The early bird catches the worm. I’m a student who needs a job, and my new boss approached me saying that she was trying to “change the face of the neighborhood.”
Yes, I am picking up what you are putting down.
You need me to work in the back and be the white face that shows up when the cops want to commit ridiculousness. I have understood the assignment. This is Baltimore. Put your white ass face between me and the police, you dense motherfucker.
Racism isn’t getting worse. It’s getting filmed. -Will Smith
What other cities do not understand is that their racism is child’s play compared to Baltimore. The analogy is that Baltimore was the root cause of systemic Jim Crow laws that provided the blueprint for the whole nation. Baltimore is thought of in the rest of the nation as “the North,” and it is true that overall, we have so much more in common with places like Princeton and Cambridge but never forget how close we are to Richmond, mmmmmmkay? That is because Black leadership has taken over the city so racism cannot flourish for long. Brandon Scott is a star in some ways, problematic in others like every mayor on earth because he’s human. People are going to find things not to like. But I like him and hope he succeeds. I’ve had cute interactions with both Brandon and his wife, Hannah, on Threads and they’re funny AF (and they know it- such cutups and I am grateful). I am settled in Black Baltimore, and let’s be clear- there has always been a difference in neighborhoods and you are blind if you don’t see it.
Baltimore is so racist there are two different accents. White people say “Bawlmer,” and Black people say “Bawdamore.” Segregated neighborhoods begat segregated speech communities, and of the two, the Black accent is closer to the original English, because the Black accent is truer to the English people who started the city in the first place.
Jim Crow fundamentally changed the city is that even now, we are two organisms in one geographic location. I’m from Houston and I can tell you with accuracy that it works the same way and trickles down to queer people. We used to congregate in Montrose, but we were priced out. But that is Baltimore’s legacy in America- creating the system by which Black and white communities overlap, but do not intentionally reach out for intersectionality.
Where I have found intersectionality are the queer and intelligence communities, and I am making a joke because today I went out in my pajamas- a pink t-shirt with the nonbinary flag that has the first Moscow rule running up the side…. “Assume Nothing,” black joggers, and rainbow Crocs that clearly advertise, “I am fluent in kitchen.” Royal Farms is a gas station and a kitchen.
It’s maybe not a Michelin star, but it’s close. It definitely fits the vibe of “place you want to stop according to Michelin” for Maryland. They’re everywhere, and eating their fried chicken in your car is a rite of passage. So, even if you are a foodie of the highest caliber, treat yourself to a chicken box or you won’t fit in culturally. It’s fried chicken. You’ll be fine.
Intelligence is information, and my new boss picked up what I was putting down with every clue. I can work it into anything and when I saw this t-shirt I did not care if it was four THOUSAND dollars, because it says who I am with a flag and a slogan.
I have two of them, to be clear. One is pink and one is gray. I am nothing if not addicted to story (and comfort). Anyway, I made the decision to go to school and the manager at Royal Farms offered me a job. I was grateful, because the problem with being white is that most people assume that you’ll think these jobs are beneath you and won’t even volunteer the information.
I said, “well, let me tell you a little bit about me and you can tell me if you still want me. I write seriously every morning, that’s why I’m here. Is it a problem to work in the afternoons?” She said, “that’s what I’m looking for. Someone to work both second and third shift.” Done, because if I was working in a pub this would be a straight up problem. I do not want to go back to working nights and writing until dawn. I am the most alert and active at dawn, and I need it for cognitive fuel. I can fry chicken while half asleep. I have quite a bit of experience in this department, actually.
You fry chicken by the sound.
But the bigger implication is truly having me on staff, because I do not carry skin that says, “trust me on first viewing.” But what Black people don’t know is that white people don’t trust me, either. They are biased against queer people, because they’re used to people being gay (sort of) but I lost them with all this nonbinary bullshit. That’s because it’s not their bullshit. They’ve never had to ask themselves the question, so why entertain it as something valid for other people?
It was watching Cam Paglia that did me in, because I thought he was crazy. Then I figured out that all my defense and anger was because he was out and I wasn’t. So, if I ever feel the need to sue anyone for turning out nonbinary in the end, it’s definitely Graydon Carter.
It was Cam (and Dominick, James, Christopher, and the whole stable at Vanity Fair) who taught me that I was capable of writing on their level and exposure didn’t mean shit. Just keep plugging away at their altitude and people will come. I do not need to chase anything, I am powerful enough as is.
I was born with the ability to hold an audience in the palm of my hand, just like Dr. Brown, just like Matthew McConaughey, just like every Texas storyteller EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
If I’d known I had journalistic instincts, the career path would have been Molly Ivins and not Jonna Mendez. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jonna’s like 80. I should probably ask her to write a foreword for me that would be appropriate for any book, because I’m not going to let a respected author call me a spitfire and then not use it for anything.
I am already capable of doctoral-level work because I’ve been sitting here pounding the keyboard every day for years. The difference is that I need to complete those degrees now because it takes a PhD to have an opinion. Tiina went to Harvard and has a doctorate, so she can reference her own opinions. I want to be able to do the same thing without reaching out to everyone else for credentials.
Like Brene, I want to go into Social Work, but not the kind of MSW that sees patients. I do not think that is my calling because when I was a preacher’s kid, the emotional load of pastoral care was just too much. I cannot function under the weight of other people’s pain because I do not have any clinical separation. I need to study people at the sociological level. What vast patterns of shame and vulnerability have wrought, not shame in interpersonal relationships.
Shame in intelligence, because I’m a political science major and psychology minor at University of Houston, transferring to University of Maryland Global Campus in the fall. I bagged it all and did IT for a while, now it’s a different ball game. I wish I could go the CIA route, because I’d be happy even if it was just working in the food court. That’s because CIA is so monolithic that I do not have to mention I work at the food court. I say I work at CIA, and I am instantly James Bond in their minds, the “chip and pickle guy” in mine.
However, if I was younger, I think I could have done better than that. I know from pattern recognition that I would have just entered a new world of pastoral care, shepherding assets like parishioners and worrying about my flock constantly. But CIA wasn’t the be all and end all when I was a kid. They were recovering from the paranoia that begat wrath from Jesus Angleton. I cannot know, but I think that Jonna thought he was a sack of shit in a cheap suit. Just pattern recognition and saying the quiet part out loud. But that’s what happens to very smart people. They have to listen to less smart people in a way that generally makes their assholes chew crackers.
Just for one day, I would love to be Aada or Mummo in a meeting. Which would be more fun is a crapshoot, but it’s a fun idea to picture me ordering around the boys upstairs. But that’s not my lane. My lane is to tell you the story of intelligence as I know it.
“Argo” was a reputation recovery mission….. an entire commercial in order to recruit smart people. I do not know if it worked as well as The West Wing did for Congress and the White House, reworking an entire generation’s speech patterns regarding how we work, but the key to loving “Argo” is not being offended that it was a commercial in the first place.
How do you get smart people to work for you? Show them that other smart people work there.
I do not like studying intelligence so much as I enjoy studying spies. The personality it takes to do the job is as important as the mission. You don’t just want bodies to fill the roles, you want exactly the right people at the time they need to be there.
You want people who can look at you deadpan and tell you the truth even when someone is technically superior to you and therefore probably afraid to speak truth to power. You have to find people that can ignore that voice inside them, and for me personally it comes from being a preacher’s kid in a very specific cultural environment like HSPVA. I didn’t go to some nondescript high school. I went to a school attended by people like Robert Glasper, Jason Moran, and Eric Harland.
And you should know that out of the three, the only one I haven’t played with is Jason.
I am not with them because I chose not to be, not because I was incapable of riding bitch, capiche? I am not the star, I am the scaffolding. They are the pianists and drummer loved across the world, and I’m the one who helps that happen by writing about them, buying their albums, and going to their concerts. Artists need patrons just as much as they need friends.
But I am not an artist like Glasper, Moran, and Harland. I am an artist like Dominick Dunne and Anais Nin. They were known for their diaries, not their publications. I am hard-pressed to think of a Dunne novel that is more famous than his reporting on the trials of the “rich, and the very, very rich.”
But the thing about having a diary is that it has to touch everything, so I have to have a life outside of it. Plenty of writers have laid brick and sold insurance.
Anthony Bourdain and I fry chicken, because brunch is the smell of failure.
It’s all about alignment. Seeing what the universe offers you and taking them up on it.
Stories That Are All True 