My Urbane Thoughts and Musings

a) she’s privileged

b) she’s a child

c) she’s white

Her vulnerability as a child is absolutely her power because she cannot be assumed or painted to be malicious or incompetent the way she would be as an adult.

Her whiteness makes her socially palatable because she fits a narrative about self that white people will actually listen to. That’s not a good thing it’s just necessary bc white ppl have the damndest time empathizing with nonwhite ppl.

Her ability to strike and take actions is directly helped by the fact that she’s not responsible for her wellbeing/income, nor anyone else’s.

I want to say this bc I know of so many black and brown people who literally fight with family and friends about recycling and evironmental issues but lack the social security to strike every friday, cannot risk going out on the streets lest they face arrest, etc etc.

So every time I see Greta, I see her as wonderful but the only reason she stands out is because she’s one of the only bodies that can make it through the filter of white supremacy without being attacked or silenced.

And I think thus that in the great scheme of things, this is a perfect plan. Children are disarming. Anyone who attacks a child exposes themselves as inherently malicious.

But please don’t forget why it’s working, and why it didn’t work for so many other people.

Greta can skip school and get ppl to do her favors while her parents see after her care in a way many adults my age absolutely could not and could not have gotten their parents to consent to when we were younger- especially in the states bc ppl here are such propagandized consumers.

It’s coming down to white kids to do activism bc everyone else is too easily beaten, policed and starved. That’s not actually like…great. It’s not that the kids are more willing than the adults and I keep seeing that narrative. I’ve been pushing for environmental awarness in the home, in my offices, in my life, since childhood, for example. And I’ve always HATED the social narrative of ‘the children are our future’ bc a) no one cares about kids usually, especially not nonwhite kids (but as sandy hook shows….not even white kids either) b) ppl say that to pawn activism off on children.

Adults keep getting left off the hook but simultaneously as these narratives keep going I see more and more teens- usually white- saying shit like ‘and the adults don’t care’. Your parent’s don’t care. My parent’s didn’t care.

But I’m an adult now and I’ve been caring since childhood. I know they’re kids and they don’t understand systematic oppression but for those of us that are old enough to do so…

So. No preamble. Here’s the story:

I was raised well, upper-middle class (later middle class because woo economy) by…well I can’t say anymore what my parents did but let’s just say dad had a mercedes, mom had fur coats, and we knew some celebrities.

You’d think that would have set me up for my education, but like I said, woo economy. Some shit happened in America, shit happened in life, and a defining moment of my teenaged understanding of how things were was the time I saw my mother scrounging her in her purse for quarters so she could buy some hot dogs to feed my brother and I. We lived in a nice neighborhood, roomy 3 bedroom house, but shit was falling apart.

Since I was about 9 (when my brother was born, surprise surprise) my parents abused me. My father had abused me before that, I can remember him hitting me to the floor as a child of like 6 because I dropped a crystal bowl (context: they were fucking breakfast bowls it wasn’t like they were so cherished that we kept them put away and I dropped it because I was trying to be helpful and unload the dishwasher), but the abuse increased with the stress of another member of the family. I’m not going to bore you with details because this isn’t about my abuse. Just know that I was hit, gaslighted, screamed at, starved, robbed of privacy, and generally just Extremely Fucked With from 10 onward.

Because of this my grades failed, even though I had a high IQ and was always in gifted classes somehow. So I was definitely not awarded any scholarships on that merit.

Anyway when I turned 18, I ran away with the help of my now-boyfriend.

I had to get a job. I had to get a car. We both did. His parents didn’t and couldn’t help him out with money, they were generally in just as shitty of a situation as he was.

Again, let me truncate this: I couldn’t afford to go to college. No one could help me pay, I didn’t have family, and on top of that my boyfriend did have a scholarship so he kind of had to go to college ASAP to use it. So even if I could have afforded it we wouldn’t have been able to pay rent with both of us schooling at once unless we got lucky with the jobs we could find.

Anyway, I’m charming. I could find jobs. I quickly moved from restaurant to restaurant, going from a shitty little BBQ place to a 5 star restaurant in around a year, and then after that, on recommendation of an adult friend, I started working in a medical office and began springboarding to medical offices with higher and higher pay, even though I didn’t have a degree.

Eventually, though, I wanted to go to college. I found one, went to my bank to discuss a loan… and discovered that my parents had made a phone account in my name and not paid the bill. ‘I’ owed a debt, and my bank said I was thus ineligible for a loan.

I had to take the brunt of the financing from the school myself, and I found out later the school was a shitty overpriced diploma mill. When the education there showed itself to be sub-par, I dropped out.

I was already 30k in debt. (It was a medical degree)

I pushed myself to keep working, making more money, and ended up with no job and GAD.

So here I am, on unemployment, debt needing to get paid, and going to the ER all the time from panic attacks (if you’ve been following me since I got to tumblr, this is how you met me).

This is how I ended up in sex work.

A friend of mine suggested I get into camming. I did it for a little while, found it miserable draining racist unrewarding etc etc etc. A new friend suggested I get into phonesex, and that’s where my money took off. I’ve transformed my angle since then, but by now?

I’m finally making six figures. I can afford to pay off my loans. 

But I want you to understand this:

If my parents hadn’t dicked me over with that debt, I wouldn’t have needed the money so bad afterward, and wouldn’t have been desperate enough to turn to sex work.

If I hadn’t ended up dropping out of school I’d be 60k in debt if not more, with a job that takes up lots more of my time for far less money- or no job in that field at all.

If my history of child abuse hadn’t taught me to lie and to become hyperattuned to the emotions of my abusers, I wouldn’t be able to manipulate and read people so well- which is extremely important to the kind of sex work I do.

For better or worse, the shitty things in my past objectively led to my success today.

I’ve known this for a while, but this pattern gets clearer and clearer. Small and large failures and disappointments alike are swiftly followed up by something better (the larger they are the longer it takes, though). There is a silver lining. When shit doesn’t work out, there’s a reason. Idk if I’ve gotten to a point where I’m a bit more in-tune with ‘The Flow’ or whatever, but that’s the story.

It’s taken me a long time to get into the mindset to write this. I’m not writing this for pity or for people to feel sorry for me. I’m fine to be honest. There are some parts of my identity that I haven’t really thought about until recently and I’m just getting them out into the open and sharing it in the public with hopes that I’ll find other people dealing with it too and hearing about how people resolve these issues might help me come to terms with it myself.

If you are not multiracial or Asian (in part or in whole) please do not comment or reblog. Thanks.

For those that are multi/bi racial and/or Asian, please feel free to share your stories or give me your input.

So I haven’t really thought about my “Asian” identity much until I got on to tumblr. I’ve met various nationalities of people with Asian descent and a lot of people that share Japanese heritage with me. So…it’s become a topic in my life that comes up more and more often and I haven’t really worked out in my head where I fit into all this. What I specifically mean is where I fit in AND ALSO feel comfortable as far as labels, how I see and refer to myself.

For the majority of my life, I’ve identified as being black. I’m comfortable with the term and how I identify with it and how it identifies me. It’s just how it has always been. Given my appearance, I’m often pressed further and I’ll add that I’m ½ Japanese. I’ve always been very specific. “1/2 Japanese.” It’s succinct and factual. I never felt that I was lying. deceiving, or omitting when I refer to myself as black, I just thought that is how the “outside” and society viewed me. Plus it kept things simple. It’s true that I was born and raised in Japan but so were other black people I knew, or white people, Korean people…

My mom is Japanese. Born and raised there she also holds Japanese citizenship and she will until the day she dies. There is no ambiguity as to what my mother is. So when people ask me “What are you?” and I include the Japanese part, it flows naturally without me having mental stuttering. The part that causes me to mentally stutter is the Asian part.

I’ve never connected to that word. I don’t know if I feel like it represents me or that Asian people look at me and are like “Ah, she’s part of us.” I’ll give you an example. I’ve participated in #blackout with no angst whatsoever. I loved it! But I have not yet participated in #afad and I still hesitate to because of my disconnect with the idea of being “Asian” and even connecting to the term. I’d probably find it easier to participate in a Nikkei thing or something specifically for Japanese but I seem to have difficulty bridging that gap to the term and concept of “Asian.”  And yet being Japanese is being Asian and I have no issue with identifying with being part Japanese…Like my brain understands Japan = a country in Asia. But my brain is also like Me = not really an Asian.

I don’t know if I’m even explaining it well or if anyone will understand what I mean. Like, I’ve never out loud said I’m half Asian. When there are things geared toward or centered around Asians, I don’t feel like I should include myself. I don’t think Asians at large think I am or something? Or maybe I feel fraudulent under the Asian banner? I don’t know.

My mom was full Japanese from Japan, born and raised there, never got an American citizenship…just a green card. She was married to my southern BLACK AS FUCK…he really really dark skinned, dad until she died last year.

Folks used to always marvel at her cooking. Whether it be collard greens, chitterlings (she didn’t eat it but made it for my dad and his friends), spaghetti…whatever she made, everyone was like it was the best they have ever tasted in their lives.

My mom finally told me her secret.

She put soy sauce in EVERYTHING. Whatever she cooked, it has soy sauce in it.

You know how we eat fried eggs with soy sauce on it? My american ex bf was just ASTOUNDED at how good soy sauce goes with eggs that he literally started carrying soy sauce with him because Waffle House and Ihop didn’t have soy sauce…

But I think folks with Japanese blood in them already knew this. I’ve had GRITS with soy sauce (only because my mom thought it was rice at first) and it’s the BOMB!!!! Especially with butter too… .buttery shoyu is a THING y’all.

So now I’ve unleashed our secret.

Everyone marvels at how good my spaghetti sauce is… .I’m sure folks gonna go wild over these greens.