Streets Is Opening

On having everything and nothing to look forward to in semi-open L.A.

I’d wager that some of you might have expected some thoughts at some point about Everything That’s Going On Right Now, specifically the ceaseless police killings that are the backdrop for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin. Nope. I got absolutely nothing for you. There’s nothing I can say to convince anyone that it’s not okay to kill n*ggas with impunity, no one who feels that way is going to read anything I write in the first place, and I’m also not going to do anything but break my own heart by writing yet another screed about how hard it is to be a Black mom/human knowing that both you and the person you love most could die just because you had the bad fortune to meet a cop that day. I can’t even recommend anyone else’s words on the topic because I’m not reading about it at the moment either. I’m keeping myself and this little gal alive the best way I can right now, you see, and that’s that on that.

Now that I’m able to return to the world to some extent, I have to face the reality of how intimidating the idea of an open L.A. is to me (and not just because the pace of capitalism is unconcerned with the rate of new COVID infections.)

As I mentioned before, I’d only moved here a short time before the pandemic and had been travelling back to New York frequently because I was really missing the place I called home for most of my adult life. In my limited experience, this place is a grid of retailers and restaurants with a few parks and beaches sprinked in. I have found spaces and places that I deeply enjoy, but nothing really feels like home quite yet. Sometimes, I feel like I’m on a modest vacation that went on a bit longer than it was supposed to, and I’m ready to go back to where I really live.

I’ve found a few beautiful friendships here and I know that bounty will only continue to grow as I get to access the world, but that doesn’t do much to quell the fact that I feel lost as hell here. I haven’t picked up my life and started over since I was 22, and the last time I did that, I simply went further East and had a whole entire extended circle of friends waiting to greet me. Here, I gotta hit up folks I haven’t hung out with since back then and hope that we still have some of the same interests.

Unfortunately, my feelings of isolation pre-date my move, due in part to me keeping a lot from my closest friends over the years. I’ve never known how to talk to my friends about the weirdness of my professional world—visability that came with expectations, entitlements and injury that few people would have been prepared for—and I’ve also gotten pretty bad about disclosing whats going on with family, men, my emotions…really, anything lol. I don’t come to friendship to feel judged or to be held accountable, I came for fun!

JK JK, but yes, I have some work to be done in that regard.

On some level, I also feel isolated by and/or might struggle to disclose things to some of my dearest loved ones because I do not know anyone who’s life looks like mine. Literally no one, and it’s been this way for a while.

I know moms. I know single people. I know folks who like to run the streets and party. I know people who smoke weed. Feminists. Writers and creatives with non-traditional work lives. I know golden-era hip-hop fans, and girls who like to wear their clothes too tight. Internet famous-ish people too.

I don’t know anyone who is all of those things at once. Obviously, that level of similarity is not required for friendship, but it would be nice to have more mom friends that were still doing Hot Girl Sh*t, you know? More creative pals who have navigated attention, anxiety and a lack of anything at all to fall back on? And can I maybe connect with someone other than a man with whom I have zero romantic interest about my ability to perform 70% of “Triumph” by myself?

Maybe it would be easier to open up if I felt like someone could understand what I’m experiencing. It’s like being the first parent in your circle, which I was lol; your friends may want to help but they also don’t know what you’re dealing with. Doesn’t mean they can’t support you, but they can’t usually put you on game either.

Be clear, I experienced the desire to find more of those a-alike connections New York, but I had other wonderful friendships to sustain me there nonetheless; I also knew the lay of the land. Things were familiar. I knew where to go sit down with my laptop and write in many neighborhoods, how to get most places without having to consult Google Maps, how to be outside, what outside smelled like without a mask on.

Furthermore, while there ain’t really many places outside of Spelman College that were built with sisters being so much as a consideration, Los Angeles has a unique reputation for hostility towards Black women, and while I’ve certainly gotten a good whiff of it through my mask and my social distancing, I haven’t had to deeply engage with it the way that I will soon.

This is not about me dating, thought I know some folks will see it as a complain about my own prospects. Alas, the number of Black men in L.A. who are partnered with non-Black women is an astounding thing to witness, particularly because it’s not relegated to any particular industry or social class. It seems, at times, as though a lot of men have a standard that is simply “anything but Black.” Like, “here’s the last White woman in the aisle on the last day of the sale at the White woman store” anything. Like, “yes, I see that your b*tch is ‘of color,’ but she’s definitely not Black and I just heard her call you n*gga” anything.

(I put this on my life: if there was any city in this country where you could go witness Black women doing such a thing at the same rate, Black men would never let us hear the end of it.)

Yet, it’s deeper than simply being lower on certain men’s ‘desireabilty’ scale. It’s how *some* of those couplings reflect a general lack of respect and care for Black women that I really wanted to believe was a figure of my imagination, until I started talking to other sisters.

Is it just me? Am I making this up? Over and over again, the answer was “Girl, no. It’s different here.” The exchanges with White folks and non-Black people of color, the frostiness from some of the brothers, the invisibility, the colorism. I mean, this is the town that has made distorting our public image it’s business, but damn.

Running super long, this is getting diary-ish. I’ll have more. thoughts another time. The TL:DR here is that I don’t know this place like that for it to be opening up on me, I’m scared and y’all treat Black women strange here, please stop that.

Jamilah