I Got The Ghey

Ever have one of those light bulb moments where you realize something about yourself and you have that WTF look on your face? I had one of those experiences a few days ago. Perusing various photos of myself I realized that my ass “looks”  like a lesbian, even when I am at my girliest. I am not an obvious lesbian [read: stud] neither am I an uber femme chick either. If anything I am a mixture of both, embracing my feminine and masculine sides equally, which I think I pull off very well. After making this realization, it occurred to me that those of you with that trusty gaydar can recognize my lesbian-esque attributes in a room full of wild pit-bulls. [shameless plug-holla if u see me by the way]

You are probably saying what the hell does a lesbian look like? I can’t answer that question for you, but for me a lesbian has this certain edge about herself that exudes a look of I want you and I know you want me to…funny I know, but I am quick to look at a chick and be able to tell right off that she is “playing for my team”…this time that chick is me. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with my appearance & persona being cloaked in lesbianism; however I was hella shocked when I was able to see the ghey in myself. So yeah, I got the ghey…and the shit is amazingly funny to me!

Here’s a tip: If your gaydar is on the fritz, pay attention to a woman’s eyes…the eyes, will tell you everything you want to know.

So how do you know if a woman is a lesbian? Talk to me…

Journey to Me: Entry #8

Entry #8 (Click here to read Entry #7)

After a few years, my mother became ill. Nothing major, just a bit of this and a bit of that and she managed her illness well. My mom had always been heavy, but after she got sick, she really started to balloon up and this was another reason for me to be ashamed of her. What kid wants to have a big fat mother? I mean, who wants to be teased by their school friends when their mom comes to the school and she is a fat?

We ended up moving from the projects after about 2 years of major struggle. We didn’t move into a single family home, but into an apartment. This apartment was ok, better than the projects, but only a few steps from being a project. The best thing about all of this was that I got to have my own room again. As a young girl, privacy was of the utmost. This was my retreat from my little world. I had my own TV, a phone extension and most of all a small love seat in my room. I was big shit by 1987 standards. Things there were cool. I went to another middle school and actually got more enthused about school. My mom laid off of dudes…the only man I saw around our house was my daddy and his presence was not felt that often. Right about the same time we moved to these apartments, my mother baby sister got divorced from her husband and she and her two boys ended up moving to the same complex that we lived in. They would spend a lot of time at each others apartments, but it seemed that my aunt and her bad ass boys spent more time at our house fucking it up really. Well, let me be clear: my aunt was a loud, dirty talking woman and her boys; especially that oldest son of hers was just bad and unruly. In those days, cleaning up your house on a Saturday morning was an event. My mom would wake me every Saturday around 8am; we would have breakfast and after that we would commence to cleaning: make the beds, sweep the floors, clean the kitchen (including cleaning out the fridge), clean the bathroom, change the sheets on every bed in the house, clean the window sills, clean the baseboards that run all around the house and worst of all we had to sweep the carpets cause having a vacuum was luxury that most black folks didn’t have back then. Needless to say, cleaning up on Saturday was hard work and you didn’t want anybody to come and mess up what you had cleaned up. Now back to my cousins…those jokers would come over with their mom and fuck up the house like it was nobody’s business and the killer part is that my mom would never say anything about it. I don’t think it was because she didn’t care…it was because she felt sorry for my aunt. Nevertheless, my ass would have a lot to say about it and my mouth got me in trouble. I hated my cousins and I didn’t like my aunt to much either cause she didn’t control her damn kids…but what could I do as a kid. All I could do was retreat to my room at least I didn’t have to entertain those ugly boys in there.

This time in my life marked an age of exploration for me. This is the year were I let a boy do more than kiss me. No I did not have sex with a boy…lets just say he touched me below my waist. What the hell: they called it finger fucking back then. So yes, I got finger fucked on several occasions by this dude who we will call Oscar. He was cute and he liked me and I let him talk me into doing it. The whole act seemed a little stupid but what the hell…all my friends were doing it. My rape always loomed in the back of my mind, but at this point I just wanted to be normal…but my normalcy didn’t include having sex…being raped kept me from going there with the lil boys I played with during that time. I also played with girls during that time too. Well let’s be more specific. I have a female cousin who is a few years older than I am. She and I were really close growing up. We would spend the night with each other all the time and just watch television and play games or whatever. Then one day in particular, she asked me what I thought girls kissing. My reply was yuck! Girls aren’t supposed to kiss each other. So her response was why not. She then tells me that she saw girls kissing each other in a movie and it was no big deal. She even said that they were kissing each other on their chests. So I’m like “really” well if it was in the movies, I guess its ok. To make a long story short…my cousin and I kissed each other on the mouth and on the chest (which really means on the breasts) and after it was over, I didn’t feel repulsed like I thought I would. No big deal…I went on about my life.

Aquarius.Soul ©2009

Journey to Me: Entry #6

Entry #6 (Click Here to Read Entry #5)

I remember lying on the table getting a rape kit done. At 13, having a rape kit done is totally humiliating. I was a virgin and having to lie on a cold table, legs spread eagle with your feet in stirrups while the doctor pokes and scrapes your vagina is an awful feeling. Seems like this process of examination took forever…with each passing moment I lost a piece of who I was and who I was to become.

My life was changed forever. My outgoing spirit was gone. I had no desire to be friendly with my friends. I spent all of my time indoors except for the times that I had to go to school. I became very withdrawn and shy with no desire to really do anything. I ate a lot…trying to rid myself of the pain I felt on the inside. A few months after my rape, we moved across town attempting to leave everything I had experienced behind. My mom met another man, who we eventually moved in with. He was much nicer than that first dude and I could tell that he truly cared for my mother. A year after I had been raped, my mom took me to counseling for rape victims because she said she didn’t want me to become a recluse and never be able to deal with what happened to me. I didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to talk about it. In my mind, I had buried that experience and didn’t want to remember anything about it. The counseling helped, but I still had this void in my spirit and to fill that void I continued to eat more than I should and I still didn’t like going outside. It took many years for me to get past my fear of going outside and it took many more years for me to learn not to bury the pain I felt with food.

As the years past I got better. Although I was never the same person…I got to the point where I could function like everyone else. My mom and her man…let’s call him Willie…they were doing well. There came a point in my teenage life that my mom told me she wanted to talk to me about something. I’m thinking that she was about to fuss or give me a whipping for something I did…but instead she took me in her bedroom and pulled a small box from under the bed. She opened the box and said this is a .38 caliber pistol that we keep in the house for protection. She went on to say that she didn’t want me or my brother messing with it, but she wanted me to know where it was just in case something happened and I needed to get it to protect myself. In my teenage mind, I’m wondering why we need a gun in the house…so of course I ask. She tells me that she and Willie sell “weed” …while she is giving me the story behind the weed, she walks over to the closet in her room and pulls out this big black trash bag and brings it over to the bed where I was sitting…She says this is how we store the weed…in these bags. She opens the bag and it full to the brim with marijuana. I was stunned, because I never thought my mom would be involved in anything like this. I ask her why she is selling weed and she says: for money…”Willie and I can provide for the family in a way that has never been done before” this is why we are selling weed. Funny as it sounds today, that was a good enough answer for me. I said ok mama and went on my way. This conversation was never brought up again and I never saw the weed or what they did with it ever again. A few years later, Willie and my mom broke up and I never saw those black trash bags again.

Aquarius.Soul ©2009

Journey to Me: Entry #5

Entry #5 (Click Here To Read Entry #4)

My mom and I had a pretty decent relationship, but I was a 13 year old girl who thought she knew it all…so we had the usual mother daughter spats and disagreements; mainly over clothes, friends and of course boys. I never have been the super girly type, and I think that’s what my mother wanted. She bought me purses and make up and all the frills that come along with becoming a budding young woman, but none of that stuff stuck. I recall a purse my mom bought me which I hated, but she made me carry it. One day in particular, I left it on the school bus just to show her. I remember my aunt telling my mama that they needed to keep and eye on me because I may turn out to be a dyke. I look back at that now and laugh…at the age of 13 I had no clue what that word even meant.

My 13th year of life was fun. We were still living in that small yellow house. It was an innocent time of playing ball in the streets, walking to school and just being a kid. All of my friends lived around me and we spent the night at each others houses all the time. Of course at 13 years old, boys come into play. I always liked boys, but never the ones that were my age; seemed to me that all the 13 year old boys were too immature for me; so I always ended up “going with” an older boy. There was this one boy that lived around the corner from me who every girl in the neighborhood wanted to be with. His name was Broderick and he rode the coolest red BMX bicycle. He had a caramel complexion and deep wavy neck length hair. Broderick of course was about 2 years older than all of us and he knew that the girls all liked him. One summer day we were all outside and it was about dusk. A storm had blew in a few days before and knocked down a fairly large tree. We all were sitting on the tree playing and talking. Beautiful Broderick comes riding around the corner on his red BMX and stops right near us. We were all talking and playing and eventually he brings up sex. At 13 I had heard of sex, but didn’t know anything about the actual act. So of course he being the older boy decides to explain it to us. Ultimately he says: sex is all about the man’s penis. All the girls cringe and giggle at this word…he then asks us if we wanted to see his, but before we could answer, he whips it out and lays it flat on the trunk of the fallen tree…all the girls start to run away laughing. This was my first penis sighting. After Broderick showed all the neighborhood girls his package, life continued as usual, except for the fact that I got to the point where I knew it all and mom and I had it out all the time….of course she would win cause back in the 80’s parents beat your ass for acting up.

One day while walking home from school with my neighborhood pals, I met this guy who lived a few streets over. He was tall, brown and lean…his name was Randolph and he was 18. He and I talked and he would meet us in the same spot everyday in order to walk me close to home. I say close to home because I knew better than to let my mom see me with this older guy. So we would kiss a few blocks away from the house and then I would make my way home with my girlfriends just like normal. I talked to Randolph all the time on the phone and tried to find a way to end up on his street as much as possible. This little love affair was short lived when my mom found out about him. You see, my mother’s aunt lived on the same street as Randolph and one day she saw he and I together…before I knew it, my mom was coming down the street with fire under her feet. No more Randolph for me, or so I thought. I still had to and from school and even though I told Randolph to leave me alone, he wouldn’t. He would be there in the mornings on our way to school and also in the evenings. It got to the point that I was becoming afraid of him….so my friends and I had Broderick and the other boys in the neighborhood to walk with us. This was the only way that he didn’t approach us. Months went by and everything seemed back to normal. One morning, I gave my mom hell about going to school. She made me go that day, but I decided that I was gonna skip school. So I take off walking in the direction that I normally go, only to turn around at the next street. Guess who I run into…Randolph.

He begins to follow me and try to talk. I talk to him as we are walking and we end up at this corner store. By this time I am about ready to go home because he was sort of creeping me out. So instead of taking my same route home, I go another way so that I would end up passing my friend’s grandmother’s house that is always at home….he follows at a distance behind me. On this street, there was a vacant wooded lot that sat between my friend’s grandma’s house and a church. As I approach the vacant lot he runs up behind me and pushes me off into the wooded lot. Not realizing what is about to happen, I didn’t scream or anything. All I did was push him and kept asking him what he was doing. He eventually pushes me down to the ground and puts his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream. With his other hand he rips my dress as he is trying to make his way up under it…eventually ripping my panties down the front. In order to pull his “package” out he had to remove his hand from my mouth and when he did, I screamed to the top of my lungs, hoping someone would hear me. It was 8 am in the morning and most people were at work or gone to school. He kept telling me to shut up as he tried to thrust himself into me, but I kept moving and he was having a hard time entering. He eventually got extremely angry and slapped me in my face multiple times while holding his hand on my throat. After all of his fidgeting; he finally got himself into me and began to pounce up and down. The pain was so intense that all I could do was wince and cry…I tried screaming, but nothing would come out anymore. After about 2 minutes, I heard gunshots and Randolph jumps up and runs through the wooded lot. I look up and it’s my friend’s uncle who took off from work that day. I later found out that he was in the shower, but heard a woman screaming. After Randolph ran off, I got up and started walking. The man who basically saved me from a savage rape tried to get me to stay with him while he called my mother, but something in me wouldn’t let me sit and wait. So I took off walking down the street with this torn dress and my ripped panties in my hand. As I approached my street, my mothers best friend came driving up beside me asking why I wasn’t in school and I didn’t respond…she stopped her car and got out and saw my bruised face and my torn clothes and immediately put me in her car and drove the rest of the way home. My mom opened the front door and I burst into tears.

Aquarius.Soul ©2009