bedazzled my life brick-by-brick.
Hood culture taught me how to set myself free from societal norms and lean more into curating my norms. I built this life brick-by-brick baby.
For as long as I can remember there’s always been only one love story that fit into the identity I have for myself. I knew I would recognize the energy when I experienced it but the chase was always after what I thought it would look like.
I’ve had a type my whole life, the more street, the more hood the person was the more my neck was breaking to see if they were checking for me too. Most of the time they were, I’m the good girl they love to turn out. I can jokingly say it now because my wife has that hood nigga effect, she swept me off my feet while turning me completely out.
Not too much on my wife, but the way she came into my life and stood on business is what allowed me to recognize that what I desired was possible the whole time and the men that I encountered along the way were experiences to prepare me for life with her better.
When Gucci Mane raps that line in his song, Truck Loaded, I promise you every time I smile and do my little dance because he is not wrong. I’m most definitely the girl that had a thing for the street niggas and the more dangerous the better. I associated hood niggas with the lyrics in damn near any rap song and if he had my attention, I was on a mission to be his Bonnie.
As a Black girl raised by a family that is the product of the hood, how could I ever date a square? My body is shaped in the way rappers glorify, pretty face slim waist big booty, so naturally I was expecting designer bags, shopping sprees, and quite frankly to be the Plug’s wife. That was the love life I envisioned for myself, to be spoiled, protected, cared for, and treated like a prized possession.
I used to have a toxic relationship with hood culture, so much that I once settled for never being married just to be in a relationship with a street nigga. It is crazy when I think about how my unworthiness kept me from having the life I am so blessed to have now, and I am so grateful that I got my dream life partner.
My wife works at a cannabis dispensary and spoils me rotten. She’s an Army Veteran, so the protective energy is unmatched, and our passionate love for each other proves that we signed up to do life together in this lifetime.
I always imagined the type of love to make me wanna tattoo their name.
A quick story about what I desired was exactly what I got in a life partner, it just turned out to be a woman. This song by Tink called Fuck Around highlights what this feeling of love was for me.
“I got a nigga that comes from the streets…I want to give you the title.”
The first time I met my wife was at a radio station I was managing, she was so damn fine and she had hood nigga energy written all over her. I was in love at first sight and started plotting on her, but little did I know she was plotting on me too. The plot was easy I started managing her best friend who was an independent music artist, I already had artists I worked with so his brand fit the profile. It was like this woman was put in the right place at the right time for me. My wife and I have this saying we tell each other, we ride this thing until the wheels fall off like four flats on a Cadillac.
I remember looking at her our first night together after becoming official as she told me she was going to marry me thinking I’m about to give you the title right now girl, I’m a lesbian now.
She was divinely sent to me but I had to be prepped to receive her. The Universe needed me to break some of my stereotypes of what a life partner looked like physically before I could fully accept her as my partner.
Before she and I admitted to each other that we wanted to explore a relationship further than our established friendship, I told this guy he was about to lose me to a woman, but at this time I had no clue it would be her I just knew I was done pretending with men.
He didn’t believe me and at my Hood Therapy event the following day he playfully pulled my hair but directed me to Lexi thinking he was being funny. I asked her in front of the crowd if she pulled my hair, and she walked right up to me, looked me in my eyes, reached for a handful of my long curly locs, pulled on them tilting back my head then asked “Do you like it when I pull your hair?”
The crowd gasped. Babygirl’s a woman of few words so to see her have me buckle at the knees; it was clear that there was some built-up tension between us that we’d been denying.
She had me ready to risk it all at my event and since that day we’ve been locked in. We joke about how that man is SICK when he thinks about how he handed me to her thinking he was the only one hood enough to get me horny the way Gucci mentioned in the song.
My experience with the bad boys from my city honestly opened me up to my authenticity and that’s why I will always have a special love for hood culture. But my lesbian marriage has been the key that unlocked my full potential, my authenticity has reached new heightens. Hood culture has this unapologetic freedom of expression and reaks of confidence. It’s so attractive to me since I was a kid. To see a Black person from the hood in public makes me smile, seeing them living their life purposefully NOT fitting into society but forcing society to adjust around them.
That energy caught my attention, and I’ve been intentional about unlocking my own by accepting my authentic hood lesbian energy, which is a whole new level. Brick-by-brick, I have been curating my identity and life based on what feels good to me: my fulfillment, my contentment, my happiness, and my freedom.
“Hoe you must not know what you just started…”
This piece was inspired as I started to heal through my emotional blockages when it came to my heartache from Black people. I know it’s so crazy to say out loud, but it’s true: my people hurt me the worst until I learned to accept our culture and the people where we are. Fake friends turn enemies only because the conversations go unaddressed, but sometimes that is the battle selected.
said, ‘Nice is fake,’ that statement sent me down a rabbit hole of times I showed up as fake trying to be nice.And that’s why I have so much of this heartache.
Every heartache I have faced reflected a hard reality I had to accept. People only hurt you when you give them the access to do so, lesson now is to limit the access. Hood culture teaches you how to restrict a person’s access to you, and hood niggas helped me master this skill.
Maybe this is where the mindset of “get them before they get me” is rooted as I flashback to my 31st birthday spent at a shooting range and the guy I was with saying this as he straightened my shooting position. At the time, I was dating a plug and turned on by his pew-pew collection, so for my birthday, he knew taking me to shoot one would be a dream come true for my little square-ass. All the hood shit was a dream come true; I wanted to experience it all. I signed that line to play the role for the perfect Bonnie & Cylde fantasy any hood nigga had.
Growing up almost all of my relationships with a Black male from the streets involved me signing that line and I was cool with it. It was my get-out-of-jail-free card in my eyes. No wonder my adult life has been dedicated to my freedom, I’ve known all my life that the person I was groomed to show up as would keep me from becoming the woman I was meant to be. I’ve always known there was a greater purpose in my life, but the person I used to be was never capable of stepping into that role.
Never capable, in the sense that I was too much of a doormat to people to be a leader. In adulthood, I’ve always carried leadership positions in my career but faced hard lessons about boundaries with people walking over me. I realized that I’ve always peeped it, but I lived my life picking my battles. I read the instructions to play the game Life before coming to Earth; the playbook is downloaded. My gift of awareness allows me to build this life brick-by-brick, but sometimes, the destruction is so massive the mess is overwhelming.
Brick-by-brick I built this life.
Everybody on this app has something to say and depending on where you are in life you may or may not resonate with the statement. For me, what I say is law because it’s what governs my life what you do in yours is none of my concern, and a hood nigga taught me that.
Each ‘hood nigga experience’ from my past served a purpose, a lesson, a brick to my foundation. I remember as young as fifth grade having a crush on the worse-behaved Black boy in class, and while we were the “it couple” I was the target of Black girl drama. This trend continued in middle school, high school, then ex-girlfriends, or previous children’s mothers. Bad boys kept me in some shit, my life was always filled with chaos and “excitement” I used to think.
The lifestyle was unapologetic and adventurous, just like my life is now. Maybe not as unhinged but way more unapologetic. Back then I apologized often for my selfish ways like boundaries, now I don’t view my self-worth as a selfish mindset.
Lately, this app has felt less like a safe space and more like a judgment zone; the feeling has triggered a lot, and this creative article gave me the safe space I needed to navigate this particular trigger. I have the birthright to curate my life the way I choose. The decisions I make in my life are based on what feels good to me if I share my thoughts, and I’m met with attacks, it feels like I’m being policed to stay in the box that others want me to squeeze myself into.
I am no longer dimming my light for people with sensitivity to a bigger vision they cannot see for themselves. I do not believe I should have to be silent either because that’s still policing me, hood culture has taught me that people will always have something to say when you are living your life the way they want to live theirs.
My desired lifestyle is hood rich but with my twist. I want to attend Pilates and Yoga classes, but the spots I regularly visit are Black-owned. Morning jogs along the water shore as the sunrises, home in time for my family to wake up to the smell of fresh buttermilk pancakes from the butter I made that morning. Wednesday afternoons are dedicated to the community garden plot, and Fridays are occupied for the community center events for Black creatives. Lunch is at the Black-owned fine dining restaurant on Broadway for the fifty-dollar crab legs special because it’s about the community in this hood-rich lifestyle I see for myself.
Doing all this with gold grills in my mouth, gold necklaces layered on my neck, and gold rings stacked on my fingers adorned with the cutest nail set with my signature lesbian two short nails. The smell of Mary Jane is always blended with my Chanel fragrance, and depending on the event, there might be one in rotation when you see me. The nature of my day-to-day routine is fixated on my freedom, money appears in my account the more I exist and share my experiences, the more vulnerable I share my stories the more confident I show up, writing gave me this freedom.
And when someone has something to say about how I am enjoying my life, I decide how I want to respond. In this season, I’m being called to be loud about my decisions because I am living intentionally against societal norms.
Sometimes as Black people, we aren’t loud enough about our Blackness and we water it down to make others comfortable, our conditioning is to fit in but we are created to stand out. Hood culture for me is the Black experience of living free from the outlook of societal norms. The words I write and share are the stories I’ve collected that have shaped my foundation to speak from my most authentic voice, and the photos are intentionally curated to capture the storyline.
My momma moved me to the whitest suburban area in the sixth grade; my experience changed forever when we moved. As a senior prank, the kids I grew up with spray painted ‘NIGGER’ on all the trailers that I and other Black classmates sat in. Attending an HBCU was, in my mind, my chance to reclaim my Black experience, and I most certainly did with the people I surrounded myself with, both good and bad.
Now, my Black experience is curated to my liking because I built this life brick-by-brick. The experiences of my life have shaped my life, and now, with more intent on my desires, life is looking more unapologetically free these days. I realize I have associated this hood aesthetic version of myself I desire to become with a divine dark feminine version of myself. She is balanced in her masculine and feminine energy, resulting in the most confident version of myself.
Hood culture is that representation for me, the form of expression that I resonate with. I choose to do hoodrat things with people that I feel safe with now, but I only do the ghetto things that bring me fulfillment. Telling all my business is my form of vulnerability. It’s a real ghetto and a dangerous play to make in the game of Life, but it’s my assignment, so if not me showing my culture how to still live a life that is fulfilling and safe by our own definitions, then who will?
xoxo,
Jacquie
Your hair-pulling story tho, I literally swooned. Felt the beauty of that moment in my soul
Your storytelling never fails to amaze me. Definitely inspires me to tighten my pen and keep evolving in my writing. This post felt like home, especially the tone and correlation between your love life and growing up in the hood (an experience I know all too well). Beautifully written and speaking in truth. 10/10!!!