Straight No Chaser

Blah Blah Black Sheep

in the car on the way home, i pretended to listen to the isley brothers, but really just spent the entire time fantasizing about marcus's phone call tonight. wherein i will say: "hey, i have a question, and i'm not asking because i want to be judged or lectured, but because i'm genuinely curious--when you were growing up, like in high school, did you ever--ever have that uneasiness about being the only one, the smart black kid, about having to not only fit in academically, but also find some sort of niche for yourself socially without turning into someone your mom always sneered at?"

he'll say no, of course. but then we'll talk about it for a while, and it will be revealed--slowly--that he knows exactly what i'm talking about, maybe even identifies a little bit, and that it was really just his machissimo at first. this is how most of our best conversations take flight: with an initial defensive lie, one that gets unwrapped, slowly, till everyone is laying things bare and telling the truth, finally.

i graduated two and a half years ago, impossible but true, and in that time everything has changed--i'm a completely different person, one who doesn't care nearly as much what other people think, one who stands straighter and speaks louder than my 2003 self. but. a couple of particular faces from that time period, that middley high schooly period, and i'm nothing again. this softspoken smear of soot on a giggling pot of clam chowder. or something. my metaphors were better then.

junior year, my journalistic magnum opus was a two thousand-word feature printed in the february issue. i'll be amazed if i haven't written about this before, here. "chocolate chip in a sugar cookie" was the title they came up with (story-writers didn't get much license over their own titles). i die a little inside, thinking back on it. probably the stupidest, most exhibitionistic thing i've ever done. except it won me points with the then-editor-in-chief, whose word was like gospel then, and it secured my position for the following year; also i touched a couple of lives, yada yada. but mostly, then, i was focused on the praises of the newspaper higher-ups--no diversity there--and on the noisy frowns of the folks i insulted--none there either.

it's so not important now, it's four years' over with and nobody but me remembers that story, probably. but still. it's weird; you move on but you don't really move on, you find yourself a new environment and learn to stand tall within its context, but that confidence doesn't always carry over, not at first. it's weird.

i just, this is just because i refuse to write about being the cause of anyone's unhappiness, except to say that i'm just a young lady, and a fucking dumb one at that; i don't deserve your compliments and i don't need sacrifices rendered, and while i'm sorry if i ever hurt you, i still fail to see how i even managed in the first place.