If you're a movie buff like me, you'll see that this post's title is an homage to the Swedish suspence drama Let the Right One In. The film is about a developing relationship between two of the most melancholy tweens I've ever seen in my life. It's heavily intense, but I recommend it if you want to experience the unexpected and be drawn into something outside of yourself. A U.S. version of the film will be released sometime this year I do believe.
I was sitting her thinking about this film and a book I read years ago but most recently have picked up again called Black Girl in Paris. The book is about an African American 20-something who moves to Paris to live the lives of her most cherished black authors, especially James Baldwin. Both of these contributions to the artistic world got me to thinking about who I want to be and how I envision myself in the future. They've inspired me to construct a future, but the problem is I'm not happy with my present so the future seems light years away.
Let the Right One Out: I've lived a fairly controlled, restrained, and limited experience. I pride myself on being honest and out-spoken, but for the most part, I've lived a carbon-copy experience. I did what I was supposed to do. I went to church. I prayed. I made good grades. I stayed out of trouble. I was the head of the pack. I got involved in church. I didn't date. I didn't stay out past curfew. I went to school. I didn't complain. I wasn't a problem child. I look back at all these things and I see how much I didn't allow myself to really be a child or a teenager. I'm not saying I had the most horrendous upbringing, but I did all these things thinking they'd get me somewhere as an adult. I played it safe and created a monster people believed in: I was the good girl. I played the smart one. People expected me to go places and be something. I have a mind like no other. A relative once told my mom that I was gonna be something someday. She seemed excited and impressed. A friend told me I was the smartest person she knows. And all the compliments in the world don't mean a thing because I'm playing a role I thought I was supposed to play and didn't ask to be any different. I always knew I was a bit of an oddball. I always saw things differently than my peers. I've always had an overactive imagination. And sadly I haven't acted on any of this. I wrote a script for myself that has been thrown away and is waiting to be written.
I want to be a new me. Well, not so much a new me, but the me I've always been but kept stifled for fear of some puritanical judgment. I'm not the most modest or conservative person. And I don't desire to be anymore. I'm can be crude, lewd, outrageous. I think drag queens are beautiful. Retro fetishistic imagery is art to me and divorced from eroticism. I feel for the gay community. I believe in fairness. I want to be the black version of Dita Von Teese and show that black beauty comes in so many wonderful and lush forms. I'm open to dating outside my racial identity group. In fact, when I was younger, I invisioned my husband to be something exotic to me and he spoke a language I'd want to learn and he wasn't necessarily black. I want to wear netted veils across my fash and fishnets with back seams. I want to wear vintage clothes for the rest of my life. I want to go to a gay bar just for the heck of it. I saw a beautiful glass blown penis one time and thought whenever I get a house, I'll put one in the foyer to great my guests as they remove the shoes at the door. I want to live somewhere in Europe where nudity isn't some over eroticized commodity, but a natural human state.
I want to let this person out because she is the right one. I haven't because I've allowed Christian expectations to keep me stifled. I can't do this or that because it's "ungodly." Some of that may even be true, but I'm still letting other people determine who I should be just for the sake of their own comfort. I want to live with artists (filmmakers, writers, painters, dancers) and drink red wine for breakfast. I want to visit a nude beach where being naked isn't sinful. I actually want to go and visit people in the fetish scene. I don't believe sexuality and my religion should be divorced from each other. I'm just like everyone else: I don't want to be judged. I want to be the right me. I was thinking about Under the Tuscan Sun the other day and there was one character I loved the most: Katherine played by Lindsay Duncan. I remember when I saw I her, I wanted to be like her. Here she was the carefree woman who was sumptuous and happy. She was sensual and artistic. She enjoyed life. She had a bit of a pitfall in the movie, but she bounced back and fell even more in love with Tuscany.
That's the kind of existence I long for.
Black Girl in Bondage: That's who I am. Maybe I should contact Shay Youngblood to get free. I bought this book when I was 18 or 19. The title and the book cover struck me as something artistic and would tell a story I wanted to live in. When I first read Black Girl In Paris, I was impressed by the heroine's experience, even thought it wasn't always the best. I admired her for just leaving and creating a new life for herself, but I didn't think I'd ever want that experience so much until now. I started reading it again and it spoke volumes to me about who I am now and who I want to be. There's one line that made me want to cry: "I needed a map to help me find love and language, and since one didn't exist, I'd have to invent one, following the trails and signs left by other travelers. I didn't knoow what I wanted to be, but I knew I wanted to be the kind of woman who was bold, took chances, and had adventures. I wanted to travel around the world. it was my little-girl dream" (Youngblood, 3). I read that and I knew someone understand what it was like to want to be the entirety of who you are and to see life as a breathing artform. Then I started thinking about all these artistic things I'd been a part of and why I never continued them.
When I was a little girl, I used to make journals to chronicle my days and give them to my mother to read. My cousin and I used to learn dances from music videos and perform them for relatives. I wanted to be like Mariah Carey. I wrote poems and songs. I wrote stories I never finished. I started sketching in high school and hard an artist friend who said I was pretty good. Someone once thought another art kid drew a picture I presented as a visual aid for discussions about teen sexuality. I was accepted into a theater program my senior year in high school. Before I auditioned for the teachers, I previewed my monologue for students who'd been in the program for years. One of them said, "Now that's acting." I learned to sneeze on cue for the end of the year play Alice in Wonderland. Before I was accepted for the concert choir, the director worked with me and a few students for vocal lessons after school. I couldn't continue after a while, but the director believed in my voice. He really did. But I did become a mezzosoprano for the choir. I sang for classes at random because somebody heard I could sing. I did one talent show, but didn't do another because I didn't want to get booed again. I was accepted to a small Christian college with a scholarship to study theater, but I didn't go because I believed God wanted me somewhere else. I didn't even really want to go to that school. I thought I was supposed to. A sorority sister told me I was so beautiful that I should be in a pageant or something. Another sorority sister from another chapter said I should be an actress. In college, a friend said I had an anointing on my voice. I used to let people read my poetry.
Then one day I stopped. I stopped writing. I stopped reading. I stopped performing. I realized why I didn't continue these things: I thought they were fantasies and my colleagues were better than I was. I didn't believe I had the passion for these things. I didn't think I was good enough even though I thoroughly enjoyed these things. When I was in that play, I thought I would be nervous. But I went out on staage and forgot about them in a way. I was still aware that I was performing for them, but I felt free to be a fool. It felt normal and right. And real. One of my teachers said on a progress report that I had so much potential, but I wasn't letting go. She was right. Then I did what I was "supposed" to do. I went to school and got 2 degrees and I still don't feel fulfilled. I'm a Black Girl in Bondage.
I want a new life somewhere else. I want to be free.
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