E's Body

This story will start in a short bit, but first I have to explain why it is a day late and will be a page short. This weekend, I am spending my time with a handful of great writer-colleauges at a retreat mentored by the prolific fiction author Percival Everett and poet Philip Bryant. It is a great time talking—sharing with them. We are laughing our heads off and getting filled with more stories that we wish we could all write ourselves—and listening to our new friends find that we don’t have to write all these stories ourselves.

The color of the weekend tells me how pale my telling of this weeks story is, that I cannot do it justice—and that many of the things I have written here in this forum are waiting for more color, texture, flavor and sounds that will want readers to linger with the stories and hopefully share more of their own.

And I don’t know why this story came to mind—seemingly unfortunately, early in this morning. Unfortunate, only because I know it is important, especially to one friend of mine, but I do not have the mental space to give it justice today, with so many other writing projects that are filling my days, my note book and the many conversations that my co-Givens Retreat Fellow, story-telling voices are too eager to join. For most of the weekend, my mind has been somewhere else, on other issues, other things about which we must write—and I will tell you more about this experience in coming days. But at the moment, I have to get out at least the notes for this story. And maybe you will fill in the color. Maybe you will fill in the details from your own life movie. The story is not uncommon.

This is a story of my friend E who called me one summer evening, tears of hurt and anger filling the stream of rant I heard as she told me, “Can you belief what he just did?!?!” She said she was, “So mad,” and with the sounds and tones I could tell that the outstretched arms of the tallest basketball player where not long enough to show just how mad “so mad” was.

I don’t know how to tell the story and in a real sense, it is not my story to tell, or at least tell the best so that it means what it needs to mean. It seems so awkward, painfully awkward that I have trouble getting it out. It is that her boyfriend had just helped her put in a large air conditioner in her apartment. After, he said something to the effect that he should now “get his reward,” as in she should give him sex.

I was not thinking of it that way. I thought, for sure, he was just having tongue-in-cheek fun in their intimate space, a little play in that is a part of noticing the space that two lovers occupy to figure out if they will make love now, later or spend that moment in each others’ space in some other way—or spend a moment apart. It was hard to imagine that he was thinking in those terms. It was not hard for her.

And the more I listened, the more I knew I just needed to listen to her and how she felt. The more I listened, that night and in later days, I realized that maybe he really did expect sex for service.

The more I listened, the more I saw that her anger was deeper than the absurd implication that sharing her body was worth help with the air conditioner. I listened, that night and over weeks and months enough to realize that while it might not have been solely the help with the air conditioner that he was offering—that he was holding out other things: THINGS and was asking for her love, her body and sex.

He is a wealthy man. But for most of their relationship, she resisted having him buy things for her, do things for her, buy her. She was as fierce about paying attention to not setting up a dynamic where he expected sex because he paid for stuff, a dynamic that I increasingly became aware was part of his psyche. She avoided it as strongly as I avoid having woman friends do any of my cleaning, especially girlfriends… because it harkens to another dynamic that doesn’t cast the roll of women duly. (My mother may not have won the battle to get her son to do a good job taking care of his house, she, and other influential people in my life, have taught me well that it is not the job of some woman to take care of house cleaning for me.)

When I see her, some days, she is very plain looking and on others strikingly stunning—or stunningly striking—and as I say this the redundancy of either phrase is not lost on my, but the emphasis is intentional. And it should not matter and I would not mention it, because in the most critical and final analysis, it is irrelevant.

What is not irrelevant is how she feels about how she looks, how others contribute to her sense of beauty—or detract from it, and, more importantly, her sense of her own humanity. As one of the girlchildren of our society, she feels the urgency of establishing her sense of worth, power of her sexuality and the human care that needed to take care of both. She knows the passing and the intimate gazes that will evaluate her as not pretty enough just as well as they will trigger the desire to make love to her. She is aware that this gaze will often come with an attitude of male supremacist entitlement, that the few bread crumbs off his plate of power and goods are sufficient payment for what is most precious.

E is not wealthy. She is one of the millions of people in our country who are very challenged to keep health insurance. She has a resume that, while is shows fast and deep talents, puts her in line for employment that barely keeps in her tiny apartment and in a nifty but old car. Those things are important. Health. Home. Job. Money. Those are things about which she worries and things she knows she could make less of a worry with a man who would buy that security for her. For her, for all of us, that price is seen when she looks in the mirror each morning and has tells herself what she is worth.


Not sure why I am thinking about this story now. Maybe it is because I am communing with a group of articulate, smart, creative people, all of them with black bodies, all of us who know what it is like to have our bodies, our image subjected to alternately an object of hatred and desire—and often experiencing those as one in the same.

Still, this is not my story to tell. It is hers to tell with more color and truth and clarity. It is hers to tell in a way that tells me why she was mad enough to spit profanity, what it is that is so important that it is an issue of protecting ones sense of self.

She tells it in a way that reminds me that I want to be beautiful, for that to be acknowledged and to have the people in my life respond with their beauty. E tells me she knows and has to remember she’s worth a whole lot more and tells me with a melody that give it meaning. I hear her. We know.

For now, back to the task of Sisyphus.

Friday Night Baseball: Game 7

It is Friday night. I am getting to this post a bit late. I have an excuse, or a few.


My son Sid and I have been spending a lot of time with the World Series. It is baseball. The best of baseball. It calls for my attention. Even now, as I type, Game 7 is pulling my attention from this craft. That is my story of the moment. Baseball is full of many more.

One of the big ones this year is Ron Washington’s story. Ron Washington, former Twin, former 3rd base coach for the Oakland A’s, and current manager of the Texas Rangers. He has led them to their second consecutive World Series. Interesting man.

He is getting a lot of attention for his animation in the dugout. They call his stirring “The Wash,” a dance of excitement that shows his emotion more than what we see in most Major League managers. He stops his feet as his players round the based and waves his arms.

This dance is not just about his personality. “Wash” is a Major League manager by merit, but a 3rd base coach at heart. The 3rd base coach, as his players round the bases on their way home, has to guide them home, using hand signals and moving his feet as quickly as a player to get in position to relay the signals to a fast-moving base runner. It is one of the most exciting dances in baseball. Windmill arms, the body English guiding a runner to home.

Being a 3rd base coach also requires a quick mind that can communicate complicated instructions to base runners and batters using an even more complicated system of clandestine hand and body signs. The job requires a fast-paced understanding of baseball situations, individual players and strategy. In short, a good 3rd base coach is smart.

We don’t hear much about Ron Washington’s intellect. It is hard for Black men to get that piece of respect. On top of having the visible animation and the smarts to run a team, he also has the quality of being able to understand and respond to the emotional disposition of his players. This was never more evident in how he spoke with Game 4 of the World Series, meeting this young pitcher at his emotional apex.

Sid and I, along with his friend Otto, went to see the movie “MONEYBALL” a couple of weeks ago. It is the story of how Billy Beane built a winning team for the Oakland A’s, a team that had far fewer resources than large market teams like the New York Yankees. It is more than just a good underdog story.

Sid loved it. So did I. Still, our favorite line is when Billy Beane and Ron Washington are visiting are talking to Scott Hatteberg about playing first base after spending his whole career as a catcher and having nothing left in his arm–and Billy says, to Hatteberg that first base isn’t all that difficult and turns to Ron Washington and says, “Right, Wash?” and without missing a beat, right on the tail of Beane, he says, “It’s ineradicable difficult.” It was one of many laughs tow baseball fans

I am writing this as the last game of the 2011 World Series plays next to me. I am writing this to describe why baseball is a love of mine, and my son, and some other people who find the stories of human character and beauty. And the complications of social realities, shortcomings of that human character and what we do to make our way past the imperfect.

I will finish watching the game, this time without Sid sitting next to me on the sofa as is the usual (apart from those moments when he jumps up in excitement as one of the many nuances and not-so-subtle events that make fans cheer or groan). We’ll see how this story turns out.

The Eternal Paper Anniversary

The Eternal Paper Anniversary

A 5-year-old's cardboard box Valentine's day has “be mine” written all over it. This, often our first social lesson in love is such unfair pedagogy, veiled in the simple aesthetics of arts and crafts. It was said that “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten, ” where we learned that love flowed from that red and pink heart shape.

Can you recall the shock upon seeing for the first time a picture of a real heart? We learned what it really takes to keep blood and live surging through our veins and to keep us alive. But why did we not find a new course for our scissors, still cutting out the same heart shape, pasting in over our chest with a happy smile of undying immortality?

And do you recall the shock when, after all those years, when our life's love faded as surely as the red construction paper in a sun that could not compete with the coursing throbs of life's true passion? And even though we knew what the heart really looks like, we go to cut out our heart shape, like a young lover who still has not see what the heart looks like?

He said, “She is not the construction paper cutout that I married.” She said, “But I cut the edges so carefully. Why does he not like it?” I said, “I would never make that mistake. I will be sure to buy different paper and use a better pair of scissors.”

One Reason Poetry is Important

Last night, my son Sid and I went to a poetry reading. I will go blue in the face trying to explain why it was important to be there. I am glad that I did not have to explain why to Sid, that for some reason, he knew, that he would go there for more than the several out-loud laughs he had or for the treats that did not come until after the reading.


It was important to be there. It was important to learn, remember, and respond to and from those words, the ideas, the emotion. How much can we learn from poetry?

Last night's lessons: They are about poetry, art and life, and why humans need all three.

We learned that there are things that we will say in poems that we won't say to our parents, won't say if we are shy and won't say if we are pretending to be polite at the expense of telling the truth. That there are things that “people” will say in their sleep, and you can make wonderful verse by just capturing those words. We say, “people,” but in the poem, it reads true, reads “lover” or “the one I love.” Sometimes we are so shy, but how else do we learn what people say in their sleep?

I was reminded that the devil so someone who will ask you to accept a deal that he himself would never accept. And that such men will call themselves gods in order to justify their carnivorous appetite for human mortals and their love and their souls.

I was reminded of what it takes—what factors must be in place—for a grown man to take the life of a boy: how he gets to take the safety of other children and women to whom he is privileged to become too close.

I was reminded that the collection of people with whom I share last night's event is a sufficiently rare collection in that we all understood that to take things like this is wrong.


We learned that we had a place where we could talk about it, even if changing the world would require us leaving that comfortable space. We were happy to know that just as those snippets of art moved us, we, too, could move people and the world will change just a little.

And it is time to write. For all of us, it is time to write, and share. And we won't have to explain why poetry is important, because, today, even though I put them to paper, I am at a loss for words.

someone told me

today

i don't believe in these things

almost as strongly

as if i did not believe in God anymore, and

the moon, stars, sun, wind, are

just cruel props

setup to help lure away the best of

my attentions

because it was not real

an illusion

or just so paper thin that

it is an easily pierced ear drum

that will never hear again

except maybe a faint whisper.

careful, I was not

are the sea, the moon for real

or are they a hoax?

did the Apollo ships really go there?

did Columbus not fall of the edge of the earth?

or is the horizon, a tired trick

that keeps getting repeated

as we chase it?

all a mock discovery

i am the fool, like the horse that runs

into the barn after it has been

set ablaze while today

someone tells me

it was the “for real”

shelter from danger

someone

Swallow

Many things have crossed my mind this week. Some of them, I am still not sure are worthy of the space they might take up here or your time. Or this may be a Minnesotan excuse not to share. Or maybe the best ideas came to me on the edge of sleep and I neglected to keep my journal by my bed and they have since been forgotten.

One thing I remember from the past week is meeting writer Patricia Anita Young. We met at an informational meeting about a writers' retreat and workshop to which we are both applying. We are writers, so I guess we talked about stories. Our stories. Stories of our people.

I don't know how we got on the topic, but we spoke of the stories of the civil rights era. She talked about her mother and relatives who lived through the Jim Crow south, and her visits there as a young adult. She talked about the difference between the “Colored” restroom and the “White” one. Not equal, she said. Just like everything else.

She talked about how the common story of discrimination and segregation was not one all African Americans wanted to speak. She said that one of her elder's favorite words was “swallow.”

“Favorite.” So many of us are required to shut up. Pat spoke of a relative who was raped by a white cab driver with whom she had to work each day. When a white man raped a black woman, what gets said? What could she say? It was a generation and a half ago, in the segregated South. What could she say today? Who would listen? Who would be on trial? Or would her plaint even register as a sound on the tin ear drums of racial and gender injustice with which we still live?

Her family elder had words. Not just words, but a scream. I suspect that they were just left as tears on a pillow or a boiling blood rage in a night that had to be turned down in the light of the day in front of the ruling class—in front of the man whose privilege allowed him to touch her most sacred places, a place that is only for her to decide who goes in, not him, not her priest, not a law, not anyone. Allowed him to do it with absolute impunity.

She could not say. She had no voice. She had the words, emotions, understanding of what happened to her, what happened to that space that she might share with a love or at least someone with whom she consented to share, what happened to her body, what happened to any sense of safety or security she might have each day when she went to work. Instead, her words were swallowed.

But we swallow everyday. Some of us more than others. We talked about another local African American writer who had a book published a decade and a half ago about her experiences working in a very male, white dominated occupation, as a “lineman” for the phone company. It was supposed to be one of those what-it's-like-to-be-black-and-female-in-America stories that tells it like it is. Instead, every time she got to one of those places where it need to be acknowledged that what described what we face and how and why it is hurtful and destructive, she would pull her punch. She would say, well, it wasn't so bad. That it was just an interesting, funny story, ironic and silly, maybe even absurd. But not speak to the substance of what we live day to day that has left us with a caste, apartheid system enforced with terror.

She swallowed, just like we do so often. Whose comfort was she protecting? Who do we protect?

We swallow, because the hurt and anger of our speaking would hurt those to whom we direct our words that must be said. We swallow, not out of compassion, but for the knowledge of the consequences of speaking that is feeling that rage powerful enough to create that terror and apartheid.

We are trained to swallow that mouth full of dirt, instead of spitting it out back to the place from where it came. I do it every day. So do most women and most people of color. And those who will not be quiet often do not survive long, even doing so in the name of justice and self respect.

Maybe as we write, Patricia and I will spit out the words that we've swallowed for so long, that our foremothers and fathers swallowed, words that we swallow and words that we hope our daughters and sons will not swallow in the future. And maybe the people who care, care about us and care about our society, will get to hear the stories they have longed for.

And maybe some of those words will be worth your time. Some day, if not now. Some how. I hope so. 

LEAVE COMMENTS AT http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/swallow/ 

stolen kiss

what was your first kiss like?

was it happy?

sad?

did it make your toes curl

a smile all the way

into the next day?

or did you hide it

in darkness where

no one would know

what he did?

because it is not love

that takes a first kiss away

forever

into scary depths

that will not surface

for a thousand kisses

you tell him

“this is not love”

he is angry

should you be angry?

should i?

i already am

or am i

projecting my own anger?

about what, I won't tell

don't know

happy. sad.

smile or hidden shame

are remembered or forgotten

because neither is to be believed

for “the questions of a thousand dreams”

spout the answers of a thousand fools

who, like me

think our kiss

could be the one

to fix it all.

LEAVE COMMENTS AT  http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/stolen-kiss/