The Art of EVE

“Men are what their mothers made them.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

First I do want to admonish that one of the most important functions in human life are the first stages of parental recognition, between the male-child and mother. She plays a huge part in communication because; she has the overall duty of carrying the continued seed of the father or surrogate donor.

She is the nurturing vassal for 9 months, growing and feeding the fetus, continuing a universal bond that mathematically adds in trinity. The Father, the mother and the child or children, if she’s mad fertile like that. In the bible, Cain was first born because of the forbidden fruit incident that got everyone evicted out of Eden and Eve cursed with the maternal job of child bearing, monthly bleeding, post-partum depression and a host of psychological and physical issues almost like the lore of opening Pandora’s Box. Notice that ‘hope’ and ‘love’ is still a remainder in this crazy world humanity built. Before then, Adam was sterile as a rock at the bottom of the ocean, until he started suffering blue balls and other hormonal dysfunctions like a myriad of mental illness, we today, are still suffering – ego, being the main one. They we’re our first African parents, hypothetically, when there seems to be a huge leap from Darwins’ ape to man theory of evolution to the upright and conscious man of God, Jah, Allah, Ra, Buddha, Anu or whatever deity decided that the joke should have a higher intelligence, than the creatures around him. Still paleontologists have yet to find evidence of the “missing link”. The closest thing is a being called “Alice”, being that she was the oldest found to date.

Cain is also cited as the first to commit fratricide, thus making him a marked man. Now while we do read about the scriptures of Adam and Eve living very long lives, one must question why Eve didn’t stop having kids at that point. Then to, a whole bunch of incest made mankind what it is today: an oxymoronic dysfunction of race. Keep in mind the Tower of Babel’s destruction is the reason we all speak different languages today. Nobody just appeared out of nowhere and said “we’re here, we run this”, now did they? Evolution and migration are the key factors in why we have concurrent cultural and intellectual separation. Hell, we did it to ourselves and nay every religious faction can’t deny it, when they should be called on it for the separation itself. Forgive and forget my left shoe! War and peace is inherent in every living thing on the planet and because of it, scientist call it survival. Earth is a violent planet and somehow we we’re taught a lesson, once. Now the second one is on us and we’re steady pushing it.

With Adams intimacy issues with Eve, she claimed Cain with the help of the Lord, not Adam. This makes him the first drop-out dad in history. Do you think Eve had an issue with that, especially when no one thought to question why she was serving it up like that? Cain had daughters and married one. Where did they come from and from whom? It would liken to the oldest profession in the world, which by way, has a global trillion-dollar price tag on it. Why do you think human trafficking is such a hot issue?

Guilt and shame dowered the crown of this woman and since then, became the fodder of abuse and discrimination to men folk, as objectified victims of a domestic hate crime called marriage, the world over. I had to look up the following definition to be sure, Abel didn’t died in vain of a being a mistake. “It is institutionalizing, by definition, as a social or ritual union or recognized legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws.[1] The definition of marriage varies according to different cultures, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually sexual, are acknowledged. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity. When defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal.” This is where the line “there’s somebody for everybody” does not apply to some of us.

Thus, Adam liked it. Cain liked it and neither of them put a damn ring on it. Not only was Eve cursed for many a millennium but it continued all the way into the end of the ’50’s when women said, enough is enough. Eve was taking her stance behind Gloria Steinem who marched to a different drum of equality and empowerment. That worked well for white women who had inherent privilege, women of color unfortunately were stuck behind the domestication of the Civil Rights movement. During the ’60’s, everyone oppressed under the thumb of the white male index, virtually said screw that, we want ours, now! John F. Kennedy, the UK and Germany – mostly white by population and census – ran with it and made greater advances in that movement, whereas women of color were stymied into rank and file domestication, poor jobs, cultural machismo and an ever-increasing black male stigma.

As a black man, teen, boy or child, those advances of equality came slow and when they were at hand, dropped by the very revolutionaries who would cry foul and do nothing to financially contribute to the cause of his equality. Socio-economic racism was and is still legal as government corruption, yet many are told, you have a chance. At what, begging? There are 3 paradigms involved when it comes to the diluted-free black man. He is either defined as good, bad or dead – his accomplishments still come short of the reparations of social justice, other races have publicly enjoyed without justice being a form of extortion. Therefore, his birth is already decided by the choice of his father and his quest to be greater than the vices society offers as crumbs.

Thus, Eve now gains power in both the household and the work force as the black man, struggles with not only himself but the world he’s trying to protect his family from and all its blind evils. His day as the bread winner, is slowly falling to a dysfunctional end, you think?

[1] Haviland, William A.; Prins, Harald E. L.; McBride, Bunny; Walrath, Dana (2011). Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge (13th ed.). Cengage Learning.ISBN 978-0-495-81178-7. ”A nonethnocentric definition of marriage is a culturally sanctioned union between two or more people that establishes certain rights and obligations between the people, between them and their children, and between them and their in-laws.

When he is at fault just for being a man, he is shunned and turned away, like Cain, marked for life as a failure before he steps into that far away light of success. His can project moments of anger, worry, happiness, peace, and hate, all of which go unaddressed being a product of his environment. His stress factors are not looked at and he must placate self-abuse to deal with not only his life but with those in his immediate circle. He must trust where none is given and fight an inner demon, bigger than Satan himself, when love is denied or never allowed to foster and mature in him the way it should be. Instead this is the bastard-man you find canned in prisons across the country and made to think and act like the only role models available to those who are suspect saggin’ today. He is an image conscious of fact, to believe with eyes open first and ears second before attainable knowledge can manifest itself as a process between good and bad. Opportunity to him is anything that will help him survive and prosper the next day, month or year. Education is the key to opportunity, which if anything south of the Mason Dixon Line, is substandard. The public-school system bars both entry and exit from behind a chained linked fence and security guards. Do you not see this as pragmatic housing in effect?

Ask any child’s parent why this setting is allowed and they’ll pay no mind to the safety precautions, no, it’s just a good enough reason to get the little hellion out of the house before they drive the parent(s) nuts! Talk about passing the buck. There are a few helicopter mom and dads’ out there who beg to differ on systemic separation to further the anxiety on a black child’s life. I call this neurosis in training because it comes from a center of loathing anger, trained fear and the sloppy conditional upbringing of a latch key kid. He’s brave when the house is empty and he talks to himself to keep company.

This has not stopped the growth and need for love, has it? That’s why I’m asking you the question because you know the answer. Most children abandoned by their parents and left to their own devices, become more than just emaciated stories lines for Hollywood exploitation.

They wouldn’t know an original story from these ghettos if you gave them the whole story without some intern hacking it for public desensitization. Hey, just filling in the blanks that at the end of 97% of the films seen, black men die immortally to the tune of a residual check, every month, courteousy of the Screen Actors Guild. Thank you, Blaxploitation.

And with that, let’s roll it back to the 60’s where I and another child, born on the same day, by two different mothers, had a slight run in with identification. She was a girl and I, of course, a boy. 438am in Queens County Hospital, 1962. The revolution was on and crackin’! It was a comedy of errors to forget that I was born, left for 4 days and then bundled up to go home with someone who could very well, not have been my real birth mother. The hospital called for the return of the mix up. Drat. You should’ve left me there, lady. At that age, new born, I wished I had the skills to convey to her that you didn’t love me enough to bring me home the first time.

Were the drugs that strong? Probably because when I got to our little dungeon, dad was there. He had a son. But it wasn’t long before he left, finding mother with my step-brothers future father, was reason enough. I wouldn’t be able to put this together until I was much older and had a reason. She was distant to me ever since and as I grew, she relayed how much resentment she had for me because I (supposedly) looked like my father. Hell, I didn’t know his name till I got in high school and even then, it was by accident. She called him by another name, “Herbert”, and I believed it for 16 years. Cursory to my trust issues with her, I acted out to a point of seeing a psychiatrist once a week, sent to a school for kids with special needs and ridiculed for it the during my childhood. I spent most of my days crying like a baby because I lost to how love was supposed to be. One of the strongest bonds a young boy can have is with respect towards his mother as she is his first love. Without that, where does he go from there?

Who does he look to? How does he grow to respect other women and form positive relationships with women who are worth it and not with those that proclaim that they are when it’s obvious they’re 3 points shallow of inhumane? Talk about pedagogic mommy complex, Joan Crawford had nothing against this shrew of a woman! Though I got my ass beat almost every week, I was taught fear more than anything else and withdrew from even asking her a simple question, fearing the belt, extension cord or whatever she could get her hands on to administer retribution. Just because my father left her, when she was laying up with a white man, I became the “mistake of hate”. Mr. Boston, thank you for ruining my home and thank you Maurice for allowing it to happen with a weak moment, I salute you both. It was no wonder the little bastard was played as the favorite and I, made to look like the village idiot. So much that when the school I attended found that I was self-aware of my own intelligence and made my mother see that it was not necessary to keep me held to a lower standard of academia. She finally placed me in regular school, which pissed my step-brother off. He didn’t like being taken out of “his” favorite school to be sent to the one up the street. You know, the one with more Negro’s than whites? Oh, he let me know then and any denial of fact, remains the reason my clarinet got busted in 3 sections, causing me not to be in band class. Shame. To think that my 2 and 5yr old niece and nephew would have enough strength to do so, was purely done out of jealousy? I loved making music at that time. To be liked as my step brother in music was far too much. That would set up years of competitive conflict and fights until I couldn’t stand either of their company. It was always 2 against 1, and for my crucible, I joined the Marine Corps to put as much distance as I could. On my 1st week of boot camp, we were instructed to write home and tell our loved ones that all is fine and graduation depended on our survival. My letter was much different. Her response was a total lie.

Oh, I don’t forget a damn thing bad or good. I just don’t like it when people try to hide it in front of my face and expect me to put faith in it. Isn’t that the biggest lie within the lie? It would hold true when I got out of the Marine Corp and came home to find that the money I sent for my baby sister, went directly into my mother’s “free money” campaign. Here’s the irony: She was getting welfare off me for being illiterate and I was stupid enough to send money home, thinking my wishes were being met. Of that, when I sent more money home, I had my step-brother send me a crate of music the first time. When I did it again, no music came back. When I stopped sending money home altogether, the reception I got was just as bad if I’d come home from Vietnam, a confirmed baby killer. She had a coldness that was not motherly at all. Especially when she doesn’t have free money, no? So, what did she do? Become the snarky shrew she was when I first left. Damn, nothing changed at all! Even after finding a meager job, it wasn’t enough. After surviving a near death accident in my sister’s car, it wasn’t enough. After starting a new path, it wasn’t enough. It all revolved around money and if I didn’t give it up, I had to get out. Besides, if you’re told, “you should’ve stayed where you were”, that should be hint enough. Even at this forwarding stage of my life, rejection was a constant reminder that postpartum depression can last for decades. To be young, gifted and black sure made a mockery of its meaning, ya’h think?

Should a young man be estranged from his mother, no matter how hard he tries to seek her approval, no matter he knows the fault of being a mistake in her life, no matter if it’s his missing father’s retribution? Apparently, I was born in the wrong family for all the right reasons.

Writing this book helped. Life is froth with challenges, don’t get me wrong but at some time, when is there a space to breath, say like a 10-year grace period between aging menopause and sporadic fits of PMS? When does the oppression of emasculation stop? As love dies; it renews and is born again, right? Am I already dead from this pattern of abuse or only know to seek it because that’s all I was ever shown? As you can see, I was a ball of confusion. Many men of many cultures throughout time, raised in this fashion, have and are still lost therefore.

Only a scant few rise to fame, infamy or power and become captains of industry, rulers of nations; U.S. paid dictators and the like. While many, elusive by a love that offers a false sincerity, sympathetic or otherwise, are haunted by the guilt of populating the world with more inbred bastards.

That’s why we have a government. If we’re to pious to say it was all good before slavery when the family was a centralized unit, it would stand as a lie to the first act of fratricide. Even from a generational stand point, we’re made by the decisions of others who have no remorse for the shame for any future consequences. If you need a hint, look at the current prison population and lack of outrage at the rate our young boys are murdered. It doesn’t matter if someone’s making a buck off the slogan, slanted otherwise.

A black man’s constant fight is to prove he matters in this world, to someone other than himself. We spend too much time pleasing while being teased. Though much has changed from the 60’s, menfolk on the poverty line are still attached to the rhetoric lifestyle of the street mentality or concrete jungle warfare, if you will. We have become less than ourselves as men this way, without valor to stand as true men in the face of love. Our anger is not a factor of strength but of emotional confusion to questions we ourselves can’t answer or are too indignant and complacent to figure out.

Nepotism stems from the fact that only a select few are permitted to over-breed. The rest are condemned, terminal to the responsibility of the irresponsible. It’s a dirty job but if I am my brother’s keeper, then who is there to keep me, when no one wants me, accept me? Selfish? Not really. It’s truly the loneliest existence palatable that defines starvation. Sure, there’s God and Satan, who want your soul to be happy in their plane of existence but why? It’s a choice from the method of prostilitation that you either accept or deny in belief but one thing’s clear; you either live with it or off yourself. Just don’t call the suicide prevention as they have had a habit of placing you on hold. It gets eckish from there. Oh, I’ve tried to O.D. once when I was a kid. Didn’t pan out the way I thought it would. Just got sick absorbing a high concentration of hormone pills my mother was taking. In that desperate cry for help, my mothers’ only concern was if I was going to eat dinner with the rest of the kids that night. I wasn’t sure if love was something other than the entertainment of psychological abuse. One must turn it around and make the good of everything a core value or certain intentions will block what is missing from compassion. As human beings, our emotional capacity has no limits but the abyss is twice deep, remote and misplaced. The only lesser beings that have a greater capacity for unconditional love are the animals we domesticate that show love to other breeds of animals, within proximity. Even at the highest rates of separation, they show more tolerance than we do as a populous on this earth. A god-rotting shame but who notices? My mothers’ shame is solely based on the integrity of her character in which karma dealt an ugly hand.

I was made to think my father was a lout for abandoning me in my need for a father figure. It was through him; I was supposed to know and be educated in the process if not reasons love exists between a man and a woman. Nowadays, your guess is as good as mine, pun intended so send the flack this way, I need the entertainment. My father must’ve been a good man at some point to think he deserved a son. Surely, I could be wrong. From my birth certificate, his last place of employment was a hotel porter in New York. He worked to provide for him and my mother. But the dynamic changed and because there is a link to the abuse I received as a child, transferred unto me. It was the only way my sister could ever document the reasons I acted out. It would mar her intentions on dealing with men altogether. My sister’s father, my step-father, was a gem of a guy. He did everything to please this woman and accept my step-brother and I, as his own. Protected us when the streets of New Jersey, erupted into chaos at Dr. Martin Luther Kings’ assassination. Even a telecast of James Brown in concert, focused us on being black and not ignorant in rage. It wasn’t until he died did two things remain a core memory: 1) She lost a very good man and 2) she’d allowed her selfishness to bring in another child from a married man. And of all things: my step-fathers’ best friend, butt-naked and on top of my mother. That’s was the last time I peeked through a key hole. At least I knew how the new baby got here and why there were no pictures of Foy in the family album. In that sense, the only baby-sitter and educator would become the t.v. It was the only thing I could find as a model of what a man was supposed to be or a facsimile thereof. Then there was the second tier education that dealt with life. Friends, your peers, the people who invite you over for dinner when you’re a latch-key: That second family who had both parents and you’d wish anything to be with them instead of the hell you’re in now. As the saying goes, you can’t choose family but you can choose your friends.

Even still, it looked weird to see both a father and a mother, raising kids. I thought all single black women raised a brood of kids. It looked the same, no matter where I went or to who’s’ household I saw after school. What caused this broken home syndrome? Why is it so hard for people to get along if all they’re fixated on is “getting it on”? Do you know what we saw in this as kids, now adults, struggling with our own issues of fidelity? What sets up the premise for prey and predator in a relationship? Are those sacred vows of matrimony a set up for a bigger failure or hesitant to experience? To answer these, I look at the basic way any black man enters this portal called compatibility and the delusions of sexual conquest. True: love begins with a first hello. This is initiated by the fact that as humans, we have a need to be communal. We need each other to survive this rock and roll show called life. Hoping that we end with our faculties intact of common sense, loved by someone who is not afraid of commitment and those we made family of or have been adopted by. Damn, I said the “c” word and ZOOM! There she goes, right out the front door!

Always the best man but never the groom, right? Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, right? That’s why I’ve been married to my hair for 30 years. I get a better commitment. There is no such thing as a human-factored, perfect love. Look at the course it takes for people to get there and ask, if an arranged marriage doesn’t sound too bad about now. We go for one bed to another in hopes that it either becomes what we want or it stays afoul the game of broken hearts. In compatibility, you virtually need a resume, a good credit score and the appearance of a Ken doll – shallow enough – to have her say, she has a good man. Doesn’t matter what he does, that’s it! To further prove this, I worked as a “compatibility screener” for a match making service called Together, Inc. They would send out survey mailers to possible singles looking to meet their compatible match. In my department, our little crew of telemarketers would read through the bundles of mail each week and call potentials in for a meeting with a real love counselor. Can that be said, “real love”?

Let’s say, out of 100 surveyed women to call on, 85% of them wanted a man in the following criteria: 1) Have a job, 2) Didn’t live with his mother 3) Had a good sense of humor. Not once did we ever run into a list of requirements. When it came to men however, the results were laughable to concept because they wanted what Hollywood showed or what Hustler magazine had from their forum editorials. Let’s trim to 65% who wanted their mom’s incarnation of what a “good woman” was supposed to be. After all, men tend to marry the ones that resemble mom, right? At least in theory but never in the practical sense, like almost mothers, they’re competitive for the love of their son. If there is more than one, it goes to the favorite, always, while the rest eke out a relationship based on what they grew up and saw first-hand. As with all women it boils down to attention and the “that tramps’ not good enough for my son”, critique. I never heard it, so it’s a smorgasbord at the Holiday Inn, table for one please. As men, we are walking disasters in the affairs of the heart. We plow through everything for the best fit and the best bargain because of it. Don’t think so? How many high school sweethearts are there now as opposed to today, still married or love each other after the divorce? Per Brandon-Gaile research; 2% make it past 10 years. 54% are first-timers and everyone else is fodder for base generalities, under 30yrs of age. It’s not that I missed the boat; there was no water to begin with. What this does is open the door for freedom and exploration. The so-called God given right for a man to sow his royal oats, like going to a shoe store and trying out as many pair of Jordans’ when your cash on hand says bargain basement, to the right. This leaves my step-brother a golden opportunity to do whatever he wanted and never be held responsible for the 8 kids out of wedlock. One placed a restraining order on him and he has child support like nobody’s biz. Yet, these are the actions of a man who as a teenager, had exception to the rule because he was, by definition of girls who confided: “cute”. He was the hottie who could talk the panties off a girl from long distance, and we had no cellphones, then. It’s these guys who I used to be jealous of but because of my shyness, I wasn’t as free to explore the nature of the game they played. As he grew older, he just couldn’t stop until he buried one. Latoya was a lost girl, from a lost man, who was taught by a lost woman. The apple didn’t fall from the tree at all. Knowing that we come from separate fathers, his ground work was much easier to prey upon the weak. He had no love but used it as an addiction to conquest. Suffice to say, the mother of Latoya called him out at the funeral and instead of riding in the car with his “old” family, he chose to emasculate himself in front of his new wife and child. A sucker play, no less. He would later divorce out of that family, whereas now, he takes care of another child out of wedlock, miles away from the other 8. Can’t leave the state with that much child support due or they’ll throw you in jail. It’s an ethical revision for debtor’s prison, scarlet letter and all. Again, it starts at home and comes out as a meaningless point of inclusion. The strong survive when they’re groomed as cock-hounds, better than those cursed, to their own devices.

Sure, anyone can deny it out of their households but the things the boy-child experiences as mistreatment go unseen and unheard until there’s a break down, spiritually, mentally and physically. But we can’t get that which was never given to us. We must carry deeper scars, wear our hearts on our sleeves and fight the bigger fight, daily. All so that we’re capable of loving and equally by the one we love. So, if the argument of the man leaving is his “mistake” for a broken home then let it be equally shared by the woman who is left to raise his son, as she sees fit. The outcome is always the same. A rise of another man who will then do the same, one generation at a time, until no names are left to give this king of bastards. For his is the mode of what his mother has made him.

Well played, Eve, well played….