I do not know why ensuring a friend made me happier. Having the saturation of someone that will listen to me complete a thought was rare and the longing point than a friend. I knew friendship as a platform to obtain an optimal than the platform to conquer the optimized- a romantic relationship with a financially solvent partner that has the boons of being widely needed or saught after. I do not complain about being a fan of a popularized group or artist, that is the happy place I have not been able to revisit the past year- the concert hall. To witness other fans screaming to the top of their lungs or wearing a cadre of elements that inspire joy upon glance, I grow content with the opening of other events being presented in open aired parks and the use of tents as a happy neutral to enjoy brisk breezes over central air.

I do not regret choosing to work in a grant-funded role. My entrance into nonprofits ensured the realization of a do what you can that mirrors the adages of certain surgeons plagued with a time-sensitive need to remove a tumor. Knowing the establishment of the in case of emergency homeless bed being plagued with an immediate gratification consumer, I hoped the rigors of a job search would render the knowledge of homeless aids moot. It doesn’t. COVID and the reliance on freelancers and tip jar employment have eliminated key functions that would permit homeless aid to reside in parts of the county- the end of something fun/ded. To be solvent enough to procure the homeless bed, the assurances of my upbringing do not match the understandings obtained in college dorm preparations and working among a need to spend upon the self campaigns. Keeping a place to initiate aid makes this better.

I can not be happier knowing that my personal goals have let me reflect on the showcase of homeless needs beyond the late-night adverts of some village that chose an Amish equate to the evolution of society's needs. There is a comfort in knowing that the toilet would not have the same understanding across the globe period. Being able to preserve a veneer of self through online platforms has also helped in the cries of help when the survival need of want prevents that from being answered. I am still seeking a job that will ensure I can keep access to the Western toilet during my looming travels. That desire has not left me the way the end of a paycheck has during my adulthood trajectories. I just know that looking at my ability to earn has similar obstacles in place that are not based on my looks or personal gains.

Until the next interview.

I don’t think the conversation ever returned to what I said.

By the time I accepted that having a turn to speak would return to me, I had accepted that my interest could not be shared with the select family members around me- they are not reading the same books and the time to build a book report is more doing my homework than this desired chat. I do not miss the pained looks and mocking conversations that would have filled the otherwise quiet as everyone added an insult to the frame of listening to me.

To have my conversation met with laughter pulled me to the ‘child’s place’ I shared with the other children in my family. I began to embrace the kindness of a quiet corner to access what conversation was and be met with laughter. I stopped enjoying contributing to a conversation as a result. As long as the space met hygiene standards of ‘cleaned up’, it was my place to enjoy an author’s interpretation of teen relationships with a nodding acquaintance with adults stabilizing the safe to inhabit spaces off camera.

I do not look at the tight interactions of my family as anything out of normal when the reason for my birth was not planned for or a daily joy to provide for. Their rages about having kids around tinged their patient interactions with us with a veneer of angst. I did not long to be a kid anymore did I longed to be a parent. That is the pivot point of my deviation and insular development alongside my generation as the need to rely on a hosting family member to be the breadwinner.

I do not regret noting that the need for a man would always accompany a wistful look at a wall when brought up among the adults. To consider that gaze of a partner in a romantic state be remarked on than attending church or being a part of a neighborhood, I see the allure of man to be a shared point of centering for the homosapiens whose chemical balance is testosterone-dominant. Watching the males be raised in this wistful wish of a man to educate the males of what it means to engage with a woman, I knew that the allure of romance awoken a need for man.

My hosting family member had regulated engagements with Black males and could not proffer her son the notes of a man when the birth of her children was too close to an open parent adoption creed of the condom less access to sex. Seeing the frustration of malignant students, I dared not entertain a teen rebellion of sexual acquisition when the act was peppered with the potential of birth, a forced engagement with a male that no longer wanted to assist with raising a kid the way he may not want to clean his room or the treatable realm of STIs when an STD would landmine that consideration.

I did not approach this recipe of adult training tools as something I would enjoy. I abhorred the need to respond to a period when the need meant $8 to my personal budget asks. I do not watch the rush to 18 with anything but the paroled time when legal access to the adult budget would need more than the law and social guidelines of child-rearing permitting me to have access to housing, food, and a line of credit.

It is hard to note that I should have recalled the repeat of that chant as the family creed. When COVID put the office clerk work that kept me a working professional into the hands of my beloved bcus, I treaded on the veneer of family hopes over the knowns- upon the age of gradation, there is no family home.

It was another aunt who can pass the paper bag test that declared my choice to attend college would mark my difference from the family. Considering her position in the family as the favored due to her skin tone, her observation that my willingness to utilize the social benefits provided to impoverished people in our city baffled me. This access to higher education and to put the straight As I was supposed to obtain were equated to a high school phase based on her interpretation of my undergraduate aspirations.

Up to this point, the only white people I have spent time with were teachers or school administrators. My interactions in white ideals were curated from my reading materials. Acknowledging that Irish and English rapists augment the purity of my Nigerian genetics, I look at my family’s interpretation of racial assimilation games stopped at us vs them mindset. Acquiring an education beyond a high school diploma was a step above comfortable for some reason. It saddens me that the memories of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King or our local pastors wearing their Sunday suits did not breach this passive association of verbal eloquence that I acquired from reading.

When I navigate my self-awareness of being Black to the rest of America while my own culture looked at my skin as a washable stain hiding a white effacer, I continued to balance on this tight rope of internal self-worth over the show worth defined by my social media. I would hate-wash my skin to a smoothness that makes applying lotion a pleasurable experience. I look to keep my skin tone even in its milk chocolate appearance openly longing for the porcelain thin pores that would give me a tempered chocolate appearance. It worked. Eventually, the lazy admissions that acquiring an education did not make me less Black but less emotionally poor guaranteed my social distancing from my family philosophically.

It was a third aunt that shares my skin tone that assumed I would bring home a white boy. It saddened me a bit that my partner would still be labeled a boy in her eyes. Meeting my female partners eliminated this idea for a decade. When I brought home a Black woman for the holidays, it startled them enough to realize my relationship choices would not matter enough to comment. The wait-and-see approach of these assumptions were not developed with keen reflections of my high school upbringing or observations based on my chosen friend groups. These accusations were pulled from an assumption that would make talking about me more an amusing addition to their conversations should it come up.

One would think with these allegations that there would be some level of interest in my romantic proclivities since I was targeted to be the interracial dater of the family. Coupled with coding the new additions to our family as sharing my character traits, my family should want to know more about my romantic dealings and openly monitor my navigations in this space. Be it a lack of interest in me as a person or the casual, I want to be right, aspect of my dating outside my race and gender, the larger observation that my family does not date counters the importance of introducing them to my romantic relationships. That open haphazard interest pairs with not knowing my day-to-day dealings and the people that impact my life and social choices.

It did not come as a surprise to me that alerting my family in meeting my soulmate that their gender was the only joy they took out of that revelation. Not that I had a soulmate, not that I could hear him on the winds, and not that my conversation about the relationship was more dominant than his financial contribution to my social-economic status. It did not matter if he was not providing financial support in the beginning. The mental wear of having him not be present did not factor in the conversations, just the comfort that I would be with a man, and that is something they would be willing to understand. When my ascension took priority over meeting him, something they sport scars over from my mother’s awakening, their lack of joy or follow up on my mental health took no precedence. It should hurt.

When they meet my soulmate and see his gender-fluid appearance paired with his initial desire to inquire about my mental history, what stories they can tell about me and my former place of residence, it will be telling that they did not have the same opportunity with my brother, who brought a new life into the family lineage without letting us meet his former wife’s family.

The fact he is Filipino will be a new addition.

It is no surprise that the male leaseholders who share my skin tone have been uniquely traumatizing in some capacity. Both have taken a verbal stance of my unemployment that suggests my existence in their residence steals from them. For my father, the idea that I would need to openly exaggerate my delight at every waking moment to acknowledge his self-sacrifice of housing me as an unemployed resident during a global pandemic. For my tenant situation where one is allotted a window of grace to recover or face legal ramifications, this leaseholder is openly ensuring my last few weeks in this property that I have paid for border on the discomfort level I want to employ local government to ensure he never is allowed the opportunity to passively torture another person in the future.

Let’s be clear, it is a pandemic. There is a base need to hunker down and ensure you survive. There is one thing I have been forced to do since the pandemic eliminated my space of employment- office upkeep- and that is house surf in some capacity. For the past year, I have been my four months savings away from being one of the visible homeless for a brief time period. It is not something one plans on in any capacity. I left home poverty for the long-term rental space only to have the reason I entered homeownership still be a factor for me to buy again. Unfortunately, the safe haven of being the deed holder is not supported in my choice of income revenue so I have entered the temporary housing market that is subletting.

Based on the spew of venom my leaseholder unloaded on me, one would think I was preparing him to house a squatter. I provided the information that openly laid out my plans to vacate and possible barters so each the decrease in income he would be facing. Having been in his place of an unpaying tenant on several occasions, I knew my response to these kinds of situations would not be to keep one on the verbal promise whilst pulling at the leaseholder’s income. I know loosely what the baseline is for not paying rent and the impact a non-employed person would have on a household in addition to the loss of their income. I had three tenants that still owe me money from their leaving from the damage they left on the property, discarding the remnants of their property, and navigating the good faith investment that their payment is coming at some point.

It is four days until I move out of this echo chamber that tugs at my preteen experiences living within a two-parent home and why the thought of them divorcing filled me with hope and relief. I want to let my aunt know I will need another two weeks before I need her couch again. The check was a fake after all. But my orisha keep pushing that need away from me. Tsunami is en route to me. In the interim, my leaseholder’s choices need to be cemented by my staying until the last hour. Much like my father’s in some capacity. The positive is that he fulfilled the police call part of this execution.

I hate being the hard lesson for people.

Unlike other relatives, I never looked at the idea of being paid to be around someone as a place to establish my self of identity or declare my self worth to my family, my culture and my community. Work was a requirement of any society I would want to partake in. As a result, I would approach the need of it with the same level of pleasure and diligence a need acquisition allotted. A job provided access to the resources that make up a life worth surviving. I did not think it would be fun to make money just to make money. Buying new things for me has never been a place that served to augment a backdrop to my heartfelt conversations. The profits of my first paying role went to purchasing my school clothes as opposed to augmenting my choices to fit in.

Continuing my time in high school, obtaining part-time employment was attached to having friends in the first place. Knowledge of employers willing to train employees in their teens- dually offering their places of business as practice ground and sacrifice to both the public, the teen, and their bottom line, having my mother reluctant to even sign the work permit made the joy in job acquisition hit an as need peak before it became a gradual love of mine. I never hoped to make friends while working for an allowance. I wanted the opportunity to not have to ask a beleaguered adult stretching their budget to augment their budget for a teen’s entertainment. With the hunt for friends a bust, I looked into other options- my library.

At least, that is how it began.

Graduation looming, I did not yearn to leave the comfort of my own cleaning practices for the greenwashing of the Armed Forces. I chose to leave my city on the back of student loan programs. To this day, I remain grateful for this choice. In most ways despite the eight dollars dusting the bottom of my bank account, I liken my expenses to educate myself worth it. While my choices of programs have yet to yield a tidy profit of material surpluses, I still have achieved mental goals and aspirations that no one asks me about. It would pain me to not share these experiences but I am informed of the day-to-day measures that fill the hours of the stably employed. Having never left a job without being shown the door, the retirement of my first manager in the professional non-profit world, I have spent more time in the world of the long-term unemployed.

I completed my undergraduate degree with a series of work-study roles showcasing I will show up for my paycheck. I held a position tending bar that indicates my customer service relations and money management is not at war with the need for someone else’s money without some effort or earning it properly. I secured a job in the service industry quickly and loathe the ethics of a fresh from school student being put on the dinner shift when a seasoned employee gets the morning ones. I am on nights from day one and want the night employees to have a safe time. It has been fifteen years since this incident and I still have amazement that this practice makes sense to the public. I took comfort in the ease of finding new work in this space as I had a replacement position as a barista in 48 hours.

For a moment, I felt the competition of my education obligations were the one and done obstacles between me and a full paying opportunity. I had one need- to enter the 9 to 5 work force, move out, find a hobby I liked, and may be a relationship would be a part of my passion. But for now, the money needs to be made. It took three weeks to find a place to teach overseas and six weeks to throw my long term relationship with teaching in jeopardy. By the time I returned to the States, I was temporarily employed again. For a newly minted college graduate, I had spent a month unemployed. It felt a lot longer at the time. But my degree secured a way out of my aunt’s place within six months of securing new employment.

It took 18 months to find a new job. I spent a week doing nothing between those jobs. I had two months of unemployment when I stepped into the world of homeownership. I like to say I enjoyed it. And someday, when the sting of how my father ensured I left it, I may. But the self imposed jail of a mortgage had its own benefits- no need to court extreme homelessness. For nearly nine years, I shuffled between working as a temp, a full time employed to a recipient of unemployment. I have four years where I my job was looking for a job in that location. I would like to have left that residence confident that my job security would come along. In the meantime, I would ensure my needs were adjustable while I can go sans health insurance. So I left.

I do not mind looking for work. In some ways, it is a gateway point to how societies are built and their ideas of what makes their corners of the world worth living. In the bid for a national income, I am in support of one. I am not looking for my government to keep me enjoying all the pleasures of a modern life but I would value living in a country where rock bottom was 600 square feet with a functional shower, toilet, clean running water, food access, heating, windows, wifi, cleaning supplies of the house and body.

Seriously. Right now, knowing I could go depressed and still have access to start self diagnosing or seeing myself out of my depression. It would be nice to know my country in its indifference would ensure I could be called upon to fight in some way or contribute to society by pick up the trash instead of being considered it.

I have spent 20 years actively seeking employment. I have compiled my skills acquired throughout my job hunt into a two page cheat sheet known as a resume. My places of employment total 20 give or take. I have paid my taxes on time annually. I have shuffled my debts to one source to limit my interest. I have a divine assignment to write several books. I have a guaranteed hobby for life. I just need to work for my basics. You would think for the amount of debt I have owned by the government, this would be the easy part.

I take humble pride in being the recipient of her first return hug from a return to her country of origin. It is nice to know that our hugs have grown from an awkward pat between a co-worker caught in a moment of weakness to a life-affirming full-body contact dance that makes me long for actual playdates. I miss hugging. It is clinically proven that homo sapiens benefit from physical contact on a regular basis. Yet, our embracing of Victorian standards of interaction suggests that all touch upon entering puberty now has some level of sexual intent. At least that is the common interpretation of the rules that still influence the ideals of Western practices.

I want to say the influx of contact restrictions came with the religious takeover in each space but for our hypersexual society in America, it has more nuance than this essay can tackle in a six-minute read. For me, the lack of hugging is sexual adjacent and reconfirmed with a low-touch family dynamic. In the two weeks I have entertained guests from the East Coast, I exchanged two hugs with my visitors- one upon greeting and one upon leaving. It is not my practice to count my hugs but with COVID restrictions making me aware of the kinds of touch that are now off the table, my human contact quota is no longer being augmented.

I have had ten successful hugs in 2021. That is one a month. If it were not for COVID isolation, I may not even have time to count these encounters. I may have reflected in another essay that one’s access to human contact that offers some level of familial comfort tends to be regulated to friends, lovers and family. One element of my ascension demanded that I acknowledge my relationships outside my family dynamics are work related. Despite being attached to sex work advocacy, or heightened by it, my access to intamcy in my informal work spaces has kept my lust for touch softly simmering under a candlewick. I once prided myself on knowing the last time I shed a tear in my teens that did not include allergies and that admission was met with a level of disbelief. Even now, when adding to the number may double that teen count held until the completion of my undergraduate degree, the idea of crying is nice in theory.

I enjoy a good hug. I admire cuddling. I look forward to it being a common occurrence over a long term experience that I carry in my mind with my stolen memories of teaching in South Korea. There have been times during my awakening that being able to subcomb to a full extreme of hysterics attributed to crying in bed, I would have enjoyed being comfortable enough to indulge in that for a moment. Being held with the freedom to talk about my wellness concerns would not hurt either. I openly pine for a point in my life where the opportunity for a cuddle pile among friends will happen. I hope I don’t need to birth the family for that to occur. Having to manufacture the experience that happened among friends would eliminate the comfort of all parties needed simple closeness over my family sharing something I plan on making standard for our family to exist.

It’s nice to have done a starfish hug. It has been a few years I think.

Let’s put some things out in the open first- the two people I have complained about making the sheer act of sharing a home equivalent to having social roaches- sighting them makes me load my emotional equivalent of pest control in order to maintain a level of passivity that does not deter my personal mindset I want to nurture as my base. The two individuals whose day to day behaviors foster actions of flagrant disrespect to become a need share the following attributes:

In their 50s
Louis Armstrong Black
Male presenting
Share height extremes
identities are tied to their jobs in some capacity
Share a level of Southern hospitality character traits

and for my female-presenting, in my late 30s, sharing their skin tone and relationship with being coded in that color in the public gaze, I gauge that my gender traits are the factors that are playing a role in the models of the leaseholder to rentee that brings us together. With these open admissions, I have not entered these places of residence with any idea that I would place a level of my own casual ownership on any part of the residence that is not assigned to me. I openly acknowledge that my approach to lease holding is not married to the underlying acknowledgment that holding the lease allows me to be the person responsible for the property as such, I will be the one to initiate cosmetic changes. Yet, keeping to my rented portion of the property has been a subtle directive based on the actions of the leaseholders. With that acknowledgment, let’s begin-

COVID made me do something this adult child would consider hovel research before taking the simple action of asking to stay longer.

I asked.

I asked my father, a parent I have not lived with since I was twelve years old, if I could extend my temporary stay in his two-bedroom apartment during COVID. I asked. It was not something he put on the table as a need he as a parent. My brother once said our father acts as if our growing pains of being teens included a stint in prison, time in front of the judge, or destroyed the family home and strained relationships at the cost of a drug addiction. His guarding of his financial gains borders on the asinine when one considers that I took on cleaning up his apartment upon arrival by brokering items he needed to part with. With the onset of COVID, I added cooking to this. I considered my work in the kitchen a fair trade. Should any parent deny their child access to the basic survival needs- food, clothing, shelter and hygiene? They do. I like to think my work in the kitchen augmented the strain on the utilities in some capacity.

But alas, this was not enough. It was not enough to watch my ideas for my 2020 to be stripped from me, my father had t o remind me that my contribution costs him. I openly offered to not eat on his dime and was about to look into food stamps but that was not enough. His conversation starters stayed around me as an expense on his retirement income. So I left for my aunt’s place. She knew I would add to her water bill but at least she wanted me to have more clothing options. I would never enhance her home by claiming dominace over the kitchen but I could keep to my promise to leave when the deities care of my orisha and free will offered that opportunity.

That respite in my aunt’s place was necessary for my current rental situation. It has been eleven months since I left my aunt’s home and once again, my money has petered out and a move back to her home feels like the first release out of quaritene when considering the living environment I paid to reside in.

I do not know if having a source of income made living in my lease holder’s corner of the West Coast easier. It made it possible but the amount of visitors this lease holder has allowed to visit in my time here suggest that the additions of a revenue stream partnered with a lack of genetic relations put a limit on what kind of intrusive actions my leaseholder would consider if our sharing an address was one of his living expenses.

In this property, the bills are split with some level of eveness. I do not mind the slight influx in payment on the electricity since all parties in the property are living and working from home. I do mind when a charge is based on my lease holder devouring one of my local treats and having me pay for the replacement. I enjoy a shared effort by the house to adhere to a level of clean. It is uncommon in my previous living situations. The responsibility of cleaning fell on me or I was fortunate to reside in a place where the leaseholders utilized a cleaner. Here, it is a rotation of chores. I enjoy knowing when to do my chores and what is entailed for those chores.

I don’t mind additions to the chore wheel so much. I do mind the time frame for an assignment being moved without my knowledge. i mind when my efforts to be accurate in my chores is micro managed. I mind when my personal chores to keep my space tidy are looked at as less than. It is as if my home environment is under the same judgement of my first employeer- must adhere to someone else’s fluctuating standards. I did not expect to live in that. I recall fondly looking to leave that work space after three months in it. And faced with an on going reflection of my job hunting, I am kind of looking forward to leaving this residence for similar reasons.

Much like my first job, this rental arrangement promised friendship during COVID. It offered a companionable meeting of two professionals. I openly admitted to my mental state which is how American society introduces its citizens to their Awakenings and that admission got maybe thirty minutes of concern rooted in assuring my financial stability. I did not expect to make a bosom buddy but the offer of friendship was curtailed at the mention of my soulmate. If the offer of romance is off the table, so is my friendship. I guess that is a restriction men choose to adhere to even when not in a relationship but the level of success that practice brings to all relationships, not something I am part of. Yet, here in a global climate where COVID is in the air we breathe and on everything we touch, I would think there would be a pause on romantic acquision being the ethos of all touch.

I did not know how much I could miss a casual hug.

I have gone hugless on and off in my life but when I returned from the hospital post ascension, I could have used one. I did not expect it from my leaseholder despite their active work in public health. Based on his one response to a fellow comrade in his health cause, he chose a path that may have had an impact done by a group as a protest but his need to blend in and be accepted to priority. It helps that his choice for the second rentee hugs me.

I did not hide my job status when entering his residence. I have been open about my expenses and when my time in his rented spaces would come to a close. And that time is approaching. I am not happy with the conclusion of my time spent in this residence. It makes me glad the same way staying in my father’s place did- I had a private bathroom to clean and a place to wash my clothes, tend to my linens and pretend that Kayne West was not right about having a college education. But living under this individual who is a part of a system that permitted him to make a transition in employment that provided more income, renting out my designated space- a three walled room with a wooded curtain for the divider- on a surplus income space over a need, suddenly, my health issues and presence are more a hindrance than my arrival. At least, the announcement of my fellow housemate leaving suggests that to me.

I like to say I do not mind when someone partakes in my snack foods. And when I am offering, I don’t. When I am not, I do. I do not mind keeping to someone else’s idea of clean. What I do mind is the erratic time line allotted to adhere to such a desire that does not factor my lifestyle nore being informed of what life I am to support. It has taken joy out of daily maintenance. It has made me ponder the last time I was not playing yoyo with depression. I don’t want to mind that every interaction with my leaseholder is a reminder I did not do something he minds, that his mood requires aim and I am the target. I notice a pattern in his behavior that shifts when addressing my fellow rentee in regards to his comments but his universal approach to women he can not court is a problem.

He mentioned when accepting my rental agreement that COVID marked the first time both rooms were available at the same time. And in a few days, he will be in the same situation he was- looking for rentees.

In leaving my father’s place I was told he openly questioned why women leave him. The dual concern of this statement that I, his child, was viewed in the same space as a look but don’t touch partner partnered with his need to keep a friend as prisoner, is troubling. I have other friends in this age range that vary in skintone and presenting gender. Their approaches to life do not make me think sharing a roof with them would result in me looking to my aunt’s home feel like a reprieve.

Returning to my aunt’s home is a ground zero I can not wait to get out of. If another three months of job hunt will ensure I get a job to make that start.

The only positive about this it took a month to acquire my West Coast role, two weeks to obtain a place to reside while employed and I am now 30 days out from needing to move again. Maybe the orisha love me but the world’s other people are not tied to the same deities. At least, I can say I committed to this experience. But being a former leaseholder, I have my limits of what abuse I will commit to.

If only these numbers would stop bugging me.

What was more important than leaving a place one goes to rest and acquire a level of pleasure, particularly in the LGBTQIA community, STD-free? Driving. Too often a possible partner would gaze on me in astonishment only to lose interest upon learning of my lack of a learner’s permit. I would polish my labeled, ‘wifey’ routines, and get admiring glances but my need to use a bus pass stank more than my obese BMI. My mindset on driving cemented the summer my best friend called upon me weekly to fill her tank while my bus pass cost $64 for the month. Their efforts to keep their car totaled six times that much when one factors in the time spent looking for other hacks, short-term jobs, and the eventual maintenance bills that took it off the street.

As a kid from the 80s where programs like DARE and the AIDs epidemic were a part of our background noise paired with being a participating member of the LGBTQIA community, one’s STD status should be the base for a community that is ostracized for its sexual proclivities. There is a level of safety in certain subsets like the lesbian dynamic. STDs are passed with a higher frequency within the gay and bi-sexual sectors. By that admission, wanting to have a bill of clean health to contribute to this statistic, members of my lesbian community wanted to rest on the herd immunity of it. If I squint, I can kind of understand an aversion to needles stalling one from getting tested. Backed by the need of the 80s, asks in this space were often met with belligerence. I recall being asked if I trusted them as my request suggested otherwise. To not want to know one’s status is a does not compute mindset for me- we just met. Why would I weave our relationship on grounds we can test?

My relationships prior to my booty call slowly ensured I would rather do my laundry than seek another romantic encounter. Both individuals were in industries that granted them access to STD tests. Both were employed advocates in the STD awareness space. Yet, my second-tier test of six months needed to be employed or engage in sexual risk to keep what was supposed to be a relationship. My booty call would be flummoxed that this was the hindrance of my dating engagements and the simple truth that their willingness to talk about this kept me renewing my season pass to their ‘easy ass’. Paying for access took its toll when my tears of exhaustion were met with disregard to the point of callousness.

It was $1000 in bus trips to get the odd weekend of sexual release. We have spent more time on the phone with each other than these weekends capture. Without those weekends of relief, our calls are hours of warm air- pleasant to be in but not the only reason you go to the beach. Thinking about our conversations, the fights stand out more than the minutia of the shared days. Were these fights about establishing ourselves as sexual relief buddies? No. It was the lack of admission to their fandom of Black history obtained in the Black South; their status as a prostitute in our sexual engagement and my constant struggle to pay to see her in her state. Neither conversation changed anything. I can award our conversations one prize- their conversations of white noise are not physical checkups.

my mother’s conversations hold that honor.

That is what comes to mind when I think about my last relationship. Is it the main thing I reflect on? No. It is what I recall as a waste of money and what being in a relationship stole from my financial situation while dating. Was the money worth the emotional drain? It varies. This is why the total is notable. $1200 is not the entire amount I spent being an active participant in a relationship I no longer wanted. In the liminal space that is dating, knowing when your potential partner has an incompatible behavior is termed a red flag. I am not sure if this overlap comes from driving when needing to pay attention to where a flag is and to avoid the radius around it but it is clearly a term that has abstract benefits that are lost in the translation of practice if not visual cues.

In bed with my ex, I would glance up at their eyes while maintaining a rhythm that ensured their journey to climax was constant. I often would do this check and mildly enjoy the visual but there is something about the dull glassiness in their eye that did not really change from the initiation of the sexual encounter to the completion of it. It strikes me that the journey to climax was the need not the individual taking them on this journey. That is when I started counting our expenses in some capacity. I mentioned in previous essays that my lack of interest to climax in the bed with this partner started on a trip out of state where their participation in the preparation fell short after talk of being eager to contribute. Behaviors seeped in self-sustaining efforts versus us establishing ourselves as a team, I began to get project-oriented about this relationship. I had openly accepted that I had violated my ending terms but surely the benefits of experience would be worth the money and time.

I did not enter this relationship hoping it would last a lifetime. Granted, I yearned in the abstract to be in a relationship that goes to teamwork to keep the foundation. In my idea of a lifelong relationship, the lack of dual effort from both parties makes commitment dead on arrival. I had a jarring introduction to dating being a late bloomer hoping to acquire a long-term relationship that surrounded me in the absence of my best friend and gay boyfriend- both were closing in on a five-year mark in their relationships. I did not seek that goal but to have it seems so commonplace in my peer space, it did not need to be that far off did it? But it was not my mindset of wanting a timed romance but the willingness of individuals not willing to respect initial boundaries nor adhere to their own when a paycheck is not attached. That was this relationship- something that was asked to live past is sell-by-date san refrigeration. I chose a brief relationship to celebrate my financial recovery, I was on life support taking a walk on the hospital grounds about to cough out an allergy irritated lung.

I had the same mindset when my father returned to my life. I was on the verge of foreclosure mediation and my estranged father was motivated by the loss of his brother to rekindle his erratic relationship with his adults. I do not know if I would have been willing to entertain these soft sallies into my life from any family member as unsettling as my father. this is a man whose own siblings choose to sit on the sidelines ignoring that they do not know our names or voices and that his comments on his children ensured they never reached out to us or the convenience of not enjoying this sibling was reinforced with his divorce actions. I am not sure since attempting to start a conversation with those family members is more akin to cold calling a client I want to sell a gallbladder to. Sitting at my dining room table, telling him the slate is wiped clean, I got day dates and money on occasion while I hustled for new job security. I wish having my brother at the table meant we aired our shared grievances but alas, this monthly schedule I had to implement was mine.

If I stopped, it would not restart.

I don’t look at my father and my last attempt to hold a romantic companion in the same frame as far as what they mean. one is family and one is water to me. I have been trying to get a pure cup of water to hydrate me.

Maybe with tsunami. Right now, it requires filtration.

This total is not solely why ex is an ex or why ex was the last date to become an ex. It was the break up that cemented that along with the red flag space.

If you are a habitual reader of my essays, you know

also add memories of the dad and why I openly acknowledge that he is bad on a person space since there is no dad deviantion.

This active practice to live to the best of my ability is nothing new to me. I would say the root of my choice in this was seeded by poverty or some mutual comradeship to seek a way out of systemic poverty augmented by witnessing family struggle to keep everyone off the streets in some capacity but it is not the case. Looking at the state of material acquisition in the homes of my family, my ability to dismantle my home of nine years within 36 hours would not be a foreseeable assessment of their property. This comparison is not where I would use as the measuring stick for anyone’s real state. I have seen the people that break their figurative arms living a pseudo modest life while their conversation borders on the level of a cult recruiter or the collective disdain attributed to vegans moaning about meat-heavy restaurants not offering a diverse menu.

When it comes to anyone with a dietary restriction, most in this uncommon fraction space are often educated to research the place they are hoping to break their fast before entering the establishment. It is a level of lazy assumption that one’s personal choice to change themselves would immediately augment the world around them. I do not understand the amount of ego that accompanies such ideals; the world is not built around one person’s idea of how they choose to navigate the world. However, depending on the turn of phrase and state of being this person carries with these expectations, I have a level of admiration for these people that make efforts to earn such a mindset.

But those kinds of people are a level of authenticity that approval seekers hope to achieve. Approval seeking, a noticeable social tick my tsunami noticed the absence of in my table manners, are people that place their personalities on the same chopping block as the king with the sword of Damocles over his head. In this Greek parable, the threat over the king is justified. His state of being should be at the approval of the people that put him there. He is a servant of the public and as such should meet their expectations or face their wrath. Approval seekers create this threat in their everyday, seeking the approval of their peer groups with no titular enforcing a rule book. Peeople creating such ideals are creating a frail social fabric that is re woven at the scent of something supposed trendsetters deem worth the consumption of mass media.

I am not averse to joining the marketed bandwagon. As a Black woman with the strains of my culture diluted and augmented by the scraps of disdain proffered with my community’s faux freedom of slavery and its social chains, I have to fashion my own interpretation of what it means to be Black in addition to being a representative of America. The idea of being Black is often shaky as it is nick picked by its own community members with a haphazard knife hoping to establish a unified hospitality that immigrants from the Asain community enjoy upon landing. Much like the reason Black Californians shot down being included in the Speakers of Another Language educational fold, being Black in America is drastically different than people fresh off the boat seeking a level of social reprieve and economic freedoms.

Listening to the music from any culture, the themes will always touch on pursuing a romantic or sexual relationship, maintaining or achieving a social status, recalling a former state of being, the energy of a good time or a political message. Granted there are others topics but in my teen home, these were the constant themes in the music sold to my part of the country. I am fond of it as it laid the basis of the passive listening skills I apply to my evolving musical taste. Part of my awakening depended on recalling music that I put on repeat for me. I was drawn to one song by the group, TLC, that described the preferences in a partner that focused on the partner’s financial status, their sexual prowess both in practice and physical assets. Looking at the opening of the song, the partner is being lauded for their emotional acumen but this pales in comparison to the perceived lack in the bedroom offerings and obvious wealth.

I admit I enjoyed the song as a teen for the delivery of the disdaining bridge, the cheekiness of the chorus, culminating in the curation of the album leading into this particular song. At least, that is what my hindsight is choosing to attribute to my teenage self. What I do recall from my teenage self was a disassociation of any possible relationship to the music around me. Not to suggest that my music choices did not have an impact on my conversations on the subject of romantic partnerships, I think this separation of prescribed social requirements in a mate were not enforced or sought out in music. I think about the scene in HBO Girls where a song was a tool in her medium to express her emotional upheaval. My education on what is romantic or the optimal standard did not have the pairing of socially insecure friends and commercial musings offered up like mnemonic devices.

I don’t know if to bless or curse not being a part of these social circles growing up as I still can not obtain a level of ease around members of these loose-knit social circles and my brushes with them often skim close to caustic as my brevity is no longer looked at as curious but an affront to their sense of well being. I may have mentioned running into a high school classmate and her query on how I have acquired a passion for any topic placed on the table. This classmate’s query still puzzles me and makes me swell in gratitude that I can count the number of times we shared words in that part of our educational careers. Reflecting on this exchange, I still take pleasure in our limited interactions. I hope to keep it that way in some capacity despite the new social ties of their friendship to my former sister-in-law and my niece.

But to let ‘real’ be the constant word chosen when reflecting on people like me still baffles me? I wonder who the approval seekers use as their rubric? How are the factors chosen that one needs to be kept in their chosen societies? Who is checking that one is adhering to these ideals? Learning that my former sister-in-law was not sharing the bed with my brother filled her with shame. She thought I harbored judgment about this practice in her house- a place I have visited less than 20 times. That number has no ability to increase with my West Coast address. She spent time on this observation as if her self-image would be rocked by my knowledge of this.

My brother's actions in their separation are evolving from the same place in some way. His choice to make unprompted declarations of his actions in this transitional space is revealing about his mental mindset and his regard for the closure of this part of this relationship. He is harassment of our family with these unjustified accusations suggest informing us is something his peer group takes as the standard. He forgets that his peer group never sees us. I imagine the women of the family are in the same state of bemusement when he chooses to make these attacks. It is sad that the measuring stick that prompts him to take any action to inform us of his relationship status is tacked on as if it is not asked for or set up as a requirement in his romances.

So I am real if the fictional social hammer is the Geiger counter that I have knocked over like a forgotten glass, thank the goddess I did not step on the broken shards to make a noose around my neck.