When I was 13, I started growing facial hair. It's never been a lot, but it signaled to me my becoming a man. I started shaving and was so embarrassed about having facial hair that I'd steal one of my moms lady-schicks and dry-shave my face. I didn't know any better about shaving or being a guy because I was being raised by a single mom. I just knew I looked weird. She found me after a shave and right before school, looking pained. I tried to hide it from her by telling her that I didn't want to go to school because I felt, "sick." She looked at me, my face raw and bleeding from so many little cuts. "Jesus, let me call the school," she said. She kept me out for two days. Then, she went and got me a razor, gel, and aftershave.
This is when I had "The Talk." It's out of love that this talk happens.
She warned me to be aware of who I was with, what I was doing, and to not make myself an easy target. I was told that if I'm seen running to catch up with friends it's not going to be seen by those nearby that I'm Catching Up With Friends, but that I'm running away from something nefarious. That someone in charge may be afraid of me running. That now, as a man, people would look at me differently. That now, I had to always be pristine when around police, and that I would be judged by my appearance. As a boy who looked like a man, a lot of times I would be viewed as a potential suspect from a crime first and not a citizen to protect and serve. People need to be protected from you. When you show up somewhere and people don't know you, you need to be prepared for them.
The second time I had a "talk," I moved to Pittsburgh. I was 15. I finished off my Freshman year in Hampton High School after being accepted to my boarding school and continued for the next 3 years in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I spent my time between my school and the home of the Walsh's in Pittsburgh. Maureen was my mom's best friend from college. They're still friends to this day. She's got a big personality and this big mane of red hair. She was one of the nicest people I knew and really helped me become comfortable around adults, she's like a second mother. Her husband, Kevin, was the more serious of the pair. If you met him on the street you'd expect he was an extra from Mad Men. Ivy league grad, banker, Irish-Catholic from New York. He taught me a lot about being smart and confident. I'd consider him a second father to me.
On summer vacation from Kiski, I'd babysit their kids: Emmett, Kate, and Brendan. They were *great* kids. I had my favorite, but still, they were great kids to handle throughout the day. During the summers, I'd run the house while they worked and they'd spend evenings with the kids while I went out with my friends from school. One of the things he told me was, "no matter what, make it home. I don't care what you do, I want you back here safely," It was because he cared about me, but also because he knew how the city's cops would treat certain people. He would tell me about how some of the guys in the mail-room would get harassed by cops and come into work with black eyes and busted lips.
Obviously, race matters. Regardless of the talking points people regurgitate, it matters if you're the one targeted. I used to tell my friends from high school who didn't "get" it to watch White Man's Burden (It's a Twilight Zone-like story where race relations are ostensibly flipped). It's a pretty forgettable movie starring John Travolta. Things stand out, like him watching TV: He flips through the stations and every show is black. The ones that are white just... aren't good enough. The stories aren't as good, the production value isn't as high, and you can see him getting frustrated. Also, when he goes out to buy his kid a toy, he keeps trying to get him to choose a white one. Then, upon inspection, the toys suck. They have no cool powers and don't have anything as good as the other toys. The movie gets heavy handed at points and was made when Quentin Tarantino was an 800-pound gorilla, making movies with his A Band Apart production company. The thing that the movie is trying to say is that, while you may not have every advantage handed to you, sometimes it's just the default. The worst part is that as the "other," there are disadvantages that people won't get. Being scrutinized for being.
Ultimately though, it's not a burden I carry alone, but a life I live in a world I love being in. I'm not black, I'm not a criminal, I'm poor. I'm the 99%. That's the ultimate thing that matters. It doesn't make me angry when people say stupid things, it makes me feel bad for them. They haven't woken up to see that these things that get such a huge amount of attention are there to divide and conquer us. If you highlight those differences, it points out how we're dissimilar. My friends in the past have been wholly different-looking than me in our backgrounds, but we've loved the same things: comic books, cars, friends, family, football, skiing, beer-bongs, etc.
Pittsburgh has a history. If you drive from east-to-west, you'll pass through Homestead, which is a run-down, adjacent portion of the metropolitan area. It's very low-income, very black, and not looked after at all. Much like Gary Indiana is the busted city next to Chicago, Homestead is like that to Pittsburgh. I'd spend my time with the Walsh's in their nice home in a nicer area of Shadyside and would get looks because, by those folks' opinions, I shouldn't have been there. I should've been in somewhere else, like Homestead. But certainly not together with the other disadvantaged white people in Saltsburg or Natrona or Johnstown, where wedges were placed and groups split into factions
We're all supposed to be in one group, trying to make it better. But we're split up so that we never come together. If we're not meant to succeed as a group, what's the point of all this accomplishment? I've never quite fit in because I don't really feel 100% comfortable in groups. I've been an outsider looking in and I'm comfortable with that, with the world I'm in. I'm a normal guy living a not so normal life. I've never fit in 100% anywhere because I'm a loner by design. It's not that I don't do well in groups, it's just a preference. See, that's where I live my life, not quite fitting in.
About a year ago I was listening to an interview with Questlove, who has gotten a bit of attention from a facebook post he recently wrote. In the interview, he spoke about blackness in that we're measured as nothing or everything. We're 1s or 10s and never just a 5. We're all just trying to make our way through this awkward, confusing world. However, knowing that there are expectations of you means another thing all together. Spike Lee touched on it in Do The Right Thing when the two Italian brothers were speaking about Michael Jordan and Eddie Murphy as though they weren't black, they were great. The thing is, they were both. It should be celebrated that you aren't expected to be shit, but you can be the best, or the worst, or just a person trying to live in this world.
The title of this post is from Rube Foster. He was a negro league baseball player from the 19th/20th century. When he was denied the right to play in The Majors, he became a manager and a businessman, then started several teams and other businesses and made it on his own. He succeeded temporarily, but ultimately failed. Not due to lack of effort, but because we're not meant to be split apart. A house divided against itself cannot stand. We're not meant to be divided. We're all in this together. We're *all* the ship, the universe is the sea.
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