A SEGMENT FROM MY SHORT STORY BLOG (The whole story can be found on my blog)

Taking a stroll in the night air allowed me to disconnect from the world and give the much needed attention to my senses.
He invaded my thoughts forcfully like a a dictatorship.
Gazing at the half cresent moon made me take deeper breaths admiring the rusty red and gold illumination it was giving off.
I still t...

hought about him.
How he held me and whispered my name made me want to stop playing tough, swallow my pride and go over to see him.
I vowed to leave him alone. Like all of the good men out there, I was tangled in a web I had woven for myself powerless to stop it. Did I want to stop my escapdes with him...nope! My heart was saying danger, but in between my legs said this is what I wanted.

Santa Doesn't look like me

       I was a child born in the 70's. At that time it seemed, black people were just developing a sense of identity as Americans and starting to have the desire to reclaim a knowledge of self. Even being a child I can see that.  Even though we were involving into a culture of trying to feel a sense of pride about, "Being black." I remember that in the midst of all this as a child, I was emotionally displaced.

       When I looked at my surroundings , people I spent everyday life with, I saw people of different hues, creeds, and cultures. People with different skin colors around me, did not reflect what I saw on TV,magazines, religious icons, and holiday images. I felt that there was a disparity of what was really the "World," and the "World," which was being portrayed in the media. Forms of media in my young eyes still oozed a segregated aura.

      I always wondered why Santa Claus didn't look like me, why Jesus didn't look like me, and why advertisements always had that one "Token," black person that slipped through the cracks, courtesy of affirmative action. The revision of of fast food commercial always included a wack ass rapper who no one knew. I guess that was to make us feel included in the world we were supposed to be apart of, that we originally wasn't. We were always overwhelmed with stereotypes.

     Fast forward to the 80's with me in middle school, talking dolls were most popular. Every boy wanted a Teddy Rupskin bear, and every girl wanted a Cricket doll. Seeing her on TV, I thought Cricket was pretty darn awesome, and I wanted one. The advertisement on TV showed long footage of Cricket with blond hair and blue eyes and a  ponytail. Towards the end there was a sneak preview of a black Cricket doll which spent so lil air time I couldn't get the just of how she looked.

     My sister and I wanted a talking Cricket for Christmas ,surprisingly we got one. Except Cricket didn't have a long flowing ponytail, she had a short curly Afro. She didn't have the cute bow the other cricket had. I remembered feeling hurt because although there were people with curls and Afros there were also people with good and straight hair as well. None of the black dolls had nice hair. it was always a nappy fro, and while there was nothing wrong with that, I remembered not understanding why she didn't look like the girls I was around. They had pony tails, and bows and baretts.

    It opened my eyes as a child trying to figure out why all around everyday life there were a vast diversity of people. School was diverse. Church was diverse, but yet Jesus was white, all the teens in the  magazines I read, white. The cards on the shelves, and any positive images...all white. I felt a sense of hopelessness feeling that all black families were destined or supposed to be negative because they were never portrayed in  positive images.
  
    When we wanted a black doll, we usually would see an flyer posted on the shelves that there were Asian, Hispanic, and black dolls upon request which must be ordered and sent to the store for pick up. To special order these dolls made us feel like we were inclusive to the world in which we were apart of.  Like we were such an inconvenience and had no sense of belonging and no value in our communities because we were minorities, and after all it was an inconvenience to produce mass quantity of dolls of different cultures to be place on store shelves because after all, they were doing us a favor by being a minority in America. At least as a child that's how I felt.

    Major holiday scenery, icons, and settings lacked diversity. Even the Pilgrims seated around the Thanksgiving table was lacking pigment. Cleopatra was even a white woman with braids.

So imagine when the Cosby Show came out, and a Different world, that it raised the bar for TV and the hope of the minority community to see diversity on TV. We were finally portrayed as a family in a functional and very positive way. For the black families who did not experience that easy going type of life style the Huxtables did, it still left us feeling like now, that yes, black people "DO" go to college.

   Now in 2013 we have a black president who has made it to a second term, which is the impossible. and yet we have achieved the impossible as a people, we still have a long long way to go. TV, magazines, and even Santa Claus in most malls are still all white. I wondered as a child if Santa was black will the lines be equally as long as if he was white?

    What would churches look like if Jesus was Asian and he was painted that way on church murals. would people still be comfortable attending.
     I often wondered just how wonderful it would feel to carry a sense of pride, seeing images that reflect all the various colors of this world. Even though we have a black president, Santa Claus still doesn't look like me
       

Time Alone

  For the second night, I lay by myself in my bedroom starring at the celling. The lights were out and the TV was on as usual. I could not seem to concentrate on getting to sleep with my thoughts streaming in my head like rivers of water, which would not stop flowing. I don't know if I was analyzing things or over analyzing things.I was thinking about my relationship. Sleep seemed to be creeping more and more far from me, as my brain continued to reel thought like a movie projector. The spot he would usually lay in was empty.

  Tonight that spot was silence, and I thought that I would be OK about that because after all, there would be no late night arguments, no frustrations, and I could finally have the house as I wanted...quiet. Most of all the older kids were gone, and the remaining were sleep. For some reason, however I could not get over the spot in the bed void of his absence on the other side of the mattress. His spot closest to the wall, so that I would not have to climb over him for repeated night trips to the restroom. He always could sleep better than me, I suppose. The bed also seemed bigger for some odd reason, I had so much room, it's as if it swallowed me up, because of how short I was, not even reaching a full 5 feet.

  Tonight that empty spot had nothing to say. There was no conversations about his intense passion for his occupation, which seemed to consume a great portion of his life, leaving me baffled and in search for understanding to why? I mean after all, I had passions for my work , but it never seemed to consume me as much as him. I guess I cannot judge him for it, it is what it is.

  Usually by this time, I would hear about how he was undeniably sensational at his line of work, and how he can do his job better than most, as a matter of fact, he felt he was the best at what he did...he would say. It's not that I didn't mind hearing him, but it all seemed to get to be repetitive, and predictable. To me, it seemed he was just getting bored and needed to escalate to a high level, seeming competition was far from him now and he was at the peak of his work. There was no other way to go, but upward.
 
  Just two days ago, his talk was put into even more action, he left. He left to do the work that needed to be done, and of course they called him to do so because, he was good at what he do. Unfortunately with his intense obsession for his work, left me in my bedroom by myself counting sheep trying to make it to sleep one more night without him.

  The empty spot he would occupy could not hear me complain. It could not hear me talk about stuff that he did not care about. I am sure I bore him with my wining and complaining about my life about things that probably irritated him about me, and most of all my fears and insecurities. After all I blame my sensitivity on my zodiac sign, it was something that I could not help. For a strong minded person like himself, it must of felt like hell listening to crying all the time. I wonder if he ever wished he'd go def so that he wouldn't have to listen to me.

  It's funny ,because I thought I had finally got what I wanted, a break and some silence. I weighed in my head, the good and bad points about my relationship with him, balancing my thoughts on a mental scale. I realized that for some odd reason even though arguments seemed to be repetitively stupid, that the good out weighed the bad.

  Tonight it was way too quiet. I missed his cocky arrogance and his work ethic of always being on the go working.I figured I am completely accepting of his good traits along with some of the bad ones. After all, he was just being who he was, and I did meet him that way.

  To door swings open, interrupting my thoughts and he walks through the door, looking worn out from his travels and occupational activities. I don't know what had come over me, but for some reason I was eager to hear his talking about his trip and his adventures he had. I listened to him ramble on about what he liked, what he didn't like, and how much of a success it was for him. I guess those couple of days of silence put everything into prospective for me.

  He reached over and kissed me gently, but passionately luring me to him saying"You know what it is?" With a smile on my face, I did.

  He took off his clothes and entered me with such intensity and love, left me moaning for more and more of him as he thrust in and out of me. He fulfilled all the yearnings I had for him by his touch and his making love to me. It left me breathless and made all the senses of my body tingle with pleasurable delight. We went from making love slow and easy, to a hard sweaty fuck. It was in that moment when I told him how much I missed him and he told me he loved me, I knew that I never wanted to be without him.