It’s been damn near three months since I’ve posted anything new here. That’s because:
- I’m lazy as hell.
- My left shin is acting up and freaking me out.
- I’ve been working on something else.
This something else is a longer, non-blog story that I’m planning to submit as part of an application for graduate school. I’ve included an excerpt of it below, but the whole thing is about 22 double-spaced pages. If you read the excerpt and have any interest in reading more of it, I would love to send you the full story and to have you tell me what you think of it. Tryna make it as good as I can, and your feedback would help. If you email classygallie@gmail.com, I’ll send it to you A$AP. (I’d use my real email address but I’ve seen the Google searches that bring people to this site. I got mad weirdos coming through.)
Also, a disclaimer: Some of this stuff I’ve already blogged about. Sorry if that’s boring. But! If you choose to read the whole thing, there is some freaky stuff I’ve never blogged about before, like the first time I shared a bed with someone (I was old and acted strangely. I’m not that thrilled about sharing it.)
In 1993, I had a bed head of blonde hair, a bug collection, and an insane speech impediment. I spent my days at home in Maine playing with Barbies, catching frogs, eating chips, and telling anyone who would listen how much I loved “big, black, muscly men.” I was four years old.
If I ever have a daughter who, at age four, confesses to me her love for big, black, muscly men, I imagine I’d be both horrified and delightfully surprised. If that’s the reaction my own mom had when I made the same confession, then I must have only registered her delighted surprise. She, like everyone else, loved it when I said my type of man was the LL Cool J type of man. So I told it to everyone.
“I heard you lost your first tooth, Allie. Nice work!” said Clayton, my next-door neighbor.
“Nah. Michael Jordan, now that’s some nice work,” I told him. “Asked Santa to bring me that ass for Christmas. Clayton you already know I love me some big, black, muscly men.”
“All right, kiddos, it’s nap time!” said Diane, my daycare provider.
“Word!” I said. “‘Bout to have some chocolate dreams up in this bitch. You know, cause I love big, black, muscly men and I think about them in my sleep. Nighty night, y’all.”
“How would your daughter like her cheeseburger?” asked a Ground Round waitress.
“She’ll have it done medium—” said my mom.
“Make that well-done, gurl,” I interrupted. “I want it black but juicy, with extra firm buns and a spooky big pickle on the side. I call it the ‘Allie’s Manwich’ in honor of my love and appreciation for big, black, muscly men. Yo, and that comes with chips, right?”
I never actually said any of those things, but I really did use that exact phrase (“I love big, black, muscly men!”) all the time. It was true; when I was four, black men with big muscles were the only men I was into. While other girls my age were watching Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and falling in love with Prince Charming, I was busy watching rap videos and counting how many rows of abs Tupac had. My mom has always been a big hip-hop fan, and by default my three older sisters and I were, too. Since the three of them had mostly grown out of Disney movies by the time I would’ve grown into them, and since they ruled the TV remote, all we watched was MTV. Once you’ve seen Tupac rapping naked on a toilet in his video for “All About You,” there’s not much to be gained from watching a cartoon prince kiss a sleeping cartoon princess.
If Cinderella is the ultimate fairy tale for most little girls, then mine was Salt-N-Pepa’s video for their song, “Shoop.” My entire notion of love and romance comes from that video. My entire notion of life comes from that video, actually. I remember watching it and seeing those chocolate chip, honey-dipped men dancing around shirtless—the guy in the leather vest and the do-rag, and the other guy in the baggy blue suit who stripped down to his underpants. I didn’t even understand what I was seeing, but I was most definitely trying to get a scoop.
It makes me sick to say that now—to admit that I was some kind of semi-racist horndog in pre-K, but I can’t change the past. I was a semi-racist horndog through-and-through. I was a blonde-headed, light-skinnded girl whose ideal Prince Charming was big and black and built. My sole redeeming quality was though I preferred black guys, I was down with just about anyone. I just wanted to shoop, goddammit—and with few big, black, built men to chose from in southern Maine, I had to take what I could get. That’s why a year later, on my first day of kindergarten, I fell in love with a scrawny white boy named Justin. He was the first boy I made eye contact with that day.
Willing to read more? Holla at classygallie@gmail.com and I’ll send you all of it!
classygallie 