If You Date, Gave Birth To, Are Related To, or Live With a Writer....You’ll Probably Be Written About…

I disguise the folks I write about. When scribing memoir, or creating fictional characters, based off of people I know, I’m sure to transfigure recognizable names, places, and situations.

Nonetheless, I still receive emails filled with contempt, for some of my work. Recently, an ex, one that couldn’t find the will to apologize until he discovered himself in my words, sent me a message.

“I’m sorry. Never got the chance to say that. Seriously, it’s my story. It’s about me. Can you take it down?”

No. Absolutely not.

Why?

It’s also my story. I lived through it, swallowed it whole, and chose to regurgitate it when it was convenient and/or therapeutic. I then decided to publish it, because I knew/know there are woman who’ve also tried to siphon their hearts, back from the men who've stolen them.

I didn’t exactly respond this way, but he got the message.

“I should have known what I was getting into, when I decided to date a writer.”

This statement. The one above, sparked something inside of me that I haven’t felt burn in a while.

Yes, my brother. You should’ve known.

A few years back, I’d go on dates with people who always made the joke, “Oh you’re a writer? Ha. Well, don’t write about us, when it’s all said and done.” I smiled half-heartedly, knowing that in every joke there’s some truth.

I started to ask permission, afraid I’d offend:

I’m working on this piece about long-distance relationships. Is it okay if I talk about us?

Hey, I really loved how we got over that hump, last week, mind if I use it in an advice piece on my blog?

I didn’t seek out publishing everything that happened to me, however sometimes my experiences slipped into my brainstorms. (duh.) The lessons life handed me were incredible content, inspiring moments that any reader could benefit from. When I realized that the person I loved was meddled within that first draft, I’d go to them for their approval.

When I started to do this, with my current boyfriend, he looked at me like I was insane.

“Can you do what?” he asked.

I was anxious as all hell, I thought he’d flip, “Can I use our experience, in this piece?”

“You can do whatever you want. It’s your story too. I knew what I was getting into, when I started to date you. Have fun writing.”

He said this same thing, when spoken word season came around, and I was called to do shows frequently. Something two ex-boyfriends absolutely hated.

“You stay leaving on the weekend. You don’t want something real? You want something part-time? Just be with your man.”

They wanted me to chill out and settle down. At 21? Que? I wanted to write. I had all the goals I aspired to and I couldn't sit still, for too long.

I looked at, my current boo, as if he was from another world, an anomaly in my romantic existence. There he stood, unflinching and sure, understanding that what I did was not a reflection on our livelihood, but what I needed to breathe.

“This is what you do babe. It’s a part of why I love you.”

I have had several conversations with writers who struggle with releasing amazing stories; for fear that their family members, friends, loves, and/or roommates might recognize themselves. I tell them that I’m an advocate for protecting those we care about, but I also remind them that those are their stories too. “They belong to you. You have no clue who’s listening, no idea who’ll blossom, petal by petal, because of your words. Don’t negate that.”

I sift through my work carefully. There are several things; I don’t share, because they’re not for public consumption. Some things are just solely for you. However, when a story strikes me as spell bounding, something the world needs to hear, I’m sure to post it. I no longer need anyone’s permission.

To those who fear being immortalized, by the art of the word. Let me promise you a few things:

We are masters of describing those most tragic and most inspiring. We will take care in molding your flaws and attributes, with adjectives. We are unaware that we’re healers, doctors to those looking for guidance, from the literary. 

& truly, we can’t help it. Nothing is really fiction. Our work is comprised of our memories of hell and heaven, bits of our soul that flutter from us, unexpectedly. Letting go and sighs hidden between the letters.

Allow us this. & if you can’t…

The only thing bound are our notebooks. You’re free to leave, whenever you’d like.

Deep Down.

I stood in the midst of my room, paper half written, my roommate storming from my half of our abode, and a sleeping cheater on our mutual sofa outside.

“Screw him,” I spoke out loud to no one in particular.

The moment the words slipped from my lips, every sensation he’d ever bestowed on to me shuddered through my body. How could I be so angry and so in love with him, all at the same time?

Derrick was a preacher’s son. Red bone with a genuine smile, turned cold-hearted frat, by sophomore year. He sung Maxwell, during school sanctioned open mics and slid open the thighs of girls who couldn’t bargain their way out of a melody, sung too close to their temples.

My high school insecurity traveled up my spine, when he walked past. I held my head down and prayed that even if he did see me, I’d be invisible, through his superficial eyes. But I wasn’t.

He snuck up behind me in the cafeteria, one afternoon, his beauty lingering from his speech.

“Hey Poet.”

I smiled awkwardly and shoveled the carbs that went down easier than loneliness.

He continued, “I saw you perform at the talent show and I must say, you’re pretty amazing.”

“Thanks, your singing was good too.”

He did this thing with his lips. An upward curve that spoke of his conquers and gestured every girl in the vicinity, close.

Usually, I’d pretty this up with a fictional tale of an innocent collegiate girl, led astray by a commandeering pretty boy. However, in this space, I’m more inclined to admit my flaws.

I’ll outstretch them to you, like I did to him. Bodies curved, in the middle of the night. Fingers interlocked, words breathy. Words I pretended I didn’t hear.

I imagined it for what I wanted it to be: An untitled affair, a mecca where we studied in too small cubicles, in the library, and a world where he came over for dinner every night.

But the truth is…

There were no titles, because he didn’t deem me deserving of one. I did his homework for him; never knowing the inquiry of ‘you’re an English major too right?’ would have me typing his words until dawn. But he did come over for dinner. He’d scarf down whatever I prepared for us, lay beside me for a while, and then take to the couch, because I was too big, for both of us to fit in the bed. His words.

On the night of English paper 305, Chicken Parmesan, and the smell of latex; Betty, my roommate, came storming into my room,

“Look at Derrick’s Facebook please! When you’re done, kick him off of our couch and out of our house.”

I went straight to his page, scrolled through the section that tells all and swallowed my tears as I clicked on the girl’s name he was inexplicably linked with.

In a relationship.

So what were we?

What are we?

Who are we?

I asked him these questions, as he walked sleepily to our coat closet to throw on his jacket: The brightly colored adornment that identified what we both knew was a blatant façade.

“Erica, I really like you. I do. You’re just not something you take outside. You know what I mean?”

Days later I would come home to that very same jacket. His audacity was sitting on top of it and our welcome mat; a god damned contradiction.

                                                                                                                           

The card read, “Wear this and think of me.”

 

Inside one of the sleeves was a journal. It’s first page read:

We know exactly what we’re getting into. It slips out during our most intimate thoughts and lives deep beneath the butterflies, in our abdomens. We are sabotage and heartbreak, but sometimes I think some of us love it.

As this notion crossed my mind, I reread the inscription on the journal, one last time.

“I hope you write about me.”

I sneered, “Never you idiot.”

& yet….here I am.

There's No Place Like Inner Home.

Nothing is really what it seems, when you’re a child. My little blue house on Rogers Ave in Brooklyn was a castle. Surrounded by mammoth brick buildings, our distinctive residence stood out like a familiar face, in a crowd of strangers. My mother and father made me feel like a queen. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches piled with my favorite strawberry jam, cartoons with my feet kicked up, and antique sofas with carved wooden moldings as intricate as crowns; I was royalty.

We were renting the upstairs portion of the house, in a neighborhood that crumbled around us. Flatbush in the 80’s wasn’t the greatest place to raise a child. The environment fell into despair, buildings abandoned and a drug epidemic underway. Our block was rampant with young adults with nowhere to go, but everywhere to make trouble. We were often awoken, from our slumber, due to loud parties and pointless commotions.

On one of those nights, an innocent outdoor festivity turned into a bullet in the abdomen, of a slain neighbor. After hearing the shot, in our very backyard, my mother, adorned in disheveled hair rollers and fear, grabbed me and laid me on the floor, until the shots were cleared. We then ran the five blocks to my grandmother’s house, a haven to the family in times of distress.

I didn’t know the gravity of this story, until I was twelve. We were living in the suburbs then, in a house reflective of my parent’s progression and will to raise a child that scarcely knew trepidation. However, I remember that night. My five-year-old mind deemed it a midnight game. A game where my mother wasn’t her normal well kept self and we dashed down the sidewalks in search of our family. Hide and go seek; we found grandma at the door, with open arms.

My mother’s knack for interior design, a connoisseur of thrifting, before it was a thing, the warmth she put into everything she touched, her gentleness and genuine smile, made our dwelling a home. We bounced from rental to rental: an upstairs apartment on Avenue H, with an old woman that banged the broom to the ceiling, if I so much as yawned. We stayed in a huge house, on Beverly Road, a three-floor multiplex that we shared with immediate family. The two men that rented the basement were a shady duo; they slipped different women in and out and even once set their car on fire, almost kindling our home in the process.

You’d think I’d have noticed these things. However, it wasn’t until listening to reminiscent conversations, years later, that I had any clue of what was happening. I was swaddled in love. With all the culture, conversation, and answered inquiry, I had no time to dabble in grown-up things. I’d never heard the arguments between my father and the two men who he asked to grow the hell up. I’d never witnessed my mother tell our cranky broom-banging landlady that she needed to relax. I was told in the heat of gunfire that we were playing a game, “We’re just going to lay on the floor, for fun, just for a little bit.”

Home, for me, was never incessant, violent, or scary. Home was pleasantries; it was reflective of my mother’s great taste in African-American art, my father’s piles of books in his study, the multitude of stuffed animals collapsed on my bed, and two parents who adored me unconditionally. When I’m listening to the reflected moments, times when we didn’t feel safe in the place we called our abode, I am hit with a mind-altering notion.

There is no physicality to home. It’s reflected within us. They way we feel about our lives and ourselves is projected onto the space we reside in.

The collegiate dweller slings posters and torn sofas into his domain, because it’s transitory. The nomad hangs home over his shoulders, in the form of a bag, and plasters it anywhere he exists in. Folks, who aren’t too happy about their lives, take less care in their surroundings, when they aren’t content with the space inside of them.

My parents were just married and blessed with a child the second year of their union. My father just landed a job, that kept him traveling, but paid the bills on time. Their home was always reflective of their evolution. The red walls of their first bedroom screamed of their strength. The yellow walls of my own echoed the light in their life. The tediousness of our living space was reflective of two nesting individuals, who were stupidly in love teens, just a half a decade before. They flung their aspirations and dreams all over their space, in the form of magnetic refrigerator letters, bookshelves filled with magnificent prose, and pictures of those they treasured.

I didn’t feel like I was home, a year ago.

My boyfriend and I moved into our first apartment, together, and everything started to fall apart. We moved in haste, eager to get into the city. Our apartment was box, a place we prayed would be temporary and we’d soon forget. We wanted to get excited about our new place, but we couldn’t muster it. We lived like we were passing through, neglecting to hang things we’d purchased for our future walls, avoiding inviting folks over, and keeping boxes unpacked.

When things started to look up, I started cooking elaborate meals again, brought a little beauty to our kitchen, and even our bedroom. I bought new sheets and my mother found a great piece for above the headboard. I didn’t want to change the way we lived; I didn’t feel like our living area was worthy of our effort. I was wrong. We walked in one day, and out of the blue, our little box began to look a little bit brighter.

I was slowly discovering that inner peace would show outwardly, no matter how hard you tried to stifle it.

Recently, we got an impromptu phone call from a relative, asking us if we were interested in an apartment. We went to check out the place, a burgundy walled and hardwood floored fixer-upper, and decided that with a little TLC we could love it. When we discovered that we’d have to move in, in two weeks, I was frightened. How could we move in two weeks? It wasn’t enough time or notice. We were slowly progressing, but we weren’t ready for a huge move. I was afraid that our haste would land us in a new space, but the same sentiment would reside.

My boyfriend grabbed my shoulders, and washed the anxiety from me, with his words, “Sometimes you’ve just got to take a chance babe. It’s not the greatest place, but it’s bigger and you will make it a home. We’re doing better and we can do more now. I think we should give it a chance.”

He was right.

We ran into a few speed bumps there: Issues with our landlord and the deposit, because of lack of notice, and the hassle getting some of our things out of storage. However, every bit of it was worth it. We walked into a repainted space, dabbed with a bright yellow and white trim. The walls were reflective of how I felt, when we said goodbye to our old area.

Optimistic.

Illuminated.

Blissful.

I’m in the process of projecting the home I feel on the inside, to our new residence: A mismatched collage of our happiest moments adorn the hallways, both of our past apartment’s adornments unify in harmony here, and I’m sure the echo of our laughter can be heard, even when we’re not here. I’ve learned, from my parents, that there is nothing we can do about the economic, financial, and societal war outside. However, we control our sanctuary. As long as your inner-being is aligned, your refuge will burst from your chest and plaster itself everywhere. It’ll push your arms to grasp items at home stores, with quotes that resonate with your current situations, it’ll push you to pick up hammers and nail them to their chosen place.

We are painted with mediums of adaptation, our strengths pushed into aesthetic perfection, we are not pictures waiting for a frame, and we should never wait to be hung in exactly the right place. We are home already, wherever we are. Our surroundings amend for what's inside of us.

Pluck your attributes, from your soul, and build a nest. Marvel at its pieced together wonder. Stay a while. 

Stockholm Syndrome.

Her door knockers
coincide with the rapping of knuckles against the entrance of her future

Jeremy arises,
in both senses of the word

waiting to part her seas, in apartment B

Hey Jeremy,

I was nine when my mother sold me, for her addiction,
been latched to you ever since

encrusted with semen, my lips touched ice cream for the first time,
reward for being a good girl

thank you, for showing me that my thighs could bring more than piss

we ate well
when rich gentleman came looking for youth

you didn't like when the boys started to notice me,
did you?

thought my DD breasts were too swollen,
for my own good,
tried to beat them back into me

I loved you like November,
when tricks were low,
because men promised their wives they'd
be home for dinner,
their children, for construction paper palm turkeys

we were good then,
remember?

smoking our troubles in,
hailing our high on that dirty mattress, on the floor

burgundy stains from miscarriage three and four

when can i have your child?
you're the only family I got
why can't we multiply?

you laughed, when I said this
told me, "Them neighborhood boys gon' knock you up, soon enough."

I could hear you crooning inside other woman,
from the other room,
orgasming your pimp name

Jereeemmmyyyy

I won't call you anything else
I need you to remember who you once were

Preacher's son
a firm grasp
the first in class

You are no one's molestation
behind the pulpit
you are no faux hallelujah

sometimes
when we are so messed up
so gone that we forget who we are
we are good to each other
and you say stupid things like,
"I love you"
and
"I wasn't always this way"

These are the words I remember,
when you  are pillaging through me,
like I stole something from you

Raw and ripped

Leaving me stumbling
through this desert we call home
to buy your cigarettes

"five dollars"
papi says
and as I rub my legs together,
blotting the blood that drips there

I remember, I was once only worth that...

But now I've got you.

When Your Flaws Become Attributes.

Circa 2005 I took up hanging with a rather insecure and gorgeous girl named Maria. It was our freshman year and she was the first person I met, at our first dorm meeting. I’m not quite clear if it was my own insecurities or our mutual boredom that expedited our friendship, but we had absolutely nothing in common. She wanted to be a model and find a rich husband and I wanted to write by the waterfront. Whatever.

Around midnight, halfway through our first semester, she stood at my door half dressed and slurring. I rubbed the I’ve-got-a-test-in-the-morning sleep from my eyes and obliged her.

“He’s not answering his phone Erica! Why is he doing me like this?”

I avoided the alcohol on her breath, by reaching for my sweats in a nearby drawer, “Who’s he?”

“Brandon. He thinks he just going to ignore my calls and that’s it? We’re going over there. He’s got another thing coming.”

I followed her there, despite the obvious warning signs, because adventure is what college is all about, right? Maria walked in front of me, tousled and perfect in her angry walk. I envied girls like her, who needed nothing more than to wake up to be tossed faultlessness.

We ended up in front of a small yellow house, not far from campus. Maria picked up stones from the front yard and began to pelt them at a side window. A rather good-looking upperclassman opened it and poked his head through, avoiding the third stone’s aim.

“What the hell Maria?”

“You’re going to talk to me boy! This ain’t over until I say it’s over!” Maria bounced around in the driveway gravel, with the shirt I let her borrow, barely covering her disheveled bra and cocked shoulders.

Brandon closed the window, as I watched from the front lawn in half humor, half horror. Maria made her way back over to me and shrugged her body, in defeat, right as Brandon emerged from the front door.

The two exploded in argument, the entire block aware that lust and tension were grappling with a dwindling, right outside of their doors.

“I don’t want you Maria. It happened too soon, it was a mistake. You’re an alcoholic!”

“We were not a mistake Brandon. We were…” Maria’s sentence faltered with her step.

“Are you drunk right now Maria? Really?” He asked.

As Brandon stated the obvious, I tried to shrink into the background unsuccessfully.

“You’re that poetry girl right?” He motioned towards me.

I nodded quietly, hoping he’d get back to his argument, so I could slip away into the night.

“Maria, you see your friend? That’s the type of girl men will be chasing after we get up out of here. You’re pretty, but you won’t get far on that. Get a hobby, something other than drinking.”

Maria snickered, “Please fool. Don’t nobody want you anymore. Leave Erica out of this.”

“Right. That’s why you’re out here acting the fool? Get out of here. Please. Let’s hope she rubs off on you.”

Maria and I walked back to our dorms in silence. I felt bad for her, because she was clearly strung out on Brandon, but I also had watched her commandeer alcohol like it was candy. I was sure that this wasn’t her first drunken shenanigan, with the brother, and it wouldn’t be her last.

As selfish as it may sound, I couldn’t get Brandon’s words out of my head. It was the first time I’d heard any man applaud my writing, instead of downplay my sexy, because of it. I started college at seventeen and I’d only had a few crushes and “boyfriends” before I got there. Most of which ended in a spiel about my “flaws” and suggestions on improving them.

A tomboy and well-rounded teenager, I wasn’t interested in most things the majority of my peers found awesome. I delved into underground hip-hop, jazz, the poetry slam scene, cooking, and interior design.

David thought I was too boyish; headphones bopping to some 808, fresh Nike kicks abundant, and a collection of colorful hoodies. George called me corny, when I beckoned him to Jazz night at Cleopatra’s or open mics in the L.E.S. Marcus laughed at my inability to stay in the club, for more than an hour and my excitement for the smell of fresh bindings and coffee, upon entrance to a bookstore. I was told to get some heels, get out more, update my mani and pedi every week, and doll up.

My mother and older cousins, female goddesses to my cultured immaturity, told me that one day my interests would be attributes. I doubted them and flung their words where cliché hope-you-feel-better phrases go to die. I didn’t want to wait.

I tried to immerse myself into things that girls were expected to like. I wanted to bust from the seams over shoes and bags. I wanted to stay put, in heart racing situations, and flutter my flirtation with eyelashes and the licking of lips. I cringed when girls, with dresses accentuating their hourglass figures, would swarm around me in my t-shirt and slim jeans.

Beautiful was a hard thing to feel, back then.

I brought my journal everywhere. Once I even brought it to a lounge and started to scribe a poem, once it’d entered my mind. The girls I’d come with looked at me with complete mortification.

I wanted to shed my “flaws”, but it was impossible. They’re embedded.

“One day, your prince will come and he’ll love all of these things, about you.” 

Waiting is a bitch.

She laughs from a crook of your life, watching you take the hands of Mr. Right Now and Mr. In-The-Meantime. She follows you when you’re single and independent and lurks in the corner pocket of your heart, just as you say, “Girl I don’t need a man!” She will wear her I’m-going-to-tell-you-so smirk as she watches you try to mold and bend, all that is unknowingly striking about you, and make another one-eighty, back to where you began. Because our beginning is everything we’re meant to be.

When she is tired of watching you make a fool of yourself, she’ll send someone your way. When your love is blossoming, she becomes a jester, bringing back fools from your past, contradictions themselves.

David said my boyfriend was a lucky guy. “You’re so well rounded, when did you become this way?”

Marcus complained about his new girlfriend, while catching up. “All she does is party. I need a girl who’s committed to doing something real with her life. I messed up with you huh?”

George wanted more versatility in his sphere. “You’re interested in a lot of dope things. Put me on, show me your world.”

I giggled at how much they’d grown. They were once boys spilling superficiality and now they wanted nothing more than simplicity.

Brandon was sort of right. In a few years, those men were in search of homemade meals, ambition, kept homes, and stability. Once a mere prospect, I’d become an example of whom they roamed for.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. We’re gorgeously flawed.

This is for the folks who are thinking about a revolution, for anyone but himself or herself. You are already a war. Stop fighting your innate ability to be distinct and stand the hell out.

Unlike Maria, there’s no waver in your step. Your flaws are foundation. Solid ground.

By Any Means Necessary: Finding the Time To Write

My mother and I have this tradition. Whether I’ve made my way to my childhood home in Long Island or she’s made her way to my cramped Brooklyn apartment, we always sit down and read my newest work, together. Today she sat on the sofa in my living room and gestured to my laptop, “Let’s read some of your new stuff.”

I was suddenly aware that I had nothing to read to her. The guilt and shame washed over me, as I thumbed through the Rolodex in my mind, remembering the madness of the previous week.

·      My job is suddenly a constant revolution. My responsibilities are evolving and I often find myself battling a severe anxiety that I will get so lost in the 9 to 5, that writing will become a mere hobby.

·      I’m incredibly tired. Once a night owl and insomniac, I can now be found slumbering on my couch, after a full day of work.

·      We moved into a bigger apartment. Between a small feud with our landlord and a lot of “misplaced mail”, we finally made it here. I’m sitting in the living room and listening to the train slide by, technically deeming our new space a railroad apartment, but the rattling doesn’t bother me at all.

It’s good to hear life again. In the apartment, we used to be in, we were cut off from the outside world, descending into a space where hermits go to die. The new inspiration is exciting; the switch of train route brings along interesting potential characters, for the ride. The hustle and bustle, you aren’t privy to, in a predominately residential neighborhood, are words dancing in the air, waiting to split their pirouettes on paper.

So why the hell am I not writing?

I’ll tell you why.

Life swallows the writer.

It will convince you that you don’t have enough time to sit and scribe. It will whisper to you that writing is a pleasure, a menial task that can be done later. For some folks, this is exactly what it is. But what about the people who live and die by the pen? What about those who began to scribe, because it released the constraints on their being? What do they do when life takes over?

1)   Conquer the intervals. I’ve convinced myself that there’s no time to write. However, I’ve forgotten the moments I’m idle: waiting in the car on someone, the train rides to and from work, and the dull moments in the conference room. I’ve become so accustomed to my office, that I’ve forgotten the spontaneity of an idea on a napkin. Those inklings are so precious and the next could have been a bestseller.  I can’t afford that.

2)   Demand time. I’m too pliable. I mold and bend my writing schedule to fit the needs of the folks that I love. I will learn the word “no” and the phrase “maybe some other time.”

3)   Hold my passion on its pedestal. Unwavering. WRITING IS MY LIVELIHOOD, WITHOUT IT, I CAN’T LIVE. Believe this and nothing else.

These are the promises I’ve made my mother and myself this week. Guilt and shame shall no longer coincide with writing. Hold me to it? I hope so. I hate breaking tradition.