THIRTY-FIRST OF MAY

She looks before herself in the mirror while she brushes her teeth. No words from her lips does she speak. Yet the chorus in chaotic sing-song rhyme plays repeatedly, non-stop, over and again in her mind . And through her eyes upon herself come these lines…

Who is this girl?
Who is this girl?
Who is this girl?

No beats, no drums, no bass lines.

I don’t know how to put it best, but it’s been a rough and enlightening four day weekend for myself. It feels good to write a little and let go. I managed to lift another candle off my mother’s living room table. From my best guess I’d say it’s blueberry, but not the kind of overbearing scent to make you nauseous like the pie. This is the current set-up for this session.

My job decided to close up operations on Friday and give us all a four day weekend. I didn’t complain a bit though I would be losing a day on my pay check. I wanted to use the day to get some things done for myself and play catch up. Most of which didn’t get done because I was irresponsible, but I’ll get to the finer details later.

The previous night I had made a couple phone calls to see who would be interested in taking a field trip down to Miami with me. A close friend of mine was going to be down for the weekend out of Los Angeles and it only seemed appropriate to meet up if he was going to be on this very coast. After a couple of calls I managed to sell Chavonne on the idea of going down to party for one night and turning around to drive right back to Tampa. It’s crazy, I’m young, it’s a four hour drive and I’m all about road trips. Plus I was going to see my friend after all.

When the time arrived Chavonne and I rode off into the sunset (sounds cliche huh) and off to Miami. I was ready! Road trips are always good if you have a lot of catching up to do or even wish to reflect upon some of the events taking place in your life. Windows down and the wind hitting your face… Ahhh…I love it. So there Chavonne and I were chatting it up and keeping quiet when a good song came on from one of the CD’s I was playing. I sped most of the way and made it to Miami in a clean four hours, but couldn’t get a hold of my friend.

We had planned to meet at his hotel where we would then plan the rest of the evening. Or night, as at this point it was 10 PM. It took three to four more phone calls before he answered and came crawling down out of his room. While we were waiting though Chavonne and I were surprised to find the hotel lobby packed the way it was. We’d never seen so many black men. Correction – good looking black men in our lives and as the night went on the numbers increased.

My friend wrapped his arms around me in and like a scene from Frailty I could feel all of the previous night and day’s vacation debauchery squeeze my limbs too. His eyes wore a soft rouge color, but his smile was devious and illuminated the entire lobby. All he could seem to chime was the words, “Don’t be mad, don’t be mad.” Why should I be mad? He only had us waiting for five minutes and it was his vacation. I certainly did not wish to intrude. Besides, I’m no saint myself. But he was out of it… He hugged Chavonne and grabbed our hands and we strolled through the lobby. He also kissed the open space on my back, which really led me to believe he was f’d up! How I heart being sober sometimes.

It took sometime for the boys to prepare so his cousin took us to McDonald’s where in Miami everything is in espanol. Felt like Cuba or something. Really gotta brush up on the lingo to travel in the U.S. sometimes. Then back to the hotel we went to eat as eyes watched the somewhat out of place girls we had become. Alas the gang was ready and to the club we went.

Now before we departed my friend managed to stir up some other words of conversation. First question:

My Friend: How do you feel about it?

Adrienne: About what?

My Friend: Niggas.

Adrienne: Uh… Laughs.

But when we got back into the car we were back to the first couple lines we were greeted with, “Don’t be mad, Don’t be mad.” I wasn’t mad though he had poured a decent amount of Hennessy on my skirt and we hadn’t made it to the club. Luckily it didn’t stain, because I would have had to kick his sober ass later on. We made it to the club safely and waited in the lengthy line to get inside. It seemed bit overpriced, but with the holiday weekend places will find ways to exploit you and overcharging is one of them. One of the fellas we were with happens to be an assistant to Debbie Allen and told us a couple of funny stories. One of which I learned anew vocabulary word or slang as that may be more accurate. “The Kids.” So here on out I may refer to some folks as “The Kids.”

By the time we made it inside the club was already hot and packed with boys, boys, boys, boys. It could have been a paradise for a woman like myself, but none of them were interested. Oh well! Time to dance. We escorted ourselves to the dance floor where popping it like it’s hot turned many a head the other way and even garnered some laughter. Sorry…

The night basically went on this way for hours. Everyone had split up, but Chavonne and I stayed close. We didn’t need any Divas rushing up on us as we had encountered in the lobby earlier that night. We danced and worked up a sweat, but then we became a little tired. One of the guys we were with swooped us up in efforts to re-ignite our night and lured us closer to the stage where there were a bunch of men. Uh, naked men. Dancing and doing things I felt my eyes should not have been witness to. But like a three year old I was fixated and disturbed, but too disturbed to move. My amiga was feeling the same, but again we were glued. And I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say so, but I guess we were sinning or who was sinning? There was a lot of sinning going. I hate that word. It’s such a harsh three letter word. S-I-N. I’m not talking about men with men or women with women, but I’m talking about deceit and secrets. Can secrets be sins too?

After I thought about my friends question from earlier I didn’t know how I felt about it. There were indeed a lot of niggas in the building . And of course many would surprise you if they came up to you on the street and slapped a guys ass or something. No, they don’t look liberal. They were fine and you know they had some tender young thang at home. A nice girl friend to keep their secret lives under wraps and a level of normalcy. perhaps to appease mum or dad. Or a grandmother who refused to believe her baby boy would ever be interested in a man. Were some of “the kids” possibly the downlow brothers Oprah had put on blast or whoever that author was? Hmm.. I had to arise an eyebrow and wonder just who was out and who was in? Because I wouldn’t buy it if someone said 75% of that place was out. But then again what concerns or stress does this put on my life. None really,… It was just something to think about when the lights started flashing and one could get a real clear view of some of the madness taking place inside.

The rest will stay in Miami as it wasn’t fully my trip to tale the tale, but I’ve told as much as I can from there and will pick up on the ride back home. It was hard. Chavonne and I nabbed only an hour of sleep before we headed back to Tampa at 6 AM. I started losing it in Alligator Alley and asked Chavonne to drive the rest of the way from Naples. We made it back safely and then I crashed again.

On the air mattress in my room that could use a good inflating. Of course.
In case you may have lost track, the day is now Saturday in this long weekend tale and I just crashed. But a few hours later I was back up. I had to be. I committed myself to a photo shoot for a guy that was looking to update some of his stock photos for submission to places like Getty Images and Corbis. Some of his work can be seen here though his site does need to be updated. www.stevenandres.com

I was tired and ill prepared for this shoot. I ran out of the house like a coke ridden whore dashing from a client to get to the next. (That either sounded really bad or really dramatic.) I had grabbed a couple of clothing changes, shoes and accessories should they be needed. I left the clothing hanging in my car and the rest packed in a suitcase.

The shoot went over well I believe, so I’ll spare you the boring details. Like he took one picture of my hand, the next of my face, a close-up, etc etc… yawns. Uh, Boring. We finished up in about three hours and I headed home.

I was beat, beat, beat. But I was too tired to rush up the stairs so I smacked my gums on some salty sunflower seeds in the parking lot before heading up. Ten minutes must had passed before I made the decision to get up, but when I did I knew I didn’t want to come back. I have a bad habit of packing my hands full even though two trips probably would have been the better idea. I took everything out of my car and last I remember, made it into the house.

I threw the clothes onto the chair and told myself I would nap for a little before getting up to write. Well I was out at 9:30 and my nap took me all the way into 5 AM. When something suddenly struck me. My suitcase wasn’t in my room and it wasn’t in the apartment. I threw on a robe and ran outside, to find of course that it wasn’t waiting for me to come pick it up out there either. Someone else probably had done me that favor. I retraced all the steps over and over in my head trying to remember where I had left the bag. And the two options are: I left it sitting by my car or I left it sitting outside my front door as I fumbled with my keys to get in.

I had been so tired that I misplaced my bag. So tired that I could leave it all the way downstairs by my car and the materials inside. I’m not counting on getting them back, but every pair of heels I own, and some pretty sentimental pieces of jewelry have all been misplaced. And these are just material things. I know, so I fret not.

I’m upset because somewhere in the process I’ve been misplacing myself, my soul, my body, my mind, and my time.

Who is she?
Who is she?
Who is she?

Because I don’t like the girl she’s beginning to be.

It being so early in the morning kept me from knocking on doors and searching the complex for the suitcase, but I did so when the sun came up and about 10 AM when people should sorta be up. No one knows anything. As one would suspect. But there is always hope I guess. Just have to be more careful in the future.

The rest of the day was a real downer. I stayed inside upset with everyone for being stupid and everything else between. Some folks tried to console me, but I realized it was better to just keep to myself. I tried to focus on writing (which did manage to get done), but faced some minor distractions from the boy my heart beats wildly for. He invited me out of the evening and after a session of yes, no, yes, no no… I stayed inside for the evening watched a DVD with my mom, worked on my scrapbook and then feel asleep around 9 or 10.

That concluded Sunday.
Toady was more on the upside. I woke up and threw on the new Common I had purchased. I’m really digging that Go song and Faithful and heck the whole damn CD is beautiful. I banged out a couple of applications for some jobs and proceeded to do some writing in between. Next CD that found it’s way into the player was M.I.A.

A couple of words on M.I.A. – FUCKIN’ HOT.

Sorry – the girl is super dope. Much of the last years hype I heard about her before buying the CD is well worth the hype. But your ears to the speaker folks because you may get it twisted for Gwen Stefani, but the girl has got something to say.

Yes, but I wrote some pretty good bits today if anyone cares to read any more please look for my works at Gadling. After tackling most of the writing I then started on one of the travel stories I have been working on about Trinidad for sometime. I should have that up and into the I Go U Go system by Wednesday. (Tomorrow is my last day of work so I should have a little time before the next job.)

My room is super steamy hot and the candle probably isn’t making it better so I’m going to speed things up some. On Saturday I had along conversation with my good bud Angel and she had mentioned seeing the movie Crash which is what my mother and I checked out this evening. A great, great, great film! You were so right Angel!!! First it had a great cast and so many inter woven pieces to such a well-written screenplay. Second it felt good watching a film based in Los Angeles and recognizing almost everything including the Farsi spoken by the Persian characters, the curry restaurant across the street from Natalie’s neighborhood and the guy on the bus with the huge mustache – who I’ve had a conversation with sometime ago. He’s missing some fingers I know that much. But an excellent film. If you have the opportunity do, and I do mean check it out.
That pretty much brings us up-to-date.

Some other points that I’ll bring to light is coming out of this slump and semi depression I’ve been hit with. Knowing the problem lies in having no goals to too many goals which boils down to unrealistic goals. So I have to return to my one and only original goal. More in depth later.

Then I’m also reading the Purpose Driven Life right now? Somehow I almost feel like I’m too out of wack to read the book now, but who reads stuff like that when everything is in place? I mean I don’t want the fact that I am out of wack to influence some of my decisions about the book, but overall I am enjoying it. I feel like it has helped.

My okay. I need to get up and complete the last day of work and in a functional manner. So I’ll excuse myself tonight xanga and promise again to write more. there is more to write about. Believe me!!!

Sayonara and g’nite.

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