Read It Because I Wrote It…
Listen to Podcast version, Read it Because I Wrote It, here. October 22, 2011. A week before, Timile and I said so long to our daughter. Cydney was the first to move from Buffalo to Virginia, Timile a week later, and I the weekend which followed. Before their departure, my mother in-law asked for power... Continue Reading →
“Ayo, quick, give me a topic to write about,” I said to Genevieve at her workplace in Queens. Despite a fortnight of experiences to expound on, I had yet to make my way to the proverbial chair and needed a challenge-or prompt-to coax my thoughts into words onto this very page. Genevieve was quite the... Continue Reading →
My friends and I found ourselves at Katra Lounge on Bowery on a February Friday night in 2013. Our whole collective was out and about, as we celebrated the release of our brothers’ mixtape Till Death, by FCF, hosted by DJ Fatfingaz, who was on the turntables as well. It was also our friend, K-Starr’s... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ekyi3E3yToc “Last night, I had a dream about you. You were older. You were driving home from work, in a very nice car, to your very nice house. The sun was setting and you were able to look back at everything you’d been through and say to yourself “I made it.’” Timile Brown told me... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WU0sUHrBxhs I listened to gospel music every morning on my commute to Manhattan for work. From the moment I walked out of my car to get on a 5:29am train until around 7am, my soundtrack was a playlist I called Gluten Free Body of Christ. Although I often napped through my 42 minutes on the... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/VFxRQ7fL0MY This is one of-if not-my favorite essays I have written, ever. By far, the stories with the greatest entertainment value over the past nine years have been the ones I have accrued as a widowed man, back into the dating world. As I have stated earlier in this series, somehow, when I came up... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/j9DaLhd0QCk Richmond County. The Forgotten Boro. Shaolin: Staten Island…. Often, when one envisions New York City, images which come to mind are Manhattan's skyscrapers, the icons who have called Brooklyn home, the Unisphere symbolizes Queens as the World’s Borough, and an interlocked NY worn all over the globe signifies the greatest sports franchise: the Bronx... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nAcptDyFb5c Sam Salter’s “It’s On Tonight” reminds me of my first stage in adolescence. It sounds like a Vaughn Harper introduced throughout his quiet storm radio show, while I sat in the passenger’s side of my parents’ cars, as we voyaged from Manhattan to our apartment in Queens on a summer night. I loved these... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/FDuvoYoNMB4 I said my final goodbye to my grandmother yesterday. About 30 minutes away from the burial site, the alternator in my mother’s car gave out; therefore, my mother, Cydney, and were unable to attend. Before the alternator ceased, we managed to make it to safety, parked, and waited for a tow service at a... Continue Reading →
https://www.youtube.com/embed/cUGXFyevoLo New Year’s Eve, 1997. A few hours before the ball dropped, I sat in my parents’ bedroom to watch my favorite rap group, Bone Thugs -N-Harmony on BET’s Planet Groove. After a performance of “Look Into My Eyez,” Cleveland’s finest sat on the couch with my former wife to be, Rachel Stuart to promote... Continue Reading →
Single Dadventures 