Gentrification Blues part deux

In the bit about gentrification I kinda glossed over the fight part.

This shit is scary. I’m a little girl (well not little in the Sarah Jessica Parker sense- see other postings) but I’m a girl. These little monkeys are crazy.

It was so easy. I’m rappin' with my homey about the season finale of the most excellent show on television and how mind twisting it was; having a few cocktails and now it's time for a delicious smoky treat.
We’re headed out to smoke and walking talking. There’s this couple hemmed up in the doorway and my homey (I guess I’ll call him BC cause I’m gonna confuse the hell out of myself like that) tries to open the door and tells this little brother he can't do that here. I’m stepping right behind him and the next thing I know is that this little MF is screaming and pushing BC and yelling.
When I told my sister she asked what he was yelling. I said it was unintelligible. "I don't know. Something like 'I’m a man'; ' I got two eyes'; 'I didn't get enough love as a child'; 'peanuts make my feet stink'; 'public education has served me poorly'..." (You get the point. it actually tickled the both of us so we went on for about 5 minutes.)
That’s when BC punched the fuck out of him. I’m running out all Tyler Durden waving my arms yelling "whoa, whoa, whoa" (when he was in front of the van- favorite scene) and screaming for someone to call the police. The supreme queen bartender was on it already as were most of the patrons (the newbies. I do distinctly remember seeing a pair of eyes only peeking over the back of the bar. Like Cleavon Little was gonna come in shouting "where all the white women at?"). I moved through the crowd of ruffians that have BC jammed up against the door to the apt building and that's my turf, so I kinda snapped a little. And remember it was like the Smiths in the Matrix so like a hundred dudes dropped out of nowhere (I think it was like 10 in the end).
So I get in front of BC and put my arms out tiger style and stood in front of him yelling, "STOP!" (Think Gandalf and the dragon thing). Then it was suddenly just the skinny troublemaker woozy looking and rising up in front of me. Then I was suddenly like shit, this kid's gonna hit me. WTF? So before he could fully stand up, I kicked him in the chest. Kinda a bitch move- but I am a girl. I even had on a skirt and my Keds. Then he just staggered away. Remember when the LA cops said that Rodney King was on PCP and acting all hulk-like. Well that's what this kid was like. Just not there.
Then BC calls my attention to the white body being dragged in the street and it's another homey and that's when I started shaking. For some reason that's when it got real. And real scary. He was limp and this kid is a firecracker. These little animals were dragging him in the street. Do they even know the implications of that? I want to drop them in 1950's Mississippi and then we'll see when they drag someone in the street.
This is my home. This neighborhood is where I’ve spent my formative adult years. I’ve become an adult here. Now that's not to say that I haven't been called an ugly bitch from my door to the end of my block. And I was shocked because I’d never been called an ugly anything in my whole life. And ironically enough one of the ruffians was the grownup boy who called me out back then. He’s going to jail. And he has a baby now. Pity. But why come after people who look like you? And despite my animus for the newer residents, I also don't want them to suffer at the hands of "angry black youth" but damn man.

What would Obama do?

But not for me

I’m usually in love with love, but not today. I hate it. I hate it because nobody’s in love with me. It fucking blows. I’m listening to jazz and writing and nobody loves me in the way that would make it where we wake up together tomorrow morning. I’m going to have a house full of my best male friends here tomorrow and my loneliness is echoing to me through this house. Today at the bar there was a couple making out and I wanted to break bottles over their heads. All I can think of is the song “”They’re singing songs of love, but not for me” and I’m fucking pissed. I don’t want to think about it, but there’s no Ginsy or Kerouac to document our ennui right now. And nobody expects a little black girl from the Southside of Chicago to be that mutha fucka, but here I am. Listening to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Eric Satie and writing a little drunk and very pissed off. Why don’t I have a boyfriend? The standard answer is that I’m too fat, but I’m not. I’m the same size as Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot” and she’s (I’m) hot as well. The whole world has been taken over by this ideal that is dedicated to making women weak. And I’m not weak or lame and I don’t weigh 100 lbs. I’d break if I did and I’m a good midwestern girl who doesn’t believe that being skinny is the way to win the world. I’m also too smart to really rally around the idea that that’s what I’m supposed to look like. I prefer Titian to Raphael and more a Titian than a Botticelli. I love the way that I look. I’m healthy and I’m strong. There’s a layer of fat over a ton of muscle and that’s okay. There’s a man out there who thinks I’m the cat’s meow. But when I open my smart mouth it generally turns the whole situation sour. I love being smart almost as I love having big strong thighs. I love pontificating on Foucault and DeBord while showing how jazz music is the equivalent of neo realist philosophy as much as the next guy. I can’t write with music that has words, so I’m infinitely a jazz chick and I’ve added some classical to the mix. But it’s only Satie that moves me in the same way as Miles and Charlie. A little Sergio Mendes is playing now. It has words that I can’t understand, but I can feel them. The beats speak to my African. They got to hold on to the drums. They got to hold on to the movements and the passion of the music. The sensuality of it all. I can’t understand what the words mean and that makes it that much sexier. It’s and ecstasy that can’t b e explained unless you hear it and feel it. It’s shoulders moving. It’s a rolling of the body that Europeans can’t understand because it doesn’t live in their bones. In their spirits. (That’s such bullshit. Even I know that’s not true.)

Take Five is on now. It’s so sexy. It’s sexy because there are all of these random moments in it that sound like they’re just hanging but they’re so on purpose. The piano, the drums, the hanging of the horn. The perfection of it all. It’s short it’s sweet and it’s jazzy without being pretentious.

Now James Ingram is singing. Fuck. What the fuck is this? It’s my favorite song. I remember reading the lyrics in Rap Pages when I was about 8. It’s the song “Never Gonna Let You Go” and it’s ruined my whole life. When you’re sixteen and have “open relationships” with the first lover you’ve ever had, it’s bound to lead to a ton of emotional problems you’re going to pay for later.

I don’t know how to have a relationship. I’m emotionally retarded. I fall in love easily and get hurt almost as easily. I live in NYC and this world is not built for people with compositions as delicate as mine. I’m living in a constant state of fear and resentment and hate. I hate people with money. I hate people who’ve found love. I hate that I’m so fat. I hate a lot of things, but the most is love. There was a couple making out at the bar tonight and then they left in a way I remember and I wished they’d get run down by a car before they got to make it home and consummate the actions they’d begun at the bar. I wanted them to die. I wanted them to die because I didn’t have anyone to love me in the same way.

Is this true?

The street was eerily quiet. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the guy standing across from the bar just standing there. Looking across the street. Peeking around the corner. Watching as the Yeminese closed their shop of wares. Watching as the little Yemeni DEVIL was playing like a true 5 year old and not as the evil little bastard cursing at women in Arabic and today pointing a cane at a man like a gun who’d gone missing a few weeks ago and I was sure that if anyone had stolen him- he’d be back in a few hours probably with some extra cash in his pocket.
But I couldn’t shake the guy across the street. He couldn’t know that I’m the bar’s protector. He would never think that the little brown girl who barely made it through her conditioning class tonight and seemed to be encased in a warm casing of creamy caramel was the one who would murk him out if he tried anything here. I’d just kicked a man in the chest of Friday and I was fully feeling my oats.

But the neighborhood’s changing so much. Any white man can stand on the corner- black men’s corners- and not get noticed. He looked like a rent boy to me. Did he even know what neighborhood he was in?

And then he came into the bar. I was wishing I’d eaten more today cause the two glasses of wine (and maybe the pot I’d smoked a little earlier) were making me a little woozy. I’d only had a few cigs in my pocket and the last one I smoked while talking to my little sister on the cell phone. It did give me the perfect diversion though, since I’d already been staring him down from the bar and when I came out for my first one.
Somewhere between my 1st and 2nd cig he’d moved across the street to sit in the doorway of the store. Looking at his cell phone. I had to know what was up. I had to know if I could go to my apartment and fall into the deep coma like sleep I so desired. But no, I had to wait. Of course I had to wait cause I’m lazy.

There were only a few of us left in the bar. We were actually laughing when the door stormed open and in walks this guy.

Gentrification Blues

I live in Brooklyn. I live in a really beautiful part of Brooklyn. It's near Prospect Park and it used to be populated with really cool people. Until Williamsburg and Lower Manhattan shook itself out into my neighborhood. Key word: NEIGHBORHOOD. I'm neighbors with the people I see and have seen everyday for the last 12 years. I nod "how do" and smile at the people walking down the street. Even if I'm in a shitty mood, I acknowledge the people I see.

Sunday I formally decided to be an urban nuisance. Let me back up. Friday at my favorite bar I kicked a young man in the chest who was going after a friend of mine. Punches in faces, brawling, dragging another friend in the street, police, nothing. The kids, the black kids, were just wildin' out. It felt like when the Smiths descended in the Matrix and there was this kind of hopelessness. Not hopeless because of the fighting situation (my friends weren't badly hurt and said it felt like a bunch of soft punches); but hopelessness over the environment that created these young men. This skinny little thing was a boy. And obviously crazy as hell to go after a man who was at least a head taller than him.

So fast-forward to that Sunday. I'm going to help another friend move back into the neighborhood and as I'm walking to the train a couple comes out of a building on Sterling. They're walking beside me (white man & Asian lady) and I'm bopping along to my walkman (okay- iPod, but walkman shows my age better). The girl starts whispering to the man as we reach a light and they're now trying to get away from me. AWAY FROM ME!!! Dude, I'm so offended. They're the ones walking side by side with me. Then they start walking really fast and I’m like “are you fucking kidding me?” So I start walking faster with them. Step in step. These assholes. Then they start walking slow, and I start walking slow. Now I’m obviously fucking with them. I’m wearing my Howard t-shirt for christssake. And I wanted to fuck with them. I know you think that just because your dumb ass is paying 3x my rent to probably live in ½ my apartment that doesn’t mean you get to be afraid of all black faces. Then these geniuses just stop. I guess they just stopped because by now I’m laughing out loud. But I’m so offended by the behavior of the people who’ve moved here in the last year, priced out the people who built this NEIGHBORHOOD and now think they own it. If you’re that goddamn important then I guess you should have stayed your white asses in Manhattan. And that’s not to be racist- it’s only whites moving here. And they call the places retaining blacks “the bad part” of the neighborhood.
So now the ugly assed glass and steel monstrosity is almost finished and they get to share my gym. This is going to be a real treat. I don’t mind the neighborhood changing, what I mind is the privileged behavior of people who can’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore, came over here cause Miranda moved here on Sex and the City, and give the current residents their asses to kiss.

And NO! It’s not okay to change your baby’s nappy IN THE WINDOW OF A BAR! NOT OKAY!