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[mariasstreet]

#6 The Breakdown and I

Dear Reader,

Everything has been for nothing. All of it. I stepped away from the computer after a rude but correct email reached me telling me to go outside. They were right, really, and so, because of an artistic endeavor I’ve dedicated myself to that I cannot reveal, my fiancé and I went to the circus. We planned to meet my soon-to-be sister-in-law. That, right there, was the cause of my demise.

I didn’t feel like myself and let my fiancé go on and on. Then we slowed and waved over his sister, who arrived with none other than the poet. Sneaking into his apartment was for nothing. Pretending to be Consuela for a woman who asked about Ricky and English classes because she couldn’t use her eyes and ears to know I’m not the woman she thought I was. All of it was just another way for me to fuck over my fiancé’s sister: I forgot to pick up her birthday present and had to, with poorly veiled shame, the Stacy Lattisaw record.

I thought the poet and I had something real. Realer than with my fiancé. He forgot his hat at the birthday party and I, as a good samaritan filled with desire for him, arranged a rendezvous to return it. I looked good: new curly hair, new attitude, shaved and bathed and dressed well. We connected over everything whether it was secretly listening to Joni Mitchell and James Taylor or reading Evelyn Waugh and Kyle Baker. It didn’t matter that I lied about liking most of that horrendous “art,” it was real.

For a moment, returning to the computer seemed like a mistake. Now, as my fiancé has left for a business trip and left me alone in the apartment, I’m glued to it. Why would I need the computer when I had the possibility of sexual fulfillment with someone who doesn’t make me feel like I’m fucking a gay, stiff, hardwood chair? And then she came with him to the circus. I’ve never been so pale.

Seinfeld plays in the background as I type this. I’m contemplating getting some chicken or ribs. No. I’m not. Yes, I want to eat, and yes, I probably will. But just when you think you know something, you’re surprised. Every day I think there’s nothing new to learn about Jonestown, and there always is. All I want to do is be that surprise for the poet just as my fiancé’s sister was for me. 

Something rotten is bubbling inside me. Before my fiancé left, I was in such dire need of attention. When he gave it to me? I didn’t want it from him. I implored him to leave. I have to leave. I’ll be back before Seinfeld ends and I’ll be back to normal. 

My God, I thought I just saw a shadow watching me. I’m sweating, cracking. I have to get out. I’ll be back.

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A ROLEPLAY BLOG POST FOR A FINAL PROJECT IN MY STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. THIS POST REWRITES A SECTION OF New People BY DANZY SENNA AND QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM THE TEXT]

[mariasstreet]

RE: YOUR MOST RECENT POSTS // Listen dude that whole thing with the white lady sux but you are being realll weird about it. Kinda sounds like you're not well rn, you need 2 take a step back. touch grass, if u will.

Though I thank you, dear reader, for your concern, its snideness is just rude. There might be no way to rationalize what happened except to say she placed a burden on me because she can't tell the difference between her nanny and a stranger. Maybe the situation is the thing that has me "being real weird about it."

[mariasstreet]

[mariasstreet]

Do the Right Thing (1989), Spike Lee.

Cinematography by Ernest Dickerson.

[mariasstreet]

Unknown queen + Sylvester The Disco Diva in the Castro on Halloween night | 1976

[mariasstreet]

#5 Consuela and I, Part 2

Dear Reader,

You trust me, right? I’m an honest person with a drive to learn, regardless of what a scientologist’s test says. I’m an academic, well-respected, getting married in Martha’s Vineyard. So, would you trust me with your baby even if I wasn’t your nanny and you just made a racist mistake? What if I snuck into your apartment? 

I spent the entire day with the baby. I thought a lot about past boyfriends and college and meeting my fiancé. Really, all normal things in an abnormal situation. This baby knew I wasn’t Consuela. Her eyes said it all: a cool disdain that, even if she could communicate with me, told me that she wouldn’t, anyway. Between the clear nemesis I had made and the rotting, old fruit and ramen in the kitchen, I had nothing to do but reminisce and clean. 

“Typical white woman shit—just leave it to the Latina.”

Eventually, though, I got a taste of the poet. The faint sound of a TV passed through the wall so long as my ear was against it. I knocked on the wall once, then twice. He turned the TV off and stomped to the door. I laughed at my trick—not deception, just a harmless joke. 

Unfortunately, this poet was starting to ignite desire within me. I could never pinpoint it before, but as I stood on the other side of his apartment, I couldn’t help but think of the other men I’ve fucked, and the man right down the hall I’d like to fuck. But it was all a mistake, everything that day was a mistake. All I wanted was to go home as the sun set on the city and East Village lit up with life. I’d had a baby for less than a day and I was completely stir crazy. I can’t believe I put my mother through this.

As I looked out the window, I noticed a fire escape outside. Shockingly, the window opened with ease. The snake in me slipped out of the apartment and with a “might as well” attitude, peeked inside his apartment. My baby-less peace ended when he exited his bathroom making a date on the phone. Before he left, he brushed over his bald head. Then, the dreaded truth revealed in a simple gesture: he put Chapstick on and walked out the door. He was going on a date. 

So, there was no way he’d really know, or care, if I went inside his apartment.

Oh, God, I did everything in there. You have to understand the undeniably bizarre day I’d had. I was suddenly a nanny for a baby that knew my truth and a woman that couldn’t see past my color to see my truth. So what if I drank some of his India pale ale? Or shook his French snowglobe? Really, plucking my own hair out and leaving it in his hairbrush is a calling card.

No, I know it was wrong. I climbed into his bed and breathed in his pillow! I peed in his toilet and refused to flush! I brushed my teeth with his toothbrush, not even to clean them but to feel our saliva touch. It was the most sensuous experience of my life. It was like we’d been sleeping together for years. The chase was too intoxicating. Which is why the baby cried and I crawled back to her.

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A ROLEPLAY BLOG POST FOR A FINAL PROJECT IN MY STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. THIS POST REWRITES A SECTION OF New People BY DANZY SENNA AND QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM THE TEXT]

[mariasstreet]

#4 Consuela and I, Part 1

Dear Reader,

I have made a massive mistake. I’ve wasted a day. More than that, I’ve made myself look like a fool.

I’m much too fixated on the poet. So fixated, in fact, that I looked up where he lives in the white pages, using his name and the subtle hints he dropped about his street and the Jewish deli below his apartment. I looked my finacé in the eyes and lied to him, told him I was going to work on my dissertation. Instead, I got on the train and got off on West 4th Street, right back in front of that same record shop we met in front of a few weeks ago. 

I don’t know why I went inside. Maybe I had the hope that he might come inside and I wouldn’t have to continue my journey to his apartment. Or maybe I just wanted to impress him with my own taste in music. Regardless, I stood out, a chic (bourgeois) Black woman in a room with grimy white people who clearly listen to white music. I’m simultaneously too mainstream and too much of a minority for this shop. Yet I persisted. 

I ran my fingers through the records in the small R&B and Rap section until I came across Stacy Lattisaw’s With You. I may remember “Love on a Two-Way Street,” but not because it’s good. When people tell you they hate pop music, or anything in the mainstream, they should be thinking of music like this, not Whitney or Diana or Michael. And I still bought it. Then a hot dog.

I sat in Washington Square Park, the winter air and Christmas decorations so much uglier without snow. Subconsciously, I couldn’t take it anymore, and before I realized, I was in front of the poet’s building. It was like he called out to me in a faint whisper. He’s in 310. For kicks, I buzzed 309. She let me in. Record in hand, I headed up the stairs. 

My paranoia hit an all-time high as I thought he was coming down the stairs as I went up them. He didn’t. It got worse when the hallway expanded before my eyes, and 310 became an impossible goal post to reach. Especially because I reached 309 and the door swung open, a white woman calling me Consuela. I looked around for the mysterious Consuela, but this woman kept talking to me. Me! In Chameleon Street, Doug Street can impersonate a surgeon, no questions asked about his race or money; in my life, I impersonate nannies just by being a light-skinned Black woman.

That’s right, dear reader, this woman hissed into her phone and paced around her apartment while I stood inside, thinking I was her nanny ready to save the day. Just as quickly as I entered the apartment, she seemed to disappear and leave her crying baby to me. The sound was unbearable. I caved. I changed the baby’s diaper, an Asian baby with the kind of name a white person gives an Asian baby. Then I looked down below—the woman was hailing a cab.

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A ROLEPLAY BLOG POST FOR A FINAL PROJECT IN MY STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. THIS POST REWRITES A SECTION OF New People BY DANZY SENNA AND QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM THE TEXT]

[mariasstreet]

[mariasstreet]

James Baldwin, 1970

Foto: Guy Le Querrec

[mariasstreet]

[mariasstreet]

#3 The Scientologist and I, Part 2

Dear Reader,

The long-awaited sequel to our trip to the upside down world of the Scientologists.

She walked and talked—she’s quite good at it. Before I knew she was a Scientologist, I needed to know why she thought I was kind. Though I now rationalize my blind following of her for two distinct reasons, to learn more about her and the world of racial harmony in which she lived, a part of me knows that I simply followed her to follow her. Bergdorf’s just isn’t my kind of shop.

I looked at a clock in the station and saw that I still had twenty minutes before my fittings with my soon-to-be sister-in-law and grandmother-in-law. Plainly, I took a chance. We exited the station into the dark of imminent rain. Like I said, she’s quite good at walking and talking and told me everything she’s done since college to free her of her own self-loathing. She went on about pills and diets, how broken everyone is, how you have to find a path back to your past self.

The longer she spoke, the less I felt I knew her in the past. The woman in front of me was nothing like the meek, chubby girl I knew years ago. But she remembers me too well. She says I was popular (I have no memory of this). She says I told her she was beautiful (this rings no bells). She says her mom always philosophized “character is character” and I’m a good person (I hadn’t seen or felt much proof of this until she insisted, no, she didn’t have me mixed up with someone else, then I was imbued with an odd, warm confidence).

Hail, not rain, began to fall, and she pulled me inside a building. Everyone smiled and waved, all different races walking arm-in-arm like a parody of the human experience. I could feel this white woman breathing on me now. Then she pulled me aside to a table with a machine on it, insisting that in my difficult time, this “test” could be helpful. She asked me a list of bizarre questions:

“What would you do if you saw a woman beating a child by the side of the road?” I don’t know.

“Would you ever lie to save a friend’s life?” Of course.

“What would you do if you saw a dollar lying on the subway platform?” Take it.

Then, over and over, “Can you remember a time when you were really real?” Suddenly, a flood of memories came over me. This is exactly what they want, to make you question your reality and place in your own community to think that you are not real, actually, and you need them to prove you are. 

I remembered hating white people in college, like the violent reaction of your throat closing when something like a peanut enters it. I thought about all of the boring television I watched back then looking for “good representation” of Black people that amounted to very little enjoyment or nuance. I remembered my notebook with James Baldwin and my failed attempt at a Whitney Houston perm that made me look more like Jennifer Beals. I remembered losing my virginity in high school to a man ten years my senior and questioning for years if it was rape. I remember my mother describing infant me in a diary as nothing short of a sociopath. Being adopted, my mother teaching me what it means to be Black, watching Roots. I remembered everything.

She turned off the machine and left. My answers were “illuminating.” When she returned, she was quite troubled by my “results.” I have the potential to do anything, she insisted. I have “it.” But I also have deceptive and belligerent tendencies. I was going places in college, she said, but I’m not there yet. Or something like that. To be quite honest, I was beginning to get bored of the experience, especially looking at her clothes which just became more garish the longer I spent time with her. 

Before I knew it, I was late for Bergdof’s. I rushed out of the Church of Scientology, unaffected by the robotic kindness of its members, and headed to the bridal salon. By the time I arrived, running to the elevator and walking past framed portraits of brides, my soon-to-be sister-in-law eyed me with heavy suspicion. It didn’t help that when I lied about the subway breaking down, she and my fiancé’s grandmother noticed a “Welcome to the Church of Scientology” sticker with my name written on it on my coat.

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A ROLEPLAY BLOG POST FOR A FINAL PROJECT IN MY STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. THIS POST REWRITES A SECTION OF New People BY DANZY SENNA AND QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM THE TEXT]

[mariasstreet]

Diana Ross , 1970

[mariasstreet]

daniel day-lewis and gordon warnecke as johnny and omar in my beautiful laundrette (1985) dir. stephen frears

[mariasstreet]

Roberta Flack by Anthony Barboza

[mariasstreet]

#2 The Scientologist and I, Part 1

Dear Reader,

My wedding approaches, but it feels as if not-so-invisible forces want to delay it. Today, I rode the subway in pursuit of Bergdorf’s to try on wedding gowns. Though I would have preferred a cheaper, smaller store, my fiancé’s grandmother insisted on Bergdorf’s. I should be more grateful towards her—after all, she passed down the engagement ring I now wear. 

I ran throughout the subway because I knew that his grandmother and sister were waiting for me. Except, I couldn’t escape this warbling voice that called out my name over and over. “Maria, Maria, Maria.” It was so agitating and demanding I had to face it. When I finally met her gaze, though, I had no idea who she was. She was this white woman, blonde with blue eyes, in a jacket from the ‘80s and clear skin. Before I knew it, she hugged me, and I choked down her perfume as I kept trying to figure out who, exactly, this white woman was. 

Finally, she made herself known after playing a game of subtle and vague hints. We met in college, in a class called Self-Defense for Women. Apparently, I made a much larger impact on her than she did me, because my “kindness” caused the drastic change in her appearance that I saw in the subway station. She’s slim and her acne is gone, and though her teeth are still stained a faint yellow, there’s been an even bigger change: she’s a scientologist. 

Well, the polite way to put it would be to call her a follower, or disciple, of L. Ron Hubbard. This makes her a more avid reader than I thought. It does reveal, however, that she still is that shy, insecure girl I knew in college. But with these books and small, constant payments? She’s not just a modern woman who adorns herself with shoulder pads and can defeat any man who lays an unwanted finger on her—she’s a modern cult member, too.

As a Jonestown Scholar, I had to let her drag me to whatever parallel world she would lead me to, whatever brochure of racial harmony we would jump into. How could I possibly be a good student if I didn’t take this field research opportunity, even if my body wasn’t so conscious of the movements it made right alongside this woman? If Jonestown won’t invade my dreams, then maybe a different cult can invade my life. The gowns could wait. Sequel coming soon.

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A ROLEPLAY BLOG POST FOR A FINAL PROJECT IN MY STUDIES IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. THIS POST REWRITES A SECTION OF New People BY DANZY SENNA AND QUOTES DIRECTLY FROM THE TEXT]

[mariasstreet]

Tracy Camilla Johns and Spike Lee at the premiere party for She’s Gotta Have It in New York City, 1986.