COMING SOON: "Don't Cry, Elijah: Letter to an Unborn Child"

Blues For A Funky White Girl: A Love Letter

Dear Maw,

If you didn’t know, this is Paw, the man whose babies, you once said, were spilling out of you onto the mattress, and we howled at that crude, awful joke, and then fucked again, this time slower, but your fingers dug deep into shoulder flesh, and my gripping hand, from time to time, ascended from your taut breast to your throat. Oh, how we loved each other, Baby.

How we loved each other, Baby, when you brought your acoustic guitar with you across the entire country—from the Florida beaches to the northern Californian mountains—to come see me amidst those other artists and that fog and those rampant dear. You sang the “Joe” song on the porch for me, the one about moving to Jamaica and playing all day in the sand, and I cried, though you didn’t see me, because you throbbed with affection for me—and later on we howled ourselves to tears when I, naked, flipped over onto the bed, and you named my move the Duck and Roll. You have never been a lipstick woman, Maw, but that evening we went for seafood, you climbed into those heels and pulled that flower-dress over your small, curved framed and it fit you like it was your skin, and I gunned that stick shift up that steep hill and we howled—partly because it was scary and funny at once, and also because we might die in a car crash in a foreign, west coast state where we hadn’t committed to one another, had only, by then, drank each other's flesh.

But, oh, how we loved each other even then, Baby, when I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you, in the end, lied to me.

So, fuck the heart, fuck the cliche fixation on an organ in our chests that is only crucial because it pumps blood. It does not break. The ache I feel is in my gut. My gut is broken. And I only know what pain is because I have a mind, an imagination—so, fuck the heart, fuck the dumb shit—when you left my apartment in the rain, my head broke into two, and out spilled a symphony of memories I honored in the dark with cigarettes, boxed wine, and a play-list of songs that made me crave your mouth, the sound of your voice, those calloused painter's hands, your Turkish lineage.

And I replayed the cacophony of memories that night, and nights and nights after, hanging against the wall, hand over my face, howling in devastation, and I pretended you were there dancing with me, and I came at you with, Ils ont change ma chanson, ma, Ils ont change ma chanson, ma, C'est la seule chose que je peux faire, Et ce n'est pas bon, ma, Ils ont change ma chanson—and you fired back with, yonder stands your orphan with his gun, crying like a fire in the sun—and I took it directly in the chest and shot you with, this one’s for you, Dad-ay—and you punched me in the mouth with, these arms of mine, they are yearning, yearning from wanting you—and when I could no longer take it I slapped you with, at this point in my life, I’ve done so many things wrong, don’t know if I can do right. And you pounded me with, if I were a boy, I think I could understand how it feels to love a girl, I swear I’d be a better man. Then I tried to apologize with, can’t run fast enough, can’t hide, can’t fly, I’m struggling with the limits of this ordinary life.

But you always had to have the last word: come into my world, I have to show you, come into my bed, I have to know you.

And, oh, how we loved each other, Baby, when we climbed those creaky apartment stairs to your bedroom—so many times!—and you slipped on that Reggae vinyl, and we got down to knowing each other once again, like how we came in to this world—butt ass naked and howling, disturbing the wretched, ridiculous humans around us. We ignited that bed, Baby, with how much we loved each other, set that mattress ablaze! We drove your roommates from their sleep, from their beds—sent them to pee, to get a glass of water from downstairs, to climb those stairs back to their own mattresses where they would lie listening intently to what two people who love each other sounded like. Your moans were much more ballistic than mine, for my penis in you was like a ventriloquist’s hand up the ass of a doll—but then you’d throw me on my back and screw yourself into me, pinning me like a punk ass motherfucker to the bed with a gripping hand on my throat—and your hips would say, “I love him from the man he wants to be and the man he almost is.”

So, yes, fuck the heart, Maw, for even though we oh-loved-each-other-so-much, I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you lied to me and I lied to you and you, in the end, lied to me.

Still—all of the above, all of it, was the howling of our love. It was not a heart attack, but a transplant. It was a thunderstorm that both decimates and baptizes the earth. It was ours.

Sorry I’ve taken up so much of your time with this love letter. All I really meant to say was that I saw you, Maw, that day we passed each other on opposite sides of the street, going in opposite directions. And I looked back when you weren’t looking and you looked back when I wasn’t looking. And that made me sad.

Sincerely,
Paw (Professor Afro)

Little Red Love Machine: Memoir Excerpt (for the ladies, god bless...)

I grew up in the 1980's Bronx with an imagination so fat and frenzied, God could have made two little boys out of me, and here is what I remember of that life:

My mind, I know now, had a mind of its own, and everyday both functioned to unveil Creston Avenue—the street I lived on with Mommy and my older sister, Asia—the way the block ought to be, not the way it actually was. To a lesser boy, a gushing fire hydrant drenching kids in the street seemed ordinary, but to me was a small gargoyle shooting acid from its mouth, hosing down enemy bodies.

Usually, a shirtless, older boy, whose back had been reddened the color of the devil by the sun, transformed the gushing stream with a soup can into a narrow, powerful beam that he used to pin helpless boys and girls like rags against buildings and driver-side car doors. Or he’d swing the pole of toxic water like a bat—smacking at shoulders, heads, and ankles with precise aim—flipping kids oddly through the air, their gangly frames sprawling and contorted as they crashed to the ground as though they’d been sideswiped. Still, the girls and boys danced in and out of the relentless current, filling the air with the brightness of their white teeth and reckless, joyful cries. But I wasn’t fooled, for I--two full boys in one--knew what would, soon, truly take place: their smiles would melt into sagging, fleshy frowns, and their bodies would disintegrate into wide puddles of smoldering blood and bone.

(stay tuned for more excerpts of Professor Afro's childhood)

"I Don't Want Them to Kill Him": Alas, Poor Barack

I got up this morning firmly convinced that I would vote for Barack Obama. I got dressed, brushed my teeth, washed my face, walked my dog, took a few practice swings with my 7 iron (a club that has been treating me well on the golf course of late), did my hair and drank 32 ounces of water firmly convinced that Barack Obama was my man.

I am a gambling man, and I am superstitious, so as I walked to my designated precinct I chose to listen to U2's live version of "One" featuring Mary J. Blige who makes a beautifully clinched fist out of a song that is already a delicate hand. Listening to this song would, undoubtedly, help Barack Obama - the man whom I was firmly convinced I was voting for - win the election and make songs like this symbolic of change in America. I had my racial unity mojo working, my imagination was pumping, I was thinking positive, aligning the inner, ethereal, spiritual Professor Afro with Barack Obama and his endeavor to become, among other things, the first Negro President this country has ever seen...

There was barely a line at the precinct; within five minutes of showing up at the place, I was behind a voting window ready to do my part for Rome.

And then I thought, They're gonna kill him.

I called a friend and said, "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't vote for McCain."

Sure, the total tonnage of reasons I have not to vote for McCain could stunt a team of oxen in its place, but I wasn't looking for the same ol' chicken mcnugget excuses - I was having a fucking breakdown in the bottom of the ninth. I was afraid for Barack's life. I am afraid.

My friend offered a reason why I shouldn't vote for McCain. It was a good one: "If you vote for McCain and he dies, Palin will be President, and then we will all die..."

But that wasn't good enough. And I said, "Why would I want Barack to be President? They're gonna kill him. Why would I do that?"

"He made the choice to run for President," my friend said. "You can't take that into consideration."

"That's bullshit," I said. "If my vote truly counts, then why would I want him elected? So they can shoot his black ass?"

"You can't think about that," my friend said.

But it was all I could think about standing at the voting terminal. Why would I send someone I respect across a bridge that has a likelihood of collapsing, just so it can prove to future generations the importance of crossing bridges?

So, instead of Barack's name, I selected McCain's. The question was never whether not a black man could do the job of President, but whether white people would get over themselves enough to see past the color of their own skins and the color of another's skin, and those skin colors in historical relation to one another, and to love themselves enough to love someone who didn't look like them, in order to vote a black man president?

We have all been complicit (rightfully or wrongfully so has yet to be tallied) - in answering that question with a resounding Yes!

I have never been one to champion the righteous goodness of voting. In fact, that America has survived this long without being blown off the face of the planet - either by ourselves of someone else - has always been evidence enough to prove that voting don't really mean shit. But after Bush's first four years, I took my ass to the poles; and now that his last four years are coming to an end, along with being swept up in the philosophical notion that is "Barack Obama," I arrived at the precinct to cast my individual vote.

But none of those son of a bitches who I've argued with over the years about the merits of an individual vote versus the gargantuan capitalistic machine that requires not your fealty to its dick, just that you keep it shoved in your mouth no matter what, foreshadowed the crisis that afflicted me when I actually had to make the physical decision to raise a finger and touch the screen, to cast my powerful, personal vote for a black man to be president of a schizophrenic country that hasn't yet earned the motherfuckin' phrase, we are all the same, although we've uttered it so much it has long since lost its luster.

They're going to kill him. The thought was choking, and seemed as real to me, then, as had been my prior decision to vote for Barack. I checked the box for McCain. I had to. How could I not? It seemed obvious to me: in our rush to make history, in our rush to pretend that Barack is a human being first and a black man second (what the fuck does that mean?), in our rush to anoint this a new era of hope and change, we'd forgotten history: people like this get killed!

Hell fuckin' yes I was voting for McCain. The power of my individual vote hit me in the chest like a blow from a sledgehammer. I suddenly felt like I had the power to send a man to his death, just because he was black and I was black; just because he preached hope and change (two notions that can't exist, and have never existed, without someone getting his head blown off), the same as I'd done in the classroom for the last 10 years; just because he'd made a life from staring the ridiculous American racist bullshit scene in the face.

In the end, I revised my vote and chose Barack.

I had to, right? Of course I did.

I said out loud, "What would James Baldwin do?" And then I said, "Fuck that shit, I ain't James Baldwin, I'm Professor Afro, my own man, I have my own mind. I'll vote for McCain and stand atop the highest point in the city and with a bullhorn let all you niggas know who I voted for and why, and kiss my ass (black) if you don't like it."

But it was no use. I am too tied to history. When I got 'Baldwin' tattooed on my arm several years ago, I did so because the man had touched the sense of god in me, and, like him, I'd always been serious about raising hell over inequality, and gaining enemies and making people feel uncomfortable because of it. When I left the precinct and hit the street for home, I threw on my headphones and began to cry. I couldn't really believe it what was happening to me: what the hell was I crying for? Was it Annie Lennox's sorrowful ballad "Why" spilling into my head and heart, or my active, necessarily dramatic sense of the moment that made the tears come?

Maybe. But I also think it was the whole of me being indicted in that moment I had to make a choice. I thought of all the people who were killed because they were good people. I was crying because I'm sick and tired of people saying things like "well, if they're shooting at you, you must be doing something right."

I'm tired of points being proven about the complexity of the human condition - about the true "colorlessness of humanity" - within the image of several men standing on the balcony of a hotel, each with their arms stretched out and pointing off into the distance at a gunman, and at an evil, that will never be found. But I have to give my nigga Barack a chance to be a hero, and unlike the comics, sometimes heroes don't make it out of the blaze. I was crying because I'm an American and I'm so fuckin' tired of that being true...

...of our heroes.

Willing Suspension of my Black Ass: Where the Fuck Are All the Black People in The Lord of the Rings?

Now, imagine this: Morgan Freeman playing the role of Gandolf...

So, if you're watching The Lord of the Rings and not thinking where the fuck are all the black people, then there's something wrong with your imagination.

And your soul.

My soul, however, is fully intact: When I was 19, I wrote the following in a journal I'd been keeping everyday since I was 15:

"Sometimes I wish everyone was alike - everyone. Somehow I believe things would be more different, possible better. If everyone looked basically the same, acted and spoke and walked the same (and especially thought the same), views of right and wrong would be as simple as...as black or white.

"But because we are all cursed with a nagging individuality, finding answers to complex problems is almost impossible. If we were all the same, generalizations would be acceptable and, thus, people’s feelings wouldn’t get hurt. Answers would be clear. Different strokes for different folks wouldn’t matter. Everybody would see things with a blinding clarity. And those looking for what was right and what was wrong would know exactly where to go. “Soul Searching,” the disease that it is, would be cured" (date: 94980. 5918; p.142-143).

I haven't changed much since I was 19 other than I no longer create forced pauses in sentences with the use of ellipses (a ridiculous grammatical punctuation) in an attempt to set up epiphany with a drum roll. But the young man in the above lines informs the man now, and there are days (this is not one of them) that I do still dream we were all alike and looked "basically" the same.

Ironically, this is the same argument ridiculous white Americans (racists?) use to justify why there aren't any black people in The Lord of the Rings: what does it matter, they say, we are all the same. Well, most of you mofos don't act like it, so that's the first fuckin' problem; and, secondly, if I'm expected - as were so many others over so many years - to make the imaginative leap of intertwining my brown, human heart with that of Froto-fuckin'-Baggins' hobbit heart and his struggle with the ring (which is to say nothing of how I contorted my imagination over Luke Skywalker's ass), then I expect to see - at the very least! - a couple two-three black hobbits mixing it up at the Shire.

Some also argue that the The Lord of the Rings wouldn't be historically accurate if there was a black person in the cast, that the stories center around European, not African, folklore. Unless I'd been paying more attention to how to fry chicken or effectively wear my jeans sagging beneath the curve of my ass as a boy during "All the Living Things on Planet Earth" class - can someone explain the historical accuracy of a fucking Elf? Or a Hobbit. Or a Dwarf. Or whatever the fuck Gollum is? These creatures are not white people. They can't be. Because, well - they're creatures! That's why they call them creatures.

Perhaps a better inquiry than the title of this blog would be why I don't have a hard time suspending my disbelief when it concerns white actors brilliantly portraying the roles of an androgynous, emotionally unstable Elf, a Dwarf who overcompensates for deep height and sexual insecurities by wielding an ax, or the ring-addicted, anorexic gnome who suffers from a multiple personality disorder that sends him bouncing back and forth, like a crack-head tennis ball, between slave of the Ring and master of the Ring. "No, no," Peter Jackson might have said on casting day, "We must honor Tolkien and use white actors for these critical roles!"

Okay, that was low down. I take it back. I dig white people (specific ones) a lot.

What I really mean to say is this: If you put a black person in a hobbit outfit, give him/her some fake, hairy feet, a couple of pointed ears and an English accent, who the fuck among us couldn't make the imaginative leap to think Hobbit? My fear – and one reason why there aren't any black people in The Lord of the Rings movies – is that too many of us would say, "Wow, there goes a black hobbit." I only have an issue with the comment if it doesn't inevitably lead (sooner rather than later) to the next comment: "Ah, fuck it. A Hobbit is a Hobbit is a Hobbit." My fear is that the white imagination hasn't evolved enough to the point where they can see themselves - and allow their children to see themselves - within the lives of people who don't look like them.

If it has evolved, then dammit, I wanna see a couple two-three white people get just as pissed off as I am, grab hold of the nearest white motherfucker you can, and demand an answer to a very simple question: if we're all the same, where the fuck are all the black people in The Lord of the Rings?

Because if y'all niggas don't start asking questions and demanding answers - well, we're just not gonna be your friends anymore...

We ain't gonna play with y'all no more and we damn sure ain't inviting y'all over to our houses. And when, and when the aliens finally come to Earth, we gonna tell them all about you and how you be treatin' us, and then we gonna leave you here all alone and go back with them to their world! And when you be still over here all lonely and missin' us and stuff and wishin' you had our hands to hold, we gonna be on that other planet makin' fun of you! And you gonna hear our laughter like an echoing roar rolling through the universe and straight stabbing you in the heart. And even if you find a way to find us and y'all be cryin' about how sorry y'all is and stuff, it still won't matter. Cause we won't even talk to you when you pass us on the street or sit across from us at a cafe. And if we do speak, it'll only be to say, "Psst, you had your chance and you messed it up. So there!"

So keep it up, white people - y'all niggas know which ones I'm talking about - and see what'll happen if you don't put us in your movies. We won't let you be the same as us no more, and then where will you be?!

"Let's Get Pregnant": Prof. Afro at 20 Years Old

Professor Afro wasn't always a professor: he was once a young man in college trying to find and love and keep a woman (despite Meatloaf's philosophy, two out of three, in this case, ain't good enough). During his freshman and sophomore years of college, he hand-wrote approximately 277 pages about his life at a rich, conservative white school in upstate New York.

Here are two excerpts from 1996, from pages 256-260, when he was 20. The italicized text that appears below is unedited from its original version in order to maintain integrity of memory and voice. For privacy, names have been initialized.

96994.1801: Manipulation can be a good thing when there are good intentions involved: I fear that when, and if, I have my first child I will be strict and completely inflexible. I have a certain way of seeing things and I’ll try to rule my child/children. I fear that it’d be my way or no way. They are not going to want to hear that and there will be problems. I’m sure of it.

I want my children to be like me; my sons are going to be strong black men who respect and love women, love what women represent and what they can offer; I want my daughters to be strong as well, just like the woman who I will marry, and I want them to see that they have to beat their men into shape before any real relationship can last. I want them to be aggressive and assertive and resemble nothing close to passiveness. Even if they turn out to be lesbians or homosexuals, whatever the case may be, I want them to be fighters.

Six days later, on 96995.7411, a young P.A. continued: I don’t want them to take any shit from anybody and question everything. And I am going to make them, force them, to keep journals. And I’ll probably go through their shit and invade the privacy of their journals. I don’t know, I hope I don’t go around doing stupid stuff like that.

(If any of my children are reading this sentence right now, please try and understand that I love you, I feel more than love for you, and I want to protect you, so if it seems that I am mean or strict or demanding or even abusive, it’s only because I care so dearly for you. I am only 20 now, but I somehow know (and can feel) already the tremendous feeling that goes along with having children. And if I am abusive, show me this part of my journal and help me to get help because I don’t want to treat you in ways that will harm you. I love you only because there is no other word or to explain to you how precious I feel toward you other than “love.” So, I love you, but care for you even more than that).

I don’t know what it is, but in the last month or so, I’ve had this new feeling inside of me. Don’t really know where it has come from, but it is here and I’m going to have to be careful. I want children. Maybe it’s because everyone in my family is having, or already has, children. And maybe it’s because I miss my younger siblings. It mainly has to do with the fact that I’m getting older, not old, but older, and, for some natural reason, there is a longing for a child inside of me...and I know I am capable of such creations as well.

My oldest sister has a baby girl, my uncle also has a baby boy. My twin male cousins have a load of kids too. And since I’ve been here in Queens this Christmas vacation of 95-96, I have seen several young women who I was affected by when I lived here, and they, too, have children.

I haven’t seen C.B. this break, but I did see her some years ago and even she was pregnant. L.M., a girl I used to mess around with when I was much younger, just had a baby on New Year’s Day. And G.O., a girl who I cared dearly for at 15, has a five month old son. I spent the last week with her and her family, just hanging out, and I asked her why she decided to have a child.

"At the time I regretted getting pregnant," she said, "but once he was born, I was so glad I didn’t kill him.”

She was holding her baby Felix in her arms when she said that, and I could hear the “love” in her voice, and I again I was jealous. I want a child. The question, though, still remains: with whom?

That I still don’t know...

The End

An Open Letter to Brad Pitt: My Man Crush

Brad, I have always been persecuted for being attracted to you, but the hell that I've been catching as of late has brought me low, and with nowhere to go with my grief, and no one else to turn to, my man crush, I come to you in this letter.

This time I'm under attack by the Conservative Alliance of Potentially Black Bisexuals (a.k.a. CAPBB), and it is their belief that interracial man-crushing claws at - and will inevitably destroy - the great fiber of our black nation and, thus, the nation as a whole. They argue that my man crush is representative of being brainwashed by the long history of white male imagery - William Shatner, Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise - culminating with your supple, solid form, Brad, but this couldn't be further from the truth.

Ok, perhaps at one time I longed to dress in red and blue tights like Christopher Reeve in Superman and catch Lois Lane - clearly a white woman - as she fell from atop a tall building. And which of us among the brown or non-white men of the world hasn't pictured Princess Leia lying naked next to us in bed and eating crackers while we finger the double-stranded braids spun into buns on either side of her head?

But this doesn't make me a lover of white men; this doesn't make me extol their visages above my own; this doesn't make me want to abandon my black skin for white. Listen, I love Denzel! I love Eddie! But for the love of all things holy, can't we all admit that Will Smith is a ridiculous fuckin' actor, which has nothing to do with the color of his skin? (Don't any of you Fresh Prince of Bel Air lovin' niggas be running up on me in the halls all pissed off, acting like Will Smith is Sidney-fuckin-Poiter -- the show sucked!).

I can only imagine what an "alliance" such as CAPBB thought of you when you gave such a stunning, titilating performance in 1994's Legends of the Fall, where you played the sensitive, troubled, and volatile Tristin Ludlow. Though the story takes place during World War I, and you have long hair, and I grew up in the Bronx in the 1980s and now have an excellently shaped afro, I very much related to Tristin. And to you, Brad; I related to you. This is but a small reason why:



And Seven, or should I say, Se7en. This is my favorite movie of all time. And it's because you're in it. At this point I think it's a little cliche to go and on about my love for this movie - my love, dare I say, for you as Detective David Mills - other than to say this: though you weren't topless in this film, one could tell from your lean, tireless physique, and the way you - with raw, sweating intensity - gripped the handle of the Smith and Wesson .45, and your firm use of the word "fuck" every six and a half minutes, that you were all man.

This is to say nothing of your body in Fight Club - an average movie, but a stunning, rippling performance by you. And Troy, what is there to say about how hard you were in Troy, how cut. I won't say you were chiseled, for that is a word far too used and scarcely does your physique the moist justice it so readily deserves: you are not made of rock, you are made of flesh and bone and muscle, muscles that can endure great pushes and shoves and tugs and gropes. You were well-oiled in that movie and I shall never forget it. In fact, I have devoted many hours to the weight room (though not of late because these racist attacks, these intolerant, close-minded rebukes have brought me low, so very low), trying to carve my own flesh into something like yours. (God, Brad, I would love to pump iron with you).

Brad, hopefully it's clear by this point that not only could I elaborate on how beautiful a being I think you are, but that I will not stop this flame that fills the space in my chest when it comes to you and your muscles. The CAPBB has a long way to go, and another thing coming, if they believe I should refrain from interracial man-crushing, that I should crush solely on those who look like me, and that the color of the man's skin who I choose to crush on means more than the content of his character, or, at least, the character of his loins.

When demanded to be told what was in the box at the end of Se7en, you did so with conviction, even though the clock was against you - you were the seventh sin. I finish this letter feeling much like you did during that scene - with a heavy heart, something wounded deep inside my soul, a sense that the bad guys have won.

But, baby, I'll continue to fight my critics with similar conviction, for I know now the true nature of Crushing. I know now, Brad, what's in your box. I know what's in your box.

*Hugs*

Forever Yours,

Professor Afro