It all started around when I was around
16. You see prior to then from ages 7-11 I pissed in the bed and my
most salient feature was my relationship with my mother. But once she
died, once she died I really became invisible. It seemed I existed in
a fog. I was a non entity. I was still unaware of my maleness and
definitely had not learn yet that I was considered “Black. So being
“cool” had never been factored in my social interactions with
others. But even within the comforts of home, I was never the favored
child. The one summoned to recite bible verses, jokes or to “cut
loose” doing the latest dance before amusing adults. Instead I
would be that reserved child; the one peeping around the corner sure
to maintain a safe distance-terrified of being “next”. I was just
that plain. Nothing unique except the embarrassment of knowing that I
pissed in the bed. I had no sports ability to speak of. I had poor
coordinating skills and was clumsy in both manner of walk and social
interaction.
Fate had found a way to further deprive
me of being a guy with any chance to shine when my mother died. I
came to be a teenager before I knew I was no longer an adolescent.
In those turbulent years of the 1970's, I lived with my sister, my
nephew's mother. I was to become further regulated to the shadows.
But then our entire family was forced into a kind of shadowy
existence. It was in 1975 that we caused white flight by moving into
an all white neighborhood. Nonetheless he was the first to develop
male friends with those White Italian-Americans those simply White
families trying to move away and the one wealthy Asians family who
remained. He was the one who had his step dad build a basketball
court in our backyard. And of course he was the first who could dunk.
I marveled at him for his prowess and his cunning. Everyone did.
Especially the girls.
When I reached age 14, I went out for
football. While my nephew could have excelled at it, he was more into
being the cool leader of the renegade pack than being a member of
organized sports team. He demonstrated his athlete prowess in
neighborhood pickup games. I was often among the last to be chosen in
such matches. Each time I was determined to improve my standing among
the horde by “holding on to the ball if it fell into my hands. It
was no use. I was as uncoordinated as I was bookish. Such a gladiator
my nephew was. In those abandoned fields of our mixed neighborhood,
he was often hosted up by those on the winning team. When I went out
for the Junior High school football, I was on the first “cut list”
and never touched a football again expect for in those neighborhood
“pick up” games. For awhile, I did excel in running. I ran for
the winter cross country team of our mixed Jr. High school. Thinking
it was cool to be able to run long distances in cold air, I did not
realized running was a white boys endeavor. Only coaches came to
watch runners. They were look for future track and fields stars.
There was the occasional white girls who came to watch white guys
cross the finish line at. No one in my family ever came to watch me
run. My nephew had all tough guy attributes for my age group. I would
by default become the “smart one”. Many years later I would
squander that prized position. I traded it for fools gold. But I am
getting ahead of myself.
I always stood in the shadows of
those I admired. Peeping around doorway, corners and walls hoping no
one asked me to step up to the stage of life and dance or say
anything funny. No matter where fate took me, I liked to visit the
spaces caused by curiosity. Better suited for the woods where no
bleachers with cheering fans await. Such untreated hedges between
property lines and dirt pathways leading off into others backyards
would pull me; and there I would go. I would befriend other odd ball
kids and lived among others outside my family: The librarian, the
shop owner, the cool gas station attended whose hair smelled of a
greasy formula like bad guys looked on television. They all seemed to
cherish teaching me things. I would not know of Muhammad Ali and
George Foreman until their upcoming title matches became the school
chatter. General Pershing of the first world war and General Douglas
MacArthur of the second were my private idols. They, as much as my
grade school teachers and the older women who smelled of womanhood
held my mind and caused my first wet dreams. I was fond of older
women and as I recalled they took a fancy to me. I had this one aunt
who was still in her party years, She had girlfriends and if I was
left there by my mom, they would allow me to sit and watch them get
dressed. They'd gossip while listening to James Brown and Joe Tex
all the while drinking from those small glasses. The odor of liquor,
beer and cigarettes in a tavern still brings back those memories. A
tavern. I was allowed to stay as long I busied myself and did not
stare. They said, I was cute. I would smile and forget about others.
The tough guys who always waited for me in darkened allies. To this
day I am most comfortable with the gaze of a woman who seems destined
to teach me. Guys who could see much quicker than me, would become
envious of that and I would eventually pay dearly. But that is
getting ahead of myself.
About the idols, those historic
figurative military Generals, like the white neighbors and my family
structures were always temporary. One after another they would become
buried as I time went on and I moved from one home to another. I
would move from city to city as relatives (in the face of my mother's
death) tried to keep me and my siblings together. Tried though they
did, I still was isolated and still read a lot. No matter where we
moves it was always on the edge of this or that place. A new suburb
where woods marked the end of the development. We were forever the
pioneers. And I was always the rambler. When we ventured south, tall
pines trees standing upon pine needle covered floors beckoned me and
that is where I was sure to go. One time while walking through some
woods I came upon a box, It smelled of decay. Inside was the remains
of a dog, its skeletal remains were starting to show. Its fangs I can
see now as I type, they were visible and maggots where in it the hole
where its stomach should have been. I stared at it. As sure as I grew
to become more like a broken sentence to myself than a complete
novel, I never knew if others knew of that dog. I would come to
gather upon factoid of not much use to anyone my age. Much less,
adults who tried to break me. Even now, I like to consume
information. It is satisfies me yet I hate being the one who has to
process information that I am told to leave alone.
Later in life I became a collector of
books. I had disappointed many a teacher and old women who had
thought so highly of me. I seemed destined to replace my wet bed
sheets with hardheadedness. The best I have been able to do was to
become a collector of things. Yet I still fear the worse. Instead of
learning how to make a living, I came to love paper, words, ideas and
pictures. I did not amount to much because I did adopt the“how to
do” skills they tried to teach me. I skimmed over the seriousness
of matters and lost on the necessary skills to improve myself. There
is something about the texture of things that I embrace. The touch
the smell of things held close. And although while I matriculated, I
would ask questions a plenty, I did not know other than to roam to
and fro what I wanted to do with my life. Perhaps the wetness of my
soiled mattresses intensified my awareness and my stagnation. To wake
and find I had “done it again” was a sure way to know I was still
me; still stuck in the same old rut. As problematic as that was, I
learned to humble myself. I knew I existed because I did not like
myself for my bad habits. This became my crutch. I could not tell
others of my problems. I could not criticize others and I carried my
secrete around. I came to despise others for awhile until I learned
of transference.
Despite my current willingness to share
my story through my writings, I remain one who can recoils and exist
comfortably in my head. This all at the expense of communicating
with others. I move forward and then backwards year after year. I
fall in and out of love, yet I ask question hoping to distance myself
from myself only to wake and find, I had done it again. Still me,
still in denial of something. This inability to connect, I reason,
must have stated somewhere. I am not sure because even for me my
past is shrouded in shadows. A tender boy such as I was had to
fabricate somethings to shield himself from these internal feelings
of inadequacy. Being unsure of myself I created invisible friends. In
the same way I imagined GOD to be. My invisible friends were no
special hindrance to me copping mechanism. I did alright with others
in reality. but for may a year, I did not have a self image to rely
on when I was alone. Mirrors played back to me a guy who I was but
not the who I felt to be. In retrospect, I wonder if others my age
felt likewise. Ah, let me back up...I'm getting ahead of myself
again.
I did not step out of the shadows of
my past and into the lime light of sexuality until I moved away from
my hometown and into the sun drenched light of a southern backwards
town of Mississippi. It was there that I became the star, Later
around this time I discovered that I dressed “different”and
talked “white”. Only then did I become a stud destined in my own
mine to sleep with all the virgins I could find. Girls in the south
had an aroma I had not discovered. They wore prettier panties and
often did not understand my fascination with pubic hair. Being tossed
from pillar to post offered me then and still to this day, new
friends. No old one held me responsible for past transgressions. No
one ever knew of my past. No girls in that sleepy southern town could
attest to my middle school behavior where I wrote protested my rights
to have what I wanted.
I had long before that time discovered
sex. I had long before that time come to find that I loved the pubic
hair of girls like an alcoholic loves wine. Back then (I was only in
the fifth grade) other than wet dreams, hair was a sure sign of
one's maturity. I had sense began to practice writing poetry and with
it relished making a name for myself . It was only a matter of time
before I rushed to exorcize my persuasiveness on girls. I practice on
those close to me by convincing them to show me their private parts.
Being the tactile person, I long to caress the peach fuss as one
would a hamster. That was in the State of Georgia immediately after I
had lost my mother to her untimely death. I suppose this was where
God began to exit my innermost life. I had been ripped from my anchor
of a stable family and left to my own devices. He this GOD was
rapidly receding from dwelling in me. Because God I figured (this guy
with a white beard and all his angels with white wings) had allowed
my little self to wet the bed and then took my mother...my only
protector. I guess that is why I clung to older women once I learned
that they, like my deceased mother had that special ability to make
me feel complete. But girls then were different. They were mysterious
and loving even in their old ages,
Girls are not mysterious now. They are
like me grown in older into a world of illusory crap dumped on us
since child hood to make us robots of currency. I stopped wetting the
bed after I moved away from my nephew. I have lost some of my
yearning to compete with others like him, and nothing seems to
satisfy me more than new journeys. Even now pubic hair has little joy
for me. It is considered non- hygienic to have any more atop a woman
mound than Adolph Hitler had a mustache. Guys and women alike seem
even more robotic even in their quests to fit in with the norm like
we Blacks yearned to fit in with the white neighborhood we moved
into. And white flight has become the Exodus of American business.
They left and created catch phrases to motivate us. Phrases like BUY
AMERICAN are false when little is made in American. Those businesses
lifted the AMERICAN DREAM on their false shoulders just like the
winning teams did my nephew back then. More and more cites like
Detroit are like the abandoned fields we played upon. Women who
marveled at winners now have reached a certain parity with men. But I
must stop and go back, I'm getting ahead of myself.
