Nolan Yuma's Blog

2004

The pink granny curlers in my hair were a ticking time bomb.

I chose the seat directly in the sun to burn the acne from my skin. With a fresh coating of fifty SPF sunscreen, my mom sat in the shade across from me. I was more concerned with the fact that my brother, eight years younger than me, had a deep, bronzed tan that he sported handsomely in contrast to his Thomas the Train t-shirt. Whereas my brother and dad could pass for larger, stretched-out versions of Latinos, my mother and I had a white, mole-prone, freckled organ that rendered useless against the climate but had other obvious advantages.

The four of us raised our glasses and said, “Buen provecho” Bon appétit (or ‘enjoy your meal,’ which to me sounds like something you say before eating ‘freedom fries’).

“These tomatoes are delicious,” my mom said as she sprinkled some Hawaiian black volcanic sea salt on them. She said this in Flemish, our family’s primary language that we mixed with English (for business and pop culture) and the occasional Spanish word (for food and respect at the table).

Himalayan pink salt was for curries, coarse sea salt was for coal-grilled steaks, fine sea salt was for pan-fried steaks, and regular table salt was for children’s science experiments. But the black salt was to be used sparingly and reverentially like one might sip a twenty-one-year-old scotch or perform A2M amid passion-filled romance. And whereas my father, who still smelled of pine, was usually happy to discuss these culinary intricacies, all he answered was:

“Mhm.”

The “Mhm” together with puckered lips and a slight head nod meant “I completely agree” or in a party setting, “Hell yeah, let’s do it.” However, this “Mhm” was unaccompanied by any form of lip-puckering, which meant one thing: leave me be. He needed to get back to chopping a tree into firewood, which he hauled up a slippery, pine-needle-covered hill from down in the forest below our home. The absolute worst thing I could say at that moment was, “What’s the matter?” And so I said:

“What’s the matter?”

It was as though the hormonic demons of pre-adolescence had taken over my tongue to bring hell’s fury into our lovely, peaceful, multiple-salt-bearing home.

“Do I need to say it?” asked my dad, putting his glass of wine down.

“Does it need to happen at the table?” My mother said.

I don’t know what was needed. I was in eleven-years-old in a time where 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Trying album was the only thing cooler than a skateboard. An era where everyone played Tony Hawk, wore D.C. shoes and sported skater caps. In other words, wings were in.

Wings were when a boy’s medium-long hair curled from underneath their caps. I thought, if little wings were cool, then big wings must be super duper cool. So, I put pink granny curlers in my hair at nighttime and came to school with the grandest wings of all. But it didn’t stop there. I needed a hat to fit in, but my version of a hat was a beret.

My father might have accepted the black beret if it weren’t for my hairstyle that didn’t belong to any culture or subculture that ever has or will exist. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye; that was enough to make him quiver before saying:

“This is why I’m always the bad guy. Why can’t you tell him yourself that he needs to stop being so self-obsessed?”

“Can I play with my trains?” My brother asked, which I assume was a four-year-old’s way of saying, “Can I get the fuck out of here?”

In her softest voice, my mother said, “Of course, Yanoku,” (The -Ku was a cute Flemish diminutive).

“First, you made your hair green, then you started putting spikes in your hair like some of those loser punks that listened to the Sex Pistols.”

“What are Sex Pistols?” Yano asked as he climbed out of his chair, likely using the words “Sex” and “Pistols” for the first time in his life.

“Horrible, talentless music. The shit people who thought they were tough listened to. But us sailors would snap those janets like twigs if they came near us with their earrings and chains and pathetic knives they could barely use.” Janet is a Flemish word for fag, but it doesn’t have the same harshness and ignorant rudeness — at least to people who haven’t lived in Belgium since the seventies.

“Just go and play, Yano,” my mother whispered, juxtaposing my father’s loud, passionate voice some might mistake with yelling.

“Then you got earrings, and ever since you got acne, the money started disappearing into your skincare products, and — ”

2009

“… and then you started with the curlers. Fucking curlers. But nope, didn’t stop there. A few years later, you looked like some orange fucking alien with that self-tanning shit you smeared on your face,” my father said in his army-green Jeep Grand Cherokee as we drove home from Rugby practice. I had finally become aware of my superficial and clownishly pathetic endeavours, but since I was sixteen, I wasn’t going to let my father know he was right all these years.

“Orange fucking alien? The kids at school called me a giant Umpa Lumpa.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I’m happy you’re done with that shit. I was mentally preparing for a gay son.

“You thought I was gay?”

“Only a little. I’ve seen the commercials of that disgusting body spray shit you and all your friends wear. It’s clear to me you’re into attracting cheap females with fake breasts and empty heads instead of men. If you want to attract a real woman, be confident in your musk, son.”

“Would you care if I were gay?” I asked as we pulled into the driveway.

“No, I mean, if you or Yano said you were gay, I would need several drinks that night, but to adjust the way I think about your futures. But in the end, it wouldn’t matter. As long as you had someone who loved and respected you.

My dad parked the car, and before getting out, he looked me in the eye and said, “I’d rather you bring home an intelligent, sentient man than one of those pyjama-wearing, thin-lipped lethargic lugs of white women you see at the mall in Vernon. I mean, if I had a choice between one of those and a man that respected himself, I’d choose the man.”

I puckered my lips in agreement.

***

Two years later, my father was sitting in the front row of an amateur fashion runway show wearing faded Wrangler jeans, a plain grey t-shirt, leather sandals and socks. I had already walked on stage in a suit and bowtie that I undid with a quick, lascivious pull right before turning around so that the photographers could snap dozens of dizzying photos I later put on Facebook, hoping it would bring me one step closer to becoming a world-renowned author and actor.

Sure, I read everything from Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat to Aristotle’s Poetics, but reading, attending workshops, bodywork, meditation, and travel meant nothing to the one everlasting truth that every artist needs to be truly fulfilled: A social media following.

In part, that’s what was going through my head when the announcer, with his flamboyant lisp and tendency to overuse words’ sexy’ and ‘delicious,’ announced my name.

This time, I came on stage in kinky netted sleeves attached to a punk-like leather t-shirt with an anarchy symbol and jeans that looked as though they belonged to a man who got his legs chewed off by a tiger. The women’s voices could barely be heard over the gayest pandemonium I have yet to encounter. (By the way, I much prefer the flamboyant rhythmic flare of a gay pandemonium to a large group of straight men who say “Fuck yeah” in their lowest, ‘gruntiest’ voice.)

But where there is cheering, there are raised arms. A mixture of B.O. and cheap and not-so-cheap deodorants wafted through the air. It was safe to say my father was in hell, but all he did when the evening ended, was congratulate me.

What he experienced was tame compared to what he would read in my book Living with the In-Laws several years later. A catwalk was a cakewalk after reading that his 4.0 achieving son was deceived into posing nude in a garage somewhere in a New Jersey ghetto and a year later lay naked on a mahogany dining table with a group of upper-class gays eating sushi off his pubes.

“Are you sure this needs to be in the book?” He asked, already annoyed by the fact I was stretching on the hardwood floor as he drank a beer.

It was Christmas, 2019, and by this point, I gave zero fucks about skincare products, brand-name clothes, and I was no longer getting naked for money. Largely because I now lived in Europe where nudity wasn’t as lucrative unless paid for by tourists and ex-pats. I had also just been unexpectedly dumped by a woman who forced me to quit stripping.

“It’s funny,” I responded as I pushed my chest closer to my legs to stretch my hammies.

“It’s sad. It makes me sick.”

“I used to cry about it, but women seem to like the stories. Being used by men, it’s relatable. And when it happens to a privileged white boy, it’s also funny… which is strange because it’s definitely not funny when it happens to privileged white women,” I said, switching to the other leg.

“Why the fuck did you have to do this superficial, stupid shit for money?” My dad asked, finishing his beer.

“Are you sure you’re not angry because I’m not abiding by traditional gender constructs? Maybe it makes you feel like you failed at turning me into a man?” I asked.

“Gender constructs my ass,” he said. I was looking at the floor now, but I knew he was likely shaking his head. “Use that silly language on some of your university buddies. If a woman did the shit you do, I’d think she is equally fucking stupid. All this gender blah blah. Dumb, attention-seeking man or dumb or dumb attention-seeking woman. Doesn’t make a difference to me. Gender constructs. Fucking hell, what has this world come to.”

Maybe he had a point.

“Anyway, do what you want, but I think there’s more than enough in there to show — what was it?”

“My character arc.”

“Yeah, that. That’s in there. You’re a beautiful, honest man, and you don’t need to scream at the world to look at you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said and got up to go to the bathroom, which is usually an excellent place for self-reflection. However, we were housesitting for my uncle in his four-story duplex in the suburbs of Antwerp. I had known the home since childhood, and so the rickety staircase angled at nearly eighty degrees with steps barely wide enough for toddler’s feet didn’t bother me. Portraits of family members adorned the walls and cupboards together with artwork from around the world, the majority being from Burundi and South Africa. The books had changed from the last time I was there, but the bookshelf’s soul remained the same, always keeping a well-rounded collection in Flemish, French, English, German, and occasionally Farsi. The T.V. was small, and whereas the couches were comfortable enough to study or speak with guests, they didn’t allow the type of posture that invites you in to binge-watch Russian Doll in a day.

Staying in my uncle’s home was much what I imagine living in a museum must be like, constant stimulation of creativity and ideas. However, like many museums, there’s a piece that makes you cringe, mourn, and pray to whatever you need to get through the rest of the day. At my uncle’s house, it’s the downstairs restroom or W.C. (an acronym I didn’t know stood for water closet until I was twenty-eight). It was a closet, a closet with no form of insulation, which allowed the toilet seat to reach temperatures only found in Antarctica. But unlike Antarctica, it’s cramped and doesn’t allow an adult to wipe their ass without pressing their nose against the door in front of them.

My breakup had been finalized, my brother would have to stay in Canada for Christmas, the stock market seemed more unpredictable than usual, my parents dropped hints of divorce, my grandma was entering the early stages of dementia, my aunt was nearing the last months of her life, and the cold, Siberian toilet wasn’t doing us any favours. So it was fair to say emotions were high.

After lifting my ass from the toilet, risking flaps of skin to tear away as they stick to the frozen brim, I went to the fridge (which was surprisingly red and retro) and took out a tub of yogurt. It was thick, but I drank it like a cup of water, and just as I was about to throw it in the bin, my dad yelled, “What are you doing?”

“Oh, I thought this was the recycling.”

“It is the recycling. The recycling I take out every day.”

I knew my father — if he felt the need to point out what he did for you, he’s fucking pissed.

“And thank you for that.”

“And thank you for that,” he said mockingly. “I just bought that yogurt today.”

“Okay.”

“Okay? Is that all you have to say? Okay,” he said, ripping the yogurt can from my hand. “One, two, three! Three spoon fulls.”

“I didn’t mean to waste it,” I said, slowly reaching for the nuts behind me, hoping to find a source of protein I could later eat like a squirrel in my room without him noticing.

“Who the hell eats an entire tub of yogurt in a day? No man needs to eat a whole yogurt tub in a day.”

We had gone over the acceptable amount of yogurt issue before. But this time, there was something different in his voice. Now, I realize it was pain about his dying sister. However, he did seem awfully pressed about the yogurt.

“Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can’t eat. I work out.”

“Yeah, all the fucking time. I can’t go anywhere in this house without you panting or stretching or lifting or jumping like some fucking maniac. And when you’re not working out, you’re writing and wallowing. When do I ever get to see you? Aside from when you’re eating the food I make you every day.”

“I’m fucking hurting. This is how I deal with my pain, and here you are fucking yelling at me for it!”

“You’re not the only one in pain, but you are the only one who is yelling.”

“I’m not yelling,” I yelled. “You know what, this is fucking ridiculous. I’ll go buy some fucking yogurt. Maybe throw on some garlic and cucumber. Would you like that? Would you like some fucking Tzatziki!”

“You know what would make me happy, you taking one day to go to Brussels with your mom and me.”

“I told you, I can, but not until three in the afternoon. I work until then.”

“Then the day is over.”

“If your bedtime is four in the afternoon like some fucking baby. You can be such a child.”

“A child? You know what. Fine,” and after catching his breath, he continued: “You don’t like me. You never liked me.” Tears were now pouring down his face and before I had the chance to tell him I loved him — “We don’t have to be friends. You might be embarrassed about me and hope you’re nothing like me, but I will always be there for you.”

But what if I become you?

***

2021

I really hope I don’t bring home the wrong parents; Nolan wouldn’t be too happy about that. I made a sign with his parents’ names: Luc Janssens and Catalina Thiers, both in black with an outline of golden glitter. It’s my first time ever meeting my boyfriend’s parents, and he’s over a hundred kilometres away. Not his fault. Nolan had to stay home because my car was too small and all their luggage wouldn’t fit.

Oh god, is it my fault that Nolan isn’t here? I mean, I bought the car. And should I speak English or Spanish, at first? I guess I’ll respond in whatever language they use.

Nolan says they’ll love me. I’m not so sure because I always thought there was one type of salt. I also really have to pee. If I’m peeing while they show up, they will think I forgot about them. They’ll call Nolan panicking, and then Nolan will call me panicking, and I’ll be panicking about peeing while everyone is panicking.

I think it’s best I don’t pee, not yet anyway. Why couldn’t they just speak Ukrainian or Russian? Actually, Ukrainian mothers, well, mothers of boys, scare the hell out of me. Fold the laundry like this, cut the potatoes like that.

Okay, okay. I see people walking through with their luggage. Zookaplet, maybe I should have worn deodorant. My sweat smells nervous, I mean nasty because I’m nervous. Nervous sweat, the worst kind. Apparently, Nolan’s parents hate perfumes even more than he does. I also made sure not to wear one of my Three Days Grace t-shirts — they’re not punk, but since their post-seventies, I played it safe.

And what about my blue hair? Will that make them think of the time Nolan —

“Lana!” A voice booms, and before I can say anything, Nolan’s father wraps his arms around me and kisses me on the cheek.

I, for one, feel lucky Nolan is like his father.

Thank you for your support. You can now find my blog at https://nolanyuma.blogspot.com/

Medium’s algorithm suppresses certain voices and conversations. It has turned into an echo chamber, and I will not support that.

He walks into his grade-two classroom with hair spiked liked a punk, earlobes infected from the recent piercings he got at Claire’s, skateboard under his arm, and a lunchbox filled with Brie de Meaux. It’s 1999 in Vernon, British Columbia; the grocery stores don’t carry such foods (they have cheddar cheese and spam.) His mom had just returned from Belgium, their home country, and brought all the delicacies she could risk sneaking back.

“Nice Spitfire skate, girl-lover,” says a boy in a logo-ridden skateboard hoodie. The same boy had recently called him a girl-lover (A harsh insult apparently) after refusing to chant, “Boys rule, girls, drool,” alongside the other boys. Instead, he said, “come on guys, one day we’re gonna marry them.” That caused most of the girls to squirm.

“Yeah, it’s pretty rad. Deck has good pop,” the foreign boy says.

“Come ride in the parking lot with us,” the boy in a logo-ridden skateboard hoodie.

“I thought that wasn’t allowed?”

“Don’t be such a girl.”

It’s lunchtime, and the foreign boy watches the other boys attempt kickflips and pop-shove-its behind the vehicles (most of which are pick-up trucks) to avoid being seen by the supervisors.

“Let’s see some tricks, foreign boy,” says the smallest of the boys.

Foreign boy stands on the skateboard. He’s unaware that he’s goofy (right foot forward) as he copies the other boys. His stance feels awkward, and he instinctively switches his footing. He notices the other boys laughing at him but decides to keep on riding.

“Do an ollie,” shouts the smallest boy.

The foreign boy attempts an ollie, and the skateboard shoots out from under him. He falls flat on his back as the skateboard hits the small boy in the shin.

The kid yelps in pain, falls to the ground and says, “this skateboard is mine now, loser!”

The foreign boy, ignoring his own pain, gets up and offers the boy his hand.

“Ew, you think that I’d touch your foreign hand? You probably eat snails or poo with it.”

The other boys laugh and help their friend. They walk away with the foreign boy’s skateboard.

“You can’t take that from me!”

“Yeah, we can, or we’ll tell the principal that you were skateboarding and hit one of our friends,” says the small boy.

The foreign boy gave up. He had already gotten in trouble with the principal for his self-portrait — he drew himself naked. He thought he’d emulate something similar to Francesco Clemente’s self-portrait, The First, which he had seen in one of his mother’s art books. The principal thought the foreign boy was trying to get attention with inappropriate behaviour; there would be a one-week suspension if anything like that happened again.

The foreign boy will come home crying. His mother and father will do anything in their power to make him feel better. His parents will put on his favourite music — Manu Chau and Bob Marley. He will run upstairs and force himself to listen to the Backstreet Boys. The mother and father won’t understand. The foreign boy will create several imaginary friends. The imaginary friends will make many bets, for instance, telling him that if he runs across a highway, he will be popular one day. He will keep looking up to skateboarders and snowboarders. The boys in his school will grow their hair and have ‘wings’ that come out from under their hats. He will try and adopt this look and put curlers in his hair. The boys will call him a girl. He will contemplate killing himself. He will become one of the best snowboarders in his school. In high school, his peers will praise his fearless attitude. His self-image problems will linger. He will turn orange with self-tanner. His peers will call him an Umpa Lumpa. He will go to the gym. He will get invited to parties and start smoking weed. He will start writing and fall in love with it. He will discover the power women hold over him. He will discover the power he holds over women. He will get on the honour roll. He will graduate with many friends. Vernon’s grocery stores will diversify — the stores will even carry Kombucha. The fact that he has lived in different countries will be considered cool. He will show his friends Manu Chau, and they will become fans. He will attribute much of his success to his fearlessness. At eighteen, he will move to Vancouver to pursue a writing career. He will no longer be considered a foreign boy.

They walk into their grade-three classroom with straightened long hair, nails painted black with a sharpie marker, and wearing a baseball cap tilted downwards. They join their peers sitting in a circle on the floor for show-and-tell. They hunch into a ball, arms wrapped tight around their knees.

A boy brings his hamster adorned in miniature camouflage attire — seemingly cute until the boy tells the class he wants to create an army of para commando hamsters to destroy communists. When the teacher asks the boy if he knows what communists are, the boy replies, “Asian-types that want to destroy our way of life.” The teacher doesn’t see much wrong with the statement. After all, it’s 1998 in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

The corpulent boy sitting next to the hamster-kid pulls out a bag of raw cookie dough from his pocket and tells the class that it’s a special recipe his mom makes. A girl unrolls a poster of Brittney Spears and explains why she’s her idol. Another girl displays her Magic School Bus Book series and tells the class she wants to be a doctor one day. She passes the show-and-tell “speaking ball” to the person next to her, but they don’t answer.

“Take the ball, hun,” says the teacher.

“I didn’t bring anything,” they say under their breath.

“Can you please look at us when you speak? It’s rude not to make eye contact,” says the teacher, western ideals being the only ones she knows. “Is there anything else you might have? You don’t want to receive a zero for today’s show-and-tell participation.”

They stand up and grab their bag. They hesitate, but the awkward silence is unbearable, and so, they pull out a vintage antique doll. Their hair is curly like the dolls, but the doll wears a blue, catholic schoolgirl dress. The doll’s nails are also painted black with a sharpie.

“This is my favourite doll because — ”

“Boys shouldn’t have dolls,” says one of the boys. “Right, teacher?”

“Well, it’s not normal, but anyone can play with what they want.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” says the corpulent boy with a mouth full of cookie dough.

“The doll’s kind of ugly,” says the girl that idolizes Brittany Spears.

They can’t hold back the tears, and the teacher tells the class that we should respect one another and that there is nothing wrong with being unique. The teacher tells her crying student that he can leave and talk to the councillor if he wishes.

They will go home and discover that their mother threw out their doll collection. They will avoid their drunken father. They will play with their younger brother until he tells them to go away when his friends arrive. They will sneak into their father’s capacious alcohol cabinet in eighth grade. The accessible alcohol will help them find a couple of “friends.” Together, they will take the greyhound to Vancouver. They will see boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls. They will become aroused when they look at a naked boy’s body. They will stare at their own penis and feel confused. They will drink more. They will try ecstasy and feel loved. The week in Vancouver will end when their parents finally find them. They will be beaten. They will dress in women’s clothes. They will be beaten again. They will change their hair weekly. They will want boobs. They will rub self-tanner on their body to accentuate their pecs. They won’t get hired for any apparent reason. The family will outlaw them. They will move to Vancouver after graduation. Caitlyn Jenner will dominate the news. For the first time in their lives, they will be celebrated for who they are. They will remain under one percent of the population and demand that language change. They will be free to be who they are.

When he arrives at his friends’ “man den,” he decides that sitting is out of the question. A film student saving up for his masters and a dude that doesn’t leave the couch share a basement suite in a soon-to-be teardown home in East Vancouver. Pizza boxes and Cariboo beer cans adorn the carpeted stained floor. The furniture is a product of well-practiced dumpster diving.

He and the film student hit it off. If it weren’t for his best friend, a semi-pro skier that had a ski movie to make with the film student, he wouldn’t have known that these boys had also left Vernon to advance their careers and/or indulge in big-city debauchery. They talk about the foreign films they had seen at the Vancouver film festival. Once the bong is passed his way, he and the aspiring master’s student talk about the philosophical rhetoric in arthouse flics.

The more everyone drinks, the more they try and one-up one another with their most lascivious stories.

“I had a threesome in a club washroom last night.”

“I paid a hooker with La Senza gift cards the other day.”

“I had a ball-cuzi.”

“What’s a ball-cuzi?”

“It’s like a jacuzzi for your balls. You just flop ’em in a glass of warm milk, and the chick blows bubbles with a straw.”

It doesn’t matter who says what. Everyone is drunk and twenty, a collection of could-be-men, forming a squadron of boys ready to hit the town.

They arrive at the first bar. The professional skier dances on stage with the band playing top-forties cover songs. Bouncers approach, and the professional skier jumps off the stage while performing a backflip and runs away.

The night becomes blurry, and everyone unwittingly splits up. It’s three in the morning, and all that’s open are the after-hour bars. The film student stands in the line for Gorg-a-mesh, the after-hour bar, unsure what he’s there for, but there are people, and that’s all that matters. The writer searches for his best friend but instead sees the film student in the lineup, and they decide to stick together. Everything becomes a blur — smoking indoors, dancing in cages, people having sex in the washroom, people snorting anything, water bottles being passed around — and they end up in a cab on their way to an apartment party with… they can’t remember their names. All that matters is that they had perfect breasts.

The apartment is spacious, and maybe it has a view of the city. It’s hard to know what’s going on. There are half-naked people, and the place seems luxurious. Sexual moaning comes from one bedroom. A woman invites the boys to join the bedroom fun, but they politely refuse. The boys notice everyone drinking a bottle cap full of something — -they’re told it’s GHB. They think they decline it. The people that brought them there ask if they want to leave the party — the boys agree. Are they leaving the building? Are they even walking? They’re floating. They’re definitely floating, and suddenly they’re both laying on a giant bed, naked.

“Do you mind that we’re queens?” They ask as they reveal their symmetrical plastic breasts.

“I don’t think so,” the boys say.

“Try this,” they say.

“What is it?” one of the boys asks.

They tell them something about it being organic and legal. That it only lasts a few minutes and will give you a quick rush and make your blood flow — it’s poppers. The boys inhale and suddenly feel hornier than a teenage boy that just discovered how his penis works. The queens go down on them, and after an unperceived amount of time, one of the queens stands up, and the writer sees their dick. He feels nauseous.

“I’m sorry, but we have to go.”

“I need to finish this, dude!” says the film student. The queen was now lying on their stomach.

The writer thinks he begs his friend to come with him, but who knows if anything he says makes sense. He’s running or stumbling; it’s hard to tell because he can’t feel his body, only his mind, which is racing to get home.

He will get home and see his best friend passed out on the ground. His best friend will get up when he hears him puking in the washroom. He will cry when he tells his friend what happened. His friend will laugh his ass off. They will laugh together. His best friend will say, “you got a little bit raped. Didn’t know that can happen to a dude.” He will get checked for STIs. He will be clean. The film student will seek counselling. The film student will be okay. The writer will go to the University of British Columbia. He will take a humanities class that discusses marginalized groups. Discussions about orientalism, black people, and natives will take up about fifty percent of class time. Queer theory will take up the other fifty percent. He will be told that members of the LGBTQ society are victims of the heteronormative patriarchy. Victims… He will struggle with that class, but he will agree. He will learn that they will be ridiculed, challenged, accepted, or praised for demanding the pronoun that suits their identity. They feel the power of a single word. And he? He will be too embarrassed and ashamed to use the word I.

The Other Ni****s of the World.

Dear Dave Chappelle, the LGBTQ society that gets mad at him and other US-Centric thinkers,

You’re triggered. Some of you won’t even bother reading this and go straight to the hate section, I mean the comment/reply section. Before you get your panties in a twist, know this: I support affirmative action in America. To quote Chris Rock, “You got a four-hundred-year head start, mother fucker.” I am aware that as a cisgender, white, straight, middle-class male, I have to check my privilege. My life has been easier because of the way I was born; that’s unfair, and I need to shut my mouth when marginalized groups need to be heard.

I’ve heard you, but now take the time to get out of your little ‘Merican box. Whether you’re a Dave Chappelle supporter or a social justice warrior, you probably don’t like a white guy using the word nig — I’ll admit, even pronouncing each syllable in my head gives me the chills, and I couldn’t fathom saying it out loud. Yet the word dominates pop culture music; you can’t go to a club without hearing the word several hundred times (and the white man is still profiting off the music and word), so don’t start bitching just cause I don’t use an asterisk to censor myself. The historical weight to the word is significant and props to black people reclaiming it as their own, but if you think that me spelling it out means I’m a racist bigot, you need to recheck your WOKE agenda.

Since Americans feel they can makeup words and change definitions of words, let me be clear in how I’m using the word. Nigger: People whose ancestors were enslaved and are currently not given an equal opportunity based on their race. And by that definition, the word works for *drum roll* Ukrainians.

Dave Chappelle loves to point to examples of how much harder black people have it than everyone else in America, and he does a great job of it because he’s one of the greatest American orators of our time. But fuck, am I ever over him talking about trans people, blacks, and whites like there are only three categories of people worth talking about. Well, he also mentions jews and keeps telling us he gave up fifty million in specials and interviews. We get it, dude. You gave up a lot of money. Now imagine the privilege you’ve got if you can give up fifty million and make it all back after a soul-searching trip to Africa. That’s not just talent; that’s the privilege of being an American.

While LGBTQ members in various countries around Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe need to fight or hide not to get killed, the LGBTQ society in America fights against Dave Chappelle and mislabeled pronouns. If you’ve travelled, you realize that all this pronoun and misgendering nonsense is not a human issue but a made-up English language issue. I know we need to fix the fact that members of the LGBTQ society have higher suicide and unemployment rates, but boy, do you love to complain about pronouns and Dave Chapelle. The man wants a better world; that should be clear if you’re not blinded by hate. Sure, he propagates the neoliberal capitalist agenda with his fancy clothes, buying out theatres with Joe Rogan, and driving around in sports cars, but that’s the American dream, I guess. Now, I’m not going to mention why a small (but very loud and well-published) group of LGBTQ society needs to stop stealing the stage when it comes to human rights. Dave Chappelle has done a pretty good job of that himself — well, in the American context.

To get outside the American bubble, you need to stop seeing and start thinking. On one side, you have black people who can’t help but be seen as because they’re, well, black. On the other side, you have a small percentage of gays and trans people who can’t help but be seen because they, well, love pride floats and the camera. The people you can’t see are Ukrainians. And that’s precisely why they don’t just get pushed down, but overlooked and neglected. They are not only fucked over by the privileged whites like myself, but by black people, gays, and all marginalized groups displayed by the media.

Now, earlier, I mentioned I support affirmative action, and that’s because I believe people whose ancestors have been enslaved, killed, and raped by the hegemonic class deserve additional help. The problem is that the hegemonic class is still the same and instead of changing power structures, all you’ve allowed them to do is make themselves look good. Because what’s the best way to look good? Make sure people of colour and the loud and proud gays get the job or into the school. Where does that leave the white Ukrainians that don’t get oily on floats?

It leaves them working twice as hard as African-Americans or gay Americans to achieve their dreams (now even the free-speech Dave Chappelle supporters are triggered). As Americans, you can travel and get visas quite quickly, you live in the wealthiest country on earth, you’re born speaking the dominant language, your culture penetrates every place on earth, you can say whatever you want about your politicians, and even if you’re black, you’ve got more opportunities than the majority of those in the third world.

“Oh, but it’s different,” you might be saying, “Ukrainians don’t get judged by the way they look.” True (fucked up cops won’t shoot a Ukrainian based on skin colour). But boy, do they get judged by the way they sound, and that goes for many Eastern Europeans (who Americans all throw in the same box). Social justice warriors complain about cisgender people playing trans people, female actors complain about not getting paid as much as male actors, and people of colour complain about not getting enough lead roles, but when have you heard people complain about Eastern European men cast as criminals and Eastern European women cast as sex workers? Definitely not as often, and that’s because it doesn’t trigger Americans.

The next difference you might be thinking about is slavery. Black people went through atrocious slavery trades by the English, Dutch, French, Spanish, Belgians, and when the rest of the white world gained some sense of empathy, the USA kept going. In his new special, Dave Chappelle mentions that some slaves found out they were free months after slavery was abolished. In Ukraine, the same thing happened, but instead of a few months, it was twenty years. And that was after 200 years of slavery. *For more information search “Why Ukrainians Should Support the Black Lives Matter Movement.” Great title, but it should also be the other way around.

Now, I’m not writing any of this to start a competition between who’s the most oppressed because that’s fucking ridiculous. I’m sure there are other groups of people (not just Ukrainians) who’ve gone through similar hell to the oppressed groups in America. I’m writing this so you Americans stop bitching about each other and realize that you’re all on the same team — the team that cheats and steals from other countries, so you can own two cars, waste resources, and live your American dream. You’re also one of the most innovative and creative teams on earth, but this opinion piece isn’t meant to stroke your ego. It’s time for you to stop punching down on each other, so you can look at what’s happening outside your country (and not just when it’s the wars you’ve caused). We’ve got global issues we need to team up for, and America needs to stop holding us back.

Nolan Yuma is the author of Living with the In-Laws.

Yesterday, I wrote an article clearly stating I support affirmative action for all marginalized groups. I mention the horrors of slavery and that we need to fix the fact that LGBTQ members have higher suicide and unemployment rates. However, I use incredibly insensitive language (well, it’s insensitive to Americans and Canadians) to evoke emotion and discussion around the fact that we spend too much time focusing on American issues causing us to neglect issues facing those in the third world (I used the example of Ukraine because it’s closest to my heart at the moment.) I also mention that Dave Chappelle is the greatest American orator, but he needs to stop talking about the same three groups (whites, gays, and blacks) like they’re the only groups worth talking about. I used the word “Nig***” without *** defining it in a way to support my argument. That was enough to make the article “Hate Speech.” The article pissed my best friend off, but he called me to have a discussion. That’s the whole point. To feel, think, and discuss. When the hell are we going to stop being so god-damn sensitive so we can have discussions about the things that matter without beating around the bush? Get uncomfortable, get outside your comfort zone, and think in a way other than people tell you.

For all those that want to learn about Ukraine by reading a politically correct, sensitive, and much more detailed article than the one I wrote, check this out.

Sidhuhttps://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/why-uk...

Excerpt from Living with the In-Laws.

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Extracto de Vivir con los suegros

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Shared Washrooms

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