Bontifficating

A Black woman makes a song about sex, money, or power, and suddenly she’s carrying the moral future of Black America on her shoulders.

Let’s be honest: “Spend Dat” wasn’t asking for your approval when it dropped. Yung Miami wasn’t waiting on a think piece or a permission slip. The song came in already moving, demanding that the money circulate faster than anybody’s questions about where it came from or where it was going.

And that’s actually the point.

Hip-hop has always been one of the places where we work out who we’re becoming before we have the language to explain it. “Spend Dat” answers that assignment with verbs that refuse to sit still: scam, boost, flip, stuff, spin, spend. The labor almost disappears. What the record makes spectacular is circulation. The Goyard bag swallows whatever was inside it. The crowd screams the hook like spending itself is the only proof anything was ever gained in the first place.

The lazy take is to stop there and say the song glorifies crime. Sure. That’s true. It’s also the least interesting thing you can say about it.

What’s actually happening in those lyrics is a whole economy of feeling. This isn’t the old hip-hop story about making money so you can escape the block and build an empire. It’s about moving money. Extracting it. Converting it into motion and status before the system can reclaim it. The post-chorus—“spend that shit, spend that shit”—works almost like an incantation. Repetition turns spending into ritual.

The bag keeps coming back because luxury has become the only receipt nobody argues with. Nobody’s asking how the money got there. They’re asking what it’s being carried in. The object authenticates the income now—not the other way around.

That reversal isn’t an accident. It’s a diagnosis.

There’s another layer that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: gender. There isn’t a waiting woman standing on the sidelines of this record. No trophy at the edge of somebody else’s story. The narrator is inside the game—scamming, boosting, running her own plays, getting ready for the feds the way other people get ready for tax season. She’s not asking to be included. She’s claiming equal access to the same machinery everybody else has been celebrating for decades.

That’s a kind of power. It’s also a limit.

If equality arrives as equal opportunity to exploit and be exploited, we haven’t escaped the old script. We’ve learned a new role inside it. That’s what empowerment looks like when it has to play by capitalism’s rules. The song is honest about that tension even while it’s celebrating it. It understands the difference between having power inside a system and imagining a world beyond it.

That’s why India Arie’s response deserves more attention than the internet gave it. When she said, “I finally realized that not EVERYBODY wants to get free,” she wasn’t speaking from nowhere. Her entire catalog has treated freedom as an interior condition—self-knowledge, spiritual clarity, refusing to let the world tell you who you are. Her later clarification matters too. She wasn’t organizing a boycott. She was talking about influence.

But I still think the jump from popularity to people don’t want freedom collapses too many different experiences into one conclusion.

Nobody’s standing at the BET Awards thinking, Tonight I reject liberation. They’re dancing. They’re quoting lyrics with their friends. They’re celebrating a hometown artist. They’re enjoying the fantasy for three minutes. What they’re buying into isn’t necessarily fraud or theft. It’s fearlessness. It’s belonging. It’s the feeling that, for one song, scarcity has finally lost.

And here’s something I don’t think we talk about enough: rap has the capacity to be fiction too.

We already understand this with almost every other art form. Nobody watched How Stella Got Her Groove Back and concluded that every forty-something Black woman in the audience was looking for a man twenty years younger. Nobody assumes people who love The Godfather secretly admire the Mafia. We don’t watch Power and decide every fan wants to become a drug kingpin. We understand that stories let us inhabit fantasies, contradictions, exaggerations, and characters without demanding ideological agreement.

Somehow rap keeps getting denied that same imaginative space.

That’s partly because hip-hop has built its reputation on authenticity. But authenticity isn’t the same thing as literal autobiography. Rappers exaggerate. They perform. They create larger-than-life versions of themselves. They tell stories. Sometimes they’re documenting real life. Sometimes they’re playing with myth. Sometimes they’re doing both at once. We can acknowledge rap’s influence without pretending every lyric functions as sworn testimony.

That inconsistency becomes even harder to ignore when Black women are involved.

If we’re serious about interrogating whose frequencies shape consciousness, we also have to ask whose frequencies get interrogated in the first place. Black women have long been expected to represent the race while Black men are more often allowed to represent themselves. A Black woman makes a song about sex, money, or power, and suddenly she’s carrying the moral future of Black America on her shoulders. A Black man makes comparable records and they’re far more likely to be discussed as entertainment, branding, or business.

That’s not just a difference in criticism. It’s a difference in expectation.

Part of why the India Arie conversation resonated is because it fits into a familiar pattern. Black women rappers are rarely allowed to simply make a hit record. Before long, they’re expected to explain what their success means for Black womanhood itself.

Every generation writes its own freedom songs—and before you come for me, just hear me out.

I’m not saying “Spend Dat” belongs in the same historical category as “We Shall Overcome.” That’s not the argument. The point is that every era creates music that reflects what freedom feels like in that particular moment. “We Shall Overcome” gave language to collective endurance. “I’m Black and I’m Proud” affirmed dignity in the face of erasure. Neo-soul asked what remained after you stripped away performance and consumption.

“Spend Dat” asks a different question: who’s spending?

That shift isn’t just aesthetic. It tells us something about what counts as evidence that we’ve survived. One tradition says freedom is a way of being. The other says freedom is visible circulation. One says know yourself. The other says show yourself.

When millions of people choose to sing the second version out loud, the mirror isn’t just reflecting Yung Miami. It’s reflecting the economic and emotional conditions that made that particular vision of freedom feel believable.

And that hunger didn’t begin with this record.

People who have lived with chronic scarcity often develop what behavioral economists call a present bias—not because they’re greedy, but because tomorrow has repeatedly failed to arrive on time. James Baldwin understood something similar long before the research gave it a name. When the future feels uncertain, today’s pleasures become heavier. They have to.

That’s why I don’t hear “Spend Dat” as a fantasy about fraud as much as I hear it as a fantasy about outrunning scarcity. The dream isn’t I want to commit a crime. The dream is I want to imagine a world where scarcity doesn’t own the clock anymore.

Fantasy, in that sense, becomes emotional regulation before it becomes aspiration. It lets people rehearse abundance even if the conditions that produced deprivation haven’t changed.

That’s a very different claim from saying the song is harmless.

Popular music absolutely shapes culture. Repetition matters. Influence matters. But influence doesn’t work by turning listeners into puppets. People bring their own histories, needs, fantasies, and wounds into the music long before they press play.

So the question isn’t whether India Arie is right to be concerned or whether Yung Miami is wrong for making the record. The more interesting question is: what hunger is this song feeding?

Every anthem feeds one. “Respect” fed dignity. “Fight the Power” fed resistance. “Golden” fed self-worth. “No Scrubs” fed standards. “Spend Dat” feeds the desire to live, however briefly, in a world where the rules no longer seem capable of reaching you—where visibility feels like safety and circulation feels like security.

That hunger is real. It’s also fragile, because it’s built on recognition more than permanence.

The song didn’t invent that appetite. It recognized it, amplified it, and gave it a hook catchy enough for millions of people to shout together.

We can hold all of that at the same time without collapsing into either condemnation or excuse. “Spend Dat” is a mirror before it’s an architect. It reflects a version of freedom narrowed to economic motion and visible consumption. It reflects a version of womanhood that insists on entering the game instead of waiting outside it. It reflects a culture where legitimacy is increasingly measured by what can be displayed.

The harder work isn’t deciding whether to cancel the song or canonize it. It’s asking what kind of world produces a record like this, what emotional need it satisfies, and why so many people recognize themselves in it.

That answer won’t fit inside a clarification thread or a viral debate. It’ll emerge, if it does at all, from building conditions where another vision of freedom—less dependent on performance, less dependent on circulation, more durable than whatever fits inside a designer bag—becomes something people can hear as easily as they can hear a hook.

Until then, the room keeps moving. The verbs keep extracting. And the bag, whatever is inside it, keeps getting passed from hand to hand, as if motion itself were the only proof we’re still here.

I don’t trust any history that can’t hold a cookout and a funeral in the same hand.

𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩

I saw the meme earlier and it kept bothering me. Not because I hated the question—I’m all for a good interrogation. In fact, I encourage it. Go’on and ask. Poke the bruise. Pause the fireworks, turn the national anthem down for a second and ask what we’re really celebrating when the calendar says freedom but history whispers, “But for who, tho?”

That part matters. I don’t need America wrapped in red, white, and blue gauze. I know the wound is still there.

But the more I sat with it, the more I realized what bothered me wasn’t the critique. It was the frame. The meme treated celebration and injustice like they’re opposites.

But they ain’t.

Black folks have always found ways to celebrate in the middle of unfinished freedom. We jumped the broom when our marriages weren’t legally recognized. We celebrated Juneteenth long before equality arrived. We built HBCU traditions while Jim Crow was still out here writing policy in a cheap suit. Jazz, blues, hip-hop, cookouts, family reunions, Sunday dinners, church anniversaries, birthday parties, homecomings, and front-porch laughter—all of it made in a country that often denied our humanity and, generations later, would insist it didn’t even see our skin color.

We didn’t build joy after the struggle. We built it alongside it.

That’s not confusion. That’s culture.

𝙎𝙤 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩

When people say Black folks shouldn’t celebrate July Fourth because we weren’t free in 1776, I understand the impulse. America loves a clean myth, fireworks with no footnotes, freedom talk with the labor edited out. So yes—interrogate the holiday. Interrogate the flag. Interrogate the founding fathers and their powdered-wig audacity.

But if the argument slides into “because injustice existed, celebration is morally suspect,” we need to slow down before we build a whole theology of joylessness.

Our ancestors didn’t wait for perfect justice before making room for joy. They couldn’t afford to. If they had waited for the law to bless their love, there would have been no broom to jump. If they had waited for America to mean what it said, there would have been no songs, no suppers sauced to hide the tastelessness of scraps thrown our way, no babies named after hope, no dresses pressed for Sunday morning, no laughter loud enough to make sorrow mind its business for a minute.

𝙉𝙤𝙬 𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩

Sometimes we trade one respectability politics for another. The old version policed behavior: be polished, be quiet, don’t embarrass the race. The new one polices feeling: grief is the only acceptable proof of consciousness. Joy means you didn’t read the room and loudness means you ain’t home-trained. Celebration dishonors the ancestors.

Nah. I don’t buy it.

Joy isn’t pretending everything was okay. Black folks have never been that naïve. It’s what happens when you refuse to let suffering become the only story worth telling. Sometimes it’s the only evidence you’ve got that you were here at all—even on July 12, when the leftover fireworks are still popping like the calendar forgot to move on.

Honestly, it reminds me of Durand Bernarr’s Mango Butter. The song was supposed to have verses, but the lyrics never came. Most people would’ve shelved it and waited until it was finished. He didn’t. He recorded it anyway, filling the empty spaces with improvised words, sounds, and enough confidence to make you stop asking whether you were supposed to understand it. Somehow it became one of his most beloved songs.

Black history has always felt a little like Mango Butter to me.

We didn’t wait for perfect conditions before making something worth remembering. The freedom wasn’t finished. The laws weren’t fair. The country wasn’t ready. And yet we refused to stand still.

Some of us don’t celebrate the Fourth at all. Valid. Some use the day to teach history. Also, valid. Some grill, play spades badly (hopefully not across from me), while others fuss over not enough or too much mustard in the potato salad. Still valid.

A paid day off with the fam does not equal a full endorsement of 1776. Sometimes a holiday is just a holiday. Sometimes rest is resistance, and sometimes rest is just rest—which is holy too, because capitalism has been trying us since forever.

Black history is not just trauma, nor just triumph. It’s  a blues note or somebody’s daughter singing loudly off key in the church choir. Let ‘em strum. Let her bellow. Because Black history bends. It holds contradiction without asking permission from people who need everything sorted into neat moral cubbies.

Our people have always known how to mourn and season meat in the same afternoon. How to bury somebody in the morning and laugh too hard at the repast by 3:17 p.m. Not because death is funny. Because life is rude enough to keep going—and sometimes laughter is how the body catches its breath.

𝙂𝙤 𝙄𝙣 𝙋𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙚

I appreciate the meme for asking the question. We should ask what we’re celebrating. We should ask who got left out of the promise. We should ask why America keeps writing freedom checks with insufficient funds.

But the interrogation shouldn’t stop there.

We should also ask why we’re so quick to treat Black joy like audacity and betrayal. Why seriousness gets mistaken for depth. Why some of us have started believing that to honor our ancestors, we must only inherit their pain and not hold history accountable. 

I don’t think our ancestors would recognize that.

They made room for mourning and music, grief and gala . They jumped the broom when the law said their love didn’t count—and that broom still speaks. It says the state can deny you paperwork, but it cannot define your covenant. It says joy does not need perfect conditions. It says even under unfinished freedom, we are still allowed to make a life.

So critique the holiday. Tell the truth. Read the footnotes. Side-eye the fireworks if your spirit says so.

But don’t let anybody convince you that consciousness requires joylessness.

Black people have never needed a perfect world to celebrate.

We just needed a reason.

And sometimes the reason was simply: we’re still here.

 The ability to hold truth without collapsing, to meet accountability without fleeing, and to choose repair over repetition.

I’ve been wondering lately why some relationships fail, and the image that keeps coming to mind is a patient who never makes it to surgery. Not because the operation is wrong — in fact, it might be the very thing that could save them — but because the body has grown too weak to withstand the intervention.

For a long time, I assumed relationships ended because of incompatibility. Different values, different goals, different personalities, different ways of communicating. All of that matters, of course, but the older I get, the less convinced I am that those explanations cover as much ground as we think they do.

More and more, I find myself thinking about capacity. Not romantic capacity, but human capacity — the ability to stay present when things get uncomfortable, to hear something painful without immediately becoming defensive, to tolerate uncertainty and accountability and disappointment without running from them. 

The ability to repair.

What

Before I go any further, I should say that I’m not talking only about romantic relationships. Some of the most painful ruptures I’ve experienced have come from friendships and family. 

The friend who stopped calling after a disagreement neither of us knew how to navigate. 

The sibling who drifted away one holiday at a time. 

The parent and adult child separated not just by history, but by the emotional labor required to face that history honestly. 

The mentor who became a disappointment. 

The church member who disappeared after realizing the institution cared more about its image than its people. 

The believer who didn’t lose faith so much as lose confidence in those claiming to represent it.

These relationships don’t get the same attention as romantic ones, but they require the same skills: humility, accountability, curiosity, forgiveness, boundaries — and again, repair.

I keep returning to that word. Not reconciliation. Not pretending nothing happened. Repair: the acknowledgment that something valuable has been damaged and may still be worth saving.

I used to think healthy relationships were the ones that avoided rupture. Then I paid attention to my own life. When my son was born, every contraction caused his heart rate to drop. The contractions were necessary. So was his heartbeat. The very process bringing him into the world was also placing him under stress. Eventually, the nurse practitioner sent me for a C‑section.

Years later, I still think about that labor whenever people talk about healthy relationships. We often assume discomfort means something is wrong, but contractions aren’t evidence that birth is failing. They’re evidence that birth is happening. The question is whether the system can tolerate the stress long enough to bring new life into the world.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “But I’ve never fought with my spouse.” 

Or your sibling, or your best friend. 

And to be clear, I’m not arguing that healthy relationships require fights. 

Conflict and fighting aren’t the same thing. All fights are conflicts, but not all conflicts are fights. Conflict simply means two realities have collided — two needs, two perspectives, two expectations, two memories, two truths trying to occupy the same space.

Sometimes conflict looks like an argument. Sometimes it looks like silence. Sometimes it’s disappointment. Sometimes it’s a difficult conversation. Sometimes it’s one person quietly carrying a hurt the other never knew existed. The absence of fighting doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of conflict. It might mean excellent communication. It might mean avoidance. It might mean the conflict hasn’t arrived yet.

When I look back at the most meaningful relationships in my life, almost all of them experienced some form of rupture — misunderstanding, disappointment, conflict, hurt. The strongest ones weren’t the ones that avoided or ran from those things.

So What

This forced me to rethink what I thought health looked like. Many of us were taught that conflict is evidence something is wrong: a disagreement means the friendship is failing, a difficult conversation means the relationship is unstable, a misunderstanding means communication has broken down. 

But maybe thats evidence that two people have finally encountered each other honestly. Authenticity creates friction. It has to. The moment two people become fully known, differences emerge. Needs collide. Expectations clash. Blind spots appear. Disappointment enters the room. 

This isn’t a design flaw. 

It’s part of the  human condition.

Repair requires a kind of humility we rarely celebrate. It asks us to value connection more than victory, to stay curious when certainty feels safer, to listen when defending ourselves would be easier, to risk being wrong, to risk changing, to risk discovering that our perspective is incomplete. These are not small asks. They are emotional heavy lifting.

This may be why so many people confuse apology with repair. An apology isn’t the repair. At best, it’s an invitation to begin — the knock at the door. Repair is what happens after the door opens. It requires conversation, curiosity, humility, listening, clarification, accountability, and most importantly, participation. One person can apologize. One person can forgive. But repair is mutual. A relationship cannot be rebuilt by only one person any more than a bridge can be constructed from a single side of the river.

This doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to continue a relationship. A person can accept an apology and still choose not to move forward. People are not projects. They are agents. But the distinction matters, because declining to continue a relationship is different from repairing one. Repair requires two people willing to approach the damage together and ask: What happened here? What needs to be understood? What, if anything, remains possible?

Which brings me back to the surgery metaphor. Some relationships fail not because someone is uncaring or malicious, but because shame regulation, tolerating criticism, hearing “you hurt me” without collapsing into “I am worthless,” sitting in discomfort without escaping — these capacities develop through use and weaken through neglect.

Not every relationship fails because love disappeared. Some fail because the people involved weren’t healthy enough, at that moment, to perform the repair the relationship required.

Now What

If that’s true, then maybe we need a new definition of health. Not perfect. Not conflict‑free. Not endlessly agreeable. Healthy enough to repair. Healthy enough to tell the truth. Healthy enough to hear a truth we don’t like. Healthy enough to stay present when the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Healthy enough to choose understanding over image.

This applies to individuals, families, institutions, communities. Trust cannot be repaired where honesty is forbidden. Accountability cannot flourish where image is sacred. A wound doesn’t disappear because we refuse to look at it. A wound exposed may heal. A wound concealed tends to deepen. The same principle governs bodies, relationships, and institutions alike.

So the question isn’t, “Did the relationship experience rupture?”

The question is, “Do we have the capacity required to repair it?”

Go In Peace

If you’re carrying disappointment today, maybe the rupture isn’t the whole story. Maybe the more important question is whether healing remains possible. Not every relationship should be restored. Some endings are necessary. Some distances are protective. Some boundaries are sacred. Sometimes the healthiest outcome isn’t preserving the original form of the relationship, but preserving the life within it.

My son’s birth didn’t unfold according to plan. The contractions were real. The stress was real. The path changed. But the goal was never the method. The goal was life.

Maybe the same is true of repair.

Not every relationship survives. Not every reconciliation happens. Not every wound closes. But where repair is possible, it remains one of the most hopeful acts available to us — a stubborn belief that something valuable remains, that understanding can grow where misunderstanding once lived, that trust can sometimes be rebuilt, that people can learn capacities they didn’t previously possess.

Nothing about humanity is neat — not birth, not growth, not grief, not love, not friendship, not faith, not healing. Even the most beautiful things often arrive through strain, uncertainty, and disruption.

Maybe health was never the absence of rupture.

Maybe it has always been the capacity to repair.

𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑑 𝑉𝑒𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑡 𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠

Disclaimer The following story is loosely based on true events.

When I say loosely, I mean like a sew-in two months past due—hanging on by a few baby hairs and a prayer.

Or like a group chat after the drama: still technically together, but mostly out of habit.

Names have been changed.
But some of this shit may have actually happened.

---

Scene 1: “Disrespectful”

I re-read the comment three times, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.

“Bonita, I think your tone is coming off as a little disrespectful. We’re just trying to keep things positive. 💛✨”

Disrespectful.

That’s the word she chose. Not confusing, not misaligned, not worth further discussion.
Disrespectful. Like I came in swinging.

I scroll up, just to check. All I did was ask:

“Can you clarify how decisions are being made now, if we’ve paused elections?”

That’s it. One sentence. No caps. No edge. No attitude. Just clarity.

And yet—here I am, being framed as the problem.

Because I asked for structure in a space built on vibes.

Because I challenged authority that didn’t want to be examined.

Because I spoke like an adult in a room that needed me to pretend confusion was collaboration.

I lean back from my laptop. My chest is hot, but I’m not panicked. Not this time. My mother’s voice doesn’t echo in my head. I don’t feel small. I feel… awake.

Because now I see it clearly:
They don’t think I’m disrespectful.
They think my clarity is disrespectful.

They’ve wrapped morality in language and it’s being used to cover structural mess.
They’ve turned “positive vibes” into a shield.
They’ve made honesty feel like an attack.

And here’s what cuts deep—they think this works.
They think a heart emoji after a boundary will soften the harm.

But not anymore. Not with me.

⸻

[Comment Reply Box: OPEN]

I type slowly. No caps. No heat.

“I want to name that asking for clarity isn’t an act of disrespect. If this space only welcomes questions that come with applause, then it’s not a community—it’s a campaign.”

Send.

I don’t wait to see who reacts.
I don’t watch for likes.

Because I didn’t write it to be agreed with.
I wrote it so my body would stop shaking.

And sure enough—it does.

⸻

Scene 2: “Unalone”

It’s 3:11 a.m. on a Friday and someone is singing alt rock like an anthem. Their mic is hot. Their wifi is worse. But you think we bout to call it a night? Nah.

There are twelve of us still on the Zoom call.
Some are singing along.
Some are half-asleep with cameras off.
Somebody’s grandma is snoring in the background.
And I’m sitting in the dark on mute, off camera, quietly crying into a bowl of Honeycomb cereal.

Because this?
This feels spiritual.

Four days ago, this was a joke. A “Quarantine Karaoke Marathon.” Just a goofy challenge someone tossed into the chat. Break the world record or just break our voices trying. Whatever.

But then people kept showing up.

We started tracking turns. Started a host donation spreadsheet. Started learning each other’s favorite artists.
I now know Aria Doyenne sings 𝙈𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 pretty much every time she’s logged on, but minus the rap of course. I used to sing it every now and then. But I’ve silently yielded the song to her.
I know Dr. Rayna owns a string of LED lights. But if we ever met in real life, I’d only be able to recognize her forehead because that’s all I’ve ever seen on camera.
I know Roxy sometimes moonlights as a comedian. Her innuendos and commentary are perfect fodder for the likes of 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙍𝙚𝙙 𝙎𝙝𝙤𝙚 𝘿𝙞𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 or 𝙏𝙖𝙭𝙞 𝘾𝙖𝙗 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙛𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨

And me? I haven’t felt this unalone since before September 2021.

We didn’t know what we were building. But we knew it was necessary.

The conversations between songs was everything.
We laughed between performances.
Offered encouragement. And listened more intently to anecdotes than any therapist charging by the hour.

Folks passed out mid-rotation, camera still on.
I remember one night Zoom froze and kicked us all out—and without even asking, everybody scrambled to log back in.

It was raggedy and beautiful and exactly what I needed.

Bonnie was already gone.

And even though no one here knew her, everything they liked in me came from missing her.

⸻

Someone just called my name.

I wipe my face.
Unmute.
Breathe.

“Bo-niiita,” Abby says with a soft chuckle, “you ready?”

I am.

And I’m not.

And maybe that’s what this whole thing is about—singing anyway. Even when your voice shakes. Even when the world’s on fire.

Because for four days and counting, this group has made it feel like maybe we could save each other.
Just by showing up.
Just by staying on the call.
Just by pressing play.

from The Red Velvet series

Florida, 2025

The night the Red Velvet burned down, folks didn’t cry for the building.
They cried for Uncle Ray’s microphone.

[Opening Shot – Archival footage, timestamp blurry]

The entrance engulfed in flames.

Velvet curtains dissolving into ash.

Sirens.

Smoke.

Somebody’s cousin live-streaming, hollering, “Damn, the microphone too?!”

---

[Narrator – Southern, emotionally dehydrated, and tired of explaining’ this man]

The Red Velvet is no more.

Burned down on a Sunday, like it was all part of God’s plan.

But this ain’t about the fire, tho.

We’re here to talk about Uncle Ray.

The man who made The Red Velvet more than a stage. The man who almost had Ray’s Boom Boom Room named after him—that is until pride, duck fat, and Luther Vandross got in the way.

---

[Bootleg Interview of somebody, still not sure who – parking lot, 2007]

“Ray?….phew! That man could sing about heartbreak like love still had a key to his place. Mmm! His falsetto had all kinda regret in it.”

---

[Backup Singer – name redacted]

He fell asleep mid-set once.

Mic in hand. Still didn’t miss a note.

Band ain’t stop playing neither. They knew better.

[Interviewer, sensing something in her voice]

“You and Ray….y’all got along pretty well… or…?”

She side-eyes the camera. Then smirks.

“See, now you askin too many questions.

But since you asked, you ain’t heard this from me, alright?” She leans in, like she’s about to whisper a secret. But doesn’t.

“Ray could sing heartbreak like he still hoped his woman’d walk right through them doors. Man sang ‘Superstar’ like he meant it…like that damn song was a mirror.

[short pause]

And now see—that was the problem.”

---

[Bar Regular – Newport lit, martini sweating]

“Ray’s Boom Boom Room?

Listen, that was s’posed to be his.

Name all on the napkins, Luther covers between catfish plates—all sung by Ray himself, mic still greasy from the kitchen. (Ashes cigarette)

And that cornbread? Ha, Lawd.

Duck fat. Not butter. (Nodding for emphasis) Mmmmmhmmm. Told me himself. Said it gave the crust ‘just enough crunch to make folks shut up and listen.’

Nah, but see, them investors, they got cute. That short, pudgy one with the slicked-back hair and the smile that ain’t quite reach his eyes—he gon tell Ray, ‘We’re going for a more… sophisticated demographic.’ Tried to swap his sweet potatoes for that dry mash with the whatchacallit—uh, nutmeg. Nutmeg and shame is what it was. Bleh! (Shaking head in stark disapproval) Who finna eat that?! Not me hunny.

And don’t even get me started on the music.

Said he couldn’t sing Never Too Much no more. Now, how you gon tell a man like Ray, what he 𝙘𝙖𝙣’𝙩 sing?? Said it wasn’t ‘modern’ enough for the brunch crowd.

Heh, BRUNCH (again, shakes her head).

Like heartbreak don’t hit before noon or some.

(Flicks cigarette butt, lights another).

Ray ain’t yell. He ain’t cuss.

Just took off his apron, left the mic warm, and walked out.

Got in that ol dusty Buick, with the two busted taillights lookin’ like two sad closed eyes, and a Luther CD stuck on loop, and drove straight here. The car mighta been trash, but the CD player and aux cord still worked. You know that’s all that mattered to him anyway. The music.

Now, the Red Velvet ain’t never had no food license or working air or nuthin’ like that.

But what it had was space.

Space for his voice.

And his recipes.

Space for a man who made grief sound and taste good.”

[Interviewer – off-camera, overthinking]

“But… you said… he left and drove straight her—”

“Yup. That’s whatta said. You can quote me suga.”

“The Boom-Boom Room…..isn’t that in Harlem?”

“And??”

“Well…., we’re in Florida….”

“I know where we at! Is you tellin’ the story or am I…?”

Interviewer pauses, exhales, lets her make it and lets the myth win.

“You are, ma’am. Nvrmnd. So, what else can you tell us about Uncle Ray?”

[Bar Regular – smirks, ashes slow]

“Everything or nothing, suga.

Depends on how bad you need the story.

But I will say this:

When Ray sang, you couldn’t tell the truth from a lie from the truth!”

---

[Neighbor – Miss Bernadette, Unit 3B]

“He used to live next door. Every Saturday. Right as I’d get ready to catch up with my reality stories —here he come belting Luther like he owned the whole damn block.

I called the police three times.

Them [BLEEP] brought lawn chairs and didn’t leave til 4 in the morning.”

---

[Narrator – now quiet, kinda confused, kinda nostalgic, but also just over it]

This isn’t a eulogy, okay.

Ray’s not dead. He’s very much alive and can be found at his favorite virtual karaoke lounge.

He just never went national.

But when he stepped onstage at The Red Velvet—

whether it was late,

or he interrupted you mid-sentence,

and even if he smelled like cooking grease and shea butter—

Ppl stayed. The band played.

And he fed the neighborhood.

In ribs.

In riffs.

In reasons to keep going.

from The Red Velvet series

Harlem, 1928

By the time he walked into The Red Velvet Parlor, I’d already seen ten men, smoked two cloves, and told one preacher’s son to stop calling on Jesus unless he planned to tip.

But him?He seemed like a man who didn’t come looking for flesh, but found it anyway. He came in carrying a saxophone case and that kind of sadness you only see in musicians and mothers. Said he didn’t need the usual—just wanted “company.”

Hmph. Okay. Miss Geneva’s girls knew to keep our mouths and minds sharp and our legs optional. But something in me softened when he asked, “You got time?”

Like time was something I owned.

I had time. What I didn’t have was peace.

“You read?” he asked me the second time he came back. I still had one heel dangling off my ankle. I’d just whispered somebody else’s husband into sleep.

“I read. I also charge by the hour. Which one you paying for?”

He smiled. Didn’t answer. Just pulled a worn copy of The Crisis from his coat pocket and handed it to me like a flower.

The first time he touched me that night, he apologized.

“You just seem too thoughtful for this,” he said.

I didn’t flinch. I’ve heard worse from men who cried after.

“And you seem too tender for war,” I said. “But here we are.”

He started reserving the hours after midnight. Called it “our time,” like the walls were on payroll and understood the assignment, keeping secrets and fools outside of 7B.

We’d lie in that creaky bed, me in nothing but skin and sarcasm, him in uniform pants and a hangover.

We’d talk Garvey, lynchings, gin, and grief—skin tangled, fused like the pages of a book soaked with rain. He’d trace the curve of my thigh like it was a map back to himself.

He liked how I spoke. Said I used words like they owed me rent.

One night, he leaned in like a secret and said, “I could stay here forever.”

I said, “But you won’t.”

He kissed my shoulder anyway.

A week later he told me he had to go. Military orders. Some excuse wrapped in patriotism.

I said, “So this your goodbye?”

He said, “This is just the last time.”

I laughed.

“You got a woman?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Which meant yes.

Two months later, I saw him walking past The Red Velvet like he’d never been inside. Like he’d never been inside me.

As a soldier should.

The woman on his arm had careful hair—glossy. I could practically smell the heating oil and hear the hot comb hiss in the wisp of the afternoon breeze. A string of pearls sat like punctuation on her collarbone. Her skin tone paper bag compliant. She looked like respectability.

I wondered if she liked jazz.

I wondered if the lies she believed were as pretty as the ones he offered me.

Sometimes I still read The Crisis in the quiet hours between “company”. Still keep that same torn copy under my pillow, creased like a broken promise.

Men come and go. They all think they’re special for asking me what I think. It was their way of trying to separate themselves from the last one and the one before that. I’d learned that their interest in my mind was as temporary as their presence.

But only one ever stayed long enough to hear my answer.

And he still left.

Let the piano play.

Let the velvet remember.

Deleted, But Not Erased

I went to visit Bonnie today.
Not at her grave.
Not in some dusty photo album that smells like old paper and forgotten time.
I went to her Facebook page.

Like I’ve done a hundred times before,
just to see her name in that familiar font,
just to pretend for a second
that time hasn’t done what time does.

But it’s gone.
Deleted.
Like a light switch flipped off in an empty room.
Like she was never here.

Grief, for me, looks like texting my iPad
because Bonnie’s Facebook is gone—
deleted like the last thread that held me together.
Her number?
It rings in someone else’s pocket now.

I’ve already reread all our messages—
every joke, every “you got this,” every inside reference.
She was my editor before the editor,
catching my typos with a teasing, “You’re better than this,”
pushing me past the easy words,
telling me, “This part is good, but you can go deeper.”
She never let me play small.

Now, even those messages are gone.
I thought I’d have them forever,
like a stack of letters folded neatly in a shoebox,
waiting to be opened when I missed her most.
But grief doesn’t let you keep things.

It looks like sending a meme at 1:11 a.m.,
a “good morning” voice note at 7:06,
a long text at 6:27 p.m.—
watching each message flicker
from “delivered” to “read”
not because she’s alive,
but because I’m basically talking to myself.

These texts go nowhere.
But I send them anyway.
Like tossing notes into the ocean,
hoping maybe Heaven has a newsfeed.

I write my ache into these apps,
where people scroll past pain like it’s content.
Where grief becomes engagement.
Where honesty only gets “likes”
if it’s in the photo caption of a pair of tiddies.

I crave connection—
real, ragged, late-night I see you connection.
But I loathe
the curated theater of digital belonging.

Because none of it fills the space she left.
None of it hands me back her laugh,
her proofreader’s pen,
her steady faith that I could go deeper.

And yet, I’m not left empty.
Memories stay behind—
a gift and a curse.
They bring her back:
the way she left cat hairs in my passenger seat,
signed every message with an otter and a heart, never hassled me about being late,
the way she saw me even when I couldn’t see myself.
But only to remind me she’s gone.

And making new friends in your 40s
feels like trying to heat a home
on Lakeshore Drive in January
with just a candle and a memory—
a warm memory of a Deep Ellum stroll
on an August night.

Bonnie’s gone
and now I’m in a Sisyphean struggle
with grief, time, and loneliness

So I write.
Because if I can’t hear her voice,
I can at least let mine carry the parts of her
I refuse to forget.
The jokes, the wisdom, the echoes of her belief in me.
She used to proofread my words,
but now, writing about her is how I hold on.

What wounds me deeper than missing the dead
is whispering to the living
and getting silence back.

The “social” in social media
don’t feel like socializing anymore—
it feels more like strategizing.

There are versions of me
that only existed in her presence.
Versions of me realized only because she was here.
And if I stop speaking her name,
if I stop telling our stories,
then I lose those parts of me too.

I still think about texting her.
Still wonder what she’d say if I could.

Maybe that’s enough.
Maybe memory is its own kind of forever.

I’ve spent years being the strong one, but today I cried because no one noticed I was quiet.

There’s this thing I do. Every few weeks—sometimes days—I’ll open one of my social media apps with full intention. Not just to scroll, but to say something. Maybe something funny. Maybe something meaningful. Maybe something soft. But then I stop. I hesitate. And it hits me like a wave and a whisper at the same time: Why?

Why post into a void where folks barely acknowledge the echo? Why offer up some layered, honest truth to people who’ll skim it, maybe like it, maybe not—but rarely engage it with the kind of tenderness or thought I put into writing it?

And worse: Why bleed on the page for people who won’t even whisper that it reached them?

It’s not the applause I want—it’s the quiet nod from someone who felt it too. What’s the point of being bare if the room pretends not to see you? Why offer visibility to folks who only see you when you’re glowing, not when you’re grieving?

I’ve ask myself these questions enough times that it’s begun to reshape the way I view connection. Not just online—but everywhere.

Here’s the truth I don’t like admitting out loud:

I don’t reach out much either.

Hell, I ghost. I vanish. Though I think of people often, I go on long walks inside my own head and forget to send the “thinking of you” text. I take social media breaks like medicine—stepping away because the noise is too much and the silence is somehow worse. And then I have the nerve to feel hurt when people mirror that same energy back. When my absence isn’t noticed. When my return is met with digital shrugs or stale scrolling.

It’s a bitter loop.

And somewhere in that loop, the guilt shows up. The what if it’s me? spiral.

What if they’re not being distant—I’m just hard to love?

What if I’ve trained people not to expect much from me, and now they’re just playing their part in a pattern I wrote?

And then comes the worst part of all—the shame. The kind that curls around my ribs and whispers, Well, maybe you’re just not worth the effort.

But no.

That shame is lying. And I’m learning to talk back to it.

Because yes, I have distance in me. Yes, I have walls. Yes, I disappear sometimes. But so do most people with deep wounds and soft hearts. So do those of us who’ve been taught to love quietly so we don’t scare folks away. So do the ones who’ve been “the strong friend” for so long we don’t even know how to ask for softness without apologizing for it.

And here’s the hard-earned truth I keep circling back to:

Behavior is communication.

And the way people treat you is how they feel about you.

If they act like they don’t care, it’s because they don’t care—or they don’t know how. And while one of those is forgivable, neither one is nourishing.

Not for me. Not anymore.

I’m not interested in decoding people’s silence.

I’m not studying half-hearted energy like it’s gospel.

I’m not translating crumbs into feasts just to justify my presence in someone’s life.

Because I’ve done that already. For years. For decades. I’ve made people mean more to me than I’ve ever meant to them. I’ve leaned in when they leaned out. I’ve convinced myself that effort is too much to ask for—and that being understood is a luxury I can live without.

But I can’t.

Not anymore.

Not without breaking something sacred inside me.

So now, I’m listening. To behavior. To patterns. To energy. To silences that used to confuse me but now speak fluently. I don’t hate the people who drift—I just accept it as an answer. I don’t need closure from every friendship or situationship or almost-love that fizzled out. I just need truth. And behavior, whether we like it or not, is where truth lives.

But this isn’t just about other people. This is about me too.

About the ways I’ve pulled away before I could be pulled on.

About the way I’ve chosen invisibility to avoid rejection.

About how I’ve made social media a place of performance instead of connection—because the performance feels safer.

So here’s my reckoning:

Yes, people treat me how they feel. But I also teach them how to treat me.

And if I’ve been inconsistent, unreachable, or too guarded, that’s worth owning—not shaming myself over, but owning.

Because now, I want more. Not louder friends. Not performative engagement. But reciprocity. Emotional fluency. Safe spaces where I don’t have to wonder if I’m too much or too little—where being seen doesn’t require me to shrink or sparkle.

And maybe, just maybe, that means I have to show up differently too.

Not for everybody. But for the ones who matter. For the ones who try.

For the ones who, like me, are learning to be present on purpose.

So I’m not done posting. I’m not done reaching. But I’m done pandering.

Done hoping strangers will clap for my healing.

Done over-explaining to folks who only show up out of curiosity, not care.

I’m writing for the ones who get it.

For the ones who feel what I mean without needing it filtered.

And if that means fewer hearts and more wholeness?

So be it.

Men do not have to like women.

Men do not have to respect women.

Men do not have to see women as fully human.

And yet, they thrive.

To lead. To take up space. To move through the world unchallenged—

A man only needs other men.

Writer Celeste Davis put it plainly:

“The sad truth is that men don’t NEED to like or respect women to successfully or safely walk through the world. Not at all. In men’s daily lives—in their jobs, in their church, in their friend groups—social capital is gained solely through other men.”

I have known this for years.

But nothing made it clearer than a Facebook group called Studio 5191—

a space I had been in since 2022,

a space run by three cisgender heterosexual Black men I consider friends,

a space where I thought my voice mattered.

I was wrong.

The Lie of Free Speech Is the Comfort of Men

They spoke freely and often.

One used the word c**t to break a woman apart.

Not in jest.

Not in irony.

Not as a whisper, but as a hammer.

Not just once, but four times.

And I called it out.

Not because I expected an apology, but because I was tired.

Tired of watching men talk about women with contempt and call it a conversation.

Tired of the laughter.

Tired of the silence.

But silence was not the only response I got.

Ben, an admin, told me,

“As we have said before, we do not delete ANYONE’s posts. We debate views and opinions, we do not edit them. We won’t change people’s minds by censoring their opinions.”

I was supposed to accept this.

As though misogyny is just an opinion.

As though dehumanization is something to be debated.

But free speech isn’t a shield against accountability. Even Iowa State University acknowledges this:

“Just because there is a First Amendment right to say something, doesn’t mean it should be said. The First Amendment protects a right to say hateful things… However, as a campus, we can all work together to promote and ensure an environment where all students, faculty, and staff are welcomed, respected, and supported.”

Studio 5191 is far from an institution of higher learning. Still, it wasn’t working to build an environment that thrives on mutual respect. They were upholding the kind of free speech that only serves one side—theirs.

Because the truth is, when they invoke “free speech,” they don’t mean open dialogue.

They mean unchecked power.

And that power wasn’t just in their words. It was in who was allowed to speak freely and who wasn’t.

Who was heard. Who was dismissed.

Because free speech in Studio 5191 meant that some could say anything—

They could degrade women.

They could be transphobic.

They could attack people under the guise of “just a joke.”

But when I challenged those ideas? I was told to just leave my comment and move on. I was told not to look at other people’s responses. Not to engage. Not to challenge.

Free speech was never free for me. It came with limits. Rules. Warnings.

Not for all. Only for me. The one who was challenging bigotry.

And again, Ben laughed, and dismissed me outright:

“You’re the only one trying to check someone else for how they talk. You love DMX, but he said ‘fggot’ this and ‘btch’ that. At the end of the day… this is SELECTIVE OUTRAGE! Go in peace, love!”

They say “Free speech!” They mean “Shut up!”

And still, I tried.

I messaged the man who used the word c**t.

I asked if we could talk. I gave him the choice to say no. I told him I would respect his boundaries.

And when he responded, he made it clear:

He had no interest in reflection.

“Wont really change much tbh. Playin’ victim mentality on topics about women is closed-minded.”

“Post something about dudes being trashy to women, and I’ll clap on the dudes too.”

“You don’t understand who I am, and that’s not my problem. Like I said its always the same story with you. Always jumping on everyone’s ass about anything involving women even if the chick in the post deserved it. Been like that since I joined and I dont post much cus of you.”

I apologized to him.

For calling him out.

For putting him on the spot.

For making it personal.

I told him I valued him. I told him I wasn’t asking for his punishment, only for him to consider why his words mattered.

And still, he took zero responsibility.

He never once mentioned his own words.

Never once engaged in self-examination.

Never once considered that he was wrong.

To him, the issue was never his misogyny.

The issue was me, for daring to challenge it.

And that’s when I knew.

I was the problem.

Not the man who spat the word c**t like it was his right.

Not the men who let it slide.

Not the ones who laughed.

Me. For saying something.

Because the truth was never that they “debated views.”

The truth was:

Men protect men.

Men excuse men.

Men make women the problem for resisting.

They called it a debate forum.

A space to stir the pot, to spark critical conversations.

A place where no opinion was off-limits.

The lies they tell. The lies I believed.

Studio 5191 is not a debate forum. It is a shitposting group, a place to throw around absurdities, jokes, memes, and insults like loose change. And like many online spaces run only by men, the humor came at the expense of women.

I pushed back. Again and again.

Against misogyny. Against transphobia. Against the ways they disguised cruelty as conversation.

One man jokingly proposed violence against a woman in a post. An admin, we’ll call him Jeffery, loved the comment and suggested the man be rewarded.

And what happened?

I was policed.

Ben, the admin who laughed off my frustration, once told me not to look at the comments before or after mine.

Just leave my thoughts and walk away.

Just drop my words into the void and let the men have the last say.

Just be quiet unless I was speaking to no one.

I was told not to challenge the words of others.

I was told my presence kept others from commenting and participating.

So if they stopped talking, it’s my fault?

But the men sharing this content?

They were free.

They were free to say whatever they wanted.

Free to post transphobic content, make fatphobic comments without consequence.

Free to degrade women in “jokes.”

Free to be as loud as they wanted—as long as I was quiet.

And when I named their transphobia, when I called it what it was, Jeffery responded the next day. Not with diplomacy. Not with accountability.

Instead, he created a post about how we should not attack people’s ideas.

He did not tell the men to stop dehumanizing trans people.

He did not tell them to think before they spoke.

He indirectly told me to stop challenging them.

Because in that space, disagreement was only dangerous when it challenged hate.

Now, looking back, I see it clearly:

They have been policing me for years.

They do not like a woman who challenges their bigotry.

They do not like a woman who does not step softly within the spaces they control.

They do not like a woman who dares to hold a mirror up to their comfort.

They do not like a woman who refuses to shrink.

The Women Who Stay Silent

But it wasn’t just the men.

It is never just the men.

It was the women who participated,

who read the same words,

who saw the same violence,

and said nothing.

I was not just fighting men.

I was fighting alone.

So I spoke. And finally, a woman spoke back.

Not in defense of me.

Not in defense of herself.

Not in defense of the women who would come after us.

She spoke to tell me she did not like being lumped in the generalization.

She had not seen the comments, she said.

She had not known.

She did not like feeling accused.

My words—sharp, but not cruel.

Firm, but not unjust.

Still, they hurt her.

And because she was hurt, she could not hear me.

I apologized. Not because I was wrong. But because she is my friend.

Because that is what women do.

We soften.

We smooth.

We take the jagged edge of a truth and dull it against our own skin so it does not cut too deep.

I reminded her that this was not the first time.

That I had spoken before.

That she had dismissed it because she felt safe.

That she had always been heard.

That she had deemed the misogyny as meaningless trolling or differences in personality.

Nothing to take seriously.

I reminded her that when a man disrespected me in front of her, she defended him.

“He didn’t mean it that way.”

And I let it go.

Because I didn’t want to be the woman who made things difficult.

The woman who could not take a joke.

The woman who made everything a fight.

And now? Now that I was speaking up yet again?

She was the one who was hurt.

That is what gets me.

She had no voice for the men.

But she found it for me.

She had nothing to say about their misogyny.

But the moment I named her silence, she spoke.

There are other women in the group who said nothing.

At least she spoke.

But when she spoke, what did she say?
Who did she speak to?
What did she speak to?

And suddenly, this was no longer about them.

No longer about the man in that group using c**t like a weapon and daring us to flinch.

Now, it was about her feelings.

And just like that, I was apologizing.

Again.

The Burden of Being a Black Woman in This Fight

Silence is never just about gender. It is about power—who holds it, who fears losing it, who stays quiet to keep it. Reilly’s privilege isn’t just in the color of her skin; it’s in her refusal to see, to speak, to stand. And maybe she thinks that silence will keep her safe. Maybe she believes she can watch without consequence. But privilege is fragile. It lasts only as long as you play by its rules. The moment she challenges the bigotry, the moment she keeps naming it for what it is, she will learn what Black women have always known:

Speaking costs.

It costs comfort. It costs belonging. It costs the benefit of the doubt.

As a Black woman, silence for me is a betrayal, but speaking is a risk. A risk of being dismissed. A risk of being labeled angry, difficult, too much. A risk of being told that the real problem is not the violence, not the bigotry, but the fact that I dared to name it.

I have seen this before.

Too many times.

It is the same pattern written over centuries, inked in the pain of Black women.

Where white women’s comfort and discomfort will always weigh more than our suffering.

Where we are asked to be the ones who fight, the ones who scream, the ones who refuse to let injustice sit in the quiet.

And they?

They are the ones who stay pleasant.

The ones who do not disrupt.

The ones who benefit from the battle without ever having to raise a fist.

And when we turn to them, when we ask them to fight alongside us, suddenly we are the problem.

We are too much.

We are angry.

We are the ones who must apologize.

And it cuts.

She benefits both from her silence and my voice.

And it cuts deep.

Reilly is my friend.

I know she cares about me.

That is what makes this hard.

But caring is not the same as standing beside me.

Caring is not the same as speaking when it is inconvenient.

Caring is not the same as choosing justice over comfort.

I can love her and still be furious.

I can love her and still know that when it mattered, she used her voice against me instead of for us.

I can love her and still ask—

Will she sit with this truth, the way I have had to sit with hers?

The Radical Act of Liking Women

Even my fiancé struggled with this.

He once called Studio 5191 a safe space for him. And as a Black man, it was.

Men did not challenge him there.

Men did not question his presence.

Men did not make him prove his worth before he spoke.

And when I left, he stayed. Not because he agreed with what was happening, but because he needed to decide for himself.

He wrestled with it.

Was it possible to fix something from the inside?

Could he make them see what I saw?

Could he investigate without becoming complicit?

And for a while, he thought about trying.

He addressed the admins directly.

He challenged them to deal with the misogynistic language.

But when the admins doubled down and defended the man’s right to use the word c**t as though it was some noble act of free speech, that was the last straw.

Because even in a space where he was safe,

He could not pretend it was safe for me.

And if he had to choose between protecting his comfort and standing with me—

He chose me.

I love Jason because he actually likes women.

Not just me.

Not just the women he desires, the women who fit neatly into his life.

Not just the ones who serve him, flatter him, need him.

He likes women. Plural.

And that should not be radical.

But it is.

The Truth They Don’t Want to Face

They don’t have to like us.

They don’t have to respect us.

They don’t have to see us as fully human.

And still—they need us.

Not just to push them toward growth.

But also to feed their contempt.

Because what is a group like Studio 5191 without women to drag, mock, humiliate?

Who do they bond over if there is no woman to use as a virtual punching bag?

They don’t have to like women.

But without us? They are starving.

And Studio 5191 is proof.

Once, it had 250 members. Now? 86.

And of those? Maybe 7, maybe 10 people actually participate. Now, there are two less.

I was told that I was the reason people didn’t want to speak.

That I was making the space uncomfortable.

That I was too much.

But am I really that powerful?

Or is it that people refuse to engage in a space that’s rotten?

They can call it a debate forum.

They can call it free speech.

They can say that I was the problem.

OR, perhaps there’s a truth more simple:

People saw what I saw.

And they disengaged or walked away, too.

Now, all that’s left are fruit flies and the ones who refuse to smell the decay.

And the men are left to lead, unchallenged by those remaining.

I don’t believe that all men are misogynistic. But I wonder if most believe men should be in charge.

Society does not require men to like women or respect us to lead. They do not have to love us to own us.

A man moves through this world untouched by the weight of his disregard, because another man will always co-sign his indifference—while a woman consents in silence. But once you raise a mirror, flinching at her own reflection, she opts to fight the image, not the truth.

“It’s not my problem,” she shrugs.

“He ain’t talkin’ ‘bout me,” she claims, self-righteous.

“Can’t you take a joke?” she minimizes.

“Ay, Ian in it.” She waves it off. “That’s you!”

Her cowardice—casual, reckless, smug.

And those remaining in Studio 5191?

The men leading do not have to like women.

And they don’t.

The women participating or sitting idly by are rewarded with a sense of belonging for not liking women.

So they don’t.

That is all the reason I need to walk away.