The Colony

Despite depictions to the contrary, the continents of the Americas were already settled and populated for millennium before the European invasion, though carefully cultivated propaganda often repeated has done its best to suggest otherwise. In fact, while doing a word search for links to this piece, words like "occupation" and "invasion" were nonexistent when grouped with "European" and "America", replaced by the far more benign and majestic-sounding "Age of Exploration" (rather one-sided), or "colonization", implying that plenty of space was "up for grabs" and available without years of murder, torture, and displacement, which is simply not true.

It is a concept that's also reinforced in Euro-centric schools here in the United States, shown to schoolchildren as the Pilgrims and Indians happily sharing a feast together in what colonists called "The New World". Fellowship and friendship among people isn't arguable, though the intentions of a bunch of rabid nut-jobs like the Puritans were definitely suspect, and therein lies the truth: that "colonists" like them were driven from their homelands for religious extremism and other acts of violence against men, much like the establishment of penal colonies in Australia.

Convicts were often given a choice between prison and expulsion, because a long sea voyage that may be your untimely death was preferable to rotting in jail. Given the feudal system of medieval Europe, it's no wonder their "undesirables" chose a boat instead. The lord/serf system of labor and land ownership was a direct precursor to the slave economy of the American South, and just as deranged. In Europe, serfs were considered property just like they were here, in colonies created for economic expansion and world domination.

Not that it stopped there. With the advent of the media age came new conduits for programming and/or re-programming, as the case may be. Movie after movie after movie showed the handsome white man "dressed to kill" in his ten-gallon hat, armed and dangerous to the savagely murderous Indians who pillaged their towns and raped their women, in an almost direct contrast to the actual battles waged on land already occupied by the First Nations. The hero wore white, the bad guy wore black, and the Indians bled red blood. Done! History for the Special Needs set: easily digestible and almost guilt-free.

Except that it wasn't. As indigenous people fought back harder than any "sophisticated" wealthy euro ever had the right to expect, those territories were left to the natives (now as disenfranchised and often poverty-stricken "reservations" free of U.S. interference), as other less contested lands were carved up by the governments of France, England, and Spain, until a new American identity was born to the children of proudly mixed parentage from "both sides of 'the pond'", which is where we stand today: a nation about to be led by yet another rich white man born to four European grandparents (with an Eastern Euro import wife), who won an election in the same "red" states fed by the southern slave economy that drives them back towards the same rich white man they remain indebted to. And you wondered why he isn't taking a salary for his presidency....<shakes head in disbelief>

The U-Haul Mauler

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-Haul 

Going back to school for Oneonta students felt like a Christmas Eve party on the same day as your birthday, and you just got a puppy that looks like Snoopy from your parents before you and your crew hit the town. It was that great. Of course, by junior year, we were all feeling the numbness that comes with so many good times, which meant we were growing up. But, we still wanted to summon up that fresh feeling before every semester, and junior year was no different.

Imagine a place where all your best friends hung out and came back to every year, knowing they'd show up ready for a good time. We hit the ground running, docked for the summer at our stupid low-paying jobs, in places that seemed like they were stuck in the mud, time-wise. You know that excruciating summer blues when its all heat and and dust and nothing's moving, especially the air? That's what we came from; stranded from the only people we'd found so far who got us on a few levels, even if some of the crucial parts were still missing. It wasn't nostalgia, either. It's a really beautiful town in upstate New York with a really good state school, framed by a perfect small-town Main Street filled with pubs. Done.

After two years on campus, we were finally allowed to live off-campus, and for my crowd, that was a good thing, too. We'd come close to getting kicked out of our dorms for having louder better times than other people, and the strain of that for two years running started to show. Now, we had house parties to look forward to. Because we were active kids (we didn't call ourselves "athletes" back then unless we attended school on a sports scholarship), we rented a house for $200 a semester split four ways at the bottom of a hill that lead directly to campus, if you could climb a steep mountain hill covered in ice and snow in tan construction books (the only kind that works), all weather permitting. We could be exceptionally healthy like that.

My best friend was JV and Varsity volleyball in high school as the team captain, breaking every finger on both hands, sometimes more than once. Her good friend at Oneonta was on a soccer scholarship, and one of our housemates ate tofu and taught aerobics classes for Continuing Ed. at the school, and at suburban joints over the summer as the prototypical "hot blond" cheerleader type, but with soul. We took all that to mean we should play hackey-sack wasted whenever the sun was out. Ah, youth. Our friend Meg was a real former cheerleader and so was her bestie from home, "Crackhead Jen".

Before my boyfriend switched majors, he wanted to be a sports therapist, being the former high school quarterback he was at the posh Jesuit school Xavier's, while he worked double-time as a bouncer during semesters and a doorman on the West Side during summers throughout our college career. He and I also opted for the actual physical labors of a "Body Conditioning" class (still have the textbook with fun 80s photos on my shelf), while our friends either bowled (and smoked pot) or took camping class...and smoked pot. With beers, too, of course. Not one of us hadn't been camping or to a bowling alley before. My friend Dave (who I would later marry) was also the star quarterback at his high school, and his crew was deep into skateboarding, biking, hiking, surfing, swimming and boating, depending on locale and budget.

So, that's what we showed up with: a bundle of fun under the clear night sky. I drove up to school with a crew of my own, navigating town and driving by our friends houses to see if they were up, yet. Low and behold, there was my man "A-Roll" in his biker wraparound shades driving some busted rental van from the 'hood with graffiti all over it. Ah, Brooklyn boys. I shouted "Hey!" out the window as we passed, just as he turned his head to look but not before we saw him rear-end a car parallel-parked on the street. Haha! What a dick. Keep driving!

We had arrived. For the entire first half of the year, Ariel tried to shake me down for cash as a participant in his smash-up with a townie's car (because I called out his name and waved to him from a passing car), and they hated ethnic city kids with a passion, especially his dark gothic hipster ass in all-black with a slicked-back ponytail. Every time we were at a party, he said I should give him some money for my part in his accident, because he was being sued by the townie with the dent in his car, after he abandoned the moving van on the street. Yeah, right. He sulked for months about losing his deposit on the vehicle. 

He might have just wanted beer and pot money. You never knew with a hungry thirsty Dominican street kid like him. What we did do is almost instantly craft a new nickname for him that we greeted him with every time he showed up for a party. "The U-Haul Mauler" was a smash hit, and we went on to design a punk rock album cover art in his name. We dominated town and campus gossip our first day back in town (like usual), and the semester had just begun. Anything could happen in a magical mountain town nestled in the hills of beautiful upstate New York. Anything. Anything was possible. See you there, kids.

Arael - variation of Uriel; prince over the people.

Joie de Vivre

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joie_de_Vivre 

Like Wadsworth's "Evangeline" and her happy Acadian family with the beautiful black eyes living in a fertile river valley, my joy at being alive is something I can't always hide, even when it is more convenient to the people around me (or more appropriate to their customs) for me to do so. In Asian cultures, a big toothy smile is often seen as the prelude to a false act, like an overly solicitous shopkeeper trying to sell you damaged goods, or the villain dressed in black from a martial arts movie with one hand behind his back, waiting to press the button down on a bomb detonator. "Oh! Haha! You die! You die, now! Hahaha!"

Let me assure you, laughter and smiling in my culture is a sign of happiness, not deeply repressed anger or hostility. If being psycho makes you happy, you need to see a reputable doctor. Like, now. At the office it was even weirder, attracting notice wherever I went, with whomever the audience, as thinly-veiled digs that were supposed to function like so many pins popping so many balloons of mine, like the child I haven't been for quite some time. I guess when you grow up without a wailing wall at your disposable, problems are much less interesting as a showpiece for attention.

We grew up with sayings like "misery loves company" and "keep a stiff upper lip", followed by my dad's favorite "the sun comes up tomorrow" as a rip-off from the popular Broadway play "Annie". It is culturally entrenched among my people to handle problems by solving them through hard work, not worrying over them like a hangnail by "pouring salt on an open wound". There is a time to grieve, and there is a time to live, and we get to savor the richness of life through our emotions and feelings. No one is excluded from it.

Most evenings, I enjoy watching the updated version of the popular game show "Family Feud", most particularly for its inclusive representation of American families, encouraged and culled as they are by the staff of the show and their host, actor/comedian Steve Harvey. It's a lot more real than so-much genteel hand-kissing and flirting, much as I loved Rich Dawson's campy turns about the stage in the 70s and 80s. For the family that makes it to the speed round at the end of the show comes a quick sucession of answers to really hard questions, like last night's repeat episode.

The question was: on a scale of one-to-ten, how happy are you at being alive? The attractive African-American woman answered "TEN!" right away, at the same time as me. After her turn, another nicely-dressed family member came out to answer the same questions, with the extra burden of answering again if she repeated the first contestant's answers. It's a telling way to hear how families have the same mindset through their similiar answers made under the gun. Same question: how happy? And again, same lightning quick response: "TEN!"

Uh uh. Try again. "NINE!" Next best thing, right? And like that <snap!>, I felt less alone in the world, as a part of an "oppressed" people supposedly so drug down through the mud that we can't get clean. Right? Wrong! Wrong answer. I felt like we was all in the same room togetha, and we could be! That's the magic of inclusiveness, and faith, and family. You can't burn your way through it. Suddenly, I knew there were other people in the world like me, and do you know how I felt? Yup. Happy. That's the "joie de vivre" that marks our particular flavor, and you're welcome to it. That's being Acadian, y'all.

Mrs. Michael

Being American is a funky experience, because we have more inter-cultural diversity than any other nation, which makes for some interesting combinations. For some of my Berkowitz family members, it's led to new waters where the Celt, Jew, and Native American combine, which means my oldest cousin Kenny "passes" for white, while his younger siblings did not. I use "pass" with quotation marks because like other mixed communities, parentage cannot often be assumed by appearance alone, which is probably the reason my cousin acts out so much. 

If he'd been dark like the rest of his family, it'd be more readily understood that his references extend beyond European ancestry to include the genetically dominant coloring of indigenous peoples. Like being "yella" among African-Americans signals bi-racial, a specific type of red/tan skin-tone marks Metis as "different" right away, especially in combination with black eyes and high cheekbones. It immediately sends a message to people, who pick it up as visual shorthand for "ethnic". 

But, just as skin color alone doesn't define the black experience, so non-indigenous parenting does not exclude or presume a cultural mismatch between, say, a squaw and her French, fur-trapping husband. Some cultures, even geographically dissimilar ones, get it, like my African-American friend and her Irish-American ex. Their daughter is easily discernible as someone of color because African features are genetically dominant over the weaker recessive genetics Northern people have from less exposure to direct sunlight, like blue eyes that often suffer from vision impairments because of less melanin.

That doesn't mean they didn't get along. They obviously did, and in no small part because Irish people have long been considered the lowest ranking ethnicity on the European scale of correctness, so much so that redheads (or "gingers" as they are disparagingly called) have entered our lexicon through sayings that underlie deeply held prejudices against Celts, like "the ugly, red-headed stepchild" as a way of saying someone is unwanted and unloved. A bigger put-down is rarely heard among us. It's a prejudice based on appearances that anyone who's ever been biased against in our society would empathize with right away, and it goes beyond looks.

Celts have long been oppressed for their devoutly Catholic beliefs that are tied to their prolific child-producing ways, which typically marks the lowest class in any society. Large broods make for less resources at home, and as traditionally disenfranchised people, blacks in America would understand Irish tales of woe quite well, especially over a few drinks, which brings us to their next bias as heavy drinkers. Pub society is very important to Irish culture, and so is a fondness for native-brewed drink, which I have a strong taste for as well. It does not include alcoholism and addiction because neither is a good time, beating in the heart of every pub as a cultural barometer to the overall health of the surrounding community.

It also means a lot of my friends and family meet their "soul mates" in bars (or at least they pretend to), because the difference between, say, pint-hoisting cheer and a violent disease can become blurry, especially around closing time. Kenny's parents met in a bar, like that classic joke about a rabbi, a priest, and an Indian chief meeting for the first time at the local watering hole. Quite the set-up. And it was. His Sephardi-looking father, while shorter than his mom, definitely had the same black hair, prominent nose, and reddened skin of his native mother. Unfortunately for my cousin, recessive European genes kicked in for their oldest child with a vengeance, making him tower over them at 6 foot tall with light brown hair, blue eyes, and fairer skin. What was commonly called "attractive" by a European society in the city made him stand out like an awkward white dude anytime he went anywhere with his parents and siblings.

And dark they were. You can see my family reunion photo on this site to pick out the Indians in a snap, where you'd be much harder pressed to single out Kenny. Like my light-eyed middle brother, it made him susceptible to nasty jokes about amorous mailmen delivering to yo' mama when yo' daddy ain't home during the day, which made my brother and Kenny best friends as kids. It made him choose to favor his Irish side for visual (and beer drinking) similarity. But just like being red or partially Christian doesn't necessarily make you a Jew, so did he struggle to define himself by other people's stereotypes.

It's led to some really weird match-ups, like his younger brother Michael's marriage to a much older and less attractive divorced single mother, someone he also met in a bar, as did his sister (my late cousin) with her last two relationships before her passing. Whereas my cousin Kenny can pass for white, Michael and Ruthie had no such luck. Like the Native American actor who portrays a detective on a popular American "cops and robbers" show, Ruthie and Michael were always assumed to be Hispanic, as Nuyoricans became the dominant Latin/Mediterranean-derived "dark" cultures that dominated NYC in the 70s and 80s. Well, that, or Mexican.

In the quest to be suitably paired combined with low tribal numbers (Kenny's mom told us her tribe had only 67 people in it), it's made finding a mate hell on earth. Who gets it?! Michael went with an older Jewish/Italian-looking suburbanite from New Jersey, but I can't see how that can last. Homeboy may be "off the rez", but that don't make Euros easy pickings for the fight. She can't cut it. It means mixed kids are a genetic "grab-bag" that doesn't suit who you are, what you want, or what your expectations about being colored might be.

As a tribe, it means we know she'll try to "rule the roost" like the pushy older woman from her ethnic background(s) she is, and as an Metis male, that ain't gonna fly for too long with any of my cousins, no matter how drunk as fuck your parents were, or how pale the winter turned you. Red sees red. As soon as we met her at a family reunion in Maine, with her outdated 80s hairdo, clothes, and wrinkly tan skin, we knew she didn't belong. Not only looks-wise, but also her attitude and mentality. Plus, she has her own kids from some other guy. She's got another man, bro. Somewhere. Don't make you "daddy" to her, or him, or them kids! Which meant for the rest of the weekend, we addressed him as "Mrs. Michael": a youngblood with a banged-up, older-looking, Euro-broad. Yeah....good luck with that one, son. 
You'll need all the Irish you can get.

"B" for Berkowitz

Having names in America is a tricky business. Many of our ancestors came here with an eye towards reinvention, which made it the perfect opportunity for a name-change. No matter how many times I'm asked, it still makes me smile: "Is Doucette 'French'"? Oh, hell no. "Doucet" is French as all get-out, but "Doucette" is a totally American creation, reflecting our past desires for assimilation and fitting in. Quickly. It's a dangerous prospect for an immigrant not to pass as an American citizen for very long. We know too many cultures of the world not to be hip to foreigners.

Belonging here is mostly a matter of choice that's not from any particular country, culture, ethnicity, or religion, related more to geographic proximity to the nearest overseas nation than anything else. San Francisco has a large Asian district because it is a western hub for Americans traveling to Japan. Miami has a vibrant Cuban community because of its relative close distance to that country; ditto with generations of Haitian boat people who landed in Florida. I can fly to Ireland from New York quicker than to any other major European country (besides Greenland and Iceland) and most American cities, which directly informs the strength of the Celtic-informed cultures of my ancestral home of "New Scotland" and the Northeastern seaboard.

But for parts of my family, their move towards an American identity was more circuitous and convoluted, with large doses of deceit mixed with insincerity. It was the perfect combo for my cousin and my old friend from college. Dave came from a Polish-American father with a phony Irish-sounding name, and both of them are heavy drinkers, just like their fathers before them. They briefly played together in a downtown darts league (my boyfriend and my two cousins who are siblings), until they blew that by fighting in the cobblestone streets of downtown New York City late at night, after one too many.

Still, we were blown away by the reveal that my cousin had changed his name without even telling us. He invited us to a party held by an Irish association that's a popular social club for many Irish-Americans, one necessitating proof of Irish ancestry, which was much harder than he could manage with a dark Indian mother who resembled Pocahontas more than Colleen. That was his gentile line from his maternal side: a mother with more native heritage than anything else, and she'd die an early death in his 20s from the drink before she'd openly divulge the truth about her ethnic origins.

We approached the table at the social club with the guest list, repeating my cousin's name a few times, only to get puzzled looks and shaking heads. Nope. He wasn't on the list! My cousin must have saw us from inside the banquet hall, because he yelled out as he ran over to us: "It's under 'Burke'!" Uh, duh. You could have told us you made the reservations in our name. How were we to know? He quickly checked us in, then pulled us aside. We didn't understand him. He didn't go by the name Berkowitz anymore. Okay...we were still waiting. He got impatient with us."You need an 'Irish' name to get into the club!" Haha! That's funny, 'cause Dave isn't even all that Irish. He's a Polish-Indian mixed with German and Italian.

No, no, no. We still didn't get it. Finally, he coughed up the truth. This time, he leaned in closer to us, seated across from him at the long banquet table with fresh beers, lowering his voice. "I changed my name." What?! Dave was furious with him. "You stole my fucking name so you could drink in a bar?!" Kenny wanted to bartend (i.e., drink for free) at the local chapter, so he felt it was worth it. Besides, it fit his personality perfectly to be a such an outrageous liar, but this was just so fucking surreal. I loved our Jewish family from my father's side. This was bullshit! It was like he cut off an entire branch of our big family tree, and we were bleeding all over the place from the cut. Fuck...what a dumb drunk fuck!

Dave jerked his thumb at me. "She's the one with the Irish grandfather, not you. And besides, she's been to Ireland. You haven't." And that was true. "Yeah, you're 'more Irish' than me." My cousin admitted to us. "That's true." It was a dubious distinction amid so many loud red faces that packed the Brooklyn hall. Uh, yeah, we're not exactly extinct, are we? Take a good look around. Still, he had a point. He was as European-American as probably half the fuckers in the joint, and he could drink most of them under the table any day or night of the week. Heck, genetics is a wild game. Maybe that big dumb fuck was onto something. Maybe he was an Irishman more than anything else all long. It was still funny, though: an Irish Norman name of French origin, stolen from an upstate Polish-Indian. It was just crazy enough to be American. 

Cruisin'

Years back—at the height of the social media craze—I re-connected with a former classmate I met in junior high school on a "friends" site, like so many of us who work with computers do. He wasn't part of my circle of friends back in the day, but I remembered him as a nice, quiet, serious boy; not exceptionally bright or gifted, but nice. My impression of him was confirmed during our reacquaintance in a series of IM chats through the online site that tended to go on and on, because he wouldn't disconnect from me first. He went to a SUNY school in the city for toy design that I thought was really neat, except that it wasn't for him, because he wrote to me that his architect dad "pushed" him into the program, when he really wanted to be a car designer. Oh.

It didn't make sense to me. No one can (or could) "force" me to be an Illuminator, especially my non-artistic immediate family, so how did it happen? He still really didn't know. He worked at a company for ten years that he described to me as his "dream job", in direct contradiction to his other messages. But, like me, he moved back from out west to Rockland County after years away, so we had that in common, along with design and martial arts. He got his Judo black belt from a strip mall dojo with a self-appointed "guru" who sold them potions while they were still on the mats, so I didn't expect much from our playful sparring, and he never competed. He sat on me with his full weight, and then told me that was a "pin" in judo, which I guess means a "win" without any technique or effort on his part. It was weird. "What do you, just sit on people?" Well, yeah...that was his strategy. Okay.

We diverged again artistically. I didn't remember him from any of my art classes at public school, and I'd taken them since childhood—even when they weren't offered on the curriculum—at my urging. He didn't strike me as an artist at all, nor do I remember any of his works. I'd simply never seen him in our studios at school. He was tepid about that, too. But, he did like to get the fuck out of his parents house while he re-established his career on the east coast, and that we very much had in common. My overbearing mom eases up immediately around strong men, because they telegraph "hetero" in a big loud voice that she doesn't like, so she skitters away vaguely. It gave me the head space I needed to endure dysfunctional family visits during their holidays—that they wrongly describe as "parties"—by having an excuse to leave, which was also noticed and attacked.

"You have to 'visit' with people when you come over!" my mom would say to me, only to either ignore me for the rest of the "visit", or abuse me into working "her" weirdo "party" filled with other headcases by serving and waiting on their lazy fat asses, only to have them insult me to my face. Fuck that! I can punch anyone of them in the face, hard enough to do serious damage. I don't have to sit in some overheated room to shove my face with bad food made for other addicts. We'd escape in his car for "joy rides" made through the twisting hills of rural Rockland County with the windows open to stave off motion sickness that sometimes didn't work, hiking our way through the trails we grew up walking. It gave us the counterbalance we needed in the mentally ill homes of our youth, as we adjusted to our adult roles of leadership in these families too sick to care for themselves in our absence.

He picked up visits to the acupuncturist his mother frequented in Nanuet, working out as a bodybuilder in New City and going to the local bars there. He established a suburban routine much quicker than I did, because I still worked as a designer in the city, and I had my own apartment in Park Slope that he immediately wanted to move into (not uncommon for me), by planting himself and his cat there for a length of time that was to be determined by me. He left on Monday morning. Besides his rather generic interests and habits, he also had a bland "white boy" sensibility about travel that was filled with dull cruises that he referred to as "cruising" online. I finally responded that to him that it's the go-to phrase for gay men on the make who are also fond of ships at sea. Oh...haha. Yeah. Did I like "cruising", though?

Oh, fuck no, "white boy". For a Filipino boy from New York, he had a lot less flavor than me, and he knew it. He told me he was always upset by people's reactions to his appearance, because he said he wasn't that exotic. "I'm kinda like a 'white boy' in L.A." Yeah. No shit, homeboy. You're kinda "white" here, too. It was doubly odd because the dude looked like a younger version of Jet Li or Donnie Yen; like, a good-looking martial arts movie star with an incredible physique. So, what gives with that? Why no "flair"? He didn't know the answer to that question, either. The last girl he dated was a homeless meth addict who slept on his couch (and with him) because he "felt sorry for her". 

He just liked to drive around aimlessly (he sent me the video links to his really dull driving videos that he made with a smartphone mounted on the dash of his car...yay), and his boring cruise ship pictures that could be anywhere with anyone. I immediately got tested after we broke up (negative for disease), and developed a much better attitude about men from my homeboy, so thanks for that. We had parted ways without any physical violence at all, which is quite uncommon for two martial arts "action heroes". No harm, no foul. It was a totally clean break from a kid who loved me from afar for many years, a schoolkid crush that he had made real for a short time, and that deserves some "kudos". But he doesn't deserve me, or a relationship with me that's a marriage with kids. That's for another superhero entirely. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shipping

Singing in the Key of Ella

"Annndddd....I only have eyes...I only have eyes...yes, I only have eyes...forrrororrr youuuuuu....." I've always loved jazz and the blues, and luckily my beatnik city parents did, too. In addition to rock n' roll and my dad's occasional country album, they had tons of vinyl from the greats, like Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. They met at a dance club, and they often visited jazz clubs in "The Village" when they first dated, seeing legendary artists like Bob Dylan when he was just another broke Jewish kid tryin' to make it in "The Big Apple". It was something they could understand, being second-generation immigrant kids themselves. Everyone's ethnic in the 'hood, knowwhatimean?

I took to the big rock acts of the 60s, 70s, and 80s first, but after that pop cultural introduction, I found myself hungry to know more about the American roots of our music, as yet another example of a cultural heritage that'd been co-opted from us (without paying fees for creative copying, and without permission) by white Europeans, no offense. Thanks for all the money! In a big classroom in upstate New York, I took a class so fucking hard that I still have anxiety dreams about it (http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/music/biographies.asp#).

They had this blind cat in class who was an idiot savant with tunes, even DJ'ing overnight at our infamous college radio station (held in very high acclaim), to come into class with an escort on one arm, like any true rock star would, sitting in the front row, or, even better, he pulled a chair right before the instructor's podium on the auditorium floor. And he was vicious. If the prof pulled just the horn section from a track, his hand always shot up first. Man! How does he know it from just a small two-second sample? It did nothing to dispel our notions about handicapped people and their "Spidey" senses that went tingling in the absence of sight (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Spidey-sense).

After that, I always worked in design studios that had music playing (or Howard Stern, haha, Carol!) in the background while we worked (or much louder after hours, when the 9-5 staff ran out the door ahead of us, always ahead of us and the end of our real work), to the amazement of the office cows wandering through our studio spaces, aghast at this break from a typically uptight protocol that they mistook for a laxity in our disciplines, but such was not the case. Almost all of my art degreed friends are also professional or semi-professional working musicians, given credence to our supposition that the arts blend together in both the practicing and well-practiced artist alike.

And so it went. I allowed the people in my life to think that they had a big "one-up" on me when they strummed their guitars slightly, or tapped a silly tambourine for attention like a trained seal at the circus, while I declined to explore yet another avenue for my already prolific output that often scared the amateurs around me. Then I scored a recording studio gig. Of course, I didn't have the time to devote to audio sessions, though my man Randy pulled me into the studio for a few vocals on commercials and promo pieces for our business clients who needed a smooth, silky, pleasantly female voice.

But, it hadn't started there. When I worked at a pizza joint in Providence, Rhode Island, my friend Greg used to encourage me to call the guys working at the liquor store down the hill for a trade. "Do the voice!", he'd say to me. "You know, that sexy one you use when you talk on the phone." So I would, and, lo and behold, with a little bit of giggling, we'd happily traded a pie with the works for a six-pack of beer, to make both of our work gigs go a little easier. That's how it went for me. My physical presence coupled with my artistic and intellectual prowess was already way more than the average Joe or Jane. I'm half-harassed to death as it is!

It wasn't until I was laid off from my last long-term office gig that I finally let the tiger out of its cage. They had requisite "art fag" kids who wrote shitty plays and bland music that I stayed very fucking far from. Pretentiousness freaks me out, besides, if this mama don't earn, ain't none of you playin' jack shit, right? So, I did the trade I was apprenticed to, and I did it famously well. End scene. Or so I thought. After I began working from home in earnest, transitioning to being a publisher with my own voice, I realized I didn't have to hide anymore.

This stupid white dude living beneath me in Park Slope felt "bad" enough for me (yeah, right) to let me piggyback off his WiFi for awhile—until he blew that up, like a typically arrogant WASPy douche with an overblown ego and sense of entitlement to go along with his easy life and generically "exotic" Asian girlfriend built like a prepubescent girl. He told me he was a "Sound Designer" like he was proud of it, which means he holds the fuzzy boom mic on set, and then goes home to fiddle around with his ProTools all night long like a raging manic-depressive, on a pricey computer that you and I can't afford without going into debt. I know: its a "dick" title to go with his bad attitude. He hated me, but he also wanted me, too, and ain't that like every otha boy on tha block? So, I let my music play loud enough to be heard (rare as that was back then) because he earned his money from sound, so what could a bitch like him really do about it? 

To go with his flabby life, I dubbed him "BitchTits" behind his tall, pompous back. He also drove a suburban SUV in fucking Brooklyn, and then complained like a whiny out-of-towner about a lack of parking on some of the most difficult streets to do so in the city. No shit, white boy! But, in the heat of my anger simmered another tiger in the tank. I finally let myself sing, after never really trying to do so in front of average folks, and it worked. I let myself find the right pitch and tone for my classic mezzo soprano (http://www.harmonyangels.com/Verse-Voice.html), a key I had avoided like the colored plague it was marked for my life, and do you know what I found out? I fucking sang in the key of Ella fucking Fitzgerald. 

That was it. That was all it ever was. I just needed to find the right notes to go with my voice, much like my beautiful grandmother's pitch, who was so modest about the strength of all of her gifts from G-d that shone like a brightly-filled chalice of light, that she only allowed herself free reign to pour it out while she was in church, where it was safe from the kind of scrutiny that sought to rip away gifts as freely as they'd been given to us. We knew that the disordered and dysfunctional swirling around our smaller healthier group circled us like hyenas, eager for the leftovers of our greater gifts that dropped from us like leftover crumbs, smacking and licking their lips in hideous gluttony.

And just like that, the evil spell surrounding and suppressing me was finally broken. The hangers-on and wanna-be's dropped away as I fell down hard financially because I had nothing left to give, in a shedding process that marks the life of any real acolyte who seeks to walk with G-d and be in the presence of His Almighty Grace. I was finally free, free to be me, free to be you and me. Ain't life grand?