Wishing for Wonderful Things

I'm in such an odd place now. It's the end of another year. I've experienced any number of things this year. Met amazing people, lost great friends, made my first foray into clinical psychology, applied to graduate school, I met the guy who I thought was going to be my final boo. I mean, this guy was everything I wanted. He was cute, a lil corny, beautiful smile, great conversation, interesting quirks, and he was just all-in-all amazing. But things didn't work out. And, as I sit here watching the year end, I just hope that 2008 brings with it wonderful things.

Feeling Lost

You ever re-meet an ex that you really liked and they are dating someone, and then they end up single again? Well, that's my predicament. I was dating a great guy in the spring of this year, but we didn't work out for reasons beyond our control. After a few months, we began to talk again and he was in a relationship. I was supportive, cuz I really care about him and ultimately care most about his being happy, even if it's not with me. Well, now he is single again. Logic would say that he'd come to me if he were interested in dating again, but I don't know. I don't want to push him into anything, but he is really the gold standard for what I like. -Sigh- I don't know what to do. I feel so lost.

Faux Depth

Words of a Day Long Past

Well, I've always considered myself a great thinker but, after reviewing some of my earlier work, I was not always correct in that belief. When I was in high school, I wrote poetry all the time. I reached a point where I was writing 10+ poems a week. Many of these poems have been lost over time, but I still have about 95 or so on my computer. So I've been re-reading them and, WOW, some things that I thought were amazing were really just a trite attempt at seeming deep, thoughtful, or wise-for-my-age. I'm not saying that there were no gems in the work that I produced then, but it definitely wasn't the greatest collection of poetry since Psalms as I then thought. This is a testament to the idea that you shouldn't read your own press, because it will definitely have your head swollen.

Pseudo-Intellectualism

Though I intend to one day be a noteworthy scholar in the areas of African-American studies (with special emphasis on the black male experience) and the psychology of marginalized peoples, I am not yet there. However, I am making a sincere attempt to make strides in that direction. As such, I read as many texts as time permits, attempt to engage other people on relevant related subjects, and consume visual/auditory material to expose myself to various perspectives on these subjects. Given that, I am PARTICULARLY bothered by people who consider them experts on subjects with which they have no interaction outside of anecdote. I believe that people can share their experiences with others, but it is necessary to understand that one perspective does not necessarily encapsulate the collective experiences of all persons in a given group or context. The way that I've experienced Gary, IN or Princeton University is very different from how some others have done so. That doesn't negate the truth of our experiences, but it does inhibit each of us from considering our experience to be the sole exemplar of what it is to have grown up in Gary, IN or been educated at Princeton University. But few people are willing to believe this, because the alternative (research and particularly research which may yield answers one does not want to integrate into his understanding) is too much work.

-Sigh-

Unfortunate.

Something About Softness

There's just something to be said about softness in a man.

As much as I love "masculinity" in the men that I choose to deal with, it is so essential that they also have a bit of softness. And I guess that can manifest in a great number of ways (which, thankfully, allows for me to see beauty and compatibility in a wide array of different persons). For example, I see softness in some men because have a small stature, beautiful eyes, lips that are full and soft, smooth musculature, long hair, a soft voice, or a beautiful smile. In other men, I see softness in the way a man finds strength in me, in his ability to shed tears, in the way his eyes brighten when he sees me, the way he talks about his mother, the way he looks when he sleeps, or the way he holds me tight when we sleep to make sure I don't move during the night.

Just had to get that off my chest, but I think I will delve more deeply into this sort of "necessary" duality at a later date.

A Bad Day

I make it a personal goal not to let the world break me, but I feel damn close to broken right now.

Let's start with the minor things and build up to the coup d'état. So a few months ago, I bought a new computer. It's a real beauty. Dual DVI-D monitors. Dual core processor. Windows Vista Ultimate. DVD burner with LightScribe technology. 500 GB hard drive. Aaaaaand TV Tuner. Well, I love all the features and I use the TV tuner every night. I watch the news or cartoons to go to sleep. That was all well and good until the TV tuner stopped working two days ago. Well, the tuner didn't stop working, but the software which accessed it stopped working and I can't figure outhow to fix it. Minor, but an annoyance nonetheless, particularly given that I paid 2K for the computer.

Next, my job is prone to give me overtime. And lots of it. But luckily I only have 24 hours of overtime in this pay period. And it works out well, because a friend of mine lives near my job and has no problem picking me up at midnight and dropping me off. Also, one of my boys gets off at 10:30 most nights, so he doesn't have a problem with picking me up at midnight either. And most of the time, I treat him to a late night breakfast for his trouble. Great. So last night, I saw him and he told me he was going to pick me up tonight from work. Well, I called him at 11...no answer. 11:10....no answer. 11:30...no answer. 11:40...no answer. And, as we approached midnight, I called with greater frequency, because I KNEW he wouldn't leave me stranded. Well, I knew wrong. As it stands, it's 1:12 and he has still yet to call me. Luckily the first friend I mentioned picked me up. I had to call her 4 times before she picked up, but it's nice to know who's down for you when you're in a jam.

And now the coup d'état , so the great guy I mentioned in the last post...well, tonight he told me why he can't be my boo. He was being super secretive and kept saying that he couldn't even bare to say it, so I assumed it was something related to HIV/AIDS. I was all ready to tell him about how that doesn't matter to me and how that doesn't change what I think about him. And he stopped me. Apparently, I was on the wrong track. So I asked him to clarify. Well, he had said "I'm sorry, but I've become another statistic." Well, apparently, he wasn't referring to national statistics. He was referring to stats very specific to my life. Nearly every man I find who likes me genuinely and who I actually like in return leaves me for his ex. Well, now this guy has joined the crew. Apparently, he and his ex had a rekindling a few weeks ago and thus, I was dropped like a bad habit. Long story short, I cried and I cried hard. Truth be told, I'm still crying. It hurts very deeply, not only because he was an amazing guy, but also because I'm so tired of living the same tragic story over and over again.

Wow, life sucks right now.

I Need a Caribbean!

See, I'm back to the same old shit again. Single than a motherfucker. Now I could write this poetically, but I think I'm just going to vent.

So...I met this guy. He was great. Light-skinned, 6'2, beautiful smile, great conversation, great hugs, kept me smiling, liked to eat, loved Jamba Juice, was easy to please, was eager to please, etc. Then he realized I was boyfriend material and dropped me like a bad habit, because he wasn't prepared to be that for me.

(Now I'm about to make an irrational jump.) This is why I hate American men. I never had these kinds of problems when I dated Caribbean men. They couldn't get enough of me. Hell, my last boyfriend was Jamaican and we've been broken up for a year now, and he STILL calls with occasional sweet nothings so I can know I still mean something to him. The West Indian cats that I've dated have just been different from the American guys. However, this perspective might just be the result of my current anger.

So...What Are You?

"So...what are you?"

That's the first question whenever somebody realizes that I'm a Black man with definite plans for bettering the current state of the race. And then I have to answer, "You mean Greek affiliation? Oh, I'm not Greek." Then they give me the WTF face, as to say "Why would a Black man who is interested in bettering the race and who is supposedly motivated not join a Black Greek Letter Organization?" That shit is tiresome.

I mean, I guess I understand on some level, but it's still a question I'm tired of answering. Indeed it is the case that a great number of well-to-do Black men who have attended college tend to be Greek. Dr. King was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. Both Michael Jordan and Shaq are members of Omega Psi Phi. Stokely Carmichael was a Sigma. Cedric the Entertainer is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Cornel West is an Alpha (tho he is technically an honorary member of Alpha Phi Alpha rather than a person who actively joined). So, yes, a lot of great, influential, and/or well-known Black men are Greek. Therefore I understand the assumption and surprise, but it just gets kind of annoying after the third or fourth person asks.

Since I started my new job, I've been asked that no less than 10 times by various staff and trainers, only 2 of which were Greek themselves. I think it's done now though. :-D

New Job

I swear that I'm a piss-poor blogger when I'm employed. When I was in college, I could write every day, but I've been a bum since graduation. Anyway, I guess the biggest current update is my new job (praise the Father!). I am going to be a teacher for youth with psychological maladjustment. And there's lots of news to come along with that.

Orientation Group

So every new employee at my new spot has to go through the same two-week orientation process. I was hoping to have either a very small group (just me) or a huge group, as to avoid any possible bullshit. Well, there were three of us: me (a teacher) and two older women (direct care workers). They both come off as motherly women, so I was hoping they'd be sensible and somewhat conservative (like my own mother). Well, I was wrong. They're both C-RAZY. Coworker's Crazy Stories

3-pc

So, in the second week of orientation, I went through a class called TCI (Therapeutic Crisis Intervention) for the first three days. It was done off-site, so I'd ride with one of the ladies. Well, Tuesday morning she decided to tell me all about her life, starting with her crazy male relatives. So, apparently, she has a cousin with serious mental imbalance (non-diagnosed). One day, they were hanging out and he was on his cell phone talking to his girlfriend. The conversation goes as follows:
Cousin: (to girlfriend on phone) Oh, okay...cool...yeah...mmmhmmm...well, I'm going to bring you a three-piece...yeah, I got you. I'm going to bring you a three-piece. Okay, bye.
Coworker: Oh, you going to KFC? I want some chicken too.
Cousin: Nah, cuzzo.
Coworker: So where you getting that three-piece from?
Cousin: You got it all fucked up, cuzzo. The bitch talks too much, so I'm gonna give her a three-piece. I'm gonna pop her in the eyes, nose, and mouth, fam.

Now this is problematic, I must admit, given the implication of domestic violence fueled by patriarchal dominance. However, it also cracked me the fuck up. I died laughing in the car. Who calls three punches to the face a 3-piece? I actually thought he was referring to something sexual initially when she told me this story. Then again, I tend to assume that. -shamed face-

Show Me That Dick

So, as if the 3-pc story wasn't enough, she decided to tell me another crazy story about this cousin. Apparently, she used to be a manager at a local KFC. So one Friday, one of her employees called out sick (as he was prone to do at the start of weekends) so she vented to her cousin that she was sick of him calling out. Sooooooo....the cousin robbed him the next day. -Sigh- And, to make matters worse, the cousin robbed him in broad daylight in the middle of the street AND after taking his money and his weed, he demanded, "Drop them drawers. Show me that dick! I want to make sure you're not hiding any more money or weed down there. Show me that dick!" -Sigh- I didn't even know what to do when I heard this.

Class Warfare (uneducated vs. educated)

In other job news, it's odd when you enter a new environment and have to become acclimated. I've been getting comfortable in my new job and the first thing I noticed was the animosity that the more ground-level (read: less educated, which equals lower pay) workers feel for the administration (read: college educated, which equals higher pay).

On the first day, my coworker M already had a grudge against the HR person. So, of course, i ask why and she says, "She is stuck up. She think she somebody, but that bitch ain't nobody." What was odd was that the HR person seemed very down to Earth to me. She's a very pretty, speaks exquisitely, and has a very professional manner. And these were precisely the things that M hated the most. "She thinks she's so damn cute. Talkin like a white person. That bitch ain't my boss!" Well, yes, she is quite cute. What is talking like a white person? And, though she's not your boss, she is your superior in this workplace, so get the chip off your shoulder. M was also apt to say, "She/he don't do shit. Why they getting paid so much more than me?" What seems like not doing shit is simply work that doesn't make much sense to her. The "shit" she was referring to was coordinating our benefits, conducting interviews, ensuring that we get paid in a timely fashion, ensuring that everybody isn't on vacation at the same time, making sure we understand company policy so we don't get fired, etc. Then again, maybe I'm biased, because I rarely trust the anger voiced by the undereducated when they realize that someone with an education is getting better paid than they are or is able to do a sort of work which doesn't require the physical labor that many unskilled positions require. Eh, I don't know.

But I guess it must also be said that there is a distaste for many of the ground-level workers on the part of the administration, because the executive director even said to me in my initial interview that many of them have lower IQs than the kids we service and that I would find that very few of them had much drive to better themselves AND that next to none of them has more than a semester of college education. All of this was said with distaste and was meant as a warning to me, so I guess the jaundiced eye is not exclusive to the ground-level workers. The administration view them in a homogenous, unsavory light as well.

Ahhh....Progress

The Price of Progress

It really sucks to be great sometimes. (Yes, that sounds REALLY arrogant, but I couldn't find a better way to put that.) This is particularly true when the people around you have no real sense of what it means to be above average. And THIS is why I hate my current job and my current surroundings in general. People who are satisfied with their own mediocrity have no positive investment in your success. In fact, some of them are threatened by the idea that someone else might want ot achieve great things (i.e. "How dare you think you can achieve more than me?") and it really makes you want to cut these people off. But what happens when these people are your family members?

Funny V-Day

So I have quite a few exes, just given the topsy-turvy nature of both gay relationships and 18-24 year old relationships in general, but very few are of any real note. But this Valentine's Day, I got a call from one of the noteworthy ones. I was with this guy for the spring and summer of 2005. He was a very nice guy, a bit selfish, childish, and lacking a bit of perspective (the kid kept telling me he would've gone to Princeton, but didn't really like it; mind you, he was a student at a community college when he told me this. Ummm....nobody opts for a community college over an Ivy. You might opt for a Stanford or WashU or Morehouse, but NOT anybody's community college). But whatever the case, he was my boo and we had a really good relationship and a REALLY bad breakup. He loved me, but he didn't have enough time for me. So when I decided we should end it, he cried and he cried hard. He couldn't even bear to hear my voice for months. But, whatever the case, we chilled twice in the spring of 2006 and he was, at that point, in a relationship with an older man who he seemed to really like. Well, he called me on v-day to tell me how much he missed me and how the older man couldn't compare. :-D Suffice it to say that it put a smile on my face, but more importantly, it really made me wonder what would've happened if I had been in Jersey and we could've reconciled. Hmm.....interesting.

ThaOthaBrotha? Who's That?

So I'm sitting here looking at 50 Cent's movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin" and there's a scene where 50 is riding in his new car. He looks over into the rear-view mirror and starts practing his gangsta speak. "Who the fuck you lookin at?" "Get the fuck out of my car!" First it made me really nostalgic, because I remember looking in the mirror and talking to myself. I remember singing in the mirror. I remember practicing my romantic lines. I remember posing. And it really made me think about the faces we put on.

I mean, it's part of life to have many masks. You can't logically be the same guy at work as you are with your significant other. And it doesn't make sense to interact with your children in the same manner that you interact with your buddies from college. It's just a matter of appropriate behavior. But what about constructed identities? And, more importantly, what happens when we can no longer tell the difference between who we are and who we have constructed?

One of my boys is a very attractive guy (as tends to be the case). From our dealings, I've always thought he was emotionally void due to his past relationships with guys and therefore less apt to get hurt in any dealings he does have with them (compounded with the power he wields by being as attractive as he is). However, recently, he tells me that the cold face is just a facade and that he is actually very sensitive and emotional. He just puts on the cold face to protect himself. But yo, how is it that I've known the guyf or 4 years and that's the only face I've ever seen. Mind you, I'm not his type so he didn't give me the cold face to protect himself. yet that's the only person I knew.

On a somewhat similar note, I have always prided myself on being nice. I know that so many people in th world are mean and unabashedly so. So I was very happy to be different and was very proud to be nicer than most other people. however, nice people often get trampled over, so I developed a very cutting sarcsem and wit to protect myself. And, of course, I honed it over time, becoming increasingly proficient at cutting to the heart of people with my words. So I was talking with some friends my sophomore year of college and I said, "yeah, I'm a real nice guy, " and they laughed. They laughed hard, inf act. They couldn't believe that I formed my lips to even say that. Then they went so far as to say that I was the meanest of the entire group. Now it seemed that the personality component that I had developed as protection had become a very permanent part of who I was and I didn't even know it. Talk about a shock.

Usually I can end these mental rants with some sort of closing statment or moral to the story, but I don't even know this time. I guess I'll have to give it more thought.