What is So Sexy About GROWN Men?

Last week I went to a book signing for Prodigy's (Mobb Deep) new biography "My Infamous Life". I was glad to go. I was always a Mobb Deep fan and it was a nice Spring evening so why not right?

I wasn't sure I was necessarily as excited about the book as I was just to go to the signing/discussion on a Spring evening in DUMBO with my bf. But after Prodigy answered a few questions about the book and about his life I realized that I was genuinely interested in what I would learn about him reading his autobiography. I was no longer simply riding the momentum of my own 90's hip-hop, nostalgic hype. I was interested in the man he was today. He said a few things that made me nod and smile and urge my bf to hurry up and read it so I can dive in. (God forbid I buy my own copy).

• He talked about the importance of eating right to maintain proper health to manage Sickle Cell Anemia (that basically works for any health condition folks)
• He talked about the absurdity of wearing and rapping about iced-down medallions when the majority of his fans are struggling
• He talked about identifying the things in his life that made him angry, hurt and confused as a teenager
• He talked about his relationship with his father
• He touched on the difficulty of being married while navigating the hip hop industry and living with friends who were not in committed relationships
• He touched on how he explained to his children why he was going to jail

To put it short. He was grown up. Still tiny in stature, but grown. And grown is sexy. That's not to say Prodigy is sexy to me but witnessing growth and maturity is sexy in any man. It's good to know it's there. It's reassuring to me as a woman. It's a refreshing contradiction to the image the general public conjures when they here "black man", "rapper" or "ex-con". I'm attracted to people with dimensions and layers. People who inevitably offer you more than what you can see or infer from the outside. (FYI, on the outside Prodigy had on a fitted button-up pale blue shirt, dark colored jeans, black hard bottom shoes and a black leather Kangol style hat). I'm attracted to what he has to say in this autobiograpy. I'll let y'all know how it is.
Ain't no such things as half-way crooks.. or half-way men. 

Resilience

I asked how she was doing

she said she’ll handle it

It’s her version of my “Maintainin’”

I know exactly what it means

I’ve seen her handle it before

It looks effortless

Maybe that’s the problem

Maybe that’s why no one seems to be worried

She can always convince me not to be… almost

My maintaining is not as graceful as her handling

So whenever I can, I take notes

It’s not something a person can learn

It just is

My notes are more for inspiration

Not an actual attempt to learn how to handle the way she handles

Impossible!

Her handle is something you have to be born with

It’s raw talent

Honed and polished by life, love and hurt.. but not necessarily in that order

So I maintain

Resilience

noun

1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

What’s better uncertainty or certain doom?

I ask because as people both male and female approach 30, their early thirties and their mid-thirties it seems in some way many of us start to do things so that we will have some certainty about our future. We don’t want it to be “too late” for whatever we think we are running out of time to do. So people tend to lock down mates, careers, homes, exercise routines, nutrition plans and everything at a rapidly increasing rate due to the proverbial pressure. And most times these are well thought out decisions. Then there are the other times.

It made me wonder if some people would just rather be certain than uncertain. Regardless of what or who we signed up for whether it be an expensive gym membership that we won’t really use or spouses and potential kids that we don’t really want. Even if that certainty is that you will probably certainly be displeased. And the joke is that there is no real such thing as certainty. You can be certain you will have a home but you can’t be certain that the town you choose with the awesome school districts and close proximity to public transportation won’t be swallowed up by a ginourmous earthquake/tsunami tag team. You can be certain you have a career plan but you can’t be certain your field won’t be eliminated due to technological innovation like the people who used to own video stores or actually repair TVs and VCRs. You can be certain you got married but you can’t be certain that your spouse won’t join a cult that will lure him/her away from you and alter their current values and beliefs and then you are just living with a stranger who drinks all kinds of Kool Aid and stops eating chicken. Obviously I’m slightly exaggerating but I think you get my point. Implied certainty at what cost? Obviously no one can predict the future. But I guess we should try to make some educated hypothesis. They may not be too far off and maybe we can avoid some of the unpleasant surprises.

Either way our not so certain certainties come back to bite us, right on the ass while our pants are down and we aren’t looking because we were texting or planning our awesomely clear and certain futures.

Think Mean Thoughts

Recently I was watching a rerun of “The Sopranos”. It was the episode where Tony finds out his mother has passed away and he ends up confessing to his therapist that he not only felt relief that she was dead, but that he had wished that she would die. And he went on about how that makes him a horrible son. But if you have watched the Sopranos at all you know that Mama Soprano was no saint and I actually could understand why Tony would just want her out of his life for good. (She actually wished herself dead a lot too. “I wish the lord would take me now.”)

It reminded me of a conversation I was having with a friend where I wished some misfortune on someone and just couldn’t be bothered feeling bad about it. Maybe some of us do this kind of thing all the time but I have always been a “live and let live”, “the best revenge is living well” kind of person. But after an exercise of thinking about some of the people that have wronged me or just irritate me and thinking of all the negative things I could wish for them I realized I felt better. I did it with a friend, it was funny, it made me laugh and I felt lighter after just spewing the meanness that I never really allowed myself to think about. And after that I still know that I’m the same “live and let live”, “the best revenge is living well” kind of person. I am now concluding that wishing negative things for people you don’t like can be personally rewarding from time to time. Go ahead and try it. Does wishing bad on someone else mean bad things will happen to you? Does wishing well for others bring you lots of good things? I call bullshit. What proof do we have of any of this?

Back in the day Camron had a song called “Hate Music” that might help get you started. Some of the lyrics are

“I hope your girl get AIDS, your brother crash and dash Or your mother die, and your sister is a topless dancer No answer, glaucoma, and your pops got cancer”

 Oooph! That’s rough! You might wanna start a little lighter than that if you are new to this.