Okay, where do I begin?  First off my mom worked really hard to keep my brother and I hella fresh.  Style, fashion, and appearance are a big thing on my mom’s side of the family.  So much so that my grandmother will legit shade you if you are a woman not wearing earrings, or “something on your lips.”  I cannot tell you how many times I have heard her shade the hell out of my mom with a casual, “Oh I guess you ain’t gon’ put nothing on yo lips, huh?”  This is followed by a sincere stare over her glasses until you comply with her passive aggressive suggestion to put some manner of lipstick on.  My dad’s side of the family, not so much.  My dad doesn’t place much value on materialistic things at all.  I almost think it was a form of silent protest against my mom for him to not give a shit how we looked when we walked out of the house.  Hence, when my brother and I would spend summers with him in South Carolina, it was a fashion free for all.  My style was at the mercy of whatever the good Lord put on my spirit to wear that day.  This was my time to be experimental with my look.  Yeah, we’ll go with that.

99.9% of my family lives in South Carolina.  So summers with my dad meant summers with my whole family too.  My dad’s family meant well.  They truly did.  I didn’t realize until I was much older that they just didn’t have a lot.  At my dad’s mom’s house we would eat mayonnaise sandwiches, hot dogs, and generic corn flakes with canned milk.  We would run around the yard all day playing with bow and arrows my great grandmother made out of sticks and twine.  “Now whatever you kill, you have to eat,” she would say.  Hence, we never killed anything.  At night, my brother would catch fire flies for me, and put them in a mason jar.  I begged my grandmother to poke holes in the top so my fire flies could breathe, and she obliged.  Before bed, I would lay in the bed with my great grandmother and watch the black and white version of the Beverly Hill Billy’s, because they didn’t have cable.  I would always try to get her to admit that she was secretly the granny from the show.  I don’t think I realized that woman was white for a long time, but in my defense they looked an awful lot alike.  My mom’s parents spoiled us rotten.  When we went to their house, we had all the good snacks, trips to the mall, my Big Ma’s cooking, and I could watch music videos all freaking day.  Now this was the 90’s.  The heyday of music videos.  This is when I realized that Lil Kim was the shit.  Her persona, and image were everything to me.  I never fully understood her lyrics (thank God, I was a child for crying out loud) but I knew I wanted to command respect like she did.  All little black girls who grew up in the 90’s wanted to look like Aaliyah (if you didn’t, I don’t trust you) but I wanted to be a boss like Lil Kim.  I watched the video for “Crush on You” like it was Shakespearean theater.  I mean I was tuned in.  I knew the choreography, decided that the blue scene was my favorite, and inadvertently knew all of the lyrics.  I never wanted to be overtly sexual like her, but based on what I saw, no one effed with Lil Kim.  That’s what I wanted to be: un-fuck-with-able.

Now let me explain to you what I looked like during the summers of my youth.  I had a lot of hair.  A whole lot.  I would’ve been natural hair goals if social media were a thing, and it was cool to be natural back then.  I had big dreams of being on a Just For Me relaxer box, but alas my day in the sun never came.  There was no edge control, or curl puddings, or YouTube tutorials, or things of that nature back then.  I either got box braids, or my grandmother’s best friend would press my hair using Vaseline and a hot comb off the stove.  To this day, nothing has ever gotten my hair as straight as good ole Mama Carrie and that Vaseline.  I got my first relaxer at 15, and still I swear that Vaseline press out was the straightest my hair ever was, but once that humidity hit it, it was over.  Anyway, there would always be about a two week lag between the time I arrived in South Carolina, and when I got my obligatory summer braids.  Mind you, I was living with my dad who knew nothing about doing hair, let alone natural hair.  Hence, my big head of hair was at the mercy of the sun and humidity of Spartanburg, South Carolina.  I was a…interesting looking kid.  My brother swears this isn’t true, but you always look better to the people who love you most.  Just to add insult to injury, I woke up one day and had boobs.  They came out of nowhere, and I wanted nothing more than to hide them from the world and myself.  As soon as my grandmother saw that I needed bras, we went to JC Penny’s and bought all of the training bra sets.  It should be noted that I grew out of them almost instantly.  She made me swear that from that day forward I would wear a bra every day for the rest of my life.  Bras were continue to be deathly uncomfortable for me.

Now that you have a good idea of how unfortunate looking I was, let me set the scene for you.  My dad would put us in this summer camp at the same church every year.  The cool girls of the camp were the girls who attended the church, and knew everybody.  They weren’t particularly pretty, it’s just that I didn’t go there, so I was automatically wrong.

Each morning there was a praise and worship hour.  This entailed the pastor of the church making you recite a scripture, and what it means to you.  Let me just tell you that as a kid, no scripture meant very much to me.  Life hadn’t fully kicked me in the balls yet, so I didn’t have a real understanding of the word of God.  I could recite a scripture, but I couldn’t give you a testimony about how it changed my life, because I had only been living for like ten years. After this embarrassing show of what I didn’t know about God, we would sing hymns, and then it was off to the gym before class started.  I am irritated right now thinking about the fact that we had full on school in the summer.  Why couldn’t we catch a break?  Anyway, during this intermission we would all gather on the stage of the gym, and sing the latest songs, do dances, share gossip, and get roasted.  Mostly I always got roasted.  But guess why?  They roasted me for being flat chested!  If you know me now you know how insanely funny that is, because I am faaaaarrrrr from flat chested.  I was like dude I’m developing over here, but how was I gonna prove that in church?  So I just endured this relentless teasing every day.  There I was with puffy hair, spaced out teeth, in the finest biker shorts Wal Mart had to offer, being joned for no good reason.  Why didn’t I wear any of the cute stuff my mom packed for me for the summer?  I don’t know.  Again, this was my experimental phase.  I think I enjoyed the freedom that came with my dad not giving a shit about appearance, and when in Rome, right?  So one day we were on a field trip, and my size 28B training bra was ruining my life.  So I dipped off to take it off and hide it in my backpack purse (totally breaking my vow to Big Ma.  Sorry Big Ma).  For some stupid reason I later left my purse out unattended, and one of the popular girls saw my bra hanging out.  I will never forget that bra.  It was green plaid, and had a front clasp.  So this evil whore pulls my little bra out and starts tossing it around to everybody.  And their overriding question was, “You don’t have boobs, so why do you have this?”  My thing was that many of them were overweight, and therefore had boobs by default, so how did we arrive there in the conversation?  My shade game wasn’t up to par back then, so I just sauntered away and cried somewhere.  So you see, camp for me was some real bull shit.  ‘Twas a cruel, cruel summer.

Fast forward, and there we were in the gym once again singing all the hits of the 90’s.  The popular girls of course ruled this too.  They always sang the good parts of the songs.  Let me put it like this, there was no way you could be Monica in the “Boy is Mine” if you wanted to join in.  You were Brandy, or you didn’t get to play honey.  So they finally got to “Crush on You” in this unspoken playlist, but they didn’t know the words.  “This is my chance, but am I ready?!” I thought to myself.  I whispered to one of the popular girls that I knew the words, but I wasn’t fully prepared to perform.  They had just made fun of my bra, so I knew it was a tough crowd.  Being the little angel that she was, she yelled to everyone, “Jessica knows it!”

Everyone crowded around waiting for me to embarrass myself.  “Go ahead, rap it, since you know it so well,” they taunted me.  “Okay, but someone has to start off the chorus, so I know when to come in,” I said, and they obliged.  This was my moment to finally shine and prove to them all that I too was cool.  I got into character, prepared to wow them all, and so I began,“Ayo shorty won’t you go get a bag of the lethal.”  I had her cadence, mannerisms, inflections, and moves down.  I nailed it.  They were floored.  I had redeemed myself to the cool kids, and as long as I was willing to perform Lil Kim’s verses of “Crush on You” in a church gym, nobody really made fun of me anymore.  So there you have it.  That is how Lil Kim saved an awkward little black girl’s confidence at a bible summer camp.

Every day I have more than enough of what I need to get through the day.  I open my mind, body, and spirit to receive abundance in every area of my life.  I repeat this silent prayer to myself over and over again while I walk from Seventh Avenue to Twelfth Avenue to attend an event at Pier 92.  My brain is overloading on anxious thoughts about financial liabilities, weight, writers block, career, and the fact that I am now more afraid than ever to be a black woman in a city living alone.  I pass by about a hundred NYPD officers, and wonder “is he one of the good ones?  Is she?”  I pass through a myriad of smells on the homage to what I only now realize is a trade show for menswear.  There’s the intoxicating allure of Thai food, ramen, and cookies, which is drowned out by smells of poverty and the people who think they’re too good to pick up their dog’s shit.  Isn’t that just like life though?  One minute your mouth is watering for the good things in life, and the next you choke back vomit from the shitty parts.

 

I finally arrive at the Pier, and take the elevator up to the venue space.  The room is full of up and coming designers with their minimalist chic designs, and clear acrylic chairs (that I want to steal and take home to my place).  The sun drenched space is buzzing with influencers, buyers, and “cool kids” carrying Budweiser bottles, because this is a sponsored event, and basically my main reason for coming.  It looks like Solange and Alexander Wang had lots of urban hipster babies, and they all met up to meet their long lost siblings.  There are Doc Martens, Yeezy’s, Stan Smith’s, grey dyed hair, and bull nose rings as far as the eye can see.  My plus one has yet to arrive, so I take a leisurely walk through the maze of clothes in search of the bar.  I finally see an opening to the outside area, and peek my head out to find my way to the booze. “Bar?  It’s this way,” says a black girl with long locks.  “Oh was it that obvious?” I retort with a laugh and a thank you.

 

New York is notorious for old industrial sites that someone re-functions into a cool space for hosting random events.  I pass by a huge, rusted, metal contraption that I’m sure once served an important purpose here, as I follow the sounds of Future mixed into a Rae Sremmurd track.  My calves are burning from my morning run, and lugging laundry up four flights of stairs.  There is a pleasant breeze coming off the water, and life feels kind of cool.  I grab a beer, even though the last time I drank a regular Budweiser was in college, and it didn’t end well.  I sit on a plush white couch adorned with Budweiser logo pillows decorated with the American flag, and text directions to my plus one.  As I sit, and vibe to the music, I am filled with pride in my city.  It makes me so proud that Atlanta artists and producers basically rule music right now, and then an unexpected rage creeps up inside of me.  I look around at all of these non-black people dancing and laughing to our music, doing the dances they’ve seen young, black kids from Atlanta doing on Instagram, wearing and selling our style of clothing, and I feel overwhelmed with anger and jealousy.  They get to put our culture on for novelty and profit, enjoying the fruits of what it means to be black to us, and I am angry at their unknown privilege.  I wonder if they have any concern for what is happening to the people from which their style and dance originated.  I feel angry that they get to turn a blind eye to it, and pretend it’s not their problem.  They get to walk the streets without fear, and anxiety of what will happen to them if a rogue police officer plays judge and jury on the street.  They get to look at the footage of those men and young boys slain by police officers, and not feel the pain and fear of knowing they could be next.  Do they have to fear for their sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, and friends the way we do?  Did they spend a difficult week at work surrounded by people who don’t look like them, and have to put on a happy face over the sadness of the weaponizing and devaluing of their skin?  They have the luxury of just living their lives without trying to figure out ways to protect themselves, and their children from the people who are supposed to protect them.  I just sit there and wonder if they know, or if they care.  Every stare feels like an insult.  Every fake smile fuels the fire within, and all I can do is hold my invisible crown and think “you do not move me.”  All the while I am thinking about all of these things, they continue to dance, and to laugh, and I wonder when we will ever be as free to be black as they are pretending to be black.