There’s Always a Girl Story: Afrique Doe, Pt. 1

“If the kid at 25, living in Buffalo only knew how good life would get…” Almost every night, after I put Cydney to bed, I sat on the steps of 271 Norfolk Ave, on the east side of Buffalo, looked off at the four lights-ECMC-shown in the visible distance. I raised my gaze above Eerie […]

There’s Always a Girl Story: The French Girls, Pt. 1

“Wouldn’t it be interesting for the story to begin, just meeting and talking in a coffee shop?” Noiéme inquired. It was a little after 1pm and the shop closed at 12:30 for the day. It seemed as if the two of us lingered and let time stand still for a moment before we went our […]

There’s Beauty in the Withering: October 22, 2011

Listen to Podcast version, Read it Because I Wrote It, here. October 22, 2011. A week before, Timile and I said so long to our daughter. Cydney was the first to move from Buffalo to Virginia, Timile a week later, and I the weekend which followed. Before their departure, my mother in-law asked for power […]

It’s Time to Sing a New Song…

“Ayo, quick, give me a topic to write about,” I said to Genevieve at her workplace in Queens. Despite a fortnight of experiences to expound on, I had yet to make my way to the proverbial chair and needed a challenge-or prompt-to coax my thoughts into words onto this very page. Genevieve was quite the […]

Resolving the Great Millennial Debate: The Tupac Rule

My friends and I found ourselves at Katra Lounge on Bowery on a February Friday night in 2013. Our whole collective was out and about, as we celebrated the release of our brothers’ mixtape Till Death, by FCF, hosted by DJ Fatfingaz, who was on the turntables as well. It was also our friend, K-Starr’s […]

My Ode to Self-Care 48: “Rich is Gangsta”

“Last night, I had a dream about you. You were older. You were driving home from work, in a very nice car, to your very nice house. The sun was setting and you were able to look back at everything you’d been through and say to yourself “I made it.’” Timile Brown told me this […]

My Ode to Self-Care 44: “You Make Me Feel”

I listened to gospel music every morning on my commute to Manhattan for work. From the moment I walked out of my car to get on a 5:29am train until around 7am, my soundtrack was a playlist I called Gluten Free Body of Christ. Although I often napped through my 42 minutes on the Long […]

My Fall Rewind: An Ode to Self-Care 41-“Sugar”

This is one of-if not-my favorite essays I have written, ever. By far, the stories with the greatest entertainment value over the past nine years have been the ones I have accrued as a widowed man, back into the dating world. As I have stated earlier in this series, somehow, when I came up with […]

My Fall Rewind: An Ode to Self-Care 32-“Shaolin Style”

Richmond County. The Forgotten Boro. Shaolin: Staten Island…. Often, when one envisions New York City, images which come to mind are Manhattan’s skyscrapers, the icons who have called Brooklyn home, the Unisphere symbolizes Queens as the World’s Borough, and an interlocked NY worn all over the globe signifies the greatest sports franchise: the Bronx Bombers. […]

My Fall Rewind: An Ode to Self-Care-“It’s On Tonight”

Sam Salter’s “It’s On Tonight” reminds me of my first stage in adolescence. It sounds like a Vaughn Harper introduced throughout his quiet storm radio show, while I sat in the passenger’s side of my parents’ cars, as we voyaged from Manhattan to our apartment in Queens on a summer night. I loved these drives […]