Birthday Blues and The Penis That Will Not Be Banned
Some through fire, some through must, all through the soil
After my last “Sipping Lovely” post about my beloved cousin Anne Marie who died tragically, I was feeling pressure to give the Sipping Lovely community something lighter, happier.
I did what I always do—reach out to the spirits to see what grapes might be picked, to summon some sweet water to blend in with the ink that tastes so bitter these days. Then I saw Bob Marley on the corner of Northwest 2nd Avenue and 20th Terrace in Wynwood. I made an abrupt U-Turn and stood in front of Mr. Marley pressed up against the wall. I stood before him the way folk stand at an altar surrounded by stained glass windows and a nearly naked Jesus hanging from a cross.
What was I expecting to happen? Perhaps, a spliff would just appear in my hand, and he’d whisper “Lively up yuhself, and don’t be no dread.” I was aching for the silver lining, the sign, the drumbeat, the reassurance that this merciless heat was not a metaphor for the merciless heat that has been building in this country of my birth.
Then I heard a familiar sound. My hips responded the way they always do when they hear this sound— up, down, circle. Up, down, circle. Feels like an ancient dance that I never learned but was born with. Up, down, circle. Up, down, circle. Gentle. Easy.
Bam bam, ey, What a bam bam
Bam bam dilla, bam bam
Bam bam dilla, bam bam
'Ey what a bam bam, said what a bam bam
There I was on Second Avenue between 20th Terrace and 21st Street, dancing. Up, down, circle. Up, down, circle. Gentle. Easy. “This is who you are,” I whispered to myself—skin sticky with Miami heat. You’re the woman who dances on the street, ancient rhythms in her hips, ink between legs, grapes hanging from her long, viny fingers.
“This is who you are,” I whispered to myself, eyes closed, trying not to see the emaciated man, big ribs piercing through a thin, torn T-shirt as he crashed through the tourist crowds, heads twisting around painted walls, avoiding the terror of his presence.
I’ve been seeing more of this lately—human beings turned inside out. Costumes discarded. When I was driving with my 12-year-old niece, a tall, dark man approached the car, his pants shredded like they were torn by a knife, his penis dangling like rotting corn. “He’s a person,” I told her as I quickly turned up the window. “He could be a professor, a poet. He’s somebody’s somebody.”
As alarming as it was, it made as much sense as the time. Women, American women, women living in America moving through dark alleys seeking abortion care, teachers hustling on OnlyFans because they can’t live on their salaries (Yes, I’ve thought about it), Miami streets burdened by endless, erupting buildings, cranes dangling from the sky like mammoth AI robots, streets so anxious, the honking car horn has become Miami’s official theme song.
Bam bam, ey, What a bam bam
Bam bam dilla, bam bam
Bam bam dilla, bam bam
'Ey what a bam bam, said what a bam bam
Then there’s Ajike Owens.
Ajike Shantrell Owens.
No sips for you tonight.
No woman, no cry.
Ajike Shantrell Owens.
Ajike Shantrell Owens.
No sips for you tonight.
No woman, no cry.
Just four hours away from Miami, 35-year old Ajike Shantrell Owens was shot through the door by her neighbor in front of her 9-year old son. Ajike had 4 children. “This is not the underground railroad, you slave,” the shooter said to Owen’s son before the confrontation.
No sips for you tonight.
No woman, no cry.
I believe when the spirit is forced from the body, that moment releases something into the atmosphere. That something moves through the air, around the cranes, through the freshly tarred roads, the colorful murals, the plastic-pumped dolphins, the Vietnam War tombstones, the unmarked graves, the steeple-less churches, the soothing AC unit then into the body—shooter and victim, reader and writer, winemaker and wine drinker alike.In those moments, we are more one body than ever before—the accidental collective united by racism’s devastating trauma.
No woman, no cry.
Human activist, theorist, poet, legal scholar, Pauli Murray, describes this something when discussing what it was like growing up in the 1920s:
“I don’t remember lynchings being prominently portrayed in the newspaper, but we would hear about them by word of mouth. Someone got lynched in so-and-so county last night. The awareness of the Ku Klux Klan was always in the background. This awareness to the child of my generation grows with you just like, almost a part of your body and your being.”
Racism is no single person or single group’s story. It is our story. “This is who you are,” I whisper to myself. A writer who writes not what is comfortable and palatable but what stings, what continues to sting, what continues to alarm, what continues to brood under the freshly tarred roads and in the bones of the tall, dark man whose penis burns in the heat for all to see and bear witness.
For what of this life of mangos and maggots, sangiovese and shell casings. We are as far forward as we are backward, as far up as we are down. And if the truth not be delicious, it be shot. It be banned.
What would Pauli Murray say of this time? What bottles do I sip for these birthday blues? The chill of the red, those airy, feathery reds that do not linger but simply pass on through—a momentary dance on the palate—Up, down, circle. Up, down, circle. Gentle. Easy.
Sicilian Winemaker Arianna Occhipinti’s rosso is that kind of wine. Made of 70% Frappato and 30% Nero d’Avola, it offers notes of plums, prunes, rosy perfume lost in a sweaty armpit, and feet crushing violets in the deep red earth. It’s raw, clear, and precise. It’s the kind of wine I would have loved to sip with Pauli Murray who wrote these lines:
“Now you are strong
And we are but grapes aching with ripeness.
Crush us!
Squeeze from us all the brave life
Contained in these full skins…”
From “The Oppressor”