February 2012
12 posts
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Sexy
is having complete control of one’s body. I don’t think anyone can have control of something they’re insecure about.
I feel sexiest when I’m walking and when I’m dancing because this is when I’m exercising this control to the fullest, balancing between exhibitionism and social invisibility. This is why I, as many do, find drunkenness unattractive—drunk...
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Yesterday at my school’s health clinic I met an older woman named Oralee. Upon her arrival, she noticed a stack of female condoms. “What is this?” She picked one up. “They’re condoms for women,” my friend said. “Or you can put them in your butt for anal sex,” I added. Her eyes widened. “I can show you how they work,” I said. “Please...
This morning I read Jame's Baldwin's essay
”Stranger in the Village.” It was one of the best—if not the best—essays I’ve ever read. I can’t remember ever before being speechless from written words—only in cases of recited spoken word poetry. And while inspiring, the skill he displays gives me severe anxiety about the poem I’m working on. With an approaching deadline of February 21, I still...
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“I thought of white men arriving for the first time in an African village,...”
– James Baldwin on being the first black person to inhabit a Swiss village in “Stranger in the Village” from Notes of a Native Son
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I feel like Chelsea is the "gayberhood"
as long as you’re a cis, White, gay man with a personal trainer, closet of high-end designer clothes and subscription to Men’s Health. I am not White, I could hardly afford a regular gym membership, none of my clothes come from high-end labels, I have subscriptions to no magazines, let alone Men’s Health, and I desire neither to be nor to have any of the above.
This is for...
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Going to Paris
“It was quite clear to me that the Frenchmen in whose hands I found myself were no better or worse than their American counterparts…The only difference here was that I did not understand these people, did not know what techniques their cruelty took…That evening in the commissariat I was not a despised black man. They would simply have laughed at me if I had behaved like one....
Embarking on a poem inspired by the above flag/image/symbol. I say embarking because the idea I have for the poem’s form, I know, will take a lot of commitment and patience. Both to execute well and to resist procrastination from fear of not writing as well as I’d like to will be strenuous ordeals. Also, I’m writing it for a contest at school offering a cash prize. Time to do...
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90s Nostalgia
Recent nostalgia for the 90s in popular culture has me reexamining my childhood experience of the world. The 90s in its entirety excites me with its myriad of baggy pants, platform shoes, braided hairstyles and neon-colored rave culture, despite my being born in 1992.
Earlier today I began to think about the idea that people lose their imagination as they grow older. My childhood mind was...
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For people who think blogging is a waste of time,
yes, it can be. But I take my blogging more seriously than most because I think that blogs will be the resumes of the future. Especially for people pursuing careers in artistic fields. What better way to showcase your abilities?
January 2012
35 posts
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Writing a short piece for my non-fiction class
that’s supposed to be about my experience with writing college essays, but of course I’ve trailed off into black and queer identity and my struggles with both throughout middle school which influenced my choice in what high school I wanted to go to which placed me in a less homophobic but implicitly racist environment, and writing about this has unpacked a new facet of my adolescence...
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Lately,
or rather the older I get, the more I realize how inevitable adjustment is. No matter the shock, discomfort or trauma caused by a drastic change or shift—physical or mental—life goes on. The past only haunts me if I resurrect it.
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Seeing racist comments under interracial porn...
apart from irritating me, always makes me question the space that sexuality occupies in our society. I read an interview on BUTT’s website a while back where Antino Crowley/Angel describes a sexual experience he had with a white man in which he role-played as a slave, the white man as the master:
So we’re doing it, and I was, like, “You have to say...
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Problems with the Dictionary by Luke Johnson
Shouldn’t the distance between impossible and improbable be widened? Might miracle
deserve its own appendix: the ease with which night becomes winter? There must be a word for it,
a term unique and apropos to star-pocked sky and village roads blanketed by snow,
a good-natured—but stone drunk—schoolteacher leaving a warm bar. It is...
Personal realization:
I prefer nighttime over daytime. But only on the weekends. For me a busy day usually means a lonely night, and I’d much rather be alone while the sun is up than when it’s down. But only on the weekends.
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French ELLE Article's Racist Remarks Spark Boycott →
“For the first time, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged [only] to its street wear codes.”
The person that wrote the article (I don’t remember their name and I don’t care to) is racist. No one is misinterpreting anything. Nothing is lost in translation. Black people are not monolithic—I don’t know how many people have to say...
Eiko Ishioka, Multifaceted Designer and Oscar... →
“She essentially becomes a sex toy, so she had to look erotic and uncomfortable at the same time,” Ms. Ishioka told The Ottawa Citizen in 2000. “I gave her a sheer dress and a big black-and-red wig and a bizarre hard collar made of plastic. Jennifer asked me if I could make it more comfortable, but I said, ‘No, you’re supposed to be tortured.’ ”
Eiko Ishioka was an incredible talent, and...
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Rot by Rio Cortez
All the tall buildings in downtown Havana have halos of carrion crows. The autumn sun burns tourists, obscured by black Vs in the sky-blue sky. They hiss and grunt into the palms, almost blind, circling by smell. They say they’re the vultures other vultures follow to prey.
After the hurricane, running along the malecón I see the bodies of two white dogs, bloated &...
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Note to Self: Regardless of actual age, everyone turns 8 years old when drunk—innocently insecure, cynical and energetic.
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Comparing poems about dresses:
New Dress by Anya Silver
Hello, lovely disguise. Come swing short and loose around my thighs. Cowl my neckline, let my throat
rise out of your yellow folds like a virgin. Cup my shoulders; cling to my breasts so closely
that my skin accepts you, sister, knit and pieced by strangers’ hands, but closer to my body
than my own husband. You absorb in your stitching my wrist’s...
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The other night, while fulfilling my role as a New York City resident and flâneur, I stumbled across this place. The street was quite quiet. May need to stop by for a drink some time.
Funny, how I find it when I’m not looking for it.
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Spring 2012 Classes:
Intermediate Non-Fiction Reading James Baldwin (very excited about this one, obv.) Anglophone Poetry 2 Intro to Media Studies This will be a wonderful semester.
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Don't leave your shit in the "coat room" at...
‘cause some hipster college student that lives in L train Brooklyn will steel the scarf you worked 3 AM inventory at an Urban Outfitters in downtown Manhattan to get a 40% discount on (among other benefits) and you’ll leave with your entire outfit smelling like cigarette smoke (a smell you hate) to then douse your pea coat in the anti-microbial Febreeze you bought freshman year when...
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Her flow. Her rhymes. Her everything. I know it’s a contradiction to post these lyrics right after disapproving of Nicki Minaj’s pejorative use of “hoe,” but I don’t feel like Azealia Banks is using “bitch” in a negative way per say. Whether “bitch” can be appropriated to mean something positive is an argument I don’t have a strong stance...
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Reason #1 why my social life is sorry: "Your...
My friend’s professor told her class that our generation invented the delayed reaction. Until texting, a conversation only functioned with the immediate responses of everyone involved. Now, I find myself texting people to receive responses half a day, if not days, later. But usually I don’t receive responses at all.
Black and white no longer divide life as they did in childhood, so...
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Shit New Yorkers Say
Yeah, I watched it and had a good laugh at its “accuracy.” Then, one of my Facebook friends posted it, annoyed by its inaccuracy. His argument: the video does not depict shit New Yorkers say as much as it depicts shit transplants of New York City say. I happen to agree with him.
Being a transplant myself, I’ve always wondered: If I were born and raised in Queens, for example,...
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Last night The Real World crossed my mind—The Real World Philadelphia in particular for its cast member Karamo Brown. I remember when he came out to the roommates to receive wide-eyed stairs of disbelief because of his stereotypical Black and masculine appearance. That and visibly gay cast member Willie Hernandez had already arrived—there couldn’t be two gay cast members,...
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In a writing mood.
I’ve got sinister and erotic emotions steaming in my gut and an aesthetic craving for Sylvia Plath. This should get interesting.
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Posting these lyrics is long overdue.
I tried bothering with punctuation at first, but the written lyrics fit her flow best without it. She’s got quite a way with cadence and rhyme. Also, “2-1-Zoo” needs to catch on.
212 by Azealia Banks
Hey, I can be the answer I’m ready to dance when the vamp up An’ when I hit that dip, get your camera You could see I been that bitch since the Pamper And that I am that...
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Confidence
isn’t about what shoes you have on, what haircut you have, how many numbers you get at the club, how many people you’ve fucked or how toned your body is. It’s not about how the push-ups make your arms look, but about your initiative to do push ups in the first place. Confidence comes from determination and self-worth; from what you have to offer the world (everyone has...
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Realization I've had because I'm broke:
Having sold a lot of my clothes, my personal style is ironically maturing. It’s all about the clothes I keep at all costs, no matter how much money I may need. And I’ve become more selective when shopping. I know what I like much more clearly than I ever have before.
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Moraine for Bob by Joanna Fuhrman
You were never a man in the television sense of the word. I was never a wild Slinky in the sex-club sense of a toy. You were never a tobacco store in the Modernist sense of a trope. I was never a snowdrop in the candy store sense of a treat. You were never Day-glo in the fashionista sense of a scarf. I was never withyouwllthetime in the username...
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Lot's of arguing
under Ryan O’Connell’s Thought Catalog post about the “Things White Girls Say…to Black Girls” video. It angers me that any white person would argue that this video isn’t about racism or assert that the idea of “reverse racism” is something real, and not just a figment of the white imagination. So I responded as a guest with this:
White people have...
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Comparing quotes:
“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy....
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I'm writing a poem
about a boy (that I had/have[?] feelings for) that reminds me of R&B music. Yeah, an ambiguous topic, so the poem will be the process of me unpacking my visceral reaction, and of course as I dig through the idea in my head I’m realizing it’s going to be a poem about race identity. The concepts of stereotypical Blackness and traditional masculinity are all I seem to think about...
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Thought Catalog: Stuff White Girls Say… To Black... →
I actually posted this on my Facebook this morning and was mildly disturbed when someone I didn’t know commented, “OMG, this is so me. The other day I asked my black friend if her hair was made of horse or human tresses. LOL. I think she was offended…” Um, this is the one video you don’t want to see yourself in. If you find yourself relating to it, you should just move to an isolated island...
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I have no attention span anymore.
I think the Internet and the iPhone have eaten my brain. Soon, I won’t be able to participate in verbal conversations without opting to text instead. Or tweet. Or post a status saying how I really feel but naming no one. Ask me a question, and I’ll get back to you in an hour or two. Maybe a day.
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Black Rage by Abiodun Oyewole
there are bombs standing on the corners of the cities waiting to explode at the slightest touch baggy shadow street boys stand cocked ready to fire their eyes are grenades and the pin is about to be pulled
BOOM! the Brother went off pressure pulled the trigger and the brother became a nigger
and no one could figure out how it happened what went wrong?...
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Having gushed over New York City before, it always surprises me when I get back into D.C. and think only of how much I’d love to call the District my home. Returning this time was different than before—maps were clearer, long distances were shorter, the commute was less laborious. The personal initiative it takes to live in a city and the energy at the end of each stride...
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December 2011
24 posts
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“I think it’s important for gay men to feel that they can hold their heads up...”
– Kele Okereke
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