Every time I go to the National Portrait Gallery

I am captivated by this bronze bust of Booker T Washington.

Photo taken by me!

For dramatic effect (at least, dramatic for those of us who get more caught up in drama from a century ago than in today's celebrity gossip), the museum places this bust and a portrait of Frederick Douglass on opposite sides of a small wall, spatially articulating their radically divergent viewpoints and envisioned directions. As much as I prefer Douglass's philosophy (though I've learned to at least see where Washington was coming from), I have to say that his portrait is little match for this bust. Sitting on a pedestal that makes him over 6 feet tall, the bust is as imposing as I imagine the man must have been. His eyes are too high to look back at me, and I can't help but feel slighted. Given the sad state of urban and rural public education these days, I am of the firm belief that you could bring Douglass and Washington into the present day and their arguments would change significantly. Bearing that in mind, I can't help but stand firmly rooted there for a number of minutes, measuring myself up to this man, wondering what he might think of me.  

#TransRespect #DCPride

My city has launched the first ever transgender respect ad campaign. Images below are via Colorlines.

True Life: I think I Dislike Happy Hours

I know, I know, this goes against everything you understand about my deep-set love and affection for alcohol and camaraderie. Hear me out, okay?

So RG asked me to go to happy hour at this bar he likes that is walking distance from both my job and my house tonight. I said sure, because I hadn't seen him in almost three weeks and wanted a chance to catch up, and besides, he's always *RAVING* about this bar. I got there first and he wasn't as late as he usually is, which was nice [Really, RG, I give you two freebies whenever we hang out--it's just that you always use your first one by being late :P]. I couldn't see their happy hour specials posted anywhere, so I decided to just sit, pretend to be interested in my phone, and wait until he got there.

Strike one: my amaretto sour was EIGHT DOLLARS. But I love amaretto, and so I let it slide and said I'd get a beer next to balance my happy hour budget. I then got a crappy Corona and it was an unheard of SEVEN dollars. I am never going back to this bar. But that's not what this post is about. Trying to have semi-serious conversations over thumping hip-hop doesn't jive well with me either, but again, this post is not about this bar specifically, and I suppose happy hour is not designed for semi-serious conversations with good friends. Fair. 

At the particular bar we were at tonight, I was, for one of very few times in my life, on the tiny side of a seriously skewed gender imbalance. At one point there were seriously five women and over twenty men in the room. RG kept commenting on this, asking if I saw anything I liked, saying I could have my pick. I kept brushing these comments off, until he tried to challenge me to get one of them to buy me a drink. I flat-out refused, and he seemed puzzled by how adamant I was. 

I...can't fuck with the superficiality of bar scenes, this one in particular or bars in general. Unless I want meaningless sex with someone I couldn't contact again if I wanted to, which is exceedingly rare but not impossible, then I have literally no interest in like, interacting with strangers on the premise of wanting them to give me things for no real reason but the possibility of getting my number and seeing me again, which they can only decide if they even want to do based on my looks and the brief conversation I suppose we'd have to have in order for him (or her, though that didn't seem likely in this bar) to decide to buy me a drink. That's actually one of the most undesirable forms of supposedly-pleasurable social interaction I can imagine--it brings to mind how I imagine putting an evening with me up for bidding at a charity auction would feel. Step up, step right up and place your bid! For the not-low-at-all price of an eight-dollar amaretto sour, you too can have a chance encounter with this woman, whom you know absolutely nothing about! #donotwant

Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to meet someone at a bar and develop some sort of legitimate interest. For instance, if that guy I met at the bar at The Howard had asked for my number, I would have given it to him. If he'd asked me out, I would have gone. Because we had an hour-long conversation that wound through all sorts of subjects and involved him showing me pictures of his family--we developed an understanding of who one another was. But that's the kind of thing that can happen when you meet at a bar at a concert you both came alone to--you already have two things in common: musical tastes and a dislike for the social constructs that say that going to concerts alone is a faux pas. At the bar we were at tonight, what was I supposed to do, scan the crowd to find a face I found aesthetically pleasing, walk over and start talking to him based on nothing, and hope he found me attractive or interesting enough in this briefest of encounters to...reward me with a drink? I'd rather not. There is literally nothing substantive involved in that kind of interaction, and I don't understand why it is supposed to appeal to me. 

A club is slightly better, because then I'm not supposed to talk and I can just dance by myself and maybe someone will start dancing with me and maybe I'll let them and maybe not and it's not a big deal. I feel simultaneously like this is less of a meat market and like I'm more comfortable because we stopped pretending it's not a meat market. There aren't awkward introductions or performance-feeling conversations when a guy whose face I probably haven't even seen comes up behind me and starts grinding his junk on my ass (culture is so weird). And grinding is infinitely more pleasurable/fun to me than dancing alone. But even so, when I go out, dancing with randos is not ever on my list of goals for the night. My list of goals for the night always consists of three things: have fun with my friends, don't lose anything important, and get home in one piece. 

So I'm in a weird place right now. I like going out with my friends. I still like drinking just as much as I did a few months ago, and I like partying with people I feel comfortable with. I don't like being thrust into social spaces where it is assumed that I will want to talk to/flirt with people I know nothing about and be "gifted" things from them for unclear reasons. For this reason, I was probably way more comfortable in the random neighborhood bar near my house where I was the only Black person in sight than I was at this upscale Black bar RG and I went to tonight. I like places that are chill and for drinking and talking, not for putting on appearances and flirting and playing peacock. If I don't know you and have literally no premise for an inkling of desire to get to know you (an attractive face does not premise make), I don't want you to do anything for/to me, kthnxbai.

...This post could appropriately be called True Life: I Miss Quad. 

I really like finding tiny bits of art around my city.

I saw this in a tree outside of an art gallery on Thursday afternoon: a little blue pipe-cleaner-man with a big red pipe-cleaner-heart is his hands. 

I'm not gonna lie: it made me want an instagram account, haha.

I want to spend more time at/around Howard.

I went to this cool kind of snazzy event with some coworkers after work today, Phillips after 5. (Link for DC-based readers.) It's an event The Phillips Gallery holds on the first Thursday of every month, with live music, art, refreshments, and live performances. The kid's dance company that performed the dance to MJ's "Thriller" was pretty great, and I really liked the jazz band that performed tonight.

What does any of this have to do with Howard, you might be wondering. Well after a subset of us museum-goers ventured to Shake Shack for dinner, I decided to ride the trusty old G2 bus home while they all got on the metro. The bus took foooorever to show up, and I contemplated giving up and walking the 15 blocks home instead. But my mother convinced me to stay and wait, and like a good daughter, I listened.

My little sister called me while I was on the bus, and I was only half-listening to her while I eavesdropped on the conversation of three young Black people across the aisle from me. I was drawn to them because one of the girls was absolutely gorgeous, and I could have been content to spend that twenty minute bus ride alternating between appreciating her beauty and ogling the ass of the guy she was talking to.

They were talking about religion. The other girl (3rd person in the 3-person party) was saying that she's a combination Christian and Buddhist. She's "trying to be a Buddhist but it's just so hard!" I didn't hear why--I went back to listening to my sister. But a minute or two later, the beautiful girl made a comment about how the church is always preaching humility, but have you SEEN some of those churches?! Talk about ego! I laughed outright, but was disguised by the fact that I was on the phone. 

I got off of the phone with my sister and began pointedly looking the other way so that I might better pretend I wasn't listening to their every word  when the beautiful girl said something else hilarious. Talking to the second girl, she said, "But you're okay because you go to Howard. Black people looooooove Howard!" I laughed outright again, and this time they noticed me. She said, "It's true!" I agreed, and the guy asked me if I go to Howard. I'm never sure when the HBCU v. Ivy thing is going to be an issue or not, so I tried to get away with just saying that no, I don't go to Howard. Where do you go, he asked. I went to Princeton--I graduated in June. They all but fell out on the ground congratulating me, and the guy turned to face me too, officially including me in the conversation.  The guy and the second girl both go to Howard, while the beautiful girl just graduated from UCBerkeley.

The second girl was trying to get the beautiful girl and the guy to go to a Kendrick Lamar concert with her on the 22nd at the Howard Theater. I mentioned that I love that theater, and how disappointed I was that the Emeli Sande tour has been postponed because I was pumped to see her on Monday. The beautiful girl was surprised that I knew Emeli Sande, and the second girl said that she had recently been on an all-neo-soul-all-the-time groove. The beautiful girl asked her if she knew any of Bilal's music, and the second girl put a look on her face like, Who? I told her she should remedy that. The beautiful girl laughed. The second girl said she was really into a lot of instrumental things recently as well, and I told her she should look up The Robert Glasper Experiment, because their recent album Black Radio is a beautiful combination of neo-soul and instrumentals. The beautiful girl looked impressed, and said I knew what I was talking about. The second girl told me she loved my hair and my earrings, and asked me where I got them from. I introduced her to etsy. [Second girl's wallet, I make my apologies to you now.] Somehow the conversation turned to Wawa and the guy joked that he'd been lost for like 10 minutes by this point. 

And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, our conversation had to come to an end because I'd reached my stop. I will likely never see any of them again, but that was the best bus ride I've had in a very long time. Perhaps ever. And it has reminded me that there are, in fact, lots of indie Black people I can relate to in this city--I just have to find them. And evidently Howard is the place to start--as if I didn't know that already. Can I just go make myself a permanent fixture in their bookstore? Take up permanent residence in a nearby coffee shop? I need an in...