without you i am something

  

   Carl Getting Plaited in Ghost Town, Belize City, 2004.

I think about death, the process and finality of it. I gave it deeper consideration when it came and Ma passed away. I was undone for a long time. I am still, going forward without her in the world. You change, reality changes when your mother is gone. 

One memory I have of her, she told me a story where a lady called her a racist. She responded to the lady, with a sense of pride, "My kids are black." That was so cool to me, like a declaration. I loved her more for that. 

The one time we got into it about race, she referred to black folks as 

' the blacks'. 

" Ma, you really gotta drop the definite article with that. I hear Jim Crow. Just say black people." 

' Well, excuse me!" She said. 

 It was heartbreaking when we cleared out her place in Denver. I made a playlist of songs she loved, going back in time with each trinket, photo, and letter, including those from my grandfather, handwritten in Italian in the 1960s, on faded parchment. She had saved those letters for nearly 50 years. It's been 8 years since she died and I still have yet to read them. 

After returning home from the desert, I received news of death that made me despair at the misfortunes we suffer. How tragic and unjust death can be, before a person has barely started. 

The sad piece of news was that of my ex-husband's son, Christian. He was a sweet boy who looked like a lot like his father. 

Last Christmas Eve, Christian was shot in the head, his body stuffed in a barrel that was cast along a waterway near Belize City. Keisha, his mother, was devastated. The tragedy was all over the news in Belize. Christian left the house, came home briefly, went out again, last seen getting into a van, and never returned.

It makes no sense to me that a young boy would suffer like that while a fascist goon gets to live - conning his way to a return to power that will bring more chaos and derision to the States. American wrongs from the past, corrected have been undone, forcing me to retreat as a person, more out of caution than fear, to protect myself.

America became a harder, more dangerous place for colored folks after it elected an authoritarian goon. One sister friend fled to Mexico, vowing never to return. Another is on a mission to expatriate to Ghana. I had to make some changes internally and externally toward the American world I inhabit, although I exist in the wider world beyond it. The world is where I found the Garifuna.

Carl and I met in Belize around 2003 and got married in 2004 in his hometown of Dangriga, on the south central coast. Dangriga is a Garifuna settlement town that goes back to 1832.

The Garifuna are Afro-Arawak people of Central America that migrated into Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. The story of how they came to Central America goes back to the slave trade when a ship carrying Nigerians crashed near the St. Vincent and Grenadine islands. Those who survived mixed with the indigenous Arawak and another people, the Garifuna, came into existence. They have their own language, rituals, and customs. My favorite is the jukunu, danced by men in masks with bands of cowrie shells at their ankles. There is no slave story for the Garifuna. They are likely the only people of African descent in the Americas who were never enslaved. 

Dangriga hosts a big festival, Garifuna Settlement Day, each year in November. It's something else to see - the drums, costumes, and dancers. When you enter the town, there's a large sculpture of two barrel drums facing the direction of Africa. 

Even though Carl fell into street hustling as a teenager, he maintained his language and identity. His auntie told us she saw two brown birds flying close together and knew that Carl was returning home to Dangriga with someone close who looked like him. I remember that conversation with her, sitting on her porch. 

Carl and I split up years ago, but have remained cool and keep in touch from time to time. He's an older man now, about 45. I'm 11 years older than Carl. He had Christian with Keisha before we met, when he was 24. He had another child, Trinity, with an American girl from Massachusetts. 

Emily and I didn't get off to a good start because I was an obstacle to the mystical trinity she believed they were, which Trinity was named for. My experience has been that we tend to be an obstacle to the object of a white girl's desire, even if he is, more or less, a buster. 

" Why are you doing his bidding, Emily? " I wrote. "If he wants a divorce, he should handle it himself. We got married in his country." 

( Don't even get me started on the hassle I had to go through with the IRS after making that bold move. I am now, legally anyway, an unmarried person and so I shall remain ). 

Well, Emily did teach him about the healing power of crystals. To hear him explain this to me was charming and amusing. There's a distinction between the hippie and the African. Africans don't trip on rocks and stones. Africans get down in the dirt, to the root of things, by hand. That's where the blues, jazz, and our cooking comes from. 

I got several accusatory emails from Emily that read like a little girl to me. It took her awhile to simmer down. She had nothing to worry about. By 2009, I had given up. My love was toast. Emily was a good person, devoted to him, who eventually suffered the same fate - the discovery of unrepentant trifling, when she cracked his code. 

" Lisa, do you know who this girl is from Idaho? And another girl from Guerneville in California?" 

My eyeballs rolled. Idaho? Guerneville? Jesus Christ. Since the eternal we had ended, they were Carl's chosen followers, the traveler earth girls, because they were easy marks. Had I known better when we met, I would have helped the brother out and pointed him in the direction of the golden jackpot. They're easy to spot. Sunburned, their hair braided with beads to look like Caribbean women. It's the visual equivalent of a three dollar bill with white dreads - it makes no sense, defies logic and reason. Had I done so, I could have saved myself considerable disappointment and gone to Peru. Such was the folly of my dick-stracted, bonkers in love young womanhood. I made a lot of unwise decisions on a regular basis then.

I encouraged Emily to pack it up and go home. I likely saved her from bringing Carl to the States and her life down to ruins. Busters always have women running around in circles, if we allow it.

Belize City can be a rough place, one of the roughest I've ever traveled to. Yankees, any white person in Belize, do not hang out there, but mostly pass through en route to somewhere else. Cruise ships shuttle people in to a tourist market, shielded from the shanties and unpaved streets, and back out to sea. 

The first person I met in Belize City was Edmond, a charming midget dude. I went to a dimly lit bar across from my basic hotel, for a rum and coke. Edmond approached me and started chatting in kreyol. 

" Oh, I'm American, brother." I said with a wave of my hand. 

Edmond was cool. I was getting hungry and he suggested a Chinese fried chicken shop a short walk away. The food there was cheap and delicious. He walked me back to my hotel, to a shortcut through a dark alley. I stopped, thinking I could get jumped by some shady midget conspiracy. 

" Oh no!" I shouted. " I'm not going through there. I don't play!" 

Edmond laughed. "No worry, sis. Shortcut! Your hotel is right pass, to the left." 

After Carl and I got married in 2004, we stayed with friends. I went out looking for him one night in a ghetto district called Yahbrah. He was struck that I went out to Yahbrah alone, a dimly lit enclave of Belize City where young men hang out on corners in the darkness drinking and smoking, listening to punta rock and reggae. I think young brothers hanging out on the corner tends to be universal. 

' I can believe you come after me here! ' He said. ' It dangerous.'

" Have you ever been to New York City?" I asked. " No. This ain't' shit to me! You should be home, not in the streets! You're a husband now." I crossed my arms over my chest and sucked my teeth. 

Carl chuckled as we walked back to the house. "Daaam." He said.  "Wifey burn hot like fiah." 

I was young and had a strong resolve then; being as hyped as I was for life and adventure outside of the states. Travel to me is the expression of my own liberation, not just physically, but psychologically. 

During my first trip in 2003, I went to Tikal to explore the Mayan ruins of the Acropolis and climbed the Temple of the Jaguar - 47 meters straight up - to the summit. That was one of the most beautiful vistas of mother earth I have ever seen. The second was Lake Atitlan at sunrise, which saved my life. 

Tikal was also a peaceful night's sleep, listening to the jaguars and howler monkeys echo through the jungle. 

In 2009 I was invited to Antigua to paint a mural for a community center. I painted for two weeks straight over 8 meters of wall using a primer made of salt and glue paste. During that trip, I came to the realization while watching the sunrise over Atitlan to give up on Carl or it would destroy me. 

That realization was precipitated by a fight (there were many) at an after hours bar in San Pedro that Carl had been banned from. I yelled at him from the balcony, wanting him to care. He was more disappointed he couldn't get access to the poppin social scene. Eventually he left and I returned to my group of friends: Karin, a volunteer from Sweden, Moreno, a local mixed brother, and Richard, a tall, young traveller from Scotland. 

I sat there dejected, listening to Karin be a supportive friend while we shared pints of Gallo beer. 

"You're too good for him, hormiga!" She said. We loved that word hormiga which means ant in Spanish. Every woman in our Antigua crew was una hormiga. 

Suddenly, a drunk Guatemalan teenager approached our table, snatched Richard by the cuff of his shirt and started cussing him out.

" Don't move!" Moreno and I yelled instinctively, our arms extended across the table as if we could intercept potential violence.

Richard froze. Within a few minutes, the kid's friends intervened and calmly took the boy back to their table. 

" Jesus Christ! " Richard said as he settled back in his seat. "What was that all about?" 

" History, my friend." Moreno said. 

We went back to drinking and chopping it up with one another. 

" So....that guy outside was your husband?" Richard asked. " I've seen him around, hustling people and being rude. What is a beautiful woman like you doing with a wank like that?"

" Oh, thank you. Well...that's a good question." I said. " I loved him."

Then a fight broke out at the back of the bar and we ran, bottles and bodies flying around us - like the punk shows of my youth. Afterhours, beautiful lakeside San Pedro can have its Wild West moments. 

In 2003, from Tikal I traveled south, through a hole in time, having visions of ancient Mayans and jaguars in my dreams. The most compelling part of my journey then was losing time. 

I met a super cool Swiss-Italian designer named Valeria, like the plant. We joined forces into Tikal since women traveling together is generally the safest bet. Valeria didn't have a reservation and was able to share my cabin in the jungle. We spent a few days there, exploring the ruins and learning about Mayan astronomy. 

We booked an early morning bus to Rio Dulce in the south. We spent the night in Flores, a town built over a lake with ancient ruins underneath, scattered across the lake bed.  I had a fitful sleep that night in Flores. It felt as though hands were caressing me and I heard whispers in the darkness. I got up to go look at the view of the town, which was still and beautiful under a sky laced with stars. I'm quite the stargazer.

I went back to the room and saw a dark figure in the bathroom, near the toilet. I screamed and jumped on the bed. It was Valeria.

" You are freaking me out!" Valeria said. "What are you doing?!"

" I....uh...I thought you were some Mayan spirit. They're trying to reach me. It's stressing me out! "

" Carina, you need to go to sleep. Pronto!"

The next morning we packed our gear and headed to the bus station. We were about 30 minutes into the ride when we were told our ticket time was wrong; we were an hour ahead of ourselves. Valeria debated with the conductor that this was not possible. We had set our watches to 5:00am, before dawn. 

We still got kicked off the bus in the middle of nowhere, with only a small rural village nearby. I was having the time of my life. Valeria not so much. She wasn't used to such unplanned disorder. Switzerland is nothing but order. 

' It's the Mayans." I said. "They can manipulate time. Remember we talked about that with our guide - how they studied and measured it?  The sundials and structures built to the coordinates of the sun and the moon." 

"You didn't really believe that did you?" She asked. " That's all just mythology." 

We eventually got on the right bus when it passed through. We later learned from two divers on the same trek, making their way to Honduras, that somehow they were an hour ahead of themselves that morning.

The look on Valeria's face was priceless. 

"What did I say?!" I said, excitedly. "That is so cool!" 

In Rio Dulce, we met Clair, a young woman from the UK. We traveled with her to Livingston, a remote Garifuna village, between Lake Isabel and the Caribbean. I felt like I was at the end of the world in Livingston, it is such a remote place. We stayed in an old colonial hotel where we had a dinner of fresh-caught shrimp seasoned over rice with plantains.

During dinner we heard gunshots outside in rapid succession. 

"It's just fireworks." Valeria said.

" No, I think that was a gun, love." Clair said. 

More gun shots through the darkness, this time closer to the hotel. People starting scattering, a woman grabbed a child playing outside on the veranda, and we dove under the table. 

" Get down!" 

Later that night, I went for a walk around the grounds. It started to rain, which was peaceful to me, so I chilled in a hammock on the veranda for awhile. When I went back to our room, the double-doors had swollen shut from the humidity. By then, the girls were fast asleep. I knocked, but they were out. I knocked again. I thought, I could sleep in the hammock, but the mosquitoes will tear my ass up. I had no choice. I had to kick the doors in.

The girls screamed so loud, it startled me for a moment. Their underlying anxiety and vulnerability, in such an end-of-the-world place, was unleashed. 

" It's me!" I said. "It's okay! The doors were stuck!"

" Oh my god..." Valeria gasped, her hand to her chest. " I can't take this place anymore. I'm leaving tomorrow! " 

The next morning Valeria left for the highlands and Antigua, Clair and I went on to Puerto Barrios - a Wild West port town where we met a staggering Mayan. While he tried in vain to woo Clair, he helped us negotiate our passage to Punta Gorda, in southern Belize. 

That boat ride was hardcore, the current rough and choppy. We sat on wooden slats with rope tied at our waists to keep us stable during the ride. We were draped with tarp to keep us and our gear dry. 

Smash, smash, smash for several hours as the boat crested one wave after another and came barrelling down. A roller coaster at sea. 

By the time Clair and I reached Punta Gorda we looked like battered, savage women. It was awesome! Salt-faced and beat, we stopped for drinks at a local bar. It was another 8 hours of unpaved roads to Placencia, an isthmus on the southern coast.

I had an idea.

'Fuck it!' I said. "Let's take a plane to Placencia. We'll save some time. My treat." 

We chartered a Cessna at a rural airstrip, commonly used by drug runners. I'm not a fan of small planes because there's not much structure to protect you if it goes down. 

" Hey." Clair leaned towards me. "The pilot is American." 

Interesting. I wondered what was up with that story. 

Once in Placencia, I was invited to a house party hosted by Miss Radiance, who owned a bar and internet cafe in town. I tried a panty rippa for the first time, a seriously strong Belizean drink of pineapple, rum, and (probably, likely) crack. I was told that a panty rippa will make you or someone else rip your panties off. 

I was fucked up after two or three of those panty crack rippas. I staggered back to our cabana before sunrise, barfed, and prayed for death.  

" Are you going to make it, Chuck?" Clair asked, sleepily. Chuck is a nickname we used with one another. Clair picked that up when she was studying in Lancashire, England. It's the northern Brit version of homie.

" Yesssss...." I groaned in abject misery from the toilet. 

Later that morning, Clair took a picture of me out on the road waiting for the bus to Belmopan. I'm visibly ruined and blurry-eyed in the same clothes I wore when I disappeared into the Placencia night with Miss Radiance and her people.

" You've gone native on me!" Clair chided.

Well, she wasn't wrong. I'm a fortunate woman to be a part of the native human collective. The savages always find me. 

On the bus to Belmopan, I put my pack on my lap and slept for a few hours. A nice brother woke me up when we reached the station. From Belmopan on to another bus full of people, sacks of rice, bundles of plantains, and live chickens. From Belize City we took a water taxi out to the cayes, an archipelago of islands off the coast. 

The more down-to-earth of the cayes is Caye Caulker. The rich and those escaping Interpol or the feds go to San Pedro ( aka Ambergris Caye ). Madonna brought more attention to San Pedro with La Isla Bonita, her 1980s honeymoon anthem that sucks. 

A trippy story about San Pedro involved John McAfee. He created the McAfee security software if you remember the 90s. He was stone cold nuts and became very rich when McAfee was licensed to every PC on earth. He was living in a compound on San Pedro and shot his neighbor in a paranoid trip out that the man had poisoned his dogs, as the story goes.

McAfee fled to Guatemala seeking political asylum ( that's quite a stretch ) to avoid extradition back to Belize. He faked a few heart attacks while in detention and likely paid a few bribes before being deported back to the States. McAfee was later sued by the dead man's family and had to pay $ 25 million to his estate. After that he was arrested on his yacht in the Bahamas for smuggling guns, married a sex worker from Houston, and tried running for president in 2020 as a Libertarian. 

How better off could we have been having a murderous, weapons dealing Larry Flynt psycho for president? Perhaps a better deal in retrospect. 

Caye Caulker is where I met Carl, barefoot with his wild natural hair and handsome face. He was persistent and followed me into a cafe. I was friendly, but thought he was too young and thuggish.

" No, thank you." I said over coffee and went on my happy-go-lucky way.

I later met Harry and O.B., a sister master braider, who tightened up my dreads beautifully. Like a queen! Harry and O.B. were cool and invited me to a local club at the back of the island. Clair took off with a group of young Americans, which didn't interest me much. I knew America. I didn't know Belize. At the club I ran into Carl who was a bit more presentable. He didn't say much, just sat in the shadows quietly. I made the first move and asked him to dance with me.

I was having a good time until I remembered I had the key to our cabana, leaving Clair locked out. Shit. It didn't occur to me to give her the key when our groups had separated. I told Harry I had to go and he walked me back to the cabana, named The Peach on the Beach for it's tropical peach color. We found Clair fumbling with the padlock on the front door.  

" Chuck, where the fuck have you been?!" She wailed. " That American diver and local boys have been fuck all! It's dark and I'm knacked! I looked everywhere for you!" 

I let her vent while Harry was visibly uncomfortable. That was a sketchy situation for him to be in, a white girl having a fit. Trying to diffuse the situation, I apologised for leaving Clair to fend for herself without me or the cabana key. Clair was a down homie to travel with then - just cool. She's married now with two young daughters living a contented life in Perth, Australia. 

The next day, I crossed paths with Carl and had a change of heart. If a moment presents itself - live, baby live! Don't worry about the future! What is the future anyway, but an abstract construct? Tempt the Fates!

" Would you like to spend time with me?" I asked.

The next several years, things gradually fell apart. It came in stages and with experience. 

In 2004 Carl and I traveled by bus to Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua is a beautiful city from the colonial period with cobblestone streets, ornate churches, and historical ruins. I went to a Dia de los Muertos party in one ruin exposed and open at the back, with a beautiful view of Volcan Fuego under a full moon.

Carl and I ventured out one evening to a club set in the back of a colonial building with an open courtyard. Such clubs usually happened after hours and were sometimes raided by military armed with AKs. This was an intimidation tactic used to bribe owners and patrons. Armed police, private security, and military patrols are not uncommon in Guatemala; some good, some bad. 

Carl and I were dancing when a crew of gangsters walked in. I sat down for a break and a drunk lady asked Carl to dance. I thought nothing of it initially. I'm not the jealous or competitive type. I'm a square who trusts myself and the person I'm with. 

Then things got out of hand. The lady was getting more and more provocative and expositional. Blouse up, then off, bra, thong straps and ass exposed to the people. The gangsters and other men formed a circle around them, cell phones illuminating their bodies. 

I signaled for Carl to stop the show. I signaled again. He kept at it.

Someone seated near me saw the look on my face. "Well, in Guatemala we think the black man with the white woman is funny and sexy. " 

Say what now? That was enough for me. I abruptly walked out. Carl and the lady followed me out onto the street. 

5....4...3...2...1

" What the fuck with you?! Are you crazy?! Have some dignity and self respect and shut it down when you or anyone else is being exploited. Those men are dangerous! They were treating you like a monkey and her like a whore. You didn't give a shit! You liked the attention! " 

"She wouldn't stop! " Carl said. " I tried! " 

" So...you blame the lady? You're a man! You should have done the right thing and you didn't! Fuckin idiot! " 

The lady cried, understanding how upset I was.

" Lo siento, lo siento."  I'm sorry. 

 I asked her if she had someone to take her home, which she did. I was so over Carl in that moment. One big 'This nigga right here is gonna get us killed!'  227 cuss-his-ass-trip out, but more like Mary than Sandra. We made up later that night, although I had the sense I was being conned - the way a kid feins remorse to his mother when he's busted. 

Carl was still a vulgar boy, not a dignified man, or a very functional person. Relationships to him were like interchangeable resources; pathways to distraction and amusement. He could be reckless without consideration to the consequences to his actions. Back home, I once visited an orisha in Oakland who gave me the straight scoop. I believe in African magic and insight. 

" You're a maternal figure to him." She said as she puffed on her cigar stub, twirling cowrie shells in her hand. " He was beat and abandoned as a child. He had no guidance, carina. He doesn't know what you know. The streets are in him too much."

Hmmm. That was true. Carl's mother, an abusive woman, left Belize when it became independent of England, leaving him and his two brothers behind. They shuffled between one poor relative to another, neglected and uneducated.  As a teen, Carl left Dangriga for Belize City where he entered the non-violent hustler life; selling seedy weed to tourists and cell phones on the black market. I must have gone to court with him 3 times over petty offences. One court visit, the bailiff asked me straight up for a bribe and he would drop the whole matter - over a petty dime bag of weed. 

I said no. 

I saw other boys shackled at their ankles and wrists like slaves at the courthouse, for nothing other than being poor and unable to bribe their way out of injustice. Carl and I took another road trip to the SuperMax to visit a friend of his who was doing time. Incarceration can be brutal in any society, but the conditions at the SuperMax were barbaric to me, a jungle jailhouse. 

Inmates were given a bucket to piss in, scraps of food, slept on the floors of their cells, and there was no way out. If anyone tried to escape, the SuperMax was surrounded by dense jungle that one needed a machete to cut through. I met a sister in the waiting area with her two kids who was there to see her Rastaman husband who had been sentenced to 5 years for marijuana possession. I never forgot the heartbroken, defeated expression on her face. That's what incarceration can do to poor people. 

Over the years, Carl calmed the fuck down through Rastafari philosophy, but he's never held a square job. He makes a modest living making maracas, repairing drums, and teaching others how to play. I joke that he looks like Capleton now, his dreads wrapped up into a turban. He goes on like an old man about da yoot dem and Jah provides. I'm down with Rastafari liberation, but Carl and I apply it differently. Jah doesn't pay the bills, I do. 

I don't hold on to bitterness. That relationship was not one of my best, but it was life. We shared a connection and experience through time. I watched in awe as he wrestled a huge barracuda on his fishing line. One time, the strap on my flipper broke and I lost my equilibrium trying to stroke with one arm.  Carl helped me as the current was pulling me out past the reef, scaring the shit out of me. Man, he was a fast and strong swimmer. The sea was effortless to him, being naturally from it. 

We swan at Blue Hole near Belmopan, where dozens of leaves cascaded down from the canopy into the hole. 

" Oh, wow. It's like Lord of the Rings!" I said, looking up. The defacto black American nerd girl. 

I watched Carl zig and zag along the jungle walls and into the trees barefoot. I washed clothes by hand ( ineffectively ) with a washboard and learned to grind cassava with a big mortar and pestle, in the Garifuna way. We shared adventure, sweetness, and the fry jacks he made one morning with his grandmother. 

By 2009, as I sat with the sunrise over Atitlan, I had snapped out of it. I was real tired of chasing after hope. 

Carl messaged me a few years ago that his best friend, Alvin, had passed away, likely from covid. They were close when they were boys, running the streets together. Alvin eventually got it together when he married Alnoy, a super cool sister. She had an office job in city government and helped Alvin set-up a small business handwashing cars at their house. 

Alnoy, to me, was proof that a good woman can change a man's life. 

I still believe that to be true. 

I told Carl to go to Alvin's funeral, that he was his brother and he loved him. He shared pictures which were touching and brought back memories. Alnoy had asked how I was doing. In 20 years, she hadn't really aged much. 

Then, this past Christmas, Christian was killed. He was only 18 years old and it was shockingly sad. I know Carl wanted to do more for him growing up, but he didn't know how and had little resources. We had a nice chat and I gave him my condolences. I was glad his daughter Trinity was there. She's a beautiful mixed girl who lives in Cape Cod with her mother, Emily, and three half-siblings.

The Garifuna have a funerary tradition called dugu, which is to honor the dead as they meet the ancestors. Christian was buried in Seine Bight, closer to his father and his people. 

lady jane

                                                           Paradis Latin, Champagne Poster

                                                               by Christian Dura, 1984 

In the mid 2ks, I had a colleague the few years I worked as an administrator for a graduate program in Berkeley. Jane had a brilliant mind and a phD in art history (my jam).  I enjoyed listening to her stories, knowledge of art, and experience living in 1980s Paris where she studied at the Sorbonne.

 Paris is one of my favourite cities - stunning in its beauty and endlessly walkable. It's a place where time seems non-linear and fluid. So much of western civilization, from the Dark Ages, the Inquisition, the Revolution, to World War II, has passed through that city. I went off the beaten path and bathed in a hammam with women from Africa and the Middle East. I got lost down narrow streets, explored flea markets and bookstores, and watched the lights of the Eiffel Tower, enchanted as I was, from the Pont des Artes. I spent hours in the Musee d’Orsay blissfully studying the impressionists.

In 1980, Lady Jane was studying at the Sorbonne. She lived in a third floor walk-up flat in a Saint Germaine brothel. She rented from the two women who ran the place. ‘ Fabulous!’ I said. ‘ They sound like Irma La Duce.’ 

' They were a hoot.’ She said. ‘ Quite the tough and sexy dames, you know. They had survived the insanity of war. They drank wine, smoked, and listened to jazz with their friends."

Jane’s place was cheap, with narrow spaces and doorways carved and moulded by the hands of men in the past. Her room had views of Saint Germaine and the city. To make extra money, she worked as a concierge at posh parties and fashion shows. A social encounter would lead from one gig to another. 

' Oui, cherie Jane! We need a concierge at a birthday party for Pierre Cardin.’

And there she was, young Jane, standing in the foyer of a Paradis Latin Cabaret, in her Givenchy dress suit. She greeted Grace Jones, Yves Saint Laurent, Issey Miyake, Marisa Berenson, and Catherine Deneuve. She helped with the flower arrangements, placed in decadent Grecian urns. She spoke fluent French without an American accent. Who has lived such a life, Jane says? 

Into the future, as an old woman, she became invisible to young people who had no concept of such an age of glamour, American rock n roll, original ideas, and sophistication.  Jane was fascinating because she actually experienced Paris at a time it was just a dream to me. The imagination, as limitless and beautiful as it is, is not the same as one’s lived experience. 

‘ It was beautiful.’ She said of the Pierre Cardin party. ‘ Everyone was so chic. I'd never seen anything like it - that kind of glamour. Such a rare thing these days. People were so interesting - inspired to create and to live. That's what drove everyone - our love of life. We all knew we’re going to suffer and die, or lose someone like I did. We might as well enjoy ourselves with whatever time we have.’

Jane could look at an image of a painting and know the artist, period and type of paint used. ‘ Oh, that’s Velázquez, 1618 to 1619. Oil on linen. He was a master of the chiaroscuro technique. I could tell you more if we were looking at the original.’

(What?! Damn).

In Paris she met an older Frenchman and fell in love with him. They were married and as she told me, that was the happiest time of her life. Then just like that, her husband became ill and died. She never recovered from the loss and grief. She remained, emotionally at least, that young grieving widow, alone in Paris.

She moved through life differently after that; living in her head, but detached from her heart and body. No one ever touched Jane again because the only person whose touch she wanted was gone.

Her ageing parents, likely motivated by the state of grief she was in, asked her to come back home. She returned to the Bay and settled into her position at the seminary, where she remained for the next 25 years. To me, it seemed as though no one took the time to learn more about Jane, who she had been or who she was. She was an original, a bonafide scholar, who had lived quite an extraordinary life until her heart was broken. I saw Jane and I listened to Jane. 

I'm drawn to interesting women who take different, non-linear paths in life -  who do what isn't expected of them.  Jane chose an academic life of the mind  through art and beauty. Then came undone by the loss of an unexpected true love. At least she had known and experienced that. 

Dr. Mary Jane Phillips passed away in 2019. Ne me quitte pas is a song written by Jacques Brel in 1959. Edith Piaf had a hit with it, then Nina Simone recorded a version of it in 1965. 

It translates in English to ‘Do not leave me.’

the lady of kazan

                                                            

Airbnb is usually slow in winter. My first booking of 2024, a Russian anthropologist showed up at my door. She lived in Anchorage where she worked for the National Park Service. She's a phD in marine anthropology, which means she's a diver. Now, that's bad ass! One thing I'm terrified of is going into deep sea anything - diving, submersibles, sharks, and darkness. The required gear is claustrophobic to me. I'm cool snorkeling up to 20 feet maximum or swimming in holes where I can clearly see the exit. 

The night she arrived, the anthropologist had two laptops stolen when she stopped at a gas station near the airport. One laptop included her presentation. Welcome to Oakland! 

"I am in shock." She said. " We need wine!"

Fortunately a colleague had a back-up of her presentation. Her first night we had a nice get to know you chat over wine. I enjoy listening to women's stories; the paths and people we choose, the lives we live. She mentioned the town Sitka, Alaska which triggered a memory.

' I used to dog sit for a visiting professor at Stanford from Sitka. ' I said. ' He was cool - a charming man.' 

' What was he teaching?' She asked. 

' I don't remember...literature, maybe? He had a houseboat in Sitka and would go back and forth. I loved his dog, Colorado. I took him everywhere with me." 

' What was his name? Was it Brandon? I think I know this professor. I lived in Sitka for a few years. Wait...he has a blog.'

She pulls up a blog on her phone and shows me a picture of the houseboat and a picture of the professor.

' No way! That's him!'

' He was lecturing in Russia on a Fulbright scholarship.' She said.

' He's a Fulbright scholar now? Wow. I have a thing for academics, artists, poets - men on boats and in the woods." 

The anthologist laughed and lifted her glass. " Vashe zdorov'ye to the boys!" 

After that, my enchantment with her was a bit of a struggle. She opened up immediately that she was going through a divorce after 25 years of marriage, two of which husband been in a relationship with someone else. She seemed sad under the hustle and bustle of the conference she was in town to attend. They had agreed that she would keep the house in Anchorage. 

Then she talked about Russia. She was fascinated with Bridgerton, a historical-fiction series I've never seen except images and snippets. Many women in the cast of Bridgerton are black playing Regency period nobility. 

"You're the wrong color for Russia.' She said. ' I was shocked with this show. Black people in Russia?! You never see this."

Okay....I felt my face make that squirm response expression.

With more wine she shared an anecdote about a black dude who approached her and got her a drink at a bar in DC. Apparently they talked about Bridgerton. I'm struck that the racist patriarchy can get into an academic's head at all. A phD should be immune to any of it.

Her comments were not boding well for her as a person. I have a hard rule that when I hear such things, I stop sharing and shift to listening. It's useless, really. The possibility of sisterhood disintegrates. She will keep tussling her hair. Then it's every black dude in a bar wants a blonde story. They always have such anecdotes and myself the misfortune of listening to them. In the realm of straight women, it's the implication of competition. 

Her habits underlied a woman grappling with too much, distracted. Abandoned  bowls left out on the counter, my bath towel used after a shower, regular requests for things that could be found in my guest tips and tricks. I don't even share towels with someone I'm sleeping with. 

Let me think. Okay, maybe once...in my 30s. After that period I had acquired more insight about microorganisms that thrive on the human body. 

Well, who among us has got it together when going through heavy things and loss? I'm a mess in such a state myself. I have a hard time being productive when I'm internally lost in grief. Sometimes going forward alone can be unbearably sad and bereft. 

Airbnb is always a roll of the dice, moments with people that can go good or bad. Most guests have been super cool, a few walk in with their burdens and heartbreak. People. I thought, be kind and patient with the marine anthropologist. 

Then she did a positive thing when she checked out. I forgave her inappropriate comments. When I got up, I found a gracious thank you note, plus cash for the extra night she needed, and an Our Lady of Kazan art card from Russia. The Lady of Kazan is the patron saint of a town near St. Petersburg. Legend has it that the lady would protect Russia against the Bolsheviks as well as travellers on their journey. 

What I never told the anthropologist is that I have been fascinated with iconography of the Madonna in antiquity. I have a tattoo of her on my leg, symbolic of Oshun, the queen high mother in the African pantheon.  

One day I plan to visit Sitka, Alaska and cross the Bering Sea to Russia where my color may be wrong. 

I could giveth a thousand fucks, sayeth the colored girl. The world is mine. 

she her we

                                           Latto (center) with the girls advancing the culture.

                                                                         Atlanta, 2023

I'm baffled by the 21st century idea of what an event or party should be. I'm far from being what anyone would call a church girl, but what is going on? 

There's not much imagination or mystery, but a lot of excess and exposition. I was sipping the tea of popular culture, which I do from time to time, and came across an image of the rapper Latto's 25th birthday bash in Atlanta. 

The theme of her party was Heaux Up x Pimps Down. Well, who doesn't want that? The sis is clever. This is aligned with Latto's bad bitch image. Such party-events are a part of the bigger branding picture. The word brand has a different meaning now than it did 30 years ago. A brand used to be a thing, like Pop Tarts or jeans. Then capitalism and social media collaborated into making a person a brand.

Latto's aesthetic style is getting into the realm of trash which will inspire other young girls to go out looking like strippers on patrol. Such style in pop culture - vacillating between Reality TV and sex doll avatar - has been going on for about 20 years now. Two things started this Twilight Zone post-feminism: the Plastic Kardashians and social media. It's a contradiction where empowerment is being naked on the internet. Fierce and filter are like distortion tools for self-exploitation. 

The vulgarity has impacted young black women who don't need to augment anything because being of African descent is wild, natural beauty. There isn't a black girl on earth that has to enhance a thing nor will she age like a cornflake girl. 

"What do you mean our time of life? How old do you think I am? You forget, your people never know how old we are." 

- Florence to Maude, 1972

Cardi B has been open about her changes; her motivation being that it was an investment in her stripper game. Cardi is the queen of body commodity culture. Her raps, image, and exposition are all based on her body parts. Megan too. I wonder how far they'll roll with all that through time? Will they end up in Vegas, into their 50s, rappin about their W.A.Ps? I'm fairly radical in my value system, but W.A.P tripped me out with its hella bold raunchiness. 

The 20s and 30s are one phase of a woman's life, the 50s - 60s are different in form and context, closer to our own mortality. We aren't baby girls anymore. I haven't been a baby girl since Seals and Croft's Summer Breeze. 

I'm clutching my old ass pearls because I don't think it's necessary or provocative to see everything. Alas, the body commodity remains profitable. It's like we've become Hottentots for sale with raps, beats, and tarantula eyelashes. 

Young women in trash glam look like saturated drag queens more than natural women. Drag queens look dope in heavy make-up, because drag itself is performative, an art form. The young Gen X queens in Paris is Burning, did this without social media, but with DIY glam and grit. I'm here to tell you, no one can mess with anyone who does anything well from scratch. Anyone can click on a filter for that Disney princess heaux glow. 

The modern age is a maximum marketing machine - image, the body, street culture, and trash. The daring garner attention and attention pays the bills. I have no idea how anyone makes money on IG.  Google and Apple Pay are tools of the matrix to me. 

I love trash as ironic camp not as an aesthetic standard of womanhood. I'm critical of entertainment imagery that will get into the heads of black girls in potentially destructive ways. Being autonomous girls and women with agency over our own bodies, in healthy relationships to ourselves and others are defiant moves. Being an entertainment heaux or bad bitch player panders to the enduring stereotypes of a racist society:

The heaux, the pimp, and the drug dealer -  the rulers of The Game.

The Game is rough and cheap and people are interchangeably rough and cheap. Rarely does anyone get to the top of it without taking someone else out. There can be loyalty, betrayal, violence, and drama.

My first serious boyfriend when I was about 18 was a pimp who was trying to get straight - that is, more square. He wanted to be a DJ and rapper.  I used to design flyers for him out of encouragement and caring. His reality, with its transient exploitation and skin trade, messed his head up. He didn't adapt well to me or my straight friends ( kids outside of the game he was into ).

When I broke up with him, he said he had a gun and threatened to hurt himself. 

RUN! 

Pimps can be master manipulators. They are always jockeying for leverage and power. When applied effectively, the guilt trip can be a form of manipulative power. T.S. Madison is a favorite trans comedian and podcaster. I like listening to her interviews. She keeps it real, I'll give her that.

No...I don't really know a lot about love because I used to be a H-O.

I also learned aspects to the game, from the point of view of women, strippers I worked with in New York.  Most were tough and functional, some were strung out, lacked discipline, and could be easily misled. It was usually white girls who got into the wacky situations.  I once booked a girl for a bachelor party gig on a boat. She went to the gig high on heroin. The bachelor party conned her bodyguard off the boat and he called me in a frantic state. That was my job - booking gigs, dispatching the phones, and collecting the money. Realizing she was alone with a gang of dudes, stripper girl freaked out and jumped off the boat into Long Island sound. 

Myself in Hell's Kitchen that night, I had to call in the Long Island cavalry to rescue the girl from that gig. 

In the game one has to be disciplined. There is no space for the expression of softness because soft is vulnerable and the vulnerable can be hurt. 

The tough strippers and hustlers had a kind of force field around them. The most powerful I met carried themselves like ladies, not heaux. There is a distinct difference. Being a lady is like an armor, a superpower. A lady can't be turned out because her presence endeavors respect. I apply such armor. My other armor is that I'm androgynous and present to hustlers like a lesbian. 

There ain't no BET princess or church wife going on over here. I'm also not very good at the sidekick, partner-in-crime, up in the club homegirl. I never learned how to do any of that. I'm interchangeably  the good friend and the lone wolf.  

Turned out is a street term for turning a good girl into a working girl.

In order to do that, a pimp or a madame uses mind control. Once a hustler gets in someone's head, it's a wrap. The promise of love and devotion that are never true. The promise of freedom is never manifested, except in death. 

The Game itself is capitalism and transactional. Whether you make 100 or 1000 a date, a heaux is the product. I'm anti-pimp because pimps are clowns who are not men.  I'm a socialist advocate for the labor of a heaux. Heaux should keep 100% of their profit without a middleman to take a cut. A pimp is the pitchman, a negotiator. Without sexual labor they would have nothing and no one to pimp.

I had a neighbor years ago in West Berkeley who was a old G from Chicago, several years older than me. He was a trip; a vulgar cat with missing teeth, but we were cool. We had one squabble after his wife hit my car door as she backed out of their driveway. When I confronted them, his wife cussed him and me out. He came at me with the ' Listen, sis, she ain't got insurance....' yappity yap.  At that point, I decided to let it go because we, as a people, go through enough shit and sometimes turn that shit on one another. 

Who could any of us become given better circumstances and degrees? Without the need to create hustle culture outside of the social order of white men and women? To the victor go the spoils of respectability.

Always, always choose your battles with the Gs. And always be cool. 

My neighbor and I were friendly, but there was a line. That line was that I was a homegirl, not a part of his game or anyone else's. I was just a regular lady who worked a square ass job and reads books. 

You know what niggas don't do? Niggas don't read books! - Chris Rock, 

Morally questionable in his livelihood choices, the G neighbor was still a person. What I did appreciate about the G, we shared a love for Elton John and he did look out for me and others on the block. Eventually he tried to hook-up and when rejected, reverted to hood rancor in a hilarious text. Were my feelings hurt by a pimp talking shit? 

Not really, no. 

We live with constraints that have existed for generations. Limited resources, lack of opportunity and access, and dysfunctional family systems. The visibly invisible who became more visible in the black girl magic age.  As standards of American beauty and womanhood - Farrah is dead. Molly is dead. Becky and Karen, a kind of mockery of the dead. 

When I have been utterly broke, I would eat at McDonald's or on one meal a day. I borrowed money from friends. I scavenged. The one thing I never did, no matter how tough things were, was heaux or hustle. I worked and worked tirelessly, like a character out of The Color Purple. Without belief in one's beauty and capability intact, all is lost and I wasn't giving either away. 

 I would challenge a bill, apply for a program, and fill out forms. I had a revelation when I was younger where I went to the county to apply for welfare. I sat with the form and read the fine print. I realised that if I pursued that path and got that deep into the system, I would not come back out. Social services can be a resource or like a prison for the dependent mind. 

I was determined to get it together and have my own shit. I navigate the system enough and I won't answer to anyone beyond that. Brick by brick, step by step, I got myself together.

Even in downest times, sleeping on a friend's couch, in my car, and challenging living situations to save on rent, I've always been adaptable. I suppose I inherited what we call backbone. I had to go through black girl hardship and loneliness to get to a place where I could sit at my own window and gaze out onto the world. 

 I've certainly earned that. 

Are heaux in the world? Not in the grand, romantic sense. Their world is myopic, chaotic, prone to relentless scrutiny, negotiation, and exhaustion. They are people in constant in motion with bags, totes, wigs, cell phones, and make-up; racing against time. It's not as glamorous as the media presents it.  

When I lived in Miami, I shared a few rides with girls on the pole. I was struck by their self-assuredness, their get-to-it approach to a kind of after-hours routine. I always did ride shares in Miami because they were cheaper. One young sis was picked up outside a strip club. She entered the car wearing heels and a trendy metallic jacket, a tote bag hanging from her shoulder. She sat next to me in the back seat and I caught a glimpse of her bikini top underneath her jacket. She wrapped the jacket around herself against the AC of the Uber and went to her phone. Her long dragon nails tapping quickly in a text. She was very young, not even 25.

Another was an Airbnb guest. I lived in a shared house in Liberty City and managed Airbnb, strategically - to save on my own rent and mitigate my millennial housemates from renting to random clowns off the interwebs. Young people of the modern age do not vet anyone or anything. 

The young girl had a body shot for her profile. I gave my housemates a heads up, that she's either a stripper or a heaux. My street-hustle knowledge was questioned. 

Have you ever seen anyone post a body shot as a profile picture on a platform except maybe Tinder? Let's get down to brass tax with that.

Sure enough, Airbnb showed up with her ' boyfriend' who was actually her pimp. They were a cool young Haitian-American couple from Tampa. She went out every night working Miami clubs while he hung out in the guest room and collected her earnings. They stayed with us for about a week. I knew cleaning up after them would be a chore. They had camped out like they were in a motel. The glamorous life. 

I wondered what the girls' stories were and whatever happened to their dreams? I know black girls dream. We all do.