The Leanover.

Last weekend, I went to The Bluebird with one of my good friends and eventually the conversation turned towards dating. In the back of my mind, I am thinking about the fact that I hate these kind of conversations and that now that I have entered a new phase in my life, it has become standard, something to anticipate as a young, single, lonely, bored female.

Early in January, a friend commented on the singleness of another friend. She talked about how it was a good thing that this other guy who once liked me was now talking to her.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because she's single," she said, and I thought about that and said, "Well, I'm single too. And I have been for longer than her."

But then she got this look on her face and she said, "Yeah but it's different," and she didn't elaborate and I didn't need her too either, because in my mind, those thoughts that stem from my loneliness and boredom and insecurities came forth and with a vigor that unnerved me. It is easy to not think of these sort of things until you are confronted with them, however unassumingly. My mind has a way of rationalizing my insecurities, and so I use these situations, seemingly benign in nature, to comment on the lack that shouldn't mean anything, but does.

My sister and I have discussed these things a couple of times, but we like to graze the surface, perhaps because the truth is too uncomfortable. See, I live in this city, this great city in the middle of the country, full of people fulfilling dreams outside of the suburbs and pursuing passions and working hard - always working hard - and sometimes falling in love. They are smiling and dating and loving, openly, completely.

One time my friend said, "It's going to be hard for you," and I knew what she meant. I am, a Black woman. I am, a Black woman a little quirkier than most Black women. I am, a Black woman without a strong support of Black friends. I am, a Black woman in this city, this great city in the middle of the country, full of people separating themselves, segregating themselves, looking sternly towards each other, avoiding each other, hating each other, simmering with guilt and exhaustion about each other, confused by each other, ignoring each other, always, completely, totally ignoring each other or stereotyping each other or refusing to acknowledge each other.

Or maybe I am just exaggerating, my beleaguered spirit defeated by the winter, the weariness of this season. If that is the case than I figure these insecurities are finally getting the best of me. At night, I take comfort in the throes of fiction, sustaining my apprehension towards the everyday, alleviating the pains of overthinking.

In the summer, your body is both everywhere and nowhere. When it is everywhere, you have the ability to feel what was always there, but trapped between the lining and stitches of your clothing. The breeze takes on a sensual quality. Nothing feels as wonderful as thick, cool air whisking against your skin. It is so sweet along your face. It is so sexy against your thighs. And when it is nowhere, you forget to take notice. It is the nowhere that matters during those months in November and December, January through May. The nowhere takes precedence then because the compactness of winter makes you so insecure that the emotions running through your mind are crippling and humiliating. Layers for warmth also keep you enclosed, subjected to your physicality as much as your “inner self.” The thoughts that are always, always there. No one ever talks about the freedom in snow, in icicles and biting cold.

Can I tell you that I am obsessed with delicacy, because I am? The idea runs through my mind constantly. Every day is a reminder of my delicacy, or lack of delicacy, and I feel consumed by the lack. Writing this now, first in longhand then typed, is a reminder of the shape of my hands, the fullness of my two palms, the length and width of fingers, the millions of creases and cracks along the knuckles. It’s not something I would think about normally, or ever, because I know I am blessed to exist, to find warmth and shelter when it is needed, to find comfort with my friends and family. But when one is feeling particularly lonely and loathing and needs a means to escape and focus on frivolities, it is easy to concentrate on the miniscule and ignore more plaguing problems. When I think of my hands, I also like to think about my childhood, those long hours spent in gymnastics: running across the springy floor, performing pirouettes on the balance beam, and swinging on the bars, my hands covered in ounces of white chalk, skin scraping against the wood, blisters bleeding profusely. A streak of blood looked like strawberry jelly oozing out of a powdered donut. My hands, their work and toil and wear were as appetizing then as the pastries I frequently consume now.



In composing biographical content, does the use of formal language and presentation distort or misrepresent the truth? Does relating a biography in academic jargon make it more believable, compelling or important?

- on Nicholas Frank, for Artwrit

It is a distortion, a grotesque representation of the body and yet, it is still fascinating and familiar.

- on Exquisite Corpse, for Artwrit

"Soulfulness is sorrowful feeling transformed into something beautiful, creative and self-renewing, and - as it reaches a pitch - ecstatic. It is an alchemy of pain. To be soulful is to follow and fall in line with a feeling, to go where it takes you and not to go against its grain."

- Zadie Smith

My many selves are dwindling. Outside of college, surprisingly, I feel less need to supplement my various surroundings with inauthentic identities, slivers of my true personality.

My acquaintances now outnumber my close friends. There is nothing wrong with this, I think. On the surface, the sentiment is lonely, but the pressure now to acquire close bonds seems impossible, and not worth it. I can be myself, as much as possible, and form bonds based on commonalities, whatever that may be, and not by conforming, altering, or eliminating the things that may not make sense.

When going out to bars, I occasionally asked, “Will there be Black people there?” It did not matter that I would only hang out with my few friends. I needed to look around the room and see faces similar to my own, in order to feel at least somewhat comfortable being myself. There would be less of a need to put on airs, to fall into a false identity in order to alleviate potentially annoying situations.

But sometimes I went out to places where my friends would answer, “I don’t know,” when I asked the above question, which almost certainly meant that there wouldn’t be many people within my race. This is not to say that I am unable to interact with people not physically similar to myself. But, as I’ve quickly learned, it is much easier to maneuver through the world, as a woman, as a Black woman, with many different “selves” that I can use when the situation calls for it. And these selves, convenient as they may be, are also exhausting. In college, I wrote constantly, reflecting on myself and the situations I faced as a means of reconnecting to the “true self” that was often buried deep somewhere, away from the intricacies of reality.

Most confounding, I never truly understood how to act around “hipsters,” which is probably why I am still slightly fascinated by them. I think this largely has to do with the “performance” that many “hipsters” seem to be participating in at any given moment: This is what it means to party! This is what it means to hang out! This is what it means to have good taste! How can I alter my personality for the situation when the situation is full of completely, totally, mind-boggling altered personalities?

But on my own, navigating the world outside of the comforts of college, I no longer feel the intense pressure. I always imagined it would be the opposite. College provides a sort of safety net from the real world, creating these unrealistic ideas of the world and what it means to be an adult, and so, I imagined that as the time outside of college grew larger than my time in college, I would have to worry more and more about fitting into ideals. But it hasn’t turned out like that, at least not now, and I feel a sense of relief that is potent.



My latest post for Dossier is about New York and Chicago apartment galleries. I decided to write the post based on a recent article published in the New York Times about the emergence of apartment galleries in New York. In Chicago, however, apartment galleries have a longer, more complicated history within the larger art “scene.” More thoughts are located here.

I imagine that if I were living my dream life with my dream career that there would be no incessant need to reflect and remember that not all time was lost. I imagine.