Untitled
When does
a boy become a man? Does it he become a man when strange
hair start to sprout around his penis? Does he penis
a man when he first falls in love with a woman, or
a man? When did I become so old? Today I looked in
the mirror and I gazed at my reflection- I do not really
know if it is my reflection- it is the reflection of
a black man with eyes that looked like my eyes and
ears that are unmistakebly my ears but that reflection
could not be my reflection. Only yesterday I was a
young boy, now I look like a man, a man on the verge
of hitting mid-life crisis, a man who is worried because
he is becoming old and there is no one around to love
him and he finds that the world is cold- my reflection
looks like such a man, whenever I look in the mirror;
but when did I become so old.
I
do not yearn for my boyhood; my childhood was not the
most
pleasant and I have absolutely no intentions of reliving
them. I was often scolded for doing this that I should
not have done- l should remain quiet in church; however,
I was never able to reamain silent and such I was often
beaten, violently, whenever I went home. I remember
once I took a woman, a woman that works at the hotel
that my grandmother worked to " kiss my rasscloth"(i.e
Kiss my ass); she told my grandmother that I told her
such vile words; my grandmother told my mother and
I knew that my mother, a woman who has an incredible
capacity to be devilish and angelic(though she is rarely
ever angelic), would beat me. When she called me I
ran. I ran into the wood. I ran along the beach. I
ran into the streets screaming. She ran into the woods-
she did not catch me- she ran along the beach- she
didnot catch me- she came into the street and a man,
a man that I do not remember( I have an incredible
ability to repress certain unpleasant elements) caught
me and handed me over to my mother, much in the same
way that one hands over a run away goat to its rightful
owner. I was beaten in the street. But that was typical-
everyone got beaten by their parents; sometimes some
people got spanked at school by the parents; everyone
got spanked at school by the teacher; yet , I remember
that spanking more than I do any other-maybe because
I ran away- maybe because I sought refuguee( I should
have thought of finding a hiding place- but where does
one hide in a small town?) Maybe that is when I became
a man- when I realized that pain and horror will find
me regardless of where I run to. I ran to the streets.
I ran along the beach. I ran into the woods. I ran
to Florida. I ran to DC. I will run to California or
Pennyslvania and the pain will come. Pain is universal
and maybe it is this knowlege, the knowledge that pain
is universal that causes wrinkles to appear on my !
19 year old face- maybe it is this knowledge that makes
me feel like a man on the verge of becoming a senior
citizen without love , without peace, with inner turmoil
and with death looming unlovingly like a lethal lord
over him.
