Welcome to Jamrock

The blog you have reached is temporarily out of the country.

10 days. A much needed exodus. But also got some family business... We're all going down for an early celebration of my dad's bday (RIP) and a ceremony to erect his tombstone (apparently this is a cultural tradition in JA).

Life is currently moving at warp speed. Got lots to share upon my return.

But please feel free to talk amongst yourselves...here's a topic...

You have 2 tickets to Montego Bay...who do you take?

Are you certain that person would take you?

Or would you sell the tickets to cover the rent? :)

There's just something about sun, sangria and sex that makes lifelong friends out of otherwise perfect strangers. See yall out on the beach one day...Uncle Slishy, can't you organize a trip or sumthin. :)

You're All I NEED: Wise Hits The Tittie Bar

A convo with this dude I know...

Dude I Know: ".....yadda, yadda, yadda...some bullshit about wo/men...followed by some obvious/valid points, then some ole bullshit...women are the needy gender anyway."

Wise: "That's a fact?"

Dude I Know: "Come on, don't gimme a hard time. That's understood. That's common knowledge. Conventional wisdom."

Wise: "Guess it's time to re-analyze the convention."

I wasn't yet drunk enough to not wonder how my azz looked in my jeans. It was mild for July, humid for after midnight. Oddly loose at the waist. Snug in the thighs.

Shoulders out. Signature newsboy cap. Slightly incognegro, mostly quarantined.

Usually when there are this many dudes standing outside a spot it's either a night out for free drinks at Gay Bartender's job, some exclusive 'you-need-to-be-accompanied-by-pussy' party, or worse. Tonight was shapinig up to be the latter. The worst.

My blackhand side is cattle stamped and I proceed inside, the only chick in my crew. Stepping across the threshold, under the scope of tacky purple strobes, into the rhythm of nursery rhyme "skip hop," I quickly assess that I am one of a few chicks in the whole joint.

I grab my fictional dick, nod at the topless hostess who welcomes us to the establishment, and walk straight to the bar as if I got the fattest azz there. That's how you gotta be when you're in the House of Azz, when that's the money shot, if you will. I felt hella out of place, yet never one to be outshined, I'm determined to fit the hell in somehow.

This is not my first time at a titty bar. It's just never as good a time as advertised.

See, I had this convo recently with some dudes I know, dudes my age and older, and I was intrigued/appalled/amused by the fact that it seems the older guys get, the more obsessed with strippers they become. For some obviously uninformed reason, I thought this was something dudes grew out of, you know, like skid marks.

Not so, I'm told. In fact, as I'm walking thru I see with my own two Guccified eyes that this may indeed be a fact.

"I'm hooked, Wise. The nastier the better. I went with my boy from work and he's like a VIP and he put me on. So we come and they show us mad love at the door..."

"I'm in love with like, the laziest stripper there. She dances maybe once a week. Some of those bitches be on it full time. Not mine. She a temp or some shit. But I love her."

"No, they're pretty broke down. The cutest one is bout two cupcakes away from dragging down the damn pole."

So I'm alert, in as analytical a mode as can be expected after a few Goose and pineapples (at home, of course. Only vodka I seen behind the stripper bar is Popov [read: cheeeeeap].) I first scan the crowd for ex-bosses, ex-classmates, suspected lesbos, celebs, white people, and dudes I would normally bone...in that order. I see a few ComicView regulars and some DJs, but that's about it. Coast is clear for me to explore openly.

There's an empty stool near the stage and I plop down, looking around, tapping my rings on my glass. In my mind this is a clear show of interest in the music and disinterest in the performer. She was largely unremarkable, as is her audience. I'm saying, she was swinging and swaying and twirling accordingly, but dudes acted like she was the opening act or something. Like she was Little Brother at a SummerJam show. Crickets. But as the night wears on I notice that this is how it always is. A few bucks thrown here and there...but mostly the stage dudes are broke.

I ease up so as not to be typecast. My boys are huddled near the rear of the place, and when I approach it's as if I'm the only kid on the block with a kick ball and I finally came outside to play.

"Showtime, Weezy." I'm whisked to the back, and I say out loud, "Oh okay, this is where the real nggas be at."

And the real hoes. Big, small, light, dark, Asian-inspired, bilingual, bilateral, everything. Just a rainbow of blue collar cooch. Hard workers, too. Straight up Mexican work ethic in this muhfucka. These back room chicks ain't playing. They keep it moving, they pay attention, show love, make eye contact, remember first names, dispense pet names like Pez, and they carry an air of control. A false air, but convincing nonetheless.

These are the earners no doubt. And before I knew it they were about to earn my respect.

I'm led to a stiff couchy chair, slightly reclined. Relaxed.

My drink is replenished. My boys are watching, fists full of cash. Calling the shots.

I smelled her hair first. Pears. And it wasn't the stringy kinda hair that I compulsively pick off me after a packed train ride. Or the kind that clogs public restroom sinks. It was the black/mixed kind... thick and healthy. Real, I think.

"You're really beautiful. Your jeans fit you so well." Her raspy whisper is a loud bellow to my ego. Before I could thank her, her head slides down the side of my neck, down the front of my shirt, along the length of my waist band and back up to my neck.

I pull my head back, in genuine 'you go girl' deference. My boys egg her on, and watch intently, begging me to finish my drink and play along. Little did they know I had no intentions of cutting the show short. I was about to get schooled. Plus she looked a lot like my girl crush Al!cia Ke.ys. Sue me.

What followed was an impeccable and impressive display of a master of human nature. She said all the right things, wisely catering to my feminine desires for attention and approval. She was aggressive and showy, conquering women's natural competitive spirit. And she hit all the erogenous zones like a metal detector in a piggy bank...

Winding her smooth azz on my lap with varying speeds and pressure.

Rubbing her face in my chest in slow, methodical circles.

Suggestive girl talk that made me giggle like we were pointing out the dudes we'd let hit.

Placing her hands over mine then on her hips as she put on a show for my boys.

Left not a drop of sweat or stuff anywhere near me.

She had me at "beautiful."

I lifted my glass and let her sip the last bit of my drink. She needed it more than me.

When it was all said and done I was thoroughly aroused, impressed and entertained. My boys on the other hand, like most of the men in the boom boom room appeared thoroughly hustled. There was a hint of 'they don't get it' in their eyes. A sense of fantastical unreality in the way they reached out to touch the oasis. Their fingers lingered, longing, looking for a sign that this might be real.

It's the same glazed out look they get around hour 3 in front of a video game.

They strike up conversations. They ask about the chicks' school, sons, shit that have nothing to do with them. Shit that says they're inappropriately invested.

They are rendered absolute azzes around these women. They feel no reservation at the fact that they are not only ruled by an illusion, but that said illusion is community property. They overlook the stench of other nggas' giz and nut sweat. Turn a blind eye to the fingerprints around the brawd's bikini top and bottom. Where other muhfuckas already paid their respect.

This is a transaction...conducted in a trance.

"I'm saying, sometimes you just want a chick to show you some love, no strings attached."

"I love my wife, but the attention is mad necessary. And after that I go home to her."

"I know she do this for a living, and I don't mind funding her shoe fetish cuz she fulfills my azz fetish."

Dudes talk all day about how they just want to have sex with different women, without any commitments, they want it all the time, they go to drastic measures for a mere dick suck.

Men want intimate contact, want to be fulfilled, want to feel sexually accomplished, constantly.

And we're the needy ones??

A Dream Best Left Deferred...Some Ole Snoopy Bullshit

PS...This version actually has an ending. Effing Blogger...


Today, for the first time in all my almost 30 years...I loaded the ice...

...firmly held down the, umm, poker, thingy...

...and cranked the hell out of the, um, cranker doodah.

And shit was no easy Peanuts my friends, but trust, Wise is living proof that it is never too late to fulfill your dreams.

And today I was indoctrinated into the world of an American iconoclast...





I FINALLY fcuked with a Snoopy Snow Cone machine!

What in the hell IS that thing?!

Once again, my parents were soooo on the money.

When I was little, I was led to believe that among other heartless limitations, little Jamaican kids don't play with toys...cuz I didn't have none. For birthdays, I got socks. For Christmas, I got draws. And every week we hauled azz to Joann Fabric and every week my mom made me a fly azz dress for church on her Singer.

Not only were sleepovers mostly disallowed unless under extreme circumstances (namely, the case of relatives, or if my mom knew the other kid's mom somehow. I'll never forget that I was one of the only kids not at SC's sleepover in 4th grade, when they watched Top Gun. To this day I've never seen that shit. I'm a grudge-holding hater, yes.)

Wow, that digression was mildly painful.

Anywho...me and my brothers? We didn't get Nintendo until all after the fact. I'm fairly certain Atari skipped over us completely. Ok, we did have Monopoly and Sorry, but we always lost the pieces or the dice after like half a day. And whatever, all I ever really wanted was Operation, anyway!

Cabbage Patch Kids. Forget it.

Barbie spent most of her short bid at our house headless.

And in 2nd grade when I BEGGED for a jheri curl, a wet and wild one like Kiwanda and Juma and dem's, my mother didn't even bother to laugh. I doubt she even dignified my request with any response...except perhaps an all-day Saturday trip to the shop for a press and curl.

Easy Bake Oven...are you effing crazy? "Den we nuh already hah oven???" [translation: we're still paying shit azz Sears for the oven we got!]

We weren't even that broke! At least I don't think we were. I mean, we aint have no snow blower or dish washer or riding lawn more or nothing (I'm pretty sure that's why they had my brothers). But I never saw food stamps until, well, until I was old enough to trick the system into giving me some...

we ain't wear no hand me downs or nothing (until a freak of nature reverse growth spurt found my older brother and I wearing almost the same shoe size. I was so fly in his old Jordans)...

and we brought our lunch to school, we aint get no free breakfast or reduced lunch like the broke kids. [Hold up, that's what Oprah said broke folks need to do, pack lunch. Shit yall, I think we mighta been broke!]

Well for whatever reason, my parents just were not feeling investing in American nonsense. I resented it and them, and had a list of shit that I vowed I'd buy as an adult.

But I gotta tell you, I think they were on to something when they vetoed the snow cone negotiation.

First of all...why did it feel like I was doing reps on the arm lift machine at Lucille Roberts, and not even on the cranker thing, but just on trying to hold down the damn Snoopy face red crusher thing?

And you do all of this for Snoopy to vomit out a spit's worth of slush?? That's it?? This is what I spent hours in my room crying crocodile tears over?? [that last line was not in the original text...but I like it] It so was not even worth the Bacardi Razz I had planned to pour in.

Ok, whatever...I still poured it in and it was good, but Bacardi's good with REGULAR ice...and doesnt require upperbody strength.

This is not what I dreamed of. Lord knows I've spent enough of my adulthood chasing these "when I get old enough" fantasies, but this one should have perhaps just stayed in the annals of my childhood agony.

In all of their anti-American, self-superior, unrelenting West Indianness...my parents were so right.

I was fine without the Snoopy Blow Cone machine. And I'm just fine with just my Bacardi.

Locs Down

Well, this is in fact old news, but for some reason I can't shake the feeling it gives me. [nostalgia sometimes make me nauseous]

So this guy is a young journalist and he's doing a summer internship at Black Enterprise magazine. Before the internship he let them know he has locs and they say that's cool.

Then he gets to the job and starts getting shade that, from what I've read, is both subtle and overt. He is subsequently asked to go clean cut.

He says, No Prob, and now sports a cute brush cut.

No harm no foul, he was cool wit it, he keeps the job, all is well that ends well. And to be sure, I wish to foster neither a dialogue nor debate about whether he should or should not have cut it. That's his grown man prerogative, and he did what he had to do.

But still, the whole thing just feels, well...icky.

Before you attempt to half-pipe down my throat, I am well-versed in the corporate American culture. I get it. Well, I get that it exists, but it's the subtext that I'm not feeling. And particularly so from this particular company.

[And now for a personal anecdote from the vaults of Wise's private historiography]

My first job out of college was at a TV network in NYC. It was magical walking into that newsroom on my first day...well, night. I started off working on the overnight news programs. So it's just before my 9pm start time and I walk in, and...um, am I in the right place??? Why there so many, brothas...and sistas up in here?! I was under the impression (and experience) that I'd be one of a palm full at most.

It was like Soul Plane up in there. I was stunned. So when I was promoted to dayside, I realized just how isolating the overnight really is...namely that that's where they store the black folks for safe keeping...cuz dayside wasn't having them. FINALLY I was back to being a token. Whew!

Yet there's a twist... there are also a few tokens in key positions. Assignment editors and such. And to be sure, they are of the fiercely loyal variety. And they are also decidedly, and as I had come to expect, of the citrus complected variety. [No offense to my light skinnded contingency. I'm a chocolate sis, but got no issues in that regard...however, my bosses REALLY did. That's another hellish story for another day]

As usual, I digress...

So the thing about working overnights is that for all the free time that you have during the daylight hours, it doesn't really translate into free personal time. No meeting your friends for 1/2-off appetizer dinners in midtown, no scheduled TV time (I was dying! Barely had time to set the damn VCR to tape shit!)

No time to do my hair, even.

But I lived in Brooklyn, and I had a more convenient personal option. One day right after work I jumped on the BK-bound Q train, woke up in time to hop off at Dean St and heard music to my ears...

"Haaahh brrrraydee, Meez?"

[translation... "Hey sis, I can tell you out here hustling just like me...but your shit is tired. Come let the Africans hook you up wit some braids. We got bout 7 chicks ready to braid you all at once. You'll be done in an hour."]

Why, yes. Thank you.

So I'm on dayside now, and I got braids right, and I'm actually making it to work on time every morning bec there is no curling iron to contend with (sue me, I'm a perm girl). And I look real fly too, cuz the braids are the same length as my natural hair, and very well groomed and beautiful. Well worth the 7 hours in that God forsaken chair listening to the girls cuss me out in Wolof and broken French for not washing my hair beforehand.

So one day the exec producer of the evening news requests a sit down with me. We hit it off immediately. He's a very tough, very fair man, who called me a "Pistol"...which I surmised was Baby Boomer white-speak for what today's corporate climbing black girl would be called "sassy" or "energetic." He liked me.

When word got back to one of the Light Bright Assignment Editors about our meeting, she dismissed it as the boss just "needing to figure out the girl with the braids."

I was stunned. Clearly she was hating...she had never made any effort to be supportive, accessible or even cordial to me or any of the other 'Of Colors' there. She may as well have been grey.

But clearly, there was also probably some truth to it. She had been there a while. I'm sure she'd seen many like me come and go. And obviously she played the game well enough to climb to where she sat comfortably (or so she thought. She got reassigned shortly thereafter).

I pondered what that meant. Was it possible for my hair to eclipse my performance? Was that all they saw ...my impossibly sharp parts brandishing my impossibly clean scalp, and not my consistently improving output and work ethic? I didn't put it past them. That's what they're taught...myopic, asinine manners of categorizing and judging black folks. Hell these were the same people who hired only gay black men, in an effort I imagine, to keep the fast tail black girls still.

I expected that from them.

I expect something different from Black Enterprise, but should I?

What the articles don't point out is that this young man, who I've met on several occasions, is an officer in the organization that reps his fellow black journos. His behavior and reputation is intrinsically linked to that position. He's also from Atlanta, so had he been sent packing that woulda been tough I'm sure on his housing, his summer dough, not to mention school credit perhaps.

I think those things are relevant to note, but at the end of the day he valued the job more than the aesthetic. [I could see if his shit was a mess, but damn!]

He chose his battles closely.

But should BE even have put up the dukes under these pretenses? I think THAT'S what's bugging me. Should a young man, an INTERN no less, be forced to make this decision? Is it fair to assume that an internship is fertile ground for growth and understanding what you do and don't want out of a career?

And while BE appears to side with Hampton Univ, which also bans its Business School students from wearing locs...in an attempt to align more closely with the "realities" of Corporate America...is it actually perpetuating the same short-sighted culture blockers as the white boys?? (And why is a messy perm with ends doing a full split, and new growth piled high to heaven ok on the job???)

I dunno. It's complex. There are lots of black pros who wear locs and are accepted as such with no problems.

Then there are others who insist that you shouldn't give white people a reason not to hire you. To me, if that's the *reason* then for all I know the reason I got hired could be nothing more than a free pass for the boss to jack off to the sight of my azz swaying daily.

I tend to agree with Susan Taylor and Essence who suggest perhaps bringing in image consultants to our black biz schools and train on personal grooming. Lawd knows, us perm girls could use the help, too.

Bottom line...as a subscriber to Black Enterprise, I'm a bit disappointed. I mean, I think it's bizarre...a black publication forces a kid make that kind of decision and all, but he's an adult. He doesn't need a pat on the back for choosing to stay on the books. [hmmm, can you collect unemployment if you get fired from a paid internship??]

But as I open up this month's issue as I do every month, I believe I have found the true root of my unease with this whole thing...

HAVE YOU SEEN THE HAIR ON EAR.L GRAVES, SR. (BE Publisher) ??? [tried to post it but blogger be trippin]

YO, in the July issue my man has on a ski helmet and his super-burly side burns are clamoring for attention even underneath the ear straps! Good Lawd!

THIS muhfucka has the audacity to tell somebody about grooming?? GTFOH!

And before you say, "Mr. Graves has earned his right to wear his face fur in any manner that he sees fit. He has sustained a respectable career and is a pioneer in this industry"...

I don't give a good gotdam. He has sustained a respectable career and is a pioneer in this industry, and he has been a black man even longer than that...he oughta know better!

Perhaps he just likes to remind his staffers they always have a long way to grow before they reach his "status."

Like a Fat Kid Loves Cake*

While I would normally find no greater joy than to rip this guy a new one, he's cool, and his dilemma's really not that bad at all. :)

Why then the venom? Cuz I'm back, nggaz.

Now. So a very charming, overwhelmingly self confident young man...let's call him "Cake"... sent me the following email:


"So I really ...really ....really like this girl. She has everything that any man would want in a wife, but settling down isn't for me right now but in like a few months...after I cut some things off (u know what I mean... [editor's note... he means he's got other pussy on his radar] ) I think i'll probably ask her to be my girlfriend... am I a bad person?"

At first I couldn't understand why Cake would feel like a bad person for coming to this admission. So I probed and got to the bottom of his issue...

1. He isnt sure that the whole one-woman-man role is for him.
2. He's made it very clear to this girl that he's single and mingling.
3. He wants to buy some time in order to chase cat before he commits to this particular girl

Where to begin...

First let me shout out the honorable Epsilonicus (and I hope he's not shy), who captured my attention and my genuine sympathy when he stated on his blog...

"I found a person I would like to spend the rest of my life with, I just dont want the rest of my life to start now." [ps...he's not "Cake"]

That's some real shit right there. He's young, but he's wise. But young. :(

Despite the youthful glean in my eyes and my overall annoying underage appeal, I'm not feeling so young these days. 30 is a stone's throw away. And I've been the girl in Cake's situation.

Yup that's me...Wise, The Dream Girl. The woman that any man...yadda yadda yadda. That's what My Dream Boy told me the day we met. That's what he told me the day he killed it...and then the day we reconnected and then the day I put a knife in it for good.

Thing is, he was that guy for me too...the guy I could see myself riding out with. Yadda, yadda, yadda...

So to me, when he came with that, "I still love you," shit, it is was just shit...bec it was followed by a "BUT."

Basically, Cake is saying, 'I want her...BUT I want her to wait while my dick simmers in a steamy stew of other brawds.'

I told Cake that this was actually one of the more sophisticated hustles you dudes have going. Any old muhfucker can't pull this one off. And to be sure, the Wonder Woman you sell it to must be of a particular breed as well.

Dude has to at least appear sincere. Perhaps it's bec he's not trying to bone me, but as talented and down to earth as he is, Cake has never appeared to me like anything more than in proud and constant pursuit of panties. A normal guy. So it took me a second to validate his claims.

However, the woman in question was far less perplexing. It is well documented that she is the proverbial "Fat Kid" in this scenario...she loves her some Cake.

Is Cake a bad guy? Hell naw, I don't think so.

But when he asked me what's so wrong with having his cake and eating it too, he became suspect.

This is the hustle. And it's almost foolproof...except I'm Wise, ngga! Can't fool me.

This goes quite well with the whole nice guy tactic, you know the one, offer the allusion of honesty (is it really honest if it's only 1/2 the truth?) and you will be exempt from any further explanation, responsibility and accountability.

If you tell her you're single, she has no choice but to allow you to plow thru piles of puss.

Tell her you really like her, but aren't ready to settle down...and you can stroke conscience-free, while she's somewhere emotionally distraught, mad that this is the consequence of having half of you. Never on her terms. Yours always.

Cake knows that he's leading her on, but he's got an alibi. The kicker though, is that he "really ...really ....really likes this girl."

So I'm not sure what to make of this. I'm not naive enough to believe that my own personal rationalization is sufficient. If I really ...really ....really like someone, I'm not concerned with the cock crosstown. That's just me.

Don't know what to tell him...cuz I know that too much cake sends me to the crapper.

*shoot me dead if I quote a gorilla with a speech impediment ever again.

How Many of Us Have Them

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want any more friends.

Wait, I take that back, I have recently re-opened enrollment for new ones, but realize that the friends I got are an effing handful. In a good way.

My best friend Wiz and her husband were in town the other day. We always manage to miss each other on these weekend visits, and we almost did this time, but we managed to slide in a few margaritas after her midnight flight in, before my 7am flight out.

She and I took this photo (which I been trying to post, but blogger be trippin) in 1986, at the Air and Space museum in Ottawa. [Raise your hand if you didn’t peg me for a black girl with a white best friend?] The remarkable thing about it is that neither one of us looks much older today than we do in this pic. And I think we both knew that 20 years later we would still be as close as two grade schoolers in a mock space shuttle.

Fast fwd to last weekend. 4th of July. Houston. I went under the guise of the Essence fest, when in essence I barely made a cameo at the damn event. Sure I had some clients in town and all that, but really, I went for rehab purposes.

My college buddy Entourage has a corporate crib down there and was nice enough to let me crash while he lived it up with his boys in Vegas for the weekend.

You remember your last few weeks of undergrad when you found yourself getting drunk with mad white kids (ok…unless you went to say, Grambling) and other nameless folks you never spoke to in four years? Well, we had a habit of nicknaming, and it was mad nostalgic for Entourage and I to spend our last night of college in the bar looking around at “Soccer Boy,” “Fresh Face,” “Dick Still in Her” and the like. So imagine our surprise when “Porn Star” comes over to us and says, “Dude, I just have to tell you guys, you two are the cutest couple on campus. And that’s what we’ve been calling you for four years…”Cutest Couple on Campus.”

We didn’t have the heart to tell him we weren’t boning. EVER.

So I stayed in Houston an extra day after he got back to town from Vegas, just so we could hang out. My last night in town, instead of hitting up downtown like we had planned, he and I ended up on his couch watching all three discs of that Denis Leary show on FX “Resc.ue Me.”

Forget that the show is effing brilliant, the company was worth every minute I was laid over traveling back to NY. I would travel around the world for his friendship.

Rewind to before Entourage got back, I met up with my girl Mack from Dallas by way of Little Rock. She’s a relatively new friend, a couple years deep, but a real one nonetheless. I'll never forget the time my ex-biz partner cleared out our biz account a few minutes before I had made it to the ATM that morning. It was rent time, and I was on my way out of town, so needless to say I was distraught. Then after the confrontational phone call, punctuated by threats of a lawsuit, I made a phone call of my own...to Mack...who stayed on the phone with me all night long, because my nerves wouldn't allow me to rest.

She and I have been thru lots, so hanging with her in Houston was right on time. We were under the assumption that Houston would do its best New Orleans impression and host sexy black folks drinking in the streets until dawn. Didn't happen. In fact, not the even the normally generous, hot Texas sun had the decency to show up.

But we made a phone call and got the hook up on the haps for the night. The directions were on point, and when we pulled up and were shut out of the already packed club, me, Mack and Ms. Living Single made do. We navigated through a full azz parking lot, a long azz line, a high azz cover charge, and a heavy azz downpour...and found a our way to tequila.

Then we managed to find a party that was relentless in pumping that NY shit...ya know, Biggie, Jigga, WuTang, Tribe, Busta. Biz on the wheels. And it was at this spot that this boy with one crazy grey eye, came up behind me, holds me by the hips, starts dancing, while trying to subtly unzip my pants. [Had it been a different club in a different city with a different ngga, I mighta been wit it...]

I can honestly say that I feel like I've found a new friend in LS. First of all, she's beautiful, which always makes for a good time out. But the girl can party! She brought the spirit of N.O., her town, to Texas, and I had a ball dipping in and out of clubs with her. But she will be the first to tell you that Houston is on some bullshit packing up the liquor at 2am on the dot.

It's not always easy to find kindred spirits. People who appreciate quality television, quality margaritas, offer quality compassion, and like a quality party!

I don't know about you, but most of the people I've met in the past five years, just been on some other shit. Trying desperately hard to be what they're not. Hating. Having no clear goals beyond retail gratification and tricking. No balance.
I admit that most of my friends were prefabricated. I either grew up with them, or went to grade school alongside them. Lifers. And those friendships have all grown and morphed into entities that reflect the growth and metamorphoses of our lives. I don't talk to them daily, or even weekly in most cases. But when we get together it still feels like home.

To the point where I feel like I don't know how to make new friends. First off, I'm an enigma...people can't figure me out. I'm an anti-social party girl, fluent in Latin and hood, a conservative slut, a liberal celebate, a drunken church girl with a dirty mouth, a generous heart and anger management issues. A writer who'd rather watch reruns than line edits. An ambitious procrastinator. Sincere and sarcastic. A Jamaican who don't smoke.

If I could be my own best friend I would.

I saw Whodini live the other day...they inspired me to emerge however briefly from my blog slump. I could go on forever about my(self) Friends.