Clusterf*ck

How does a rare medical condition, a skunk attack and magic tie in together? By the end of this post you will find out.

I must admit that I always wanted to be rare and special. When I was eight-years-old my mother and I travelled to Rome and I met the then-pontiff, Pope Paul VI. Well, the meeting was not exactly intimate. He presided over a mass of thousands at the Vatican. I still remember him standing on that tiny little balcony waving to the ardor of the throng. Upon returning to home to America, I would grab my cape and staff, head out into the front yard and stand on my invisible ledge pretending each blade of grass was an adoring congregant. Ahhhhhhhhrrrr! The cheers of the crowd was defining. I was blessing them surely as the Pope had blessed me---blessed me to be special.

Life is not without irony.

Shortly after that trip, I started experiencing something that would define my youth (actually my life):  a medical condition that fulfilled my wish of being rare.  It took me 29 years before I even knew what I was suffering from had a name and that there were others like me.  Hortons Headache---or its more common name, cluster headache---is a 1-in-1,000 condition (or roughly one-tenth of one percent of the population), whereby those who suffer from it often describe it as a curse. All my life I had been prodded, x-rayed, MRI'd, had blood drawn, screened over and over to no relief. I was told it could be mini-strokes, meningitis, cancer.  All sorts of scary things. The true diagnosis was far crueler and more fitting of my personality. It was Greek in nature; Promethean, to be specific...

The myth of Prometheus is powerful.  After defying the gods by giving human beings fire, Prometheus was punished by Zeus. His judgment was exacting and horrific in scale. Prometheus was chained to a rock. Each morning, an eagle would descend to eat his organs and leave him bleeding, racked with pain and left for dead. Then, miraculously overnight, his organs would grow back only for the eagle to return the next morning. This went on for eternity.

So what does all this mishegas have to do with me? Cluster headaches are like a Promethean judgment. Everyday, at the same time, I get a headache---the most powerful, intense white-hot, suicide-tempting pain you'd ever experience. It's akin to a thief that steals your sanity and happiness. When that hour approaches you feel dread and doom. It's like torture. The few women who suffer from cluster headaches (males statistically make up the majority) say that child-bearing is less painful.

My clusters, like all clusters, are unilateral, meaning they only affect one side of the head, and, in my case, they occur on the right side. Unlike a migraine, clusters are a shock-and-awe type of pain. They start out rapture-quick and within 5-10 minutes they are at its peak, becoming an unbearable ordeal. Imagine a drill that starts boring above and slightly to the left of your right eye. And imagine this drill is blisteringly hot. Now, imagine it drilling through your skull and brain before exiting out of the back of your head near your right ear. Then come the tears. Your right eye (and only your right eye) starts to weep. Your right nostril then begins to stuff-up like you have a cold.  We're not done.  Accompanying this pain is the sensation of electricity shooting through your head. Imagine little bolts of lightning shooting from the drill. Now envision, as each bolt pops, you feel the sensation of an ice pick pierce the spot just where the lightning bolts struck. With each stab of the "ice pick" you feel as if your nervous system is shattering. Now, my friends:  imagine that is the starting point of the headache and the pain only intensifies from there. I moan, groan, rock and pace. I toggle between begging God for release and cursing him for giving me this pain. I roll and roll and wonder "why me Lord?" Why give this to me? It hurts so bad that I've beaten myself in the head with my own fists. I've used telephone receivers. In college, I used text books. I even once bit myself to distract, albeit momentarily, from the pain. Luckily, in my case, the headache lasts only 45 minutes and then it's gone almost as quickly as it came; a brief destructive tornado then the sun is back shining. By the time it's over I'm usually exhausted.

Cluster headaches are cyclical. They hit you regularly from about 2 weeks (like mine usually do) till about 2 months, then they dissapear. They won't return for weeks or even years if one is lucky. They usually start around age 20 and subside around age 50.  I've had them since I was 8---right after I wanted to be "special" after being blessed by the Pope.  Although they have seemed to taper off over the years, I am, unfortunately, still a life-long sufferer. My last bout was in 2008. This new cycle has lasted 86 days. Zeus, you sly devil: you goaded me into thinking I was safe.

Now for the skunk. Since moving back to the South to take care of my mother (who has dementia), these clusters have been attacking me as if I don't have enough on my plate. If you've ever been the sole caretaker of a person with dementia, you would agree that I need every ounce of strength and stamina imaginable. So waking up several times a night with intense pain is not conducive for the daily caregiving routine. My mother has developed a strange, inexplicable habit of putting our dog, Ricky, a playful adolescent chihuahua mix, out on the side porch in the middle of the night. Last Wednesday she followed this routine. It was 1 a.m. and I was asleep. The cluster hit. The dog was outside barking excitedly. There was a strange creature visibly lurking in the woods behind our house, just beyond the treeline. The stage was set for pure disaster.

I stumbled downstairs, still in awesome pain. I opened the side door and unleashed barking Ricky to let him back in.  He raced off into the darkness instead.  Dammit! I don't need this. I hear barks, growls, a struggle. I yell for Ricky to heel. Oh god, I hope he wasn't bitten by a racoon. They have rabies. He appears from the bushes and happily charges back up the steps. As he runs past me it hits. It hits. A SKUNK!!

"Shit!" I rasp.

I turn and chase him through the house and finally corral him into the garage. I run back upstairs to my home office and immediately jump on the Internet. I begin googling skunk+dog+clean to quickly learn what to do. Now my head is pounding, I'm tearing at the computer and the smell of skunk is rising to the upper floors. My mother pops out of her bedroom clutching the front of her robe and bleats "What in the world is that smell?!"  I shout while in my cluster pain, "The dog got skunked Ma!"

Moments later she's at her door again, clutching her robe once more. "What in the world is that smell?!?" Again, I shout, "The dog got skunked!"  A few more minutes, she comes back a third time: "What in the world is that smell?!"  Just like a cuckoo clock this goes on for several more minutes. So, gathering the googled information I needed,  I dashed to the car (which now smells like skunk too thanks to my temporarily locking the dog in the garage). Driving a little too fast and holding the side of my head cursing every deity I can think of, I venture into Wal-Mart. I grabbed a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and some baking soda and I'm forced to wait behind a family dressed in camo buying an assortment of processed lunch meats, soda, chips and beer. Mother, father, daugher and arm-baby all dressed for combat at 1:30 a.m. for some unknown reason. The man looked to be my age but had no discernible teeth and his daughter had a dirty t-shirt over her army trousers that read "I'm a Princess."

Yes you are.  But I digress.

Finally, back home, I'm out in the dark yard in my underwear washing my skunked dog in 95-degree late-night heat, all with a cluster headache. And my mother, every few minutes, has now descended to the garage level, completely forgetting the entire skunk debacle of just 30 minutes prior. She opens the door, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

Three minutes later, "Oh you're washing the dog? That's nice."

But here's where the magic happened. In the midst of all this stress I'm hit with an epiphany:  Maybe the rare things that I thought were burdens are actually tiny little blessings. Maybe if I just laugh it won't seem so insurmountable. Maybe the Pope really DID bless me (and not curse me as I've always thought)---to have these experiences surrounded by people and pets that I love. That no matter how dire the straits may be, there's always a sun to appear after the hurricane. So there I sat; in my drawers covered with skunk-smelling doggie bath water, a horrifically scary headache yet I was laughing my ass off. I have been laughing ever since. Sure, my headaches are still kicking my ass. Sure, it's still stressful looking after my dimentia-laden mother. But that night was the funniest thing that has happened to me in a long time. And it made me realize how rarely special I really am.

The stone throwing spring of Mrs. Roman

Tami Roman needn't apologize nor be ashamed of her behavior. We should be of ours.

It was over 100 degrees when I arrived in Charlotte late Friday night---a slow moving, exhaustive heat, Southern and gothic like those of my lazy, hazy childhood.  The city of Charlotte simmered under the humidity of late June's heat. The skyscrapers wavered in the distance as if they were involved in some kind of wobbly calisthenics, shimmering in the waning sunlight.  I was attending the opening of America I Am at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts+Culture where Tavis Smiley was the special guest. The spectacular exhibit chronicles centuries of Africans' accomplishments and tragedies in the western hemisphere, localizing on those of us in America. The exhibit is laid out in a coherent fashion that takes you from the chains shackled to African legs 400 years ago to the flight suits worn by modern African American astronauts who soared over the earth today. It's emotional and powerful.

After a few visits to the bar, I made a startlingly realization. My friend Sharon, who invited me, works for the Gantt and had assembled a dazzling array of guests which included artists, politicians, clergy, scientists, celebrities and business professionals---most of them black and many of whom were women; "bougie" women dressed in designer fashions evoking big city styles alongside "mother earth girls" in their natural fabrics and unprocessed hair filled the space with laughter and conversation and not a bottle of Cliquot was thrown in any direction. How is this possible that so many women of color can assemble in tight, climate-controlled spaces and not end up punching, kicking, screaming or cussing? By the end of the night they were dancing, happily together, under the languid cobalt of the evening's sky. Their voices and movements were raised to the heavens as they were each celebrating their sultry black-womaness. But this isn't possible. Black women fight every chance they get. VH1 and its hosts of Battling Negresses have proven that. Black women are incapable of peaceful discourse. Bravo sparked a cottage industry on the notion that black women can cuss and slap at the same time. Look at The Bad Girls Club. Or check your email inbox where someone has probably forwarded you a link from worldstahiphop.com, showcasing where young black women have spilled out onto the streets of Chicago, Memphis, Spartanburg, South Carolina and Kosciusko, Mississippi fighting like pit bulls in a ring inside malls, parking lots, Dairy Queens, etc.  Hell, last week I was even forwarded a video of two young women fighting in a church. 

Where has this ill-manner and discomposure come from? We can't say it's manufactured. It's been boilng under the surface for some time, maybe due to, among other reasons, the anger of isolation and invisibility that black women experience. I discussed the rampant desexualization (as well as over-sexualization) of black women at the hands of Hollywood here. The sassy black woman telling-it-like-it-is has been part of cinema and television even before Jim Crow fell. These tropes usually constitute the neck-rolling sista-cum-greek chorus of the white protagonist, telling her "Girl you betta' go afta' that man," or "Oh no you di'idn't!" But for the most part, these stereotypical women were never violent. But in the last few years that sass has turned into bash. Now comes another daughter of Sheba and she's ready to tho' dubs.

There has always been a certain cachet in the black community when it comes to violence. Many resolve issues and conflicts with fisticuffs.  Bitch!, inferred and inflicted in any fashion you may choose, has become the mot du jour compliment of this decade. This goes way beyond Omarosa's haranguing on the first season of the Apprentice. Black women now seem to want to fight everybody. Random men on the subway. Cashiers at McDonalds. Bus drivers. Each other. The list goes on and on. Have we so undervalued our women that now the spotlight has shone upon them as spectacle?  Is participation in life only acquired by verbal and physical assault?  Spartacus in Christian Loubitin battling Crixus in giant glittery earrings? YouTube, Vimeo and cellphones all record and regurgitate bad behavior to the cheers of a legion of online fans. To use an obvious pun, these videos have generated millions of hits. Literally. 

Tanisha has her own spin-off show after popping off asses on Bad Girls Club. And who can forget the oh so quotable "Bitch you’re a non-motherfucking factor!" We laud and applaud these women as if they are the millennial role models of our worlds. Gone is the courage of Harriet Tubman and Daisy Bates; the righteous anger of Angela Davis and Ruby Dee; the odds-defying accomplishments of Mildred Loving and Marian Wright Edelman. It has now been replaced with the preening, cattiness of bourgeois hellions who don't fight for freedom but fight for ratings.  Every woman has a right to be who she wants to be. If that's a scrapping diva then so be it. My fear is that this behavior has already slipped into the realm of acceptable behavior by many young people. And yes young white women fight too. Just look at any given episode of Maury or Jerry Springer. There's nothing wrong with a good girl fight. It has been a staple of melodrama since Clare Booth Luce's The Women. Who can forget Diahann Carroll's Dominique Devereux's "Thank You" slap-to-the-face of Alexis heard round the world in the now famous episode of Dynasty. This is not that kind of stylized choreography. It has a  sense of doom and tension a raised humidity when two women of color go on the attack. The mob goes wild in the arena. Others may laugh but all I see is that awful Battle Royal scene from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. 

But why must this be for so many black women? We all know the cultural phenomenon of male black-on-black violence. In my short story, Hands of Fire (included in my soon-to-be-released collection of short stories entitled Thirteen Days of May), the protagonist, a teenage boy, comes to terms with his homosexuality and muses about the violence that black men inflict on each other.

I sat dumbfounded when we were sitting in the living room of Juney’s house. My father and his father talking over “the problem."  My father suggested that we fight. Juney and me. The bully’s father, gushing with pride, said "yes" to the whole thing. Has the world gone crazy?! These are adults?! They’re supposed to be rational. But I had to remember:  reason had no hold on a black man’s mind when his son had just been called a faggot. Maybe it’s the legacy of slavery that caused our violence. We were emasculated and stripped of all semblances of humanity. The only thing we had [left] was our fists and our dicks. We could not raise those fists to massah so we brought them down on each other. The future they gave us was, if you didn’t fuck, you were queer. If you didn't fight, you were queer. Well, I could not debate the anthropological ramification of slavery now; I was 'bout to get my ass kicked by the biggest bully in the neighborhood.

But such, typically, has been in the domain of men and maleness. It was the generalization that black men won't/don't/can't strive for the best that was the underpinning to our nation's post-segregation racism. But these female fight clubs, a.k.a. reality shows, have brought something ugly to the fore---a  piston of anger and rage pummeling many of our young women. I think Ms. Roman's apology and her later talk on the legacy she leaves behind bear the fruit of how to stop this problem. America will consume both the good and bad of us individually. What we must do is to learn how to separate reality from reality tv, and educate our daughters that the consequences to bad public behavior is not your own 15 minutes of fame, but rather a lifetime of potential hurt and rejection. To use that inner strength and  power to not just say what's on your mind but to say what's right is a trait that many want but few exercise.

For you, my reality show battle-cats and wannabes, remember that your legacy should not become a 'funny-but-sad' clip on Talk Soup or Tosh.0.  You should leave not a bloody nose, but an open heart.  And for all of us opening that email right now with the subject line: FW: Hood Fights in the CHITOWN Big Girls on Deck, let us not perpetuate, instigate, celebrate or participate in our young womens'  embarrassing regression. The producers at Bravo, VH1 and Oxygen need no help doing that themselves.