The Fat Boi Diaries: Breaking To Heal

This is a hard one:

Does it matter how long it takes you to reach a place of healing? I dunno. Is it scary and hard? Yes. But, is it necessary that you reach the point when you can admit the truth, face up to what you allowed yourself to become and how you treated yourself? Do you need to acknowledge and understand the price you paid for someone who never did, and  never would,  put forth any effort to cherish and respect you?  Does it matter that you made sacrificed so many things including your self-respect for a  person who only cared  about you when it was convenient for them? If you want to survive, yes. Can you heal from this experience; can you respect yourself again? Yes.

So here it goes, a confession:

Over the last 4 years, I took myself and ground myself into dust, cracked my bones, twisted my guts, all because I thought I needed that intangible thing. Because I deep down believed that fat, black, dark-skin, fem boy me was lucky to have that copper-skinned, high cheeked boy tell me that he loved me; that I was the beast and he was Beauty. All because I believed I was the monster. Because I still, somewhere inside believed what the world told me. So I needed his “love,”  and I stayed, no I waited for the moment when he would “bless” me with the “privilege” of being his, even though it only hurt. It cost.

I lied to myself. I lied for him. I created alternate truths because reality was too harsh to face. Like the time my friend Carl saw him on what seemed like a date with his friend K while he and I were trying to make something work between us, and when I asked him he insisted I trust him and that K was just a friend, nothing more, and he wasn’t at all attracted to him; then I found out the following year that he had lied to me and had fucked K off and on for about a month or two while we were trying to make something work.  There was the time I needed him at my cousin’s funeral; I begged him to go with me because he was the only one I allowed myself to be vulnerable around, but he claimed he had to work.  I called him and called him while I was away, needing to talk and it wasn’t until the day of the funeral, while I was telling him how hard the funeral was for me while I was sitting on my best friend’s bed, once I asked how he was because I couldn’t get a hold of him, when I asked how work was that he told me that he never went to work. He wasn’t scheduled. He spent the night fucking his ex in his backseat and had to spend the day cleaning his car from the paint job the ex gave the backseat. Oh, then there was that time when I was kept in the hospital out of the doctors’ concern but he didn’t answer the phone. Or the time I apologized for the bad head and explained how memories of sexual trauma were coming back while my mouth was wrapped around his dick, but all he said to me was for me to “do better next time.” Or the time he shamed me for being too sexually aggressive and then six months later penalized me for moving too slow. Or that time when I became a doctoral candidate and he never congratulated me and just fried twenty tacos instead. Or the time when I moved to Chicago and he forgot about me. When I confronted him about it and his in general horrible treatment of me he said, through a cracking voice, that he loved me but was too scared to let himself be with me. And I believed it. I believed it enough so that when it was my last night in St Louis I set it aside to spend time with him over my parents or other friends; he stood me up again. I cried for three hours on the way to Chicago. And still I came crawling back. I listened while he told me about how he desperately wanted to fuck some fellow fast food worker he knew because the guy was white. “I have never been with a white boy and I want to know how it feels and what you can do with them.” I listened while he complained when the guy T stood him up ,”I rearranged my entire schedule for him; I am done.” T missed the date because he had an incident come up with his kids. Yes, I listened while this “man” who supposedly loved me told me he was pinning over a white boy who was closeted with two children. The white boy was the prize and I was the burden. And later when I asserted my independence Robin suddenly became re-interested in me, and I once again fell for the lines.  When he told me he wanted to see if we could be together, no one else could make him feel the way I did, I  allowed myself to believe him. Then, not even two weeks later, he fucked a guy who “wasn’t too special” to him and suddenly he, once again, was not sure if he wanted me.  I waited in all of this, all of it shit.

And in-between I kept myself numb with so many anonymous ones. I survived off words and apologies and empty promises and lies. I lied to myself and pulled my friends and family through it all too. The times my mother wondered where my smile went. My brothers looking at me scared because they saw me slicing myself off and rearranging myself to better appease and please him. My brother’s words echo in my head from when I asked him of he could accept Robin and I officially together, “He has taken years not months but years!” My friends’ clicking the phone at his name. The fatigue. The loneliness. The question of “Why?” The dark.

And it comes to me: I did this with him. I told him he could treat me like shit because I felt I was shit. I said it was okay for him to disregard my feelings because I consistently ignored my pain. I begged him to be cruel to me every time I stayed. I made myself pathetic for him, and Robin was not worth it; no man is.

But then something else occurred to me: Once I could admit what I did to myself, the role I played, once I gave up on not being angry at him or myself, once I stopped not caring,  I started to heal.   I am forgiving myself. I can admit that I care–not about him but about me. I love myself now, I did that.

Was that hard? Yes. Embarrassing? Certainly. Freeing? I feel the wind.

———————————————-/

Pariah: Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free.

 

 

Where in the Interwebs is BlaQueer?

Why I am here:

” xoxoxo

Huffpost Healthy Living
xo JAne

It’s the Weekend Luvs!

The Fat Boi Diaries: Why Selfies?

Last week at an apartment party in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood on the North side, I whipped out my iPhone 5, told the folks at the gathering to press together, and clicked away. Simple act, happens at least a hundred times a day, and I completed the ritual by posting the picture to my instagram and linking it to my Facebook account. But, before I could put the camera away I heard a friend joke, read, throw a little shade (?) my way and say:

“Watch, tomorrow there will be like five picture of himself up there.”

Yes, guilty as charged, I am a selfie. One of those annoying people who take tons of self-pictures. Declaring to the world that I look good and you know it. This is so true that the same friend had earlier brought up the topic with me; apparently he and another friend occasionally discussed my self-pictures. My narcissism flagged alarm. But, here is the thing:

No one ever asked me, “Why do you take so many selfies?”

I mean, I am not traditionly phine, cute, or awkwardly endearing. I am fat. Daaaaaark. My nose is wide. My hair is kinky ( a biracial friend once used my hair texture to describe to a white stranger what “bad hair” is, apparently any hair that can kink up; mind you, at the time my hair was short, combed, and nap-free but I digress). My eyebrows are not plucked, and I swear my pores are visible. But this is the point.

I live in a world where this is celebrated and attainable:

I could go on, but you get the point. That is beautiful. No argument there; they may all be assembly line phine, but they are each phine.  I even fail on quirk level:

now note: I have limited the photos to black men; the reality is that in the GAYme of Trones, white boys tend to be the Lannisters (the most powerful, most often desired, and the ones most likely to toss their beauty privilege around), but I just figured for once we could focus on just us. 

I take my selfies because I am that guy who, unless he takes the picture or suggests it, doesn’t get his picture taken. My friend who asked, truthfully had very little right to judge; everyone takes pictures of him, with him, and for him. The same is true of almost all my friends. I live in a world where I didn’t hear someone romantically call me beautiful and desirable till I was 26. I live in a world where either body privilege or race privilege is always against me. So I point my camera at my face, most often when I am alone, and possibly bored, and I click; I upload it to instagram, and I hold my breath because the world is cruel and I am what some would call ugly, but I don’t see it. At first I clicked so I could see what others saw, but I don’t. So now I click and post and breathe, waiting for others to see what I see: beautiful dark skin, Afrika’s son, a dream un-deferred, pretty eyes,and nice lips, and a nose that fits my face; I want them, you, to see that I am human, and there is a reason why I got to this size, but I owe you no explanation or justification for any part of my existence  I owe you no explanation or justification for my smile or my swag or my selfie. Hell I didn’t even owe you this.

Like I said, I owe you nothing, but I owe myself everything.

The Fat Boi Dairies: “Bad Religion,” 20 Tacos, and a Journey to Self-Love

Note: This reflects how I felt about 3-4 weeks ago.

“Ever since this world began

there’s nothing sadder than

the one-man [fella] searching for the man that got away”

Perhaps it was the blue dress suit, or those red lips, or the way her face contorted with, pain, anguish, melancholy, or the fact that she was giving it all in just a rehearsal but I connected to Judy in that moment and knew, just knew her song was true  I have loved and lost and loved and lost  and loved and lost the same man for three years. Quite frankly it was, is, pathetic. I watched one too many movies and identified with one too many tragic divas who pursued their men at all costs. And the cost was high.

I met “Allen” in the summer of 2008 when I was in my mid-twenties (at 25 and up, we gay boys never reveal our age) and he was 19, but we didn’t start “talking” romantically till 2009 when he was 20 and I was still in my mid-twenties.  I told myself the age difference didn’t matter, nor our backgrounds, or my education, or his lack of education. All that mattered was that he once told me he liked me—emotionally, romantically, I was 13— and when I liked his friend “Cam,” he still liked me, stood by me ,and told me that “Cam” passing on me was his loss. I, to “Allen,” was a prize worth waiting for, woth trying for. Eventually, one day, I looked up and saw what was in front of me: I fell for the wrong boy. “Cam” was just a friend but “Allen” was the right one all along.

I had cast myself in my own romantic movie: he was the golden-skinned Stix to my fat boi Keith. Alas, even without an Amanda Jones or Hardy Jenns the path to love would not be easy. His insecurities over my education, my previous feelings for his friend, and his own cloudy history reared its ugly head; when I came to him, heart on my sleeve, like Meredith Grey to Derrick Shepard and did my own rendition of “pick me,” he said “let me think about it,” and then he said “let’s go with the flow.” I wish I could say I said no and went into detail about my worth but I didn’t. I went with the flow.

“Back in the day when I was young

I wasn’t afraid to love…what was I thinking of?”

Eventually one night, in late 2009, when I was undressing in the dark, (“Allen” had spent the night a few nights at my place by then, splendid nights where we just talked and got emotionally closer, and this was huge for me because I never let guys spend the night; I was a come over, slip on a condom, slip in me, slip out kind of guy, but not with him, never with him; we didn’t try to push sex, I thought this meant he respected me; now I know: respect can be a weapon)  holding a blanket in front of me by my chin, he asked me, “Why are you covering yourself up?” I could not look at him, and he reached out from my bed, pulled on the blanket, causing it to fall. I was exposed, my giant belly hanging in front of me, my man-boobs, which would be epic breasts if I were a cisgendered woman, hung, alert. Gooseflesh was rising, I was flushing red from fear. And  he grabbed my belly, and then moved his hand onto my stomach and said, “This doesn’t gross me out, this doesn’t bother me. You are beautiful.” That was better than a kiss for me, and at that moment, I could not let go. It did not matter that we were not official, one day I knew we would be, and all I had to do was hold on. I was wrong. A few weeks later, when I asked him about a guy he kept texting, he threw “You are not my boyfriend” in my face; jealousy was not my right, and he could talk to other guys.

Oh the guys. Skinny guys. “You’re beautiful” echoed in my head but sounded hollow. And every time a guy would do him wrong, I was there, waiting like a mammy, to tell him, “I love you; don’t you know what you are worth?” And he would smile, and I would think, this is it, this time will be different.”

“Maybe this time

For the first

He’ll stay…”

It was never different. We would talk, flirt, kiss, act like a couple, and then I would want more, he would pull away, we would fight, then after some grand gesture, we would fall apart and stop talking.  There was the time I cried to him that I needed space and he decided to block me on Facebook. There was the time he abandoned me on my birthday because he felt uncomfortable around my friends; then that next birthday when I found out, by a friend accidentally letting it slip, that he had indeed slept with someone he claimed he hadn’t and never would, a person to whom I confided my feelings about him; oh and last year’s birthday when he stopped talking to me after making out with me. He shamed me for my sexuality and then held it against me when I was tentative.  There were the numerous times he would tell me how I deserved better than him but if I mentioned another guy’s name he would quickly tell me how they were not good enough for me, or if they were undisputedly wonderful guys, like a boy I had a crush on in NYC at a prestigious school, he would sulk and become short with me and sullen and jealous. Oh and that time last October when he asked me to be his boyfriend in the middle of an odd conversation and when I hesitated, he took it back, and within a week he was dating someone else. And I kept holding on. And I paid.

Love cost me dinners, movies, gas, Aldo Shoes, Express pants, Express sweaters, a designer watch plus inscription. I spent on him, money ear-marked for trips to NYC and Chicago to visit my brothers. Few people know that. Without realizing it, I had made him the most important aspect of my life. I lived on the hope of “I love you,” a touch, an acknowledgement.   “ I thought love had to hurt to turn out right…” I was almost dismissed from my doctoral program, twice, because I struggled to get out of bed; I was worthless, not good enough, he would not be mine, he would not claim me in the light. I drank more than I should. A bottle of wine day. It helped me sleep. I called our friend “Cam” and always asked about “Allen”  repeatedly every week; I stumbled through conversations, pretending to care about “Cam” and his life until I got the inevitable  “Have you heard from ‘Allen’?”; “Is he with you?”; “Is he flirting with guys?” I wore “Cam” down, abusing our friendship for information. I needed the information, pain signified connection, dues being payed, a fix. I think I vomited on six separate occasions when I found out “Allen” was out and I was in.

“You don’t know what love it

Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues

‘Till you’ve loved the love you’ve had to lose

You don’t know what love is…”

I don’t know how I picked myself up that last time. April of 2012. I was two years behind in my program. I cried every night and day because I thought I was going to lose it all, and I had nothing to show for it. Even then, I saw “Allen” as my light; if I had him, then whatever, the outcome would be worth it. Truthfully, I didn’t pick myself up then. Between the stress of graduate school and “Allen” drop kicking me to the curb right after making out with me on my birthday (and accusing me of a lie on the phone), I would burn myself to get through  from one hour to the next, to face each new day; eventually I took a knife, heated the blade, placed it on my arm and smelt the sizzle. There is still a faint mark of the “x” on my forearm.

“If it brings me to my knees

it’s a bad religion

this unrequited love

to me, it’s nothing but a one-man cult.

And cyanide in my styrofoam cup.

I could never make him love me.”

Foolish boy. I wasn’t in my twenties anymore but I was still just a boy. This is what comes from looking to the world to love you when you have obsidian skin and extra flesh and large nostrils, and wooly hair. You cling to the first one who comes along and smiles; you don’t see him as the iceberg that cuts and sinks the ship; you mistake him for the raft.

“The Greatest love of all

is easy to achieve

learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all…”

I love Whitney, lord knows I do, but she was so wrong. It is not easy to love yourself. It is not easy to be honest with yourself and others about your failings. To say, “I was pathetic over a boy who didn’t know my worth” is not easy, but if it is true, it is necessary to speak it. It is mandatory to be honest with yourself and admit that you loved a boy who asked you to be his boyfriend and because out of fear, bred from a messy past you share with him, you hesitate, he shuts down and dates a random boy four days later. You must face the mirror and see that you allowed yourself to apologize for him to everyone.

This past week I proposed my dissertation project and my department approved. I am officially a doctoral candidate. I smile writing that. All those close to me in my life called me to wish me well. But not “Allen”; even though we still talk, and he had admitted he loved me, that I was the only one he ever had loved, and we supposedly had a bond, and I left him a message saying how nervous I was, he never called.  When I called “Allen” to tell him I was ABD, he reacted as if I told him I just bought a brand new pair of trousers.  I pressed him and he exploded at me. I tried to assert myself but once I got of the phone old feelings resurfaced. I felt guilty and wrong. So I called back to apologize. He answered the phone, I think just to let me hear how annoyed he was. He said “Maurice I can’t do this right now, I am about to be rushed and I gotta fry twenty tacos.” He hung up on me while I was speaking. And it hit me. That was, is, us. He hangs up on me because he can, because I have taught him he can; I come crawling back; each time I crawled back to him, acting as if it is all okay. Each crawl came, comes, back to me, out of time  because each wound is still immediate and fresh:

You lied to me, that is fine; you slept with someone else while we were trying to make things work, that is fine; you let me confess my emotions about you to that person you slept with, that is fine; you told me you cared and then you lied, that is fine; you ruined my birthdays for three years even though I went all out for yours, that is fine; you told me you loved me and then dated someone else, that is fine; I wrote poems about you and read them in front of crowds, wooed you, made you feel loved, and you couldn’t even take five minutes to read to for yourself; you just said I don’t like poetry, and that is fine; you told me no one ever celebrated your birthday or made you feel special so I created a picnic for you on a cloud, I showered you with affection; you said you had no one to confide in, to depend upon, so I made myself open for you; I said I needed you and you never showed up; it took my cousin being murdered for you to be there for me just once, and when you were supposed to have been with me at his funeral, you stayed and went on a date with your ex who left you to fuck around with different guys, and when I called you that weekend, crying, in pain, you didn’t answer my call because you were busy fucking your ex in your car, and that is fine; when I confessed, after you told me you loved me, that I had never slept with a man who loved me and I wanted you to be the first (at the time, only), you told me you couldn’t sleep with me b/c it would be too serious, but you didn’t really want to let me go, and then, that night when I massaged you, and respected your words and didn’t make a move to sleep with, despite your erection, you held it against me, my actions and, i suspect, your erection, and that was fine. Everything was fine because it had to be, for us to stay. But, when I called, expressing joy, wanting to share it with you and you only care about frying 20 tacos, that is not fine.

It is not that he has to fry twenty tacos and I have to schedule meetings, and try to do research. Nor is it that I want to talk about jazz, films, wine, books, and everything bougie under the sun, and he hates reading, doesn’t care for jazz, and finds poetry a waste. It is that words are not important to him. I was not important to him, my success, my joy did not trump frying twenty tacos.  I thought about when he told me, “You deserve better than me” and realized he was right.  I am fat, smart, dark, and beautiful. He has to fry twenty tacos.  I thought of my ancestors and cried because I am fat, smart, dark and beautiful; I am what they dreamed for. And he has to fry twenty tacos. I thought of what my mom always told me: “Baby, you are worth your weight in gold.” And he had to fry twenty tacos. I thought of what my Baptist pastor daddy told me: “I can tell you love this boy, but not all love, be it straight or gay, is good; you can’t lose yourself. You gotta love yourself more.” And he has to fry twenty tacos. I love myself more than twenty tacos.

I’m worth more than twenty tacos.

“And if I loved myself

as much as I loved some

bodied else

that would be revolution.”

Song Lyrics cited:

“Why Should I Care ” by Toni Braxton

“You Don’t Know What Love Is” by Nina Simone

“The Man That Got Away” by Judy Garland

“Maybe This Time” by Liza Minelli

“All the Man I Need” by Whitney Houston

“The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston

“Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean

“To Be Young Gifted and Black” by Nina Simone

The Fat Boi Diaries: Fat Listening: Things Fat Queer Men Hear From Gay Men

1) “Fat makes my dick soft.” (Said to my best friend by some semi-random dude.)
2) A conversation among appropriately weighted gays with a fat gay present:
“Would you rather have sex with a fat guy or a guy with AIDS?”
(In unison): “AIDS!
3) On Grindr: Looking for LTR; a great guy who can also be my friend. Someone smart and fun. Personality is most important. No Fats.
4) Online in general: No Fats
5) Gays don’t get fat.
6) From your skinny friends:
“You are such a great guy. You are cute, smart, it is his loss. You’re not even that big. You just thick.”
“But you never talk to big boys.” (and you are BLIND)
“Girl that’s different.”
“Oh…”

(in our mind we are doing this:

  sooooo lost)
7) Twink: “You should try the bear community.”

8) Bear Community: “You are not a bear. You are a chub. No woof for you.”
9) “I know you hungry.”
And to everything we say:

Welcome

This is me, and my hair. We are becoming two separate entities. We never agree on what we should do. If we could, we would part. I love my hair more than it loves me. I am Maurice. I am fat, black, queer, allegedly smart, and woefully underemployed. (By under I currently mean unemployed). This is a space for my thoughts, and though some of those thoughts may be about my hair, none of my hair’s thoughts will be on this blog because they are scary and vicious. Welcome.