A new tactic.
Mom: The guy I met when I came to visit you.
Me: Guy?
Mom: The cute one. Are you dating him? Or . . . you know?
Me: You've been asking a lot of questions about my romantic life, lately.
Mom: Just tell me!
Me: No, you tell me.
Mom: Tell you what?
Me: Are you sleeping with your personal trainer?
Mom: What?!
Me: Exactly. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
That'll shut her up for awhile -- a whole week, if I'm lucky.
5 twenty-something guys from La Jolla are being charged with the senseless murder of pro surfer Emery Kauanui Jr., and their odds are not looking good. They're known members of a group known as the Bird Rock Bandits, and prosecutors are looking to get them a tougher sentence for being affiliated with a 'gang.'
One defense attorney is arguing otherwise: “They are as much a gang as any fraternity,” quotes the Times.
What, really, are the differences between gangs and fraternities? In my eyes, there are not too many. Both offer loyalty to their members. They're distinct by gender. They offer paraphernalia or some sort of signifier -- such as a color or symbol or hand gesture -- to designate themselves. They distinguish themselves via chapter or title. They force initiations. They are territorial.
Key difference? Fraternities are thought, primarily, to be white. Gangs, by contrast, are thought to be black or 'minority.' We're talking about perception, here; there are obviously minority fraternities and white gangs, but we probably shouldn't consider them to be the perceived norm.
Another difference strikes me. Fraternities are, of course, not assumed to be violent in the way that gangs are assumed to be violent. This is not to say that they aren't violent. (Some initiation rituals would suggest otherwise.) But they are most certainly not thought to make violence their mission, as gangs are. Again, we're speaking of perception and not necessarily truth.
Fraternities, the way I see it, are glorified gangs with better alumni networks. And they are primarily white. 'Gang mentality' is not raced; but gangs, or our understanding of them, are.
It's clear to me that the defense attorney's underlying assertion was that the 5 guys from La Jolla -- or, really, any white guys traveling packs -- couldn't be said to be functioning within a 'gang' because they're mostly, well, white. So of course blacks and other minorities would be, in this construction, violent by implication. (Insert conversation about the black 'other' here.)
I can't help but be bothered.
Harvard is apparently a grim(mer) place when we all have massive amounts of final papers to write and finals to study for.
As such, and as always, it's fairly easy to track the stress levels of my friends via their Gmail chat statuses.
"dejected."
"sad face."
"Harvard, please just give me my degree. I'm begging." (Senior)
"14(pages)/20, 2(papers)/4."
"i can't sleeeeeep again."
"why do I feel like I'm writing my thesis all over again???" (Senior)
"Lord lawd lawd."
"all i want is a pap smear! the american health care system..."
Wait, that last one was out of place. My bad.
Ah. But we can't forget:
"not hung over! somehow . . ."
That would be mine. You wouldn't have expected any less.
Speaks for itself.
Mom: I'm sending you condoms.
Kameron: Okay . . . Why?
Mom: Aren't you having sex?
Kameron: Not at the moment, no.
Mom: Ha ha ha. Smart ass. Do you need condoms?
Kameron: N--
Mom: Wait. Maybe you don't need condoms. Are you a . . . you know.
Kameron: . . . ?
Mom: 'Catcher'?
Kameron: Huh? (beat) Oh. Ew. Mom . . .
Mom: If you were it would change everything.
Kameron: I don't want to talk about this . . .
Mom: But if you weren't, you might not need these condoms that I have, anyway. Not if you take after your father. They're regular-sized.
Kameron: Not hearing this.
Mom: Kameron, haven't you reached a point where you're comfortable talking to your mom about your sex life? Because I have.
Kameron: Clearly.
For the record: No, I haven't.
One of the first things my mom asked me when I came out was whether I was a top or a bottom.
I guess this was the 3-year follow-up, her chance to ask the same question again to see if anything has changed.
It hasn't.
Sometimes, like now, I take the Christina Aguilera 'my body's saying let's go / my heart is saying no' approach to doing my work.
I often opt to follow my heart, resulting in what my friends and I term a 'shitshow,' which is as messy as it sounds. (Common alternatives to this are 'wreck,' 'hot tranny mess,' which I don't say because I'm not a fan of the word 'tranny,' and 'hot mess,' which I probably say too often, because I'm definitely a fan of the word 'mess.')
For this reason, my parents think I'm irresponsible. My mother calls me a 'delinquent' and my father has essentially stopped asking about school entirely. I'm sure they in some way thinking I'm wasting my potential. And my Ivy League degree.
I, of course, disagree. What I've realized over the course of my 3 years (and counting) here is that a) I like to have fun, and b) I'm not really okay with willingly doing things that I dislike if they don't necessarily have to be done. Luckily, I love learning -- I wouldn't be here otherwise -- and so writing papers, reading, researching, etc. are all high on the list of things that I'm excited to devote time to.
But they don't top the list. Being a socially, mentally and emotionally healthy person does. Read: going to parties and seeing my friends often both qualify. Homework has its place, for sure. But I don't want to leave college and feel like my experience wasn't 'college' enough, whatever that means. And whereas as a high schooler I felt like I had so much to prove to those anonymous college admission committees, as a college student, I'm not really convinced that I should feel any such pressure. The 'real world' (again, whatever that means) seems too vast an expanse for me to feel that pressure properly.
Social versatility is a personal quality I value over most others. Finding the balance between being a geek and being social and fun is probably the only thing I've done successfully all year.
My penis doesn't talk to strangers. Nor, for that matter, does it do much -- or any -- talking.
Curious, then, that during a conversation last week, my friend's eyes kept moseying down to my crotch while I talked. Either I was unwittingly throwing my voice so that it seemed like my penis really was doing the talking (not altogether unlikely) or my friend is rude, really horny and almost unforgivably non-discreet.
I can't help but recall the complaints of so many women friends whose breasts apparently gather the mysterious ability to start talking to the horny boys those women are conversing with. As a guy, it never occurred to me that I'd ever have to redirect someone's attention from my sexual presence in order to get them to pay attention to what I'm saying.
Serious food for thought.
Gchat conversation.
Me: It's long story.
Roomie: a bad one?
Me: I'm not sure. the narrative isn't over yet
Me: so it's not worth telling until it is
Roomie: i see
Roomie: when will it be over?
Me: impossible to know.
Roomie: boo.
Roomie: then you start telling the story sooner!
Me: unfortunately, sir, that's not how it works
Roomie: then give a back-of-the-book preview?
Me: It's Kameron's third year at Hogwarts and he's got serious feelings for someone.
Me: Shit has hit the fan.
But hopefully he wins in the end, or at the very least resolves this shit before book 7.
Because, really, who's got that long? I think I'll skip forward to the surprise ending.
Harvard students don't think enough about their privilege.
Whether it's white privilege, which about 60% of the students here have, or male privilege, restricted to about half of the student body, or the socioeconomic privilege, which -- if you recognize that going to Harvard automatically makes us all social bourgeois, whether we like it or not -- that we all have upon leaving, 'privilege' itself is something that runs rampant at Harvard. To be sure, there's an ongoing conversation about privilege here, but many among us -- many of the privileged -- are not tuned into it, perhaps because they're not aware that they should be.
Regardless, somewhere in the primarily white, historically male, socially privileged space of Harvard, the conversation about these forms of privilege is happening.
It occurred to me this weekend, while I was dancing with a guy at a crowded party and didn't have to think twice about doing it, that what I'm not hearing is enough conversation about a potential queer privilege at Harvard.
Such a privilege would refer to a gay Harvard student's ability to be vocally gay at Harvard without risk of serious repercussions and would not be limited to the space of Harvard. Such a privilege would, obviously, not be absolute, as 'safe spaces' are easier to achieve in theory than they are in practice, and as 'safe spaces' are not always all-encompassing, with gay students usually having an advantage over people who adapt other identifications of queerness, like the oft-forgotten T in LGBT.
Nonetheless, if I'm able to walk into a 'not-gay' party and be openly, actively gay without fear of assault or anything worse than maybe a couple moments of awkwardness, I should perhaps consider myself very lucky. Privileged, even.
I think we all should.
A conversation I had with my mom a little while ago.
Mom: So where are you spending spring break?
Kameron: At my friend's place in Harlem.
Mom: That sounds exciting. What's it like? Is it ghetto?
Kameron: Not really . . .
Mom: Is it diverse?
Kameron: A bit.
Mom: White people?
Kameron: Yes.
Mom: That's a change. It's good to see white people and black people living among each other without conflict. MLK would've been proud.
Kameron: I'm not sure gentrification is what he had in mind.
But I could be wrong.
Nowhere, apparently.
. . . But I'm sure that hasn't stopped most of you from trying.
Happy Holiday.
1) Don't.*
* Even if you're black.**
** But especially if you're white.
Pretty simple.
Let's keep in mind that when I use the verb "to say," I'm being fairly literal and referring mostly to the cases in which the person has the most agency over what they're saying.
I'm excluding those instances where you're reading aloud from a book, example, or paraphrasing dialogue from Birth of a Nation, or talking about the word "nigger" as a social concept/construct. Because, hey -- we can be adults about this. It isn't a word we should be afraid of, and part of unpacking the word and dealing with it should be learning how to face it and even, in some cases, if we really have to, say it.
But gratuitous use isn't really acceptable, and it hasn't been for awhile now. Using the word haphazardly isn't going to desensitize me to it. Nor will saying it hundreds of times in my sleep. Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger Nigger. See? -- still offended. By myself, even.
If there isn't an appropriate context or justification for using it, white-girl-in-my-friend's-English-class, you might want to avoid doing so. Even if you're talking about Beloved, as I heard you were, phrases like "And then the niggers did this" are probably not going to win you any friends, and I can't think of any plot point in that novel that really justifies your use of the word to refer to the black people in it.
I don't know you, but what bothers me is that you could have been so many people here, and that so many of those people seem to think that they have the privilege of using the word in the classroom because it's an 'academic context.' Probably misguided; the context is in the use and not only in the surroundings. Remember that.
You're lucky I wasn't in the classroom with you.
Why April 15th passed without a stir.
Dad: So who's doing your taxes this year?
Me: Is that a trick question?
Dad: No.
Me: Oh. I'll mail them to you soon.
Dad: Fine. When are you going to start doing your own taxes?
Me: When you stop being an accountant.
No one gets sick with a doctor in the family.
Last weekend, at a party, a DJ attempted to rescue what was an otherwise lagging playlist from party-death. "Souljaboy Tell 'Em" was his or her secret weapon.
Immediately, a friend, who happened to be black, turned to me and said: "I refuse to dance to this. Only white people dance to this."
But when I looked around . . . not even the white people were really getting into it. Perhaps, 7 months ago, when the song was still "cool," they would've been.
But now -- thank God -- it is no longer fun to Superman ho's, get supersoaked or post YouTube videos of yourself or your children acting a damn fool.
So stop playing it.
Don't even mention it.
The "Souljaboy" is dead.
