Devolution of males because of weak and stupid males in power.
-"Can I have my item back?"
"You gave it to me"
-"No, I didn't. I lent it to you."
"You said you gave it to me." Stares at me, looming over me. His eyes are steady and he does not blink. He sways from left to right and right to left. His hands hang down. He starres at me.
-"I said you can keep it if you'd like, but it was meant out of politeness."
He takes a closer step to me, he looms over me, his eyes squint: you mean to say you've changed your mind?....
I open my mouth because I gasp for air. He looks right through me and not at me. How do I explain to a person who stands in my room and talks to me while I am in the kitchen, that he is disregarding normal boundaries and should not be standing in my room? How can I exlain to a person who exists the bathroom and stands there staring at me for ten minutes straight until I ask him what he want, and who goes into denial about the whole staring at me thing? He stares without blinking, like a mad animal, like an animal stares before jumping for the throat and strangling you. What do I say to an individual who denies having starred thusly, and says he "didn't do no nothing wrong". How do you explain to this individual that to stand and stare behind someone's back at what that person is writing, is impolite at least, and freaky at the most. To put it differently, this staring and this standing is an actual invasion of my privacy.
"No, I did not change my mind" I finally reply, after reflection, with a sigh. "I always wanted it back. You've misinterpreted me."
He straightenes his back and makes a face at me that promises pain. Like a kid, he thinks he can convince me to disbelieve my own words. "But yesterday you said I can have it."
"It's been a month by now and you have not returned to me my goddamn item, why did you not ask me if you coudl keep it for a longer time? Why didn't you?"
He stands straight and starts yelling at me that I have changed my mind and that I lie.
"You are a liar." I say to him. He doesn't like it.
He stops yelling and squints again. "Don't you ever call me that" he says and sharply turns on his heels. He walks with huge steps to the back, to his private room, to retrieve my item. He turns around as he walks and says: don't you ever call me that.
"You are that! You stand and lie straight to my face! You are obnoxious on top of that and intolerable. You have no sense of norm and decency."
He says very loudly, waking up our other roommate, through whose room he has to pass to arrive to his destination: I am warning you, Ms. Zakharov, don't call me a liar. Be careful, Dana. Be carefull.
"I will speak as I please, now give me my thing."
"Be carefull, I am warning you" I continue to hear threats.
He comes out and shoves the curtain into my hands. Just like that. He repeats to me that I should be carefull. I look at him and feel the cold. I also feel his eyes, they are empty, empty of humanity, empty of feeling, empty of being, empty of everything. He looks like a zombie, and not Rob. I say to him: you are threatening me. He says "that's enough, Dana" as if I was a child. Then I remember how my friend was spoken to by her supposed friend, very similar. I recall the story in all details. The friend who spoke was a guy, and she, she was a girl. He was nice until they had a contention. That is, until he did not have to be tested. And then he went full force and all the way. All friendship went to hell when he needed something she had. It wasn't even something significant. When she fought back, naturally, first out of fear, and then out of reaction, and hurt, he got very upset and started to threaten her very similarly. She used to bring me along as a buffer during those times. I got into fights with him a few times. I wanted to protect because any friend who is good and can protect should protect another friend who is good and needs protection. During those times, he hated me so much I thought he would kill both me and my friend.
So, "that's enough, Dana" as he exists down the stairs with his gangly mid-Western walk, turning around to look at my face. He repeats his warning with this strange, quite voice, looking at me deeplym yet somehow, through me. One may be led to believe he is not joking. I loose my temper and yell that he will find his shit thrown out if he continues talking to me so disrespectfully. I close the door. He runs upstairs and opens the door. I am sitting and reading my book, trying to calm down. He stares at me with hatred and threatens again, then he pauses, now he threatens to go to court with me. I say that's just fine.
At least the pretense of liking this beast is now gone. I could not stand the person after the incident at the fence. He was horrible to me, horrendous, obnoxious, crude and although he did help me some then, the complex of inferiority that I grew is slowly reducing only now, months later...I feel a thousand and one times relieved now that I don't have to like the beast.
The beast is revealed.
The beast is yet another male who mocks and humilates a female that was forced to let him in to survive, the rent issue in turn created by the ghostly and beastly patriarchy. And he takes advantage of that need by gaining on her needines and sensitivity, through using all of the tricks of patriarchy to harass the psyche as I've outlined previously.
He is a beast.
He hates himself for being such a looser but who cares for his motivation: in the end, it is the choices that we make that make us or unmake us.
THE SECOND ROOMMATE:
The other one is even weirder. He constantly sexually harasses me. Subtly. The time will come when he will prove himself a friend but nonetheless, one doubts his motivation and one doubts his sanity.
He stares at me too. But with a different twist. The common trait of both is harassment of my person, regardless of the indicated choice to be otherwise treated. He comes out of the bathroom after the shower and tries to loose his towel on his way to his room. I can see his naked torso. He tries to accentuate the smell of his body wash: coincidentally, it is the same as mine. He grabs my cell phone when it rings to give it to me. He puts things I left out where he thinks I would like them. Consequently, I cannot find anything. He stares at me and pretends he was looking elsewhere when I look up to catch him. When I am in my room, he suddenly yells out my name or yells out to me, making me jump off my chair, making my heart race and making me loose my train of thought...My thought is important, I do not want nor need to be associating with him and my work requires me to be in depth, not on the surface. When he washes his own dishes he acts as if he is doing ME a favor. He bangs them and throws them into the sink. He used to take all my three dishes and dirty them, not bothering to wash them after. He does something and checks for my reaction, it is as if he is unable to tell what is right and what is wrong without my reaction. He has no brain of his own. He constantly stands in such a way as to demonstrate his "masculinity" to me. When I get caught off guard, I blush. He often tries to stick his penis in my field of vision. He looks very satisfied. He started to immitate the gait of the other roommate because he thinks I like him... It is pathetic to watch this black guy immitate this mid-Western bozo redneck with a heavy accent. He thinks he is sexy. He contantly puts on black television and waits for my reaction. I was never a racist in my life until I started to get harassed and told why I should at in any way. This is America. Live and let live. Don't live off me.
He does not understand why I hide my cups and dishes now. He thinks I am mean. I am not his mommy nor his servant. I will not clean after him.
The Harlem Renaissance remains exciting, inspiring, and irresistible in the first half of the 21st Century for the same reason that the many people who lived it found it exciting, inspiring, and irresistible in the first half of the 20th Century. De
The Harlem Renaissance remains exciting, inspiring, and irresistible in the first half of the 21st Century for the same reason that the many people who lived it found it exciting, inspiring, and irresistible in the first half of the 20th Century. De
This valuable educational tool for students and teachers not only entertains with engaging stories on the lives and events which comprised the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. It also provides important case studies of diversity, multiculturalism, an
