erotic poems about my bike

DIOTIMA

we bough-limbed things

she knows my fathers' fears

i know wind & hunger,

tangle friction heat

where our cores meet

oil with sweat & sunshine

she is high yellow,

i'm high on her

hearts jitter in separation

like each other's children

while each other's mothers

we gazelle

this ripe body

bruises delicious mementos.

to carry & carry

legs pump & straighten

arch or low, test & tense

potential fall

from rest into love

from an angel to sin

a stranger calls out

a pant like this a want from the street

she or me or both? we pound on.

The Principle of Charity, in Interpersonal Relationships

So yeah, I guess I studied philosophy or something. And I guess I was good at it? (3.9 GPA, departmental honors, Phi Beta Kappa Society, summa cum laude, etc etc).

But now that I am out of the academic world, I don’t think that’s anything that could be guessed by looking at me, a slight and quiet black girl fond of miniskirts and cat-eared hats. Girls normally study feminism if they study thought, and black people take cultural studies, isn’t that the stereotype?

And black intellectuals are rare enough that no one expects intellect of me. Although I relate to the absent-minded professor archetype and consider academia if only to complete the expectation, I feel that few people see me as intelligent. They see absentmindedness + blackness and think = stupid or they see absentmindedness + female and think = ditz. I know because they they start to overexplain, talking slowly, and I need to resist the need to roll my eyes until they break free of their optic nerves.

Such is the power of stereotypes.

Within philosophy, there’s a rule created to prevent this kind of lazy thinking. It’s called the Principle of Charity.

To quote Wikipedia:

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available.

In order to be charitable towards someone’s views, you assume that they are logical and truthful--and intelligent, I would add. In order to address a person charitably, you address the strongest form of their argument even when arguing against it. So no straw man arguments, no twisting people’s words, no playing dirty.

The people I like, the people who get me, the people I actually spend time with were first charitable with me. And eventually, they move from charitability to normal understanding, because taking my thought in its strongest form is the likeliest way to understand what I mean to say.

But for most people, I could say anything at all and I would be taken as an idiot’s utterance. Even if I stumbled across some of the greatest insights in the history of thought, I imagine it would play out like this:

Me: “One cannot step twice in the same river twice.”

Lazy Thinker: “Yes, you can, honey. Want me to show you?”

versus:

Heraclitus: “One cannot step twice in the same river twice.”

Lazy Thinker: “That sounds very zen. What does it mean?”

Or...

Me: “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

Lazy Thinker: “Don’t say that about yourself. Nobody knows nothing. Believe in yourself!”

versus

Socrates: “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

Lazy Thinker: “So humble! Such an inspiration.”

Or...

Me: “God is dead! And we have killed him.”

Lazy Thinker: “What are you talking about? God can’t be killed. If you read the Bible, it says that...”

versus

Nietzsche: “God is dead! And we have killed him.”

Lazy Thinker: “Wow, that’s super deep and edgy! Do explain.”

Or...

Me: “Man is condemned to be free.”

Lazy Thinker: “Uh, no. That’s a contradiction. What’s wrong with you?”

versus

Sartre: “Man is condemned to be free.”

Lazy Thinker: “What, really? How?”

Or...

Me: “The medium is the message.”

Lazy Thinker: “No, it isn’t. Allow me to explain to you the ways in which you are wrong...”

versus

McLuhan: “The medium is the message.”

Lazy Thinker: “It sounds like you know what you are talking about, so let me assume your competency and give you space to elucidate.”

I should more accurately title the “Lazy Thinker” as the Racist/Sexist thinker, because in case I haven’t hammered the point home, the laziness is stronger when the thoughts come from the mouth of someone in a place of power who perceives me unworthy of respect. Charitable interpretations require a certain level of faith in humans that even most philosophers don’t have towards women or people of color (see Nietzsche, Hegel, or Schopenhauer on sex or race).

So yeah, I guess I studied philosophy or something.

I was always the only black girl in class, often the only black or woman. I’m still thinking over what I got out of it, but I feel like I know enough about rationality and the history of thought that know that the history of thought is full of irrationality.

I feel a bit like an outsider to many conversations on intersectional feminism, because my entry point is capital-P Philosophy. But my identity requires me to investigate those issues, using tools not always designed for me. (In my heart of hearts, I believe that no true Utilitarian was ever racist, and they are my favorites school of thought, so.)

I would say something about how the master’s tools cannot dismantle the master’s house, but I don’t know enough context for that quote to use it correctly.

sad black girls

Everyone knows about Angry Black Woman. Everyone sees them everywhere. Anger and sadness are two sides of the same coin called dissatisfaction. One is external, one is internal. Woman internalize, men externalize.

(Women should be sad, huh? So does anger make black women masculine?)

I am not angry, and I’m not a woman. Blackness is perceived regardless of my will, but what I’m really into is crying. I’m a Sad Black Girl. Sad Black Girls listen to King Krule and Radiohead. We read Kafka and shouldn’t read Schopenhauer. We smoke loud and we’re lonely clouds. We own hi-fis. We ruminate. We close our eyes.

Sad Black Girls are tomboys and robots. We don’t wear pantsuits. We know that anger is a secondary emotion that hides fear or hurt or sadness. Our emotions are purer, primary? We hurt and we fear and we cry. We don’t have formal diagnosis. The doctor says we’re not in pain.

Sad Black Girls are probably too passive. Some of us are maladaptive daydreamers, still talking to imaginary friends at the age of 21. Between the lot of us, we have millions of paracosms. If you’d like to enter one, listen up for a bit.

Sad Black Girls existed all over everywhere, until the 60s. And then there were afros. “By the 1970s, a majority of empirical studies found that Blacks had high self-esteem,” but we weren’t born then. Some of us have natural hair and some of us have been teased for it.

Happy black girls compare themselves to other black girls, but Sad Black Girls go to lily-white schools. We blame ourselves, but maybe it’s not our fault. Is it? Isn’t it? "The person of color is caught in a Catch-22: If she confronts the perpetrator, the perpetrator will deny it." Sad Black Girls tend to overthink and do nothing.

Sad Black Girls have learned culture-bound syndromes from white girls. Some of us vomit, slit our wrists, become hikikomori. We use self-deprecating humor, sarcasm. We get all As. Our moms are not tigers but our peers’ moms are, and we care about our peers.

Sad Black Girls cannot be seen by God. We aren’t blessed. We should smoke less often, be less fatalistic. Someone tells a Sad Black Girl to pray, and she doesn’t, and she stays sad. We are too rational to believe in #BlackGirlMagic.

Sad Black Girls maybe kinda know the difference between self-esteem and racial-esteem. Kinda? Collective self-esteem, right? Sad Black Girls are loners, of course, we don’t have reflected glory to bask in. We have cut off the reflected failure with a boxcutter, but we cut too much, oops.

Some of us secretly love To Be Young, Gifted, and Black even if we can’t get past the corniness.

Angry Black Women are out there fighting for something today. They are empowered, entrepreneurial, independent. They are role-modeling. They have overcome adversity.

Meanwhile, the Sad Black Girls are crying until their defense mechanisms rust. We are giving up, learning helplessness. We are being abused right now, physically or emotionally or without realizing it. We are doing what we're told. We’re being silent. We bear with it, thinking of other places, maybe England, anywhere but here.

(A roach skitters. A siren screams. A couple argues in the street. What are we doing here?)

Someone mistakes a Sad Black Girl for an Angry Black Women and calls her strong, places a burden in her arms and sends her along. There are no Evergreens for us, no all-girl schools or sanatoriums. There is no place for weakness in blackness. Sad Black Girls are crushed by life quite quickly, maybe there are none already.

unrequited love for the human race

Imagine never feeling comfortable, ever, except with alone (or drunk, or (sometimes) with family). Social anxiety is kind of like having a one of those nausea-inducing crushes, except it holds for the whole human race: you want to make a good impression, you're hyper-aware of everything wrong about you, and failure is your worst nightmare but you can't stop thinking about failure even though it makes failure more likely. So of course 90% of your day is spend imagining and remembering past and possible failures.

Sometimes you manage to do or say something cool, but then you have to immediately run away so you don't fuck it up right after. Sometimes you decide to cut your losses and not even try. That's always easier.

Almost every action is on the conscious incompetence level of the four stages of competence. You know you suck, you know you suck, you know you suck. Or worse, sometimes the stages get broken and you believe you suck and you feel that you suck but you don't actually know if you do. All you have is a constant sucky feeling without adequate proof.

You do know that everything, even smiling, takes extra brainpower. People can probably tell that you have to force yourself, and some will dislike you for being "fake."

The part of your brain that says yes, I am secure and comfortable and loved by others never quite switches on. If you are clever enough, you can reason your way into believing that you're safe, into believing that people want you around. Sometimes. Like, only if they actually return texts and stuff like that, start conversations with you and check in when you withdraw.

And you're going to make social mistakes because they're necessary to learning, but mistakes during adulthood mean missed job opportunities or lost wages, falling behind in life because of the ways you've already suffered. The solution is often exposure therapy, but sometimes you feel guilty for testing things on people:

"Will this person mind if they're the first person I've ever asked on a date?"

"Can I tell them that their behavior makes my anxiety worse?"

"Should I thank this person for helping me overcome my fear by actually showing up?"

"Should I hide that this took all my courage?"

And since social anxiety isn't agoraphobia nor general anxiety nor stage fright, you may be perfectly fine in the anonymity of crowds, but break into a cold sweat when you receive a phone call. Or you may be in your element with public speaking, presentations, and other professional situations that can rely on scripts, but have no idea how to relax or "hang out." Or maybe acting is freeing in a way you rarely feel in the day to day, because it is a mask. But then you go home and can't leave your room and have to skip dinner because you can hear your landlady through the door and you can't deal with another person being in the kitchen the same time as you, especially because you feel like living garbage in the vulnerable state of sweats or pajamas.

I personally wonder if people want me around when I'm not being "useful." A couple friends indicate that they want me around for my own sake, but for most, people there is an unspoken obligation to perform, give, or act in specific ways. Even if the obligation isn't there, I always feel it. Maybe it is always there.

Nothing completely erases the suspicion that most people are only friends with me out of pity. Nothing can turn off the hypervigilance that makes my eyes, my mind constantly scan for signs of rejection. The suspicion does grows quieter, very nearly vanishes with people I can read well. It also alerts me to people I should distance myself from, so that we don't hurt each other. That's one of the upsides of anxiety, that is it a deluxe version of the Gift of Fear.

Something like that.

addendum

1. This is a reference not only to Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio (the original is so good, btw, it’s a proper mess. I’ve never seen the Disney film tho) but also the cult 90s original video anime Key the Metal Idol. Its dubbed opening and ending songs are so peak that I miss that era.

I’m generally obsessed with all characters who feel they are insufficiently human, whether due to trauma, queerness, neurodivergence, or more fantastic and symbolic forms of Otherness.

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2. This is a reference to the Japanese children’s song 一年生いちねんせいになった /When I Become a First Grader, which has so infiltrated the pop cultural consciousness in Japan that it shows up in anime/manga including Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, Sexy Commando Gaiden, Komi Can't Communicate, Iruma-kun, Planetes, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Beelzebub, and so on. It’s usually the social awkward character who declares this goal, and it strikes me as so childishly optimistic that it’s funny for me to declare.
Research supporting Dunbar’s number indicates that the most friends one can reasonably have is more around 50, whereas 150 is the upper limit for “meaningful contacts,” but I want to agree with the researchers who believe that these upper limits are likely not neuro-deterministically written into our brains. But what do I know?

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