I stood my ground

We are at this table yet again. Unintended invitees to a bitter soup served cold. The best kind of revenge they say. Of course I'm talking about the Jordan Davis murder trial. By now we know all the players and they know their lines. A white man with expressed racial bias comes across an unarmed black teenager and assumes him threatening. The white man demands fealty from the black teenager who bucks back. Heated words are exchanged and the toxic mix of lax gun laws, moronic bravado and good old American-style racism leaves the teenager dead. Then the outrage comes, the trial, the verdict and more outage after the verdict. On and on ad infinitum forever and ever amen.

Since last week a lot of people have discussed how anybody would be confused on finding Michael Dunn, Jordan Davis' murderer anything built guilty. How a white man who routinely uses racial slurs and stated he hated black people can put on a sweater vest and be transformed into Mr. Rogers; while all black men no matter what their station in life are Willie Horton. Gangsters. Thugs. Gang bangers. Violence an immutable trait coiled under our very surface. A russet dermis overlaying a truculent soul.  We are always dangerous. We are always the villain. The killer of Susan Smith's children, the shooter of the banker with the dead pregnant wife on the Charles River Bridge and just recently the man who shot himself then lied and told the police a black male attacked him. It's an all too easy excuse. I mean it has been proven that black men can weaponize anything. That we are all a hare's breath from the long arm of the law.

I had just returned from working in India for about four months. I returned to work that Friday afternoon. There were several new employees. I was introduced to them as their manager when the oddest thing happened. I was speaking with one of the new hires, a charming woman that reminded me greatly of Diane Wiest, when she saw the hint of my tattoo peeking from behind the sleeve of my polo shirt. She asked "Is that a tattoo?"

"Yes," I said.

"May I see it?" I pulled up my sleeve. She looked at it. "I used to volunteer at a youth center in Newark and I used to work with a lot of ex-gang members. All of their prison tattoos had meanings. Were you in a gang?"

"Do I look or sound like I've ever been in a gang?"

"Well I don't know. You are black. I think." she smiled at her own deduction. It took every fiber of my being to not break out singing "America!" from West Side Story complete with Jerome Robbins choreography. "I was a member of the Northside Quips," I snapped, "where blood and glitter ran in the streets after every rumble." She just stared at me for a moment, my shade lost upon the train wreck of her mind.

A few weeks later during our annual evaluation period she wrote in her review, in true conservative fashion, that God lead her to understand the job, and I assume ostensibly me, treated her like a slave and she was nobody's n-word. I fired her on the spot.

These kinds of interactions are what black parents are talking about when they give their children "The Talk."

The Talk is the conversation that some black parents have with their children, primarily boys as they reach puberty. Because once a black boy grows pubic hair he's no longer cherub-cheeked Arnold Jackson (Gary Coleman) he's darkened by Photoshop OJ Simpson. For us as black men there's no transitional period. We don't get to use youthful exuberance as an excuse for reckless behavior. We don't have a nation rally behind us when we've been caught stealing street signs and sentenced to a public ass whoopin'. We get shot. Or arrested at staggering numbers. So our parents have to give us "The Talk." To make sure that we are aware that America does not afford us an even playing field. That in many cases the field is slanted to make it harder for us to even get on it. That when you go about your life that there are going to meet people fearful of you for no reason. That they may harm you. That you simply being alive proves a greater threat than influenza or their drunk husband. So be careful of furtive movements. Make sure your car's inspection and registration is current and up to date. Don't loiter in predominately white neighborhoods. Don't give the police a reason to arrest you or worse. Don't give that white lady walking her dog any reason to shout rape. Don't give that teacher any reason to send you to the principal for back-talk.

In full disclosure: I didn't get The Talk.

And you know what? I'm glad I didn't. From the time I was a small child my mother and father told me I could be whatever I wanted to be and go anywhere in this world that I wanted to. There was no limitations on my progress or my imagination. There was no talk of averting eyes. There was no mincing of words. When I got a grade of unsatisfactory in behavior in fifth grade it wasn't because I misbehaved. It was because I argued with my teacher who erroneously said the Civil War was fought over state's rights. I corrected her.  My parents told me to boldly step forward. They didn't teach me to be fearful or subservient. But to speak my mind and follow my heart. So when President Obama said that he could have been Trayvon I understand that he means it not in a literal sense. But in a sense that he would never run from a white man questioning him or his purpose in any neighborhood. I've been pulled over by police on my way home to my mother's house when I was just out of college. The white police officer asked me what I was doing in "this neighborhood" as if to imply the impossibility that I could actually live along a tree-lined street of stately homes. I didn't tell him I lived nearby. Why should I have to? Instead I told him that as a tax-payer I can drive my car anywhere I wanted in Winston-Salem. And if he had no other reason to stop me then he should let me go on about my business. We as black men are under constant surveillance. So our well meaning parents try to prepare us for life and safety. But as Tonyaa Weathersbee stated on The Root this week that keeping black children safe is making it okay for some whites to be racist.  

Let's put these recent murders into perspective. Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were in a place that they had a legal right to be. They were not committing a crime. They had no duty to retreat when confronted by an attacker or angry motorist. They had the right to meet force with force. They had the right to use deadly force if they reasonably thought their life was in danger. They had the right to stand their ground. But in America it is unreasonable to think that an unarmed black man is the victim and not the aggressor.

Facebook hates me

Apparently Facebook thinks my life sucks. It told me so in a neat 1:02 video. For its tenth anniversary Facebook is allowing all its user the joy of watching their digital life over the last decade from the point they joined Facebook. I've seen several "Look Backs." All those smiling faces of friends and family. Trips and birthdays. It was like each pixel was filled with a tiny bit of e-love. As the oh-so-clever music rose to a crescendo I not only felt pangs of joy I was overcome at how full and enriched my Facebook friends lives are. So I eagerly did mine own. I clicked the play button. And for the next sixty-two seconds I was horrified. Here flashing before me were images of 30-year old college pictures, coworkers from jobs long gone, renovations to my mother's house and only one picture of me anywhere. Where were my friendly smiles. Where were my friends. Where were the pictures I posted from Cancun? Milan? Frankfurt? That New Year's eve party or that small dinner. Where was my joie de vivre? Facebook just told me in no uncertain terms that my life just straight up sucked.

Mediocrity is a hard thing to grasp for some of us. As a child I used to sit and dream about greatness. I had such plans. I wanted to be a movie director. From the time I could remember that's what I wanted to do. Make movies. Everything was a film to me. Everything was fantasy. When I was six-years-old my GI Joes and Planet of the Apes action figures (never dolls) were trapped in the board game Candyland where villainous giant Lollipops blew up the Peanut-Brittle Bridge and chased them into the Molasses Swamp. At eight I wrote a short story in Mrs. Thompson's third grade class about an existential dinosaur who sought out the truth of why his kind died off only to find an alien plot against the earth. When I was twelve I had a notebook where I wrote down all the plots of the movies I had created. I made up casts, crew. I made up filming locations. I had an old basketball timer-clock that I nicked from my cousins. I would start it and would repeat my movies aloud in their entirety only stopping the clock to note the running time. My longest faux-film you ask? Was a movie entitled "Masquerade." It was about a woman whose husband left her for some one younger and the emotionally journey she took as she became a movie-star while fighting fame, depression and addiction to drugs and sex. Think of a cross between Valley of the Dolls and Looking for Mr Goodbar. The woman, Betty Ross, committed suicide/ or OD'd in the final scene. I could never decide which so left it ambiguous. That film clocked in at 167 minutes (2:47 to you laymen.) The make-believe actress who played that role won an Emerald Award. It was my version of the Oscars. You see each year I would give out awards for the films that I made the previous year. Since the Oscar statue wad gold I figured my should be a precious stone. So the Emerald Awards were born. For years I kept a list of what film won what for Best Picture and Best Director. I had opening dates and even box office receipt numbers. My two highest grossing movies? "The Owl"--the story of a woman cursed by an avian cult causing her to slowly turn into a monstrous bird and  "Arcade"--the story of a young girl's encounter with aliens that gave her the power to heal the sick by killing the wicked. They both grossed over $1 billion. What can I say I was ambitious in 1978.

Either stupidity or fear got the best of me because I never went to film school. After college I moved to New York City. Now don't get me wrong. I am not being mawkish. I loved--love my life. I have great friends, great family and have had many adventures that will actually make you scratch your head in disbelief. I've visited and lived in other countries. I was on one of the last flights out of Hong Kong the day before it was turned over to the communist. I've seen James Bond Island. Had clairvoyant dreams while living in India. Done drugs with celebrities and done other things with porn stars. Sometimes at the same party. I've met millionaires and homeless and treated them all the same. Worked in the most disparate places imaginable; from operations manager at the Bronx Zoo, to software trainer at a program dedicated to helping women escape domestic violence to being the manager of a graphic presentation group at the world's most prestigious investment bank. Along the way I've been a dishwasher, custodian, clown and we just won't talk about what I got paid to do in the sumer of 1989.  Right now if I threw a party I would have white-bread conservatives eating chicken roulade cheek-by-jowl with transmen anad transwomen. People have used the words "You did that?" around me. But according to Facebook the zenith of my life is a French Door stainless steel refrigerator.

Life is finite. So we have to squeeze as much into it as possible. It's like a banquet you see, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But over the last six years life has afforded me fewer and fewer opportunities it would seem almost on purpose. I've gone from the abundance of Auntie Mame to the decrease of Mrs. Havisham. Not only have these opportunities seemingly dried up but things have come undone. As if their was a hand at work in this mess. Dismantling the different parts of my life. First I had severe financial problems, then my mother developed dementia, then I health problems, then I had bed bugs, then I had to move to North Carolina, then I had to work from home to take care of my mother, then that job was gone, then unemployment was gone. Leaving me broke and humbled. It was a systematic reduction; a cascading system failure; a complete collapse of the layers of my life. One pancaking down onto the next. I felt beset upon like Ramesses. I would lay at night looking out my bedroom window waiting for the creeping mist and the wail of lost children as the hand of God moved through the Nile delta taking the first born of the Egyptians. I beseeched God to at least give me a clue as to why I was being punished so.

Its bad enough that I often feel that life has left me with so little but now Facebook is reinforcing that emotion with a stupid video that illustrates just how far I've fallen. Well all I have to say is fuck you Facebook. I will not allow you to reduce the beauty and joy or even the inelegance of my life to a neat little package of silly little images. I am more than that. How dare you try to make me so small. The volume of my life is vast. I am not some cyber-plaything you can analyze and algorithm then spew out in the form of a hokey video downloadable in multi-device formats. You're a ruse. A falsehood. A canard. I am a real person. With fragile hopes and impossible dreams; of unimaginable sorrow of watching a parent slowly decay, of struggling to find the dignity in that work, of struggling to pay bills and live in a country that prizes excess while I subsist on so little. A person of simple pleasures of walking my dog or listening to my mother play songs on her Steinway piano or Hammond organ plucked from her demolished memory. Of those three hour conversations with friends left behind in New York where the shade is thick and now all we have are reminiscence because I am here and they are there. But none of that was in your stupid little video was it Facebook? It's a difficult place to be in isn't it? And you now that don't you. Needing that human contact even if its on a virtual level; but I won't allow you to tell me that my life is nothing more than a selfie that was liked 157 times. I may not quit you Facebook but I will disengage more frequently from you. Because the more I log-on the more I log-out of my life. So no Facebook I am not going to Look Back. Look back over the life you've fashioned for me. You don't get to choose the soundtrack of my soul or the emotions I should be feeling. You hold us back with your pretty pictures and choruses of like-minded people. You make inaction and inactivity palatable as long as one reads that Al Jazeera story of inequity or likes that video of the laughing baby. A facsimile of human interaction. You meter out your judgment in the form of a condescending short sentimental video. But you know what Facebook? You can keep your shoddy simulacrum of whatever it is you think you've created about me.  I may not be an emperor but I'm not a tatterdemalion either. I'm going to look forward. Not back but forward and move forward with my life. And guess what? There's going to be a lot less of you in it.