Journey to the Center of CAUCASIA

In approximately 5 hours I will board a plane bound for Stockholm, Sweden, where I will spend 2 weeks. This will be plane number 14 in approximately 9 weeks. It will be my third journey into a different time zone. It will be frequent flyer miles 5,298,001-8,515,210.

I'm excited.
And fearful.

Not only will this be my first trip with one of my best friends--and the first time I've traveled with someone since developing my comfort and habits as a lone wolf/blackpacker--but I'll be in Scandinavia. The epicenter of Caucasian culture. Where pigment is a mere figment of the imagination!

I'm scared it's going to be very.... Village of the Damned.

AAAHHHH!!!! Inside Caucasia!

One friend said to me, "You go to the whitest vacation spots." Well, I'm sorry if this diminishes my 'negrosity,' but I believe that only by going deep inside Caucasia can I truly learn their ways. Like Nicholas Cage in Face/Off, I will go deep undercover--incognegro, if you will--and find out about Swedes. Packing list features:
-Hip boots, to combat the 40-degree temperatures.
-Sunglasses, to fend off the Swedish paparazzi who'll think I'm Michelle Obama.
-Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight series. After all, nothing prepares you for Caucasia like pasty vamps.
-The movie Juno, freshly uploaded onto my iPod. I'm not really sure why. Maybe cause it shows what trials and tribulations Caucasia can get through with a few smartly placed quips?


Okay, I'm off to finish packing and learn key Swedish phrases (such as "Do you have a girlfriend?" and "I'd like red wine, please"). Wish me luck! I hope to have hard-hitting news from my journey into the center of CAUCASIA* very soon.


*I hope my use of 'Caucasia' doesn't offend anyone. I mean, some of my best friends are White.

Something to Blog About

So, I don’t know what’s particularly interesting nowadays, so here’s a look at the past week’s highlights—let me know which you’d like to know more about, dear readers.

1. The blacktress is officially booked on Quantas flight 740, departing San Francisco on October 11, 2008. I arrive in Sydney on October 13*-- holla!!! Eli Reed and other Aussie friends: I expect you to have 12 rugged men and 7 koalas waiting for me.

2. Tonight is date #2 with a hottie from NEW ZEALAND!!!
I mean, that’s practically like Australia (don’t tell him I said that—there’s apparently beef between the two countries), so it’s great preparation for the big trip. It also allows me to pretend like I'm dating Jemaine from "Flight of the Conchords" (let me look at my list....living the dream? CHECK! hot accent? double-check! love for a blacktress? mutha-CHECKIN' yes!)

He has even asked me to be his “summer girlfriend”—yes, please!! Best to go out with a bang, I always say!

3. This morning, I was on the Underground Railroad heading in the wrong direction (to the plantation), when a petite pregnant lady got on the train. Being NYC at rush hour, of course there were no seats left. She quietly stood and grabbed the pole, and I looked around momentarily. Not a single man, woman, or child got up. I got the woman’s attention and offered her my seat. She immediately accepted and I stood up over the young, able-bodied hipster guy who I had been sitting next to. He looked momentarily sheepish, then went back to reading his book on social theory.

I was so annoyed by this turn of events. Well, yes, I would have liked to sit, but I was more put off by the fact that I, a young blacktress, was the only person who offered to give this clearly-8-months-pregnant woman a seat on the train. She’s holding life in womb, for Christ’s sake! I can barely stand up in a pair of heels, so lord knows the day I accidentally get knocked up, I’m gonna need to take a knee every ten seconds!! And, on top of that, I noticed that when she sat down she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring—is she a single mom, struggling with the worry of how to raise this incoming fetus on her own?! My lord, if I had that weighing on my shoulders in addition to the baby weighing on my torso, I would probably be in a Jazzy Electric Wheelchair, much like this one:

It’s actually called a “Jazzy.”

The refusal of any man to get up off his ass and give her a seat reminded me of the words of a great poet—Nelly Furtado—in her hit opus “Promiscuous”:

“Roses are red / some diamonds are blue / chivalry is dead / but you’re still kinda cute.”

I mean, if that ain’t the gospel truth, I don’t know what is. If it was 1956, everyone with a Y chromosome would have gotten up when that woman came on the train, and some probably would have removed their bowler hats. Alas, those days of propriety are gone.

I guess I shouldn’t be so upset, though—if the old days were still around, I’d be sitting at the back of the bus.



*What happens to me for a whole day???? It’s like I’m in some transcontinental vortex where I cease to exist…..I smell a Sci-Fi channel original motion picture!

Ugly Bette (Davis)

Have you ever seen the film Now, Voyager? It’s one the films the students viewed in the class I’m grading papers for, and it was one that I saw as an undergraduate film hopeful back at Diversity U.
Made in 1942, it stars Bette Davis as Charlotte Vale, an unattractive spinster who lives with her overbearing mother, who convinces her that she’s nothing, “with her bushy eyebrows and glasses.” I was discussing this with my homegirl The Persian Excursion earlier today, and she made a good point:
The Excursion: do you think that is how they got the original idea for Ugly Betty?
i mean for real though
Ugly Bette Davis
HELLO!

Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, back to the film:
Charlotte, a frumpy adult who has never known the touch of a man, is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown (o, "una mujer al borde de una ataque de nervios," for all you Betty La Fea fans), when a psychiatrist comes to her rescue and tells her to come to his sanatorium, luring her with candies into his white van.
I jest. He’s not a perv.

In his crazy house (which is apparently where they put anybody who was stressed or different up until 1975), Charlotte learns that she’s in fact attractive, and they trade her busted clothes for stylish ones, much like the character of Tai in Clueless, and she takes off her glasses, much like Rachel Leigh Cook in She’s All That.

After bringing her own sexy back, Charlotte decides to go on a cruise and get her head right. There, she meets a man named Jerry, who doesn’t love his wife, but stays with her for their daughter. Jerry and Charlotte clearly have a connection, but he’s married, and Charlotte’s classy.

She returns home after her cruise feeling grown and sexy—and a little sad that she’s lost a man. She quickly finds a new one, a wealthy widower who is ready to marry her. Charlotte, however, can't get over Jerry, and breaks her engagement, making her mother so angry that she has a heart attack and dies (did I mention this was a 1942 melodrama?). So what does Charlotte do?

She goes back to the sanatorium to get her head right.

She, like Winona, is a Girl, Interrupted (but unlike Winona, she doesn’t steal).

At the sanatorium, she meets Tina—JERRY’S DAUGHTER (cue music). Tina, like, Charlotte, is called an “ugly duckling,” and, in the words of TLC, feels “unpretty.” She and Charlotte bond, with Charlotte taking her under her wing and bringing her back home with her to Boston.
Jerry clearly comes to her house to see where his daughter is, and you think they’ll finally get together, but…..

Should I spoil it? You may have to see this film.

Charlotte’s last line is, "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon... we have the stars," one of the top 100 movie quotes in American cinema (seriously, look it up).

You may be saying to yourself, “Sojourner, Bette Davis isn’t a blacktress,” or “This movie sounds lame. Why are you giving me a plot summary of a melodrama starring a random white woman? What does this have to do with me?”

Nothing. It has to do with me.

Let me explain.
I, too, grew up as an ugly duckling, and at times my mamadukes could be rough and tough on a young blacktress (you don’t know drama until you know Black Mama Drama). I’m sure if laws weren’t so strict I would have been sent away to a sanatorium just so she could get peace and quiet.
I, too, in moments of confidence, have met a man while on a foreign journey (or a foreign man on a blacktress journey), but was unable to express my love due to circumstances outside of my control (you know, he lived in Australia and had a girlfriend—those kinds of hurdles).

And, I, too, am now a voyager.
However, unlike Ugly Bette, I WILL ask for the moon, the stars—and a condo on Mars!!! (sometimes the blacktress likes to freestyle)

As I sit on the plantation, embittered and bored, I think about the possibilities for the blacktress in a foreign land.
I could open up a beauty shop, a la Queen Latifah
I could open a soul food restaurant, and let people fetishize my otherness.
I could write a book, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to my speech “Ain’t I a Woman?!” in the vein of Eat, Pray, Love—only not whiny crap.


Lee from Brisbane said she’d pick me up from the airport. Girl, how far is Brisbane from Sydney? Holla at me via gmail--aka, gangstamail!

2007: A Blacktress Looks Back

Hello there gentle readers,

Welcome to 2008! As you can see, we are not as far along as we should be as a people. To my dismay, I awoke in Brooklyn on the 1st day of 2008 and stepped outside to see NO flying cars, and discovered that I hadn’t become an omnipotent robot. I expected way more from us this far along in the aughts (this is what we call the first decade. Yeah, look it up. The blacktress teaches).
Oh yeah, and there’s still oppression everywhere.

As we look to this new year, and as the decade draws to a close, I would like to share some of the lessons I have learned this long, hard year. Perhaps you, too, will gain something from my strife. After all, what good is the struggle if you can’t help someone out?

Sometimes, the only lesson to be learned from something is to not do it again.
Yeah, I said it. I’m so done with all these people telling me that “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” (yeah, Kanye, I’m talking to you). I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes rough shit happens and it just sucks. And when it’s all said and done, you learn not to go down that road again. In the words of the wise musician Rick, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted.” Yes, true that.

Don’t Buy Him A Drank (Shawty TRIPPIN’!)
Did I ever tell you about the hot mess I met back in November? We locked eyes at the Bourgie Pig (my jam and my jump-off), and, inspired by T-Pain and my liberal need to shirk the gender binary, I decided to buy HIM a drank. I was nervous as the waiter walked over with his beer (that’s what dudes drank, right?). I was pleasantly surprised when he came over and started chatting and then asked for my number. I had high hopes for this 30-year-old IT guy with the bald head and stubble I’ve come to realize is my type.

I was sorely let down when my interactions with Dave became a series of late-night text messages that amounted to nothing. He fell off the face of the earth in the month of December, citing “too much schoolwork” (um, I’m not impressed! Even ancient man knew to holla at a cavewoman after chasing mastadons). I clearly kicked him to the curb—one of the many lessons learned this year—and decided he was dead to me, much like Michael Jackson and Boyz II Men (where are you????).

You can imagine my shock when I received a text message from him at 2 AM this past Friday night!!! I believe the exact words were: “Wadd up…2 am winter spoon?”

No that fool did NOT use my words to woo me! And no he didn’t think he could call me up at 2am like I’m some common woman and expect his needs to be met. That is just like a damn white man to lose his good-goddamn mind and think he can play. I said I was a blacktress—NOT a wack-tress!

White People Have Too Much Money, and it Makes Them Stupid
Yeah, I said it. The paparazzi have shown us what Biggie was saying all along: Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems. From crazy Britney (Tears for Spears, ’08—courtesy Leila Estes!!!) to that Wicked Leona Helmsley, clearly, when white folks get money, they go a little nuts. The green makes them a hot mess, and they don’t know what to do with themselves. Leaving a damn dog money?! Shaving your head, showing your bare vajayjay, and getting into more baby mama drama than a Jerry Springer guest?! I mean, come on, people!

Get an Office Wife and an Office Husband—Preferably Gay-- and the Plantation Will Be Less Oppressive.
My first full-fledged non-temporary office job has taught me that there really is no such thing as sexual harassment if your coworkers like you. I mean, my tender office wife brings nothing but good cheer and laughter, even when I say things that don’t make sense. AND she’s even into Jesus and finds my offensive humor hilARious! Getting an office wife turns the mundane task of sitting at a desk into your very own slumber party, complete with giggling, snacks, and pillow fights (with rulers instead of pillows). Today’s gem from wifey proves it. When discussing our resolutions to eat healthier (I’m on Fatkins, not Atkins), she said to me, “Girl, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. You can eat whatever you want. I think if you trace back to your ancestry, you’ll find you were, like, a cougar in the Egyptian wilderness.”
AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!! Wifey is sooo cray! God bless her.
(We’re both probably getting fired soon.)

Gchat IS LIFE.
I don’t think anything could have gotten through this sedentary year of 9-to-5’in’ quite like Gmail and its chatting capabilities. It’s like I can talk to people for 8 hours straight and make money at the same time. I’m never out of the gossip loop, I’ve got youtube links coming out of my arse, and every puny thought that runs through my brain can be shared with 12 people in an instant. I mean, how did the world exist before the interweb? What, people interacted face to face? What about ugly people? I think not.

Everyone Needs A Litsa.
Seriously, she came into my life in the summer like a heat wave—only without the sticky sweat or bad smell. She warmed my heart and soul, and I wouldn’t have survived the blackout of 2007 if it wasn’t for her ability to keep a sober head while nearly blind-drunk. She is my Harlem girl with lesbian dogs, who has hosted me, fed me, given me her bed (in more ways than one), and acted as a sex-cellent partner in crime. Unfortunately for me, her winter spoon has returned, so she’s gone all domestic, but discovering this tame side has only made me appreciate her more. Without our daily gchats, her distrust of unattractive people, and her love of yellowtail Shiraz, I don’t know how I would have made it into 2008.

Foreign Men Are Evil.
Ugh, George Bush would be too proud to hear me say this (lord knows he wouldn’t be able to read it). However, I cannot let that stop me from speaking my truth. I have learned that from Australia to Astoria, from Greece to London, these fools have as many emotional barriers as language barriers, and treat each kiss like another stamp on their passport: makes for a great story, but ain’t nothing much besides that. Like the long transcontinental flights on which they embark, they arrive on our shores with excess baggage, ready to unload on the first brown woman they see. They will leave you with nothing besides a broken heart, a confused mind, perhaps a Facebook friendship, and a fur shrug. You have been warned. Enter the foreign man’s hostel at your own risk.

Everything is Better With Gay Men.
This past year I have made many important friendships, many of which were with gay men. Some of whom I knew in previous years, our love strengthened and deepened with the dawning of the spring and the sunshine of the summer. I spent many lazy afternoons sitting in Central Park with the Boys, ogling shirtless hotties and drinking white trash sangria. We laughed, we cried, we developed blogs and I developed crushes. I’m prepared to lend my womb, heart, and soul to these men as our lives continue forward. I must name the best of the best, just so they know who they are:
Mr. Casey: you taught me about politics, life, and laughter…and I love your mom.
Vince Vaughn: I think you know who you are. You are the counterpart to Mr. Casey, and by far the most surprising love affair I’ve had this year. You make me wanna be a strong black woman.
JJS iii: Your Photoshop is too bootylicious for me, your rhymes are like whoa, and you support my love of HP. Without your support, this blacktress blog would not exist. You may be involved with a D-list, but you’re A-list to me!
Nick Cearley: Sweet god in heaven, you are it. If I had to be trapped in a closet, I hope it would be with you…and some showtunes. Billy Jean may not be your lover, but I think I am!
Tumbles: You cartwheeled your way into my heart, and being fellow Sagittarians, I knew our bond would deepen. We should go on more dates where other people come along.
Ronnie: I have a crush on you. There, I said it. Imagine how hot our mixie would be.
Jeff Hiller: Our love has only just begun. You are my brother from another mother, and I can’t wait to improvise with you.
Katie Walsh: You are a 35-year-old gay man trapped in a woman’s body. You publicly relate to my soul.

Artists and Serious Art Hobbyists Are Cray.
Since working at this art magazine, I have come in contact with more weirdos than I do on NYC transit. Apparently, acrylic painters are oppressed, anything in life can be cured with plasticize board, and “artists are lower than whale shit.” It’s gotten to the point where I’m scared to answer my phone.

I LOVE NEW YORK….WHEN SHE COONS IT UP.
I’ve given her way too much blog time to not acknowledge the force New York has been in my life. She’s a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania (aka, Utica, NY—not even the city, y’all!), and she has about as much class as a kid at summer camp, I know. But she entertains me. She makes me feel better about myself, and reminds me why black people can’t have nice things sometimes. She is currently boo-ed up with Tailor Made—aka GEORGE WEISGERBER. Um, I don’t know about y’all, but I would die of happiness if New York came to introduce herself as Mrs. Weisgerber. Can. You. Imagine like John Lennon?!
When it comes to New York, I have one word for you: TOOKEN.

Anyone Can Be A Strong Black Woman!
I know this statement may seem shocking and bold, but I hold it to be the TRUTH. As I have shared stories with my ladies and my fellas, I’ve found that strength, courage, and wisdom rest not only with India.Arie. Clearly White in their own right, Karisa, Katie, Litsa, and even Edith Zimmerman have shown themselves to also be strong black women. With their heads held high, their pockets fat like Tony Soprano, and their chinchillas, they can handle the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Everyone Comes Into Your Life For A Reason—Or A Season.
As you know, much of my bloggery has been devoted to the quest for a “winter spoon.” But most of the people I have met (electronically and organically) have not been worth their weight in gold dubloons. I have kissed frogs, dogs, and stayed in shit way too long just for the idea of what I wanted. I have learned that I need to let that go. Besides, this global warming may work in my favor, as half the season has been warm enough to forgo spooning altogether. I am done dealing with fools and consoling myself with the thought that they’ll at least make a good blog post. It is time to stand up as the strong black woman I am and stop cleaning up after other people’s hot messes.

That is all dear Reader. If you have made it this far along, I thank you for supporting Sojourner yet again. Look forward to a year of truth, justice, and the African-American way.

I don´t think I´m Lovin´

I honestly don´t know what can be said about this video. I just need someone else to see what I saw yesterday on my new favorite channel full of German and other foreign music videos. It´s called "I´m lovin... LRHP." LRHP stands for Little Red Hot Pants.
Has this boy´s balls dropped yet?

Passport to Freedom

Dear Readers/Equals,

I am heading to Europe to spread the truth. Starting Wednesday, I will spend 3 days in London, where I will say “Frosted Flakes” when they say “Cheerio!” and then head to Barcelona, where I will tell LA VERDAD! Though it may seem odd to leave this country on one of our highest of holy days-- Thanksgiving-- I feel it is on the day of celebrating the oppression of a minority that I must escape.

I’m excited for this getaway primarily because the United States is heaping oppression on me like we’re back in slave days. How, you may ask?

1. I did not get the co-op. Apparently, I’m not good enough to live in a newly renovated crack den. Fine then, let them gentrify it and don’t blame me when the Columbia kids leave the doors unlocked and everyone gets jacked!!

2. I was rejected by a 25 year old actor who is new to this fair city and has one testicle. Um, excuse me? While I was initially drawn to the fact that he was a survivor, and could perhaps relate to oppression and darkness (as well as the dark woman), it turns out I really should have focused on the most important part of his identity: he’s an ACTOR. Though I am a blacktress, and appreciate the artistic yearning, actors often have the following traits which prevent them from being true:
- They are egotistical.

- They are broke

- They sleep on twin-sized air mattresses.

- They live in non-renovated crack dens.

But they also often have a charm and charisma which is dangerous when unleashed. And I must admit I was the victim of yet another performer, another player on life’s stage. And he indeed played me—much like a remake of a Shakespearean drama starring the latest Hollywood tart-let.

Clearly, the quest for the winter spoon is not going so well. So I now pack my bags, head to foreign lands, and hope for the best. And by “the best” I mean, “copious amounts of food, non-awkward fetishizing of my Nubian beauty, and sexy accents.”

Wish me luck. I may not return.