The Truth Won't Save You Now

Netflix: Dollhouse Season 1
Book: Freakonomics
iTunes: "Mrs. O" The Dresden Dolls

The front entryway to my apartment building smells like cheap beer and old cigarettes.
The parking lot, on the other hand, smelled like fried chicken, and a man walking around caused me to question: what came first? The swagger or the pants that only stay on because you're gripping them tight?

It's not that I don't like black people.
In fact, I used to want to be a black person.
(Then came a Native American phase, and then the inevitable Asian phase that has not only lasted the longest but probably has no end in sight.)

Why did I have this want to be anything other than my own race?
(Other than the obvious: white people suck. But this isn't a history lesson.)
The best answer I can think of is that ever since I can remember, I wanted to be different.

(Why I wanted to "be different" is unbeknown to me, as, like most people, I cannot remember most of those early, terribly important years that shape who we are to become later in life.)

"Being" different isn't really "doing" anything, is it? One can be "different" and no one can give a damn. What's the point in being "different," anyway? I'd do it to piss people off, I'd do it to make people uncomfortable, I'd to it to make them stare. In the grand scheme of things, this is relatively pointless, embarrassing, and childish. Softcore rebellion, at its core. So, unconsciously, my goal must have been changed... I wanted to prove people wrong.

It has only been in the past year that I have come upon the realization that "proving 'them' wrong" has been the impetus of so many of my actions, of so many why-I-do-the-things-I-do's.

Against the odds, defying the statistics, flattening stereotypes.
I wanted to make people comfortable in what they knew and twist it in their face.
I wanted quiet shock, a double take, an invisible reaction.
I wanted people to open their fucking eyes, without,
Without knowing that it had been my goal, all along.

I have, can, and will continually do things just to prove you wrong. That's something about my that will probably not be changing for awhile.

And so I wonder.
Maybe I wanted to be black and not have a baby on my hip, not find grills the least bit attractive, not wear South Pole no matter how good my ass looks in it, and not listen to music about the shootings going down in my momma's 'hood.


But if I were black, would I want to be white?