When it rains, it feels like a million mini plastic army men marching on my face. The grass, prickly and soft. And when the clouds part, they’re gone. Though I wanted them there. Gone too soon.
Category: a post about nothing
“Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way. Like an improv conversation. An improversation.” –Michael Scott, The Office
“What is my perfect crime? I break into Tiffany’s at midnight. Do I go for the vault? no. I go for the chandelier. it’s priceless. as I’m taking it down a woman catches me. she tells me to stop. it’s her fathers business. she’s tiffany. I say no. we make love all night. in the morning the cops come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico, but I go to Canada. I don’t trust her. besides I don’t like the cold. thirty years later I get a postcard. I have a son. and he’s the chief of police. this is where the story gets interesting. I tell tiffany to meet me in Paris by the troccodero. she’s been waiting for me all these years. she’s never taken another lover. I don’t care. I don’t show up. I go to Berlin. that’s where I stashed the chandelier”. –Dwight Schrute, The Office
I don’t talk about my relationships here ’cause that’s not my thing, but there’s a lesson in this. And I feel like I should do some actual writing here once in a while, like one of my favorite writers is doing on her awesome new blog. Some time back, I posted Alicia Keys’ “Lesson Learned” and didn’t offer up much of an explanation as to why the song meant so much to me…
About two years ago, me and my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years at the time broke up. There wasn’t any one reason: growing apart, loss of trust and things of that nature. It was, is, the longest relationship I’ve been in and it taught me a lot. However, there was infidelity on his end (hence the loss of trust), emotionally and somewhat physically. I still don’t really know the whole story. Losing him hurt like nothing ever hurt before and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to hold conversations with him right after we ended it. It was too easy to cry afterward. Why put myself through that?
A little after we officially broke up—it seemed like we’d been in the process of breaking up for months—he started dating another girl, three years younger than him. Of course I was crushed. He was the love of my life and I wasn’t his I guess, or I was and then I wasn’t, and I had to come to terms with that.
Though we kept in contact over the next few years, he never talked about his new girl. Every time I would ask, “How’s The Girl?” he’d offer vague replies like “She’s fine.” This went on for two years. During this time, he apologized for his behavior when we were together, and for hurting me. He was remorseful and he couldn’t believe some of the things he did as a boy, not yet a man. I slowly allowed myself not to hate him. I always thought I was the (almost) perfect girlfriend—I tried to be anyway—but this only made it more hurtful when it came time to part ways. I hadn’t done anything wrong… except I snooped a bit because I had tried to communicate to no avail. Okay, that was wrong… But he was the flirty type and I was the curious type and those two types don’t quite mix.
Which brings me to now. A few weeks ago, he calls me to tell me that he and his girl are having problems, and that he doesn’t think they’ll last. She’s been unfaithful, it seems. I offer an ear. He relays that on more than one occasion he’s thought that he possibly made a mistake with us (he made many. we made many). How could she do this to him? Can’t she see she’s making a mistake? I tell him she has to see on her own. Just like he did. He doesn’t know what to do, feel. He’s lost. I don’t know what else to do but listen and say it’ll be all right. But I’m saying it’ll be all right to someone who had once made me all wrong. He tells me he’s about to talk to her about how to proceed with the relationship but that he’s doubtful it’ll sustain. He’ll call me back. He doesn’t.
So the next day I phone him to make sure everything’s okay, ask how it went. They’d broken up. I listen.
A week or so later, we’re at a mutual friend’s new apartment and he tells me The Girl is engaged to the guy she’d been unfaithful with. He can’t believe it.
A couple of weeks later, he finds out she’s getting married literally in a few days…shortest engagement ever? As much as I see he’s trying to brush it off, I know it hurts terribly. I know because…well, I know.
One day a close girlfriend of mine who’s very aware of the situation asks me: “Why are you helping him when he did the same thing to you?” I don’t really have an answer except that I cannot hate him. I will not. All the time that I’d been listening to him and offering advice, yes it did occur to me that this was karma (it occurred to him too) and that perhaps he was being hypocritical. How could he be hurt by the same actions that he hurt me with? Some of his feelings—his disgust with her behavior, not being able to talk to her at all—echoed my sentiments about him. So at times it did feel weird. Why was I even listening? Should I not have? But the past is past and I’ve forgotten how to be resentful toward him anymore. We’re just friends with a beautiful thing that turned sordid but is beautiful still. Yes, I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. I gather he does now, too.
Watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Bucket List recently made me realize I’m completely terrified of growing old, forgetting what I once knew and seeing what once were the most important things in my life wither into spotty memories. In the latter movie, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, both riddled with cancer, compile a list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket” and then proceed to execute said list. They jump out of an airplane. They see the pyramids in Egypt. They go on a safari. They, in short, experience. It’s not a great movie but a perspective-filled one. At one point, Nicholson says, “We live and we die and the wheels on the bus go round and round.”
We sometimes, I think, lose sight of the living part. Yes, I want to and will have children. I want to go on Wheel of Fortune to win some money to pay off student loans. I want to write a book and etcetera, etcetera (all those things I mentioned in the post below). We always talk about the things we’d love to do, focusing more on those someday aspirations than today’s. What about what we have done? What we’ve accomplished. What have you done already? And what are you happy that you’ve done?
Me, I’ve written cover stories. I’ve started a blog. I’ve shot a gun. I’ve gone fishing. I’ve interviewed legends and inspirations, some of them my own. I’ve gone over 150 mph in a car (well, shotgun). I’ve gotten speeding tickets and, subsequently, my license suspended. I’ve gotten wasted, wished I didn’t and then did it again. I’ve seen a Black man become president. I’ve fallen in love. I’ve gotten my heart broken. I’ve gotten four tattoos and two piercings. I took one out. I’ve witnessed two marriages–my mom’s and my dad’s. I’ve gotten stung by a bee. I’ve sung in a choir. I’ve modeled and auditioned for a play (as a kid). I’ve taken ballet. I’ve inspired at least one person through my writing. I’ve played in the snow. I’ve changed my style. I’ve seen the great playwright August Wilson AT an August Wilson play months before his death.
I’ve had no regrets. So I’m thinking growing old isn’t half bad…especially the growing part.
What have you done? (Seriously…I want to hear from people lol)
BRB…
Eminem, one of my favorite rappers yes, is featured in one of Esquire‘s “What I’ve Learned” columns in its January issue. He says this:
“If you don’t overlook the fact of what you look like, then no one else will. I had a complex back then: if I get booed off stage, it’s probably because I’m white. There comes a time when you gotta stop thinking like that and just be you.”
I’ve said before that I don’t think anyone ever truly reveals all of themselves. Quiet ones secretly have a wild side, and those who are loud and boisterous have a very vulnerable side. Very few people get to view the full scope of another person, including close friends. It’s too scary. You don’t know what they do when they’re home alone or what they mutedly pine for. At some point in your life, though, being yourself becomes the most important thing in the world to you. Things you hated about you are now embraced and things you loved, proudly displayed. There’s less of a guise, less of a pretense, just you. This is what I’m after right now. Come as you are. And come from the heart.
Had to…
…means learning how to cook. I’m tryn.
While in search of the black-and-white striped unicorn that is the perfect New York apartment–specifically in Brooklyn where all the cool creative people are, I heard–I encountered a member of the holler-men species on the Q train. I’d unwisely chosen to disarm my iPod for the ride.
guy: [Taps me on arm] Hey.
lucky: [Turns head, notices dude, okay looking, discolored lips. Tries not to be superficial. Fails]
guy: You from Brooklyn? [Hood dude alert]
lucky: Nah. [Turns away]
guy: You look familiar.
lucky: Hm. [With a half nod upward. Looks away]
[Silence]
guy: Where you from?
lucky: Queens.
guy: Jamaica right?
lucky: Kinda. [Yes]
guy: Kinda, like you just be there but you not really from there?
lucky: …Yeah.
guy: Oh. Beat. What’s your name?
lucky: *Blank stare*
guy: What’s your name?
lucky:
guy: My names Shalik. I’ma tell you my name since it’s so beautiful.
lucky:
guy: Where you goin’?
lucky: Brooklyn.
guy: Whatchu goin’ to Brooklyn for?
lucky: [inaudible]
guy: I can’t hear you.
lucky: Stuff.
guy: You can’t tell me?
lucky: Nah. [I'm going to see an apartment that I probably won't like]
The train doors open. As someone passes by me to get off, I inch inward, away from the hollerman and from speaking distance. I get distracted by the subway map. Then, drifting back into consciousness, I overhear “guy” talking to another girl who’d just come on the train.
guy: Where you from…?
gal: Queens.
guy: What you goin’ to Brooklyn for?
[inaudible]
guy: I can’t wait til I get my license. I’ma act a fool when I get my license. [Then you can't tell him nothin' right?]
gal: Why don’t you have a license?
guy: I been busy doing other things-babysitting…
This is some…
I need somebody to write a dope feature on this guy. Stat.
Scruff is in, guys. I’m guessing.
?
“Can’t wear skinny jeans cause my knots don’t fit” (Hov)
