There are two shots that are favorites of mine from my sabbatical, and my sister took both of them. There was no big preparation or primping, we were just sitting out in the patio area outside her mobile home attempting not to get too bitten from the mosquitos, that is the reason I have a shawl on my shoulders to cover up my bare arms.
It's such an excellent moment, which is what makes for great photography. I am crossed legged and barefoot, my hair is tied up, I have my glasses on, which really tells you I didn't pose for the shot. I usually always take my glasses off before being photographed. To my right is my older iPad Pro that got its screen cracked on the concrete right below my feet. The bottle of Raid brings me back to my childhood. And my sister's folded walker to my left is evidence of her declining health.
Between the colorful fabric on the table and the three different kinds I have on, of which no attempt was made to match. Curiously it all works. This was just five years ago, and I was feeling horrible about my weight which I would loose eight pounds of a year from the time this picture was taken. I would keep it off for three years before some of it slipping back. The other thing that is notable about this photo, at least to me, was this was the time before the park owner forced my sister to remove the little garden jungle she had on the side of her house. I actually loved that area, the plants hid the surrounding mobile homes giving us the impression of privacy in such a closely concentrated community.
Oh how could I forget about the Avengers band-aid on my little toe, I think I had picked at the skin or something and had a little bleeder, which was silly because I spent the six weeks at my sister's house complete barefoot, unless I had to go in a store. I would walk the mile to pick up my niece from work barefoot, and back barefoot with her. I even walked ten miles barefoot. It was the longest period of time of me being continually without foot coverings and it was lovely.
I was supposed to spend four to six months in Mexico for this sabbatical that just happened to fall on the tail end of the pandemic, but the racist behavior of the VRBO owner that I stayed at for a week forced me back to the states much earlier than I would have liked.
The last two shots are two of my favorite clothed self-portraits both taken in Mt. Helix, just outside of San Diego. The VRBO had no wifi, which I thought was just odd, she felt that everyone has a phone and doesn't need additional internet. I had neither. I would have to walk about a mile down the hill to a local Starbucks to do whatever it was I needed to do on the internet. Trust I will never stay in a VRBO again, she knew because of the wifi situation I had to leave quicker than I wanted to, and didn't have time to do the last minute cleaning, she gave me a poor rating for cleaning even knowing the situation. Her Elon Musk loving ass could go fuck herself!
These two shots were taken by the pool. I would usually sit out till the sun went down enjoying the sound of the water. I never used the pool, sticking nothing more than a toe in it just to see if it was heated. I am not a pool person, I really missed the ocean that was indeed forty steps from my front door as the bigoted VRBO owner advertised. Ultimately I spent about three months on my sabbatical and came back home refreshed, having shed all the negative energy from being a caregiver for my deceased grandmother.
Sticking to my iconoclast nature I preferred The New Mutants to the X-Men. I have a tendency to not get into things because everyone else is into them. I think even my dad was an X-Men fan, it was one of the books he had a subscription to that went to his parents home. I think the fact that I first met the junior X-Men team in my pre-adolescence helped, their stories were very relatable to what I was going through at the time. Along with paper issues I also have three of the omnibus that collect all their adventures, I can't wait for the last one to come out so I can have a complete run of the one hundred issue first run.
Curiously as a child I saw this PSA many times, but never thought it applied to me. I wouldn't realize for at least another twenty-five years that sexual abuse can be initiated by another child. As an adult I figured out that this child who was actually a little bit younger than me was probably being sexual abused by an adult in the household. At the time I didn't consider this, I thought it might just be a form of sex play, not taking into consideration how predatory the child was towards me, mirroring the abuse they had faced. The sad thing is as adults we never had the opportunity to talk about this and compare notes. I am sure the perpetrator was his uncle, who was the only new person in the household. I do remember the physical abuse and the domestic violence this man had perpetrated against his cousin, that household was forever changed by his presence and not for good. I think Marvel did a great job with this campaign, but it took me reading about childhood sexual abuse to support my boyfriend at the time that I finally learned that I too had been sexual abused for years.
The moral of the story is I shouldn't be buying music from a 41.7 billion dollar record company, but directly from the artist. I had trouble finding some albums in the past and ended up on UMG's mailing list, they had a sale on this artist I liked, and I made an impulse purchase. UMG sent me the incorrect album. I tried to asked for what I paid for, and all they had were threats of how it would take 90 days to get a refund. I disputed the purchase with PayPal got my money back in three minutes.
I strongly suggest folks think more about where they spend their money. Just a couple of weeks ago on Discogs, I had a similar issue. I contacted the seller, less than 90 seconds I got a notification of a full refund. Unlike UMG he had sent me three albums, not one, but ran me back my fifty bucks, and ate the loss. I now have an Aerosmith EP I didn't really want, but UMG isn't getting it back either. They are so big they think you will jump through their hoops to follow their convoluted processes even when they are in the wrong. I said, hell no!
There are like a handful of comic book artist who can seemingly in the most simplest ways elevate a narrative. Barry Windsor-Smith is one of them. You feel like you stumbled onto some kind of museum-quality fine art piece, not just a comic book you picked up for sixty-five cents. This Life-Death storyline with Ororo Munroe was groundbreaking for the character and I don't think there could have been any other artist than Windsor-Smith to communicate her pain, suffering and disillusion. I think I need to make a list of my favorite comic artist, Windsor-Smith would be in the top five.
I would have never attended the High School of Performing Arts if it wasn't for Leroy Johnson, albeit I never had his natural abilities I was very inspired by him and Lydia Grant. I would get in for Drama, but I danced every chance I got. #ThanksGeneAnthonyRay
I think it was the eighth grade where I played Danny Zuko in our junior high school's production of Grease. Sandy was played by my JHS & HS friend Corina Dennison. I only have one shot from the production and of course the program without the actual contents, I am not sure how that happened, but this is is from the late eighties I should be glad my grandmother saved this much.
And I found that one photo of me and my T-Birds performing Greased Lightening [Vinnie to my left looking away, Tyrell to my right behind me, and one of the twins Robert I think, and that is Michael out front looking towards the audience]
I came to Batman Beyond later in life, but have now finished the entire run of the cartoon. Static I have been ride or die with since his inception and all later iterations. I am also a Beyoncé fan.
I have a Ms. Pac-Man arcade game in my home, not the original, a licensed version created by Arcade1Up, it's a bit smaller than the original and the perfect size for a studio apartment. I was always envious of Ricky Schroder's character on the 80s sitcom Silver Spoons, he had like ten arcade games in his home, let's not talk about that miniature train that could be ridden all through the house. We had a 5200 briefly at my god-grandmother's house, and my long-lost older brother bought me the same system for X-mas back in '84, a parting gift because I would never hear from or see him again. I will be honest I don't play it much, it's just a visual reminder of something I loved as a child, and was able to now have as an adult. It fits in with the nostalgia driven decor of the rest of my home, with vintage toys, comic books and vinyl records all about.
I was repeating myself, and I am not keen on saying things I have said before, particularly if I wasn't overly thrilled about admitting this truth anyway. I think the average person who maintains a normal homeostasis wouldn't understand that mental health albeit not physical, has physical repercussions. A residual of my own persistent depressive disorder is I have a higher threshold for pain, as I said to the dentist once again, I am in a low-level of pain daily, nothing you do in here is going to as much as make me blink.
He didn't believe me though, it took him placing those multiple needles in my mouth to numb me for his scaling procedure to say, "oh, you were telling the truth."
I said, I am approaching late middle age why would I not be in touch with my body and its thresholds for pain? But he still didn't believe me, even though through his observations he had noted how deadened I was to his scraping, picking and drilling. He attempted to explain there might be soreness afterwards, through a very numbed mouth, I said, "doubtful." Once again he doubted my knowledge of self, and repeated the after effects of soreness, I once again said, "doubtful".
Four hours later when I could feel my face again, there was no soreness as I had predicted, no, not predicted, that I had known, this was no prediction this was experience living in my body being who and what I am, I knew no little dentist torture was going to as much as raise my heart rate less having any lasting after effects. I had to keep reminding myself that this young man was easily about half my age, and hadn't had enough life on him yet to respect when folks tell you their truth.
I had never been tender-headed, as the Black women like to call those fidgety children who act like they are being killed when they're getting they hairs did. This lack of sensitivity applied to me in a number of other ways, my thin-skinnedness was far in my past, decades away, in a place and a person so far away from the person I was today. I wish I had the luxury of pain, but I didn't, no one had time for that, we had ish to do. We had life to live, traumas to surpass, predators to dodge, sexual molestations & assaults to heal from, false accusations to suffer, no one had time to wallow in pain and self-pity. We had to get back up, and move forward, because no one was coming to rescue us, we had to rescue ourselves.
It's beyond insulting when you show people who you are, and they don't believe you. Why wouldn't I know my own pain? Maybe this was some kind of projection of his own ish onto me, but he isn't me, and I am not him. I truly keep trying to root for this young practice but they keep disappointing me, and I think this may lead me to move on to somewhere where I don't see myself, because I need to be believed when I tell the truth, not doubted.
I spent so much of the nineties in the village up and down Christopher Street to the piers wash and repeat. These were my post-college years, no I was there during the end of high school too, because I was friends with another gay, and he would get us out and into clubs and bars all over the village and Chelsea. I don't think I have been back there since I decided to step away from the LGBT communities, fuck a rainbow, what was on the promotional material, and the reality for a young femme dark-skinned Black queer were markedly different. I haven't looked back at all, I was perfectly fine leaving this community that never really saw or embraced me, I have not regretted it once.
