I don’t want to say I’ve wasted the third decade of my life. I won’t diminish myself in such fashion. I have done many things I am proud of. Things will improve. Some things have already improved. But what hasn’t changed is one fundamental fact: so much of my life is still revolving around the $1,000+ a month I give to my student loan lenders. So much of that money could’ve gone elsewhere. An IRA account. Better insurance. A house. Actual vacations. Stuff that would make me happy. Projects that creatively would make me feel fulfilled and would more than likely have me already in that better position in life.
And you already know that some of the things other people have that you don’t—marriage, home ownership, children—aren’t even necessarily things you want right and may never want. Also: Some of your friends have these things and none made their lives happier, much less complete.
You also know that your thirties are not that late in your life. However, in terms of earning potential, career advancement, and compatibility, based on some very adult aspects of life—credit, debt, general stability—this period is pivotal. I’ve seen people in my line of work who never quite got over the hump. I know people my age who already have. I feel for the former, but I need to be the latter.
My greatest fear is that I won’t, and if I don’t, what that means.
There are many days in which I wrestle with the guilt of getting out of my hood only to subject myself to more struggle pursuing a dream my kind typically cannot afford to have.
Chance had nothing to do with any this, but in hearing more of his story, I heard the key parts where ours aligned and where they differed. He chose a more stable route to improve his life and I went with something risky. And harder. My career has largely consisted of self-employment and self-teaching on how to not just survive in pursuit of something, but thrive. His was a much clearer path—he understood exactly what results his hard work would yield. That made his debt irksome, but not debilitating. Mine had me both thriving and barely surviving at the same time. I didn’t know what to think about myself based on my own metrics, so it was ill-advised to measure myself by his.
He just made me feel like such a broke nigga by comparison. I have listened to too many R&B songs in my life not to know you don’t want to be that person. Do you remember the first R&B song that warned you of the futility of the broke nigga?
For me, it was “Tell Me (I’ll Be Around),” released in 1996 from the obscure R&B girl group named Shades. On the song, one of them—I don’t remember names or faces much—sings, “Don’t think that I’m an opportunist, I fall in love, but just not for free.” I tried looking this up, so I do know it was not Shannon Walker Williams, the one who married Ray Allen, and thus stayed very true to her mission of marrying a baller. It doesn’t look like it was the member named Tiffanie Cardwell, so it was either Danielle Andrews or Monique Peoples. My apologies to the group members, but at least I bought the CD single. Point is, the song was basically cluck-cluck, I need a man with the big bucks. The chorus is truly a gorgeously sung gold digger questionnaire: “Tell me your name, what car do you drive? How much money do you make?”
If Chance and I had to answer this song that I still listen to regularly because the shit still slaps, he would nail all of the questions. I would be asking if my answers could be written. And sorry, but I have been impacted more by the bevy of Kandi Burruss–penned “this broke man ain’t shit”–themed tunes so many artists were singing in the aughts than I ever realized. We need to make more economically realistic R&B.
Right before Chance, I made the mistake of going out with someone else that was basically a walking City Girls track. This boy was younger than me and not necessarily dumb per se, but not someone that you could have a conversation with if the topics at hand deviated to anything that involved the world around us versus the world viewed through your social media feeds. He talked a lot about nothing, I looked at him and wrestled with whether he was that pretty or I was this shallow. I like to think if you invite someone out, you should pay for dinner or whatever else is the date. I think it’s more than fine to pay for multiple dates if you so desire. Back when I was trying to impress girls in vain, I did the most with the money I made from working. I tried to do that initially when I switched to boys, but I quickly dropped that act because men aren’t worth it. And with men, why would we even go by straight people? They don’t know anything. Look at them.
This dude was more into tradition. Even when he would invite me out, I would pay. He only once made mention that I always paid, before ordering another drink. I had to cut that one loose. He made too many jokes about escorting anyway—and not the kind I make because it’s too late for me now. If he were an escort, I wish he would have at least said his price and I could have made an evaluation yay or nay.
Right before him was Aaron, who I’m convinced believes living as close to Nene Leakes’s “I’M VERY RICH” essence is the key to a happy life.
I don’t have a problem with people of meager means who go on to make a nice life for themselves, reaping the rewards of their hard-earned success, but new money types are the most insufferable people on the planet. I don’t care about which gym you go to. I don’t care what class your flight was—though now that you mention it, even comfort seats are amazing for the free liquor and leg room so shout-out to first class, Still, yo chill. I don’t care about the car you drive, either.
I don’t care not because I don’t have those things, but because I’m not sure I even want much of that. My ideal is a quieter stunt and less-is-more approach to showing off whatever constitutes success to you. I think his choices are fine given they are his to make, but they were too loud for me.
Those last two wastes of my time, coupled with my own penchant for self-sabotaging, impacted how I acted with Chance. I could feel myself increasingly shrinking in front of him. Instead of me admitting those issues to myself in an effort to address them, I chose to create reasons not to like him. None of them is worth repeating because none of them made any sense. It was easier to come up with new and varied excuses to dislike him. I’m good at coming up with reasons to push myself away from people. It’s far less laborious than admitting my own insecurities.
What I should have done is look myself in the mirror and admit that my own hang-ups about my place in life were why I was failing to impress someone who was steadily losing interest in me. I regret giving him all the reasons to. It was only a temporary feeling.
I can credibly blame my childhood for my delayed start in a romantic and sexual life, but it is my own fault at this point for tripping up my own progress. I am not a failure, but if I don’t accept it, I will only continue to fail myself and be rewarded with a dusty dick and hurt feelings.
I don’t know where the intersection of Suze Orman and Iyanla Vanzant is, but there is a market for that.
Although I blew it with that beautiful, well-off gym rat who debated like a prosecutor seeking public office, I did reach out to him every now and then to see how he was doing. Eventually, I built up enough nerve to ask him to hang out again. He had left his high-paying job for something not as well paid but more fulfilling. I confessed that part of my admitted nervousness around him was rooted in him triggering some of my insecurities. I told him how much he intimidated me because of where my head was. In getting to know him, I realized he was a beautiful, thoughtful writer, and because he was so brilliant and thoughtful, he did not pursue a writing career. After saying “wow” to what I thought was just stating the obvious, he thanked me for the compliment but went on to say that he could have just assumed that I looked down on folks like him for not being as “brave.”
He had used that word once before when I admitted via text that I bet my mom wished I had pursued something more stable, as he had. “You were different,” he said in response. “You were braver.”
I wish I had the confidence of others who actually aren’t shit but get booed up anyway. Brother, can you spare a cup of misplaced confidence? I wish I had been
honest sooner. Maybe things might have gone differently. Or perhaps not—but if nothing else, I would have made my best effort.
While walking with him back home, he asked how I felt about my life changing. I expressed to him that it’s not changing as sharply as some believe it to be, but I do feel as if I am working toward getting over certain humps. He asked me how important money was to my future. My answer was immediate: “It’s everything. I am not trying to struggle anymore.”
He countered the way a thoughtful, socially conscious person who quit a job for one that felt like it mattered more in terms of contributions to society is expected to: stressing that money wasn’t the end all, be all. Or the key to happiness.
Yeah, yeah, I get that lesson, but in terms of my life, having financial security means I can embark on the kind of freedom I’ve long been deprived of. The kind of life he was living. You have to be able to afford choice. Happiness is expensive. I have made conscious choices about the direction of my life and how I wanted it to go, but money plays a direct influence in whether much of those plans come to fruition. He’s right to a larger extent. But I’ll take the money for now.
MAMA’S BOY
I worry that ultimately, this experience has been just another way of me disappointing you. You are correct in that I care too much about what you think. I am a grown man. I do not need to be so consumed with what my mother thinks of me, an adult male. Maybe he was right that Marcus and I are both mama’s boys. He was right about a few other things, too, to his brown liquor-scented credit.
You can be mean. Not just cold, which was always more attributable to those who were cruel to you rather than any testament to your character. You are a kind, compassionate person regardless of whatever outward disposition you decide to deliver at the time. But yes, you can be mean and are efficient in using that ability to make people feel small. I don’t fault you for that, actually. People made you mean. You can indeed be a little holier than thou. He isn’t the only one to think that, though he always deserved your scorn.
You were not abusive, but you, like a lot of Black parents of a certain time, gave in to corporal punishment at times. The practice should die altogether because no matter the intention, when you strike your child, you are hitting them with your force, and what informs that force isn’t always purely rooted in some effort to discipline. Can you imagine a child getting a whopping from a Black parent living in Trump’s America? No ass should be swatted extra hard because of that man’s policies or his infuriating tweets. You had a lot of stress in and out of your home. I could see that stress leading to a mis-aim here and there. But you never whopped me.
The worst you’ve ever made me feel in terms of disciplining me was the time you made me stand in the corner for what felt like forever as you finished watching The Young and the Restless. I assume you knew the best way to punish each kid, but did you ever get the sense if you struck me so harshly that I would hit you back? I never wanted to do that, but Dad wasn’t the only parent who could get it. You were mostly on the defensive, but there were times he pushed you to take the first swing. Still, I saw the way you struck in other situations.
You did not hit me that way. Then again, none of us were ever much trouble, and I was relatively quiet by comparison. I was never really as sneaky as I was portrayed to be in that house. It was a punch line that became my reputation solely based on repetition. Even if I were sneaky, we were conditioned to be secretive. It would simply make me a product of my environment, ma’am.
But when I did cause trouble—fights, suspensions, in-school suspensions, being kicked out of class at times because like you, when I feel pushed to my limit, I lash out verbally (to start)—you didn’t hit me then either. You must have known the resentment I had wasn’t limited to him. You must have seen it in my eyes. Like you, I don’t have a game face. People always know what we are thinking. We say we’ll try to change that, but we’re both saying it to be saying it. We don’t especially care. We kind of both revel in it, no?
I’ve been back home for a spell or two, but for the most part, I haven’t really behaved like a person who truly lives and exists in Houston in so long. So you must have seen the contempt I had for you both at one point scratched into the walls by now. How did it make you feel? Probably not as amused as when you saw “Batman” scratched into the walls in me and Marcus’s closet. Remember when I kept telling you that I wanted to be Batman? You found it so amusing. I still want to be Batman. I wish I knew someone.
I have never had the nerve to say it in person, but I am very sorry for what I wrote into the walls. Whenever I do come home for the holidays, I often stay with you and you make up my old bed. You had to have come across “DIE MOM AND DAD” scratched into the walls. I have written about what I felt when I wrote it, but I should have long considered the impact of that on others. You might have seen it every single time you reached to the other side of the bed as you tucked in the fitted sheet, evened out the flat sheet you laid down after, and topped them with the comforter.
I am really sorry, Mama. I was in pain, but it was reactionary. Disgustingly impulsive. Where do I get that from? Him, huh? I love him, but I don’t want to be like him—surely not in those ways. I regret the day I grabbed that butter knife and soiled that wall you purchased with your hard-earned money by turning it into my journal entry. I shared that in writing, but not with the apology the act commanded.
Of course, I would have never wanted to strike you, my mother. I was angry, though. You kept me in that angry house and wouldn’t let me go out and be social. You were apparently worried about the outside forces influencing me, yet everything I witnessed in that house is responsible for the overwhelming majority of my character flaws, past and present. I wouldn’t have wanted to touch you in any way that didn’t emphatically convey love and adoration, but I would have never stood there and let you strike me. Nothing—my height, my weight, my age, your authority—would have stopped me from fighting back. Because my thought was always You have your fucking nerve.
All of the shit we were enduring plus your restrictions and you wanted to take out your rage on me? No, no, no. You don’t get that. Not without a fight anyway. I would have not had it. I would have gone down fighting. It’s what I always thought when I saw you pop off. I meant it with every thing in me.
This is not to say any child in the house was Penny Gordon from Good Times. You were not an abuser and we were not abused—at least not by your hands. But you know, Black folks sure can discipline hard. In ways we ought to frown upon now. And that is not to say I was miraculously braver. Your daughter is the strongest of us all. We were all a little scared of you.
But my original point still stands: You treated me a little bit differently, and I’ve always wondered if it was because you could smell the whiff of defiance in me.
My anger mainly drove that defiance. We all joke about how short you are, but you’re the David of Lafayette and ready to chomp down Goliaths from all over. I had a rage in me that wanted to bring that entire house down. It blossomed in that setting. Those feelings were nourished more than any others in my formative years.
I suspect you knew that.
We’ve only talked about it once as adults. You, in your sixties, proclaiming to be far less concerned with how the words that came out of your mouth sounded when everyone who loves you knows you never cared that much to begin with. Me, in my thirties, still longing for us to have been more open with our feelings in the past—knowing most efforts to have these conversations have ended in failure, but nevertheless, the sissy persisted.
This time, it went well. I was pleasantly surprised. I wanted to make a note of it at the time, but you would have swatted my sentimental ass away and turned the volume up on your gospel tunes. But I think we were both ready to address it.
That quiet anger we both possess.
When Dad loses his shit, he wants it to command everyone’s attention. A lot of people are like this. They want you to know when they are mad and a
ct as if it requires a town crier. They don’t have time to dilly-dally waiting for one, so they take on the role themselves. He is a little Fry Daddy that way.
We simmer, on the other hand. And stew. We are so used to things being awful, but while we may vocalize our displeasure, we’re not necessarily mad. It takes a lot for us to get mad-mad. A lot of it has to do with our fear that once we allow ourselves to get angry, it becomes uncontrollable. It’s a force that takes over because no matter what in the present prompted our fury, it comes with a lifetime of residual anger. It’s hard to contain that lividity once it’s out there.
I gave Chris a black eye on the bus because he called you gay. He wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept taunting how gay I acted. How gay I sounded. Then he called you gay and that’s when everything turned black. All I can remember is shouting “Who’s a bitch now?” as the bus driver who I bet wasn’t paid enough to be dealing with this pulled me off of him. That wasn’t the first time it happened.
It happened with Jarick in third grade. And Gilberto in fourth grade. And Gregory in sixth. I didn’t start any of these fights, but even if I finished them there was always a caveat: Each fight took place around the time Dad got out of order. But he was so frequent in his fury that no matter how sweet I was and tried to be, the anger was there.
However, I really didn’t want to fight Ebony in ninth grade. She wanted notebook paper, and while I was normally generous, I barely had any left and needed it to last for the rest of the week. But she snatched it out of my hands and stormed away with it. So I got up and went after my paper. Then she punched me. Like a nigga.
We were friendly since middle school, and here she was, punching me over some fucking notebook paper. It was college ruled, not that it matters. I could not believe she did that. What in the hood bitch hell?
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