Five

5. I was thinking earlier about the curious practice the British upper classes used to have of wearing powdered wigs. I was in the shower, hungry and filthy, and it occurred to me that it was a tradition that probably had it roots in younger people wanting to appear older so that people might give them the courtesy and respect due an older and wider person. Thus they wouldn’t have to, oh, you know, EARN that respect that comes of having walked a noble path and actually GAIN that wisdom that comes from listening more than speaking, and of speaking with all sorts of people. What a fucking joke.

I am sick and tired of the effrontery practiced to this day by the new landed gentry of my nation.Now they proudly keep their haircuts short, an indication of the deep denial they feel for the mistakes they have made both intentionally and otherwise over the last four hundred years. FDR was a great man, perhaps the last reasonably honest president this nation has had the pleasure of being governed by, but let’s be serious, he wouldn’t have voted for himself if he knew he was in a wheelchair…

There is a phrase that came from the so-called realm of hip-hop, “urban” culture to you fucking lousy racists out there- “Being Real”. “Speaking Real”, “Giving It Real”, practicing “Real Talk”. I was confused about what this meant when I first started to hear this phrase in common usage during my high school years. I often heard it from televised programs from people I had never met in person, and soon thereafter I heard people around me that I had known for a time, and I didn’t know what they meant when they said it. It was probably the case that many of the people at my high school didn’t know what they meant when they said it.

How could anyone not speak Real, I thought, do all of our thoughts and expressions of them not come straight from the heart and mind? What is this “Fiction Section”? I must apologize, the computer I’m speaking to is giving me some formatting issues. Be advised, all lyric sheets are unauthorized by this author.

I was unaware at the time of just how duplicitous people could be. I had no idea, not a clue, of how successful people could operate within the established parameters of our society by lying their polished asses off. I won a thousand-dollar scholarship in the spring of my last year of high school because there was a scholarship fund established to award a grand to the highest-achieving boy and girl of each graduating class, academically speaking. I was the fourth-highest achieving student in my class, based on grade point average; the first three were girls. Thus two people who had actually achieved a greater academic ranking than I received nothing for their efforts simply because they were female. I was unaware of this double-standard until the ceremony where I was awarded the scholarship in front of many of my peers, including the two girls, both of whom I knew well and respected greatly.

The principal of my school said “This award is given to the two students in every graduating class who achieve the highest weighted grade point average.” The audience was not informed of the inequity of the selection process. Both of the girls who were passed over in order to give me the scholarship were going to more expensive colleges in the fall.

Call me the MaleMan, the MailMan, the Millennial Man. I will not stand for it anymore. All humans are equal in the eyes of the non-existent old white man that so many of my fellow Americans worship. Free yourself from the slavery of acceptance of this corrupt way and perhaps your children will live a life of opportunity and boundless joy.