3000 miles


he is the greatest navigator
so when he left i was lost without him
he has the sharpest brain
so when he left i thought i lost my mind
he has the warmest heart
so when he left my bed was cold
his smile shines the brightest
so when he was gone my days turned gray
he has the safest arms
and when he left i felt unprotected
i have an empty space
so when he returns
he will fit
right
in

Take a good look.

There my friends, is a girl      young woman   woman.

There is a woman, home from her first professional film gig.

There is a woman, who will rest well tonight after her first professional film gig, and wake up in the morning, yawn, and then go wait tables from dusk to dawn.

There is a woman, who is good at what she does.
There is a woman, who is bad at being good.
There is a woman, who is good at being bad.

There is a lonely woman.
There is a woman wishing she was someplace else.
There is a woman wishing she was noplace else.
There is a woman who wants to be loved.
There is a woman who thinks that she already is.
There is another woman who doubts this.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a woman with goals.
This is a woman wandering about.
This is a woman going in know particular direction.
This is a woman who knows where she will end up.

This is a red woman.
This is a black woman.
This is a woman in red.
This is a blackie.
This is a whitey.

This is a woman who talks all day about issues.
This is a woman who works all day and has issues.
This is an issue free woman who works all day.
Here is a woman who likes to run away.
Here is a woman who likes to stay and play.

There is a person who wishes you would call.
There is a person who will never call at all.

There is a person who doesn't like to rhyme.

This person is a song.
This person is plain.
This woman always changes.
This woman stays the same.

"So how long have you known you were a..."
"A mutant?"

Oh, X2.

For some reason I feel like I just came out to my mom.

Don't get too excited ladies, I still (for better or worse) am hetero in all sexual tenses, but of course as you have always known there are some of you I would marry in a second. (Soon as we go legal) No, my sexuality has remained the same, but in alot of ways my orientation has been flipped all upside down.

Just a few moments ago I pretty much blamed my mom for being at the heart of the black complacency problem in America. I caught her off balance when I told her to "watch what she said" when making some comment about the crazy folks in my organization. I told her unfortunately those are the only kind we can get, and that people who look us up and down and then sit at home and do nothing are the worst kind of enemy we have. I told her that I would leave the NAACP if I had somewhere else to go. If there was an organization with enough balls and enough of a proven track record to go to I would go. I'm still waiting.

She said that everything I was saying was true and that she agreed with me 100%. I don't know what came over me, or what has been coming over me for the last few months, but it has seemed like a progressive "coming out" or rather an unmasking as I encounter the world as an educated adult.

Maybe it began with dinner at with Chris' parents in New York. Me, Chris, Sarah and his parents all crammed together in the favorite little Italian resturant on the corner, drinking wine, feeling fine. As the night got later, the wine and the atmosphere seemed to grow darker simultaneously, and even the tomato sauce seemed to grow thicker. We talked photography, New York, Chris' amazing portfolio, the scam artists at my job, Sarah's involment with SoWeBo, and

"you wanna do something on the children's stage?" "oh sure..."

and "where are you kids going tonight?" "Out dancing! WOO!"

and "What else are you doing this summer Erica?" "I have a little traveling to do, you know the NAACP sending me everywhere..." "Wow! The NAACP!" "Yes I am a member of the Board of Directors" "WOW! That's great, how'd you get that?"

And so I go into my spiel. And what a spiel really. I have gotten so good at it, I almost feel guilty about it. It's like a routine. Tell them how good you are doing in school, tell them about all your accomplishments, tell them about the civil rights "movement" so they feel a part of it. Show them what a good example of your people you are. It really hurts me to write this, but its true. I play they game just as well as everyone else who shares my burden of wearing the permanent undergarment of brown skin.

And so somewhere in the middle of the conversation we got to talking politics and civil rights. Somewhere in the middle of the second bottle of wine Mr. Chris' dad, father of my best friend, father of a gay eccentric photographer who despite himself attempts to remain conversative in his own views, began to really hurt my feelings. Like a papercut, I didn't realize that I was hurt and how bad it hurt until later. He began to introduce random statistics that said that racial profiling in fact does not exist, that said that studies have shown that blacks commit more crimes, speed more on the highway, don't acheive well enough to attend the best schools so to hell with affirmative action, that he used to work in such and such school and this is why he thinks that black community makes themselves out to look like victims. That this is essentially our problem, and we, like him, need to just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and stop looking like someone is hurting us all the time, like we are victims. In alot of ways, I agreed with him. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that although there isn't someone out to get us, sometimes there really is.

I don't think it was then when I changed. I don't even know that I have changed or woken up or if I have always been. I just know that lately there have been parts of me that are crying out and that realize that this is not the world I grew up believing in. Maybe it was little things here and there, and maybe just an abundance of things recently, like sitting in the back of The Spectator for the second time, alone, watching, wondering where young semi-militant, rainbow-colored-glasses wearing, almost-colorblind people like me fit into that whole picture. Or hearing that there might actually be a chance of me being cast in a substanstial role in the fall show about Asia because the makeup will probably be all white-face. How acting, my school, my friends, hell even the president have made me feel blacker than I have ever felt before. How coming home to Racial Utopia Columbia seems faker and ever and out of place, more shallow, more real.

I read the obituary of a young black boy in the newspaper today and I was sitting at the kitchem table trying to keep my breathing from getting out of control. His friends on the basketball team said they would wear his picture and number on their warm-up shirts at the national championships. And I couldn't help thining about how I had seen that before, when Dre died senior year, when my friends wore armbands at their basketball game, friends from both teams. And how the rivalry wasn't between the two teams playing on the court, but between those kids and the rest of the world. I though about senior year, and how I went to three funerals within about six months, and how I spent alot of my time organizing a community forum about the violence and demanding better guidance counselors. I told my mom I was amazed at how all that happened, and I still managed to do well on the SATs, hold a steady job, get good grades, participate in the NAACP, choir, Poms team, drama club, direct a show, write a few plays, choreograph, dance company, perform in Disney World, etc. People always ask me how I can do as many things as I do at one time. We faced so much trouble, so many people killed, locked up, or even worse, being successful at the horrible things they were doing to themselves. We had it real rough for a while. I told my mom, "After all that, this stuff is a breeze."

Yesterday in Baltimore was a glow of a city I knew before
There were power lines hung in the sunshine
Trees there draped in dew
Yesterday I thought I saw a city I once knew

Blending with the stop light was a man who had no home
There I was with my bag gathering pennies of my own
I must have walked past ten of them before my day was through
Gave him mine cause he remind me of someone I once knew

Walked across the city blocks and peeking into stores
Catching my reflection in the dark on the closed doors
Wanting to know where abouts that girl was going to
A little more but she looks like the someone I once knew

-Yesterday in Baltimore
Erica L. McLaughlin, 3/27/2004

She drove back and forth on side streets that were not large enough to accommodate the unnecessary monstrosity that was her SUV, and that were not cheery enough to take her out of the inescapable slump that was right now. Prince blasted on the radio, and the shrieks of the guitar perfectly accentuated the hum of her subconscious. She was lost. She had been here so many times before, in fact not a day had passed since the last time she was her, yet she could not find her way out. The suburban houses, the stops signs and the Christmas lights all looked the same now, and even if she had not had all those drinks she still would have felt trapped. Or rather -- caught. For on this morning, she was running away.

That morning when she woke up she found herself on one of four couches in a crowded living room. She looked around at all the bodies spread out like corpses across the furniture. She remembered why she was here, and why she was not where she wanted to be. She felt alone but careless, and secure but nauseous. Very nauseous. Her heart was broken and apparently it was contagious because her stomach was broken too. She wanted to go home. Well not really. She just wanted to be anywhere but where she was right now feeling the way she was. Yes. Because she knew were she wanted to be. But home was the only option.

When she got there, the place was still a bustle and hustle from the night before. Actually the place was asleep, but like the place she just ran away from, there were lifeless bodies all over these rooms too. She imagined they were all dreaming of New Year’s resolutions that would be made and would not be kept. She stood in the hallway, turning away consciously to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. And she began to tell her story to anyone who would listen. And she could tell that they could see the hurt she was wearing all over her, in the last remnants of mascara from the night before, in the way her back was cramped from the hard, lonely couch. One person listened, followed her into her room. She told her everything. The words flowed out of her involuntarily, and when they were done, then everything else started to do the same thing.

Ten minutes later she found herself bowing down in front of the porcelain goddess, giving her all the praise. She tried to keep some of the umm... “praise” to herself, but the greedy goddess wanted it all. She couldn’t keep anything in her body, even water seemed to flow directly back out. She had not felt this sick in a long time. She continued this worship service until about three in the afternoon, when she finally remarked, “I’m empty. I am completely empty.” She couldn’t even cry about it because the alcohol had dried up all her tears.

She thought she was dying. Or rather, she knew she wasn’t, but wished that she was. She was depleted, she felt like an invalid, and everything was passing by really slowly. She thought about how she felt that morning when she left, how powerful she felt-- despite the fact she was fleeing. For she thought had made a bold decision to just leave that shit, to not let it catch up with her. She was leaving them all there to clean it up. Which is why she wanted to die. Yea. So they could clean it all up.

But she did not die. And it was New Year’s Day. And for some reason she had managed to live another year. So she went and began to nurse herself back to health and clean up her own shit. And even though she didn’t have time to start all over again, she knew she would make some progress.