Black Boy, natural hair
Looking back on it,
I started doing the natural hair thing for a myriad of reasons, but there’s really two reasons that rest paramount:
Shit is expensive to get done, and I ain’t got no money.
Alright this is a paragraph.
My boy was a couple years older than me. This was 2013 maybe and I was 17, maybe. We smoked a lot of weed and wanted to eat as many slices of Bacci’s as humanly possible. I didn’t wanna keep splitting that 5 dollar joint from Little Ceasar’s. And we definitely didn’t wanna keep (redacted) to make money.
So he gets a job at Jimmy John’s. I’m telling you I couldn’t afford a turkey sandwich; I was in there eating the day old bread. I ain’t have shit to do since my best friend was working all day. Sidebar: we rode bikes and shit, and he was delivering in Gold Coast, so I’d be nearby. We’d just ride around and smoke, pull up on some bitches, fuck around with the homies until he got a ping. He was a straight up messenger carrier pigeon type motherfucker.
Short story long he recommends me for a job, and I wasn’t 18, so I wasn’t able to deliver. They told me I’d be applying for a register position and that if I wanted to work there I had to “Get rid of those”
I said “what about the lady back there?”
He goes “no, you can have long hair, you just can’t have THOSE”
I honestly don’t remember what happened next but I know I wasn’t working at Jimmy John’s.
Zimmerman was free and Trayvon was dead, and I wasn’t having a motherfucker tell me nothing bout nothing that had nothing to do with NOTHING. Fuck I look like cutting my hair for a nigga named Jimmy John.
I think the way I wore my hair for the next few years was subconsciously protest because I just didn’t agree that I had to alter or edit anything about myself in order to make anyone feel comfortable. I didn’t do shit to my hair. Didn’t even wash it for long periods of time. It would be about 6 years until I got an actual retwist. I don’t think my hair was washed ten times within that span of time. And when I was getting shampooed, that lady said I had some of the cleanest dreads she’d ever seen. Ha.
But on the real I was repulsing bad bitches. I was young and kinda cool though so I still had the art girls
Oh yeah. A couple years before I got that retwist, I had my friend separate the REALLY matted parts with a razor so they would fall and not stick out. I really had that SAMO shit poppin. I went out that night and I kid you not, this woman who curved me a couple nights prior, was like “oh my god! you look so handsome”
I could do a whole dissertation on anti-blackness and desirability politics, but that’s actually not my bag. I think less is more when it comes to my voice. I’m learning that.
But that brings me to my thesis.
“Niggas be acting different when they get they hair done.”