A/N: Hey all in HA! realm. I am back with another story for my dear friend Jose as compensation for my tedious picture requests. I know I will forget to do it later on so I am doing it now while I have hardly any homework. Enjoy.
P.S.- This is going to get a bit deep and suggestive. You are warned. This is only part 1 of two parts.Some are connected, others are not. Anyway, ENJOY
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Truth behind lies.
Ten Things Gerald never talks about
Part 1: 5-10
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5)
"Do you say "yo" at the beginning of your sentences?"
"No."
"Do you wear baggy pants and a white T-shirt everyday?"
"No."
"Do you only eat Soul Food?"
"No."
"Do you rap?"
"Sometimes."
"Play ball?"
"All the time."
"Want to go to college?"
"Yes."
"Do you want to be something other than a football player, basketball player, or the next 'LIL WAYNE'?"
"Yes. A doctor if my basketball plan doesn't work out."
"Do you have a tail?"
"No."
"Do you taste like chocolate?"
"No."
"Do you live on welfare?"
"No."
Little Missy Jenkins simply smiled and waved farewell as she skipped away towards the 'Jolly Olly' ice-cream truck that was beginning to pass her by with the cool delicious treats her heart desired. Her emerald green eyes outshone the brightest jewels and her smile seemed to light up the darkest night sky. She was only allowed out at night due to her rare skin cancer of being allergic to the sun, and found comfort in me by talking about things that interested her. However, after every conversation, she always asks me the same questions that her parents told her were true.
Top Ten Things Blacks Do.
6)
"Gerald, mind giving us an example?"
So what, now I am the oracle of all things dealing with African Heritage because I happen to be the only person of color in this class setting of thirty? I suddenly know thousands of years into my past just because this teacher thinks that I know everything there is to know about slavery and Negro Spirituals because of my skin tone? To him, I suddenly walked right out of the shackles that had me confined to the wooden pillars of the overly massive slave boat that had carried me for months on end from my homeland of Africa and came waltzing right in the class to get some education to be like "All da otha lil' chilin'" There are twenty-nine other faces in this room that can give examples of way Slaves were treated back in the 1800's, some of which may know extensive knowledge since half of their ancestors used to own quite a handful of slaves before they gained 'freedom'. Why am I the only one out of a crowd of thirty that has to give an example of how a slave was treated? Why am I the first one to get called on to answer a question during black history month when the issue of discrimination and racism is brought up? None of the other children are called to give examples, so why the hell am I?!
"Gerald?"
"Why me?"
His face dropped and he looked at me with his green eyes in a state of complete confusion and disfigurement. I know what he was thinking. Get the black child to answer a question on the slave trade and try and undermine his intelligence with a counter argument.
"Gerald, I called on you because you haven't answered at all today."
"I just did last class when I had you for Science." I corrected with an infuriated tap of my erasable pen. "Do I look like some kind of oracle?"
"Gerald..."
"Just because I am black does that mean I am the spokesperson for all African-Americans and some how we all came up with the same example on the same concept?"
"Gerald..."
"Do you THINK I can HONESTLY give you an example of how a slave was beaten and whipped because of his skin-tone while the women were raped and then murdered for having white babies?"
"Gerald..."
"I can't! I cannot begin to imagine how that life must have felt; having everything taken from you and then sold like priceless furniture to the highest bidder as if our feelings and family didn't matter!" I paused only to hear intense sound of quiet while feeling scattered stares from all who were around me. I could feel Arnold's glare become directed onto his blank sheets of notebook paper as Helga's followed suit. I heard Stinky and Sid begin to shift their desks away from me to avoid any possible danger that might result from my evident anger. I saw Harold gulp nervously as his fingers twitched. I smelled the fear in Rhonda's heart as she tried to keep her impotent gaze on Mr.Embry and not give into temptation by looking at me. I felt the warm hand of my beloved become pressed down gently on my shoulder as her tender caresses soothed me internally. I saw myself shaking and could feel my blood boil out of anger, my vision becoming hazy to nonexsistant. "So, to answer your question, No, I can't give you an example."
And then the bell rang.
7)
My brother hates that I date a Japanese woman and not a black woman with a degrading name. Phoebe to him is a 'white' girl's name and 'Tamaqua' is a Black girl's name, a name I should be gracing the presence of my lips instead of the name Phoebe. He spoke her name with such malice that it was similar to a snake ejecting something poisonous. It angered me how he could be so hypocritical when, in fact, he dates some Hispanic girl named 'Maria'. She is from Mexico and is an illegal immigrant on top of that, looking for a marriage with my brother as her way to stay legally in the United States of America; and he has the nerve to criticize me. My family sides with him saying I should be more ethnic and stay true to the whole 'Black on Black' love scenario. I didn't ask to fall in love with an Asian beauty, it just happened. If anything, they should blame themselves for having me grow up in a diverse neighborhood. They were the ones that wanted to trade the ghetto on 22nd and Marshall for this cozy little 'utopia'. How is falling in love with an Asian woman my fault?
8)
Her white and peach hued Vera Wang dress was slowly, but steadily, undressing itself from her person as her semi-exposed porcelain skin glistened from the moonlight. My tinted windows of my '89 Chevy Impala was manufactured to ensure that there would be no source of light able to escape in and cause deathly glare, but my beloved's beauty quickly and effectively proved them wrong by outshining even the brightest midnight star. Her open-towed sandals were still left on her dainty feet and she extended a slender leg out to me for immediate removal. I smiled and kissed my way down from her neck, to her shoulders, to her upper thigh, to, finally, her ankle where I lowered my grasp to remove the glass nuisance.
Filled with slender curves that would have made even Kiera Knightly become jealous, Phoebe exposed herself to my hungry gaze with nothing but virgin white lingerie covering her most precious feminine assets from unwanted eyes. I wanted to touch and feel them with my palms as my mouth devoured every inch of peach pigmented skin it could very well taste. Her scent of Marc Jacobs Daisy swarmed my senses in a wave of pure rapture I can't describe as her natural feminine fragrance made certain extensions of me come alive. She was beautiful.
"Do I please you Gerald?"
I gulped and nodded nervously as I settled myself between her thighs. "Yes."
"Do you want me?"
"Yes."
"Do you need me?"
"Yes."
"Do you love me?"
My voice became nothing but a husky murmur as I began to explore the delicately crafted lace upon her panties. I grinned and gave her beautiful eyes back their attention. "Yes."
"Do you feel comfortable doing this knowing your family will hate you for it later?"
It was silent for awhile until I answered. I didn't know what to say to that. Could I be known as the traitor in my family for loving another woman of another race? Could I be deemed as a heartbreaker for hurting the very woman I love due to internal conflict with my ethnicity and identity?
"…Yes." And with her smile, my troubles faded, but the conflict and self-pity I could feel as my family looked down on me with stern glances that held hardly any emotion resided.
I was now officially not black.
9)
"Will you marry me Phoebe Heyerdahl?"
I was down on one knee in front of the graduating class of '2009' presenting the love of my life with the wedding ring I spent my blood, sweat, and tears on. It wasn't one of those fancy rings from the infamous Princess Dianna collection, but it was a nice piece of precious metal that had a pretty price-tag to match. But it didn't matter; Phoebe was worth every penny and then more.
"Gerald…." she gasped and covered her mouth with a manicured hand.
"Please say yes. I know this is sudden, but I need you to be my wife. I cannot live another day without having you next to me."
"But…" her voice went deaf as her crimson blush of discomfiture grew a darker shade of red within a matter of seconds. She placed side-glances between me and her livid looking father down in the front row that held the silent prayer a God to help her decide what she should do. In front of two thousand people, in an auditorium full of our graduating class' family and friends, I was down on one knee presenting a red satin box that held the fate of our relationship within its shadowy grasp. I hoped for the heart-warming 'yes' that would send the largely filled room in a break of harmonious applause and scattered slurs of endearment that would commend best wishes to our future together of utmost bliss. However, due to the previous battle between me and Phoebe's father in "direct ownership", as he calls it, over his daughter; I was quite unsure of her response.
"What about college?"
"We can get married after you've gotten your diplomas and I have made it into the NBA."
"But Gerald…we are still so young and naïve…"
"Please say yes anyway." I flashed a trivial smile and pressed the silver band further within her reach, "I'll be a good husband."
But I got an inaudible 'no' as a response before the light gasps of our ever present audience masked the faint clacking of Phoebe's heels to the polished stage floor as she rushed out the door; the sight of seeing her father nod his head and smile only proving my first thought true. I could never fit into her life.
10)
The words I have longed to hear seem unreal to me.
"Welcome to the family Gerald."
I was hesitant in accepting the oddly spoken welcome coming from Mr.Heyerdahl but I masked my apprehensions with a fake smile and shook than mans stiff hand anyway. This kind gesture in welcoming me, a Black man, into a predominately Japanese family unknown to the man I now call father-in-law. It was this same male that had scolded my beloved wife for accepting the mediocre proposal of a pink and silver Cubic Zirconium wedding band, after a second try from humiliating first defeat, from a reckless "Ghetto Child", to put it lightly and less callous, just a few years prior when I first popped the question. What Mr. Heyerdrahl does not know is that I spent my first months rent on just the ring alone, the price of jewelry- even the cubic zirconium- going up because of America's evident "depression".
"We are so glad to have you in the family."
"It's good to be here, Mr. Heyerdahl." I still held my counterfeit grin and looked the man in his stony cold eyes. "I apologize in advance for Phoebe's absence, but she preferred to have her baby shower at Helga's place to give you and me a chance to have a formal introduction. You can understand right?"
The man grimaced and shook his head lowly with a small yet sadistic round of laughter. "I can. What would I want more than for my daughter's happiness before she gives birth to my first set of twin grandbabies? After all," he abruptly stopped to grab a bottle of traditional Japanese liquor and began to pour the brownish gold liquid in two shot glasses, "my family welcoming in a set of dark ones is a first in our age-old history, and that needs to be drunken to."