Not At Work, But On The Job

Just went into panic mode about the fact that I'm working for myself this year, haha.

You know the story if you've been following the blog, so I won't fully repeat it, but since I've removed all the posts related to what took me from hopeful, first-time-international-educator-with-positive-expectations-and-an-open-mind to disenchanted-but-not-discouraged, former teacher/tutor-for-hire/soon-to-be health coach/personal trainer, I'll give you the quick recap:

The school my wife and I were hired to teach at and I didn't see pupil-to-pupil for a variety of reasons, so over the course of 3 or 4 contentious months, we negotiated a situation in which I'd take a leave-of-absence while my wife assumes a new position at the school. I no longer work for them, she does, but I'm still under their sponsorship, so I can't (and wouldn't) work elsewhere. I've chosen to pursue my health, writing and artistic passions while supporting myself by contracting out my tutoring services (because the ability to teach my ass off didn't cease to exist just because I resigned from being a teacher; I'm trying my hand at cutting out the middle man). There were many posts dedicated to the struggles I experienced over the past year, but I removed them because I felt like I had strayed from the original purpose of the blog, which was to focus on my unique experience as one of the few black American males here in Doha. The blog underwent a change in design and mood to reflect the shift back to it's original purpose.

While caught in the throes of panic, I decided to call the family I worked with last school year and arrange to start tutoring after next week. It's sometimes downright scary to know that whatever you earn will be completely dependent upon your own hard work but it's a good fear and that's how I want it. It'll be a good 6 weeks before the money starts coming in but I've grown to learn that when you handle your business with prudence, smarts and integrity, the money takes care of itself. In the meantime, I'm still working out if/when I'll start this online health certification program. I'm leaning towards it while also very much considering becoming a certified personal trainer, hoping to offer my services to former colleagues and whoever else might want/need my services. I'm making sure to eat well, exercise, rest and take care of the house during the day (I'm like a house husband and it's not bad work if you can get it, haha). I've spent the past week improving my online presence because I'm going to need it to be solid as I reach out to different creatives in the Doha community, which won't be easy. I'd like to get into a hip-hop scene of some form or another, so we'll see. I may not be going to work every day anymore, but trust me, I'm on the job.

Overcoming My Homophobia

Before I get into this story, let me say that making a conscious decision to embrace all lifestyle choices didn’t mean that I instantly stopped using words like “faggot,” “queer,” “homo” and the like as pejoratives. It meant that I went through a process of ever-increasing awareness that those words and the intent behind using them carried far more weight than I ever realized. That's what happens, that’s what’s happening, now and everywhere. We are experiencing civil rights history here, take it in, enjoy it, participate. This had to be how it felt when decent people made the connection between their use of words like “nigger,” “coon,” and “spook” and the weight those words were carrying beyond who they were saying them to. You start to realize that you’re in one of those moments in history where the collective consciousness just sort of decides on a particular path, and you have to decide if it’s the right one for you. In the span of a couple of years, I went from feeling very little when I used those words to feeling like…no…knowing I was choosing the wrong way to express myself when I did. That’s not to say that I still don’t use those kinds of words on rare occasions, but the context is much different, I’m very careful when I do and I completely understand if someone wants to take me to task upon hearing me say them. This is kind of similar to my relationship with the word “nigga” as used by my white friends. The word will always invoke a certain feeling or reaction, but that feeling or reaction will always depend upon the person’s intent and the context. It doesn’t always give me a negative feeling, actually, among white people who are close to me, it rarely gives me a negative feeling. However, I think that they should always be prepared and accepting of the fact that any black person has a right to a more adverse reaction upon hearing them or any or white person use the word. Words like “nigga,” “homo,” and “faggot” are heavy and if you aren’t prepared to carry the load you assume when you decide to use them, you shouldn’t pick them up.

I used to be a school safety agent at a really tough high school, Adlai Stevenson in The Bronx. I went into the job with big, bright naïve eyes and ideas, and I exited with a layer of hardened skin I’ve since been thankful for, but didn’t enjoy earning at the time. Everything went on there, drug dealing, sex, gang activity, low achievement/expectations, all the good stuff that’s since been effectively tackled by NCLB, Race To The Top and Teach For America. I was 21, meaning at a school like that, there were students my age. I’m from the ‘hood, I lived less than a mile away, and nothing that went on there was out of my realm of experiences, but having to help police it all was something else entirely. I was just trying to hold up my end of the rent for my first apartment, and working for a division of the NYPD meant a city gig with good benefits and security. I wasn’t thinking much past that, even though we heard horror stories in school safety academy. I knew how to talk to drug dealers, flirtatious females and various ne’er-do-wells because I was raised around them. But supervising them, with the main objective of trying to get them into class and care about their education, was a skill set my ego made me believe I had at an age where I hadn’t even began drinking. Add in the fact that I have a baby face and had a chronically pleasant demeanor (even students warned me that I smiled too much), and you can probably deduce that this wasn’t the job for me.

There were many clicks, ethnic clicks, nerds, thugs, the artistic kids, the goths, etc. There was also a click of gay students and a click of Jamaican students, mostly male. If you know anything about Jamaicans, then you know that those two clicks weren’t exactly sharing a lunch table. Incidentally, Jamaican dudes have never felt me much throughout my life, for reasons I still can’t quite put my finger on and won’t even attempt to ponder at this stage in life, it just is what it is. It’s not all of them, but I’ve clashed with them enough times to realize that there is just something about me that they don’t like. One crew in particular hated me and went out of their way to annoy me, usually by straggling when the bell rang and during dismissal, or making remarks about me in patois. I always had the advantage, being the “adult” backed by 15 other agents tasked with keeping them in order, but they did get under my skin. Once, in a not-so-empty hallway, one told me that I better be happy to be able to “see Christmas” as the winter holiday was approaching. I took that as a major threat and followed him through the hallway, using the kind of language the NYPD doesn’t officially approve of, trying to provoke a confrontation I didn’t need.

So what does any of this have to do with me realizing I need to chill with the homophobia?

Well, like I said, the school had a click of gay kids, some of who were pretty cool with me, some who didn’t dig me so much. (One time a girl who had a confusing crush on me said to me, “Man, I wish you were a lesbian, I would go with you.” There’s so much I’m confused about regarding that. Moving on…) People like to spill their guts to me, and I find peace in helping them sort it all out; one day one of the gay kids did just that. I can’t remember why or how, but I do remember that having good talks was a good way to past the time or jolt myself out of the mental prison I had to put myself in just to resemble an effective SSA. I listened, because I’m a much better listener than I am a talker, and I think her appreciated that. One thing we found common ground about was how annoying (I guess that’s a euphemism; when we’re talking about what that one said to me, and about how they followed this gay home and threatened him in front of his sibling, I think annoying is putting it mildly) the Jamaican kids were. (For the record, I have some good male Jamaican friends/acquaintances, not all of the Jamaican male students were bad, or even from Jamaica, and I idolize Usain Bolt, so don’t paint me anti-Jamaican. Everyting irie over here, bredren.) He told me about their constant harassment, among other personal things, like touching on the difficulties of being openly gay at his age and his dreams of becoming a dancer. From then on, we were pretty cool.

Fast forward a couple of years later, I’m still living in that neighborhood but I’ve quite school safety to resume my studies more consistently. While waiting at a bus stop across the street from my building, I see someone who looks like this same kid, except he has further embraced his gender identity, and has in hair extensions, and maybe make-up on. As he started to cross the street, obviously to wait at the bus stop also, I got really nervous really fast. It was then that I realized just how homophobic I was. Talking to this kid at work was one thing – it was easy, it was in the job description, no one would attach any meaning to it that mean anything to me, everyone knew who we were. But in the street, out in the world, I got scared that strangers might wonder how I knew this guy, why we were talking, and if we were of a similar flock, him willing to show his feathers, me not so much. I wasn’t going to leave, I mean, I needed to get the bus, and I couldn’t just ignore him if he decided to speak to me, I don’t do that. Funny enough, I could tell that he sensed my apprehension (no doubt, he had experience with such situations) and walked over but not too close, and not looking my way, almost as if he was offering the option for me not to have to interact with him. I was instantly brought back to an incident from my high school days, when while taking the train home from summer night school with a bunch of my peers, an extremely flamboyant gay dude from my block entered the train to much laughter and ridicule from my classmates. I prayed to God that he wouldn’t reveal that he knew me, and as he walked through our subway car to get to another, he just gave me the slightest acknowledgment and never missed a step. He’d been in those situations before, trying not to embarrass straight people who could only bring themselves to treat him like a normal human being under very controlled circumstances, with his presence. I felt incredible relief and not a small amount of shame.

More than six years later, at this bus stop, I should have grown enough to expect more of myself. In a split second it hit me – Was I, StarPower, the guy known for saying/doing the most outrageous things on stage because I don’t embarrass easy and didn’t give a soaring crap about what anyone thought of me, scared of what some STRANGERS might think about my sexuality if I held a conversation with this dude while waiting for the Bx22? Really?? The absurdity of the thought hit me with the force of logic, reason, and common sense. Before he cold comfortable turn away from me, I reached out to him and began conversing. After a minute or two, I was completely relaxed, and he seemed to be also. Maybe someone was watching from a window, wondering if we were two gay guys having a conversation. So what? Why was I afraid of that? It was the kind of moment in which you do something you should have done, and then realize you should have done it not only because it was the right thing, but because it would’ve been so EASY to do the right thing.

My journey away from homophobia is ongoing; just a couple of years ago a close friend of mine, a teacher who is a lesbian, was quite disappointed with me when I said that I didn’t think I could bring myself to go to a gay rights rally. I considered myself a supporter of civil rights, but there was my boundary. I used all the logic I could and believed to explain why it was alright for me to feel that way, and we eventually agreed to disagree. I’m sure that affected what she thought of me afterwards to some degree, but true friendship is patient so I’m also sure that if she thought I was the person she hoped I was, that I just had some growing to do, something I admitted then and I do now. Now I realize that you can’t draw a line on where your support lies when it comes to equal rights. It’s not for us to decide who gets to do what in what way, we aren’t smart or civilized enough, and if we were we’d probably just come to the same conclusion. Maybe I’ll always let a smirk or chuckle escape when I hear what I take to be a clever racist, homophobic or sexist joke/remark. Maybe one day I’ll stop thinking such things even have the potential to entertain. The only thing I know for sure is this:

“Change, shit, everybody goes through change. As long as you change for the better, I don’t see how anybody can be mad at ya.” – 2Pac

Mario Van Peeples and Peepak Chopra Over Here

Here they are this morning, peeping and creeping:

My Peeps

Tower 25

See that? That's a building under construction about 10 meters across from mine. (By the way, take any estimations I make using metric units with a grain of salt; I’m trying to be international when I use terms like “meters,” “kilometers,” Lionel Messi and “the lift,” but the fact is, I’m probably just being internationally incorrect.) I previously assumed this building was empty because every time I’d glance over there, there’d be no one inside. Then one day about a week and a half ago, I saw 2 or 3 guys standing in the window RIGHT ACROSS from mine, just staring. Why do I assume that they were staring in my window and not, say, a window on the 14^th or 17^th floor? Because we still don’t have curtains! Even when we do have curtains, we love to have as much light flood the apartment as possible so we rarely keep them closed. And with no curtains at all (we’re going to buy some this weekend), the workers in that building rarely keep their eyes closed.

I don’t blame them; I look in ANY and EVERY window I can whenever possible because I’m constantly trying to relive the glory of that Dominican woman’s nipples I saw looking out of my bedroom window at 12 years old. I won’t, like, climb on something to look in someone’s window, but if there’s a view, trust me, you’ll have at least one viewer. Even though I understand the mentality, I would think they would exercise a little couth, a little discretion. They just stand in the window, in duos and trios, and stare right in long and hard (I swear that wasn’t intentional; leaving it in after editing was, however) unless I meet their gazes with equal intensity.  They don’t seem to be working in the building all day (due to heat, I assume) or even every day, and when they are they don’t always look into our window, but it happens often enough for me to know that they don’t just happen to spend a lot of time clustered up in that one apartment across from mine, with their bodies positioned in a way that suggests they are waiting for a show to start.

"Pero papi, you didn't have to peep through the window. 

I would've showed you whatever you wanted to see, 

then made you pernil and flan," said no Dominican 

milf to me, ever.

What do they expect to see? Come on, they’re guys. They are praying to Vishnu that they see one or all of my wife’s killer b’s - boobs, butt or bush. And come on, part 2, this is Doha. They’ll settle for a bare shoulder, a few centimeters of unexposed hip or a nice knee shot. I get it. They’re creeps, not necessarily a bad thing in my book. The problem, and I mean for them, not us, is that my wife is not the type to walk around exposed, but I am. Sometimes she goes to bed in more clothes than I wear to the supermarket. She almost always has on a full outfit (albeit a light summer get up), usually a shirt, underwear, not-so-short shorts, a black girl hair-preserving wrap of some sort, a sheet over her as she is always chilly even though she’s the one usually responsible for putting the aircon on “tundra,” and she rarely goes to the window or keeps the door open to rooms that allow intimate views. This isn’t by design, it’s just her nature. I, on the other hand, jump right out of the bed in my designer birthday suit each morning and usually I go straight to the window to look at water. I poop with the door open (when she isn’t home, of course; come on, I do have some behavior). I walk back and forth naked to loosen up and when I do put on clothes, it’s usually one garment, and not necessarily bottoms (could be just a robe, a surgical mask or my WWE championship belt). That’s how I’m comfortable in my house.

Tsk, tsk...naughty pussy.

I have to say, I’ve noticed a dip in frequency of peepers over there. I guess brown eggs and frankfurters don’t appeal to them. *Shrug* I’m just waiting for them to finish construction so I don’t have to see a bunch of hard hats over there much longer. Anyone know a Dominican family who prefers open shades to closed curtains looking to move to the Middle East? I know of an available apartment or two…

Hair and Now

If I don't cut my hair again,
I'll be back to this length in abooouuut...um...never

Time to cut my hair. Good thing I’m feeling adventurous because going to the barber can be quite the experience for me and I can only go when I have the energy to put up with the unpredictable nature of most Doha-based activities. Remember, my first trip to the barber was at Bin Omran. I had a Tunisian barber who didn’t have a pair of sharp clippers and shaped up my hairline in a way I’ve never seen before. I had the Indian wrestling fan whose lights went out and had to finish my haircut by the light of cell phone. Then I finally arrived at a guy who gets me over on Al-Saad, unfortunately, I no longer live on Al-Saad. But I’m willing to make the trip. Barbers are plentiful here and most are very good because being well-groomed is very important in the Arab world. And a nice population of black African Muslims means that there are some barbers who know how to cut a black man’s hair (the difference in texture makes all the difference). 

My Doha barber's good, but has NO IDEA
what to do with my sideburns.

African-Americans are famous for being particular about their hair, men and women alike. It’s imperative for us to put our heads in the hands of those we trust. In our communities, it’s one of the things that define us, a crown of sorts. I’ve experimented with all kinds of hairstyles over the course of my lifetime, probably more than the average black dude.

Lookin' like Theo Huxtable at 19.

Most of my friends kept it pretty basic: a neat, low cut with a sharp line, sometimes with waves (if you have the patience), with occasional forays into afros, braids, tapers, flattops and dreds. I’ve had perms, I’ve dyed and twisted my hair various ways, I’ve had s-curl and baldies. I’ve enjoyed having a variety of “dos” over the years, but the end result of a lifetime of experimentation is a head of slowly-thinning locks with a weird hairline that dances a careful dance with my rather large forehead. Fate accepted; experimentation continues, however.

I don't know what this was;
my girlfriend was my stylist.

I’ve been growing my hair out for a coupla months in hopes of being able to adopt a new hairstyle that I discover somewhere along the way. As a youth, not cutting my hair for two months would result in being mistaken for one of the Jackson 5. As a 33 year old victim of ever-decreasing rate of growth, it’s barely noticeable.  So here I am, 7 weeks after my last trip to the barber. My last cut was by a Dominican dude back in NY; I wish I could transport him here.

My dude was NICE. You just can't teach that, can ya?

I currently have more than a few hairs on my head, but not quite as much as I hoped I would have. Right now I’m rocking one of those hairstyles that safe, older black dudes sometimes rock. I wouldn’t call it a “’fro,” it’s more like a “’fraux.” A nice little self-maintained field of black hair covering my sphere, not too sharply lined up, never brushed or combed too neatly. It says “I’m not very vain, but I have to maintain the ability to look presentable in a dress shirt at a moment’s notice.”

It was either a haircut or a bottle of wine.
Priorities, people. Priorities.

It’s not enough to go too crazy with, but enough to satisfy my urge to do something interesting. I’m thinking of getting a Mohawk (a fauxhawk? A StarPohawk?). I’ve wanted one for a little while, and usually chickened out because of how damn weird it’ll look with my oddly-shaped dome. But now that’s kinda the reason I want to get it. I’m firmly back in my artistic zone, and I like to be a visual representation of how I create and feel. As an artist, I’m fearless, risky and innovative. Just having a Mohawk is none of those things, but walking around here with one is something like it, and seeing myself with such a different design up top is just outside of my comfort zone enough for me to feel that sense of being off-balance a little bit that is important to me. I’ve only seen my guy do one style that was close to a Mohawk on a black guy. I’ve seen him do fresh Arab and Indian versions. I’m going to go in with an open mind. The worse that can happen is I don’t like it, and I have to have the heart to tell him to just cut it all off. Eventually I’d like to grow dredlocks anyway, and I think time may be running out on that idea, so if the StarPohawk doesn’t come out looking right, maybe it’ll jumpstart my way in that direction. Stay tuned.