I wrote this a month after beginning Tell Me a Story which is on hiatus until August 2013.
Author Archives: charitythomas
Good Wife past good
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GOOD WIFE SUPERB.
I’ve been saying for ages that NBC was trying to go out of business. I began thinking that when they murdered Heroes for no good reason other than lack of vision and greed. Then 30 Rock ended and I realized it was the only show I watched on NBC, which used to be my favorite network. The peacock is dead.
The problem is that I bet they’re tough and sinewy. Unless it’s one of those fat bankers, they must be delicious.
I think I might be fucked
Calamity Jane: Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fucking live.I just want to write down a bunch of curse words and write fucked up stories with fucked up people. But I guess I can’t get there cause I keep getting myself fucked. Not in the carnal sense (today) but in the metaphysical sense I guess. I keep creating situations in my head that are preposterous so I can keep myself busy cause I’m bored out of my mind. I just want to party and bullshit right now.
The good thing is that I am keeping busy and feel like I’ve reconnected with my purpose in life. The thing I like best but would be considered the bad thing is that I’m also setting myself up for a mighty fall. I’m not using the minuscule amount of self control over my thinking on certain things and it’s really affecting my life.
Firstly, I’ve got to go to work soon. This is really some bullshit and besides the fact that right now I feel all production people should be fucked, I don’t want to do that. I just don’t want to have to go pretend that I give a fuck about Pizza Hut, or Mastercardor anyone who has more money than me. I’m sick of pretending at all and since I’m doing it less and less, I’m getting much better at speaking my real mind and watching people look at me in horror.
Secondly, my own mind is full of rage, lust, sloth and abject hedonism. Rage and lust apparently go everywhere together. They’re almost inseparable right now. I never would have guessed them for a couple. But since my lust has a crazy component right now, I just have to write it out and see if I can find a website sick enough to print it. I’m making that sound worse than what I’ve written, but not what I’ve thought. My rage is so all emcompassing it can only be satisfied by lust.
Lust, well it’s always more difficult isn’t it. Lust (or lechery) is an inordinate craving for sexual intercourse often to the point of assuming a self-indulgent, and sometimes violent character (Wikipedia). But there’s a component of affection there, supposedly. In order to make the emotion of affection dissapate, I now rely on the lust. But sometimes, when my heart does go a flutter, I flirt with a stranger or spend some serious quality time with myself and computer. I can’t deal with “feelings”; I’m learning, but I’m slow learning.
Sloth and hedonism, well they’re pretty well matched. I did buy that bottle of Jameson along with other choice fun aides and nothing lasted two days. Two days? And I didn’t share but a drop with anyone else. Then the next week brought about sake Thursday. I’ve apparently created a song and dance revolving around the nectar of the small isle.
But see, I’m still pussyfooting around what it is that I want to say. I’m not telling the whole truth. Maybe I’ve gotten so good at it that there is no whole truth with me anymore.
But I know one thing, I hate being told what to do and if you want something done you need to do it yourself. That’s abstract. I’m in a constant tug of war with my friend and basically pusher of alcohol over the contents of my soul. Or at least my allegiances, or my loyalty. But what she wants is obedience and a reflection of herself as all saving saint that I know is false and therefore can’t trust. I’m always a player in the dramas that ensue around her. I try to stay away, but I’m so bored and I want to be with my friends…so I succumb. Then she’ll try to help me with something or start pouting cause she’s left out or try to find a way to manipulate a situation to create some drama. I’m so sick of it. Now she wants me to clean something that’s been dirty for years because she wants it done now. Fuck that. I’m not her kid. I’m not A kid.
When we met I was much more fucked than I am now (which is saying a lot). I had a neediness on me that reeked. When I’m reading my old journals it’s the same ole thing: I wish I had money, I wish I had a boyfriend, I’m so lonely, some strange guy was here this morning, smoked too many cigarettes today, I’m fat, I’m so lonely- because I’m fat…it goes on and on for years like that.
Then suddenly there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it was full of booze and it gave me a bunch of people I like a lot and some, not too much. But I stayed cordial. Well, even my cordial is getting thin. I don’t have anything to lose so much and I’m sick of being manipulated. I’m really sick of being needed in a way that makes me feel like I’m constantly in a turtleneck. Everythingsmushed, tits, throat.Sometimes I think I’ll just stay away forever. But I know I can’t. That would freak me out more than anything else. I do change slow. When I learn slow, I synthesize. I’m still not even telling the whole truth, but at least I posted today.
Chapter I- Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile: Black Manhood Part 3
Baby Boy, like Menace discusses the nihilist worldview of young black men, only it speaks more to the sexual obsessions of the men who feel they have no control over their lives. Jody is introduced to the audience as an adult embryo in the womb. His life is that of a child with the ability to spread his seed throughout the neighborhood. Upon returning from a brief incarceration, he returns to his childhood room with nothing to do but have sex, live off of his two ‘baby mammas’ and his own mother. His maternal dependency is replicated within his two sexual relationships. He expects these women to provide for him and when they do not he accuses them of not caring for him. His mother is portrayed as young mother trying to still have a life after raising her son to adulthood. She insists that he grow up, but it is obvious he hasn’t been given the skill set to do so. Like Caine at the end of Menace, Jody wants to do something, but does not know how or what and is not given any guidance. Jody’s identity is his sexuality — like Caine and Sweetback before him. When confronted by Yvette, his main ‘baby momma’, about the reality of his cheating, unproductive economic situation and his life in general, he flees and begins a new sexual relationship. He ultimately does not complete his new sexual transaction, but the compulsion to gain a sense of power through sexual means shows his immature emotional development. For hooks, “Equating manhood with fucking, many black men saw status and economic success as synonymous with endless sexual conquest” (Cool 71). Jody seems to solve his problems through his ability to sexually satisfy young women. The young men in these films are moving through life with no sense of a non-sexualized self. Even attempting emotional equality, communicative intimacy or reciprocal vulnerability is outside of their frame of reference. Lack of emotional maturity cannot be seen as simply a symptom of the hip-hop generations’ youth. When looking for contemporary models of behavior, Spike Lee (with his proliferation of black visual images) is poignant because despite his sexism, as an older member of the hip-hop generation, his view on manhood is highly regarded. When applied to representations of older black men the hip-hop generationers could emulate, the same behaviors exist even in the absence of financial and social woes.
Chapter I- Never Trust a Big Butt and a Smile: Black Manhood Part 2
In films such as Menace II Society and Baby Boy, black male sexuality is defined by and for young men through peer interactions and emulations. There are adult males present in these films but the peer-oriented nature of the male fraternization is poignant. “Women are discussed as less valuable than drugs and money, including endless references to Black women as ‘bitches,’ ‘hos,’ and “skeezers.’ Furthermore, abusive and violent language is used indiscriminately to describe all women, including those with whom the leading characters were most intimate” (Kitwana 130). These films show a cross section of class representations yet at base black male sexuality is still closely linked to a nihilistic thug mentality. The nihilism of the male characters in terms of love, which has more to do with sex than any emotional vulnerability, is representative in their relationships with women.
In Menace II Society, the relationship between Caine and Ronnie is the only space Caine receives any loving care. Caine’s life is one of violence and a general disregard for human life. Only in his relationship with Ronnie does he find a safe harbor where he can open himself up emotionally and attempt to lovingly care for someone else. Nelson George writes, “Without sucking her teeth or flaunting a ‘ghetto’ accent, [actress Jada] Pinkett’s Ronnie shows the growth of an urban woman child from gangster moll to suddenly mature mother. As a homegirl free of clichés Pinkett gives Menace a feminine souls and offers Caine salvation, both romantically and with her dream of them building a life…” (204). While Ronnie’s love and affections offer Caine a place to explore his own vulnerabilities. (It is important to note George’s prescribed idea of black female behavior. Being without “homegirl clichés” defines her as mature.)
Street life leaves no room for vulnerabilities and Ronnie’s love cannot erase Caine’s past. Despite all of the murder he has both borne witness to and participated in, it is his creation of life that ultimately leads to his own murder. Caine’s sexuality was not like Sweetback in that Sweetback’s “ability to perform skillfully require[d] the discipline of a soldier intent upon killing the enemy; such a performance cannot be interpreted as primitive lust nor a reflection of emotional desire” (Reid 77). Caine’s primitive existence is based only on desire. All things and people become material to satisfy his lust. When a young woman he casually had sex with calls him crying, telling him she’s pregnant; he dismisses her after questioning the paternity of the child because he has no regard for anything outside of his desires. She was a receptacle of his desire and is now the potential mother of his unborn child.
Kitwana observes that “[a]lthough the stigma has retreated, the expressions ‘baby momma’ and ‘baby daddy’ point to the antagonism brewing between young Black men and women who make these dubious social connections” (116). The “baby mama/ daddy” situation agitates the already precarious relationship between black men and women. Unwed parenthood is not hip-hop generation specific, its lack of stigma is. For Caine, the price of this “dubious social connection” is death, as violence ultimately was the answer for an ill-fated sexual encounter. He was not afforded the opportunity to live with the consequences of his actions, unlike Jody in Baby Boy.
Working Class Sha(wo)man 