Thinking of what's has/will become of me......

Thinking of what's become of me, why has this SB/SD lifestyle becomes so natural to me...

Will I ever get out? Do I even want out?

I've been pretty sucessful with this choice of lifestyle thus far, and I'm ready to take it to the next level.

Anxiety takes over me...because I live two lives; one as Dionne Davenport and the other use to be the "real me". Currently, I don't even know who the real me is anymore; I've become so involved with both side of me and have invested so much in both that now I feel stuck because I can't chose between the two. Which one should I be? I just always assumed one side would have taken over the other by now. I just can't fully let either go. Every once in a blue, I find a guy I can see myself married to but I've gotten so used to the stability that the SB lifestyle has given me, so I run back to dionne. Then on days i'm in vegas laying poolside with an overweight, annoying fuck older than my dad (aka Mr. Blackcard) rubbing his balls at every woman that walks by I say FML and go running back to my otherself.

Since age twelve my relationship with this concrete jungle has been bittersweet. As most Caribbean children whose families migrated to New York, my journey began in Brooklyn. However I detest the borough of Brooklyn; my memories of “BK” don’t consist of the boutiques in Brooklyn Heights, the tree lined streets of Fort Green, or the beautiful restaurants and harbor of Sheepshead Bay. Unfortunately, I am also not cool enough to claim the drug infested government housing of Marcy Projects or any of the other death traps most of hip-hop’s great talent such as Jay Z has struggled to rise above.


“My New York” first consisted of East Flatbush. Think of East Flatbush as the port authority for the Caribbean; its residents on a whole were and still are the holier than thou Bajans, curry smelling Trinidadians, iguana eating Guyanese, know it all Haitians and the ever fearless of them all, Jamaicans. I still remember the first place we called home, a 3rd floor condominium in a building belonging to the father of my new, self-absorbed stepfather. Although this home was modern in comparison to the Caribbean, I couldn’t grasp the reason for bars on the 3rd floor windows. Were Spiderman and his marvel buddies to invade us during the night to steal me away? I remember looking out the window of my bedroom one night thinking, wherever Spiderman wanted to take me had to be better than New York.

Soon after, I found the adaptation to life in New York pretty uninteresting. In New York, children suffered from bulling because they didn’t have the right materialistic items such as Jordan sneakers or Jas Sport knapsacks. Parents protested the use of prayer in the public school system. Female students talked about becoming the next big celebrity in order to show off the “rims” they were going to buy with their “paper” for the Cadillac’s that their “man” will give them because he’ll be impressed with the way “they put it on him.” At twelve year s old, I became familiar with words and phrases through my peers, words I never heard come out of a mother’s mouth even on her angriest of days. I assumed being a New Yorker meant being vulgar, materialistic, reckless, rebellious and free to do as you please.

Was this the reason we moved to New York? In my country, uniforms in schools were the only fashions a twelve year old knew; prayer was mandatory in the mornings and before lunch, trades were learned from the elementary level, and you were expected to work in the education, agriculture, medicine or tourism industry in order to become a contributing member of our country. That was just the way it was. I guess my mother wanted me to have the freedom and opportunity to do whatever I wanted, so I did just that from then on and I didn’t want to be a New Yorker. I return to my country of birth at least twice a year just to hold on to my culture and not lose track of what we stood for. At first it was to visit family I missed. Then it became a break I needed from school; now it’s a small apparel import hustle I’ve created while I’m there on vacation. On each visit back to what once was my home; I am perceived more and more as a foreigner.

I sometimes wonder, how come it was so easy for me to become a sugarbabe....why does it come so natural to me. Its as though in rebelling I became a New Yorker, a New York sugarbabe.Taking that initial embrace of its culture a bit too literal, when at the age of twenty-seven I awaken most days at noon, stumbling back into slumber around 4am and have at most 2-3 lonely  46-57yrs men at my beckon call. I don’t even remember conforming. It feels as though it happened over night. Being a New Yorker and living the “New York” way of life eventually lead to my constant state of insatiability and greed, amongst a few other personality disorders I dare not mention that define my very being. Surprisingly, my mother seems rather proud of my nothingness; she even brags of me being so carefree. I now choose to pursue a career that influences the bullies who may degrade that young child in school whose parents may have just moved here and can’t afford to buy her those now material items; Coach shoes and Longchamp bag as yet. To some, I may be the most superficial person they know, but to New York I’m right at home somewhere and this has become my culture, my comfort. I am a New Yorker, and this is “My New York”.