Not just another night. If she really evolved, she believed there would never be just another night, ever again. She had the restlessness to make it so. Her life.
Here she was well made-up to her five feet, seven inches of her. Add a low heel inch and a styled up do to catch her somewhere between five nine and ten. Like she liked. Out on a ride in a 1994 primed but not painted el camino with her friend. West to east Oakland for some business he had to settle.Then they started on back west. She could breathe easy again.
Am i gonna have sex tonight? was a question crossed her mind, and which she entertained out of boredom. No stupid questions, right? She could not really know, might as well get the answers from the stars. So she could fantasize or try and get real about it, or worry how she looked. Or just let it pass with all the other nonsense she found renting space in her pretty head.
A few years ago, she wouldn't have had to ask.
A couple years ago, it was more like 50/50.
Last year the numbers were all over the map. She was purposefully unpredictable.
This year, the ratio was probably one out of ten.
Sex took a backseat to other aspects in her life, in her chart, in her modus operandi.
She focused on working on her art projects, projecting a certain style, walking that fine balance between her comfort and the thrilling (and scary) place which was like an edge she walked. Carefully.
She had little choice, once she set her mind to setting out any night with him. Based on some of the trauma and thrills mixed up in her recent years experience of the streets (within the wide light he cast encircling them both and more. She was fortunate even to get the chance to stand in these circles, under his protective watch. She thought so. Most of her people (where she was from) would have and did warn her against this kind of company she kept. In almost every case, she realized they simply misunderstood why she did what she did. Some thought it was because she had been spoiled as a child. Some thought it her own selfish rebellion. Some thought she was thirsty to get high. Some thought her a slut. Others explained it away as her having fallen off track, lost her mind, become criminal-minded, become lazy. Or that she just was insecure and did not know who she was. A grown child! they marvelled over their foie gras. Stuffing their necks like the geese before them. Eating like food was the panacea for anxiety. Stuffing themselves, mindlessly, with worried glances one to the other and back, reverberating in an unatrractive way across country club putting greens.
Nah, she could no longer care nor stress about what people thought. If they thought those things, they were hardly anymore her people. Maybe by blood or origin. But she defined her people nowadays, and her people were people with whom she shared a mutual respect and love. People whose company she shought out.
She was quite mature, really. She had her mind on her presence. Her mind on mindfulness.
When out in the streets, she kept vigilant. She loved her life, that's why. And safety was no given out there for a girl like her. In her early twenties. Hot by most mens standards. Hot by most women's standards as well. Whether they would admit it or not. And hot was not just sexy and beautiful like it used to mean in the seventies and eighties. No, hot now encompassed such qualities in her possession as intelligent, stylish, unique....someone who many stopped to look at or think about or smile toward. (Or hate. Like haters love to do).
The only degradation of her status from hot, in her experience, were the times (infrequent, fortunately) when someone thought and then expressed (either vocally or another way) : slut! aka whore! aka toss up! aka junkie! All of which, though inherently unmistakably untrue, still made her feel thoroughly unloved. And as she knew now that she was done crying over that bullshit: she understood how misunderstood she really was by the haters. The ones easy to envy, easy to fear, easy to narrower-constructed paths and visions etched within the parameters of those who taught the art of envisioning one's life through the lens of some asshole's vision superimposed upon their whole young and manipulated souls.
If she cried, she cried for the haters the original haters made hate.
Okay, enough about her equals love and beauty, prevailing against a red tide of haters. She was truly, at times, exactly what the worst of them suggested she was. She saw her darkness quite clearly. She accepted as much of herself as she could, good and bad. She could take the heat. She would not duck in denial of those parts of herself she also wished she could disown, for real. Like the promiscuity in recent years. But then again, she was stimulated in alot of ways, and she responded with honest desire. She got a lot of consequences from her behavior, you know. It was not exactly a sleigh ride in a winter wonderland. Well, there was sure enough snow to go around. Snow and flow and freestyling motherfuckers high on blow.
But that shit got old. fast. She certainly did not hit the streets for it. She had lots of subtle reasons to style her life the way she styled. And the simplicity of getting into a man's car not knowing what the night held in store, freed her from the choices of which there were too many to count.
The rush she felt was akin to all sorts of rushes her mom and best friend Rachelle and her brother described to her all the time when she was a little naive nothing sitting at the dinner table looking at her nails in their beautiful unchipped glossy fineness.
Yeah, she did nails. She was a miss manicurist back then, high school, all cause she made a bad french nail. Everyone thought her nails were salon quality work. She had a steady hand, and back then she had a strong sorta focus.
Looking now at her beat up half-chewed to the bit, chipped like a mother kinda delapidated shanty of nailbeds, she could only laugh. She easily traded off the endless boring nights reading cosmo, trying to find her style, her fashion, her self... nights now had no comparison. Usually.
The good ones were fucking great!
The bad ones were terrible and sometimes but not often, scary.
The usual ones were the usual people whom she knew, had established trust on levels from hypervigilance to the kinda ease the good guys set her in. The guys who cared about her. Who wanted her to be happy and challenged her to handle herself like a grown woman.
The guy she was going out with tonight was one of those. Not a pimp but only because he didn't fit any stereotype. Not a boyfriend cause he knew and even enabled her dating. Not a john cause even though it may have started that way, they both meant more to one another than either expected they would from the start.
From the start he was just some dude on a couch in the apartment of some sweet much-known and loved transvestite who held company while his wife was out working her nine fiver. She would go there to try on the always wonderful room half-full of clothes they all picked through. Replete with the most thirsted after labels a girl could have her heart set on.
Then he was to her just some dude half-watching the big screen tv, half-the-time on the phone working out the next paycheck, the next meal, the next ways of means to make life tolerable in the states. Which of course required cream. Meaning cash. He found a way to walk her home one night, and they began to see how good they could be for one another, and to manifest exactly that. No strings.
Tonight he was taking her somewhere, possibly to chill and see some of the girlfriends she laughed with over stupid shit. Hopefully not with any of the bitches who hated her for her looks and envied her her relationship with him, which most saw was somehow a little deeper than he had with most chicks.
Never tight like he was with his people, not tight like he was with his main business partners. Not to be held up to flesh and blood. Nor his two ex-wives. Whatever it was, the je ne sais quoi that was them, was not to be competed against, compared with, or anything like that. Much less high maintenance. She often thought about him, one three five am, and she continued to pick up his calls (despite a temptation to let the intensity of it all cool for a while) and continued to go on these nights trusting him...because she felt freshness, she felt love, she felt protected. What they had was honest.
He was literally the only dude she met in the past five years when she inadvertently found herself in the company of a bunch of the kinda people they said Jesus used to hang with. You know the kind. From the far side of the tracks (far from that hollywood plastic kinda sparkle). The dark side (cause the tax bracket was weaker, and city services were half-assed). The fast food on every other corner side. The shoes hanging over the telephone wires side. The side of town mom & pop shops rule. The 99 cent store side. The crack whore side. The you thought you knew poor? side.
The street smarts acquisition curve was climbing over here. Atleast hers had. Though she had no fear at the start, and her self-confidence kept her safe for a little while, she realized quickly she become a mark. Someone to be manipulated and taken advantage of. But the markers wanted a mark, and made her what she wasn't simply because she came into view. Not so. The world does not work to please markers. The world may be an assemblyline of marks, but she was not in line for it. She was to see to that. And he was to see to that, through his connection to her. Well thank goodness! she thought, when she found herself protected. Attempted plays for a mark. Failed attempts. Instead, she became respected. Then by many cherished.
Today, hmmmm she wondered. Not really a mark by the look of her. Certainly dressed appropriate. Daisy dukes over tights. All-stars on the feet to soften the sexual enticement. Makeup done subtle (not garish) for the touch of sophistication. Jewelry light but clearly chosen chains, bracelets, earrings. And only her favorite necklaces. She forged a wide-eyed open attitude with some ability to trash talk in a fierce and freestyle way, when necessary, and often just for fun, just fucking around. This served to let someone with whom she was unacquainted know she was comfortable with herself, and in any circles, street or academic. She could make ya laugh (if you weren't a natural born hater).
Tonight? Tonight she had no fear, no worries, and a strong desire to get laid. Probably and hopefully if she could coax him to drive toward the northwest side of town. Where the gentrification was mad furious. Where two diametrically opposed hoods came together in some eye of some culture storm.
Yes! she felt her heartbeat later as they headed up grande avenue. She popped another strawberry hi-chew in her mouth, and his, then did a show-n-tell on pink gone neon pink tongues. His tongue was wide as fuck! She laughed, he asked why, and she laughed some more.
By the time they were turning into that old 7-11, she had a laugh or two out of him. Which left her first in tears, then steady smiling until smiling had long gone out of fashion. The scandalous bitches rolled their eyes all night long. They only wish they knew what the hell was to smile about, when there was so much picking on, up, and off still to do.
Hard work, being miserable, she thought to herself.
Then decisively struck out on her own.
Here she was well made-up to her five feet, seven inches of her. Add a low heel inch and a styled up do to catch her somewhere between five nine and ten. Like she liked. Out on a ride in a 1994 primed but not painted el camino with her friend. West to east Oakland for some business he had to settle.Then they started on back west. She could breathe easy again.
Am i gonna have sex tonight? was a question crossed her mind, and which she entertained out of boredom. No stupid questions, right? She could not really know, might as well get the answers from the stars. So she could fantasize or try and get real about it, or worry how she looked. Or just let it pass with all the other nonsense she found renting space in her pretty head.
A few years ago, she wouldn't have had to ask.
A couple years ago, it was more like 50/50.
Last year the numbers were all over the map. She was purposefully unpredictable.
 |
| Glen Echo Ritual by K |
Sex took a backseat to other aspects in her life, in her chart, in her modus operandi.
She focused on working on her art projects, projecting a certain style, walking that fine balance between her comfort and the thrilling (and scary) place which was like an edge she walked. Carefully.
She had little choice, once she set her mind to setting out any night with him. Based on some of the trauma and thrills mixed up in her recent years experience of the streets (within the wide light he cast encircling them both and more. She was fortunate even to get the chance to stand in these circles, under his protective watch. She thought so. Most of her people (where she was from) would have and did warn her against this kind of company she kept. In almost every case, she realized they simply misunderstood why she did what she did. Some thought it was because she had been spoiled as a child. Some thought it her own selfish rebellion. Some thought she was thirsty to get high. Some thought her a slut. Others explained it away as her having fallen off track, lost her mind, become criminal-minded, become lazy. Or that she just was insecure and did not know who she was. A grown child! they marvelled over their foie gras. Stuffing their necks like the geese before them. Eating like food was the panacea for anxiety. Stuffing themselves, mindlessly, with worried glances one to the other and back, reverberating in an unatrractive way across country club putting greens.
Nah, she could no longer care nor stress about what people thought. If they thought those things, they were hardly anymore her people. Maybe by blood or origin. But she defined her people nowadays, and her people were people with whom she shared a mutual respect and love. People whose company she shought out.
She was quite mature, really. She had her mind on her presence. Her mind on mindfulness.
When out in the streets, she kept vigilant. She loved her life, that's why. And safety was no given out there for a girl like her. In her early twenties. Hot by most mens standards. Hot by most women's standards as well. Whether they would admit it or not. And hot was not just sexy and beautiful like it used to mean in the seventies and eighties. No, hot now encompassed such qualities in her possession as intelligent, stylish, unique....someone who many stopped to look at or think about or smile toward. (Or hate. Like haters love to do).
The only degradation of her status from hot, in her experience, were the times (infrequent, fortunately) when someone thought and then expressed (either vocally or another way) : slut! aka whore! aka toss up! aka junkie! All of which, though inherently unmistakably untrue, still made her feel thoroughly unloved. And as she knew now that she was done crying over that bullshit: she understood how misunderstood she really was by the haters. The ones easy to envy, easy to fear, easy to narrower-constructed paths and visions etched within the parameters of those who taught the art of envisioning one's life through the lens of some asshole's vision superimposed upon their whole young and manipulated souls.
If she cried, she cried for the haters the original haters made hate.
Okay, enough about her equals love and beauty, prevailing against a red tide of haters. She was truly, at times, exactly what the worst of them suggested she was. She saw her darkness quite clearly. She accepted as much of herself as she could, good and bad. She could take the heat. She would not duck in denial of those parts of herself she also wished she could disown, for real. Like the promiscuity in recent years. But then again, she was stimulated in alot of ways, and she responded with honest desire. She got a lot of consequences from her behavior, you know. It was not exactly a sleigh ride in a winter wonderland. Well, there was sure enough snow to go around. Snow and flow and freestyling motherfuckers high on blow.
But that shit got old. fast. She certainly did not hit the streets for it. She had lots of subtle reasons to style her life the way she styled. And the simplicity of getting into a man's car not knowing what the night held in store, freed her from the choices of which there were too many to count.
The rush she felt was akin to all sorts of rushes her mom and best friend Rachelle and her brother described to her all the time when she was a little naive nothing sitting at the dinner table looking at her nails in their beautiful unchipped glossy fineness.
Yeah, she did nails. She was a miss manicurist back then, high school, all cause she made a bad french nail. Everyone thought her nails were salon quality work. She had a steady hand, and back then she had a strong sorta focus.
Looking now at her beat up half-chewed to the bit, chipped like a mother kinda delapidated shanty of nailbeds, she could only laugh. She easily traded off the endless boring nights reading cosmo, trying to find her style, her fashion, her self... nights now had no comparison. Usually.
The good ones were fucking great!
The bad ones were terrible and sometimes but not often, scary.
The usual ones were the usual people whom she knew, had established trust on levels from hypervigilance to the kinda ease the good guys set her in. The guys who cared about her. Who wanted her to be happy and challenged her to handle herself like a grown woman.
The guy she was going out with tonight was one of those. Not a pimp but only because he didn't fit any stereotype. Not a boyfriend cause he knew and even enabled her dating. Not a john cause even though it may have started that way, they both meant more to one another than either expected they would from the start.
From the start he was just some dude on a couch in the apartment of some sweet much-known and loved transvestite who held company while his wife was out working her nine fiver. She would go there to try on the always wonderful room half-full of clothes they all picked through. Replete with the most thirsted after labels a girl could have her heart set on.
Then he was to her just some dude half-watching the big screen tv, half-the-time on the phone working out the next paycheck, the next meal, the next ways of means to make life tolerable in the states. Which of course required cream. Meaning cash. He found a way to walk her home one night, and they began to see how good they could be for one another, and to manifest exactly that. No strings.
Tonight he was taking her somewhere, possibly to chill and see some of the girlfriends she laughed with over stupid shit. Hopefully not with any of the bitches who hated her for her looks and envied her her relationship with him, which most saw was somehow a little deeper than he had with most chicks.
Never tight like he was with his people, not tight like he was with his main business partners. Not to be held up to flesh and blood. Nor his two ex-wives. Whatever it was, the je ne sais quoi that was them, was not to be competed against, compared with, or anything like that. Much less high maintenance. She often thought about him, one three five am, and she continued to pick up his calls (despite a temptation to let the intensity of it all cool for a while) and continued to go on these nights trusting him...because she felt freshness, she felt love, she felt protected. What they had was honest.
He was literally the only dude she met in the past five years when she inadvertently found herself in the company of a bunch of the kinda people they said Jesus used to hang with. You know the kind. From the far side of the tracks (far from that hollywood plastic kinda sparkle). The dark side (cause the tax bracket was weaker, and city services were half-assed). The fast food on every other corner side. The shoes hanging over the telephone wires side. The side of town mom & pop shops rule. The 99 cent store side. The crack whore side. The you thought you knew poor? side.
 |
| For Raccoon by K |
Today, hmmmm she wondered. Not really a mark by the look of her. Certainly dressed appropriate. Daisy dukes over tights. All-stars on the feet to soften the sexual enticement. Makeup done subtle (not garish) for the touch of sophistication. Jewelry light but clearly chosen chains, bracelets, earrings. And only her favorite necklaces. She forged a wide-eyed open attitude with some ability to trash talk in a fierce and freestyle way, when necessary, and often just for fun, just fucking around. This served to let someone with whom she was unacquainted know she was comfortable with herself, and in any circles, street or academic. She could make ya laugh (if you weren't a natural born hater).
Tonight? Tonight she had no fear, no worries, and a strong desire to get laid. Probably and hopefully if she could coax him to drive toward the northwest side of town. Where the gentrification was mad furious. Where two diametrically opposed hoods came together in some eye of some culture storm.
Yes! she felt her heartbeat later as they headed up grande avenue. She popped another strawberry hi-chew in her mouth, and his, then did a show-n-tell on pink gone neon pink tongues. His tongue was wide as fuck! She laughed, he asked why, and she laughed some more.
By the time they were turning into that old 7-11, she had a laugh or two out of him. Which left her first in tears, then steady smiling until smiling had long gone out of fashion. The scandalous bitches rolled their eyes all night long. They only wish they knew what the hell was to smile about, when there was so much picking on, up, and off still to do.
Hard work, being miserable, she thought to herself.
Then decisively struck out on her own.
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