Son of the Beach

For those of you ladies out there who ever want to move to LA, don't do it for the men. As I've made annual trips here over the last seven years, I've never met a woman, particularly one of color, who didn't think that this was the dating hell of the Western Hemisphere.

Some of it is understandable. This town is the hub for all of the pretty people in the country, those obsessing with their faces and bodies and smiles because they hope they'll be on display for the masses of folks who flip channels and buy movie tickets. They believe that what's on the outside is all that there is. They believe that keeping it all surface is the only way to save themselves from seeing who they are when they look at themselves in the mirror each morning.

I've listened to my friends tell me these tales of men whose game was on par with things I saw dudes try unsuccessfully in junior high. They admit that they often entertain such advances because they're better than staying at home and watching reruns of Girlfriends. So as we walk through the Venice Canal, my homegirl, the conservative, the Kenyan and me, I am reminded of all the reasons why things are why they are, why in the company of friends we find ourselves saying that the opposite sex ain't shit, why in my past lives I paid the price for the ghosts of assholes who had long since moved on to the next town to terrorize some other poor soul.

As the sun fell towards the sky, I stuck my toes in the Pacific Ocean and gave reverence to the full-bodied lady who will save my life when the times comes. She washed over me like the rising waves off in the distance, reminding me that there is a plan within the depths, a plot beyond our limited comprehension. A millennia ago Native Americans most likely did the same thing en masse on that very spot. Trying to erase them was one of the countless efforts to erase what gives us peace, a twisted act from twisted spirits looking to find sanity in their gold instead of within themselves.

This has been a PSA from the voice that guides me from within. The rest of me trembles in fear at the odds that stand against me. But I shall prevail, in this life or the next. Out.