St. Paddy's Day 2007, NYC

On St. Patrick’s Day, I was wandering around with a friend of mine, dipping my face in random pints of beer at whatever bar we could squeeze ourselves into. They say it’s a holiday for amateurs, I say screw them. I’m from Boston (located in the state that the most Irish people call home, second in Irish population only to Ireland itself) and was raised by (random fact number one:) an Irish-American woman for 2/3 of my life.

My grandmother decorated our house for St. Patrick’s Day like it was Christmas. The name of our church was St. Patrick’s. My grandparents helped build it with their financial contributions. I may not go to church anymore, but I still worship at the bar on St. Paddy’s.

Taking into account the number of beers and shots of whiskey I consumed that day, it’s not much of a surprise that I found myself getting my palm read for $10 inside some storefront next to one of my favorite bars. I can truthfully say it was my friend’s idea. The fortune teller was saying things that were oddly accurate for my friend, so I decided to throw her a few coins and call her bluff.

Here’s what she said:
1. I’m a very lucky person. I’m blessed and God basically follows me around, showering me with good things. TRUE

2. Within three years, I’ll be signing my name on a house or a business. WHO KNOWS (St. Paddy’s Day 2010 update: True. See Mouth Of The Border. Laying groundwork to launch business in 2011.)

3. I’m going to have two children; a girl and a boy. (Considering I want about 47.5 children, I can only hope this is FALSE.)

4. I’m going to live for awhile and die of natural causes. WHO KNOWS

5. My last relationship tainted me and I carry around some serious emotional stuff because of it. I need to do meditations to cleanse myself of that. TRUE, although I don’t know about the meditation thing.

6. At the end of the year, I’ll make an unexpected move to California. HIGHLY DOUBTFUL since, uhhhh, I just f*cking moved – and since the b*tch told me, it ain’t so unexpected now, is it?

PARTY PLANES, AKA New York vs. Boston, Part One

(Random fact number two: I’m a Red Sox fan) I was crossing the street from the train to my office last Friday and I saw a big man in a shiny Yankees jacket. Reflexively, I almost spit on him. No lie. Then I thought to myself, “Holy sh*t. I’m in New York.” I forgot myself. Baseball season is going to SUCK for me this year. I have to go out and grab more Sox gear.

I was back in NH/Boston for the weekend for two of my friends’ birthdays and I noticed a lot of little stuff that I probably took for granted when I lived there.

1. 1 point for New York – NH, your liquor laws suck. As soon as I boarded the bus from Boston > NH, some dude asked to borrow a cell phone. He gets on the horn with his boy and says, “I’ll be in at 11:15. Hey – grab some beeah before you come ovah.” I got in at 11:15 and my best friend was a little late picking me up. Why? Because she had to swing by the store and grab a six-pack of Blue Moon for us to celebrate her bday. You can’t buy beer past 11:15 or 11:30 anywhere in NH. Including bars.

2. 1,000 points for NH/Boston – NY, your men are (generally speaking) not at all what I thought they would be. At all. From a purely statistical standpoint, you should have hot men flowing out of every nook and cranny. And the problems is there are a lot of hot men. But most of them are either gay or dating one of my friends. Either way, totally off limits. When I was back in New England for a mere 72 hours, I talked to two hot men.

One was a firefighter sitting in his big ol’ firetruck right next to our car as we drove to Boston. I didn’t talk to him so much as yell out of my window to him about how hot he was. The other one I’ll get to in a minute. Again, generally speaking, New England men are heads-and-shoulders above you grungy, brooding New Yorkers. They’re clean-cut, seem to shower often, do not have hipster haircuts and seem to be in a much better mood. They’re too busy drinking to wonder if they’re acting cool enough for the ladies, and I will take their no-bullshit attitude to your New York game any fucking day.

3. 567 points for NH/Boston. God damn, I miss my girls. Whatever we did Saturday night, I can’t wait to do it again. There’s nothing like arriving at a hotel to see 10 of your closest friends, a few 12-packs of beer, a table loaded with bottles of booze, chips, dip and a whole night ahead of ya. Whatever new friends or lovers I may make in New York, New England has my heart. And that’s real.

Different Animals (For BG)

Speaking of game and guys, I’ve grown leaps and bounds since my last relationship, and I didn’t really realize how much until this weekend. I met a guy. Not usually something I’ll talk about, but this time it’s worth mentioning. Regardless of what happens, I know dating is going to be a different animal for me now. For instance, when we got into the “what happens now” conversation, one of the first questions I asked him was, “Do you have any problems with bisexuality? Because I kind of am.” It was never an issue before my last relationship, so I didn’t even think to bring it up then. Lo and behold, it was a problem.

I’ve always been upfront, but I changed a lot during my last relationship for the sake of the guy I was dating and I shouldn’t have. So I’m just going to put that shit on the table from now on. You can take it or leave it.

I also told him point-blank that I don’t think I can date him because I don’t do long-distance unless there’s an end in sight. I don’t plan on moving back to New England, so I’d rather he know that now instead of later. I can’t afford to spend time with someone who’s got a problem with who I am or how I live. The next guy needs to just deal with the whole package instead of trying to return the pieces he doesn’t like because they don’t fit. If the pieces don’t fit, he should get a whole new outfit instead of trying to f*ck up my flow.

My Dealbreaker Questions: (And here are the rest of your little known facts.)
a) Have you ever been married?
b) Do you have any children?
c) Do you smoke?
d) Do you have a criminal record?
e) Are your parents still married, and are you close with them? (Or at least someone in your family, if not your parents.)
f) What kind of music do you listen to?
g) Do you like football?
h) Do you eat seafood, onions and garlic?

I think that says more about me than any guy I date. Who bases their choice of mate on food preferences? I am insane. (But then again, so is he, if he thinks he can date an Italian girl without enjoying onions and garlic.)

That said, I am sittin’ my ass back down in Black Hair Mommy 2′s chair Thursday night and paying attention to every damn thing she does when she blowdries my hair. If she so much as arches an eyebrow or holds her breath while she works, you best believe I will be doing the exact same thing.
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My friend was supposed to visit this weekend. She and I were really looking forward to having fun running around acting buck wild in NYC. But her flight was cancelled due to (imaginary) bad weather. There were no problems weather-wise, so we haven’t figured it out. We’d been counting down the days for a month. That sucks.
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I learn little things everywhere I go now. It’s very strange to be an adult in a new city with no social network or even any real sense of geography to get you from place to place. It’s like not having store-bought foods available and having to make bread from scratch every time you want a piece of toast. At home, if I found myself with an unexpected free weekend like I did this weekend, I’d have all these friends I could call. I could hop in my car and go hang out with them.

When I was faced with the same situation this past Friday night, I was happy that I  had a new friend to call and see if she wanted to grab a drink. She and her roommate met me and my coworker out. Another friend met us and a drink turned into dinner which turned into a movie and then a brownie sundae and vodka tonics at a bar. At 2 a.m., we found ourselves coordinating on how to get home – one of us lived on the Upper West Side, one lived in Jersey, one lived nearby and I live in Brooklyn.

It was never really like that in NH. If I was unsure how to get anywhere, I could just mapquest it or call a friend. Here, not only do I need to figure out the street address of where I’m going, I have to figure which train/bus combo to take. I also have to factor in the weekend shenanignans of public transport directors who have nothing better to do than to make a Brooklyn-bound train run on a Manhattan-bound track. Or make it stop running entirely.

But sometimes fun things happen. I walk too far and find myself on W. 14th Street instead of E. 14th. I turn my head and see the Chelsea Antiques Market. I see dogs dressed in little outfits. I see miles upon miles of Starbucks instead of the homey, personable coffee shops I had in my old city. (Okay, so that last one is not fun at all. In fact, it’s really annoying. What I could use is a Target, though. Can we replace all the Starbucks with Targets?)

It took this long for it to sink in that I’m being a little hard on myself. I’ve only been  here three months, so I can’t really expect to be able to have the kind of social life here that I did at home. NYC is the place to live if you never want to run out of things to do – it’s just a little hard for me right now while I meet enough people to do them all with. Even going to Target is more fun with a friend tagging along.
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One thing I knew I’d miss (besides my hairdresser) when I moved was my little organic grocery store, A Market. It was next to my regular grocery store, so I could do my main shopping at the big chain-type store and do my fruits, veggies and grains at A Market.

I enjoy everything about food, including spending an hour in the grocery store on the weekend picking up pineapples to sense their heft and squeezing tomatoes, peaches or avocados to gauge their ripeness.

Living here, though, it’s a challenge to get groceries home without having a car. A lot of times, it’s easier to just order your groceries to be delivered. The delivery charge is only $5 or $10 and the food quality is even better than at the cracker jack grocery store a few blocks away. I’m lucky that I even have a grocer within walking distance. But sometimes it’s just nice to pick up my produce and make friends with it before I take it home.

Yesterday, I went into the city to work on my laptop and visit Whole Foods (which has the prettiest produce outside of a farmer’s market or farm). After not being able to find a seat at not one, but two Starbucks, I gave up and just went to Whole Foods. Holy hell – it was packed. The line to get one of the six or seven express checkouts wrapped all the way back into the produce section. Using a cart was out of the question. It was so stressful, I may never go to that location again.

I picked up chicken thighs and the fixings for cacciatore – just what I needed for dinner, and split. Since I needed stuff for the rest of the week, today I made my first visit to the organic grocer by my train stop in Brooklyn. I walked in and was comforted by the tiny carts and cramped aisles. It wasn’t crowded at all, and it reminded me of A Market. But it didn’t smell the same. And I was surprised that they didn’t have as much variety as A Market does. After all, this is the big city. I thought almost everything was supposed to better. (Joking.)

But it was really nice to pick up a pineapple. I bought what I thought were green onions, but they were actually organic leeks. I forget that a lot of organic fruits and vegetables are much tinier than their hormone and pesticide-pumped cousins over at the chain grocer. The diminuitive leeks will taste just as yummy in my stirfry tonight.
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There are all sorts of crazy people on public transportation. It’s awesome. There was a homeless dude trying to sling crack on the B61 bus Thursday night. He was big and tall, wearing an oversized shiny Padres jacket, with sunglasses and a white plastic cross dangling from his neck. The skin on his face was cracked and ashy. His teeth made a mockery of his smile, which was earnest and seemingly genuine.

He sat down in a seat up front by the driver. I was a few seats behind him. Speaking to no one in particular, he said, “You ain’t black like me. None a y’all are n*ggas no more. Y’all are African-who? African-Americans?”

And then he said he had 20s and a 16th. I don’t know what that means, but I know I’m not black like him. I never knew there were so many different ways to be black until I got here.

April 4, 2006
I was born to do this. I was born to do this. There will be blood on the paper because this is the only thing I know beyond myself. It is myself.

That’s it. Do you feel the tingling? Someone sitting in another place, doing another thing, is having an impact on your life. The moment before the pendulum repeats its arc. No stopping now. Do it.

I’ve wanted to live in New York City for over ten years. In 1995, I decided that I wanted to go to school at NYU for broadcasting and eventually work for MTV News. I’m a bit of a news junkie, but I realized in high school that my peers were having less and less interest in traditional media and I wanted to figure out a way to get a message to them in the media that was most likely to hold their attention.

Unfortunately, about $10,000 of my financial aid for NYU fell through at the very last minute. I deferred my admission so that I could try to work something out and attend NYU in the spring, but it didn’t work out. I wound up at the University of New Hampshire (my state school), which didn’t even have a broadcast program. What UNH did have was a very strong print journalism program. I know that I wound up at the place that was best for me at the time.

I finished college with honors in three and a half years and applied to graduate school, still convinced that I wanted to try my hand at broadcasting. Again, I applied to NYU as well as Columbia University. I was accepted to both, but Northwestern University in Illinois had the superior broadcasting program and would afford me the opportunity to live and work in several places during the program. So, NYC eluded me again.

After all of this happened, I decided it was really the right time to cut ties and pursue what I want to do with my life. The short list of possible next destinations included New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. L.A. made the list because I’ve lived everywhere in the U.S. but the west coast. They have gorgeous sunshine there and it’s imperative that I live within driving distance of the ocean or I can’t function.

However, the streets are filled with plastic bobbleheaded bitches and I’d want to end it after one day of dealing with them. Cross L.A. off the list. Atlanta has a little piece of my heart because my whole fam is down in Florida and Georgia and it would be so nice to live near everyone. Plus, the city is just a fun place to be. Oh, and Nina lives there. However, it is not the place to live to do the things I want to do professionally. I’d be out at the strip clubs every damn night and get nothing done.

Ahhh, New York. What sealed it was back at the beginning of April, I was talking to a guy and he was telling me about he was about to move to California. This was a really successful guy; president of his company at the same age as me, owned a beautiful house, had tons of close friends in the area. He was going to give it all up to pursue a film program at a school he had always wanted to go to. How cool is that? And I’m on the phone with him, telling him about the things I wanted to do, and he says to me “You’ve got too much flava for Manch[ester].” Now, when a white boy is telling you that you have too much flava, it’s time to get the f*ck out.

Continue to Diary of Decision, Part 2 by clicking here.

“Just like with sex, it’s all in how you mount the weapon. Make sure to keep the rifle tucked into your shoulder’s pocket, the hollow spot just below the collarbone and inside the shoulder joint where there is nothing but muscle. Pull the stock firmly in and blaze away . . .

I never discolor because my gun mount is flawless. Guys that turn black and blue are guys with a poor mount who let the stock slap them in the shoulder with every shot.” – “El Supremo” on 11/7/2006

And then I let go. I let go of one life, one set of experiences, and made room for another place in my heart. I gave my notice at work on Nov. 3, the day after my birthday, and instead of feeling sadness, I tasted blood. I tasted my life, my heart beating . . . the drumbeat calling me to What Comes Next.

This wasn’t right, was it? Every time I’ve left a job, I’ve cried. I get attached to the people I see (at the least) eight hours a day. Due to the nature of some of my jobs over the years, we are thrown together in some emotional situations.

Working events involving the most powerful people in the state. Covering “fatals.” Going to court hearings regarding DUIs, rape charges, spousal abuse. Driving out into the heart of blizzards on country roads to report on nighttime fires.

There are deadlines to meet. Photos to choose. “We have to be sensitive. Does he look too nonchalant in this one? He just killed someone.” “I think that’s perfect. Not a scratch on him, and someone’s dead.”

So, I hold my coworkers and their opinions in high regard. I trust them and they trust me. Next to love, trust is the most essential human connection. So why wasn’t I crying this time? Maybe it’s because all that crying at the beginning wore me out. I shut my door to my coworkers. I never like to have anyone see me cry.

The week I started my new job in January was the week before I would have gotten married had things worked out differently with my ex-fiance. I was moving on. He was flipping out. I went back to work, and he went back to his bottle. I ignored his phone calls, which came every half hour on the half hour from 11 on a Thursday night to 3 o’clock Friday morning.

I knew he had to be drunk to be calling so incessantly. That Friday was the day before we would have gotten married. At 3 a.m., he slipped his key into the door of my apartment, where I lived alone. Uninvited, unannounced and unwanted. He jiggled the key harder on the dark stairway, only to realize I had changed the locks. The door rattled.

“Just like with sex, it’s all in how you mount the weapon. Make sure to keep the rifle tucked into your shoulder’s pocket, the hollow spot just below the collarbone and inside the shoulder joint where there is nothing but muscle. Pull the stock firmly in and blaze away . . .

I never discolor because my gun mount is flawless. Guys that turn black and blue are guys with a poor mount who let the stock slap them in the shoulder with every shot.” – El Supremo, Tuesday, November 07, 2006

“I bruise really easily, though. I’m assuming I’m going to get messed up just because this is my first time. I’m going to keep this in mind, though, so thanks.

The others I’ll be working with are an M1A National Match .308, M1A SOCOM .308, a Springfield Armory 1911 Long-Slide .45 Super and an H&K USP .45. I asked that they bring the AK-47, just so I can say I did it. I am so excited.” – Me, Tuesday, November 07

M1A SOCOM .308 (AKA "Black Beauty") on the far left, M1A National Match .308 (AKA,"The Redeemer") in the middle, AK-47 on the right.

“5 a.m.
Friday morning
Thursday night
Far from sleep
I’m still up and driving
Can’t go home
obviously
So I’ll just change direction
Cause they’ll soon know where I live
And I wanna live . . .” Tori Amos, “Me and a Gun”

Explosions of light at the tip of the nozzle. Shells discharging like golden grasshoppers from the magazine. The smell of gunpowder. With the muffs on, all you hear is the sound of your own heart beating . . . and the boom from that weapon, now an extension of your own body.

Our Host:”This one is loud and aggressive.” Me:”Oh, perfect. Just how I like it.”

“Me and a gun
and a man
On my back
But I haven’t seen Barbados,
So I must get out of this” Tori Amos

Springfield Armory 1911 Long-Slide .45 Super

Recoil

Not bad for a first-timer. I'm getting better.

My friends were very patient with me while I switched back and forth between the Springfield and the H&K until I got the shot I wanted.

Final results
Rifles: 60 percent accuracy at 100 yards, 80 percent accuracy at 50 yards
Handguns: Well, there’s my target above. In all fairness, I only got three of those shots dead center from 50 yards (the target was on a t-shirt, and the rest of my shots made a ring around the target on the shirt). The rest of the shots on the target were at close range, because I wanted it dead before I left.

Preferences:
Rifle: The AK, and then “Black Beauty” (the M1A SOCOM .308).
Handgun: Springfield. I was more accurate with the H&K (very similar to the Glock .45, which I’m comfortable with) but the Springfield just felt better.

Look for parts of this blog to show up again in a month or two. There’s much more to the story.

Disclaimer bullsh*t: These weapons belong to a licensed owner who just so happens to know what the f*ck he’s doing. We observed all safety and legal regulations at an outdoor sportsman’s club. (Edit: In case I could be any more clear . . . regarding the first photo, yes it was pointed downrange, the safety was on, and no one was in front of me. I mean, really. Would you stand in front me when I’m carrying an assault rifle?)

Thank you, veterans and current enlisted, for defending our right to bear arms.

I catalogue my life through photos. They are not a collection of emotionally moving images composed for the benefit of others, but a lock box for my own memory of where I was at a given moment or stage of my life. Without them, I can forget entire months of my own existence. I have a hard time remembering anything about college right now because my photo albums and journals are locked up and divided between a friend’s parents’ house in suburban Illinois and a self-storage unit in Chicago, where I left them during grad school.

I am fascinated by the shards of life one can capture between the F stop and the (increasingly digital) darkroom. If I thought I had any talent, I might have pursued a storytelling career in photojournalism instead of print and broadcast journalism. I work with a really cool group of people right now, and we take monthly field trips that have us roving among the paranormal in Portsmouth and the mundane in Manchester. A few months ago, we had a workshop with a local photographer and he patiently sat with us and answered all of our technical questions. He said one thing that stuck with me, and I’ve been trying to incorporate it into my photos ever since.

It’s the Rule of Thirds. Our photo guru for the day said the subject of the shot should occupy one-third of the space in the frame, while the remaining two-thirds should be filled with something else – whether it be white space, something complementary, something contradictory, etc.

It stuck with me because I live my life about as opposite of that Rule as one could possibly live. When something becomes important to me, I make it the center of my focus. I’m not one to make a long list of New Year’s resolutions, but one I’ve kept since I made it in 2002/2003 was “Care Deeply, or Not at All.”

Is there some white space in my life? Sure, but not much. I focus on dancing, writing, cooking and fucking . . . and that’s all I want right now. One shifts into focus while the rest blur around the edges. The shutter snaps, grabs what it wants for the memory picture book, and another area lurches forward, demanding that I hold my hands steady just for this one second.

I’m really excited because I’ll have a photo published for the first time in a couple of weeks. The day before my birthday, to be precise. (Actually, this isn’t true. I had a photo published while I lived in Chicago, but it was of another photo at an art exhibit, so to me it doesn’t count.) I have, without exaggeration, 15 or 20 stories to write for you (the ideas keep me up nights), but right now I’m just going to share with you visuals of how I think, remember and love.

If all the previous paragraphs make no sense, it’s because I got home late from another photography workshop tonight and I type too fast when I’m tired. I’ll do two more parts to this (1/3 is this one, 2/3 is “I take stupid photos,” and by the time we get to 3/3 it’ll be time for my 2006 Photo Essay).

Four Days in Photos: October 13 – October 17

FRIDAY

Splendor in the Grass: Me in my backyard.

What I was looking up at.

SATURDAY

My neighbors' dog, Kula. She brings me joy.

Kula in Action.

My neighbor took this one.

I was trying to photograph the bumper sticker above my head.

I didn’t see the ass sticker in the photo above until I looked at the pictures the next day. Drunk mistakes = great photos.

SUNDAY

Apple picking. A completion, of sorts.

Me, pumpkin, scarecrow. Mack's Apples, 2006.

We grow more than apples here.

Making apple pie

Making apple pies is like a Chinese New Year for me – I celebrate a fresh start independent of the rest of the world. This year, pie-making happened the same day my best friend had her first baby.

TUESDAY

Apple pie for breakfast today.

I’ve been trying to get a nighttime shot of this for my best friend’s husband, but I can’t get it right with the reflective material and the flash setting. I’ll keep trying, as I stifle my giggles. Just trying to hold my hands steady long enough to stop.

Hammertime.

1. Camping is for White people.
2. Camping is for White people.
3. When camping with White people, drinking makes the experience infinitely more fun.

This is what I packed into Double-0′s car. April went up early to set things up for us since we had to work.

Note that all I brought were some clothes and a sleeping bag. That’s it. Oh, and martinis in a box, which I didn’t even know existed until now. Class-ay! That’s my pink luggage. Underneath all that is the pink yoga mat I loaned Double-0. This will be important later. When I arrive at Double-0′s, she asks, “Did you remember a towel?” Uhhhh. “Emily, we’re not going to a hotel.” I know this, but in my enthusiasm to go camping with a blonde and a Jewish princess, I have forgotten my towel. And my pillow. And warm socks and mittens.

That’s our tent. And Double-0′s ass. And her Beamer. She drives a Beamer now because a couple months ago an immigrant decided it was a good idea to back up in the fast lane on the highway right in front of her while she was going 65mph.

Chinet, up in flames.

Oh yes, marshmallows were roasted. I hate them any other way.

I should also mention that it was F*CKING COLD the first night we were up there. Double-0 had wool socks, fancy scientific thermal clothes, a f*cking floodlight, headlamp, you name it that chick had it. I told her that I’d been running around all day telling people I was going camping with a Jewish princess and she said, “That’s funny, because all day I was telling people at work I was going camping with a Black girl.”

When I woke up Saturday morning, I said, “What the f*ck is wrong with you White people? Why would you want to go outside and sleep on the ground in something as thick as a Ziplog bag when you have perfectly good houses? Look at that – there is a hole in our tent (it was a vent). Why would you make a tent and then give it a hole?”

The campground had very nicely heated bathrooms with showers. I wanted to set up my sleeping bag in there instead. The thought of actually doing it made me have a laughing fit at 5:30 a.m.

This is me, being f*cking cold in the tent. I’m using my enormous wool sweater as a pillow and wearing two pairs of socks.

Double-0 refused to give me my own yoga mat to put underneath my sleeping bag to insulate it from the cold ground because she wanted to use it under hers. Bitch. :-)

Then she pushed a boulder onto me. I hate her.

Autumn in New England: One of the reasons I think there must be a God.

I’d like to explain this one, but I’ll just leave it.

We all said that we wouldn’t bring makeup on the trip and just, you know, rough it. But those chicks brought compacts and all sorts of shit.

Here I am, roughin’ it.

Just so the “Losers” know, I ate turkey dogs (and turkey burgers and turkey bacon). April doesn’t eat beef. I would include the sneak shot April took of me eating a turkey dog, but it is rather explicit and this blog is almost clean enough to share with your family. Almost.

Our weekend as Country Bumpkins turned out to be just as fun as I thought it would be. We got marshmallow all over our faces, cooked on a camp stove under a full moon, percolated our coffee, saw awe-inspiring foliage on the Kancamangus Highway, and got absolutely, totally obliderated tipsy on a mixture of pomegranate martinis, boxed Cosmopolitans and peach wine.

My hair now smells like a camp fire and my body aches for my pillow, but I have to say roughing it was pretty cool. It was fun to drop everything and go into the woods and do the female bonding thing. Even if the chicks did bring makeup.

Prof. John Ernest with me and Kristin at our college graduation

I went to college with a mission: I wanted to learn more about Being Black. Problem was, $10,000 of my scholarship money for New York University had fallen through on the day of my high school graduation. I wouldn’t be attending school in the diverse Mecca-lekka-hiney-bro Melting Pot known as NYC.

Nope. The University of New Hampshire would be hosting my education in Being Black. It was as unlikely a place as one could find for increasing cultural awareness. There were 78 Black students out of 13,000. If you were counting me, there were only 77.5 Black students. We do what we can with what we have, though, and what I had was a course catalogue listing a 500-level course for Introduction to African-American Literature.

Any time I’ve ever wanted to understand anything, I’ve turned to books. From cooking to interior design to tarot card reading, if there was anything I’ve wanted to understand, I just buried myself in every chapter and verse I could get my hands on. I thought if I could read about other Black people, their history, what they had been through . . . maybe I would understand a little bit more about myself.

The first day of class was a Tuesday during my sophomore year. The classroom was small. The desks were set up in a circle. I was excited. I was finally brave enough to publicly acknowledge that I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was doing telling people I was half Black.

The truth was, I was 100 percent White. My parents broke up when I was six and I haven’t seen my father since. I was raised by a bunch of rowdy Italians and it literally took me years to figure out what to do with my hair. When I was growing up in Florida, the Black kids put me down because I didn’t talk Black or dress Black. The White kids didn’t know what the fuck I was. When they asked me, I answered to the best of my ability. I told them, “I’m tan.” Duh.

As I sat at my desk in Hamilton-Smith Hall in September 1998, I was still wondering what I was and if I needed to be anything different. I just wanted to understand what all the fuss was about. I was earnest to begin some sort of inner transformation.

Therefore, it was a little disconcerting to discover that my mentor in Blackness was to be a lanky white gentleman with balding hair and black-rimmed glasses. I was expecting something different. Maybe a member of the Black Panthers. Panther Power! Or something.

It turned out that John Ernest was something different.

The first thing he asked the class to do was make a list of our five favorite CDs and to tell the class why we enjoyed the music we did. Secondly, he was a Scorpio. I don’t care what the fuck you think about astrology – I dare you to find me a Scorpio who doesnt have an affinity for Black culture. It’s like all Scorpios are Black on the inside and they’re looking for a connection with an old cotton picker’s soul or something.

But here’s what Prof. Ernest did: he broke me open and then made me more whole. I had experienced two sexual assaults and my first relationship right before I became his student. He didn’t know that at first, but he allowed me to connect my own struggles with what I was learning through him and develop a more organic understanding of the word “plight.”

I dated a Black classmate I met in Prof. Ernest’s class. If anything revealed how little I knew about Being Black, it was dating Big Al. It was the first time I felt like I was having an interracial relationship. His CD collection went beyond my familiarity with Biggie, Jay-Z and the rest of the Puff Daddy family. His enormous lips enveloped mine when we kissed, and he made fun of my ass-less ass. (It’s sad, really. I’ve always wanted a Bonita Apple Bum.) While Al played the gentleman, he did get a little annoyed when I told him if he was going to act like a typical Black guy and refuse to go down on me, I was going to act like a Black girl and refuse to go down on him (which kind of sucked – no pun intended – because we weren’t sleeping together, either).

I read W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes and “Celia; A Slave.” I went on to take a more advanced African-American Lit. class with Prof. Ernest and that class led to an independent study with him and my close friend, Kristin. (She’s another Scorpio, by the way. She minored in Black people.) I wish I could find the paper I wrote on Toni Morrison’s”Beloved.” I just remember crying from exhaustion when I was done with it.

At the end of it all, Prof. Ernest became a friend. He and I talked about my confusion over my racial identity, about relationships, about poetry, about our relatives with mental illness. He was the sort of professor who looked beyond students’ day-to-day problems like juggling two times the course load I should have taken and the general laziness that set in after too many nights partying.

Funny that it took a lanky white guy in a staff office the size of a toaster oven and covered with pictures of jackalopes to teach me how to be Black. If Being Black for me means I’m just Emily with a killer tan and a small ass, so be it.

Second: I am on the phone with my Mom as I type. She just watched “Save the Last Dance,” for the first time. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a white high school girl who gets her dance on. Unfortunately for her, “getting her dance on,” means ballet. This does not go over well for her as the new girl in school in the ghetto. Then, to the chagrin of many, she has the gall to date a black dude. Her new black friends teach her how to bring it, “In Living Color” style, and she incorporates some of her newfound jiggy into her ballet.

Momsy’s thoughts? “Gosh, I never went through any of that when I was with your brother’s dad. Or with your dad. [Mom's white, our fathers are black.] It’s not that the white race created their problems. It went way, way back to slavery. But now, a lot of white people have just as many problems as black people. Oh, by the way, I moved again. There were thieves. They stole my lawnmower.”

Welcome to my life. Now she’s talking about the joys of living in Jamestown, NY. I’ve mentioned this before – Jamestown is about as uplifting as looking out my windowpane at the road, which is quickly flooding.

Momsy: “Erie [county] is just f*cked up. It’s not us. It’s depressed. It’s how this area is.” Ah, the delight. “Don’t set limitations on me, ’cause there aren’t limitations as far as I’m concerned. I said some things I shouldn’t have said, but that’s how I am when I get heated. I don’t need to apologize. I will write to my congressmen and senators and they will put heat on them, ” Momsy says. “Jackasses.”

I do love her.

[Edit: For people who live in NY, you know Jamestown is not in Erie County. But my family is originally from Buffalo, which is the heart of Erie. My Mom has no love for that whole side of NY. Everyone but her and my grandfather's first wife (Mom's mom) moved to Florida. We talk about it every time she calls.]

[Edit 2: Okay, I just got off the phone. Talking to my Mom is a 50/50 enterprise. Half the time, she drops gems that have me laughing so hard I practically wet myself. She is ridiculously funny and bitchy. She knows this about herself and does not give a flying f*ck. I'm pretty sure I picked part of that up in the womb. On the other hand, talking to me usually brings out the worst in her because she hasn't seen me since I was 14 and she misses me. That's half of my life she hasn't witnessed. She cries. It makes me sad. I'm not gonna take it any deeper than that here because some of my things aren't for public view. I hope those of you who are close with your moms had a great mommy's day.]

Let me tell you about my friend, the old DCC.

I started attending reggae Sundays at the deck back in 2002 with my best friends Heather and Stacie. We’d usually be groggy, rolling out of bed after a Saturday night adventure – we’d pull my mattress out to the living room, make some mac ‘n cheese, and flop down and watch the 1 o’clock Pats game on the bed in the living room. Around 4, we would put our hair in pigtails, swap tank tops and make the short drive to the D.

There was something seductive and crystalline about that place. I was thoroughly enchanted. We’d see the motorcycles lining the street when we pulled up and Heather and Stace would squeal. They liked boys with bikes. This year, they’ll both be marrying boys with bikes.

Walk up to the bouncer, pay our $5 and get our hands stamped, and that was it. We were in for the night. Up the short flight of stairs to the deck and it was like being transported. First of all, it’s the only place where I got to see black people in large groups in New Hampshire. You can’t find that many in the entire state, I swear. I only count for half of one, but that’s another blog entry. We had to import them, just for Sundays. And the racial diversity (we had my Haitian and Latino folks up in there, too) wasn’t the only factor stirring up the mix. There were folks in their fifties, married couples looking to get in the groove and then all the young hot things. It was such a nice mix of people, together purely just to have a good time and enjoy the vibe.

Without fail, the sun would be out in full force, giving the guys sunglass lines and sweaty foreheads. Cigars were smoked. Overflowing platters of nachos made their way to the table. The women would be tan, glowing and dressed to kill. For a few hours, you couldn’t find more attractive people than the happy faces gathered at the D.

And then the slow, sweet, sticky notes of the steel drum and guitar would reverberate back to my spine and I would sink further down into my bliss. This is what I came for. We would all be seated at the white plastic tables and chairs, if we could find a free one (and I always did) and at first, the small dance space would be empty. By drink number three, the old men would have taken their ladies by the hand and started dancing cheek to cheek to a rendition of “Destiny,” by Buju Banton. Another drink and, that’s it, everybody is up and swaying. It didn’t matter how hot it was. The big glass pitcher of Stoli Doli was full of fruit and ice and the waitresses were always on time with your beer.

There would be some fine young (or old!) man wanting to talk to you about where you’re from, what’s your name, what are you doing. After the reggae soaked you through completely, there was just no getting away. By the end of the night, the mosquitos are out, the heat lamps are on, and somehow you have become friends with everybody at the next three tables. Everybody would be singing along to the last song of the set and then the party would move, en masse, to Cahoots (now, the illustrious WBs).

There, DJ Roberto would spin some crazy reggae/hip hop/caliente mix and the guys would have breakdancing contests or grab the mic and spit some new lyrics. They would always swear they were the next big thing. Forty would toss you a cold one, for free, and you would all be gathered there in the Sunday madness until last call.

To this day, the only other place that feels like home is my actual home – with my family in Florida. Maybe it’s the sunshine that did it. I’ll never know. But there will never be another experience quite like it. Those days, cast in a golden glow, will always keep me warm and happy.