“i wish people came with friendship expiration dates like milk. ‘throw this nigga away before July 17th’ aight bet”
maria: she been grinding all month on mad opportunities, 2021 we winning. also, she’s the creative director of my apartment 🌱
ashley: glad you’re back on your feet, lower limb injuries ain’t no joke, gonna need you to be out here dancing when we do parties later this summer, yung shoeminati!! thanks for the candle, new spot smelling great 🕯🎶
flying rats: i finally got drafted to play division 29.5 soccer in williamsburg. i got linguini knees, but on god, i’m dropping 50 this season, i’m back ⚽️
rama: you back in the city, time to go be african and do crime, pull up 🔥
lili: my yes and laughter lab grandkid out here pitching and practicing, get yours fam, i see you 👀
pillars fund: go see the fire work that they have been doing on documenting the erasure of muslims on screen with riz ahmed (yes, that one) ✨
poppy: shout out to the new spot, glad to see you and louis move on up to such a dope spot ❤️
kyra: got a cool ass trailer for a fire webseries, looking forward to working with you for this contract my g 🙏🏾
sundance: y’all came through for ‘griot’ for real, thanks for constantly being that bitch 😩 (aviva, ainslee, yossera, we in there!!!)
mars: get that bag fam! let’s gooooooo✨
leah: man, you’re doing inspiring stuff, keep shining fam. we gonna have a sitcom called “the mediators” where we
jah, laci, and leah: i dunno if i’ll get another one of these out by your birthday’s but happy fucking birthday to y’all beautiful black ass people ❤️❤️❤️
karen: i dunno if I said this yet but she got a new dog named ginger (but named pastelito in my heart) and a new gig, we going up 🙏🏾
james iii: saw my son in a carvana commercial and did the leo dicaprio point, congrats my guy ✊🏾
jorja: big ups on your short film withdrawals, everyone should watch & support 📽
aviva: my academic ass sister, i’m so proud of you for turning in your paper and honored you’d shout me out. love you so much, team trash can for life 🎭
“shoulda kept this one in the thumbs, sis”
definitely hang out in the food bazaar freezer section degrees outside
may my bootyhole forgive me for eating food that makes going number 2 sound like freeform jazz
definitely three showers within 24 hours weather
thottery barn, is this something?
free palestine. till the sun fall out the sky.
some of you wake up every day and choose violence when silence is right there
it’s day party season my dudes; when you hear “too close” resist being a weirdo, i beg of thee
throwing coupons in the club because the savings is better
ay, my musky niggxs: deodorant plz, abolish mustiness
i need an origin story for that dickhead tootsie pop owl, disney hit me up
stop fucking with me, i will buy bluetooth speakers for every rando on the stoops on your block so they can listen to club bangers from ‘04 at 3 am
claptain planet
day parties already having a "who all gonna be there" mood
new term for yts: “people of gentrification pigmentation”
don’t ever live by tv logic. don’t.
instead of saying “we need the space for _____,” create it.
a decolonial feminism - françoise verges
living while black: the essential guide to overcoming racial trauma - guilaine kinouani
the motherlode: 100+ women who made hip-hop - clover hope
long division - kiese laymon
you are your best thing - tarana burke, brené brown
about to let that thaaaaang off but before i break off a piece for y’all, enjoy this guest poem by the homie ashley ✨
Mocha Fern by Ashley Hefnawy
By the side of a highway
Sits a tiny heart that beats
With the chirps of a cricket
The unknown sounds of cicada
Drowned out by the sounds of a race track.
I was not made to work
More than half a life
Half of what it means to be alive
Is tending to the ferns of my heart
Is it normal to
Just want to water the pothos that are
My kidneys?
To soak my liver in sun, as if it were
A palm tree that produces dates?
Or what about the stomach,
A sack of succulents,
That is far too often manipulated by
Delusions of the mind,
Survival rates are
Higher than one might imagine.
When I woke up this morning,
I threw some chocolate into coffee
Doused my esophagus in adrenaline,
Let the ice melt to my feet
Before remembering,
To water with care.
“rootbound and down”
let me start by saying this: before i met maria i did not know a goddamn thing about plants besides that they existed. i had one lonely ass monstera in my bedroom and i wasn’t even taking care of it right little did i know that it would become a 2012 gym class heroes style metaphor for me as a person; somebody who was alive but not really living. 🥀
i named the plant vic, and she was in the pot she came in and had been for months. she was in a kind of state that was (no pun intended) vegetative; droopy, not much new growth, looking for any light she could find in the room. if that ain’t clinical depression, i don’t know what is. i have had vic for about a year now and had lived at decatur st for 7 years; fresh out of uni and into adulthood into a decent rent-controlled apartment, ran by my future golden globes date and former landlady angie and her family.
anyone who came to a decatur street party knew that the party was gonna be a jump off. one thing about me, nothing is more important to me than my friends and family having a good time, being safe. i made sure everyone had a good time and when it was closing time, made sure everyone got home (or to the bodega on central and schaefer where papi made the ill middle of the night sandwiches). a shorty i know slapped the dude who she was messing with because a lady i formerly dated pulled up to my birthday and made out with aforementioned dude after the two women kiki’d in the bathroom about how much the first shorty liked that dude only for the second lady to end the night trying to holla at me after the first shorty fell down our joker stairs. read that sentence back til you get it. got it? good. everyone’s good now but man was that a birthday i’ll never forget.
your 20s are a scam. you’re trying to grow but the capitalist, racist, sexist, predatory, and xenophobic organism we call “america” straight jumps you the moment you think you got it. made some progress on student loans? bang, hold this hospital bill. no health care? lemme hold 5 racks. oh, you wanted to take them out on a date? hope y’all sleep for dinner al dente. everything in life told us “remember your 20s” and to “go live life.” my niggxs, life is dummy expensive; jeff bezos gonna come back from space and charge us by the inhale. but the thing that costs the most is your mental health. your mental credit score is dummy low through your 20s when you roll with the crowd i was with; my mental credit karma score just said “*heavy sigh*.”
when existing is a lot, where do you go? you create the space you want right? a safe mental, emotional, and physical spot where you can just…be. but when your home is a place mired in memory, painted by painful patterns, and feels as inescapable as the outside world, what to do? well, you make do. you go into survival mode. you build routine and try to keep that mental credit score up in the low 600s.
everything in my life was in the same room; joy, failure, friends, family, depression, financial insecurity, fear, social anxiety, level two depression, level three anxiety, ccccombobreaker ptsd, dreams of escape, reality check after reality check, etc. i could only see the next day, waking up like *gta voice* aw shit, here’s we go again! not only that but i also felt a constant pressure to perform okness. i’m sure we’re all familiar with this example: “how are you doing?“ “i’m fine, and you?“ i was never fine. i didn’t care. i didn’t care about that. both of us were fucking spiraling and doubly so because we were part of a community that was a community in the name but not and any other form of the word.
in the last year, i realized that i had outgrown my surroundings. people i looked up to because they were older than me or had more power than they were just as flawed if not more than i was yet demanded respect that was unearned. i paid attention to the non-superficial relationships in my life, the ones that were not cosmetic, for the gram, or had a certain malevolent selfishness circling around them. i had been invested in by people who continue to believe in me even when i didn’t believe in myself i didn’t even want to be here anymore but i focused on the “check in“ friendships.
growing in the right spot is paramount. we all deserve the sunlight, we all deserve the water, the nutrients, and a place to put down roots. when i first moved to new york i was a teacher navigating a nebulous and complex “community" of artists; musicians, writers, and more likely, comedians. it took me a long time to realize that some of the values of that “community” are antithetical to who i was and who i am but i spent an inordinate amount of time trying to contort myself to fit in there without losing myself.
i ride for my communities (black immigrant, muslim, queer, etc) and to me community puts the good of the social organism over the individual. of course i wasn't going to grow in a community that is predicated on toxic individualism, competitiveness, manufactured drama and transparent sycophancy to whiteness. it wasn’t right for me but i stayed.
i don't know where this comes from (i assume my science background) but i try and find out all details and variables before making decisions. there is a proverb in bambara translated roughly “turn your tongue two times in your mouth before saying anything.” social media made me more reactive and i hate that i would shoot my shot from anywhere on the court without using my court vision to truly understand people. i studied this, lived this, goddamn it, but i still conformed. i allowed my grey areas to separate into black and white and began to feel like the person i hated; someone who fit into labels and used those labels to define people, not giving them the complexity i gave myself.
i had to grow up fast. an endless swarm of compounding microaggressions, traumas, and losses kept me sensitive and hypervigilant in a way that the yts (and some bipoc) in my peer group never understood. never. one day, i’ll talk about the people who told me not to take police violence seriously, the ones who told me men couldn’t be assaulted, the champions of virtue who made it to hollywood and then said “that’s enough allyship” and the ones who exoticized me and others in uncomfortable ways. it made me feel no sense of play and fun, consistently getting ready for loss or processing the last one. shit felt like an adult drama club, letting you stay 23 for 20 extra years. trying to grow when the “community” you’re a part of is allowing a certain childishness and arrested development is like constant sleep paralysis and the demon is external validation, lurking with the vague promise of success in the periphery.
people of color, specifically black and often first-gen immigrants, give me life, safety, security, more breathing room due to common experiences. whiteness has always felt subtractive, a looming conditional love broken only if you challenge whiteness in a way that competes with whiteness’s self image/definition. i was always going to do that. not just by virtue of existing, but by the very nature of what was important to me; social justice (that critiqued white people, racist and “radical” left alike), commitment to diversity (something that white peers only did cosmetically), and centering black voices (something that white people love to do but want to have control over the volume knob). in recent years and months, i’ve refocused but at the time the frailty of the veneer of white acceptance in comedy felt like it’s own prison, with the wardens smiling in your face, showing up to the cookout while not showing up to the protest. (sidebar: there was a yt dude who bragged constantly he got arrested at a blm protest to my face as if i was supposed to give him top right then and there. fuck you, you strung out looking harry potter looking ass boy)
whiteness lives off of indirect conflict; yt folks talk around you, not to you. a conversational sleight of hand, a passing of the buck to another person, keeping you off kilter under the guise of their frail sense of “civility” and order. and that whiteness or wish to be adjacent to it is a drug that controls the non-yt people, willing to sacrifice compounding bits of their mental health, investing in their own future power. i dipped my toe there then realized exactly how long that performance of affability lasts (forever) and chose mental health instead. i got tired of telling white people my feelings and then having to comfort their feelings about my feelings without me having space to ever have my own. talking about anything substantive and additive was an emotional triathlon (being a teacher, a friend, and ultimately, a threat for including whiteness as a problem) and talking about trivial things was boring (“i already saw seinfeld and lord of the rings, why do i need a reca-no, i’ve only watched two episodes of the simpso-wait, why are you more mad about that than racism?”)
finally, fake ass people. me and my homies out here potted next to prop plants wondering why the watering can never swung our way. the industry is held up on performative positivity and the literal job is to make up stories, twist, turn, manipulate, etc. i don’t like that shit and i don’t have time to pretend to like people for a check or otherwise. all i know is i’ve been myself, honest, and worked hard to get anything i got. i don’t come from bread, half of y’all can’t point to my countries on a map, and i scare white people and somehow i’m still here. it’s because i’m being authentic. but authenticity doesn’t bloom unless it’s around other authentic people. fortunately, my friends (even when i was absent) have always kept it a buck with me and hold space so i can do that same thing back and stepping away to focus on the non-performative relationships changed my life forever.
ultimately, after a conversation last summer with somebody but i had at one time looked up to, i learned one thing about myself: i have this pathological need for people to be better than they have been presenting themselves as to me. yeah i was sitting with somebody who told me point-blank “i’m selfish, i’m always going to be“ and i expected them to change one day one in the six years that i had known that, but i have never been the case. i always want my friends and myself to have values and actions that align consistently but i had to stop “making things work“ and start taking people as they were, deciding whether i had room for them in my space. which then ultimately led me to realize that i didn’t have any more space. it was time to finally grow.
i was rootbound, no more space for taking in anything new, no mental space, no, no social space, no emotional space. there i was droopy and depressed, everywhere i turned i was just another wall, and i needed out.
so i left. there’s something about a liminal space that is infused with trauma that is comfortable. the trauma itself is not, however, the selfish state of survival, the ability to look everywhere but in, choosing gmo artificial fleeting joy in survival mode over organic, free-range health to thrive is. when we say “do the work” it is often used as an external pejorative but it is much more internal but it starts with you.
i spent most of the last decade trapped in a pot with other plants watching them grow, giving them nutrients, letting their leaves see the sun and hope i’d get scraps, and ultimately blaming myself for the withering that on one side wasn’t my fault and on the other i was complicit in. i got my own planter, i’m going to let my leaves extend and can’t wait to share the new growth with y’all.
i stepped back from the sun because on some level i thought that i didn’t deserve it. i watched other leaves block me from this song at the same time trying to convince me that i was getting too much and often i was part of that chorus. that time is over.
a constant anxiety of mine is becoming unrecognizable to myself and my loved ones. however my loved ones recognized that i needed more space for new growth for a long time and other ones that i’m letting you take it, sharing the light with one another.
in other words, i’m coming back for my motherfucking corners and my crew riding too. come correct before i come collect. we blooming over here. 🌺
thank you angie, your family is like mine. whenever i move to a new place, i look for family and i’m so happy we stumbled into each other and you were understanding of my lows and celebrated my highs. i mean damn, you pulled up with rum to my birthday and kicked it with my friends no problem and invited me to meals with your family. i watched your wedding video!!! i mean, damn, are we blood now?? you went above and beyond being a regular degular landlord and i know you and benjie were always looking out. mad love to y’all ❤️
to mia and rebecca: you know it’s hunnydixx gang over here always. thanks for coming in and being dope roommates and homies. asspocalypse 2017 aka analgeddon aka the tour de dookie will go down in infamy and i love y’all so much
to yedoye: we were both popped living together but we made it work. dear god we made it work. out here splitting bags of pretzels and shit. we had lows turn to highs and always had each other’s back. that’s brotherhood, full stop. video games, 4 hour conversations on black politic, wack comics with no class analysis, almost getting our asses whooped by 12 and still going out there, throwing show pitches back and forth. i’ll miss it but that door closing doesn’t mean i don’t still got you but...from, like, over here. love you my g.
to steve: you funny mf lmaoooo keep writing them esoteric shorts and freestyling them bars, don’t let the yakubian comedy industry get you down, and nigga you took my tv. you can have it but like damn i was over here tvless and confused. stick to your path, keep shining bro.
to antwan and ashley: y’all we moved straight from college into the wildest, most expensive city in the most underpaid industry and made it out alive. we did that thing that niggas can’t and in the years since we’ve not lived together, i see the growth, the moves, and the momentum building. thanks for letting me be a roommate right when i finally moved and for letting me be part of the underground railroad of black wooster students who always found their way to us and finally *onika maraj voice* to freedom!