#MuteRKelly: The Face and Risk to Precocious Black Girls (PBGs)

At 17, I was a Precocious Black Girl (PBG)
I was a teen model.
I was a dancer.
I was an actress.
I was a “free Black girl.”
I was an articulate, cerebral, chess-playing, tarot card reading and intuitive Black girl, with an expansive vocabulary. I was precocious AF.
I am also a survivor of teen sexual harassment by adult men.
Growing up in a middle-class area of Cleveland, Ohio, with both of my biological married parents, I did not fit the “profile” of the typical Black girl. My weekends consisted of attending youth leadership events, visiting the latest exhibit at The Cleveland Museum of Art, hanging out at the local metaphysical shop in Coventry, and sampling the latest Kenyan blend coffee at the trendy Shaker Square coffee shop. I was in Youth and Government, canvassed for Cleveland Councilwoman Fannie Lewis, and would attend public hearings of the Shaker Heights, Ohio City Council. At 17 I had a membership to the Symphony. I was precocious, to say the least.
My precociousness, generally garnered me attention of adults. Most of this attention was positive.
Some of it was not. Especially from men.
Precociousness, is often a Bat signal for men who have a proclivity for pubescent punany.
By the time I was 15 year old, I think I might have been sexually propositioned by adult men about 20 times, including a store security guard who wanted to see “what I tasted like.” At another time when I was grabbed and grouped while walking through “Tower City”, with the retort of “Well what did you think, with that lil’ ass looking so good!”
I was 16.
At one point, there was a substitute teacher at my high school who said, “the other girls do it with me, and I won’t tell.”
I was 17.
Admittedly, my precociousness often confused men. Many thought I was much older. Yet, when it was revealed that I was a minor, many retreated in embarrassment. Most did so by complimenting how “deep” my conversation, and how “if only you were X years older….” (as an aside: The notion of “if you were older” is an indication that they likewise would fuck a child, yet were more afraid of possible legal sanctions.)
While many of the men who approached me were moderately respectful, there were some who were downright creepy. I could not possibly recount every episode of inappropriate adult male attention under the guise of being a PBG, but her are some of my favs:
The Record Rendezvous Stalker.
I liked music. Because PBGs tended to often have eclectic taste in music, Record Rendezvous, in Warrensville Heights, Ohio, was my favorite resale record shop. I’d spend HOURS looking through the stacks. My poison: Acid jazz, soundtracks, hip-hop, orchestral arrangements and 70s disco.
One day I remembered going and had a very creepy encounter with a man, who was clearly not a day younger than 40 years old. While I was busy contemplating whether to purchase the David Foster compilation of “St. Elmo’s Fire”, or “Fame”, I was approached by this man who wanted to holler. But…. what he told me would send a cold rush of fear through me.
He told me that he had been watching me while I shopped, and later admitted to having FOLLOWED ME FROM THE NEARBY MALL. Yes… he followed me. For what must have been like 30 minutes.
After basically admitted to stalking and following me, he asked me for my phone number. Shocked I said “I don’t know my number!” He laughed and said, “You don’t know your number? What are you 12?”
“No, I’m 16.”
“Then why you walking around looking grown!”
I don’t remember much after that, except that I was afraid to leave the store. Ironically, in October 2016, I was in Cleveland to see my mom who’d just had surgery and rode passed the once vibrant Randall Park Mall. While I had some lighthearted conversation about shopping there as a teen, that stalking episode re-entered my mind, quickly diminishing the nostalgia of the moment, 30 years later.
The Chess Player
I like chess. I’m self-taught, and while I was around a family of chess players (mostly men), I tended to find others to play. I don’t know why, I just never liked to play my family. Nonetheless, there was a small park in Old City in the trendy Westside Tremont area of Cleveland. Usually, there were about 2 or three boards at the park and random people would come to play. I usually just sat and watched, studying the moves of the more seasoned players and silently judging the ill-placed moves of those who carelessly “lost a knight trying to attack the castle.”
Most days the men would just speak, yet not invite me to play. Until one day.
As I sat down, eager to finally play with the man whom I thought was the “master”, he said, “If you win, I’ll give you $20!”
“If I win, you can give me some p*ssy!”
I was 17.
Needless to say, I never played. I just stood up in shame and walked away, listening to the distant heckling of “Damn n*gga you scared her away!!”
PBGs live in a cusp of having outgrown “child” things, yet not sophisticated enough to navigate “adult” things. This is the cusp where exploitation occurs.
Precociousness is also the place where the apologists of the world can call PBGs “fass”, “grown”, “asking for it”, or any other moniker that shifts blame for their own exploitation.
Also, as it’s assumed that precociousness is a correlate for sexually experienced, hence it is assumed (unfairly so), that PBGs are always “DTF” at the drop of a dime. I mean, how many stories of adolescent sexual assault do we hear about where a victim’s “precociousness” was the leading defense?
PBGs come in all shapes and sizes. In all experiences. Some PBGs were teen mothers, others were physically more developed, or experienced trauma, which stole her youth and forced her to grow up. Others were just a little bit “more”, “extra”, and required a higher level of stimulation than was available from her peers. Unfortunately, PBGs tend to be the “Black sheep” of the family and most of the immediate peer and social group, lack the expansiveness to support her precociousness AND PROTECT HER.
So, who is willing to walk in the gap? The adult men who view PBGs as easy prey.
The ones, like R. Kelly.
The ones who lack the moral fiber that tells them that while precocious, she is still HIGHLY VULNERABLE to exploitation. That despite her precociousness, she shouldn’t be targeted, abused and then shamed for her own abuse. She shouldn’t be dragged because “well, she been fucking since she was 12.” She shouldn’t have her cerebral precociousness used as bait to sexually harass her.
And until we address THAT, this shit will continue.
Because what else do these PBGs do anyway?
Maybe just try to live their lives as normally as they can.
