, my country tis of thee, home of the brave and the free, I’m largely derided as ugly even
most so by people who look like me. Did I mention my glorious but not yet substantial garden of kinky
tresses? Tresses I no longer comb, no longer hide by wigs or conform via weave/heat/perm. I have yet
to confront the pieces of me from head to toe, a to z. Those pieces something about those pieces, the
prominence of pieces. The values placed, the worthlessness, the impressions attached on my pieces and
parts. Fuck my brain and screw my heart ! Did I mention the label of boy? The separation of colors, the divvy of toys, clothes, names and
roles in games. My lifelong switch, my struggle still of what to do with my hands, my wrists. My hands
calloused internally by the balling of my fists and my proclivity to violence, the legacy of a punk/fag

childhood in seclusion sucked into the delusion I could hide who I am and who I would become. Oh the
stages, the fantastic scenes, my drama, comedy action thriller.

Nowadays I give ‘em strong, black woman pose. It’s in my favor that I appear as the stock beast
all Jemima smiles and shiny skin. I’m an expert in languages and posing. I’m immune to the micro
aggressions and I have a saucy tongue ready. I’m not angry. I smile at the men afraid to meet my eyes. I
smile at the women who make it a point to meet mine and in a second read and rip with a look of
supreme bitch superiority. But inside overall I’m breaking up in pieces.

Stop Switching
You so smart, you do good in school
Oooh look how black ya neck is
You will be such a handsome, strong chocolate man
Why none of them lil girls ya girlfriend?
That is damnation, that is wrong?
Why do you wanna kiss a boy?
Why ya pants so tight?
Why you get weave added to ya cornrows?
Why can’ t you just be a man?
You too big to walk around like that
Sorry no fats,no fems
You never come around no more
How come we never see you?
You can’t fight the world
That’s just the way it is

Lovers short story

Lovers

She looked at the face of Kwame sleeping looking as peaceful as a 40 year old baby. Wrapped up in his big body with hers on the queen size bed. Her lover man. She smiled as the tears began to form, she glanced to her right to the mirror that overlooked their nude bodies. Kwame, peanut brown. She, Erica big a few pounds short of 300. She, her Erica big in legs thighs, butt her stomach was wide but she wasn’t sloppy with it courtesy of her long frame. Kwame shifted in his sleep turning on the sweat and cum soaked sheets. So now his sexy dick nestled in between Erica’s thighs. As if searching for the canal that should be in front. His dick was heavy, it had weight Ike a mini dumbbell and protruded out coffee colored with a little cream, the head mushroom, the bass large, the sack lay sticky against his legs. Erica loved his dick. She loved the way he ripped inside of her always from day one freely, aggressively, religiously. She loved when he’d rub his brick dick against her much smaller one. The sensations sent ripples through her body and hardened the nipples of her perky breasts. And a smile parted her full lips as she began to touch herself, her breasts, her dick, movements , a motion to elicit that final spasm of ecstasy. Cum less the white stuff had long disappeared. But a sensation had erupted ,the result of hormones and the “cumming” felt intense, a extra after, before and without vigorous anal probing. And with a vision of a thick male butt and long hard dick she came. Kwame woke up then ,his beautiful brown almost hazel eyes. “You got a blunt babe?” He grinned, forever a pothead. Erica coming off her nut and feeling dined good grunted look on the stand. He turned over where already a rolled el lay waiting. He lay on his back ,lit the herb and waited for Erica to put her head on his chest. He felt the familiar tears and tenderness she elicited from the moment. He found himself tripping because he had never loved a tranny sorry transwoman the way he loved her . In fact, she was the only one. Young ,black ,built thick and beautiful. She was smart, spoke properly, knew about current events, she worked but she was also down. Shawty had a survivors story , a spirit, a drive that had not died in the three years since they first started kicking it. “Yo “,he started passing the blunt,” what you thinking about?”. Erica pulled from the blunt and played with her hair “Babe thank you for being here .”” Sometimes I trip because you got a wife but I can’t tell you how hard it is to find a man that I got both body and heart from”. He grinned ,”You good ma. I fucks with you. You a good girl and you satisfy me. Don’t get hung up on bullshit or my wife or none of that. I fucks with you because I want to”. Erica used to the routine and intuitive to Kwame’s responses smiled at his simplicity.

Black Silence At Work

It is without question that working is different for Blacks than it is for everyone else. We go in to workplaces cognizant of unfair playing grounds and having to conform to a culture that swallows you whole. Being Black at work means knowing you’re the last one to be hired and the first one to be fired. It means not standing up for yourself when wronged and accepting so many forms of macro and micro aggressions just for the sake of staying employed. Work culture is toxic for everyone but even more so for Black people who contend with stereotypes and historical and contemporary injustices related to our employment. Out of all the aspects of working that I find exhausting ,none is more demoralizing than seeing my fellow Blacks en masse choose policies of silence in the face of the administration. It irks me to my core because amongst our selves , we have the most passionate people with huge voices and expansive intelligence. And to see these people choose silence as a policy just sucks. Because I know they have plenty to say and they do us a collective disservice when they refuse to speak up.

I get and I am beholden to the idea of keeping your job, needing to pay your bills , not wanting to upset people in authority. But I also believe and find it to be true that people do not change unless they’re forced to. And if there are policies or aspects of work culture that many people may have an issue with, then it does not serve us to be quiet and accept it. Professionalism as a concept is conforming to white supremacy based aspects of behavior and morality and modeling that. It is a concept that translates and plays out as a form of acting and pretend. Professionalism means smiling in the face of a liar and taking bullshit as gospel. I just hope that for my people we learn to speak up. If we are going to insist on being controlled by these spaces, if we’re going to swallow injustices and accept apathy , abuse and manipulation then the least we can do is protest. I had someone tell me recently that ,” they are playing a part till they’re in a higher position”. And all I could think of is that people who get any leverage or the higher on the food chain you are the more condoning and accepting of the bullshit you are. I won’t smile for Blacks who make it if all they are going to do is give me white heteropatriarchy in Black face. That is not progress, it is submission, it is acceptance , endorsement and permission.

I find myself outspoken if for no other reason than having been in spaces majority filled with people who look like me and the voiceless-ness that pervaded was startling. The smaller number of whites and non Blacks dominated the room with an intensity , an assurance , a smug belief that they are the all knowing, always right , most capable ,most intelligent people in the room. At first, I’d imagine that maybe the subject matter wasn’t believed to be important enough to comment. But later meetings would prove to be the same way and the Black folks chose vows of silence. So I speak if for no other reason than my voice and our voices are valid as well. This centuries old practice of not speaking up, of just accepting what “authority” dishes, of waiting to “make it” will not keep us safe or even employed for that matter. I’m challenging all of us to say something.

Trauma Barometer

There are certain sayings in life that I think get misused far too often to be even remotely real after a while. It’s things like, “what doesn’t kill you ,makes you stronger” or “the climb to the top is full of hurdles.” At the crux of it, the speaker is saying all of this pain and struggle will aid you to that elusive point of victory one day. I believe surviving painful experiences can make someone “more tougher”, “more stronger” in the future sure but I also think that depending on the experience and the amount of challenges one has been through prior ,it’s not always a sure thing. In fact, I believe experiences add up. I believe hurt and pain adds up. I believe we are born from a place of deficits and often inherent internalize the pain and hurt of our bloodline before us.

Black folks, we love to deliver these types of sayings to one another. We eagerly await to tell each other to “put it in God’s hands” and “He doesn’t give you more than you can handle”. I imagine this is a residual of slavery, when our people had to be so fucking tough to the point of brute just to survive. There was no time or relief for tears and comfort. We had no choice but to keep on keeping on. It persists to the descendants today. You go to the shittiest hood in America and you find the most apparent hope and optimism in the world. People with the most challenges, people who will never make it and who will incur more pain and baggage before they take their last breath will be the first to speak on how much one’s trauma barometer can take.

For us transwomen, I imagine we are gluttons for pain. I imagine that when most of us become who we know ourselves to be ,that we knowingly wait and expect the trauma. In fact, not being able to be one’s self has to be one of the ultimate acts of trauma. So we begin our transitions from places of trauma and as the years grow so do our experiences. The first time you’re attacked. When someone spooks you in front of a crowd. Being denied housing. Being rejected by family, friends and lovers. Being forced to hustle by any means cause you can’t find a job. Called man over and over again. The trauma of hating yourself for not being able to be “normal”. The knowledge that for the rest of your life if you are to own your identity, you will always be fighting the world. And I write from a place of deficit because I don’t know en masse how other transwomen feel. I will say much like mainstream Black folks and because my few interactions with transwomen have been mostly Black, it makes sense that as a people we embrace a facade of “do it all, handle it all”. I have never been on the Pier and seen a group of transwomen crying but I’m sure each and every one of them have a story that will break your heart. As do most people. Living is suffering. It isn’t life, if it doesn’t include pain. But it’s not an equal opportunity dispenser and some people get more than their fair share of pain.

I write all this to say I hope society ,well actually Black people and Trans people and Black transpeople begin to name and call out our pain. Begin to make our cultural outputs reflect the hurt and the severity of extended excessive trauma. Our identities are rooted in pain, that pain that we have used to survive, the anger and the rage that has fueled our push forwards. Mainstream society does not , will not and cannot give two fucks about the trauma of our people. They , in fact, decide when things are painful , when things are traumatic and worthy of a conversation. And it’s only when they themselves are victims of something. I want to see shows about Black people with Depression, I want to read about the transwoman who is struggling to keep her head up. I need music from Black artists and Black queer artists that makes me want to cry. Because the reality is we’re all hurting, we always have and we always will until we properly name all that afflicts us. And I think that’s some bad assed shit, living with pain or overcoming that pain and calling it out regardless of censure and gaslights.

World News

I try to keep up with what’s going on in the world. I read a variety of things about domestic and international affairs. I admit that I don’t retain details as much as I used to. There comes a point after awhile when you read about the Israel/ Palestine conflict, the ongoing Sudanese struggle and the results of excess industrialization in Japan that it all coalesces into this clump of usual noise. You hear about fights for power and capital and people who resist and die. You hear about the enormous wealth generated and the worsening plights of the poor. You see the dominance of certain powers and the subjugation demanded by others.

I had a teacher in high school who spoke about the Marshall Plan directly translating into the world we see today. That line was noteworthy in that it made me think it was both simplistic and very short sighted. It also made me think about the way U.S. history is taught and by extension the way the history of the West is taught. Perhaps it’s a result of proximity or the mantra of white is right that made me root for the Crusaders over the Muslims in the Crusades. Or somehow letting a college professor state ” Greece was the first civilization” without question or challenge. It’s how the Founding Fathers are spoken about in reverence in their fight against the British. Or how the Pioneers who slaughtered the Natives were markers of American ingenuity. History and by extension the contemporary is framed and dispensed through a white centric lens. It is purposeful that as a collective, hearts poured out for the fighting in Bosnia while Rwanda was ignored.

James Baldwin said something to the effect of ,” to be conscious in this country is to be in a state of constant rage”. I reflect on those words often. Nothing is without root and reason. And after awhile it all feels like a big set up. Sometimes when I read the news and some Black person did something crazy, I wonder if someone paid them to do such a thing just to keep us in a bad light. Cause let’s face it one marking the bunch is real and it causes the rest of us in many ways to feel required to dispel any deviance from palatability. It’s too easy for those random crazy acts to be used as justification for why the police need to be as militarized and trigger happy as they are. It keeps defense number one in the funding and education and health care always subtracted from. It keeps rural wastelands above air with a tried and true industry of locking Black people up. You have this continued technological advance in this country and the world that seems hell bent on making literal human beings obsolete and useless. I won’t even begin to get into this pandemic and all the residuals of this time period. I recall words I heard in April 2020 of how ” the world will never be the same”. And how dubious I was then but how true those words ring out now. And in a land that marks itself on liberty and justice for all, it seems like a bad joke when I hear about mandates and people forced to choose between livelihoods and their own free will.

Reading is an addiction now. Has been since I was a child. My grandfather told me to read the newspaper. He also taught me to learn Spanish. It’s a very interesting thing, I think especially since I don’t remember him reading the newspaper that often and he speaks not a word of Spanish. The more I learned though and that I continue to learn, it fills me with unquestionable convictions and so many unknowns. I read contemporary American culture and history and see it for what it is. And think of my participation in systems that were built for my subjugation. There are those who would take offense at the mere thought that I ‘d believe the United States was anything but the greatest country on earth. The irony in that though is that at one point I believed that to be true. There was once a time that the Star Spangled Banner and the Pledge of allegiance filled me with almost a tearful reverence in the land that extends sea to shining sea. And I continued to read and learn and question and confront my ignorance and now those songs are almost mocking banter. As is most of the world news one read’s on a daily basis. To quote my grandfather with the bitter cynicism only a Black man born and bred in Jim Crow South could muster, “God Bless America”.

My Hair Challenge

There is not a Black woman alive today whose hair is not a thing. There is not a Black woman alive who has never hated her hair or wished it looked like something else at one point or another. It is endemic and a culturally required necessity to have hair matters. I am no different. Recently I found my hair to not be in the condition I wanted. I’d done all those ” right things”. Avoided heat, deep conditioned, took vitamins, washed when necessary, not washed it. I tried this oil and that oil and this cream and this cream and I gorged the incessant Black women on Youtube with their natural hair vids. There was such an effortlessness with them, a simple one two three and I too could have longer, healthier hair. Like so many other things that affect us Blacks, there’s often this prescribed level of action being applied to a problem and then reaping the results of such efforts (i.e. if we look this way, get this degree we get a job, if we lose weight and avoid this we can be our best selves). But I posit that our conditions are not simply individually based but a result and a necessity of the systems we live under.

The first thing Black women look at amongst ourselves is our hair. It is the first thing we’ll roast a bitch on or the first thing we’ll mention if she did the damn thing with it. However it’s worn will say alot about your interaction with another sista. Hair is a currency in our world and while a rich resource of culture and style in of itself, it also operates on a measure of deficiency. And what I mean by that, is that if possible, most of us would choose to have longer hair, we’d choose to have less Black hair, in a perfect world those bundles we buy by a ton would flow out our heads no glue,or thread necessary. Hence the very popular commands for us to constantly “do our hair” “get our hair done”. The level of importance placed on hair itself says a lot about the people who spew it. It’s at once a source of pride and shame as well.

I love that in 2021 more and more of us are rocking our beautiful God given naturalness. There’s just something so majestic about a beautiful Black person with a halo of unrestrained Black roots aimed towards the sky. Its authentic, its resilient, it stands as this rightful marker of Blackness in a world full of straighter tresses. I’ve always wanted a nice, huge Angela Davis fro. To date, my hair has never gotten there. And that’s ok. I rock my shortness now with a ferocity and purposefulness that I’ve never with wigs and weaves. Nowadays when I wear a wig I feel insecure as fuck, quite contrary to what they seem to usually inspire in their wearers. It’s something about being a large bodied, darkskin transwoman with certain hairstyles that is almost laughable. I can’t help but feel like it screams “I hate my real shit”. There’s something about living in this NY metro area surrounded by non Black women with their long, flowing tresses and me rocking hair that mimics theirs that feels like a cultural betrayal. I can’t help but feel like those non Black women laugh at us , like they thrive off our apparent insecurity in our own shit. It’s bad enough that misogynoir flourishes in contemporary culture by everyone else including our male contemporaries. And when we bastardize our image, I can’t help but feel like it’s a double shit on our culture, our heritage, our whole essence of Blackness as critical to us as the melanin in our skin.

I write as a hypocrite and one of the afflicted. I write knowing about the necessity of protective hairstyles, of knowing one’s desire to switch up and knowing “they do it too”. I write with a bin full of wigs in my closet. I write because I remember the euphoria I felt the first and only time I got a perm, and the first time I had a curly wig put in. And I write because I get sad sometimes that I’m nowhere near Angela and that my hair doesn’t thrive in the ways I ‘d like it too. I write because I love my Blackness and Black hair and on those instances of “protecting” or wanting to “switch up”, I feel even more insecure than I would with my real shit. It’s an ongoing thing and one I will deal with the rest of my life. I just hate the mainstream culture sometimes , hate Hip Hop and hip hop videos for the imagery and messages they spew out that directly attack its’ main consumers. I hate the grand shows of “natural hair ” by celebrities who switch it up a whole day later. I hate that “good hair ” still exists in our vocabulary and there’s something toxic about the incessant advertisements in Beauty Supply shops indulging insecurities. I write knowing that in popular company I’d be read up and down for even daring to comment on Black hair. Not an attack , just commentary on our conditioning. It is an entrenched facet in our world and the challenge is to battle those insecurities and self hate fed by a culture dependent on one’s self mutilation .

SEX

I imagine as the trans community gains visibility, as we obtain strides in the mainstream and some of our tribe “gets there”, there will undoubtedly be those segments of the community that eschew and isolate from those of us with more risque’ dispositions. I imagine the promotion of dowdy, Mrs. Doubtfire types in the press, in the media playing Judas to her sisters who don’t uphold tenets of respectability. And there’s no question, they will be coming for us who love sex and are proud of it. I want to say to those types on the up and up, the success stories that will be featured on Oprah, the ones that CNN will call on when they need a trans rep, those types who through advertisements and PSA’s will seemingly reach out to young trans women, please balk at and rebuke respectability. It ain’t real, it’s tired and respectability adherence is not the same as being respected. We need representatives who are not gon preach the same song and dance of looking and acting a certain way being the way we too can be part of the movement. Stonewall and all them other movements for trans and queer liberation were waged by girls from the street, girls who hustled and sold sex and lived it how they did it. And as challenging as their lives were, I am sure they didn’t say if I rebuke my inherent “unrespectability” and get away from being thought of as a sex worker then these cops will stop beating my ass. Then these people won’t spit in my face and will actually hire me for these menial jobs. Then these landlords will let me live here. Then they will provide medicine to me so I won’t die. They knew that at the heart of the struggle, the mainstream hated and feared them. No one has ever been un-hated and un-feared by appealing to the sentiments of their opps. I say all this to say I will not run away from my sexuality as a Black transwoman. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to say I love sex. And that sex has been so many different things to me besides a moment.

For transwomen who are attracted to cisgender men, I’d venture to say our most feminine moments are in the bedroom. If you play your position to a tee in that most conservative way possible, it’s something bout taking some hard dick from a man who wants it, who palms your ass so tight, who squeezed your tits just right, who plays with your candy as he pumps, that feels so fucking cunt. Ain’t nothing manly in the moans and motions you go through as he fucks you. Or when you resist and throw it back. And the conversation is revealing. I like when I’m made to submit. I like sometimes being called a bitch, and there’s something bout being asked , if you like this dick that I’m sure turns on any woman that’s getting that hard meat. Sex is a beautiful thing. It gets alot of baggage, it has so many other variables that accompany it that probably turns people off, it’s not always a breeze. But I find that the universe can be cruel that way , all the good things being bad somehow(i.e. fried food, alcohol, ice cream). But I still believe we all owe it to ourselves to have the best sex that we can. And not to run from sex. Not to bastardize or be ashamed of it the way the cis hetero mainstream will have you be. The hypocrisy of the mainstream just starts to annoy me. It’s the sexual innuendo that permeates every aspect of our culture and yet this unspoken adherence to being respectable on surface.

As a Black transwoman, I will resist these notions. Pleasure is mine. If my life expectancy is short and you won’t stop discriminating and killing me. If I’m to be denied those fixtures of a “good life” and I will be mis-named and mis-gendered in death and life , then while I’m here I need to have a good damn time.

Travel as A Black Transwoman

Without a doubt,one of the joys I find in my life and living is travel. There is something about leaving the immediate vicinity of my home base that fills me with this giddiness. It’s like knowing I’m bouta embark on something so new and so risky yet so rewarding. As a child,I was an avid reader and I held a special place in my heart for the geography section. Whether it was reading about castles in Haiti, the landmarks in London or the many tribes in Nigeria, I eagerly consumed these books about these foreign places. And I wasn’t biased because the domestic interested me as well, learning about California and Michigan and my root state of South Carolina. The world was so dynamic and so vast and varied. I was blessed to be born and raised in NYC , so called capital of the world. And in many ways, I believe we can own that title. But the capital ain’t everything.

Beauty of Canal Street, New Orleans at night

I’ve only recently started traveling further than the tri -state in the last few years. Before that, South Carolina was my go to locale with family as a kid. I wasn’t in the best place during most of my twenties to go anywhere. A birthday trip to Atlanta to celebrate 27 years of life has sparked an addiction that I never want to overcome. It wouldn’t take long for me to realize that travel adds a necessary spice for me, it feeds the soul with these really esoteric emotions, enhances visual memory and grounds me in my own history and culture. Every place is unique in its own ways and it is travel that sparks the internal convo of the possibilities in life.

I know that I am of privilege with my experiences. I know that for many especially us Blacks and Black transwomen,our pockets don’t often allow for much navigation within our localities. The gatekeeping and systemic necessities of our marginalization and limited opportunities means that many of us may never get to go anywhere outside of our immediate area. This is never lost on me every time I go to JFK or Newark Liberty. For my trans specific experiences, I guess there is a heightened sense of imagery and surveillance. The body scanners and the security procedures probably rattles everyone but for transwomen its even more intense. You worry about the scanners, you worry about the prominence of the ignorance that pervades agencies like TSA. You know that you may encounter people who look like you mad that someone like you is going anywhere. I hate public restrooms and I find that airports tend to have long ass lines for the female bathroom. Sometimes it sucks to be 5’10 , black with short natural hair as a transwoman surrounded by cis women who are 5’2 with mandatory friends and kids along. And they watch you and stare and make it so you really want to be in and out. I don’t have that female quality of bonding or fixing myself for long times in shared spaces. It’s a get in , get out situation.

I imagine my manual of traveling while trans will expand as my list of trips expand. I’ve done most of my travel within the US. I used to look for gay bars in different cities alot of times simply for the presence of queerness in different states. It was after my trip to LA looking for gay spaces and finding them very white boy dominated and consequently in other places not finding that gay exclusiveness I’m accustomed to as a New Yorker. Gay and queer spaces need to remain and remain predominantly for its people. That said I’ve found with that caveat so little space for black queerness and little to none for transwomen period. So the next best bet ,is to peruse off beaten paths to an extent, queerer people tend to be poorer and for Black queerness it doesn’t take long to find ourselves in the hood. And believe it or not there are times I feel safer in the hood than I do in white areas. In one venue, I may be unwanted but expected while in the other I am ignored, subject to SNAFU’s and possibly criminalized just for being.

That all said, I am proud of my slow but growing list of places I’ve seen. There was a time in my life that I thought traveling from Harlem to Brooklyn was a big thing. So to have been to a place where they speak a language other than English, a place not connected to North America and to have gazed at the Pacific, I am fortunate as fuck. I still have loads left to see including somewhere in West Africa. That is a must as a Black woman. That is a must for my global Black African family to see me a Black transwoman from America, one of your tribe in the world. We’re your family too despite your mass disdain and ridicule.

Sharing

It goes without saying that the greatest relationships with people are built on sharing. Sharing , the act of exchanging your stuff with another. On surface , sharing sounds like such an altruistic act. But the reality is sharing comes with sacrifice. Sharing comes with vulnerability. And often, people may not want what you’re sharing. It is not a one sided act at all. As a wanna be writer, as someone who has always best expressed myself through words, I’m confounded constantly with the weight of sharing. Sharing my experiences, sharing other’s experiences, my feelings and others, sharing beliefs and others. And I’m often acutely saturated with what sharing whatever it is may mean for a reader or a listener. As a species, we are attuned to take shit personal. But there is a power in being open to sharing, even if it’s some shit you don’t agree with or understand. Billions of people on the world, an infinite number of experiences, values and truths.

Earlier on this date, I passed by someone who wanted to get my attention. But I just kept walking on by in my vibe and did not feel like sharing my time, sharing my ears, sharing my little bit of me with this person for whatever unknown reason. I imagine it was some small little thing, some thing this person just needed to say, wanted to say. And I had no time for them. I did not feel like sharing. Did not want the intrusion or possible insult. I haven’t yet developed that very particular Black queer way of being aloof and unyielding in the world. The type of cheery, sort of no sweat off my back approach I’ve observed from my tribe. It’s like yea they may be phobic or living for me but either way I’m so fabulous. I’m more don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you.

I will do my best to share. So often, I find we live in such a facade driven, perfectionist seeking ass world. The kind where kind strangers offer very privileged, judgmental advice. The kind of world where you’re judged worthy by the price of your bags , the names of your shoes. The kind of world where those of us of darker hues are always performing and making ourselves as palatable as we can in a world that cannot and will not digest our beauty. The kind of world built on seeking respectability as much as you can while navigating mazes and traps. But somewhere in that I’ll find time to share , I guess.

Relics

Relic; an object surviving from an earlier time especially having sentimental or historical value. Relic is how I would describe the plethora of experiences that make us who we are. These relics exist as moments and energies that are not meant to be forgotten. They exist large and looming in our psyche and our movements. It’s important to acknowledge them. It’s important to call them out. And they have to be treated with the reverence or disdain that they deserve.

In Black American culture, I feel as though we have a predilection for being on the up and up. We are on surface a very future focused people yet the intensity and marvel of our struggle and existence is grounded in the relics . All of our shit compounded for centuries and added on to what will be an always ongoing struggle till they concede or we breed or die ourselves out. And even then ,I imagine the weight and contaminants of those relics will necessitate a constant purge, a constant need to do damage control, a gnawing anxiety that they can never undo all that has been done.

It is only recently that I think I started to analyze all these levels of oppression, all the “mal normalities” treated as norms and come to understand them as necessary functions in a relic filled society. None of it exists in a vacuum. All of it stems from the relics. And continue to function as the offspring defended and upheld by diseased denizens of the empire. I guess my line of thought then ,as a Black transwoman, a nobody, a statistic, a result according to popular culture, what do we do with those live relics in our lives in a future forward society? What do we do when we’re able to recognize the roots of our disenfranchisement, the various ways that the genocide continues and yet we’re saturated with a cultural edict to look to the future? Is it too farfetched to suggest that we’re not even counted or considered? When I think about the metrics of surviving in my NYC metro area. The cost of living , the displacement, the stagnant wages, the unemployed who will always be unemployed, the overworked 2 ,3 job having folks, the people in their 20s looking to get Social Security cause they’ve been forced to concede possibly ever running in the rat race that doesn’t sustain, that chews you out and admonishes you for having the nerve to complain. Gotta acknowledge the relics . They’re powerful determinants, they set the stage for where we go and how we get there. We want that picket fence to be them people in those picket fences. We do this all with the hope we can escape or at least forget the relics.