Sardonic Sistah Says

This is the last day for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.  I went to no events or celebrations.  But then I’m not really surprised, this is the midwest.

This morning I woke up at 5am and was able to catch The Cheat  on TMC.  I was tired and ended up falling asleep on the last half which is sad since the movie was only an hour long. 

This past month my book blogs was dedicated to Asian books and I was very happy that those have been getting high hits.  Last time I checked one particular blog was almost 3,000 for the month but I’m not sure how it compares to other people’s blogs.  I’m just hoping that the people above will see that I’m generating a lot of interest in it and perhaps we, as in Institution, should think about maybe doing something next year for that population.  Although their numbers are small in the area they are the 2nd fastest growing ethnic group.

But the whole point of having your own month is to be able to take if for granted.  Like Black History or women’s history month.  In school I used to be like, “Awww, man, we gone learn about Harriet Tubman again?!” 

Except for the shows I pointed out to my husband he didn’t to out of the way to watch any specials on being Asian although for some reason he thinks the Spelling Bee broadcast on ESPN is one of the shows.    Hmmm….

What does it take to make a sweet ordinary young black girl metamorph into a screaming black banshee full anger and suspicion? 

There’s truth to every stereotype.  It might not apply to the group as a whole but there’s a good percentage of people who roam the earth whose job it must be to help confirm the stereotypes for others.  Like when you are in a majority white audience and throughout the crowd there are some who clap off the beat and it throws others off.  The black people in the audience (if they can clap on beat) will give each other knowing looks. 

Or its like meeting an Asian American who excels in school and got a full ride to M.I.T.  Or you walk past a home that has a few caddies up in the yard and a group of Spanish speaking people walk out the door. 

A person may encounter it, file it away and for the rest of their life use it as their point of reference when dealing with people who may fall in that group.  Its hard for them to change it, even when confronted with an image that goes agains the stereotype.  The stereotype, which is sometimes negative, will always remain the measuring stick and the other anomalies.

“Yo, Winston, what’s the square root of 9628?”

“I don’t know.  I suck at math that’s why I’m a dance major.”

“Really, huh.  I thought Asians were good at math.”

Its really the problem of the other person.  The other person being so stupid and lazy that instead of getting to know you as a person, you as an individual that instead they would rather take characteristics of someone they met and project it on to you and everyone that might look like you, share your culture or share your community.  But then  a lot of people begin to do it and what was once a bad stereotype becomes an indicator of your subset/group.  First, people in the group refer to it as a joke (Oh, you know we come on CP time) until its said so often that people begin to believe that its true and a genuine phenotype of themselves and their group (I’m late?  You know black folks run on CP time).  Some within the group begin to claim the stereotype and call it true for themselves if its positive or use it against others (or themselves) in the group even if its negative.

I am not the stereotype of a black woman but sometimes people behave if I am.  I am overly acquiescent.  Sometimes I comply too quickly.  I bite my tongue when sometimes I should say what is on my mind. 

But then its hard trying to be that person: to be soft and female when you know its seen as a weakness.  I had friends who had ‘tudes. Being around them sometimes was too hard.  They were insecure and would sometimes take the simplest things as slights.  They didn’t want anyone getting over on them, no matter what, and would sometimes cuss someone or, if things got really heated, take to fighting.  In youth it was okay but as I got older the drama and the walking on eggshells in some conversations got to be a bit much.  One day I got off the phone with one of my friends and thanked God I wasn’t a lesbian. 

I understand why we scream.  We want to be heard and we feel like we aren’t being heard.  We want to be seen because sometimes we feel invisible.  We are uncomfortable in our lives, in our space, in our bodies, so why should we afford someone else comfort when they are the ones causing the pain?  We’ve been messed with and we don’t want to be messed over anymore; who is going to try to take advantage of the strong, loud black woman who isn’t afraid to cuss you out?  Our primal yell is our strength.

But really it isn’t.   Going by health statistics black women live longer than black men but not as long as white women.  Perhaps its because we have a heavy load with no one to help us tote it.  So although we may be more outspoken than our white counterparts it doesn’t seem to help us live longer.

It also doesn’t seem to help get much changed either.  We are angry but that hasn’t seemed to have changed the state of the black community.  Quite a few black men seem to be at a quandry about what to do.  They are looking for a leader although they aren’t necessarily looking to us to help with the role.  For those black men who are trying to help the job is daunting considering how small they are in numbers.

Our anger isn’t working.  Our nagging isn’t working and my mama says God answers prayers but you have to be willing to work to make it happen.  Isn’t it time we got up off our knees and became the solution instead of the question?  Besides, sore throats don’t carry voices across generations.

Black men and women should institute a “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” rule when it comes to interracial relationships.  Black women shouldn’t care about who black men are dating, but they do.  If the black male is not dating you then it shouldn’t matter who they are with and why they are with them.  I don’t think I have ever known a black woman to question a black an about the black woman they are dating.  If she’s black (light, medium, or dark) and with a cute guy other women may mean mugg her or try to stare her down because women can be petty but rarely will the guy get the inquisition about his choice of mate.

Why is this?  Its because in the black community dating can be political.  For a long time black women have kept to the colorline while black men crossed back and forth tasting the rainbow.  There are some black men who appreciate the racial fidelity of black women because when it comes to (mating/procreating/dating –you pick your word) any man of any color would like to have a wider field to choose from.  So for them to have black women as a safety net benefits the small number of black men who like to play the field way past the point that anyone with any sense would have settled down. 70% is the number that is being bandied around this year as the number of single black women of marrying age.  I think I might pull that down to maybe 65 or 68% because some of us might not want to be married (or married to a male).  But still it’s pretty high. 

Black women are wondering why the number is so high.  We are looking at ourselves (are we overeducated?  too overbearing?  too defined in our ownselves?) and we are looking at them (too many are in jail/uneducated/on the DL/want white women). 

Black men have some reasons why the high number– for us.  They will say we are too loud, we are too brash, we are too independent, we are too fat.  Never is the question asked about how many of them are unattached.  For black women and black men the focus is kept on the women.  We didn’t need for staticians to divulge that many of us were single, we already knew.  Which is why we have been mad and berating the black males we see on the street for crossing over to the white side.

And then we want to know why.  In our minds its simple: if the white woman is a bit overweight its because her skin is white.  If she’s thin its because her skin is white.  If she’s pretty or smart or dumb or ugly its because of her skin; for us it all boils down to he’s with her because she’s white and we, too, can be  all those of those things he’s attracted to in her but he didn’t choose one of us, he chose one of them. 

There are some men who are that shallow, who only assess the containment of a female and not what’s within because he doesn’t see the woman as a person but as an object.  A few of these men who exclusively date white women will then slur us behind our backs to them, degrading our beauty and our intelligence as they uphold anothers just because of race.  Any woman with any sense would see that this man is not a prize for neither black women nor white women.

But then there are some men who will say they are in love with the whole person.  They were attracted to her physically and then grew to love the person inside.  They may have dated all sorts of women but she is the one he ended up with.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what these men have to say about why they chose to love the woman they are with because in the long run they are off the market to viable, intelligent, worthy black women.  Why wonder about what’s not for you?  Why let it hurt you?  A few years ago on an interracial forum I used to have a black woman went off on a black male because of a disagreement they had over something simple and suddenly she wrote,” Why are you even responding to me?  Aren’t you married to an Asian woman?  Go talk to her!”  The black woman herself was engaged to a white male and claimed to have been in several interracial relationships.  But it was apparent to a lot of people on the board that the idea of bm interracial dating upset her.  I wondered if she dated interracially because she was interested in the men or if it was for spite. 

When black women see a black male with a non-black female they shouldn’t sweat it.  It doesn’t diminish our beauty no matter what reasons any particular male has for dating out.  People have the right to choose to love whom they want to love and not have it become a statement on who they are.

I remember when Romeo Must Die came out and a lot of people on the black/Asian message boards were upset because there was no clincher kiss at the end of the movie.  Rumors spread why Jet Li and Aaliyah didn’t kiss: he was allergic to her lipstick, Asians wouldn’t like it, black people wouldn’t like it –stupid stuff.  But most of the people on the black female/Asian male message boards wanted to see a romantic ending with Jet Lie and Aaliyah clutched in an embrace.

If you watched The Slanted Screen  on PBS this month you found out why.

And Gene Cajayon, the Filipino American director of the 2001 film “The Debut,” the first Fil-Am movie to be released nationwide in the United States, talks about the revised ending for the action movie “Romeo Must Die,” a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” where the R&B star Aaliyah plays Juliet to the Chinese actor Jet Li’s Romeo. The original ending had Aaliyah kissing Li, a scenario that didn’t test well with an “urban audience.” So the studio changed it. The new ending had Aaliyah giving Li a tight hug. Says Cajayon, “Mainstream America, for the most part, gets uncomfortable with seeing an Asian man portrayed in a sexual light.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402573.html

So it perhaps it was racially motivated but I’m betting anything it didn’t come from black or Asian camps.  I may be hedging bets but something tells me they probably tested the movie to mostly white audiences and the white audiences in selected markets and they were probably uncomfortable with a consumated love connection between the two.  I don’t know whether it was more that Aaliyah was black or that Jet Li is Asian or the thought of the two hooking up just seemed implausible but whichever way it went down it made it end with the oddest hug between them.  All through the movie you got the vibe they were feeling each other and fallling in love and then at the end she cradles his face and hugs him.  Uh huh.  Yeah. 

I wonder if they remade the movie today if it would have the same ending.  I’m awaiting the premiere of Akira’s Hip Hop Shop  starring James Kyson Lee.  I can admit I’m interested in seeing the movie because I’m in a similar combination, but hey, everyone wants to see a reflection of themselves out in the world even the smallest of categories.

It was a beautiful fall day a few years ago when I decided to go on a 7 mile run after I dropped my daughter off to play rehearsal.  It was late in the day but I figured I could get my run done before the sun began to set around 6pm.  I drove my car out to the far west side of town to Miami Whitewater to run their beautiful trail.

I was less than a mile from the stopping point when I saw something up ahead of me on the path.  First it was just a few but as some left more came and just stood there looking at me.  My pace slowed and eventually I stopped as I looked at the animals.  There was no one else on the trail; it was only me and these large animals I thought were deer but I was unsure.  I thought to myself, they can’t be wild dogs or coyotes because they would have come after me but if they are deer why aren’t they seeing me and clearing off the path?  I was standing several yards away from, dusk was coming in and the animals were standing stock still and staring at me.  I’ll admit, I got punked off the path.

I thought I could walk down the road and wind up at the end by the parking lot.  But, no.  Not to happen.  I wandered around aimlessly in the boonies for over an hour and a half.  There were no sidewalks, no signs and, even worse, no black faces.  A guy in a pick up came and asked me if I had lost my way off the path and if I wanted a ride and I quickly told him no thanks.  I wondered how close I was to the Indiana border and where the effe were the police cars.  If they wanted to pick me up for suspicion on the cause of being black I would have gladly jumped in the back if it could have gotten me to my car quickly.

Soon I was away from the woods and in a residential area.  Finally I thought I could get some directions and hopefully a shortcut back to my car.  I began knocking on doors but no one would answer.  It was a Sunday night, about 6 pm so maybe they were still at church.  Finally I came to a house and a man answered the door.  He told me to go back the way I came and quickly shut the door in my face. 

I’m headed back the way I came.  It was completely dark and only the light of the moon and an occasional street lamp lit my way.  I wondered if I was going to be found dead on the side of the road run over by a car.  I thought about how long it would take to find and identify my body and who would get custody of my daughter.  I also tried to strategize a way back to my vehicle without having to go back through the woods when God sent a SAINT my way.  It was a young mother with kids in the back.

“Have you lost your way off the path?” she asked. 

I was on the verge of tears when I told her I had.  She offered me a ride back to my car and told me it happened quite a lot around there.

On my way back to the car the path was completely dark but you can feel the eyes on you.  Every now and again the van’s headlights illuminated a spot in the woods and there were hundreds of eyes peering at us from behind the trees.  There were groups of deer just staring at us, watching us and (I felt as if they were) waiting.

I got back to my car safe.  You don’t know how happy I was.  I thanked the woman profusely and I still send out blessings her way because I was scared out of my mind.  My cell phone was in my car as always because I never carry it when I go out for a jog and it held a couple of messages from my daughter who wanted me to know play rehearsal was ending an hour early at 8pm.  It was after 7 already, I had been lost in the area for a little over two hours.

 As I drove out of the park I kept my eyes on the road and not up the hills into the trees but I knew they were there watching me.

When I picked my daughter up I told her my story and she laughed at me.

“You were punked out by deer?” she was in disbelief and laughing at me.

“They were menacing deer,” I said.  “I don’t know if they were really deer, they could have been coyotes.”

“It was deer,” she said chuckling at me.

At the time J and I had just started a relationship and I immediately went home and called him to find solace.

“You left the path because of deer?” he said.  What is wrong with people?  Deer are some big-ass animals.  They have hooves and horns.  They are mean. 

“They were going to attack me,” I said.  “They were mean mugging me.  They just stood looking at me like ‘Yeah, whassup, b’.  They were waiting for me.”

He just laughed at me.  “They could have been wild dogs! It could have been coyotes.”

“What did their tails look like?”

“I …. think they were short and white… But it was from far away.  I couldn’t be sure.”  J started to laugh harder and tried to reassure me it was deer and I was safe.

So, yesterday I had to work the Taste of Cincinnati and I had the bright idea for my daughter and I to walk from downtown to her grandmother’s house in Walnut Hills.  I told my daughter I knew a shortcut which would help us bypass walking up the big long hill of Gilbert Ave and take us up a steep hill in Mt. Adams.  From there we would cut through Eden Park  and then be in Walnut Hills.

We had just left the steep hill where my daughter was berating me for my crazy short cuts that was killing her calves and rounding the street around Playhouse in the Park when my daughter spotted them.

“There go your friends,” my daughter said.  She was pointing to two deer that was under a shelter nibbling on grass.  She thought she was being funny to bring up the incident that happened about three years ago but I have learned my lesson.

“Let’s cross the street,” I said.  A van passed by with a black dude who looked at us and then the deer and back at us.  He laughed at us.  F him, I thought.  He’s in a car.  That’s when a doe looked over at us and stared.

“Come on, come on lets cross the street,” I said.  Reluctantly my daughter crossed the street with me but then we looked back and noticed the doe was following us.

“Its following us,” my daughter said.  I told her to come on and began to quicken my pace.  The deer followed us across the street and we began to walk down the path that lead to the Pavillion.  Eden Park is an inner city park and the pavillion benches had left over bags of fast food.

“I thought that was someone lying on the bench,” my daughter said but I was moving fast.  This time I had my cellphone on me and I called, of all people, J. He didn’t pick up.  Cricket had on gym shoes and I had on sandals and we were both a bit tired from the trip up the hill but found a second wind to breeze quickly past the benches and rounded the pavilion.

“Ma, they are running after us,” my daughter said.  She had looked back one more time.   ”They are coming around the other side.” 

My daughter began to run and my cell rang.  It was J.

“The deer are after us!” I screamed into the phone.  “Cricket!  Cricket stop running they will chase you!”

“The deer aren’t after you,” J said.

“Yes, they are!  Yes they are!”

“Where are you at?”

“Eden park.”

“They aren’t coming after you,” he said reassuringly.  By that time I was closer to mirror lake.  They hadn’t rounded the corner and Cricket stopped running but a far distance ahead of me.  I know if they caught up with me she’d leave me behind in the dust.

“Why are you calling me?  What can I do? ” he asked.  “Why didn’t you call 911?” He was being snarky.

“Next time I will,” I said and hung up the phone.

We were walking past mirror lake and talking excitedly.

“I didn’t believe you before,” she said.  “You have to be in it to believe it.”  But as we moved further away from the deer she began to hypothosize about what made them come after us.  They could smell our fear, they wanted the leftover food, or they remembered me from the other side of town and wanted to get me.

“You have bad karma,” my daughter said.  “The deer want to get you.”

Its hard to believe that deer are dangerous.  Usually when we think of them we visualize them hightailing it away from us or remember the movie Bambi.  But with suburban sprawl and fewer hunters deer are losing their fear of humans and attacks are on the rise.  As much as Americans like to Disney-fy animals we have to realize that they are wild creatures, not docile animals for human enjoyment.

“Disney lied to us,” my daughter said as we neared her grandmother’s house.  “They have you thinking they are all sweet and nice, but they aren’t.  I’m glad Bambi’s mother got killed.  And I’m no friend of Thumper anymore either.”

A few years back  my friend Lonnie was asking me advice about what to do about our friend Tonya.  Tonya asked Lonnie to go on a double date with her which Lonnie agreed to since she was single.

“Gurrrrrl,” she said rolling her eyes.  “I am so mad at her.  This guy was horrible, he was crass, and then I had to pay for the date.  She called me up the other day saying “He likes you.  Can I give him your number?’  I’m like hell no, I can’t believe you did this to me.  Nay, I can’t even tell you all the stuff that went on because I am so upset, but what does she think of me?”

“Did he just get out of prison?” I asked.

“That’s not funny,” Lonnie set her eyes straight on me and gave me an angry look I’ve never seen on her before.  “Why would you ask that?”

“Oh, its just that someone told me she liked to write to men from prison.  You know, because the number of good black men is hard to find.”  The problem also might be that Tonya is very overweight.  Lonnie also is college educated and a bit chunky, but unlike Tonya her weight is in curvy proportion and she often comes off like a playful sexkitten to men at times.  She owns her own home and is known for being a bit spoiled.  After I mentioned the prison guys Lonnie’s emotions went from disbelief to highly pissed in a matter of seconds.

“Wha the— WHAT?  She better not have fixed me up with a prison guy.  Who told you she dates prison guys?”

“I thought you knew?  You used to work with her –I don’t even work with her and I knew.”

“Gurl, oh, hell no.” Lonnie began shaking her head.

“Just ask her if dude was from prison and so no to the next date,” I said.

“Uh.. duh!”

I guess this is where we are in the dating world.  Black women, who feel they aren’t as much in demand because they feel they are too dark or too old or overweight so they have lowered (or abandoned) their standards to have a man.  I remembered when I was shocked when I learned a relative had remarried to a guy she met while she was doing prison missionary work with the church.  Her children were teens at the time and were out the door as soon as they came of age.  The relatives marriage to the ex-con only lasted a few years and now she’s single.

I know some will point at examples like this and think that these black women have low self esteem, but I think its also shows that we have low estimation of one another.  Black women have low opinions of black men because we think most of them are parolees and the ones that are of higher calibre don’t want us.  Black men think that we are desperate and willing to accept anything.  And with many feeling this way it becomes a self fulling prophecy. 

Looking at the battlefield in the war of the sexes between bm and bw it seems as if bm have won this battle but just slightly.  By bm accepting the low view bw have of them it encourages them to not do better for themselves and up to their bad reputation.  BW need to be more like my friend Lonnie, who loves herself unconditionally and no matter what image the media is selling she knows she’s a dime.  Many black women claim to know they are all that but then sell themselves short when it comes to finding a man who matches them as well as cherishes them.

When I was younger I dated a guy who went to jail.  It was an off again on again thing and even at the time I wasn’t even sure why I was with him besides the fact my friends pushed me to be with him (that’s a whole other post).  He was locked up in jail for drinking and driving and he called me up to come see him.  I mentioned it to my friends, who of course had men who had also went to jail and they encouraged me to go see him.  And I went.  I had a guy who liked me drive me there and I spent the whole time laughing at him, telling him his curl was effed up (it was 1988, the curl was still in) and telling him not to drop the soap.  It was over for me after that.  I didn’t care for the idea of being a moll.  My girlfriends would get their letters from their locked up boyfriends and the letters were usually 5-10 pages long.  One friend’s envelope had a drawing of unicorns and rainbows on it and she felt so touched.  She still has that damn letter to this day along with a deep resentment for black man and a mantra that black men ain’t shit.  She’s also unmarried and bitter. 

The whole idea of having a man who is locked up really gets to some women.  One, they know where he is and two they know he’s not cheating on them (they hope).  Three, men locked away get reflective and romantic.  They begin to write long, soppy love letters confessing their innermost thoughts and writing professions of love.  Sometimes they are writing the same letters to other women, too, but you don’t know because you can’t see that. All you see is the long letter and the emotions behind it.  Sometimes you might find out if you go to visit him in jail and see someone else’s name on the roster who has come to visit him.  So, for all you know all he’s doing is thinking of you and counting off the days until you are together again.  Oh yeah, and four, he’s lifting weights and because he’s lifting weights he will come home to you with a really nice body.

For all that comfort and loving feelings you have to pay.  You have to pay to receive phone calls from him.  If the guy needs toiletries, cigarettes or snacks some women send money for those things.  Sometimes the guy wants shoes or something else from the prison store so they ask their girlfriends for money there, too.

Once I went with my friend Grace to go see the first of several boyfriends who would end up locked away.  This boyfriend was put in the Justice Center for receiving stolen goods.  A few years later he would go to a jail out of the county for robbing people.  Her boyfriend Joe was funny and charming even behind the glass.  I was naive then and almost completely believed his story that he didn’t know the items were stolen.

“Come on now, you ain’t know they were hot?” I joked with them.  “Didn’t they burn your hand?  You need a good lawyer, we have to get you a good lawyer.”

“She’s funny, Grace,” Joe said.  “You want me to hook you up with one of my boy’s in here?”

“No, that’s okay.”

As we were leaving the justice center Grace looked up to wave good-bye to Joe about 6 or 7 stories up.  A group of men  on nearly every floor were pressed up against the window like puppies in a pet store.  Joe was motioning to a friend beside him and then pointing downward at us.

“What is he doing?” I asked. 

“You wanna give his boy your number?”  Grace said.

“Yeah, okay,” I said wimping out although I really didn’t want to.  She motioned out my phone number and then we left.  A few days later when I came home from work my irate mother met me at the door.

“What is someone doing calling our house collect from the Justice Center?” my mother fumed.

“We were walking past the Justice Center and Grace gave out my number to a guy in a window,” I conveniently lied.  “I said no.” I did say no, but then gave in asked me again.  I never planned to talk to the guy and stood there in entrance way embarassed and ashamed.

“Don’t you ever give your number to someone in jail again,” my mother said.  “And you need to think about who your friends are.”

The last prison boyfriend Grace had was the one who broke away a large chunk of her trust in men.  She had met the guy in church, even became friends with his mother and things were going well until he went to LA to pursue a music career.  With one hit single and a shelved album his group broke up and he moved to NY to continue the career.  There he hit on hard times and decided to turn to pimping and thugging to help make ends meet.  While on the street one day he was jacked for his money by a different crew.  A pregnant girl was driving the get-away car and he had grabbed hold of the door and was dragged along with the car while punching the driver in the face.  The police caught them and arrested everyone including the singer turned pimp.

When he was locked up he called my friend a lot and wrote to her a lot.  He told her about the connections he made while in jail (at the time a prominent rapper was on his cell block) and how he was going to come back for her once he cut his new album with the rapper.   Grace began talking to his mother every so often and when he got out on parole he was only able to make a trip home for a funeral but he was able to see my friend Grace.  A few weeks after that a girl called Grace’s home saying she was the singer/pimp/thug’s girlfriend.  She had found Grace’s number and the letters she wrote to him while he was in prison.  She wanted to know what was up and let Grace in on the real deal.

“I’m the one who went to see him every day in jail,” the girl told her.  “I’m the one who sent him money to buy what he needed and I’m the one paying the rent while he tries to find money.  I’m here, you’re there and I’d appreciate it if you would leave my man alone.”

Grace left him alone after that and really hasn’t dated anyone since then.  Grace is pretty. Her weight varies but generally hovers around a size 12.  She’s intelligent and attractive but always had a thing for thug boys to her own detriment.  After the singer pimp she gave up on men and had embarked on a seven year journey of celibacy.

There are no fairy tales and rarely do imprisoned men who get released come out and make excellent husbands.   But it still hasn’t stopped Tonya from catalog shopping for a man in prison.  And sometimes when I’m on the number 4 bus I will see girls walking down Central.  They hear a noise and look up staring at the windows above.  One girl will hold up her hands, changing the digits on her fingers and mouthing the words.  And up in the windows probably more than one guy is taking down her number and for a small price she can speed date in the comfort of her own home.

I ran into my friend Trey the other day and we got into a discussion about how R. Kelly should go to jail (he disagreed), why black men who are gay should just come out the closet (he disagreed with that also) and the state of black gay males in the city. 

I told him about this young boy who comes into the library from time to time.  I usually will ask him how school is going and then chastize him for getting suspended.  He likes to tell me stories if I believe them.  For some reason he wants me to believe he’s almost 18 but I can tell he’s only 12/13.  I know he’s gay.  Or as gay as you can be when you are that age. But when he hits his late teens he will definitely be in the gay demographic.

Last weekend he came up to the desk and did his dramatic flop against it.  We again debated his age and then a phone call came through and he walked away.  He came back an hour later, telling a story but looking for advice.  When he rushes through a story he likes to make a smacking noise with his tongue at the roof of his mouth.

“There’s this person that I like and I told this person I ain’t wanna be with them (smack) cause my friend said don’t get with them (smack).  But then I just found out some stuff about my friend (smack) and my friend lied.  Now I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do.”

Then he just kept repeating he didn’t know what to do.  I noted he said he said he liked a “person” and not a girl.  Not a boy.

“Well, you know, if that person still likes you things will work out.   Talk to your friend; you don’t want to lose them.”

Yeah, I know.  You could get better advice from a fortune cookie.  I wanted to say you  don’t need to be dating, you’re only 12(!) and you need to stop getting expelled from school before they have you down at the slow learners high school.  You need to worry about getting the hell up outta this damn bigoted city. 

But I thought it was best to be supportive.

So I asked Trey if they had programs for young gay and lesbians kids in the inner city schools.  He said he didn’t think they did.  I know at one local high school they have a program for GLBT students.  But there isnt’ an outreach group for young black poor kids and they need it.

Trey said, “You can’t come out if you live in (economically depressed black neighborhoods).  I know; I live there.  It ain’t like living in the suburbs; ain’t nobody going to be supportive.  They’re going to beat your ass.  I’ve seen it where I live.”

What is the sex talk that is given to young black gay and lesbian teens.  Besides, don’t do it, you’ll go to hell.  We used to have a crew of young black gay males who skipped school and hung in here.  Perhaps one of the reasons a small group of young black gay males drop out of school is because they can’t hide who they are.  Or they don’t want to hide who they are.  But the black community isn’t open to homosexuality.  For males its seen as a weakness, but to some the strongest images a lot of them get in their homes and hoods aren’t necessarily the dope boys on the corner but their mothers and grandmothers struggling to hold it all together and most boys aspire to strength.

But then where do they have to turn?  A lot of their families won’t accept them and the majority of black churches preach against homosexuality as a sin.  So if you are a young black male who happens to be gay the message you are getting from home and from church (your places of solace) is that you are sinful or the way you are living is wrong.  Occasionally we have crews of  black gay teens hanging out at the library.  One particular group looks kind of thuggy gays and a young boy named Dante I knew from church started hanging around the older boys.  I had known him since he was in early grade school and I was shocked when he came in one day running with the wild boys.  The guards usually kept an eye on the bunch because they suspected them of stealing, maybe tricking, and just basically cutting up or fighting with the straight teens outside the door.  I called his minister who also happened to be my best friend, Vee. 

“You know, Dante is hanging around with these rough crew of boys… I think they’re gay and ….”

“I already know,” Vee said.  “One of the girls from the church said she saw him down at the library and that he was with the gay boys.”  Vee then proceeded to blame the whole experience on Dante’s upbringing.  For a while Dante and his sister would spend a lot of time at Vee’s house.  But recently his father was released from jail and said the church was a bad influence on him so he forbid him to go back.  His mother had “issues” off and on but generally acquiesced to the father.

“So Nay, he’s looking for love.  This is why he’s hanging with those kids.  He knows he’s wrong which is another reason why he won’t come back.  But when you see him again I want you to do something for me.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Tell him that I love him and God loves him.  And homosexuality is wrong.”

“Look, I’m not going to do that,” I said. 

“Then just tell him to call me.  I’ll tell him.”

The young gay black males I see remind me of the short story, Proper Library by Carolyn Ferrell.   In the story a young gay 14 year old boy struggles with being gay in an atmosphere that is unaccepting.  His family is in denial about who he is and he feels he can’t be gay and attend school at the same time.  Around him his peers are sexually charged but he can’t equate love and sex with what he does.

In the black community many people live by the mantra that you have boys and raise girls.  Where we talk to our girls about the perils of sex (bad boys, pregnancies, STDs, the idea of purity through abstinance) a lot of time the boys just get the speeded up version where we highlight using condoms to avoid STDs and pregnancies.  We expect our sons to have numerous sexual encounters although we oddly assume it will be with girls while we hope our daughters won’t adopt the same behavior.  So if straight boys are given the impression that having sex with a lot of girls is just sewing their wild oats wouldn’t gay boys use the same mindset in their sexual activities?  Although some might not be getting the message to wrap it up or they might not want to prepare for gay sex because in preparing for it they would have to actually admit to themselves that they are gay.

So basically, with a demographic group that no one is looking out for but many reports are being written about gay black males slip through the cracks and get lost  the most and no one is looking for them.   No one wants to acknowledge they exist.

“No, ” said Trey.  “There’s no mentoring of younger gays from older gays.” Then he became circumspect and started wondering aloud if he could do something and what was actually in his power to accomplish.  As I sit listening to him I wonder the same thing of myself but think about my commitment to my family, my time to myself and I know neither one of us will probably never do a thing.

A few years ago I was having dinner with my friend Bri when he began to lament his propects on the dating scene.

“I tell you, Nay, its hard out there for a guy like me to get a date,” Bri opined while buttering his bread.  “No one is dating white men anymore.  No one!  You like Asian guys, Bethany likes black guys, Trace is dating the hispanics and Rachel is living with an Austrian.”

“But Austrians are white…”

“Yeah, but its not the same thing,” he quipped and went on and on about the plight of the diminishing white male on the dating scene.

I want to feel sorry for him.  I do.  Science Fiction has promised us a lot of things that its reneged on.  Like jet packs, our own personal flying cars, interplanetary travel and, for white men, the joy of macking all across the galaxy.  When Captain Kirk was locking lips with every green, purple and polka dot honey across the galaxy (accept he had to be forced to kiss Lieut’ Uhura, but I’ll save it for another post) I’m sure every young hetero white boy was watching the screen and thinking of their own manifest destiny, if not across the universe but at least across the globe.

But for Bri he claims that’s just not happening right now.  I think he’s just feeling a bit sorry for himself because on the superficial dating hierarchy his category (SWM) may not be at the top but it’s definitely not at the bottom.  But it appears there are a lot of SWM feeling the same way as Bri and they are not going to take it anymore even if they have to start a 12 step group to do it.

Someone the other day pointed me to White Males Anonymous, which is a group for white males who want to,  in my estimation, take back their sexual dominance across the planet.  The hottest women, be they black, white, yellow, brown, or red belong to them.   They sit back and think about the days before the women’s movement and posture how white women are the ones who in the biggest IR dating group although all stats show that AF/WMs have the biggest numbers.

The site says its against racism (kudos for that) but I can’t help but feel that women are viewed a bit like chattel and get an overwhelming sense of self pity.  With all things beginning to level off (accept for Black Women and Asian Men) in the IR dating field won’t there be some people that will come out the losers on all sides if they don’t step up their game?  If Waldo doesn’t get the perfect abs (or at least a good IRA) won’t he lose out to Tyrone the baller or Wen-cho the tax accountant?

In a recent study it showed that most women want to date within their own racial groups, especially black women.  Most men had to earn more than the men in their racial group before most of the women would consider dating out.  So its not necessarily women looking at men for their looks, but for security, which is what we have done throughout history.

I ran into Bri today.  He’s still single, but I think he likes to be single.  The last time he cried the whoa is me song an Asian girl took him home for the night.  She didn’t see him again because he wasn’t in the right financial bracket.

So, if you want to see what my other blogs have been like then find me on MySpace.   Personally, I like to start with a clean slate so you might to just want to read the next entry.