Hello everyone! I apologize for the long absence, but school has started back and I’m trying not to drown! So, today, I would like to talk about a very familiar modern-day topic: money.

Well, ever since I can remember, I have been aware of money and the fact that with it comes trouble. While my mother gave me many of the things I needed and in many cases, wanted. However, as I have grown older the reality of my financial situation has only grown especially with the current economy. When aspects such as cell phones, iPods, college, and other expensive items enter the picture accepting the fact that we simply cannot afford something is a lesson that I had to learn. It’s a difficult lesson to learn but it is one that had to be learned.

This lesson’s importance is great and yet it seems that it is rarely learned. Our world seems to place such immense importance on money. Rap artists toss it around in expensive music videos, characters in classic plays such as a Raisin in the Sun lose their minds over it, and government officials debate over the best way to handle it. It’s everywhere, and we can’t get rid of it.

So in this post I will leave you not with an answer but with questions:

What would happen if money never existed? Would our need for a social class system have never been a reality? Would we be happier or lost without the ability to distinguish who was more successful or who had ‘progressed more’? Or would we simply co-exist peacefully without the need to judge others?

Does money really make the world go around?

With today’s post, I would like to try to encourage people to see bisexual people as having just as solid a sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, and straight people. As a result of the many issues that have arisen for GLBT community nowadays from the outside, it’s very easy to miss some of the difficulties coming from within the community itself. As an incredibly feminine mulatto boy growing up in the south I’m sure you can all imagine how much fun I had in elementary school. While I never had to experience too much physical violence, I certainly wasn’t accepted and everyone certainly had no trouble telling me just how useless and disgusting they thought I was. I think that growing up in this way is a lot of the reason why it took me so long to realize that maybe I wanted to be a little more than friends with Taye Diggs. But now, I find myself facing a problem similar to the one I faced throughout most of elementary and middle school: people thinking that I’m not really bisexual.

Now when I say people don’t believe me when I say I’m bisexual, I’m not just talking about the southern Baptists who think it’s just a phase or the Catholics who are booking my flight to hell with Holier Than Thou West Airlines. I’m actually talking about proud gay and lesbian people who think that my being bisexual is just my refusal to “pick a team.” While I can certainly not fault them since I do fit many of the stereotypes, it is rather frustrating to feel like everyone’s looking at you and thinking “oh sweetie, you think you’re bisexual?! Oh, you are just so adorable! Yes you are! Yes you are! We’ll just wait until you’re in your 30s and then see how you feel.” Personally, while I know that the stereotypes come from somewhere I still know that the idea of me looking at Ciara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, or Megan Fox and saying that I’m not sexually attracted to them is laughable.

In reality, most people don’t fit into the categories of gay, straight, and bisexual because there are so many gray areas. However, because our society needs to pick one of the three so that everyone can feel comfortable we all feel as though we have to choose. For me, I know that I am pretty much 50-50 when I am not dating or interested in anyone just as my relationship experience is pretty much 50-50. The reason that everyone finds it so difficult for me to be bisexual instead of gay is a reason that I have a feeling haunts many other bisexual people like myself: expression.

For me, growing up in a family of strong women (most of whom were feminists) with no strong male influence, sexual advances towards women were mostly expressed to me as degrading and disrespectful. A woman was not sexy, she was beautiful. She had a fantastic figure, not a bangin’ body. As a result of this, I have always found that my sexual attraction to women is very personal and is only really expressed as a way to build their ego as a friend. Sadly, the easiest way I have found to be friends with a woman is to be her “gay friend.” While fashion advice and hair styling sessions are certainly not all my friendships with women are limited to it is certainly an incredibly simple and easy way to break the ice and get to know them. The downfall of this is that once you have reached this point with a woman, she has already come to see you as, if not gay, a friend that she is not romantically interested in. On the other side of my orientation, is my attraction to men. Since I grew up without a strong father figure, and a lot of the friendships I tried to have with men ended badly because I was so unpopular and seen as being gay, my respect for men was not great in any way. Therefore, referring to a man in a way that I thought to be degrading was not and is not only easy but is also in a sad twist of psychological way almost a way of getting back at the men who have hurt me in my life.

It is this kind of situation, in which one attraction or attribute about a person is expressed more than another which I believe causes much of the belief that bisexuality is merely a phase before the person grows up and chooses one or the other. However, I am here to testify that being bisexual is just as real and lasting as being gay or lesbian. While I cannot speak for the rest of the bisexual community, I know that personally I have no problem with being gay or straight; I just want to be myself and not be punished, judged, or disbelieved because of that. I hope you agree.

Recently, my family has been plagued with arguments over the “it” thing to do in the 21^st century: texting. Domestic arguments over texting and general cellular maintenance and leisure have become as common nowadays as arguments over social behavior. The two different sides of this argument seem to be clearly divided between the parental generation of the 1990s-2000s and their children.

Parental Argument

Because the majority of them grew up without knowing the joys and insecurities that come along with the teenage cellular age, it is hard for many parents to understand or sympathize with their children’s feelings of need when it comes to using cell phones. Whether for the better or not, most parents of today’s generation grew up with a different set of morals and ideals when it came to entertainment and social interactions. Communication was stretched out over time rather than the instantaneous contact regardless of location that we children of the cell phone age have become accustomed to. Because of this plus previous concerns about modern media and the influence it has on their children the financial woes that can be brought because of excessive use parents try to restrict what their children think of as normal communication. So, despite their attempts to help their children move through the dreadful period of puberty without their eyes attached to the TV and their ears and fingers glued to a phone parents take the course of restriction which can come off to their teenage children as an attack to the social life they feel a necessity to uphold.

Children’s Argument

Because of their societal expectations children in this day and age grow up with the idea that they should always be in contact with their friends, especially since most of their friends are trying to always be in contact with them. This is not something they can be blamed for. Nowadays, children are receiving at completely unreasonable ages. Recently, I witnessed a young girl texting on her phone and the temptation to lean my head out of the window and shout: “Sweetheart! If you’re too young for a training bra, you’re too young for a cell phone!” almost overwhelmed me. But it is this kind of thing that starts the slow downhill slide into domestic arguments over cellular use that so many domestic families experience. And yet, to be fair, can it really be said that the children are wrong for wanting to be social? While early socialization is unhealthy can it not be argued, once mature enough to have a phone and their family can financially support it, there is no real reason why teens not use their resources and text their friends when possible rather than use up minutes for the sake of a lukewarm conversation? And even if there is a valid answer that says that children should have the lukewarm conversation rather than send an impersonal text, at this point in technological socialization does it even matter?

For the better part of two centuries, slavery flourished in the United States as and became, for the south, an economic dependency. During this time, music was used by the slaves as a way to get their minds off the horrific work they were being forced to do. Another aspect of this slave music was slave wit, a literary term for the metaphors slaves used in their music to tell other slaves how to escape. This secret language hidden in the rhythm and tones of music is a very good example of music as a racial boundary and link. While the songs linked the slaves in their ultimate desire to be free, it also was used as a boundary between the slaves and their white masters. While this boundary was very necessary, it’s also interesting to see how those habits seem to have crossed over into our modern integrated culture.

Having been raised by white people, my mixed heritage can be a very confusing obstacle that for the most part, I have learned to handle very nicely. Needless to say, when originally seen by black people in my Abercrombie jeans, Holister jeans, and flip flops, they automatically assume that all I listen to is Coldplay and Broadway musicals. While both are true, they are surprised to say the least when they realize that I can quote Lil’ Wayne, Kanye West, and other rap artists. In this way, music links me to the other side of my racial heritage because they realize that there’s more to me, than the brand names and that despite their first instincts, we actually do have something in common.

Of course, the divide in musical tastes is not due to any lingering racism or prejudices, but instead, due to the differences in culture and individuality. The only instances in which these musical differences change is when the above situation occurs in which judgments are established by first impression and/or by the music individuals listen to. Therefore, before immediately assuming that your friendly neighborhood mulatto boy only listens to Broadway musicals and Norah Jones, and is therefore gay and hangs out only with white people, take a moment, and then get to know him. Who knows? He might listen to Lil’ Wayne, Usher, India.Arie, Norah Jones, Broadway musicals, be bisexual, AND hang out with all types of people….. Who knows?

The Fall

I’ve been in love twice in my life (possibly three times but I’m still working on that one.) Both times have been life-changing and utterly painful at times (especially since they were both uninterested in anything more.) While I was able to pull myself out of both these occasions, after a year of hard work, to accumulate good friendships there are some very revealing moments that have made themselves apparent after some post-examination.

In my opinion, you can’t really know for sure whether you’re in love or not by fulfilling any criteria. The truth is you have to know it for yourself, and ever person knows love in a different way. However, after a long time of examining the subject, I have come up with two things that I believe to be absolutely necessary for anyone to be in love.

When we’re little every little boy is taught to be a Romeo and every little girl is taught to be a Juliet. Well, I say, look at Romeo and Juliet, and then canter in the opposite direction. Honey, Romeo and Juliet ended up dead, with poison in one of them and a knife in the other, along with a few other dead bodies to complete the scene of medieval tragedy. Even putting aside that the fact that the time spent between them is all of 48 hours (if that) during which Juliet loses her virginity, Romeo is MUCH older than Juliet, who is still twelve and about to turn thirteen (at that time when most girls started their period), AND is “in love” with someone else at the beginning of the play and is “in love” with Juliet (even though he learns her name AFTER meeting her) by the early evening at a party that he went to so that he could find the girl he was ORIGINALLY in love with. If you haven’t guessed all ready I have some issues with the idea that Romeo and Juliet is a love story. However, putting that aside, this story illustrates perfectly the two things that I feel are neccesary for someone to fall in love:

1- There has to have been a GOOD amount of time spent together in which both of you have shared the deeper parts of yourself. To truly love someone, I believe you have to have seen both the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of them.

2- Your feelings for this person are LIMITED to that single person.

Hopefully, we can all agree on number one (I don’t quite have the energy to get into my feelings about love at first sight) so I will go straight to an explanation of number two since that one can definitely be argued.

When I say your feelings are limited to that person I’m not saying that you don’t still find Taye Diggs or Catherine Zeta Jones or *fill in the blank if you’re crazy and don’t find one of those two utterly gorgeous* to be simply mouth-watering. I’m not even saying that you can’t be in love if you still enjoy talking to an old crush! Feelings don’t ever go away completely, you’re human and that’s fine. What I’m saying is that, at the end of the day, that person is ALWAYS the one you want to be with no matter what the situation because in the end, no matter what, you could end up alone in the world with that person and be completely and totally blissfully happy.

Wow, that one lasted a lot longer than I thought it would.. ah well, for those of you who are still crazy enough to be still reading, I thank you for your support.

So now, I will leave you with some questions I am still trying to come up with answers to (I have a feeling another post like this is soon to follow… this could turn into a series):

1- Is it better to be painfully in love rather than painfully alone?

2- At the end of the day, what’s worst? Taking a chance at losing the one you love for the sake of moving on or waiting on the one you love to love you back and possibly missing a chance at something healthier?

(SIDELINE- these are not personal issues at the moment, simply analytical ideas that have been being tossed around in my head for a couple days now.)

Welcome to My World

Welcome to my blog, here you will find many different ideas, comments, and opinions ranging from my thoughts on parenting to modern media to fashion blunders and catastrophes. I take pride in who I am and what I believe and it is for that reason that this blog exists…. (Also because I felt I was wasting my time on the computer and figured I might as well do something useful!)

And now for your entertainment and inspiration I will leave you with pictures that will give you an idea of what goes on in my head.