And contribution is not a misnomer. For the guy with the OnlyFans account who got me to put some money in his collection plate provided a service, and based on his responses and posts, he appreciated the transaction. As long as he and others enjoy what they do and figure out that looming tax bill awaiting them, I don’t want to assign too much blame to them.
I did feel bad for Abram, though.
I never subscribed to his OnlyFans, but I found one of his EPs on iTunes and bought it. I don’t know how to properly describe his music, but it is great music to smoke weed and chill the fuck out already to. And clean. And write. And read. All that classy shit. Way to go, Abram.
We had another exchange via WhatsApp. When I asked if he enjoyed what he did at all, he told me “a little bit,” but said he was stopping soon because he was in a relationship. I wanted to tell him “Bust down, Russiana,” but I realized (1) he wouldn’t get the reference, and (2) it was wildly inappropriate of me. So instead, I told him that after listening to his music, I thought that his talent was bigger than whatever doubts he had about what he was doing in the meantime.
“Thank you. I know that. But the real world is different, anybody needs cock/ass pics, not music.”
I told him that he needed to listen to more contemporary music. He said I was funny and soon after asked a question that I gathered translated well regardless of background: “WYD?”
For a dude that grew up paranoid about sex and nearly ruined by prudishness, the prospect of fucking an incredibly handsome, fit Russian who dabbled in amateur porn was appealing. Not only would it feel triumphant for obvious reasons, it also sounds like the synopsis of an independent film that becomes Oscar bait after the Kremlin bans it in Russia. I didn’t go that night. Or the other two times he hit me up after. I made up excuses.
He had a boyfriend! I didn’t need the guilt. Looking back, I know that’s good karma and all, but I regret having to tell that Russian “NO COLLUSION!”
Last I heard, he had moved to Los Angeles, so he’s either going to get back to his music, dance as a go-go boy in WeHo, or end up on reality television—maybe all of the above if he really pushes himself. He took all of his OnlyFans-related material down.
God, I wish I had fucked him.
As for the one who got me to pay mind and money to OnlyFans, he’s upped his production values and posts of designer tings. Good for him. And good for me. I’m supporting the arts!
Through him, I finally understand what the rest of you perverts have gotten out of porn all this time. I simply had a more artisanal flair for it. He and his page showed me the way. All I had to do was stop playing and swipe up.
I feel so much closer to you porn people now. To not tip your porn star is arguably even less civilized than not tipping at a restaurant.
Please support the arts.
IT’S CHEAPER TO DIE
I was not raised to be one of those Black men who avoid the doctor at all costs. My mama, a nurse, made certain that whatever the health care equivalent of “nails done, hair done, everything did” was, we had it.
I remember all of the doctors I came across growing up. Dr. Stevens looked like all of the light-skinned women who were releasing R&B albums around the time: Vanessa Williams, Jasmine Guy, Tisha Campbell, Pebbles, and other Lite Brites serving you several eight-counts in tights. She had recently moved from Chicago, and I was one of her first new patients. I used to repeatedly have extremely painful cases of strep throat. Dr. Stevens had a soothing voice—helpful in assuaging the fears of a kid about to have his tonsils removed. I was six when it happened, so my memory of the operation itself is a bit shaky: I remember lying on my back on a gurney at St. Joseph’s Hospital and an anesthesiologist explaining to me that as soon as that mask went over my nose, I should start counting to ten. After waking up, I was told that everything went fine and I would have less pain moving forward. Before going home I was reminded by both her and my mom not to eat anything like a Chicken Nugget in the first couple of days after the operation. I did so anyway. It hurt so bad when I reached into my brother’s food, grabbed that Nugget, dipped it in sweet-and-sour sauce, and inhaled it. The skin on a McDonald’s Chicken Nugget can occasionally be sharp enough to slash someone’s tires. I deserved what I got for not following instructions, but there’s only so much Blue Bell and soup a child can stand in such a short amount of time.
Dr. Michaels reminded me of the late comedian Robin Harris because he talked like the dad in Bébé’s Kids, which Harris created. In the face, he was more so a heavy-set Bernie Mac. He used to lean in the chair at his office like all of the Black dudes who played dominoes outside with my pops. That or any Black man driving a Cadillac Eldorado fresh off of a wash and wax. Rest in peace, icon.
After watching multiple seasons of Bravo’s greatest creation, Married to Medicine, I’d be remiss if I overlooked my tooth cleaners and smile shapers. I don’t want to further insult the work of Dr. Heavenly and others. All I can recall about Dr. Richards, the dentist, though, was that he used to be at an office in our hood until he suddenly moved closer to a location by what was then known as the Summit, before it became the Compaq Center, and eventually Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church. Oh, he had a weird smile, too. My mom never liked him and later explained that he was a (Black) Scientologist, which, in her mind, explained the oddity of his grin and the root of her disdain. Not into the idea of mixing Dianetics with dentistry, we stopped going there after a while, and much of my dental work over the years has been negated by my breaking my retainer and my wisdom teeth coming in, but eventually, I’ll make my way to the Smile Store. My teeth are white, but crooked. My friend Nnete once said they had “personality.” That’s generous, but while I can’t afford whatever teeth T.I. has purchased with his health, I consider them a template on what to shoot for when I get a remix on this mouth of mine.
By high school, I had my first white doctor: Dr. B. I forget his surname as he insisted on being identified as Dr. B. He was genial as fuck. And he took an actual interest in me that never felt like pandering. I knew just enough to feign interest in talking sports with him outside of which professional athletes I fantasized about, but what built our rapport more was my interest in news and politics and a vision of what I hoped my professional life might look like. To this day, he asks my mom about me—mostly if I’m still writing.
The names of all of the specialists escape me, but I saw plenty well before high school ended. Of the various problems, the one constant involved my ears—I have been told repeatedly that I have an incredibly thin ear canal. As a result of that, every few years, I get an excruciatingly painful ear infection that always-always-always forces me to take a trip to an ear/nose/throat doctor. Around sixteen or so, I was required to have some operation that sought to remove ear wax stuck to some kind of bone in my ear. I swear I am not a dirty, dusty peasant. I also know that Q-tips only worsen such a situation. It’s not that I am forgetting to wash every part of my body. I’m not—never mind. I have a condition! I can’t help the ear canals I was born with the same way I can’t alter the fact that my ears in general are slightly too big for my peanut head.
But even when I was disgusting myself while seeking medical care, I always had a relatively good experience with doctors. I had no reason to fear them. I never had an anxiety about a doctor’s trip, given that it had been my experience that if something went wrong, it would get taken care of. It might hurt like hell along the way, but eventually, I’d be all right. I just needed to make sure to go when a situation called for it.
We may have wanted for some things, but not our health.
My mom had good insurance, but in recalling all of the doctor’s visits through the years, I imagine that if her health insurance had not been so good, I would have been an even more expensive little problem. My mom changed her insurance by the time I graduated from college, in order for me to stay on her plan until I was twenty-five. She knew her sick-ass child might need it.
When the plan told my
Black ass I had to go and get my own, it took less than a month of me not on my mom’s insurance plan to get another ear infection—one that didn’t bother with pretense and so jumped ahead of mild and rushed instantly to wildly painful and frustrating. There is no pain like ear canal pain, beloveds. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. The free clinic made the problem worse—I couldn’t hear out of the right side of my head anymore, but outside of the near two days it took to be treated in the emergency room and almost having to run over some bad-ass kids who circled my car while I applied for health insurance, it could have been much worse. (Don’t feel bad for those kids either; rob niggas your own age.)
For the first few years of having insurance on my own, while I had to work through my learning curve to avoid racist and/or homophobic doctors, I was good about taking care of myself. The weird things happening with my skin; the unbearable headaches; my ears, again; what I came to learn was a panic attack. The low cost of those generic forms of antidepressants in particular saved my life in one form or another.
I was one of the apparent few millennials who purchased health care plans pre-Obamacare. It wasn’t only an earache that pushed me back to insurance. It was knowing its value to begin with from the values my mom the nurse instilled in me. I also never got over Big Mama losing her leg in Soul Food and those niggas going back to eating the exact foods that took her ass out of the game.
I had more direct examples to turn to as well.
Joshua was one of the few male friends I had in my teens. Not just cool with—I was cool with plenty of people—but an actual friend. I was sociable, but considered “soft” by a lot of people. That wasn’t the easiest way to make male friends—who could sniff out what I was trying to suppress—but Joshua was my friend. He was a football player and ran track, but he was smart and we found each other amusing. He also seemed to have a lot of secrets. Once, he and I along with maybe seven others took a bus trip to visit one of the bigger universities in Texas our senior year. We had to meet at 5 a.m. because it was going to take nine hours to get to our destination. It gave teases of “Welcome to our Very White Campus, Urban Youths.” Joshua ended up at the school based on that visit, but by the time we got back to Houston—it had to have been at least 10 p.m.—everyone walked to their parents meeting the bus except him. No one had shown up for Joshua. My mom noticed it faster than I did and we decided to wait with him a little longer. We ended up taking him home. There was someone back at the house, but he never told me why no one was there to pick him up and take him home. He had only made mild allusions to discomfort with his mom, but nothing specific. I wasn’t volunteering information about my home life, so I didn’t pry.
We kept in touch for a good while—instant messenger conversations, email, and Facebook here and there. He paid a surprise visit to my house on Thanksgiving one year to see me, but I wasn’t home yet. I told him that he should have hit me up! I was going to be there in a few days. He would be gone by then, going with his family somewhere else. I was bummed that I had missed him. I had no idea that was going to be the last chance I ever had to see his face and hear his voice—slightly deep and always in a tone best described as “chill.” He was a lot calmer than I ever was, but he was funny himself on the low-low.
I don’t know if he ever really liked dudes, too, as a few others hinted by the time we both were in college. I heard he was spotted at a gay club in Houston. That didn’t necessarily mean he was gay. He was the kind of person who might have popped up there to be supportive. He was considerate in that way. He was attractive, and I can admit looking at him in that way from time to time, but I never gave him any indication. I talked to him about girls. I even tried to hook him up with one of my friends around the time we first became closer. I was more into having a platonic relationship with another dude in which I didn’t feel like I had to tone down any parts of myself that I guess screamed “gay,” in order to be considered “normal” enough for another dude to be my friend and not assume that anything he assumed about me suggested anything about him. If he ever did have any discomfort when we hung out, he never made it known to me.
We lost touch in the last two and a half years he was alive. I found out through mutual friends that he was experiencing some sudden health problems—something about the liver, I think—and was rapidly declining in health. He didn’t have insurance. Then people were trying to raise money on Facebook. This was long before the days of crowdsourcing’s peak. He died at a county hospital a few months after he had literally just gotten an advanced degree. He had had his entire life ahead of him and he died at the very start of his late twenties. I was nowhere near Houston when it happened. I wish I had asked my mom to help me fly down to say goodbye properly. To say thank you for being a friend and then proceed to sing the rest of the Golden Girls theme because you can’t say the words “thank you for being a friend” and not finish the rest of the song—no matter the situation.
He wasn’t the first childhood friend of mine to die too soon, but he was the first I knew who might not have had to die if only he’d had access to health care sooner.
I thought of him when the Affordable Care Act gained congressional approval, given that he died only about four months later. I was sad about him, but happy about the bill itself. The only people who weren’t happy about the legislation were monsters—the types of people who enjoyed watching Scar murder his brother Mufasa. More people deserved health insurance—especially those who had been robbed of it for preexisting conditions.
Still, I have a secret: Obamacare has since become the bane of my existence and the reason I have become that Black fool who avoids going to the doctor at all costs. I never wanted to be that Black man. There are so many ways to die early as hell as a Black man, and not being the Black man who gets a regular checkup ranks right up there with “just being a Black man in America.”
The conservative media industrial complex has already taken that declaration and plastered it on television. I can see the chyron on Tucker Carlson Tonight now: “NEGRO AND HOMO WRITER HATES SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE PLAN CRAFTED BY FELLOW DARKIE!”
I take no pleasure in sharing this. I would never want to intentionally upset my beloved Michelle Obama, the greatest First Lady this racist-ass country has ever had. Nor do I want to disappoint Sasha or Malia Obama, as I am sure one of them will at least have a dope podcast that I would die to appear on. And you know, Barry, too. I don’t want to shit on the biggest legislative achievement of not only the first Black president of the United States of America, but the greatest legislative win for Democrats in decades.
I’ve got to two-step in my truth, though. Obamacare has made it harder for me to not end up having a future bout with gout. I am not a selfish person. I understand that Obamacare needed to happen because for far too long, millions of people who needed health insurance were denied that right, long treated as a privilege. I recognize that the problems with the ACA are not totally former President Obama’s fault.
In December 2009, Senator Joe Lieberman, no longer a Democrat in name upon losing a 2006 primary to Ned Lamont, only to run as an independent and be reelected as senator of Connecticut, told the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, to scrap the idea of expanding Medicare and abandon any new government insurance or lose his vote. Democrats in the Senate had previously believed they had Lieberman’s support, but being the hating-ass bitch he is, Lieberman flip-flopped.
On his decision, Lieberman said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation: “You’ve got to take out the Medicare buy-in. You’ve got to forget about the public option.”
He claimed it was about concerns over deficits, but it felt more like a personal fuck you to Obama and a Democratic Party that no longer catered to him until he held their health care bill for ransom. They acquiesced. Ultimately, the bill was named after former President Obama, and neither he nor any of the Democrats pushed hard enough to pass a bill that Republicans were never planning to support anyway, despite the delightful irony that Obamacare
is just Romneycare, which is just Bob Dole’s health care plan from the 1990s. So I place most of my contempt where it belongs, but it should be spread around a bit.
It was Obama himself who said on July 18, 2009: “Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange—a one-stop-shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs and track records of a variety of plans, including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest.”
As an independent contractor, I am responsible for my health insurance bill. Some boast about the rise of the gig economy and some berate those working nine to five to make a living rather than being an entrepreneur. Let me tell you, I envy you W-2 bitches. You don’t have my tax headaches, and more importantly, you generally have health care provided by your employer. I would be less envious if my options were better.
Initially, Obamacare had no real impact on me in terms of what I paid for my insurance. The good old days, as I’ve now come to see them. My plan stayed roughly in the $170 to $200 per month range and I was free to make the most of my PPO.
Three years in, my very reasonably priced plan rapidly surged in price as some had warned it would without a public option to compete with the private sector. Even after I paid the new higher premium, I would be informed by fall that the plan I had would no longer be available in the next enrollment year. Because my insurance company was leaving the market. So I had to join another. And then they left, so I had to find some new folks.
I miss Aetna so much. That was my bitch until she decided she couldn’t be bothered with the Obamacare market anymore. Once, I called a different health insurance provider for information about their plan and she said that for well over $400 per month, I could basically get a physical a year and one trip to the emergency room. It was the third year I lived in New York, and I was trying to find a plan comparable to the ones I’d enjoyed in California and Texas. Everything is more expensive in New York, but when she told me that price, I literally laughed out loud and hung up. More of the markets have left, and my current provider is basically that bae that let themselves go and always wants to punish me for every wrong that I’ve ever done in life.
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