Hard arteries and bubble gum cigarettes. Episode 6.

Alcohol should not be considered a gateway drug.

I say this because I was stealing cigarettes and smoking weed before I ever had enough alcohol to intoxicate my brain-lobes with.

Mommy wasn't dumb, she knew we childs were bad. She didn't want us finding out something else we couldn't already do just to do it, so the first time I asked to taste the drink she was drinking, she leaned the cup towards me and I burnt my mouth, chest and lungs with it.

"What's that," I asked her.
"Alcohol," she said.
"I'm never drinking that stuff again," I vowed.

But I didn't know I would be 11 one day. So 11ness came and we had a 6th grade field trip where Mommy gave me $20 for food and games. I had her make me a sandwich in case they didn't have anything I liked, and once I got there, I didn't touch one game.

I waited 'til school got out, got my stuff to spend the night at Josh's apartment, and convinced Ashley's older brother to buy us one 40 oz each if we bought one for him and his friend. He got us the beer and I didn't get any change.

It didn't matter. Miller Genuine Draft. High Life. You didn't even know they ever had 40's of that. But don't trip, I am generous with my knowledge.

Down goes a 40 into an 11 year old's body, and down a grassy hill he goes. The first thing I learned about drunkeness: if you ever get dizzy, the world won't stop spinning 'til you fall asleep.

I didn't know you could remedy the nausea by washing your face in the toilet yet.

Edit: Hang-overs were the second thing I learned about drinking.

Edit Part Deux: When I confessed to that in high school, my mom said she already knew too. Josh's neighbor saw and told her. We went to church together. What a snitch.

If I were a girl ...

Beyonce's latest single has really got me thinking on the meaning of life.

If she were a boy, she'd be a much better man to her woman than we men are. But that would mean she'd have to be a girl first and have been brainwashed by the feminist agenda.

Sike. Kind of. But. Being a boy ... clearly ... fifty-eight times doper than being a girl. Because if I were a girl there'd be an 80% chance that I'd wake up and be unhappy with a part of myself.

But since I'm a boy in the U.S., I wake up and decide whether or not I'm gonna take a shit before or after I shower. Then I eat two packets of oatmeal so I can make sure I'll have to ask myself the same question the next morning, when I have to go caca again.

So I'm glad I'm a boy, Beyonce Knowles. Or should I say Carter? Who am I to judge on whether or not one is married to another one.

But shit. AND. Erin. I don't know what it is about my brain, but I keep talking about women's self-esteem. I wonder why ...

Maybe it's 'cause I take it into consideration since I have a little sister. And I'm also effing skuurd to know what it might be like to have daughters. So it's just one of those things that floats up ... like "If you have daughters, this is what you're up against," ... and I keep finding reasons to not have kids 'cause there's a chance that 23rd chromosome might come out XX ...

and maybe that kills her chances of developing autism and color blindness but it still scares my body to sleep.

Hard arteries and bubble gum cigarettes. Episode 5.

Cigarettes should not be considered gateway drugs.

I say this because I was 8 when I was smoking them, and 8 alone. As soon as 4th grade was around the bend, I knew I needed a little conviction in my life, to find a passion somewhere, to leave my addictions behind me.

So I did. And then 5th grade happened. Some folks might expect that we kids didn't have strong wills, but nay ... they are mistaken I say. I never touched another cigarette until high school. And that was just 'cause I was drunk. It was an accident.

Sike. It was an excuse to talk to Her.

But I did smoke weed for the first time in fifth grade, which was a magical experience. 3 joints between Josh and I alone, and I don't know how many dub sacks brought into the mix by the people we were with.

We dove into the shrubbery at the river bottom where an abandoned couch sat right beneath a tree, the sun was setting in the West, sky-edges all sun-singed and colorful ... there was a little breeze ... and I remember seeing purple clouds for the first time.

Then I was high out of my mind. My atoms felt like they were ice-skating. But while my self-image was smeared and combobulating, I realized that the trees were shaved into rough shapes of dinosaurs.

Weed makes the brain wobbly, I knew that even then, so I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating. I just sat quietly, in a grey cloud of paranoia, feeling like Reptar was gonna bite the back of my head off.

Then every one else noticed dinosaur shapes too. It wasn't my mind playing tricks on me. The gardeners were just mean. No one ever saw those trees, we didn't know they were designed. So instead of sitting in their shade we ran for our lives.

Terrorize you with a toddler's imagination. That's what weed can do.

Hard arteries and bubble gum cigarettes. Episode 4.

Learning how to cuss properly was like learning that pornography was readily available for free on the inter-web. There was just ... excessive ... amounts of time ... dedicated to learning ... all its possible ... combinations.

Stop thinking.

Because it wasn't just one four-letter word here and another four letter word there. Profanity served as nouns and verbs and gerunds and transitional parts of speech ... it was like learning a way of expression that meant I'd have my ass kicked inside out if I got caught doing it. The challenge was part of the fun.

Like when your girlfriend texts you with an important question and you don't answer 'til right before you know she'll call.

The way to play this game--and more importantly, survive it--was to figure out the rules, which basically boiled down to: DON'T GET CAUGHT. And the way you didn't get caught was to know when and where to cuss.

After the first few times my lip was busted faster than I could know what happened, I came up with with a list to keep my face in tact at all hours.

Times and places to do it:
Playground at recess
On the way to or from school
When lighting a bottle on fire
When describing a woman's breasts


Times and places NOT to do it:
In class or around any adult.
On the way to, at, or on the way home from church.
Within a 10 mile radius of my mom or any one she knew.

Hard arteries and bubble gum cigarettes. Episode 3.

When most people think of third grade, they might think about learning cursive if someone didn't already teach them, or learning how to pronounce Canada, or hearing about the end of the world within the next four years.

But I, between the years of 1996 and 1997, could not have lived a life as these normal children ... for nay ... I was never meant to think on my childhood and pick a time I could say I was innocent.

I was stealing cigarettes from my dad.

And not 1 or 2 or 12, but 20. At a time. If it was only one box I stole. Because there were times where there'd be more of us, so we needed to smoke more, just to be bad. And as a result of habitually lighting things on fire, we'd already learned how to operate lighters.

So I never got caught snatching cancer sticks out of dad's carton on the top shelf of the closet ... or so I thought ... because when I confessed to my mommy that I used to steal them, she laughed and said "I know." And I thought ... what else does she know?

I haven't had a girlfriend since.

My dad, on the other hand ... when I told before leaving for college he chuckled and said "I always thought it was Adrian." That's my brother. I Love him to.

We're getting too sensitive I think

Hambre. Écouter. I couldn't find other translations so the point is not as dramatic. All words for hunger. But what exactly are we describing?

Most of us don't even know the biology of what goes on during hunger--and we don't have to--but we know we have it. Hambre and hunger and ecouter are words, symbols in our heads to describe this thing.

The same goes for birds, for flowers, for trees. You can know their names, you still won't know sheeyiznit about them. Some trees have roots you can mix with adobe to hold bricks together, some bark you can grind into a tea for nausea, some leaves you can use for dye.

Even if you didn't know the name of the tree, you'd know what it's good for.

So, honey, if I forget your name or accidentally call you by your best friend's ... isn't the fact that I know your favorite color is turquiose, and how you wanted to be the Black Power Ranger as a child, or how you and your mom call Sunflowers "Moonlight" because when you were four, you decided they reminded you more of night time?

Matios Emmanuel Berhe, February 24, 1444.
Letter to his you know who.

Experts on beauty

We're all pretty aware that one of the largest contributors to women's low self-esteem is the media. There's a certain model for beauty, and all things that don't fit into the tall, skinny, blue eyed, light skin sort of mold aren't pushed up as much.

So ... without really saying explicitly ... the message is that if you're not what they are then you're not attractive. And that would be okay if we didn't pay attention to it. But when statistics like 80% of women in the U.S., regardless of race, class, or age, wake up in the morning feel dissatisfied with a part of themselves ... it sort of feels like we are believing it.

And even that could be tolerable if we didn't have entire "systems" of beauty built around this false base. Suddenly you have experts on highlighting, on splashing on blush, on lightening, on darkening, how to pull off those colored contacts ... whatever else they talk about. Kn'amsaying. Effing. Modern day sorcerers casting evil spells on our sisters, mothers and exes.

They call themselves experts. But what do they know? To be an expert on beauty you have to know what beautiful things are in the first place. And clearly ... women are not.

Sike.

But some folks aren't experts at all.
Ask a cardiologist about a heart.
Ask Matios about Love.
We're experts at it.