I am extraordinary.
Internally & externally whisper this to self on the daily.
Yet, when I utter these words in range of listening ears. Typically I am met with a form of disgust. In both verbal rebuttal and look.
And I get it.
Who am I to say, what I am (hard stiff dick sarcasm). The sentence alone makes little sense to me but for the sake of a story lets push forth.
Yet, in a clout society where words all seem to be just “words “ and nothing more . We have to remind a hating ass listener that we are extraordinary not because we say so, but because of what has failed to kill us.
Lets began at my first memories.
I recall with picture perfect accuracy running through the dark streets of Mobile, Al, in the 90’s. The same street my father once gave me piggy-back rides on to go get lunch at the Chinese spot next door; off of airport blvd, by the Wendy’s, next to the big regions banks, across from where Sear’s used to be. If you’re from Mobile, you know the one.
We only ran down this street at night to get to the women’s and children’s home (the Penelope house) when father’s love turned to disdain and he thought a better use of his time would be to beat Mother and throw his first born through walls ( I wasn’t really his first born. His later-on wives or girls had two babies under my mothers nose before I).
He wasn’t shit.
Section 8 housing. My memory of growing up in the 90’s in Prichard, Al, where the murder rate and gun violence were so high I didn’t really know that we had a front yard until years later. It was decent though. I named every dandelion and became besties with all the honey bees, in the backyard.
There were no drive-by’s in the backyard.
Early boyhood.
Memories of therapy sessions with some white lady doctor as I colored vigorously whilst the grown-ups talked about me as if I weren’t even in the room. However, words like PTSD, trauma, border-line blah blah, autistic spectrum….I didn’t know wtf they were saying then but we know now.
Elementary school. Still non-verbal, still very strange. A fist fight for everyday of the year type strange, with the bullying children from the many hoods that circled D.I.P. I went to Maryvelle…wasn’t shit marry about the bitch.
6-7 bullies a day. One was even my cousin on my father’s side. Another, a hard bodied girl that was probably trying to earn her stripes. Once one of those bullies shit his pants. I remember it running down his leg, in the line, on the way to lunch.
I didn’t laugh. I didn’t think it was funny. The other kids shamed him badly. He never came back to school.
Middle school kids are now learning to spread rumors. The words stayed with me. They stuck to me. The moon couldn’t massage this pain away like I did everything else.
I did get in one big scrap in middle school though, with a kid named Steve Hamilton. He was the schools running back and football star. He benched like 200 lbs in 6th grade. I don’t think he belong with the kids at all.
One day he lined up all the boys from history class and walked down that line slapping the shit out of everyone. When he reached me, I let off in his shit (punched him) because the devil is a lie if you think you’re going to hit me with impunity (god I would have been a terrible slave).
He body slammed me alot but I punched him a lot too.
Thanks for teaching me martial arts dad. You were useful….somtimes
1 best friend.
His name is Brett (it’s his middle name actually).
Brett was bad AF but I loved him the most. Still do. He kinda taught me how to be a boy and boys do bad shit, until they just grow up and stop doing bad shit.
Yet, it’s 2001-2005 and Alma Bryant High School still has race wars. I fought against the jacked-up truck rednecks with the blacks (Of course. Even though they didn’t fuck with me) Cambodians, Vietnamese and Laotian kids.
This went on for months.
No shoes on in the house EVER! Their home was where I was first introduced into group economics as well. They had their falling outs here and there but they always worked for and toward the betterment of the everyone.
I worked on a boat as a fisherman (crabber) for years in high school every weekend in Bay St. Louis, Ms, with the father of the family Mr. Denny. A Cambodian holocaust survivor and rebel during the killing fields (look that up not many people know about it) and my best friends ,in the Gulf of Mexico.
There was Peter Nuon, John Red (Sometimes but he always got sea sick) Joey Baker, and Brett.
Lunch on the boat will always be a base memory. We would make big soups and toss in some of the fresh fish and crabs we pulled in that day. Sometimes we would get to see dolphins fucking around by the boat. Life was so magic when that happened
One night Peter and I snuck out to see our girlfriends at the time. When we returned home the Ambulance was there. Mr. Denny lay on top the Asian rugs we use to sleep with the EMT attempting to violently resuscitate him.
He died right in front us.
That was my first true heartbreak.
College hurt. I was still awkward. Non-verbal-esque in front of new people, to the max. Like I couldn’t even make eye contact without the feeling of a pending heart attack.
Somehow I had a girlfriend. Her name was Pebbles. She played basketball and volleyball. Hella more athletic than I was at the time. She cheated on me with women, ALOT. She didn’t know I knew but I did. I couldn’t speak, I was no where near stupid, deaf nor blind.
This started my deep dive into communication, body language (autism seems to erase the understanding of human cues) and self-mastery. I read so much during this time that when I would return home to visit family they kind of just stared at me like….”my nigga that’s enough of that brainy shit”.
4/7 my grandfather passed. Every father figure I had and needed had gone.
The Bayou Boys (Me and Mine) vs Mobile Boys (inner city). They would ride down into the country or Bayou where we live and shoot up our cars and houses and start basic spurts of mischief.
We fought them lots.
But one big fight, something like a 8 v 14 we being the former number we beat them into retreat. One of their own members had his eyelid punched off by Borey. Like..his eyeball was hanging out.
I don’t feel bad. They always started every fight. We couldn’t even go to the mall without getting jumped by these fools. That fight where that kid gained an eye patch, was the last time we had to deal with them.
P.S.
Don’t worry about alerting the proper authorities. They already know what happened. They were at our hearing when the mobile school district tried to expel all of us, for protecting ourselves. Luckily enough. We as teenagers had done so much work in the community through dance shows that all the mommas and papas that knew us got the case thrown out.
University. In some twist of universal magic I land a scholarship to The University of Southern Mississippi. The dance department there held one of the top 10 spots in the country for their training program. Now! I'm from the dirt roads of KKK land Alabama. Being in university, surrounded by a congregation of children that know very little about section 8 housing and more so about trust funds and frat parties. I find myself wildly comfortable. Broke and fucking uncomfy, my nigga.
For the first time in life, I’m quite popular. Not star football player popular but new boy training in dance popular.
I quit uni after about 3 years. Too much money, even with the assistance of a scholarship. $20,000 a semester only for your professor to tell you you have to retake a very eurocentric dance style for the 4th time in a row. As if my aim was to ever be in the San Francisco ballet.
Starting over every semester is 80 bands alone.
The Christmas before I departed USM I take my first international flight. I dig my feet into my first bit of foreign soil. An insanely cold and magical and dark sweden cracked my ribs with her embrace.
Quickly I noticed the change in temperature in humans, both in mentality and physicality (It was like -35 on a good day and ZERO sun). All of the food (In which i hated by the way.) that I consumed at the round tables of the vikings told its own tale about their culture. You could really tell by the smell of the pickled seafood they used to ride or die for them lil cruises.
Post viking voyage I began to travel overseas at least once a year. Mostly with 200 dollars and a backpack….for months at a time.
Mom hated the idea.
As she should.
Yet I was really in my Alexander of Macedonia era. A real tough to kill ass nigga.
I will say that university dance training came in handy though. Not only was I able to travel with next to nothing and make money doing and providing a service that I loved. I meet so many people that I still consider friend to this day. I met individuals who gave me roles in music videos, short film and stage performances. So whenever I would leave and return to Europe I always had a home base and a place to crash.
One less bill, baby.
I learned then and still know that bravery and happiness is a currency. People want it and at times have no clue how to arrive at it. Yet, if you find yourself around an individual who has achieved something can’t seem to figure out. Don’t distance yourself, in fact, do the opposite, ask them for their secret.
Berlin.
Since I was a child my imagination was my greatest attribute. In a round about way I still cling to the magic of it all. The alchemy of being able to mentally conceive an idea, and using a bit of energy and one’s hands to make a thought physical. Is so profoundly special and underrated in our first world.
I’m an 80’s baby. I grew up during a time where the American pop culture machine was fucking unhinged. There was Surge drinks (crack), danimals snack cup things, and paper food stamps that gave you back american tender once the cashier broke the notes.
A-fucking-fever-dream.
What there was no lack of was T.V. and film. God damn it, man! All the goodies were popping off then. Terminator, Predator, Bond Films, all things spy and dystopia were my thing. The attraction I had to dystopia and spy films were that protagonist always seemed to go to Berlin to push a niggas wig back. Everything on the floor model t.v. set that occurred in Berlin seems like magic; the Berlin Wall, the landscape, the subway system, the ring-bahn, the techno, ahhhh fucking magic.
Until I went there….
I remember staying in Friedrichhain at a friend of a friend’s flat. Intimidated by all the sex clubs they would frequent and the idea of handling public transit alone in a city of 3.5 million people. I simply stayed on my block for the duration of a week.
When I tell you that on this one stretch of street, I had the time of 100 of my lives combined in the smoldering cauldron of a witch, I DID!
I had food that made my knees quake; Brazilian dishes, Japanese dishes, Ethiopian dishes, the list is madness.
I had fresh pastries and coffee every morning for like 3 Euro.
That same coffee shop and bakery doubled as a club at night. In that same club I got together with a Dutch lover. We walked down the street to my friends flat and did what we did, returned back to the bar/club and partied again.
”OMG!!!
What is this place I would?” I would say all too often. My friends and randoms would just smile at me and say “This is Berlin. Is it your first time?” The parks, the crisp air (if you’re in the right areas), all of the nationalities (too many to count), this place felt like utopia. No place really is but this was as close as it gets.
Even the cops on patrol didn’t fuck with poc people. They didn’t stop and frisk, nothing. They were just around to make sure people were safe and no violence happened. The rooms in shared flats could be found for 400 (all inclusive) a month. Parties went on for days on end, non-stop. The conversations with intellectuals as this was a place that seemed to not understand social boundaries. You might find yourself at a party with a sex worker, then turn around and be dancing with a heart surgeon.
This place has an endless, almost novel beauty to it.
And I am smitten.
TO BE CONTINUED…..IN
