Life in the Raw:
A Journey from Fear to Faith

This is where i get to be brave,
calling my pain by its name(s)
and releasing myself from the story
that pain tells me about myself.
I am the storyteller now.
This is just one of a million courageous acts
that I am making for my own healing.
I am not alone …
—Blues Record/Improvising Peace: A Journal of Interactive Healing


Sunday, July 13: Escape from the City of Demons
At 5:30 in the morning, I wheel my luggage down the darkened hallway of my apartment building, en route to San Diego. I encounter no one by the bank of golden mailboxes, on the elevator, or in the underground parking garage now gashed with the murky rays of dawn. No one witnesses my escape.

The drive will take two hours. I’m functioning on two hours of sleep, since I always wait until the last minute to do laundry and pack. I promised my friend E. that I would attend church with him in San Diego, and in two-and-a-half hours, the sanctuary walls will be awash with song. I have to hurry.

I’m not fleeing Los Angeles at daybreak simply to hear a sermon in a distant city or to visit an old friend. Later in the afternoon, I will check into the Optimum Health Institute in Lemon Grove, California for a week-long stay. Weary pilgrims from all over the world seek refuge in this branch of the Free Sacred Trinity Church, hoping that a diet of raw foods, meditation and prayer can heal their diseases. My wounds are more emotional than physical. I can’t pinpoint exactly what ails me, but I’m desperate to get away — especially from myself.

It’s strange that I’m on my way to service, and that I’m voluntarily participating in a program with spiritual origins, since I haven’t prayed in months. My heart feels orphaned. I’m mad at God. I feel afraid all the time, like my life will always be a muddle of missed opportunities and thorny regrets. I feel alone, without purpose or motivation. But especially, I feel loveless, as if I’ve never known the Almighty’s caress. Lack of love in the City of Angels, especially a dearth of self-love, is dangerous.

Few cars dot the road on this early Sunday morning. The city still slumbers, hung over from a night of cheap drinks and expensive dreams. In the hazy distance, the downtown skyscrapers seem to be fading out of existence. After merging onto the 5 Freeway, I rummage in my tote bag for a CD. I want to blast Busta Rhymes or Teena Marie to stay awake on my travels and to detract from the pain constantly lodged on a shelf of my heart.

As I turn on the stereo, gospel streams from my speakers. I’m surprised, because my radio is always tuned to Pacifica, and hymns are the last thing I expect to hear from that political station. An unfamiliar song by Smokie Norful fills the car:

Though it seems like life is over/and your tragedy has no end/don't count yourself out of the game, no not yet/Pull it back together and drive right back in/It's going to work out/in time …

The lyrics loosen a knot in my chest. I feel the blues bubbling up, clogging my throat, threatening to cascade down my cheeks. I try to blink back tears, but soon nothing can staunch the flow. I have never felt so emotionally fragile, like I’m not only losing my mind, but I’m enjoying the process. I’m worried that other drivers will see my damp face and think I’m crazy. I feel my mascara coursing an inky path down my skin and onto my dress. Once my makeup wears off, there will be no reapplication. I have packed no lipstick, foundation or eye shadow for my journey. Since everyone at OHI will be detoxing on a diet of living foods and juices, participants are encouraged to forego fragrances, chemicals and other hindrances to health. This policy suits me just fine. I want to let it all go. I want to cast off the designer sorrow I’ve acquired in Los Angeles and allow my true self to emerge.

I pull into the gravelly parking lot of the church twenty minutes early. E. texts me that he’s running late, so I find a seat at the back of the sanctuary, closest to the exit. I’m nervous. Within ten minutes, I have rushed to the restroom three times. I want to bolt out of the tabernacle like some demon seed scalded with holy water. E. joins me just as the organist begins to play. After a sermon I am too preoccupied to focus on, we head to Souplantation for lunch. My friend thinks I’m quirky, but then so do most people who meet me. He watches as I pile salad on my plate and shun the commercial dressings lined up on the counter like a toxic rainbow. He calls my natural hairstyle “Afrocentric” and worries that OHI is a cult. I try to explain to him that I won’t be brainwashed, that I’m simply going away for my own healing. It’s either the Optimum Health Institute or the convent. Or the psych ward. A black woman’s blues unconnected to men or money befuddles him. But he says he’ll pray for me.

E. and I embrace one last time and then head down our own separate stretches of highway. Loneliness rings my throat, leaks from my lashes. My life seems to be a series of solo voyages. Nearly twelve years ago, I hopped a Greyhound Bus from Norristown, Pennsylvania for the sunnier climes of San Diego. What was supposed to be a two-month visit with friends turned into an 18-month odyssey. I slept on the floors, couches and futons of other people, and worked humiliating, low-paying telemarketing gigs, as I tried to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Then a decade ago, I departed San Diego for the siren’s song of Los Angeles. There was no fanfare, no broken glass and confetti littered bon voyage when I left. I had no family or friends in the City of Angels, but I believed my destiny awaited me as a screenwriter. I never imagined that I’d return to this pretty coastal town on the lip of Tijuana broken down, lost and in the throes of despair. I try to convince myself that every place I’ve been to in my life — real or figurative, every triumph and every heartache — has only served to make me stronger. Riding the wave of this thought, I pull up to the gates of the Optimum Health Institute.

I envisioned OHI as some Amish-type settlement tucked in the armpit of civilization, nestled among oak trees and fields of clover. I was wrong. The campus is located in the middle of a quiet residential street, just down the road from Target, Bank of America and an Arco gas station. As the automatic gate closes behind my car, I realize that I will be spending the next seven days of my life away from all that is familiar: No friends, no family, no laptop, no cyberspace, no blogs, no news, no Internet porn, no masturbating myself into a coma. But I need this solitude to sort out my thoughts and emotions, and to empower myself.

At 2:00 p.m. when I walk up to the front office to register, I notice that there aren’t many people fanning themselves in patio chairs or traipsing across the manicured lawns. I’m grateful for the anonymity. My eyes are still red-rimmed from crying, and I don’t want to stand out like a scared kid on the first day of school. I grab my room key and retreat to #72, which I have all to myself. I initially booked a double-occupancy room because it was cheaper, but I quickly changed my reservation when I learned that we have to self-administer enemas every day as part of our detox.

As I cross the campus, I see twin hummingbirds flitting between the regal arms of a bird of paradise flower. Butterflies float daintily by. It’s as if the Almighty has made this 129-mile trip down the highway with me. Once inside my room, I unpack within fifteen minutes instead of leaving my clothes in my luggage for days, as I normally do. But I feel as though I’m on the cusp of a major life change, a re-birthing process. I want to make a fresh start. The day before, I threw away most of my chemical-laden cosmetics (couldn’t part ways with the M.A.C. makeup just yet), and for the first time in my life purchased all-natural deodorant, soap and toothpaste. I’m pleased to learn that OHI features organic flax seed soap in the bathroom, and all the water on the campus is filtered and reverse-osmosis — even in the shower.

A few hours later, the “First Weekers,” as we are called, line up on the front lawn for a tour of the compound. I have traded in my Sunday best for a pair of jeans and a cotton top. Wearing no makeup or jewelry, I feel so plain, the antithesis of Venus. I’m struggling to embrace my natural beauty. Most of the guests are middle-aged and white, but I see a smattering of brown faces in the crowd of about 30. Our guide is munching on purslane, an edible weed that he plucked from the OHI grounds. He offers this bitter bounty to us. As I accept a leaf from his fingers, I know there is no turning back now. I want to wring as many new experiences from my stay as possible. Never before would I have accepted a strange plant from a strange man not knowing if he had washed his hands. But now? I’m ready for anything. This is boot camp for the beleaguered, life in the raw.

Our group marches down a meandering lane, past a little chapel complete with stained glass windows, past a gurgling outdoor water fountain. We come to a stop in a courtyard beneath a carob tree, and our guide gives us a glimpse into his history. He is a missionary, someone who has completed a three-week stay at OHI, and who lives and volunteers at the retreat for at least three months. I wonder how it would feel to be a missionary. For the past few months, I have flirted with the idea of becoming a nun, of leaving starlets, silicone and the industry behind. I just want to live in a small safe place where I can sleep, write and read all day. But even as I yearn for solitude, I crave the company of others.

In the lessening light, the Second and Third Weekers join us on the lawn. Now even more people of color gather, and I’m grateful for the community and kinship. We form a prayer circle to bless our dinner and to meditate on the word of the day: acceptance. I clasp the hands nearest me. This is an alien sensation, because hailing from an undemonstrative clan, I’m not used to hugging or touching other folks. But for the next seven days, these strangers will be my family.

Finally, it’s dinner time, and I try not to sprint to the multipurpose room. I haven’t eaten since the Souplantation at noon. I’m looking forward to having all of my meals prepared each day, knowing that everything is 100 percent raw. Tonight’s menu consists of sauerkraut, seed cheese, sprouts and a dehydrated cracker. I see several guests glancing curiously at the evening’s fare as if they have mistakenly picked up a plate of earthworms. There is an array of homemade seasonings on the table, and people are drowning their dinner in dulse flakes, kelp, garlic and gomashio. I feel like a raw rock star since I’ve been eating living foods for three months, and I’m ready to dig in.

I shake seasonings on my meal and then look around for a place to sit. The coming week will be a whirlwind of information and activities. In preparation for that, OHI has provided all participants with a planner so we can keep track of our water, wheatgrass and rejuvelac intake, note our daily exercise and classes, journal our thoughts and make entries in our gratitude diaries. I feel like a scientist performing an important experiment, concocting a formula of hope and self-recovery.

As I carry my plate and planner out of the dining area, I hear a familiar voice calling my name …

From my journal, July 13: I accept myself, no matter what my hair, or skin, or thighs or butt look like. I am a divine being, a child of God. I am worthy and valuable. I. ACCEPT. MYSELF. I am giving my body a chance to heal, and my emotions are healing as well. I trust God. I trust the process. All is well in my world.

Raw Rehab (or Sisters of the [Dehydrated] Yam

Lord, I've known sleeping women.
Women who've slept for lives at a time
On sunny afternoons, and purple evenings.
Women who sleep sound, and live silently.
Some dreams never to be heard of again …
They've taught myself how to sleep
Having swallowed the moon.
Sleep 'till mid afternoon.
And yearn for the silence of night
To sleep sound once again.
–Saul Williams

I’m not Catholic, but last month found me Googling “convents Los Angeles.”

Even though rocking a nun’s habit and sleeping in a monastic cell isn’t especially appealing to me, I wanted to escape, to “get away from it all.”

More than simply retreating from my reality, I wanted to shut my brain down. The thought of doing the simplest tasks, like vacuuming my apartment or preparing dinner, brought me to tears. I hid my loneliness in Internet porn and white wine. It’s tragically funny, but in the midst of my despondency, I still tried to adhere to raw food tenets and only consume alcoholic beverages that weren’t processed. And yet, I still got drunk, and I still drove home from the restaurant or the club buzzed, almost as if I had a death wish.

Depression is something that I’ve struggled with chronically since I was 14, but I was never officially diagnosed until about seven years ago. At that time, I was also suffering from anxiety attacks, driving myself to the hospital, and camping out in the E.R. parking lot because I didn’t have health insurance. The panic attacks manifested as heart palpitations or chest pain, and I was convinced that I was having a heart attack — once a week. I needed to be close to a hospital so that a doctor could revive me in time.

In my battle with the blues, there isn’t one triggering incident that sets me off — like the death of a loved one or loss of a job. It’s more like a free-floating angst that I can’t pinpoint. Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness converge in my consciousness. And so I sleep. Or sometimes, I don’t sleep. I just get in bed, pull the covers over my head and cry.

In talking to my sisterfriends, I realize that I’m not alone. Many of my girlfriends suffer from depression in some form. Their blues may manifest as withdrawal, crying jags, and not having the strength or the desire to clean their homes. This cry for help goes largely ignored by well-meaning friends because black women are supposed to be strong enough to deal.

I’m not a martyr to my mental health issues. I have taken Effexor and Xanax in the past to manage my depression and anxiety. At first, I refused to take pharmaceuticals, so I sought out herbal alternatives like Valerian. But the same day I started that bitter supplement, I careened into the parking lots of three different emergency rooms on a sixty-four mile drive from Los Angeles to Riverside to visit a friend. After that day, I got my prescription filled. I hated to be lumped in with neurotic white chicks who popped Prozac and Zoloft like Skittles. But I knew every hospital within a 25-mile radius of my home, and I couldn’t keep rotating Emergency Room parking lots every time my left arm started hurting or my heart pounded a staccato beat in my chest.

The thing that saddens — and frustrates — me is that I can’t get this manic monkey off my back. Depression isn’t a bizarre memento that you can keep safely packed away in a keepsake chest. Sometimes I can go months feeling that I’m loved, my future is on track, and all is well in my world. Other times, I feel lost.

I’m a spiritual person, but in the midst of this sporadic sorrow, I feel as if God has never known my name. Maybe that’s why I was online checking for convents. In my mind, becoming a nun would fulfill my desire for anonymity, communnion with the Almighty and solitude. I imagined myself, hair hidden beneath a black-and-white habit, as I traversed some lonely hillside near the abbey, humming “My Favorite Things.”

Fortunately, I discovered a pit stop on my way to the nunnery. Back in February, a raw foodist friend hipped me to the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego. She stayed there for three weeks when she was diagnosed with cancer, and believes the raw food meals that OHI serves, coupled with the program’s focus on prayer and meditation, vastly improved her condition. I had researched OHI at the time, but didn’t think I could afford the tuition, and I knew I couldn’t take three weeks off from my job. But I needed to go somewhere … before I went crazy. Last week, I inquired into OHI’s program, and discovered that the minimum stay is one week. During that time, I could detox — mentally, spiritually and physically — on organic non-cooked food, wheat grass shots, colonics, massage, yoga and exercise. It’s like an ashram meets the spa!

I don’t write about my neuroses from the perspective of a victim, but as a woman who is engaged in an ongoing process of self-empowerment. Black women aren’t supposed to be depressed in the first place, let alone discuss their interior pain. But as bell hooks writes in Sisters of the Yam: “It is important that black people talk to one another, that we talk with friends and allies, for the telling of our stories enables us to name our pain, our suffering and to seek healing.”

As I type this, my suitcase is lying on my bed, loaded down with self-help books, positive affirmation cards, poetry books and my Saul Williams She CD. I can’t wait to embark on my healing journey in the a.m. If I had the money, I would start a non-profit like OHI for women of color. A chill place the homies can go to worship, be served uncooked vegan meals, be pampered, to commune with each other and to name our pain. Raw rehab. Now that’s a sister act.

Raw Divatude: Reclaiming My Inner Vegan Vixen

Most black women own a pair of jeans that they love, that flatter their curves, that display the derrière in high definition. Sadly, I’m curves-free, and I suffer from booty envy. But once upon a time, during my sojourn in the City of Angels, I did have denim that I adored. They made me feel sexy. Not Kim-Kardashian-showing-off-the-backshot-every-time-there-is-a-paparazzo-in-breathing-distance sexy, but confident. More than just a functional relationship, the jeans symbolized my victory in the battle of the bulge, a formerly overweight chick at ease in her own skin.

My denim was far from designer, but a cast-off Mudd brand that I had inherited from a good friend. They were a tight size 7, not camel-toe inducing, but comfortably cradling my tush, my hips and my legs. I never washed my jeans; I had them dry cleaned to preserve their true blue swagger, and I wore them like a uniform to the club, the industry parties and once, even up in the sanctuary.

But that fateful day arrived when I was no longer able to zip my jeans. No amount of struggling, lying on the bed, or sucking in my gut would force those defiant metal teeth to close. Even though junk food had been my constant companion, and I had gained about twenty pounds at the time, I felt sure that my true blue wouldn’t betray me.

I had struggled with my weight before, but a strict vegan diet helped me to lose fifty pounds, and I plummeted from 175 to 125 in 2000. I was able to hold obesity at bay until about 2005. A steady diet of emotional eating, lack of exercise and sporadic depression helped to pack the pounds back on. Even as my midsection expanded, I desperately clung to the belief that I was still a fly girl goddess flaunting my loveliness in size sevens. But I had to face the fabric. When I tried to squeeze into my jeans, they would rise no higher than my thighs. I was crushed. The love affair had ended. With much sadness, I bid those denims adieu, packing them away in the furthest recesses of my closet, a purgatory for pants that had not yet passed over to the other side.

I laid my jeans and my confidence to rest two years ago. In no time at all, I went from hottie to haus frau, hiding my girth in flowy skirts, oversized shirts and muu-muus. Belts were out, as was lycra. I wore nothing that called attention to my gut or my ponderous thighs. From time to time, I would venture to the nether regions of my closet, pushing past hanger after hanger of elastic-waisted pants, and hideous size 14 skirts, just to touch the fabric that once lovingly enshrouded my sexiness.

I was morose for a while, refusing to linger in full-length mirrors or department store fitting rooms. Not only did I miss my jeans, but I missed my self-esteem. A black woman without self-worth in Los Angeles — where fashion billboards glare down at her, daring her to aspire to Melrose’s size 2 standards of beauty, and every other ad is touting tummy tucks and liposuction — is lost indeed.

I found my mojo in living foods. On April 16, I embarked on a journey into the world of unprocessed, raw foods, and I haven’t looked back. No more lonely nights on the couch with a bag of Uncle Eddie’s vegan cookies and a book, or a bag of Barbara’s All Natural Potato Chips and a Slurpee. If it doesn’t grow, I don’t eat it. It’s that simple. I find my strength in sprouts and smoothies.

A little over a month after eating raw foods only, I lost 16 pounds. Although the mirrors of Nordstrom and Arden B. still intimidated me, I was slowly regaining my confidence. Not only did my new lifestyle provide me with tons of energy and mental clarity, I was also able to reclaim my inner vixen.

A few weeks ago, while getting dressed for work, I decided to try on some outfits that I hadn’t worn in awhile. While riffling through my wardrobe, my hand fell on the hanger that houses my beloved jeans. Even though I hadn’t been weighing myself regularly, I was certain they would fit. It was time for my old friend to cross over from pants purgatory to the heaven that is my heinie.

Cautiously, I wiggled into them. With some struggle, they rose over my thighs, but what if the defiant metal teeth still refused to close? As I zipped and buttoned my jeans, I felt like doing cartwheels in my bedroom. My sexiness had been resurrected. To be sure, my muffin top was still in effect, albeit not as bloated as before. My inner thighs still kissed. Not a long, passionate smooch, mind you, but a friendly peck. Self-love indeed.

Earlier this week, while at the nude Olympic Spa in Koreatown, I decided to weigh myself. What better time to hop on the scale than when you’re in the buff? To my surprise, I was 148 pounds. I’ve lost 27 pounds since April 16. Although I’m ecstatic to be within 10.5 pounds of my goal weight of 137.5, what brings me greater joy is feeling blissful in my own skin.

No matter how much weight I lose, I’ll never be bootylicious, nor do I aspire to be. But there’s nothing wrong with flaunting a little raw divatude in my denim.

Karrine Steffans:
An I-Con of Urban Literature

“People just thought I was, like, a hooker … they didn’t know I was, like, an intellectual with a book.”
– Karrine Steffans

I was apprehensive about purchasing The Vixen Diaries, the second installment in Karrine Steffans’ sex-soaked memoirs. Yet, I couldn’t honestly analyze a book that I hadn't read. So last weekend found me sitting in Borders — less than two miles from the former video girl’s million dollar Sherman Oaks home — sipping an inferior soy chai latte as I pored over her latest tome.

Why was I so uneasy about this author, a woman whose first book, Confessions of a Video Vixen, spent nearly a year atop the New York Times best-sellers list? Partly because I take issue with Karrine’s fly girl brand of feminism. In Confessions, she dished the dirt about her sexcapades with A-listers (among them Diddy, Shaq and Jay-Z), and then framed her book as a cautionary tale for vulnerable young women trying to come up in the cutthroat entertainment industry. Despite an absent father, an abusive baby daddy, and countless lovers who bedded her then bounced, she was able to throw off the shackles of patriarchy to become a rich and successful businesswoman in Hollywood.

Yet, for all of her pseudo-empowering pontificating, Karrine comes off as a coon, a hypersexualized Stepin Fetchit in a risqué minstrel show. During her recent publicity blitz for The Vixen Diaries, I caught several of her interviews, and they didn’t make me want to throw a fist in the air for women’s solidarity. On the “Wendy Williams Experience,” Karrinne just sat and laughed as the titular talk show host administered countless verbal smackdowns.

“You are amazingly clean-looking to be such a dirty hooker,” Wendy deadpanned. “Compared to your ‘whory’ acts … for somebody who doesn’t know you, they would think you were virginal.”

Likewise, on Jamie Foxx’s radio show, Karrine's message of self-actualization for black women was eclipsed by cries of “skank” and “ho,” and questions about the penis size of her lovers. In both interviews, Karrine tried valiantly to maintain her elitist demeanor while simultaneously packing switchblades in her responses. “I’m a highly educated woman who just knows how to tap into my nigger side,” she boasted.

The same could be said about her writing style, which is ghetto grandiose. And yet, I found The Vixen Diaries decidedly lacking in passion. In a word, boring. In this soulless stream of consciousness, the artist formerly known as Superhead brags about being a New York Times best-selling author, her appearance on Oprah, her magazine covers, her Sherman Oaks house, her Benzes, her posh red-carpet lifestyle … then throws in a gratuitous romp with an anonymous Hollywood icon, or half-heartedly mentions her lunch dates with B-list celebrities. The tone of The Vixen Diaries is condescending and detached — she could just as easily be signaling for valet at The Ivy. She tries to pass off the lack of spicy sex scenes in this book as emotional maturity and spiritual growth, when in fact, she exhausted the more salacious details of her life in Confessions.

Karrine wants the reader to believe that her journey is both tragic and triumphant, that she is a talented young woman who felt marginalized in a male-dominated industry, but was still able to survive. For her, sex is an equalizer. As a black woman who has struggled to “make it” in Hollywood as a writer, who has felt both invisible and objectified, I wanted to sympathize with Karrine’s plight. Yet her story is lacking in literary integrity, and reads more like self-parody.

“I know the game and what it takes to be respected,” she writes. “I know how to use my intellect and not my body. These days, I walk into a room as Karrine Steffans, mother, New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur and woman to be reckoned with.”

Although Karrine attempts to shed her Superhead trademark, she is indelibly stamped as a tramp. People pick up her books for mental masturbation, not for intellectual stimulation. She doesn’t realize that folks are far more interested in her sexual roster than in her transformation, hence readers who have trashed The Vixen Diaries for having less libidinous bling than its predecessor. If recent reviews are any indication, the star of this seductive scribe is on the wane.

It’s interesting that Karrine is both reviled and relevant because of her sexploits. She tapped into the zeitgeist, a post-modern hip-hop culture that glamorizes “money, clothes and hoes," and idolizes those smart enough to get rich or die trying. When I attended last summer’s Harlem book festival, I was amazed (and saddened) by the glut of “nigglature” on display. Folks flocked to the tables of authors who exploited every aspect of urban life — pimps, drug dealers, baby mamas and the ubiquitous Prada-rocking club chick on a mission to get paid. I’m not knocking anyone’s hustle. Everyone has a story to tell, and African-Americans are underrepresented in the Western literary canon. But when folks are more familiar with Superhead than with Sula, Houston, we have a problem.

Even Karrine seems to understand that she is a product (and beneficiary) of the very culture she condemns. “The irony is, I have become an icon by sleeping with many of them,” she writes. “Something about that gives me an uncomfortable feeling and not because of my sexual roster but because of the weight that society places on the celebrities on it. For this I am iconic? Jeez.”

Despite seeming disenchantment with her “i-con” status, Karrine continues to capitalize on the Superhead brand. A third book is on the horizon, allegedly a titillating but fictionalized account of her life. Although she fancies herself a rebel and a street heroine who continues to hustle the system, Karrine is simply a narcissistic opportunist whose confessions are better left unsaid.

More Than a Photo-Op?
When Pretty Women Go Missing

When surfing for news about black folks, I usually log on to the “ghetto grapevine” before I visit CNN or the New York Times. The black underground was where I first learned about Megan Williams’ rape and torture in West Virginia and the Jena 6. These outlets may not always be objective in their reporting, but when it comes to covering issues affecting the black community, they make the mainstream media look like they’re running on CP time.

While browsing the message boards of one popular black Web site, I came across the name Nailah Franklin. The 28-year-old sales rep from Chicago had been missing for a week at the time and was presumed dead. Cyber prayer circles were forming. Condolences were being offered in advance. Calamity united total strangers.

Then the blow came: Nailah’s badly decomposed body was discovered behind a vacant store. It was so unrecognizable, she had to be identified through dental records. Shock quickly turned to sadness as mourners remarked on how unfair it was for someone so pretty to meet with such a tragic end.

Pretty. Beautiful. Wholesome. These are just a few adjectives used to describe the young woman. I confess, when I first glimpsed Nailah’s picture, I couldn't stop staring at it. In every pose, she looks sun-kissed. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but I wonder if Nailah’s case would have garnered national attention if she weren’t so photogenic.

A recent Sun Times commentary said Nailah’s “all-American girl face” humanized her disappearance. That leads my inner cynic to inquire: If Nailah resembled Serena Williams – a woman whose features are not considered as American as apple pie – would her story still be endearing? Are we more sympathetic when disaster strikes pretty people?

Our culture places such a high premium on beauty that missing black women who don’t typify the all-American ideal fail to earn equal face time on the nightly news. "Unless it's a pretty girl ages 20 to 35, the media exposure is just not there," says Kelly Bennett, a case manager for the National Center for Missing Adults.

A story that has not received a significant amount of coverage is the disappearance of 22-year-old Stepha Henry. An honors graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Stepha vanished on May 29, 2007 while vacationing in Florida. Although she received a paragraph or two in a few media outlets, her story was largely ignored.

Many blacks decried the lack of coverage for Stepha’s case, and considered her a casualty of Missing White Woman Syndrome. This mocking phrase describes relentless media pursuit of photogenic "damsels in distress," among them Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson and Jessie Marie Davis.

I don't mean to trivialize the tragedy that befell Nailah Franklin. She was a vibrant young woman who was well-loved by family and friends, and she didn't deserve to die. Yet, I hope she is not reduced to a photo-op used to sell newspapers and ad space. Women of color who go missing are underreported in the media, so I’m thankful when these stories get any mention. I hope her case shines a spotlight on other sisters who vanish from parking lots and restaurants and sidewalks across America — regardless of age, economic background or good looks.

I know it’s impossible for the mainstream media to report on every woman who fails to make it home, but I hope future cases aren’t assigned relevance based on beauty.

Why I Write

My mother often reminds me that my dysfunction didn’t commence when I moved to the City of Angels, but began at the tender age of six or seven. Around that time, I started writing obituaries: “Kristy was killed by her father today…” “Timmy got ran over by the school bus…”

They were pretty morbid stories, the stuff that fills psychiatric files. But the carnage cluttering my literary landscape wasn’t the work of a burgeoning serial killer. Those dark eulogies were simply the means for a lonely little girl to exorcise childhood's demons.

By age 10, I started journaling. I remember trying to erect a time machine from a toy baby carriage and some miscellaneous items around my grandmother’s house. I wanted to document my journey to the past, my voyage from a life of invisibility. It was at that time that I discovered Stephen King, Dean Koontz and the Twilight series — teen horror paperbacks that my mom dismissed as “occult books.” I wasn’t fascinated by vampires or gruesome murders. What enchanted me was the ability of little girls to set a foe aflame from fifty feet, or telepathic teens who could levitate the school bully to another plain.

I grew up in a small town ten miles northwest of Philadelphia, and was often teased for “talking white.” While my cornrowed neighbors were jumping double Dutch on the sidewalk or hanging out on the stoop listening to Salt n Pepa, I was locked in my room penning the ‘hood version of Carrie. I identified with King’s psychokinetic protagonist because she too knew how it felt to be the odd kid on the block.

I still feel like the odd kid, but now I’m learning to embrace my otherness. I enjoy writing essays and novels that celebrate that curious, disenfranchised and marginalized character — the dysfunctional black diva. Yet, I have trouble negotiating my love for the vapid and materialistic with the need to examine more political and intellectual matters. I felt conflicted for not blogging about the Jena 6 case, Bill O'Reilly’s off-color comments about black folks, or Megan Williams’ rape and torture by six white people in West Virginia. I’m sometimes plagued by the notion that I’m not intelligent or informed enough to critique relevant social issues. It’s not that I’m oblivious to racism, sexism, classism and other interlocking systems of oppression. It’s just that I’m more at home with essays that begin: “A funny thing happened on the way to my colonics appointment …”

When I write about the comedic but mundane, I worry that I won’t be considered a conscious writer. I appreciate the politics of Fanon, Cornel West, bell hooks, The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron — in fact, I interviewed Scott-Heron when I lived in Baltimore after his set at the Arena Players. But I also spend hours reading Stephen King or perusing perezhilton.com. I’m an information junkie. I read feminist blogs, Latino blogs, gay blogs, conservative and left-wing blogs, black militant to evangelical Christian sites, Bossip to Slate, Crunk & Disorderly to Salon … and they all inform my writing.

Sometimes, I return home from a full-time job and sit at my laptop until four or five in the a.m. Writing is lonely work, but it’s also redemptive. I want to explore the struggles of women who not only battle bigoted bosses, but who also have hair care woes. Like bell hooks says, “There is a world of thoughts and ideas women have yet to write about in nonfiction — whole worlds of writing we need to enter and call home. No woman is writing too much. Women need to write more. We need to know what it feels like to be submerged in language, carried about by the passion of writing words.”

As trite as it sounds, writing is my passion. Little did I know that as I was killing off the neighborhood bullies in those childhood obituaries, I was also writing myself into existence. There is healing in humor, and I’ve found a safe place to be zany, reflective and vulnerable — all at the same time.

Branding Colorblind Love:
New Frontiers in Interracial Dating?

"I Heart White Men."

You probably won't see that T-shirt hanging from a kiosk in the Crenshaw District or on 125th Street in Harlem, but merchandise marketing black women’s interracial relationships may be coming to a cyber store near you.

Earlier this year, I joked about creating a line of “Looking for Mr. White” tees for black women. My idea was a tongue-in-cheek response to the proliferation of black male/white female couplings, and also a nod to what I called the “Something New Movement” — an increased number of sisters choosing to date outside the race.

The blog Black Female Interracial Marriage appears to be on the verge of a similar movement – branding colorblind love. Created by Evia, a black woman married to a white man, the site recently posted information on this campaign: “Sistas, what words would scream IR interest yet be subtle enough for you as a bw to wear or have on your totebag?” Evia asks. “I will be selling gear (tote bags, caps, shirts, etc.) here that will signal to others in a subtle way that you are receptive to the possibility of an IR relationship of varied types.”

I must confess, reading Evia’s blog has become a guilty pleasure for me. The sidebar of her site features photos of famous and not-so-famous sisters happily embracing their white partners. Evia often pontificates on the beauty and desirability of black women, and encourages her readers not to limit their dating options to black men. She comes across as the Harriet Tubman of outmarriage, leading her charges to the Promised Land of Interracial Love.

In this world, black chicks rule. Her site celebrates black women – in all their hues – and provides balance to IR mainstays Heidi and Seal, Tiger and Elin that saturate the pages of US Weekly and People. Her space offers kinship and community to interracially involved black women who feel ostracized by society, or who simply want to see a loving representation of their relationships.

I get Evia’s message. I really do. But I’m uncomfortable with the idea of preference as product. Do sisters really need a discreet logo or badge to signify that they’re open-minded about relationships? And why does the insignia have to be “subtle”? Is there an unspoken fear that black women will catch a beat-down from black men for flaunting their interracial desires on designer totes, mugs and key chains? If this trend takes off, what’s next? A secret society complete with handshakes and passwords?

Just as I have issues with brothers who exclusively date non-black women, I am also suspicious of sisters who omit the color black from their kaleidoscopic courtships. People should be free to love whomever they please. But is interracial love still colorblind when you actively seek out mates based on skin tone? I would have a problem if Hakeem passed me on the sidewalk wearing an “I Heart Becky” hat. Although Evia often says black women should be open to potential suitors in a variety of races, not too long ago, she featured an “I Love Vanilla” button campaign on her site.

Here’s a suggestion: For those sisters who want to alert others that they’re open to dating out, why not purchase an orange awareness ribbon? The ribbon not only promotes cultural diversity, but also symbolizes solidarity with those fighting world hunger, lupus and Multiple Sclerosis. You can be an activist and get your interracial flirt on at the same time. Doesn’t that sound better than endorsing walking product placement?

My Dirty Little Secret

“What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.”
- Susan Sontag

I watched my first adult film at age 13.

Spending the night at my older cousin’s house promised to be an evening filled with girl talk, Jiffy Pop and Sixteen Candles in the VCR. But what transpired over the course of six hours was more hardcore than any Molly Ringwald movie.

My uncle and his girlfriend at the time were headed out on a date. To my shock, he dropped a dime bag of weed into my 15-year-old cousin’s lap, and admonished me not to tell anyone. Then, grabbing his jacket, he closed the door behind him and locked us in.

Claustrophobia was a hazy noose tightening around my neck. I was sandwiched between my cousin and her 15-year-old girlfriend on a love seat as they passed a joint back and forth, inches from my startled face. Instead of Sixteen Candles, we watched The Exorcist. I grew fearful that we weren’t alone in the apartment, a paranoia spurred by the contact high I was getting.

After a few hours of horror movies, my cousin decided to lighten the mood. Rifling through videotapes, she inserted one of my uncle’s pornos in the VCR. I felt like the heroine in a Donald Goines novel, trying valiantly to resist the pimp’s attempts to turn her out. But it was a battle I was slowly losing. The video was laughable, featuring ugly white guys with thick moustaches and corny names like “Dick Goezinya.” Yet, I was impressed by the skills of one fat, curly-haired man who could lean over and perform fellatio on himself. Ron Jeremy, as I later learned, was an unlikely icon in the porn industry.

More shocking than the sex acts appearing inches from our faces was my cousin and her friend’s reaction to the flick. They seemed stoic and bored, like restless kids trying to stay awake in church. But I became aroused by the moans and gyrations on the TV screen, even replaying the tape after the two girls had passed out on the couch in a bud-induced stupor.

Over the years, my flirtation with pornography became a full-fledged love affair. The video I watched that night at my cousin’s apartment awakened some dormant sexual desire in me. At 14, I would raid my older brother’s hidden stash of dirty magazines, and sneak them to my room to masturbate. When I went to the bookstore, I would buy soft core “Victorian romances” to supplement my diet of Sweet Valley High and Judy Blume novels. My favorite offering from Blume, the beloved teen author? Wifey. I had to hide my dog-eared copy in the back of my closet.

As a freshman at Hampton, I had a small library of X-rated titles “borrowed” from friends that I conveniently forgot to return. But I was growing bored with my hobby. Because I considered myself a critical thinker, porn was viewed as anti-intellectual and anti-woman. I didn't want to see myself as a hypersexualized underclassman who couldn't stop masturbating. I didn’t watch another X-rated movie until junior year. I got drunk with some homies and we picked up a Heather Hunter flick at the video store as a joke. I remember dozing off during her sexcapades, believing that my addiction had indeed fizzled out. For a few years, I developed an aversion to the Caught from Behind and Debbie Does Deliverance films of the world. Around that time, I started attending church, developing new friendships, and disdaining my dance with debauchery. Whatever comfort porn offered shriveled up like a raisin in the sun.

But even dried fruit can be reconstituted.

Earlier this year when Ray-J’s sex tape was leaked, curiosity got the best of me, and I went online to find a copy. In my quest to view the R&B singer’s home video with Kim Kardashian, I discovered several Web sites that boasted free porn. Religious beliefs aside, another reason I stopped watching flicks was the embarrassment of coming out of an X-rated store and being spotted with a tell-tale paper bag in hand. But my laptop became a portable sex shop, and I could browse all the three-minute videos I wanted.

At first, I convinced myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. After all, I had been celibate for six years, and at least I wasn’t sleeping around. But I was spending an inordinate amount of time on the computer – sometimes three to four hours a night – surfing sex sites. I knew I had a problem when I started watching online videos at 10 o'clock one evening, and didn’t shut down my computer until 6 in the a.m. After a while, I viewed the choreographed sex acts with the same stoic expression my cousin and her friend wore that fateful night so many years ago. But I couldn’t look away. Disaffection became a disease, and even when it was apparent that some of the women were being roughed up during intercourse, and several of the teens looked suspiciously underage, I didn’t avert my gaze. “MILF,” “facialized” and “cumshot” were unwanted entries in my mental dictionary. I started to feel corrupt, like a pedophile in a raincoat and shades, handing out hard candy to children in the park. But that didn’t stop me from logging onto my laptop every night.

A part of my spirit dies every time I stare through the window of my monitor into someone else's bedroom. I used to cry out of guilt when I did it, but I don't anymore. I know that, at 13, I was an unwilling participant in a perverse rite of passage, yet emotional tribal scars run deep. Maybe it's sexual repression, loneliness, excitement or an addictive personality that makes me turn to pornography. Sometimes, I fancy myself as Sula, the detached anti-hero who mourns, yet wholeheartedly embraces, her own fragmentation.

I mentioned this addiction to a girlfriend, and she warned me about the dangers of forming soul ties with my cyber partners. Her words hit home recently. I turned off the lights and got into bed after hours of net porn, and for several minutes, naked couples copulated against the darkened screen of my closed eyelids.

Here's where I'm supposed to insert: "But my relationship with Christ delivered me from this sinful compulsion." Sadly, I'm still looking for redemption. Sunday mornings have found me strolling the seedier online communities until it's time to get dressed for church. I know that I have many spiritual (and sisterly) bedfellows. According to 2006 statistics from Family Safe Media, 9.4 million women access adult Web sites every month, and 47 percent of Christians say pornography is a major problem in their households. That’s a whole lot of bawdy bandwidth being broadcast into the home.

I’m not proud of my dirty little secret, but I'm working hard to remove this cloak of shame. Instead of three to four hours a night of illicit net flicks, I’m down to 30 minutes every other day. Last night, right before I clicked on a porn portal, my finger hovered above the mouse, unsure. After moments of indecision, I went to my Favorites, and selected an Internet sermon on forgiveness. For me, this is deliverance … and not the kind that Debbie does.

Redefining the Rainbow:
How it Feels to be Colored Me

“But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about it … No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
– Zora Neale Hurston
“How it Feels to be Colored Me”


I love being a woman of color.

That might not be such a P.C. thing to proclaim in today’s color-blind utopia, race-is-a-social-construct society, but I love blackness in all its permutations.

There, I said it.

Recently, a very dear friend observed that I am hyperaware of pigmentation, particularly the dark variety. In other words, I'm color-obsessed. Guilty as charged. What can I say? I’m a writer dedicated to exploring the richness and complexity of African-American culture, particularly as it impacts black women. I notice race. I argue about race. I'm a racy chick.

The first op-ed piece that I published in the Baltimore Sun at age 22 was titled "The Multicultural Whirl of Racial Identity." This is the first line from that article: "The other night, an MCI operator called from New Mexico. In the course of haranguing me about the value of switching long-distance calling plans, the topic turned to race, as it frequently does in my conversations ..."

As a black woman living in the multicultural mosaic that is Los Angeles, sometimes my otherness stands out like a knock-off purse in the Prada store. But to crib from Zora Neale Hurston, I am not "tragically colored." I love being a card-carrying member of the sistagirl club, an identity that I am reluctant to exchange for simply being "human” or "American.”

But I didn’t always have a love affair with my melanin. Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood in southeastern Pennsylvania, I wanted to swap skins with my playmates Christie and Joey. I thought I was white, or at least Asian. A grade school teacher assumed I was part Chinese and I promptly went home and asked my mother. I felt proud that someone else knew I wasn’t an ordinary black girl with thick lips and woolly pigtails.

The quasi-exotic illusion that I operated under was shattered at 10 when my family moved to a predominantly black part of town. I tried to fit in, but I found no kinship in my new community. I didn’t have any ethnic signifiers. I couldn’t dance, jump double dutch or speak slang as a second language. The kids I rode the bus with were always loud and menacing, bullying me for speaking “like a white girl." Blackness was as ugly and second-rate as my hand-me-down clothes.

I wouldn’t morph into a baby nationalist until my freshman year at a historically black college. But well before I started rocking “It’s a Black Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand!” T-shirts at Hampton University, a Jewish English teacher tossed me a lifeline. She perceived that I was struggling with identity issues, and recommended that I pick up some books by Zora Neale Hurston. As I read Their Eyes Were Watching God, I heard the dialect of my grandfather, my great-grandmother. Initially, I thought Zora’s works were a caricature of the black idiom, but later realized that she saw a lyrical beauty in the black vernacular, in black culture. She was unabashedly colored.

Zora’s contemporaries didn't view her so highly. Richard Wright of Native Son fame, wrote a scathing critique of Their Eyes, saying, "Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theater, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the 'white folks' laugh."

Black feminist writers, among them Alice Walker – who resurrected Zora’s works from obscurity – regarded her as a foremother. Walker believed that Zora’s male critics viewed a black woman’s self-determination in the 1930s as insignificant and unworthy of a platform. Yet, Walker saw a sense of “racial health” in Zora’s writing. She once wrote of Their Eyes, "There is enough self-love in that one book — love of community, culture, traditions — to restore a world."

Growing up in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black town in America, Zora was surrounded by folks who celebrated blackness. Proud and self-governed (Zora’s father, John, was once elected mayor), they didn’t think themselves inferior to the white people who occasionally drove through their dusty back roads.

I largely credit Zora (and The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, bell hooks and Malcolm X) with helping to ground me in this identity. My love affair with black culture doesn’t mean that I run around with a fist-shaped Afro pick and green-black-and-red medallion, shouting “Fight the Power” in my best Chuck D. impression. It means that I don’t back down from discussions of race in polite company. It means that I’m not afraid to confront racism for fear of offending (or scaring off) my non-black friends. For the longest time, I only believed I was a worthy writer if a white person said I was good. Not that I don’t respect the opinions of my non-black homies and mentors, but a white stamp of approval held more weight than a black one, or even my own.

As we move toward a more homogeneous society, the concept of race seems romanticized and antiquated. I support multiculturalism – I probably have more non-black friends in L.A. than black friends – and yet I wholeheartedly maintain my own identity. When I wrote my first book, California Schemin’: The Black Woman’s Guide to Surviving in L.A., a well-meaning friend suggested that I omit the word “black” from the title. It was more important to him that my book appeal to a wider fan base (read: white folks) than it was for me to articulate the unique struggle against invisibility and marginality that many black women face in La La Land. A tiny coda occurred a few years later when another friend called to say that a gay white couple was reading my book at the table next to her in California Pizza Kitchen.

Some may think I'm more Elle than Essence, more Valley Girl than around-the-way girl, but I am indelibly marked. Interestingly enough, this sense of racial pride was informed by my mother, a woman wholly liberated from racial labels. There is a bit of Zora in Lola, who doesn’t eschew her blackness, but finds humor in it, an inside joke she shares with her sistafriends. I see this in the way she nicknames them: Big girl. Chicken. Puddin’. Colored girl. Using identifiably ethnic monikers, she doesn’t transcend the culture, but revels in it. I, too, share this naming with my own sistagirls, and it symbolizes our collective journey, ascribes us to a healthy, vibrant, colorful history. We are Sojourner. Harriet Tubman. Miss Celie. Colored girl.

There’s a colored girl in every community, but as Zora would say, we are not weeping at the world. We are redefining the rainbow.

Loving across Color Lines

When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1998, KKBT The Beat was heavily promoting its “No Color Lines” campaign. At the time, I thought the movement's mantra was clichéd and overly simplistic.

That is until I heard Theo, the leader of the revolution.

Theo was a honey-throated DJ who figured prominently in my fantasies — and this was on the strength of his voice alone. Sexy, thuggish and effortlessly popular with the ladies and the homies, he was the golden boy of the city's hip-hop radio station. If the brother was promoting tolerance, I was all over it! So it was a major shock to come face-to-face with him at a club and discover that, for all of his 'hood markers, my future baby daddy was Asian. I quickly recovered from that bombshell, however, and decided that Theo Mizuhara was too alluring to exclude from my daydreams.

Fantasies fade, but even those interracial imaginings of mine wouldn't have been possible without landmark legislation that took place 40 years ago today. In the Loving v. Virginia ruling, the Supreme Court overturned a Virginia statute that prohibited whites from marrying nonwhites. At the heart of the case was a black woman, Mildred Jeter, who smacked down segregated society to marry Richard Loving, a white man.

June 12 marks a day of remembrance, a mixed-race lovefest. Although I appreciate the Lovings' struggle to desegregate relationships four decades ago, I'm still trying to emanicpate my inner interracial-dater hater. I don't suffer from Angry Black Woman Syndrome, yet I still feel a tad apprehensive when I spy mixed-raced couplings, particularly of the black male/white female variety.

Ironically, this nation's path to color-blind love was paved in part by a sister. Yet, according to the 2002 Census, black women are less likely to marry outside their race than black men. In 2002, there were 279,000 white female-black male marriages compared with 116,000 black female-white male marriages. Black men stroll down the aisle with non-black women at a greater rate — nearly 10 percent — than any other racial or gender group except Asian women.

A Korean writer reached out to me recently for my thoughts on interracial relationships. He read my article "Black Men, White Women, Mixed Emotions," and could relate to my ambivalence: a belief that love conquers all, and yet feeling that many, many brothers are jumping ship in search of it. Because I live in Los Angeles, the "Jungle Fever" capitol of the West Coast, one is hard pressed to find Heidi/Hakeem-free zones. I explained to this writer that even in the midst of my dating dilemmas, I didn't want to become that hostile chick who sucks her teeth and gives the side eye to Kobe, Tiger, Seal, Taye and other brothers (and yes, I include Tiger in that category) for loving non-black women. That stems from a belief that my relationship options are limited, that white women have the dating game on lockdown, or that I have a lease on the love life of black men. None of the above are true.

The swirl of racial politics surrounding dating and marriage is often hard to unravel. I joke about black women starting a "Something New" movement, but I realize I'm being reactionary ... and hypocritical. There are several blogs and Web sites that wholeheartedly encourage sisters to expand their dating options, particularly with white men. With statistics showing that 43.4 percent of black women between the ages of 30 to 34 have never experienced matrimonial bliss, "Looking for Mr. White" looks more and more like a viable option.

Misgivings aside, there is a part of me that wants to embrace the "No Color Lines" credo. Even though I haven't realized it fully, I am indebted to the Lovings for their sacrifice, and for reminding us that love is, and should be, colorblind. On this Remembrance Day, I pledge to keep my apprehension in check should I see Bilal cruising down the 101 freeway with Becky. I will not avert my eyes and act like these couples don't exist. Although I probably won't hug them and sell them a "Remembrance Day '07" tee shirt, I am going to remind myself that, ultimately, people have the right to love who they want to love. Theo would be proud of me.

Pole Dancing 101:
Bringing Sexy Back … Front and Center

“Sometimes, when I'm alone, I put on six inch heels and wear nothing else, and dance around in front of the mirror and do my little stripper dance.”
- Tori Spelling

“You gotta keep her off the pole!”
- Chris Rock


Vanilla-scented candles dotted the North Hollywood loft, and Guy’s “Piece of My Love” pulsated from speakers in the dimly lit room …

Sounds like the opening scene from a ghetto erotica novel. Now add to it four stainless steel poles and eight mats strategically placed on the floor and you have X-Polesitions, a pole dancing studio where women can bring sexy back, front and center.

“It’s expressing your sexuality through exercise,” says Leah Daniels-Butler, founder of X-Polesitions. Leah is a woman whom brothers back east would call “thick.” She doesn’t mind pointing out her problem areas, but drapes confidence about her like an old shawl. A former TV and film casting director with 16 years in the business, she opened her doors last October as a means of helping women feel comfortable in their own skin. “Sexiness is an attitude,” she says with a smile.

Last night, I took my first stroll around the pole. The invitation for X-Polesitions’ free intro class had been sitting in my inbox for months, but I never deleted it. To me, pole dancing conjured up clear stilettos, G-strings and crisp dollar bills. It seemed too naughty an activity for an upstanding (read: single and celibate) chick to be indulging in. But my inner siren got the best of me, so I scheduled an appointment.

On my way to the class, I shared the elevator with a 45-year-old white woman who was also attending. “You only live once,” she said, proudly displaying her new boob job. “What do you have to lose?”

Inhibition, for one thing. Seven dimepieces were lounging around the studio, half of them wearing Daisy Dukes and tight halters. I felt decidedly unsexy in my penitentiary gray tee shirt and elastic-waisted jogging pants. But I assured myself that if I felt too uncomfortable (if, say, an orgy erupted), I would discreetly grab my things and hit the door.

The first 30 to 40 minutes of class were spent warming up and doing stretches on the mat, albeit erotic ones. We learned techniques called the “Cat Pounce” and the “Ship’s Bitch.” During one position, Leah instructed us to slowly slide our hands down to our "chocha," a move that felt awkward for me. I couldn’t put my heart into the techniques because I just knew my cellulite was showing through the gauzy sweat pants.

The whole time I was sweeping my chocha across the mat, or bouncing my backside to Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy?” I reflected on the love-hate relationship I have with my body. Since I’ve gained weight, I have to sneak up on my reflection in the mirror, and I try to hide my girth in bulky clothes. Yet even when I was 125 pounds, I never felt truly happy and at peace in my own skin.

Finally, it was time to work the poles. Although the X-Polesitions Web site boasts that its routines will help “build muscle strength and build cardiovascular ability,” we weren't there for the health benefits. Every woman in the room was eager to swing around that stainless steel like a veteran stripper, but we had to earn our stripes. Forming a circle, we were instructed to saunter sensuously across the parquet floor as “Make it Rain (I Make it Rain on Them Hoes)” blared in the background. We giggled. We bumped into each other. We felt clumsy getting our sexy stroll on, little girls trying on Mommy’s heels.

Satisfied with our performance, Leah had us assume the position. I know my limitations. I’ve been called “uncoordinated” since the fifth grade, and was never chosen to turn the rope in Double Dutch because I’m “double-handed.” But I approached the pole like my name was Candy and I was two months behind on the rent. The first five attempts, I could only manage half swings because I forgot to lift my right leg off the floor. But Leah was patient. “You have to trust that the pole is going to hold you,” she said, giving me a maternal nudge.

Finally, I let go. Both feet left the floor and I was hugging the pole like a long-lost lover. At that moment, I wished I still had a weave down my back and a fresh pedicure. I felt – dare I say it? – flirty! I wasn’t going home that night to practice my new tricks on some boy toy, but every woman needs to feel sexy, if only for herself.

After Leah pried us from the poles, we were treated to a collective lap dance by Antoinette, another instructor. Contrary to my initial thoughts, the women weren’t cast-offs from the strip club looking to make an extra buck. Antoinette has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, and she trained with a Cirque du Soleil dancer for a year and a half. We oohed and aahed as she sidled sinuously up the pole, performing backflips and splits like an urban aerialist. We admired her grace … but more importantly, her body was bangin’! We had co-opted her curves and her confidence as our own.

I know I’ll never wear Daisy Dukes or make my booty clap at the club, but as I donned my socks and sneakers after class, I realized that, despite my imperfections, I can find the courage to dance naked in front of my mirror again. I don’t need a pole for validation, but there’s nothing like candles, dim lights and 15 feet of gleaming stainless steel to bring out your inner sexpot.

I signed up for six more classes.

X-Polesitions, 5355 Cartwright Avenue, Suite 203, North Hollywood, CA 91601. For more information, visit the Web site: www.xpolesitions.com

De-Icing the Cryonic Woman:
The Journey from Abuse to Love

cryonics \kri- ä- nīks\ n. plural but usually singular in construction - the practice of freezing a dead diseased human in hopes of bringing her back to life at some future time when a cure for her disease has been developed.

I took a much needed break from composing my wedding vows to write this article.

How does a woman who hasn’t been on a date in two years leap from abstinence to the altar? I’m still working on that transition, hence the vows but no groom in sight. There is nothing wrong with being single, but the desire to be in a relationship, to be in love, has been strong as of late, as persistent as the sun piercing the smoggy Los Angeles skyline.

Why aren’t you dating?

I’ve been fielding that question for years, and lately, have been asking it of myself. Why aren’t I dating? I’m not a lipstick lesbian, and I’m not that picky, in spite of what some friends insist. I don’t buy into the “good man shortage,” and believe that yes, black women can find love in the City of Angels, despite statistics to the contrary. I don’t think I’m unattractive or undateable. The deli technician at Whole Foods calls me gorgeous each morning as he prepares my quarter pound of sesame kale. Every other day, unsolicited e-mails arrive in my inbox from strangers (complete with resumés, head shots and six-packs on display) wanting to do coffee or dinner. Random Negroes and non-Negroes alike stop me in parking lots, at supermarket checkout lines, in the stairwells of office buildings, at traffic lights, on studio lots and in department stores to get my number. There is no scarcity of potential suitors.

So why aren’t I dating?

I don’t believe all men are dogs, deadbeats, thugs, or abusive on some level. And yet, when it comes to intimacy with the opposite sex, I struggle to contain my inner ice queen. She emerges to sabotage relationships, deliberately pushing folks away and testing the limits of their loyalty, or more insidiously through cynical comments and aloof gestures. Although I can be loving and I want to be in love, my reality belies that desire. When I look around, I notice that I don’t have close relationships with my father, brother, uncle or male cousins, and my guy friends are few and far between. It’s as if the queen of ice has frozen me into indifference, and my heart has yet to thaw.

I don’t hate men, but I have been conditioned not to trust them. At 17, I lost my virginity to a man I both detested and feared. Jeff was one of the neighborhood drug dealers, an underling to his cousin, the kingpin. He used to cruise the streets of our small town in his mud-colored Pontiac, a giant beetle in search of other invertebrates. I knew he was trouble the minute he lowered his tinted window, and in another world, I wouldn’t have given him a second glance. Instead, I gave him my phone number.

My descent into apathy didn’t begin at 17 between the fists of a minor hustler. Years before, I had learned to be uncomfortable around men, so I made myself invisible in their presence. At 10, someone I loved, revered and was related to told me I had “a nice ass,” and fondled me between my legs. Fast forward four years, and I’m sitting on the staircase of my rowhouse wearing a Hershey Park tee shirt and jeans. Alone. An older male friend of the family drops by to chat about homework and grades, while glibly extolling the wonders of prostitution, or being a “skeezer” as it was called back then. I had recently developed breasts, and was conscious of how tightly the tee hugged my bosom during his “recruitment” speech. Those experiences, among others, taught me that men were both nice and nefarious, and I had to insulate myself against any emotional intrusion. I learned that I wasn’t worthy of love or respect, so at 17, by the time Jeff spun into my life in a brown haze, I was waiting for him.

I “dated” Jeff for one year, and God only knows what would have happened had I not escaped to college. Only a few friends were aware that I was being abused because I was too ashamed to ask for help. I was too frightened to dump a guy who slapped me publicly, attempted to smother me, yanked my hair, tried to break my arm, and who tortured me in his bedroom for three hours one winter night until I fled down three flights of stairs, out the front door, and down the street with no coat or shoes on.

Jeff never left black-and-blue marks on my skin, but not all scars are on the surface. Many women walk around wounded, like cosmopolitan Hester Prynnes, scarlet letters of Abuse embroidered into their Coach bags, Prada blouses and Victoria’s Secret bras. The summer of my junior year at Hampton, I hung out with three such sisters from my hometown, girls I had not associated with in high school. Our coming together seemed strange since we didn’t have the same interests or friends. I later learned the one thing we all had in common was abuse. We shared tales of mistreatment over dinner at Dennys, or while giggling nervously into drinks at the club. Stephanie’s* man beat her while she was pregnant, and she later lost the baby. China’s boyfriend used to perch on the roof of the building across the street from her rowhouse, like some thugged out, Kangol-wearing Spiderman, and watch her every move. Natalia, as short and cute as she was, used to get slammed against the wall by her lover at house parties. In some warped way, we were relishing our pain. For us, abuse was so normalized that we traded dating horror stories with all the gusto of old vets crowing over their Purple Hearts.

My first boyfriend was the only man who physically abused me, but after I left him, I kept attracting others who were violent on some level – emotionally, verbally, and psychically. I’m not a victim. I’m just trying to deconstruct the attitudes that enslaved me to dysfunctional relationships, and prevented me from believing I was worthy to give or receive love. Despite my past, abuse is not my identity. I have forgiven Jeff. I am told the man who choked me until I nearly passed out is now a police officer in a suburb of our small town. I have forgiven him, which is an ongoing process, and I have extended that same pardon to all the men whose names are tattooed on my inner thighs.

After years of hating men, fearing men, not trusting men, blaming men, it’s as if my heart is slowly defrosting, an ice floe sliced from a larger berg by a shaft of sunlight. I want to be in love! I want to do all the clichéd couple things: taking romantic walks on Venice Beach; chatting on the phone for hours; visiting museums; pretending to be all absorbed as I listen to jazz in Leimert Park and going restaurant hopping, Zagat guide tucked firmly into my purse. I contributed my share of toxins to relationships -- the oppressed rising up to become the oppressor – but I’m working hard not to contaminate future friendships. Despite my wounds (and those I have caused), there is no lack of love in my life, no lack of intimacy. Armed with this knowledge, I have begun reaching out to the men in my circle in an attempt at recovery. Real healing takes place in knowing that I may have nicks and bruises, but I’m not damaged goods, not damaged for good.

So pardon me as I resume my wedding vows. I hope to recite them one day soon … and not just to my own face in the mirror. I can’t divulge all the silliness I’ve penned so far, but this quote from Mari Evans’ poem “Celebration” sums up my covenant: “I will bring you a whole person/and you will bring me a whole person/and we will have us twice as much/of love and everything …”


* names changed to protect privacy

Rasheeda’s Blues: Black Women and Anxiety

have we gone crazy? I can’t hear anythin /but the maddening screams & the soft strains of death/ & you promised me/ you promised me … somebody/anybody/sing a black girl’s song/ bring her out/to know herself/to know you/but sing her rhythms/carin/struggle/hard times/sing her song of life/she’s been dead so long/closed in silence so long/she doesn’t know the sound/of her own voice/her infinite beauty/she’s half-notes scattered/without rhythm/no tune/sing her sighs/sing the song of her possibilities/sing a righteous gospel/let her be born/let her be born…

-Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf


My first anxiety attack struck in April 2001. I was the editor of a radio trade magazine, and was wrapping up a phone interview with Luther Vandross. Any other time, I would have been thrilled to chat with the legendary crooner, who had recently released an album on J Records, but I couldn’t shake the free-floating dread that taunted me during our conversation.

The minute I hung up the phone, pain flooded my chest and my left arm went numb. Believing I was in the throes of a massive coronary, I grabbed my keys, told the startled receptionist that I had a doctor’s appointment, and fled the building. Once I arrived at my doctor’s office, where I did not have an appointment, I informed the nurse that I was having a heart attack. I was promptly given an EKG, which read 151 beats per minute. The average resting heart rate for women is 75 bpm. My doctor went into her bag of tricks to calm the palpitations – massaging my carotid artery and telling me to exhale forcefully with my mouth closed. Nothing worked. My traitorous heart raced on. After 20 minutes, the paramedics were called, and I was given another EKG. When the reading showed my heart rate was still around 150, an EMT said, “Let’s take her for a ride.”

Hearing those fateful words, I knew I was going gently into that good night. My body felt preternaturally cold and my palms were turning blue. As I sucked oxygen on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance, I thought about all the writing projects I’d left undone, how, at 30, I didn’t have a will, my family was 3,000 miles away, and my apartment wasn’t even clean.

At the hospital, I was given a blood test and a third EKG. For two hours, I nervously awaited the results, trying to decide how I would react upon hearing that I had a terminal illness. Finally, the grim-faced ER physician, a dead ringer for Bela Lugosi, appeared at my bedside. He delivered this shocking prognosis: there was nothing medically wrong with me. Further, he seemed miffed that I was even admitted to the emergency room. The doctor handed me a small medicine cup of Valium, along with the admonition to learn how to “calm myself.” I was offended by his insinuation that I had some sort of mental issues. Any fool could see that my heart had been beating twice the normal rate for no apparent reason.

When I visited my doctor the next day and relayed the ER physician’s diagnosis, she surprised me by agreeing with him. Apparently, Bela had notified her that my emergency room EKG was far below 150 bpm. My physician explained that I was probably suffering from anxiety, and wrote a prescription for Zoloft. Surely, she jested. My name wasn’t Becky and I didn’t live in Beverly Hills. I didn’t know any black chicks on medication, and I wasn’t going to start the dysfunctional diva revolution. I kept the hateful prescription in my purse for two weeks before tearing it up and feeding it to the wind.

Over the next few months, it felt like my brain was unraveling. Each week found me driving to the emergency room – to either sit in my car and cry, or stagger all the way to the front desk. I just needed someone to assure me that I wasn’t dying – at least not that day. I had to rotate hospitals so I wouldn’t become familiar to the ER staff. I went to seven different hospitals in seven different cities. Yet, I refused to believe that my issue was a psychological one. I was working 10- to 11-hour days with tight deadlines, writing screenplays at night, going to two or three industry parties a week, and living on Slurpees, potato chips and veggie fried rice. I was convinced that I was just supremely stressed.

One night a major panic attack struck while I was getting ready for yet another entertainment gala. I was reclining on my couch listening to Les Nubians as I waited for my painted toenails to dry. Suddenly, my left arm dropped to my side, like it was filled with wet sand. When I stood up, my legs buckled, as if boneless. On top of having a heart attack, I was certain that I had developed a neurological disorder, like Multiple Sclerosis. I just knew I’d have to dial 911 with my tongue.

I called my neighbor, who was accompanying me to the party, and begged her to sit with me until the paramedics arrived. They knocked five minutes later, puzzled, I’m sure, by the sight of the fully dressed club diva stretched out on her chaise lounge, and the chic friend checking her pulse. After asking the usual questions – age, history of heart disease in the family, smoker, high cholesterol – the younger paramedic said it sounded like I was having a panic attack, but there was no way to be 100 percent sure unless I was examined at the hospital. “Go to your party,” his partner chimed in. I took his advice.

After that night, I finally admitted to myself that I might have some mental health issues. But I refused to be a victim; I decided to get proactive about my “condition.” I searched the shelves at the organic market for alternatives to medication. I couldn’t bring myself to buy the popular St. John’s Wort, because suburban chicks had co-opted it, and I didn’t want to align myself with a “white woman’s disease.” I settled for Valerian, an herbal remedy for anxiety. At home, I would surf the net for hours, trying to find more information about my disorder. I was discouraged by the accounts that I read on panic attack message boards. Suzy suffered from anxiety for a decade and couldn’t leave her bedroom. Bob had been taking Prozac and Xanax for years and still felt melancholy. Those boards weren’t relatable or empowering; it was a cyber dumping ground for the neurotic.

I was searching for community and kinship. I wanted to hear about Rasheeda’s blues. I needed to know if other black women – their fortitude as legendary as Samson’s locks – were driving themselves to the emergency room, or were overwhelmed with a constant fear of dying, and how they coped. The lack of information, resources and even statistics about sisters suffering from anxiety was frustrating.

My time spent on the Internet did more harm than good. I became hypersuggestible. If anyone casually mentioned a disease or illness – even one common to children or the elderly – I would read about those symptoms for hours, trying to self-diagnose. According to my research, I had seven major ailments: lupus, MS, sickle cell anemia, diabetes, leukemia, ovarian cancer and Alzheimer’s – all at the same time.

My social life was in shambles. I didn’t feel safe anywhere but on my denim couch. To paraphrase Ntozake Shange, my universe was becoming one room long. If I did go out with friends, I had to know the proximity of the club or restaurant to the hospital. It wasn’t that I was afraid of people. I was afraid that I would faint or die in front of them, and they would laugh at me. I didn’t want to become a spectacle.

Only a few friends were privy to my pain. I was too ashamed to admit that I was wrestling with something that I could not handle – smart, successful and superfly as I thought I was. One day while attempting to go to the grocery store, I got as far as the garage when tremors coursed through my body. I ran back into my apartment and threw myself on the floor. As if summoned by my sobs, my mother called. I was in the practice of scaling my meltdowns way back during our conversations because she lived on the opposite coast, and I didn’t want to worry her. But that day, I could no longer hold back the hysteria. “Mom, my chest is always hurting and I’m so afraid I’m going to die!” I said, through tears. Her reaction surprised me. I have only seen my mother cry twice in my life, and I expected her to tell me to suck it up and quit acting like a drama queen. Instead, she said quietly, “Nikki, when you hurt, I hurt. When you’re in pain, I’m in pain.” With those words, I felt like a burden had been lifted. I didn’t have to labor under the façade of being strong all the time. Although I was slowly developing a support system, the perceived stigma associated with anxiety wouldn’t allow me to seek professional help.

June found me fired from my job. That day, I returned to my apartment with my personal effects, changed clothes, and immediately felt like I was being smothered. I had been living with adult onset asthma for three years, but was convinced that it was in remission. Scrambling for the inhaler I kept in my purse, I inhaled greedily. To my horror, my breathing worsened. I took another drag, and almost passed out. The irony! All this time, I feared dying of a heart attack, and my asthma, which had been under control, was about to take me out.

I called the paramedics then raced to my balcony, gulping in the smoggy morning air as I waited for them. The fire department is three blocks from my apartment, and even now when I hear their sirens wailing in the distance, I think they’re coming for me. When the two medics and two firemen knocked on my door, I was barefoot and sucking on the white Albuterol canister for dear life. I sat at my dining room table as the men held a mini confab about what to do with me. Obviously, the attack wasn’t life-threatening, because I was able to talk to them. Yet, asthma-related deaths were on the rise, and the medics weren’t taking any chances. It was time to go for another ride. When I heard that announcement, I started to cry. I was 30 years old, and I felt like a 3-year-old. I couldn’t manage my own life. Adding credence to my feelings of helplessness, one EMT rummaged in my bedroom closet and brought out a pair of bummy sneakers, which he stuffed my feet into.

I spent two hours at the hospital undergoing oxygen, nebulizer treatments and observation from the ER doctor. Five or six interns paraded through the room, scrutinizing me as if I had a fascinating deformity. I called *Tyrone to pick me up, a guy I dated off and on for two years, and hadn’t talked to in months. He was my last resort because everyone else was at work or auditions, and I didn’t have money for a cab.

“You look homeless,” Tyrone said, pulling up to the emergency room parking lot. I turned my head to hide my hurt. He didn’t know how true his words were. Even though I’d lived in L.A. for three years at that point, I still felt like a nomad. I had on dirty sneakers with no socks, and a shirt I only wore to clean my apartment. In another setting, someone would have been pressing wrinkled dollar bills into my hand.

Tyrone drops me off at my apartment and I call unemployment. I am eligible for a $450 check every two weeks. My medical benefits expire at the end of the month, so I go to another doctor while I am still covered. She doesn’t regard me as a bothersome nut, the way I feel my previous physician had. I trust her with my tears. She listens while I talk about my fears, and loads me down with sample packets of the antidepressant Effexor. She also writes a prescription for Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication. I decide to get that filled while I can still afford it. I won’t use the medicine, though. I plan to keep it in my purse as an amulet against the next attack.

I don’t have to wait long. A few weeks later, my friend Darnell, who lives in San Diego, wants to get together for lunch and a movie at Ontario Mall, which is 45 to 50 minutes from my apartment in North Hollywood. Darnell is like my brother, and I can’t flake on him. I will be brave. I decide to hang out with him and then spend the night with my girlfriend Raina in Riverside, a half-hour drive from Ontario. During the journey, I am proud of myself for only getting off at one exit that boasts a hospital – in West Covina. I make it to the theater, but 20 minutes into the film, I feel a familiar roiling in my chest and numbness in my left arm. Leaning over to Darnell, I say, “I’m having a heart attack. I’m going to go sit in my car.” Darnell looks at me in disbelief, but gentleman that he is, won’t allow me to leave alone.

Out in the parking lot, I flag down a cop, and ask for directions to the nearest hospital. When I learn that it’s a few exits away, I tell Darnell that I will try to sit through the movie again. Maybe it’s the nearness of the emergency room, or the sunlight, but I feel safe. Another 30 minutes into the film, and my body starts trembling violently. I shift anxiously in my seat, index finger glued to my carotid artery. The palpitations are so loud, I know that everyone in the darkened theater can hear them, like Poe’s “Telltale Heart.” My gaze pleads with Darnell. “I’m going to the emergency room,” I announce softly. “Remind me never to go the movies with you again,” he says, half-jokingly.

Darnell drives me to the hospital. He sits with me in the courtyard as I check and re-check my heart rate, and try to explain the anxiety that has taken over my life. Grabbing my hand, he places two of my fingers on his pulse. He wants me to understand that everyone’s heart beats fast sometimes. Everyone gets anxious, he seems to say. It’s no reason to go to the emergency room, and certainly no reason to bolt from The Mummy Returns. I’ve heard this argument before, especially from my male friends. Weakly, I concede. I can handle this.

We drive back to the mall and have lunch. I try to ignore the fluttering under my left breast, the wings of a small bird in panic. If I give in to the urge to run out of the restaurant, Darnell will never speak to me again. Mercifully, lunch is over. We hug, give air kisses, and I’m on the road to Riverside. I am in the midst of a full-blown anxiety attack, and I’m trapped in traffic on the 10 Freeway, miles from any safety zone. I have never ridden out an attack before, because it can only mean a fierce explosion in my chest, and then sudden blackness. I am screaming in my head. I white-knuckle the steering wheel so I don’t swerve into oncoming cars or crash into the mountains like I want to. I feel like I am teetering on the precipice of madness.

One mile from Raina’s house, I see a gift from God: HOSPITAL NEXT EXIT. Has the sign been there all this time? I never noticed it before. Or rather, I never needed to notice it. I pull up to Raina’s driveway, jump from my car and collapse in her doorway. “You look malnourished,” she says in alarm, “like you have organ failure.”

Yes, that’s it! Not anxiety; organ failure. That explains everything – the weakness, the tremors, the heart palpitations, the weight loss. I am down to 118 pounds, and for the first time in my life, friends are telling me to gain weight. I ask Raina to drive me to the hospital. Her boys are three and eight, and she loads them into the car with us. When I walk through the emergency room doors, I realize it’s a county hospital. The wait seems interminable, as mothers pace the floor with their snotty-nosed babies, and languid toddlers curl in scratched plastic chairs. I look out the door at my girlfriend sitting in the car with her two young children. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep running.

When we return to Raina’s house, her mother is home. Lily is like my surrogate mom, and over herbal tea, I confess everything to her. She nods patiently, not judging, but understanding. Then she drops a bombshell – she is an anxiety survivor. I am stunned by this revelation. This fabulous, strong black woman – a business owner, living in a plush house – felt like she was losing her mind?

Lily tosses me a lifeline: a book called The Anxiety Disease by David Sheehan. I read all about the fight-or-flight response my body is going through at the onset of an attack, which is why I feel so relieved when I’m on the run. Sheehan also breaks down the spells that anxiety sufferers experience, like jelly legs, a lump in the throat called globus hystericus, palpitations and obsessions and compulsions. Most of all, I realize it’s not my fault that I have anxiety. I’m not going crazy, and I’m not going to die. That night, I take my first Xanax.

It’s been nearly six years since that first anxiety attack. Although I might have a spell every now and then, I haven’t driven myself to the emergency room in months. I wish I could say years, but I’d be lying. I started taking Effexor the summer of 2001, along with Xanax, and six months later, weaned myself off all antidepressants. At the time, I thought medication was a crutch that made me feel weak and needy.

Black women are socialized to be strong, so strong sometimes, that if we can’t get out of bed, or we can’t stop crying, or we feel that our lives are spiraling out of control, we’re afraid to speak up for fear of backlash. White women like Rosie O’Donnell and Brooke Shields go public with their depression, but sisters suffer in silence. According to a study conducted by the Black Women’s Health Imperative, 60 percent of black women have symptoms of depression. In California, I’ve met more women of color who are on medication or in therapy or who have considered suicide. To those who believe mental health issues are endemic to Hollywood hotties, my East Coast sisters would beg to differ. Rasheedas from Harlem to Hotlanta also battle the blues.

I’ve learned to embrace my inner dysfunctional diva, and get her help when she needs it. There is recovery not only in antidepressants, and therapy and prayer, but also in naming one’s pain. Instead of stigmatizing our mental health issues, we need to talk about them, blog about them, broadcast them from the rooftops (without jumping). As bell hooks says, “Healing takes place within us as we speak the truth of our lives.”

This is my testimony: I should have lost my mind, but like Miss Celie from The Color Purple, I’m still here. I hope more women will understand that, to paraphrase bell, asking for help is not a symptom of weakness; it’s a sign of empowerment. If sisters start finding their voices, Rasheeda can sing a new song.

*Names have been changed to respect privacy.