Profunksticated

Profunksticated, like many of you just finished watching Michelle Obama’s beautifully delivered address to the Democratic National Convention Monday night. Then I damn near teared up seeing the daughters on stage say to their Dad via satellite, “I love you Daddy.”

The scene took me back to when my older daughter and son, now almost 21 and 19, were little. I’ll tell you guys something. They were both born in Denver. The Spouse and I were there for seven years. I wish I were back there tonight.

I’m now thinking, “Game over.”

Peace.

My younger sisters, let’s talk about diamond engagement rings.

Specifically, I’m talking to those of you who expect your man to follow that jewelry industry marketing bunk about spending two months’ salary on a diamond ring so you can show it off to your girls.

Please. Stop it. Now.

No man, at least no man under 30, has any business spending that kind of money on diamonds, society and sentimentality be damned. And if you’re demanding a rock, then maybe he’d do better not marrying your azz, because you’re likely to be a higher-maintenance model than what he can initially – or want to – afford.

Let’s take the example of Profunksticated. When I decided to get married at 26, I was holding down a gig paying about $25,500 a year. That translates to about $2,125 a month. By that warped jewelry industry logic, I should have spent $4,250 on a diamond ring for the woman who I call The Spouse.

Keep in mind I was living here in the always-expensive DMV, so my savings were hovering between squat and squat and a half. I wasn’t exercising the best of judgment – -some of my cash was fueling my personal vices – and that also hurt my bank account.

But I had to show my intended a token of my love for her. I fell back on my old standby: Debt. I obtained a Zale’s card and used the account to charge a $700 quarter-carat ring. I would not do that today.

Even if I did have four grand socked away, I sure as hell wouldn’t have spent it all on jewelry. And The Spouse, I believe, was smart enough to have killed me if I did blow my wad on a rock.

Let’s say your young man is thrifty enough to have saved two months’ salary. There are better things on which he can spend those dollars than a mineral of crystalline carbon.

The money can be a down payment on a house. It can start a college fund for your kids. It can start a retirement account. Maybe it can pay for that vacation.

Still not convinced? Still want your man to buy you a rock? Consider this: The diamond may adorn your finger, but its blood will cover the rest of your hand. Diamond mining has caused untold suffering in sub-Saharan Africa.

And closer to home, here in North America, Canadian diamond mining has drawn legions of truck drivers willing to drive their rigs across 300-mile-long, 28-inch-thick sheets of ice to transport diamonds. Despite engineers’ monitoring of the ice road, rigs and their drivers occasionally go down through ice that cracks beneath their weights, with no hope of being saved.

Diamonds have no value except to appeal to our human sense of vanity.

Let your man get established. Then tell him that you’ll accept a less expensive piece of jewelry later, perhaps on your first, fifth or 10th anniversaries. Whatever he presents you will be no less sentimental and he will appreciate you that much more.

Peace.

There’s been a lot of talk about marriage in the blogosphere of late. Profunksticated is here to give his take on a crucial portion of one of the promises folk make before God when they marry.

To stay with each other in sickness and in health.

The health part, that’s easy. It’s the sickness piece that’s the rub. And I’m not talking about the common cold or the flu, which comes and goes. I speak of chronic illness, the kind that can debilitate people for years and rob them of quality of life.

My landlady’s friend told me about her younger sister, who came down with Lou Gerhig’s disease, which left her muscles unusable. Near the end, all she could do was communicate by moving her eyes. She had the condition for more than four years until she died, which was 10 years ago.

What was really sad about the situation was how her husband reacted: He was flat out angry. He was angry at his spouse, angry at her sisters and angry at the kids. The husband worked while the sisters took care of the sick woman. My landlady’s friend tells me this man is still angry.

That brings me to my brother. You know his wife died this year and shortly afterwards revealed the existence of an infant he had with another woman with whom he carried on a longtime affair. We talked about the situation recently and he admitted that his wife coming down with rheumatoid arthritis so early in their marriage angered him. He said he felt robbed. She wasn’t able to perform her wifely duties, so he looked elsewhere. He didn’t have to look far.

It even happened to me. When The Spouse came down with multiple sclerosis five years ago, I used her diagnosis as a pretext to act out with other women on a few occasions after a few years of being “good.” (This about a year before I confessed my all my cheating over the years, even the stuff that happened before she got sick. I know, there was no excuse for that behavior.) Today I find her attractive in a spiritual sort of way.

We know that women, being the nurturers they are, are more likely to hang in there when their husbands get sick, but men react much differently. Studies have shown that men are much more likely to bail on their sick wives than vice versa. We men are selfish as a mug.

To you men reading this: If you’re contemplating getting married, think long and hard about your intended. Sure, she looks good now, and you can accept that she’ll change physically with age and childbearing.

But what if she gets sick and has little chance of recovery? Let’s throw in a disability – she’s hurt in a car accident and now must use a wheelchair. Can you deal with taking care of her while still holding down the job? Can you deal with spending hundreds of dollars on prescription drugs, doctors and occasional hospital visits?

How are you going to react? Are you going to get angry? Lash out at your spouse for something over which she has no control?

Can you deal with her being physically unable to have sex with you? What will you do then? Hang in there and deal or run to another woman?

My reading of marriage, at least according to Christianity, is that the two of you become one. When one suffers, so does the other. In other words, your azz just might have to go without sex if you’re going to be true to your vows. As Janet said, “That’s the way love goes.”

This is among the many topics you must discuss with your intended before you stand before a minister, your family, friends and God. You say, “I do.” But do you really?

Peace.

Profunksticated admits to having days where he misses working for daily newspapers – experiencing the cacophony of newsroom noise rising as deadline approaches, feeling the rush of seeing one’s byline in print (the part my ego loved), and exhibiting devotion toward the idea that being in journalism is to help make a difference, even if some readers don’t always appreciate what one writes.

Those days are becoming fewer and farther between. Not a day goes by, it seems, that I don’t hear of one more newsroom shedding staff in an effort to cut costs. And the cuts seem to disproportionately hurt minority journalists. You know, last hired, first fired and all that sort of rot. The latest round of such slashings has occurred at the Chicago Tribune.

When I tell folks I was once a reporter, they seem awed and amazed that I once did something they perceive as exciting. One person asked me why I don’t return to what I once loved instead of doing grunt work for Corporate America.

I told her newspapers are struggling. The average newspaper, I explained, derives about 25 percent of its revenue from subscriptions and newsstand sales. The other 75 percent comes from organizations and individuals who pay to advertise their products, services or other messages.

I said a large part of what’s hurting papers is declining readership, driven largely by – lo and behold – the Internet. My older kids, for example, know that Dad put food on the table by writing for newspapers. But do they read newspapers today? Heck no, they get their news online.

But there’s the other part of the newspaper-killing equation — declines in advertising. I drove home my point thusly: “If you want to sell a car or a dining room set, how are you going to advertise? Are you going to pay the local newspaper to run a classified ad or are you going to list it on Craigslist for free?”

At that point, my questioner nodded in understanding and said, “Oh, yeah.”

Being a proposal specialist in Corporate America may not carry the stimulation of writing about police killing a mentally deranged man during a standoff; chronicling the grief of a father whose son died corkscrewing a small plane into a field; or reporting on local officials who voted to site a landfill amid howls of protest from its neighbors.

But as I told Raw Dawg Buffalo in response to a comment, “It payz da billz.”

Peace.

Profunksticated now directs you to a funny-azz post by one The Field Negro about whites becoming a minority in America by the time Pro is 83 years young.

August 15.

This date is of special significance to Profunksticated. It was on this day 27 years ago the Big State Supported School in the South conferred upon my person the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.

To reach that destination required me to travel a long winding road that started with a trip to the Philadelphia International Airport in 1974. You see, it was there that the family and I saw my little sister off on her first plane flight to visit relatives down South. Fascinating me was seeing all those Eastern Airlines (they went defunct in the 1980s) Boeing 727s parked on the concourse. The aircraft bore the words “Whisperjet.”

Which was false advertising. There was nothing quiet about the 727, which sounded like thunder on takeoff. But at the time, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to become an airline pilot.

So I did research. I looked at photos of planes. I gobbled up airline magazine ads. I would look in the sky and instantly identify the make and model of any given jetliner as it passed over our southern Jersey home on approach to Philly.

I learned at the time most commercial pilots learned to fly in the military. So when the Air Force recruiters came to my high school during my sophomore year, I asked how one could become a pilot.

“You have to become an officer.”

“How do you become an officer?”

“You have to have a four-year college degree.”

That settled it. I would go to college. For the first time, I had a real goal. I never viewed myself as college material. I had been drifting along as a disinterested 10th grader who regularly fell asleep in class, drooled on desks and had lousy grades. Now I had a purpose. I was going to buckle down, make up for lost time, get my grades up and get accepted into someone’s college.

And not just any college. It had to be one with an Air Force ROTC detachment, the completion of which would earn me a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force at the same time I receive my degree.

I was accepted to the Big State Supported School in the South. I matriculated in the fall of 1977. I joined the Air Force ROTC detachment. At first the upper class ROTC officers intimidated the crap out of me during those weekly field drills. But I adjusted to ROTC culture and made up my mind I was joining the Air Force when I graduated.

By the middle of my sophomore year, however, I was out. Kicked out. I admitted to using marijuana, and the military doesn’t look kindly upon drug users among their ranks. I was 18 and truly believed I’d get points for honesty. Nope. There’s a back story about how I managed to commit that life-changing blunder. I’ll cover that in a future post. I probably wouldn’t have become a pilot because an Air Force-paid exam showed the sight in my right eye was less than 20/20.

With a military career dashed on the jagged shoals of my naiveté, I had to focus on something else. That something else became journalism, which I also dreamed of doing long before the aviation bug bit.

I did the broadcast track at first, trying radio. But it wasn’t challenging enough. I’d heard the news-editorial track was more difficult, so I went there. It was challenging all right. So challenging that I had to repeat both reporting and copyediting courses. This also meant I had to take a couple of summer sessions to finish out my requirements, hence the August commencement.

I worked for the school newspaper and even got a summer gig with a paper in Florida in 1980, between my junior and senior years. After I received the degree, well, I did newspapers full time, along with drugs and alcohol, for the next 15 or so years.

August 15 marks another anniversary. It was a year ago today that the dude I call Profunksticated launched this blog, this mix of diary, rants, raves, commentary, introspection and old-school black culture. My heartfelt thanks goes out to all of you, commenters and lurkers, who’ve supported this blog and by extension, Profunksticated. May God bless all of you.

What a sad weekend for African-American male entertainers. First Bernie Mac in Chicago passes on Saturday. And today, Sunday, Isaac Hayes dies in Memphis.

Most people know Mr. Hayes best for writing and recording the “The Theme from Shaft.” I first heard Mr. Hayes as a 10-year-old a few years earlier, listening to an LP called The Isaac Hayes Movement, with cuts like “I Stand Accused” and “One Big Unhappy Family.”

In honor of Mr. Hayes’ life, I present some old school in the form of one of my favorite songs, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” written by Clifton Davis, as covered by the late great Isaac Hayes. May you rest in peace in a big vat of Hot Buttered Soul.

Profunksticated’s Spouse called today to tell him the actor-comedian Bernie Mac passed away. I went online and read the story. Turns out he had a lung disease and he died of complications of pnuemonia.

Wow, I thought. Those damn lung diseases. A lung disease is what killed my brother’s wife this year.

As for Bernie Mac, dude was only 50. (For you young-uns, when you’re 48, you’re entitled to refer to someone as “only 50.”)

I marvel at how much Bernie Mac has accomplished from the time I first saw him perform on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam in the early ’90s. He opened by telling the audience, “I ain’t scared of you m—-r-f—–s!” That cracked me up, although I wondered why he opened with such an in-your-face pronouncement

I later read that the DCJ audience would heckle comics they thought sucked, a la Showtime at the Apollo, but the heckling was edited out of the show. That’s why Bernie Mac would take the stage like he did.

With all that Bernie Mac has done in nearly 20 years in the entertainment business, I hope his affairs are in proper order and he doesn’t leave behind a mess like another iconic entertainer, one James Brown.

Mr. Mac’s story leads my to a conversation I had today with my landlady, who constantly exhorts me to work to become an author. “If I had your talent, I know what I’d do!” she says. “If you don’t want the money (royalties), give it to me!”

And at the same time I had today’s Washington Post in front of me, where I saw this article, where it says that at life’s end, people’s biggest regrets are the things they didn’t try. The minister advises us to “set God-sized goals.”

Bernie Mac apparenly set some God-sized goals, even if God didn’t look too kindly on Bernie’s use of profane language in his routines.

With Bernie Mac in my head, my landlady in my ear and the article before my eyes, I do believe God once again is trying to tell me to go for what it is I want. First I’ve got to struggle to get out of my own head and make that move to my heart.

Peace.

The rubber has finally met the road. The ish has hit the fan.

I’ve been sitting on this for six weeks. I texted Hostess about it, and I hinted about it in a comment on A’s blog.

My younger brother, the recent widower, has a baby son by another woman. Yup, old Profunksticated has a half-nephew. Bro told me in late June over the phone while I was in the DMV, in between gigs. I was dumbfounded. He swore me to secrecy.

I can tell you this now because he’s finally told his two sons, 19 and 13, so now the news will travel. The woman, the baby’s mother and a long-time co-worker of my brother’s , came by their house with the child and introduced the little guy to the boys on Tuesday. The 19-year-old, I’m hearing, is quite upset. I don’t know how the 13-year-old took the news.

The kid was born in December, three months before my sis-in-law passed away. My bro says indicated it was an accident, and says he was angry as all get out when he learned the woman was preggers last fall.

I’m not so sure it was an accident. I need to say this: I’m now sorry I made my bro sound like a saint in one of my earlier posts, as the guy who stuck by his sick spouse. (Well, technically he did, but he obviously took some time off).

He’s been dealing with this other woman on the side for a number of years (I’m not gonna say how many), but in the last maybe two-three years, I figured he left her alone because he didn’t talk about her.

When he told me about the baby, I immediately recalled a convo he and I had several years ago in which he told me said woman wanted to have his baby. She promised he wouldn’t have to raise it and that she wouldn’t come after him for child support. Her biological clock was ticking.

I told my bro not to even think such a thing, for the most obvious reason that his wife was alive back then.

Now I’m thinking the woman did it deliberately, but I have no proof, only circumstantial evidence. And by my calculation, the kids conception came a full year before his wife passed on.

Don’t get me wrong, my bro isn’t blameless in all this. He acknowledged he did wrong, but says he cannot change the fact that the kid is here. He said the adults in the family, while sure to be shocked and disappointed, are going to have to deal with it.

What was even more shocking to me is that my bro also indicated he may continue a relationship with this woman, and that she wants to be part of the family. I’m thinking, “Oh my God.”

I told a childhood friend about this today, and he said that he feels for my brother in that he’ll have this cloud hanging over his head. He said men are likely to understand his adultery in the context of his wife having a chronic illness. But women, he said, will look at it completely differently. ” ‘He was out screwing around while his wife was sick,’ ” he said would be the common refrain among women. He said instead of viewing him as the the selfless, devoted husband, they’ll now only see him as just another two-timing n-gga.

My nephew told my wife, and it brought back all kinds of feelings for her, given the admissions I made some years back about my screwing around. I’m now sorry to say that I can’t be sure I don’t have a kid out there. All I can say is that at the very least, no woman has knocked on my door accusing me of being her child’s father. My wife said that as much as she misses our sister-in-law, she’s glad that sis is not here to see this. Sis probably would have killed my bro.

This all said, I still love my bro and will support him. Yes, he’s disappointed me. I feel for the woman, for the holding on to the delusion carrying on a relationship with a married dude is the right thing to do. And I really feel for the baby, the innocent party who may or may not have his father completely in his life.

I can only view this situation as another one of God’s tests of whether humans can forgive.

Profunksticated doesn’t much like telephone calls. I stumbled onto a couple of blog posts, here and here, agreeing with this sentiment. I loved talking on the phone as a teenager and college student. It didn’t matter if they were local or long distance (I used to run up prodigous phone bills in school I couldn’t afford to pay, and many ended up going to my parents, who needless to say weren’t happy).

When myself and the Spouse first met, we talked on the phone for hours. Then when I returned to school, we talked on the phone for even more hours. I would call collect, she’d refuse the call and then call me right back. We’d talk about our lives, past relationships and dirty to one another. Today, I find our phone conversations mostly involve irritating mundane household matters.

The phone became a necessary evil in my newspaper reporting days. I was told the best reporters go out to a scene and see the news for themselves, but deadlines and those stupid edicts requiring weekly story quotas dictated I use the phone. Today, I prefer to communicate via e-mail or text to tell a colleague what I need for a project. I usually will call only if a deadline is approaching and I haven’t heard from this person.

There is a guy in my 12-step fellowship here in the DMV who has glommed on to me and now expects me to talk to him on the phone every day. He even fancies himself my sponsor although I didn’t ask him to sponsor me. Now, you do that sort of thing (talking on the phone daily) to support someone who is completely new to your fellowship and is struggling to get clean and/or sober. But as an experienced member with more than six years clean, I don’t always feel the need to talk to someone one the phone each day. This person seems to believe that because I’m relatively new to the area, he decided I needed a friend when we met at a meeting and he would be it.

One time I tried texting this individual, and he about had a fit. “I like intimate communications,” he said, adding that texting was impersonal. But how personal is it, I wonder, when this person insists on talking to me and two or three other people on the same call? I hate conference calls. The only time I want to be on a conference is at work or if the discussion involves a crucial personal matter.

And I use a cell phone as my primary means of communication here in the DMV. That said, mobiles are frustrating devices on which to hold a conversation, what with the dropped calls, muffled-sounding voices and static.

The only time I would actually enjoy a phone conversation would be with someone who I haven’t seen or talked to in years. Other than that, I’d rather text, e-mail or *ahem* blog.