ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 18
Nate’s horrific haircut in season four rendered the entire program
unwatchable. I even started dating a white boy. His name was Jesi
Tinker-Rein (yes, that’s his real name--that fucker deserves no anonymity). He had bright green eyes and shaggy blonde hair and was
arguably the worst player on the basketball team. We had our first
kiss behind the gym the week before winter break. He lunged forward, tongue first while I kept my eyes open the entire time, consumed with a bone deep sense of betrayal; Is this what they do on
Gossip Girl every week? No amount of network television or young
adult novels will prepare you for the moment when a boy in a Puka
shell necklace and a Goonies shirt standing three inches shorter
than you sticks his tongue down your throat. When we got back to
campus two weeks later, he had decided that it was time we parted
ways, and by second period he was holding hands with the class
mean girl Emma, someone who also hasn’t earned a name change.
I’m going to spare you the gory details of the following three
years. All you need to know is that by the time I graduated high
school, I still had never made a Black friend. I had never been to a
Black person’s house or listened to what I was told was Black music.
All of the magazines and TV shows I continued to worship featured
almost no melanated characters. When Black folks did get some
airtime, they were either the bully, the whore or the athlete. This
didn’t give me much to relate to. And although the morning ritual
of straightening my hair had ceased, I remained overwhelmingly
aware of the color of my skin.
I came to American River College with the hope of figuring out
what I was supposed to contribute to this world. I had spent half
of high school thinking I was going to be an artist (talent pending),
and the other half watching The X-Files and hoping that the earth
would just open up and swallow me whole. Needless to say, not a
lot of career planning had occurred within that timespan.
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