Harlem: On Being Home & Belonging

 "Harlem was home; was where we belonged; where we knew and were known in return; where we felt most alive; where, if need be, somebody had to take us in. Harlem defined us, claiming our consciousness and, I suspect, our unconsciousness." ~ Ossie Davis 

The other day I got home from the gym and opened my mailbox to find my lease renewal form waiting for me.  Though my lease isn’t up until the end of June, I had expected to see the paperwork fairly early this year. (My building has recently switched owners causing quite a bit of ruckus in the process.) As I ripped open the envelope, I stilled myself in preparation for the increase in rent.  (NYC rent is NOT a game.) As I peered down at the number for my rent I blew out a breath coming to the realization that after two years in my little studio, it is no longer feasible to continue living here. (Not in this little space for that much money.) I knew then that I would be moving. Only three more months in my first real big girl dwelling, a home that I’ve called my own.

Two years ago, after finishing undergrad at NYU, I went back to my hometown for a little bit, biding my time until I could move back to NYC to begin my graduate studies at Columbia.  Even then it was Harlem over any other neighborhood that had been calling my name.

Except for the four years that I spent at NYU, I’ve always lived in neighborhoods that have been “isolated”; cut off if you will, from the rest of the city. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago, almost as east as one could get. (Damn near in the lake if you know anything about Chicago’s geography.)  99% of the people in my neighborhood and the surrounding areas were brown people. I went to an all black preschool, elementary school, and middle school. In the majority of the activities that I participated in (bougie block parties, Girl Scout sessions, forced basketball lessons) the people that I interacted with looked like me. It's difficult to understand how comforting that is until you no longer have that blanket of protection. Until you’re the only Black person in the room. ( A near constant state of being for me during the past six years.)

In high school my horizons were opened in the best way possible. I realize in retrospect how rare that type of “diversity” actually is.  I would take an express bus from 67^th Street and Jeffery until 110^th street in downtown Chicago (no stops in between) and transfer over to a train that dropped me off near my school on the near north side.  This was my comfortable cushy ass experience from birth until 18 years of age when I moved to NYC to begin my freshman year at NYU.

Thinking I was destined to live like a young chocolate Carrie Bradshaw I was in for a rude awakening. First I had to contend with being the only black girl in my year for my program and when I went to Duane Reade (Walgreens) I could find nary a hair product that I recognized to tame my kinks and curls.  My frustrations of course didn’t end there, but as I got older and I hope a bit wiser I started to find my niche and seek out my own group of friends.

But then there were those days, days that I still have every now and then when I just wander about the city, people watching and contemplating. On days like those I always seemed to drift towards Harlem. I know people feel that same way about Brooklyn and other hoods, but with Harlem the history was always so prevalent in my mind. The Garvey parades in the 1930’s, sites and locations from Malcolm X’s autobiography. The apartment parties during the Renaissance. The places and spaces where Hughes, Hurston and McKay talked, wrote, lived and experienced.  Not too far from Columbia, it was the ideal place for me to end up.

116th and Lenox, Last Sunday

Harlem is familiar; it’s always been just like home. I feel as at ease here as I felt standing on the bus stop at 69^th and Jeffery back home or when I spent summer days lounging about at 63^rd street beach listening to the men drumming as I ate jerk chicken and rice. Nowadays much of my time is spent on express trains running from 59^th Street to 125^th Street (no stops in between). As the train hurtles towards my stop, towards my home, I never feel isolated I simply feel freer.

As June 30^th quickly approaches, I have some decisions to make. I’m open to the world (or at least that’s what I keep telling myself), but the truth, is I’m not sure if Brooklyn or LA will ever measure up to the love I have for Harlem or even for my hometown. Right now all of that is up in the air.

People ask me why Harlem, why am I so attached? It’s because of my history and my people and the fact that it’s always embraced me without judgment. I’ve never felt the isolation that I felt when living in the West Village. In my fellow Harlemites I see my family and my friends.  In these past couple of years I’ve had some crazy experiences and I’ve learned a lot about myself. One thing though is for certain; Harlem has never asked me to be anybody I’m not.

xoxoxo Chocolate Girl in the City xoxoxox

In my Mother's house, there's a photograph of a day gone past...always makes me laugh.

Home

Once again like I always do, I will ask that you excuse me for slipping into oblivion. I have a legitimate excuse this time.  a lot has happened, much has changed, things have shifted. By the skin of my narrow Black ass I manage to finished my Master's classes with A's and B's (some I deserved and some I didn't). Once again I find myself back in my hometown. The the place where I grew up is forever changing and yet, always the same. Its strange being here again, surrounded by memories, and moments just out of reach in this empty house. I'm not alone, not really, my sister is ever present, my family is in and out helping us pack up and purge and reminisce. But its not the same as it once was,not really. My dad isn't in the den on the green leather couch watching Pride and Prejudice on an endless loop. Its Sunday today, so my mama would have been making pancakes, loudly laughing on the phone, gossiping with some sister or some friends. Its not quite noon yet so I would have just been waking, the smells of butter and sausages would have assaulted my senses drifting upward into my third floor lair.

Instead, I've been up for hours. It cold here and silent. Though my favorite season is rapidly approaching I've been fiddling with the thermostat this last week or so. When I yell up to my sister about this thing or that the echo of my voice beams through the house. An echo that hadn't been there before. Its empty because they're gone. They've left this world.

I remember before my mom passed nearly three years ago I had a lot of fears. Like small anxieties that would burden my heart (I randomly developed a fear of flying and I was scared to drive on the highway because I was sure that I was going to get hit by a truck.) After she passed none of those fears consumed me anymore. There wasn’t much left that could hurt me, that could affect me so drastically. My dad passed just over three months ago. Ironically, I’ve been on more planes than I can think this year and its only May. My reactions to both of my parents deaths are strange and honestly I feel like I don’t speak about them much. My mom passed and I had to be be back at school nine days later. I was going into my junior year in college. I got the call about my dad in between my two mandatory three hours Master’s film studies classes. I hopped on a plane shortly thereafter. It was a Tuesday, I was back in class Monday. I didn’t really cry with my dad, still haven’t shed too many tears. Maybe its because I feel that funerals are these contrived things, like people carry on and on and act so upset but I think to myself, where was all this emotion when the person was living.

            I guess the real reason that I'm writing this post is because, people go through things, but the world keeps turning, The city wakes from its slumber, holidays and birthdays and heartbreak and vacations and the whole still come and go year after year.   What's left behind after a person leaves is just their stuff. I've pulled out trinkets and china sets and clothing from the eighties and pictures of my mom's old boyfriends and sing-along from my childhood. And they've stacked up. In the kitchen, living room, dining room, basement.  Things long forgotten about or things simply meant to be displayed, never touched, or handled or really seen.  These things just become stuff, some things sentimental and worth saving and others better off with someone who really needs them. Some family that could really make use of them.

I've been dreading coming back here, probably since my mother died. My parents were mini- hoarders and the house is large enough to hold a lot of stuff without it outwardly appearing cluttered. In these last two weeks My sister and I have waded our way through the books and the paintings and the nick knacks. Strangely, though its been difficult, we haven't felt the need to keep much because I guess we know that this wasn't them, not really.

A part of me is itching to get back to New York, to my life and my apartment away from the things left behind. And another part, albeit a smaller part never wants to leave this place, the laughter and Christmas parties and the teenage standoffs between my mama and myself. My dad praying in the background or reading his Qu'ran. It was always home even when it got really bad.  It'll never be the same though.  I just bag things up and wrap the fragiles with care. And as this old life fades, this childhood days, these memories, I think how lucky I've been and all the experiences that have yet to come.  I try not to dwell in sadness or negativity, because that's more crippling than the empty house and the cold spaces.

The house will be on the market soon, so these are probably some of the last weeks I'll spend in it. I've only ever lived here (Until I moved for college and grad school). I think what I've learned out of losing both of them is how to let go, of bad memories and meaningless things, and people who weigh you down. Because life is too short and so precious. Why waste it grasping on to what is no longer there or even worse what was never there to begin with.

Instead I'll remember this

I stayed with some beads in my head lol. They even had the foil at the end.

and this

Look at sister!! LMAO she's exactly the same.

and when I hand over the keys to a new family where they can grow and share their memories, it'll be a tough day but I won't regret it.  I've somehow managed to press on, to build a full life for myself and the best thing I know to do for them is continue to live it.

xoxoxox Chocolate Girl In the City xoxoxox

My Love Affair With New York City

A city like New York, where everything's moving all the time at this constant driving place. Its like a live in organism, breathing and changing and over time your relationship to it becomes like this incredible romance. At first its intoxicating then instant and then slowly it becomes comfortable and safe. You have this cellular connection to it as if you've known each other forever like your oldest happiness. And sometimes you're on the outs and sometimes you're makings up and every now and then you catch yourself in this transcendent moment when you think to yourself..... Oh my God I'm madly in love with you.... and I always will be. -------(Dawson's Creek)

There's this episode of Sex and the City ("Anchors Away Season 5 Episode 1), Carrie is single again after her final disaster with Adien, she begins to look for the city for romance. She meets this beautiful sailor and he tells her he doesn't understand what she sees in the city. Though he's beautiful and sweet shes offended because New York has been there for her when no one else has.

I must say that I've been on the both sides of that issue. Growing up, I had this romanticized vision of what NYC was, I was drawn to it and once I got into college there I knew that's where  I had to be. Fresh faced and naive, I arrived in the fall of 2008 for my freshman year and my romanticized illusions were immediately popped. I can't blame the city entirely for this, I had personal circumstances to deal with and I had gone to NYC all alone, with no one but myself to lean on. I missed Chicago, so much i could hardly breathe at times. All through my first year of college, I felt that the city, my university and the people surrounding me were surely going to suffocate me. Not one to give up easily, I returned for a second year and because of my incredible roommate and becoming more involved, I slowly let the city in.

My true love affair, didn't begin until last year. My life, though still quite chaotic was slowly giving me a path to navigate through, I surrounded myself with incredible peole and I became intune with the city, slowly embracing what it had to offer. As I return for my final year, I reflect upon those days when I felt lost and sufficated and how I've come so far from that.

So Ninja's Are Sucking Toes In the Club Now ?

Bleech !!!!!!

(Ninja's are my replacement for the n word, courtesy of VerySmartBrothas, tryna still keep it ladylike :))

So the other night against my knowledge I was lured out to the hood clubs on the far South Side. I was initially horrified when I learned we were going to The Factory, smh.

It's a strip club 90% of the time and they have no liquor license SMH

(But as my bestie says I can't be bougie all of my life.)

Why can't I be bougie? Whitley was and she still found her Dwayne.

Anywhoo by the time we arrived I was excited (or the alcohol had excited me) only to have my bubble burst because there was a fifty dollar cover, yeah we definitely weren't paying that. Our plan B was to head over to Adrianna's where my beloved Rick Ross was suppose to be making an appearance. However, upon our arrival we learned that they had a forty-five dollar cover. (We promptly made a U-TURN). Plan C, we headed to Mr. Ricky's (yes I know, but it was an experience I shan't soon forget).

Despite the fact that the club was extremely female heavy (and pretty empty because of a shooting a few weeks ago) and there was a plethora of women tryna win $500 from Mr. Ricky himself by disgracing themselves on the pole, my besties and I still managed to get Mr. Ricky himself to buy us drinks. I think its mostly because our wardrobe hadn't come out of Rainbow, nor did we have on purple lace wigs.  After asking each of us our individual signs (SIDE EYE), he tried to convince us to get on the pole saying that we were bashful and that it was classy and  would attract men. I rolled my eyes at him, and told him, "It is not classy and I have a father."  Anywhoo, on the the toe sucking. (I shan't name any names). The besties and I were chillin at a booth, sipping on our drinks and feeling bad for the girl who literally fell off the pole when a quite drunken gentleman approached my very flyy and fabulous friend and asked if he might give her a foot massage, and did we want one also. Though the bestie and I declined, my fab friend obliged the man's wishes and he had her shoe off before he could even sit down good. The bestie and I sat together chatting and looking around, (You know doing the usual avert the eyes so not to cockblock) as my eyes shifted I suddenly realized that the man had my fab friends toes in his mouth and he was slipping off her other shoe to get to her other foot. The bestie and I realized with horror what we were witnessing. Coming to the realization that no sane ninjas were going to approach our booth with the freaky fool attached to my friends foot, the bestie and I jumped out of the booth and sat at the table directly behind it. The foot rubbing and toe sucking continued on for about fifteen more minutes, until we were given the signal to go and rescue my friend from the freaky fool. (During the toe sucking extravaganza a bouncer came past the booth and I guess he approved of what he saw because he didn't stop the fool). I'm writing about this hilarious adventure because it got me thinking that the thirst is real (as my cousin said). I'm not gonna say that men are the only ones out here thirsty and desperate, because well a woman astronaut drove across the country in a diaper for some man that didn't know she existed.  However, if you really want to meet a woman or even get in her pants, whatever happen to dinner and a movie, or even just drinks? Toe sucking from the get-go it just a bit much LMAO. Anyway it was a epic end to a Chicago summer, back to NYC in a few. xoxoxoxoxoxo Chocolate Girl In the City xoxoxoxoxoxo P.S. Why isn't the entire series of A Different World on DVD? annoyed.