Young With the Soul of an Old Man

I’m officially confused. I have always been one to believe that you should say what you mean and want it as well. I just can’t get with this notion of conversing with someone, hunting for a particular type of answer, then once you get the answer you want (or interpret what you feel is as such), it becomes this offensive remark that they were not aware of before you told them. It seems as though situations like this turn into lose-lose situations, and they are best left unanswered.

It’s like you engage in a conversation with someone you trust and the conversation leads to you really expressing something that’s on your brain. They get a case of tunnel vision and are set on finding out a particular thing, which leads to the ever-popular cliche’ of “just say what you gotta say”. I gotta admit, I say this myself, but when I do, I really want you to say what you gotta say. However, what they may be asking me to “just say” might conflict/offend them, or you just have that much respect for them that you would not feel comfortable revealing what is really going on. Either way, you deny wanting to reveal it for your stated reason. You spend excessive time explaining the back story and why the “secret” should not be as offensive, an that it should be dropped.

This answer is not good enough, though, and they continue to poke and prod, to which you respond by CONTINUING to beat around the bush, but moving ever so closely to it, because you don’t want to avoid or disregard their curiousity (you DO trust them, after all). You inch and inch, while they continue to go ghetto Barbara Walters on you to “get the true story”. You ramble and ramble, hoping that it will eventually lead to some semblance of an explanation that they are satisfied with and will leave it where it is.

Then, the magic moment comes. You are tired of them being tired of you beating around the bush. They just want to hear it. Again, you hear “JUST SAY WHAT IT IS AND STOP BEATING AROUND THE BUSH!!!”, much to your chagrin. You just WISH the would find a way to respect where you don’t want to go and drop it. Naaaaaah, black. That doesn’t lead to any substantial gains. So, their nose gets deeper and deeper to the point that you say to yourself “okay, maybe they’re right. Lemme just say this and cut the speculation.”

Then you say it: “I don’t really love you like you love me” or “I’m attracted to your friend” or “I think you’re reading too much into this relationship” or whatever (these are extreme examples, but I’m giving examples of things that you might not want to tell people right off the bat). THEN, the ol’ switcheroo happens. THEN, the histrionics and the feared reactions kick in. They become quiet, their voices more hesitant, social reservation kicks in, and they become instantly introverted. Conversely, they could become volatile and blow up at you, making you the cause for their unforeseen misery. They neglect the fact that you did NOT want to say this (or in some cases, you DID say it, but their perverted interpretation of your comment makes you wish you said nothing) the whole time. They neglect the ENTIRE backstory which, under normal circumstances, would have exonerated you of all wrongdoing.

My beef sets in here. DON’T poke and prod and beseech me for my opinion, comment, or whatever if you’re not prepared for it. That lie of “just tell me the truth, I won’t get upset” is bullshit. If you fear my answer, either pick your questions carefully, cease to ask questions, or man the fuck up and respect my mind and keep ticking.

That’s NOT to say if you try to reverse it and they have a problem with that. For instance, you say “I think your sister’s pretty,” and they have a problem with that. Then, you retell the entire backstory of how it came about and why it’s not the big deal they think it is. You switch up to some “she can wait forever, darling, she won’t ever get my love,” George Duke type shit. Then, their story switches: “Well,
why NOT?! My sister is VERY pretty an you would WANT to like her!” Makes you feel like you’re in a damn sitcom.

Fuck all that radio shit. Situations like these SUCK. You don’t say anything, you’re accused of holding back. You say it and it’s something they don’t like, you suffer that wrath (or introversion). You try to explain yourself, you’re considered a cruel being, only out for self. You become the blame of it all. There is no caution to throw to the wind. There is no recourse, no second chance. You cannot dirty delete spoken word. The way I see it, respect my mind. Either be comfortable with whatever I have to say (provided I’ve given the proper backstory and grounds for explanation) or just get used to me shutting up and not opening up to you. If we are to be really close, there should be no “conditional” sharing. Just me, maybe I’m a little messed up in the head. Do you mislead them with a lie or do I risk pissing them off by being honest? It’s so confusing, I had to put it in Haiku form.

Man, I just can’t with
Either thoughtless or heartless
I’m damned, do or don’t

-B

A wise man once said “A man that can stand up on his own two feet doesn’t need to be stood up.”

-B

“Can’t nothin’ a broke n-gga do for me but point me towards a n-gga with money…”

-Ms. Fulsom

I heard this nonsense at a party I was blessed to attend (the salsa was off the chain!) the other night. Seeing as I was the only “stranger” amongst friends, I played it back and kept ears open, mouth shut. The loudest of the group of 9 blurted this crap out, and I was so taken aback, I had to make sure I kept my mouth shut. She KEPT going off about how a broke man was less of a man and she was less concerned with a man being good to her, because she was about going to the mall.

This leads me back to a yin-yang cycle of duality that I’ve stereotypically noticed between males and females. Males want sex, the women want money. The women seem to not wanna look like they’re being used for their body, so they want a valuable asset of the male’s: his money. The male doesn’t wanna look like a trick, breaking bread without a return on his investment, so he wants a valuable asset of hers: her vagina. Round and round we go. Of course this doesn’t apply to all inter-gender relations, but we can all acknowledge that it does exist.

You also have to look at the fact that every good man is not of extraneous means. One of my friends who bartends at a club told me this story:

A guy comes up to his bar with a female he’s obviously trying to get with. In true club fashion, I guess, he is offering to buy her a drink. Her choice of drink? An Incredible Hulk (a mixture of Hennessey and Hypnotiq). He got a shot of Crown for himself. My friend quotes twenty dollars as the ultimate total, to which the guy’s face is shocked into reality. Not wanting to look cheap to the female, he pays the tab and gives the bartender a couple dollars as a tip. He continued to entertain the woman, but never again offered to buy her another drink.

A couple things could have been changed in this scenario: he could’ve not paid for it, he could’ve told her up front what his financial limits were, etc. The thing is, though, spending money or giving of one’s sexual goods is a gamble. Whoever gives in first is at risk of being “played”, which is never a good feeling. So, the battle goes on…

Then, another thing about it is that there is no concrete definition of “broke”. The fact that the woman at anytime can declare you as a “broke n-gga” can put a hustler at her mercy. He can be a good man of modest means (meaning that he doesn’t splurge and would rather save than spend), and because he isn’t bending at her every financial whim, he may be declared “broke” and shunned aside with “the rest of them”.

Then again, I think if a man is foolish enough to not only lead his courting efforts with his money, but to also be LED and strung along, based on this very principle, is JUST AS BIG a problem. Money seems to be more smoke and mirrors for laziness and/or a shortcut, as opposed to a means of acquiring life’s luxuries. This ends up being a double edged sword when moderation is thrown out the window. Then, the woman who gets used to the money subconsciously makes it a condition to enjoy her company, while the man may subconsciously push the envelope, looking for a return on his investment. If you look at it from the two perspectives involved, the money can be more of a hindrance than help. I could go on about the whole “pay to play” nonsense, but I won’t go there (at least not in THIS blog entry!).

I know I’m speaking on all this because I can’t wrap my mind around the thought process that leads to this line of logic, but it just boggles my mind. There’s an answer somewhere, but I’m sure it won’t make much sense. Some things may really require you to BE in the situation to get it. To each…his own (but in this case, his AND hers!)…

-B

With Mardi Gras coming up, I found this unpublished blog about Mardi Gras. I will not edit it, for fear of tainting it with updates, lol. Wow, I was 24 when I wrote this? Funny…how…time…flies…

-B

I know there are people who are and there are people who have not experienced the mania that is Mardi Gras. I’ve been around this annual phenomenon for 24 years now, and I have felt every way about Mardi Gras that the human brain can feel about it. However, for the out-of-towners who regularly tune in to my blog, I have compiled a list of the top 10 things you should know about Mardi Gras.

1. Mardi Gras after hours is NOT for children!!: You wouldn’t think I would have to make this clear, but I can’t STAND seeing little children prancing around Canal St. at Juvember o’clock around a bunch of perverse, drinking, smoking, and cursing adults. Leave your children supervised at the hotel at night or just stay in that night. More harm can come to them that good, trust me.

    

2. Beware of the bootleggers: Okay, so you see a bootlegger peddling a copy of Daddy’s Little Girls a little under a WEEK since it’s been out. GOTTA get it!! Buyer, beware! I’ve heard of some shifty bootleggers who will sell you a bum product, leaving you pissed and out of a couple dollars. Then again, the unauthorized selling of copyrighted material is illegal anyway, so I guess you win or lose with a gamble like that.
3. Find a store out of the French Quarter area and shop there: I don’t mean to bankrupt New Orleans’ economy, but the French Quarter is the biggest tourist trap known to man. Why people buy some of the crap they buy at the INFLATED prices they buy it at boggles my mind sometimes. If I’m paying $2.50 for a bottle of friggin’ bottled water, I better be sitting at a candlelit table with a date in a retaurant with Kenny G playing. You won’t believe how many stores are actually OPEN. Most of these hotels have wireless anyway. Get on it, find a store, go there, and save some money.
4. Get to the parades on time: I guess I’m back to assuming a particular level of common sense with this one, but I think I gotta say it again. Get to the parades and mark your spot EARLY! Make sure you know where the Port-O-Let’s are and how to maneuver back to your vehicle. I cannot say how frustrating it is to have people keep yelling excuse me, trying to bump me out of the way because they need to move. Damn that. GET WHERE YOU NEED TO GET TO! Everybody doesn’t like that, and some will get downright indignant with you. So, just know you’re taking a risk trying to bump your way through a crowd of people around that time (this rule gets more and more serious the closer you are to the front).
5. For the love of all that is sacred, DON’T throw beads at the floats!: Forget what you heard, that crap ain’t cool! I don’t care if everybody is doing it, you can not only cause harm to the riders, but also to other parade-goers. I remember a FEW misguided throws that hit some fathers in the head. The ending to those wasn’t pretty. In addition, some of those riders are very armed to the teeth with beaded projectiles. I’ve seen riders huck handfuls of beads at parade-goers with the intent to hurt them. Watch that!
6. Don’t let the bands b-tch you out!: Yea, the bands in the parades need room to march, yes, you should get off the street ad give them space, but NO, they, nor their chaperones should be threatening people with “move or you get hurt”. If you are wondering about having a course of retaliation, follow this advice I found on a Mardi Gras message board.
   1. Contact the school, especially the principal & most importantly the band director.
   2. Contact the parade captain, can be found on line. Believe you me, there is a fierce competition between schools to march in parades. Major, major $$$ are spent on bands plus an additional chunk goes to the band directors. If a band director knows they may not be asked back because of some jerk, action will definitely be taken.
   3. Take the time & call the school.

    

What’s it gonna take for this guy to come out of blog retirement? Where has he been? Why hasn’t he been blogging like he used to? I have answers for these questions, and I must say, blogging is definitely a different feel for me now. I don’t look at it the same way I used to. I love blogging, but I’ve been spoiled. The main culprit: TWITTER! Yes, Twitter. I know you all have probably been looking at my Twitterations on the side and the constant, near daily upgrades. Twitter, mixed with my iPhone (yea, I caved and went Apple. I’m happy with my choice!) allows me to speak my mind in a very concise manner. On Twitter, I can get right to the point and say what I need to. That 140 character count has really put me on track to getting what I need to say said. I’ve lately felt that my blog should be the well thought out and structured oratorical thought. Yea, I know it can be whatever I want it to be, but I wanted to speak my mind. I wanted people to not only know what I had to say, but to give the whole picture. I love knowledge, and I love being challenged. It is a key to learning, and I’m glad that I have such a thoughtful group of people that I communicate with.

I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like I need a GOOD topic to blog about, with a GOOD set of supporting details to follow everything up. I think that, in turn, has led to me not feeling inspired to blog, but rather to tweet. Yea, I have the WordPress app on my phone, but I guess I haven’t brought myself to being comfortable enough to blog over tweeting. Rest assured, though. I’m not done with the blog, and I will be picking it back up. You know it don’t stop!

-B

First of all, I would like to have a moment of acknowledgement for all the events that have transpired since my last blog. From Barack’s historic win and inauguration to the new year to everything else, I would like to take this moment to give a nod to it all.

This blog is one that I type amidst great confusion and uneasiness. I go through things and I talk to people about the things they’re going through. I listen to the things that happen and the things I witness that involve friends and how dealings with these friends have lead to unsavory outcomes. I have come to the conclusion that we, in most cases, whore out the term/label of “friend”.

It seems, in most cases, as though two people (particularly of opposing genders) are only allowed to have 5 labels: unknown, friend, boy/girlfriend, fiance, husband/wife. Of these, the “friend” label seems to be the most ambiguous and cover the most ground. To some, a friend is someone who will provide favors for them with little to no resistance, while others regard a friend as someone whose name and face they know. The title is thrown around like a rag doll and people are allowed to read into it what they will, and that’s not always a good thing.

This complication takes it even FURTHER up the wazoo when the two parties involved are attracted to one another. The term friend gets pretzled into a myriad things to validate the party’s motives, because platonicism isn’t allowed to exist. Self control and balance seem to be out of the scope of possibility, and I, for one, am clueless as to why. When did we hit a point where people HAVE TO always make sense to us, or they cease to be valid? Is it REALLY my place to put my seal of approval on a relationship that has NOTHING to do with me? Even more, why seek the approval/acceptance from people who have nothing to do with me and who I’m with?

I wanna go back to the days when being a friend MEANT something. Being lumped in the gray area of “not someone I hate, but not someone I love” helps nobody, because if you care about where you stand, you have no idea where you stand (I hope that makes sense!).

-B

Relationships are really something. I don’t know if it’s the state of affairs or what, but I think that we (men and women) have developed into a species that seems to fear fear itself (I guess the old addage came to fruition, eh?) as it relates to getting in and maintaining relationships. It seems as of our drive to avoid being hurt leads to more problems than solutions.

Relationships now are like poker games. Both parties with their hands, making moves, pushing bluffs, and maintaining mystery, all the while, doing their best to figure out the other person’s hand, wanting to do as little as possible until you know it’s totally safe and fail-proof to put your hand down.

Talking to men and women about this issue, it seems like there are more and more people who approach these relationship situations not looking to succeed, but rather to not fail. The fear of usary or emotional abuse seems to be so much higher now than before. It seems to now have come to a situation where people are more interested in mapping out every move to prevent this or prevent that. Isn’t that what life is all about? How can you learn and grow if you never allow yourself to be human?

I’m aware of the rampant amount of hurt and emotional savagery in today’s society, but how much of our OWN actions play a part in our emotional failures? How long can we remain neutral, while demanding action from the other side? It seems that frame of mind leads to emotional stand-offs that nt only waste time, but leaves you with nothing to show for it. People are afraid of being shortchanged, but they’re totally fine with nothing? Doctor, my head.

Fear, in most cases, is immobilizing. Going into such an at-stake situation like a relationship, fear will work against you far more than it will aid you. It has a bigger chance pf increasing skepticism and clouding judgement. Not wanting to be hurt is human. However, I don’t think that the “no hurt” frame of mind puts you in a tighter cell in the emotional prison that most people try to avoid.

There’s something to be said for coming out and speaking your mind and making your moves. Life is for the taking, and if we submit ourselves to looking for a hand to hold to cross the street, you will be bound by that hand. We have the vigilance to look both ways on our own and use our judgement to know the best time to cross the street. If you feel you are after something, you should go ahead with it. If you dig it, do it!

-B

I have made 27 years old as of today. I am so overwhelmed with the love I have received, I am truly wordless. I love this life.

-B

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson…
The Greatest of All Time…

I know this may be a bit of a nitpick, but something that’s always bothered me is why everyone, man and woman, says that they are looking for a GOOD (wo)man. This would imply that there are some people who are ADVERTISING wanting the dregs of our genders. Who out there is saying “I want to deal wit a gutter tripe, worthless piece of person. Y’all can have the good ones!” Not a soul I know of, past or present. Everybody wants quality, so why the need to specify?

Conversely, what horrid piece of person would realistically stay away when people say they want a good person in their life? Nobody. Of course, everybody is the best thing since sliced bread when they are on the hunt for their better half. Words are AWESOME!

-B