Big Brother is watching. And he’s posting AIPAC ads on your blog.

According to friend and friend of the blog Joseph, yesterday a Google-sponsored ad for the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) showed up on this post. After some enlightening (albeit upsetting) discussion with him about hasbara and new media, I discovered that WordPress does sometimes place ads related to a post’s content on a page.  WordPress is a free service; this is how they sometimes pay the bills:

Note: To support the service (and keep free features free), we also sometimes run advertisements. We’ve tested a lot of different ad providers and currently use Google AdSense and Skimlinks. We try hard to make the ads discreet and effective and only run them in limited places. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade.

 I guess I can’t really finger-point. I’ve done things I’m ashamed of for money, too. Now, those things typically involved flirting and some nudity as opposed to, say, compromising my ethics and personal integrity…but okay. 

Who knows? Maybe I’m being unfair, judging AIPAC this way.  I wouldn’t necessarily write off a kind and brilliant person with crippling body odor, and by the same token, I shouldn’t necessarily dismiss this organization because of a little surface stench. Really, there’s got to be more to AIPAC than its decades of relentless obfuscation and creepy air of menace, right?

Or not. o_O

The Talk.

I’ve been staring at a  title and a blinking cursor for almost three whole weeks now. It’s time to write. I know it’s time to write. Hell, it’s been time to write. Unfortunately, that’s harder than it sounds. Even now as I type, the ever-more-pressing importance of what I’m about to relay here grows, spurring on something that feels like courage and rage and a whole bunch of stuff that I can’t quite name yet all mixed up.  I’m literally forcing deep, steady inhalations just long enough for me to get this shit out.   I’ve gotten up to pace about a hundred million times in the last couple of hours. My hands, thankfully, stopped trembling about ten minutes or so ago.  (You don’t even wanna KNOW what my stomach’s doing.  Let’s just say it’s…musical. And athletic.)

Alright, here it is. For almost two years now, I’ve been actively engaged in healing as an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse.  This healing has taken many forms, from hearing stories of other survivors who have spoken up, to lending an ear and a shoulder to survivors who have come to me,  to one-on-one and group counseling.  For years, out of necessity, I had actively suppressed memories of my abuse.  The traumatic physical disconnect and sexual aversion dysfunction that many survivors of abuse experience was starkly evident in much of my very early adolescent behavior. I didn’t become truly comfortable with my sexuality until I was about seventeen, ten whole years after the abuse started.  The man who abused me, a relative 19 years my senior who is now a father, has been out of my life for nearly two decades. It’s not as good as him being dead, but it helps.

So. We’ve established that I had a shittier childhood than a lot of people, and like every other adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse on the planet, I am now tasked with the monumentally unfair burden of repairing damage to my spirit that I did nothing to incur. It’s a sad and tragically common story. Since I’m not particularly interested in throwing myself a pity party, recounting it here doesn’t undo the mess, so what’s the point? Glad you asked.  According to my favorite survivor-founded online resource and help center, April is Child Abuse Prevention Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month.  And the man who hurt me has direct proximal access to at least two little girls in our family. 

Though she doesn’t know it yet, I have enlisted one of my relatives-by-marriage, the mother of one of the little girls, as an ally. As you can imagine, this has been tricky. For the past couple of weeks, she and I have been exchanging emails. I have invited her to my home, asked her out for lunch, the whole nine. While my relative-by-marriage likes me well enough, we’re not “hang out and chat” comfortable, so my low-key but frequent urging to talk with her about “something really, really important that absolutely should not wait” is probably annoying at best and creepy at not-best. (I can’t really say “worst” because, to me, worst would be my doing nothing and standing by as history repeats itself. I’m also struggling to put aside my own frustration at her evasiveness; I hate when people put me off when I need to discuss something important, knowing that if it wasn’t important, then I wouldn’t fucking bother.) There’s also the matter of her husband, who, because of his relationship to my abuser (an immediate relative of his), would need to be lied to minimally informed about this exchange. I am not sure who knows what happened beyond myself, the man who abused me, and my mother.

And there is perhaps the most poisonous legacy of this brand of silencing.  When and if a survivor does find the courage to tell their story, it’s like a dam breaking.  It all comes rushing out. I’m wary of face-to-face discussions about this with anyone who isn’t a survivor themselves.  Victim-blaming happens all the time with child sexual abuse; for adult survivors like myself, this can be incredibly triggering. Although protocols and suggestions from resources abound for this topic, I confess that I really don’t know what to tell, and what to keep to myself.  My abuse, like that of so many children, was covered up.  By the one person in my child universe who I knew for certain I could trust to make everything alright.  Like a lot of children, I didn’t  know right away that what my abuser was doing was bad, but I suspected that it was wrong because it was a secret, it only happened when we were alone, and it made me ashamed.  Before I was even in double digits, I knew what so many adults actively force themselves to forget: that the line between a secret and a lie is finer than peach fuzz and just as hard to see sometimes.  So one day I gathered every scrap of courage in my little body and told my mother.  And she said, “That’s not the truth.”  And she said, “I don’t believe you.” And how that night she didn’t tuck me in, kiss me, or even look at me. And how that night I lay wide awake in my bed, watching dry-eyed and numb,  as my world with the giant crack splintering the center shattered.

I don’t think I can tell her that. I think that I’ll save for my therapist. But you might need it one day, so take it with you. What to say? I can tell her how my visits home were infrequent after college.  All the reasons I hated being in my mother’s house. The slumbering rage that had a source I vaguely recalled but couldn’t quite name.  Eh. Maybe not. I can tell her how the “Fiqah’s soooo strange”  narrative that this side of my family created and insisted on clinging to served to heighten my loneliness and isolation and make me vulnerable to the abuse.  How I was lavished with gifts and attention by my abuser.  How it felt like love.  How I craved love because my little brother’s special needs ate up my mother’s energy and left me emotionally untended to a lot. How I missed my daddy so, so much. How my abuser, an amateur photographer, had a 100-page photo album of just me.  How someone, SOMEONE should have been just a little bit fucking suspicious that a 26-year-old man was devoting THAT much time and attention to a 7-year-old girl.  How my family decided for themselves that my natural brightness and curiosity about the world around me made me strange and possibly ”fast.”  How I despised them for aiding and abetting the murder of something bright and good in me and, in what has to be one of life’s most painful ironies, calling that shit “raising” me. Already I’m biting my tongue here. I’ll save that for Oprah. It’s a lot to dump on someone carry.

I can tell her how my mother’s denial of my abuse calcified through the years.  How my she never ceased contact with my abuser, who she’s known his whole life and who she - and I quote – loves “like a son.” How just a few months ago she called him to wish him a happy birthday while I was in the room. How she mentions him in passing like  it never even happened. I can tell her how this admission, made in the sterile quiet of a hospital waiting room while my mother comforted my abuser’s mother as he was undergoing an organ transplant, made my tweenaged heart ache, then go cold in a way that I would come to recognize as my fury manifesting itself. How when I go cold this way I’m capable of  causing extreme emotional pain to others without remorse or regret.  Maybe not. Okay. Well, I can tell her how I would quietly sneak away to the hospital’s chapel, and (standing next to people fresh from the ER and shaken) pray fervently for God to please, please kill my abuser.  How I would visualize air bubbles traveling up through his IV tube, or a scalpel slipping, or a heavy-handed anesthesiologist, just in case God needed suggestions and He didn’t want to dispatch my abuser in a suspicious manner.  Surely the life of the four-year-old who had wandered into traffic, and whose mother and father sat sobbing in the pew behind me, was worth more than his.  Apparently, God thought so too, but then possibly in a fit of Old Testament capriciousness changed His mind – my abuser had several dangerous complications around the surgery and almost didn’t make it. Although I felt bad for his mother, the prospect of attending his funeral filled me with a dark, satisfying joy, and I was very disappointed when he pulled through. No, no. Probably best to leave that out. I had and have every right to feel this way, but every time I’ve talked about it, some asshole well-intentioned but misguided assholey assHOLE person tells me that I shouldn’t, and that I should forgive my abuser, conveniently forgetting that my own mother was the first person to introduce me to the underside of that bus my healing does not necessarily center around forgiveness. Or maybe they just don’t know.

I could say all that. I know that I won’t relay a fraction of it.  I’ll tell her exactly what she needs to know: that my abuser must be constantly monitored if he’s around any child, including his own.  That she should watch and be aware of certain patterns and behavior. That it’s almost never a stranger who hurts a child.  That she shouldn’t trust anyone around her little one.  That she is her first line of defense. That I will never forgive my mother for dropping the ball on this, and that now, all these years later, she can never forgive herself.   That all it takes to prevent child sexual abuse and all the horror it comes with is a word from an adult.  That prevention is so much easier than healing.  That being a survivor is a life sentence for a crime committed against a child.   That damaged children become damaged adults like me. That it is okay to do or say things that are socially awkward or uncomfortable if  those actions insure the safety of a child. Any child. EVERY child. And there is no real protocol for that, because the only way to talk about this shit is to talk about this shit.  That’s a lot to carry, but a child you love  might need it one day. So take it with you.

(Special thanks to friend and friend of the blog Joseph Shahadi, whose courage has been more of an inspiration to me than he knew. Well, until just now. Warm hugs of thanks as well to my dearling, Mizz Awesomesauce herself, dopegirlfresh. )

 

Yup. THIS.

Excerpted from here.

If you’ve caused someone offense or hurt them in some way, and you didn’t mean to, do you know what you can do? Apologize!

Apologies exist! They are a very handy way of saying, sometimes verbatim, “I’m really sorry I said/did that. That was screwed up and I didn’t mean it that way.”

And then maybe the people you’ve offended or hurt will feel better instead of writing you off as a jackass and avoiding you!

That’s…that’s basically it.  It’s like a step-by-step on how to…not be a flaming asshole. (Apparently, some fokes need detailed instructions…prolly best to avoid them in general.)

I’m putting this shit on a poster.

UPDATE: 28 Days Without the N-Bomb, Day Five

N-Bomb Chronicles, Entry Two:  I have reconciled myself to the fact that using the n-word in my dream is (probably) beyond my control and (mostly) not my fault. I have never been able to completely master lucid dreaming techniques; I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had that whole dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream thing happen, à la Waking Life.  Still…something about it, feels vaguely like cheating. Silly maybe, but I feel how I feel.  (I may not always know what to do or what course of action to take, but I always know EXACTLY how I feel. Can YOU say that? I hadn’t thought so.)

Soooo many interesting discussions have sprung up from this project/experiment. Partner-in-crime,  friend and friend-of-the-blog Dopegirlfresh (she’s over here and here) and I have discussed how extraordinarily tempting it is to use that word.  It’s the ultimate trump word.  You whip it out and you basically win the game (whatever the game is). As is her wont, my buddy summed up the Word That Wouldn’t Die succinctly and brilliantly: “I been thinking about it, and what I realized it that when call someone an n-bomb, you’re basically saying  ’fuck your life.’ ” And she’s right. The n-bomb is more than just a fighting word –  although that alone would be plenty.  It’s a killing word. It is designed to murder one’s soul. And, as someone who has been on the receiving end of it more times than I care to recall, lemme tell ya, it’s pretty damned effective.

Anyway, dopegirlfresh had the awesome idea of substituting the n-bomb with…wait for it…Wocka Flocka Flame. Now, the name is so absurd that it immediately diffuses the rage that inspired the n-word to leap to mind in the first place, and it’s creative and awesome. Drawback? Most people hear “Wocka Flocka Flame” and think of this:

While I hear it, and think of this:

"Wocka wocka flocka!"

It’s gonna be an interesting month.

I don’t wanna talk about Haiti.

And I’m not. Not that I have nothing to say (when is that ever my problem?), but that this whole mess makes my heart hurt. And I’m kinda at capacity for heart ache at the moment. No more, all full, thank you.

Anyway, Joe’s got it covered.  He talks about Haiti and Guantanamo,  Pat Robertson’s stankin’ ass,  Haiti’s beautiful natural features and extraordinary history,  the absurdity and racism of supposedly liberal  media reports of homeless amd starving Haitians “looting”,  and the best way to help Haiti.    Go read his blog. Get like me.

Letter to my 8-year-old self.

Dear Bébé Fiqah:   

I know right now that things seem bad. And I’ll be straight with you – they seem that way because they are. You’re doing a tremendous amount of self-parenting at the moment. It’s temporary, but I know it’s all very confusing. With that in mind, I’m gonna help you out with a few of the stickier bits of this “growing up” thing.   

THINGS FOR YOU TO REMEMBER   

1. Grown-ups don’t know everything. They’re just in control of everything. That is not the same.   

2. Sometimes you can do everything right, and have it all go wrong, like when the first cake you ever made for Girl Scouts fell.  Try again.   

3. You are right to be suspicious when your otherwise well-meaning White second-grade and music teachers insist that they are ”color-blind”, and that you and your classmates are and/or should be.  There’s a reason it feels like a lie. Continue to tune “color-blindness” out, and if they prod you about it, parrot what they wanna hear so they go away.   

4. Don’t call your little brother stupid. He has a learning disability, and the whole world is telling him now and will tell him later that he is stupid because he is a Black male. Knock it off.   

5. You aren’t like anyone else. Everyone knows you’re not like anyone else. One day, you’ll see just how special that truly is. And it’ll be sooner than you think. I promise. In the meantime, don’t try and be anything but you. Don’t pretend you read as slowly as everyone else in class. Don’t be ashamed to know the answer. Don’t hold yourself back – there’s a whole world out there that will try to do that for you. Not too worry. Very soon, NOTHING will be able to hold you back.   

6. Hate to break it to ya, but tying your shoes is something you won’t be able to master until damn near middle school. Sorry, but no amount of poems and songs about rabbits and trees and holes and shit is gonna help you though this one, kiddo. It’s a big, shameful deal now, but its import will lessen as you get older. Besides, someone who started teaching herself to read at the age of three doesn’t owe anybody any explanations for unusual cognitive gaps. To quote King Jaffe-Joffar of Zamunda: “I tied my own shoes once. It is an over-rated experience!”  Just keep balling your laces up and tucking ‘em in your shoes like you been doin’, you’re GOOD.   

Thank the Lord for velcro.

   

7. Keep writing. Your stories are wonderful, and your talent is beautiful. It will lead you to places most folks from your neck of the woods never even dream of.   

8. Speaking of beautiful: brace yourself. You’re a year away from the traumatic start of a seven-year-long pubescent stage. You are gonna look really, REALLY funny during this time. Almost all your crushes during this period will be unrequited. Worst than that, you’ll still be smart, and in spite of their protestations to the contrary, cis boys and men really DON’T like smart cis women and girls. I am very, very sorry to report that for the most part, they don’t ever grow out of it.  It will be a painful and scarring period.  But, about a decade from now, when you (yes, YOU!)  literally – and I mean  lit-rah-LEE – stop traffic in the streets of Amsterdam, Dakar and Paris, it’ll all be worth it.   

9. Your long-held suspicion that the secret of escaping from a life of unfulfilled potential and abject misery in the swamp lies within the pages of a book is correct. Keep reading.   

10. Clean the house. It’ll help take a lotta stress of your mother. And she’ll be quiet. So you can read in peace.   

11. That sound you heard when you climbed all the way to the top of that tree, beneath all the noise of the neighborhood?  There’s a word for it. Buddhists call it Om. And it is the sound of God, being.    

12. Aunt L____ is a bitch. She is. It’s not your imagination, and it’s not just you who thinks it, either. You can tune her out, too.   

13. Your mother is not doing the best that she can. No parent, no matter how loving, EVER does “the best that they can.” This would render them too exhausted to breathe. But. She is doing the best that she knows how. And that is the absolute most that it is realistic to expect of a parent. Give her a break.   

14. You’re gonna get the big sister you always wanted in six years. And she’ll be your real big sister, too. Hang in there.   

15. Your family DOES treat your brother better. That’s not your imagination, either. That’s called “patriarchy within communities of color.” It’s a very common problem. Once again, NOT your fault. You’ll understand it in about ten years. Until then, continue to not engage with them.   

16. You are right. There IS something profoundly wrong with people who don’t like cats.   

17. And speaking of cats: next year, you’ll come home from school and discover that your cat Snowball is missing. Your mom’s gonna say she ran away. Snowball didn’t run away. Your mother’s gonna take her to a no-kill shelter to be adopted. Yes. YOUR cat. If you want to cut your eyes at her behind her back for the rest of your life for it, you are free to.   

18. That girl who used to pinch you and pull your hair in class until Mizz Moore changed her seat?  It’s because her mother hates her beautiful cocoa skin and thick, short curls…so she does, too. You see, while both of you are pretty li’l girls, only you are told on a regular basis by grown-ups that you are. And that is not fair. This is neither of your faults, and it’s so much bigger than either of you. BUT, understand this: neither of you is worse or better than the other. Period. That’s a grown-up lie, like Santa Claus. Don’t you believe it.   

19. You are gonna change your mind about so many things. You won’t always want to get married and have future taxpayers  babies, but you’ll always love buttercream wedding cake! want to be a writer. Remember that it is your destiny to bear witness to your own life. That’s hard, often lonely, and definitely not for everybody. But you know well by now that being in a group of fools where no one understands you is much more lonely than being by yourself with a good book. One day you’ll be surrounded by people as impressive as you are. Until then, continue to cultivate your inner wealth in solitude.   

20. You’re amazing. I promise to be the best grown up version of you that I can. And I promise that you have an abundantly blessed life to look forward to. But you are never gonna get that pony, kid.   

Love,   

Grown-Up Fiqah   

P.S. — Shoelaces don’t add up to diddly squat in the grand scheme of things. They really, really don’t.

Tiger Woods: “You coulda been so much more!”

Alvin Lau, my Imaginary Poet Husband, thought you could have, anyway. At least back in 2006, in spite of yourself. 

As for me? Pffftttt. I never trust rodent-like muhfuggers with big ass rat teefs.* I’m glad Lau mentioned those fucking awful racist jokes that you thought were off the record. I was done with you then. Ugh.

Too. EASY.

(*Tiger Woods’ teefs are also too big for any sane and rational woman to allow him near her delicate lady bits with his face. Yeah, damnit. I said it. )

I LOVE this chick!

 One of the great things about being overly contemplative/analytical is having lots and lots and lots of ideas. And one of the great things about being Fiqah is that I attract some pretty amazing people, and we get together and neat things happen, and the world is a li’l bit better than it was before we met. One of my favoritest, funniest, brilliantest (<– hush your mouth, it’s a word) soul warrior buddies - on the internets and out here in real life -  did this awesome write-up that totally lifted my spirits today.   I have excerpted some of it below.  (NYC peeps, PLEASE NOTE THAT PART ABOUT THE BODEGA SANDWICH PICKLES! It’s serious! ) Oh, and if you haven’t linked her blog yet, I don’t know what you are doing with your life. I rilly don’t. ::: Katt Williams disapproving head shake :::

"Go get yo'self summadat Dopegirlfresh Incredible Juju, and stay pimpin', Pimpin'!"

- racism doesn’t need hate in order to function. no form of oppression does. in fact, ignorance is quite the consummate fuckery fuel. think about how many times you have been confronted with information to the contrary of your (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise oppressive-to-a-group-of-people) opinion or belief & found that information was all you needed to set your lil brain in the right direction? that doesn’t, of course, mean that hate isn’t fuel for oppression.  it means that even without hate, these things exist & still manage to fuck people over.

- love can move mountains. it can also be used to justify the ugliest things humans do/ say.  love doesn’t erase fucked up shit. it can and does exist alongside this fucked up shit. don’t excuse the fucked up shit.

- when talking to a child, imagine that what you’re saying is the last thing you will ever say to that child. especially if that child is your own. what do you want their last thought of you to be? don’t assume shit. (i personally believe that this should be extended to everyone.  you can tell someone about themselves without destroying them or dragging them into a fight.  don’t be that asshole who tries to climb in the fucking casket at your girl’s funeral cuz you weren’t doing right by her before she passed away.)

- either you play the victim role or act as a survivor. you can’t throw up the shield of “i’ve been hurt” and then use that as a reason to treat people like shit. to generalize. to lump folks into the same group because it’s convenient to do so.  this includes jumping to conclusions based on something that’s triggered you instead of simply keeping yourself aware that something triggering just happened. also: if your responses to triggers of all sizes are rarely or never proportionate to said triggers, you’re fucking up. big time. & there may be a lot more healing left undone by you.

- never eat the pickles from a bodega. the pickle jars are older than that bottle of fucking steak sauce in the back of your mama’s fridge. no, really.  eww.

Awwwwww! See? I’m good for stuff! It’s nice to feel lurved.

Unreported.

[NOTE: This post was originally penned back in September. The police officer in question is obviously no longer a threat to my safety. However, because a lot of what I discuss in this post is triggering, it took me a while to get to a place where I felt comfortable posting it.  If you have any bad experiences with police harassment or street/sidewalk harassment, you might want to skip this post altogether.]

 

Today I cried on a stack of lemons at the supermarket. I should note here that crying in public, much less on produce, is atypical Fiqah behavior. Public crying is embarrassing AND unattractive, and as a pretty and vain chronic sinusitis sufferer, I know that Puffy-Sobby-Wetface is NOT my best look.  But today, that’s exactly what I did: stuck my elbows in a stack of sunny yellow lemons, buried my face in my palms, and sobbed.  It was early afternoon, and the produce section was thankfully empty. I don’t know how long I stood there before I was able to collect myself, wipe my obviously-been-crying face, clean my smeary glasses, and make my purchase. I ignored the eyes of the cashier, the concerned and alarmed expression of the man bagging my groceries, and the fiery burning of my beet-red ears as I left the store. You fucking idiot!  I thought as I made my way back home. You forgot he was there!

 I guess now would be a good time to explain myself. 

For the past month or so, I have been the recipient of the unwanted attentions of a cop. This officer, whose beat is at a park in my neighborhood, first approached me when I was coming back from running some morning errands. At the time, I was carrying a few large shopping bags and wearing ear buds blasting M.I.A. I didn’t see him until he was right next to me, grabbing one of the heavier bags right out of my hand and startling me stupid. The cop, a Latino man in his late thirties, purred a too-familiar “hello” and told me that he it looked like I needed some help. All this as he took off his sunglasses and frankly assessed my bosom. A chill had gone through my whole body as I’d smiled and stammered a nervous thank you,  moving my purse around to from my side to my front in an attempt to cover my breasts.

“Where you headed?” he asked, looking down at me as my eyes landed everywhere else: his shoes, a lamppost, a trashcan, a little boy barrelling down the sidewalk on his scooter. As we stopped at a crosswalk, he moved a full step closer to me so that we were separated by no more than a few inches. I  swung the shopping bag hanging from my hand between us, casually, so as to appear non-deliberate. My flitting eyes landed on the gun at his hip. I quickly looked away.

“Oh, not far,” I’d said, calmly, making small talk as my mind screamed angry accusations and panicked instructions. Don’t let him walk you to your building! Stall him! It’s your fault for wearing a V-neck shirt without a minimizer! Tell him you have run to the bodega across the street and pick up something you forgot! Tell him your boyfriend’s waiting for you! You must always remember to wear your wedding ring when you go out or this will happen! This is your fault! Your fault! Don’t tell him your real name! Don’t tell him anything! Keep talking! This is your fault!

“OH!” I said, feigning dismay. “I forgot something! I gotta run into one of these bodegas and grab it.”

“No problem, I’ll walk you there,” he’d said. My stomach turned over.

“Thank you so much, that’s really nice, but I got it.”

“You sure?” he’d asked, handing me my bags.

“Oh, yeah, it’s not a problem. I mean, a little weight-lifting won’t hurt!” I added. He laughed, and gave me one last nauseating up-and-down.

“Don’t get too much exercise, now,” he’d drawled.

I had swallowed my rising bile and forced a smile, thanking him for his help, and hastily crossed the street.  As I stood in the tiny, cramped bodega, the crystal pinpricks I felt along my arms, legs and neck condensed into a sickening film of cool sweat. I was mortified to discover that my normally well-behaved teeth were chattering audibly. The store owner’s cat, dozing on a bag of flour and awakened by the noise, lifted her eyelids to half-mast to investigate.   Finding me boring, she slid them shut and resumed her napping.  Clenching my teeth, I strode quickly  out the door, crossing the street against traffic, and headed up to my apartment.  The elevator ride up those ten flights lasted forever, as I plotted my future daily trajectory.I would have to be more careful. I would have to vary my route. I would have to remember he was there. I must not forget.

And yet, weeks later, here was I, in the same boat. As I unpacked my groceries, I tried to calm down. Contradictory thoughts echoed in my head. It’s fine. He doesn’t know my name. He hasn’t done anything untoward. I’m  fine.   It’ll be okay.  He doesn’t know which building I live in. He doesn’t have  my number. I’ll be okay. As I put my kettle on the stove for tea, it dawned on me that what this officer hadn’t done didn’t matter one whit to me. Because it was  my knowledge of what he could do that had sent me into the first public crying jag I had had in over a decade. All the things that he could do to me, without questions, without consequences. All the ways that in an instant this man, whose sworn duty is to protect and serve me, could do me harm. Could hurt my body. Could ravage my soul. Could hurt the people I loved. Could ruin my life, or take my life, or both.  And it was that which emboldened him to repeatedly ignore my body language, transgress my personal space – spatial rape -and openly eye my body. The weapon he wielded was menace, and it was backed up by the physical reality of a loaded gun and the legal authority of a badge. Because of the power dynamic imbalance, I would not be able, politely or harshly, to brush this man off. He would not allow it.  My mind pored over the seemingly unending roster of the NYPD dead and wounded, people who had been violated and/or murdered because some asshole racist bastard jackass inferiority complex motherfucking PIG was having a bad day and exercising bad judgment.  It wasn’t fair. It just was not.

As my anger and outrage grew, tears filled my eyes as I tried to recall the last time I had felt truly Safe. It had been such a long time. I am relentlessly mistrustful of authority in general by design, and the Poh-Leese in particular by experience. By the time I was four I knew that there were things in this world that my mother, the most powerful force in my child universe, was unable to protect me from. And by the time I was seven, I knew that the adult world often abused its power, gorging itself with gusto on the innocence of children, aided and abetted in its crimes by willful adult blindness. (I am and have been smart, strong, quick and crafty since I was a kid. Please believe me when I tell you that if I had been Safe, I would not have needed to be any of those things.)  I abandoned the notion of entitlement to safety altogether the first time I was followed by a grown (White) man. It happened at my local mall.  Panicked, I found a  (White) female security guard. And told her what happened.  She didn’t believe me. Or rather, she didn’t believe that I hadn’t done something to make the pervy bastard follow me. Let the record show that I was twelve years old.  As an adult, I know that my positionality as determined by the laws of the Kyriarchy mean that I will very rarely be Safe in any real sense, and will often have to fend for myself even when I obviously need help or am in danger.  Having been blessed with a survivor’s mentality, the mantle of victimhood is something that I rarely wear for very long. So, with that in mind, I blew my nose, washed my face, and got online to see what options for citizens who are subjected to police harassment are.  I was appalled to learn that the Department of Justice, one of the few bodies empowered to “police the police”, offers no preemptive recourse and precious few options to actual victims of non-physical (i.e., property damage, verbal assault) police harassment. Mind you, if you so much as brush the arm of an officer of the law, it’s considered assault, and you can be arrested. Basically, you only have a case if you have been violated, and even then, it may be shot down unless you have solid physical evidence. Your chances of building a case are significantly reduced if you are female and Black.  A short conversation with my lawyer upon the advice of a friend confirmed that, as is so often the case with the law, it wasn’t about what I knew, but what I could prove. My attorney, his voice simultaneously tired and hurried, sighed the truth to me: “I’m sorry, honey. There’s no case here.”

There’s no case here. So,there it was. With the exception of my teary retelling of these incidents – and there were more – with this cop to my friends, this story didn’t happen. It won’t be a nationally-known scathing indictment of the NYPD. It won’t be another chink in the perceived armor of the NYPD’s professional integrity. It will be a drop in the bucket, and water under the bridge. It will fade into silence with nary an echo.

Or. Maybe it won’t.

Represent!: Nezua does the “Arpaio Smackdown” dance

I love that I can always count on my boy Nez to knock it out of the park. Dance starts at  5:56 . First time I saw it I almost peed my pants; there are some serious “Disco Duck” elements going on! But I like it.  It’s just great.  Enjoy!

“Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.”

This post isn’t for me. No, really. It’s about YOU, my offline IRL friends. This one is to thank YOU. You all handle your life challenges with grace, and share your joy without reservation. That’s not easy, but you guys make it look that way. That’s nothing short of a miracle, actually, considering just how hard so many of you have had to fight for the right to simply be.  Hope and sweetness are necessary, but often rare in this ugly world. So thank YOU. Y’all  are just fucking awesome.

Because it’s fall and her music resonates with me most in autumn, I offer you an adorably pregnant Bjork…doing that mystical magical “faerie” thing she does so well. Bjork, patron saint of freaks, inspires me. In a world that destroys anything good and natural as it normalizes pathology and artificiality,  if your ass is a little nuts, you’re doing something right. TRUST. Stay brave, strong, and a wee bit off, my dears. 

“Only the strong go crazy. The weak just go along.” – Assata Shakur*

(*I wonder if Bill Maher knows who Assata Shakur is yet…)

I know, I know.

I’m the ooooooooonly Black woman in the Afro-sphere who hasn’t done a post about hair.  SIGH.

The revolution will not be permed.

I have tons of good reasons for not doing so. Just for starters, I feel passionately that the simultaneous denigration, politicization, and “othering” of Black people’s hair has done more harm to the self-esteems of Black girls and woman than any other single tool of the Kyriarchy’s oppression.  I’m also hesitant to have this discussion with anyone BUT other Black women and girls, because sexism and racism coalesce in a very specific way with regard to notions of beauty and the compulsory chemical processing of our hair.  In other words, unless you’ve felt the pressure, you wouldn’t understand what I’m talking about. And I’m not sure I feel like giving clueless people a 101 here. Buuuuuuut there’s been some offline arm-twisting nudging in this direction, so I’ve got something in the queue. I guess it was time.

These are about the stupidest motherfuckers who ever lived.

I have. NO words.

Represent!: Nezua, The Unapologetic Mexican

I follow some AMAZING people on the interwebs who I have been remiss in repping lately. One of them is Nezua, super-left progressive creator of the multiple-award winning blog The Unapologetic Mexican, and media crafter par excellence. His blog is as visually-impressive as it is content rich; as evidenced by this brilliant glossary that I’m super-jealous of, his writing is just fucking fantastic. 

 I was really impressed with this vlog “diary,” in which he discusses the conundrum so many of us who blog about deep shit face every time we hit the “Publish” button. Is it too much? Am I being too serious? What about the emotional/psychic/spiritual toll?  TRUTH: The Struggle, no matter what your role is in it, pulls you back. I’m always happy to promote fellow progressive thinkers, activists and friends here on the Stew, and he was gracious enough to grant me permission to do so.   I’m pleased to present to you, dear reader,  soul warrior Nezua “Cambiando.”