Old Skool Sex, Love and Instagram, and all of the above.
Fourteen years old- a formative year, a walk don’t run year, in many respects an inordinate length of juvenile time, and as such, losing the title of “virgin,” to the awesome sounds of Freddie Jacksons ‘Rock Me Tonight’, at three o’ clock in the afternoon, on mother’s leathered green settee whilst her labour, belaboured a 9-t0-5 humdrum pretty much set the tone; of a ghetto-funk sexuality, bound for the exposé of the inaugural act of love, and its colour, and its culture, and it’s perplexed masculinity navigating actual, and the potential significance of pride.
Sex at fourteen, with the emphasis on Freddie’s soulful rendition, monoluging the aura of a fourteen year old’s; old soul, was essentially how I feel about “me”, as opposed to how I feel about “you,” and bound by the black genealogy is important to history, or whether this is really a cornerstone document articulation; of a sexually libertine renaissance, the principal engaging with the formality of self, and sex, spends its entire lifetime routing the multifaceted soul of Black folk, weaving the sacred and the secular, naturally in line with a linage parallel to ancestral celebration; the everyday job really is expressing, and reconciling the warring ideals of the black "soul." And thus the relationship between self, and sexuality echoes old compulsions, and what in its naked essence motivates bed hops, of easy virtue, or simply wild and abandoned licentious behaviour, when for a lover, still in love, in with what has become his very own, personally inscribed, renaissance of all things self and love, more often than not it’s a rebirth at odds with a new age significance, aspiring to porn star veracity.
The question of sex, essentially the riddle to decode, without Fatherly lessons on what is sex, and what, if any part it should, or does express an inkling of your “love”, bombarded with top shelf pornography, and grainy ‘blue movies’, and daily Page 3 delights, it became a lesson in what “they” did, overwhelmed by the essence of Nefertiti, and the myths and truths about Mothers, and beautiful afro-sheen Jasmine at Primary school, and it’s who “you” are, these sexualised veneers, effortlessly combining elements of the African, along with the Western, felt in fourteen year old lions a lone reason artists like Freddie Jackson sung of their longing to connect, to a soul in the most personal way, songs like Rock Me Tonight, and more essentially Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing singing of a pain, and a tiredness, that for its sheer ability to sound soul profound it runs soul deep, sufficiently malleable to allow for religious retentions, specifically those notions enforcing the "spirit of revolt and revenge" against the echoes of old compulsions.
At fourteen, with less pubic hairs crowning the rite of passage distinction that boyhood to manhood begins to episode, embodying all kinds of sexual nuances, and undertones, the song said it- Freddie Jackson’s track was by all accounts for the occasion, commentating a state of mind, with the well-intentioned, 12 inch vinyl masterpiece reflection clean, and needle ready, and the instructions on the condom’s use- it’s pinch and roll on- timidly read, and ingenuously appraised, that then was the soul of the sex- expressive of sentiment and emotion- the connotations of “soul” deeper than any definition and really difficult to explain, but fun, and free, and ultimately sincere.
On this quest to be the greatest lover this child was unluckily, preordained to be, listening to these songs, essentially motivated, and educated in lessons of love, and love making by virtue of these songs, naturally tied into one of the things the Afro pick culture fourteen years old was conscious of, committed to an inherited social struggle meant the nature of sex, and mines and its intimate minding you, destined a fourteen years old sex and possession to a preordained, predestined, necessitated battle for the trappings of his heart, opting for soul music to manifest the circumstance of a longing to “come on and rock me, ooh, girl”, the all defining cosmic intercourse, after six, well-intended, poorly handled gyrations later no closer to reverencing life.
Thus the point of grown-man rationale, where and when the sex really does become self-defining, and life-affirming, going to the riddle behind the question, first asked at fourteen years old, whilst practices discover other songs to have sex, or make love to, always tied into the nature of sexuality was, and still is the morale of a “nation”, and as a man, first and foremost the; black man, essentially meant the boy, amongst his acquainted surroundings has only ever acquiesced with the conflicted nature of his own personality; the distortion, and debasement of his own experience, allowing his sex to transcend from coveted young afro, and the memory of hands gently gliding along the moments we speak of the “purity” of our women, searching for each other's salvation, and light and breasts, transcoding to grown-man rationale, weighted in his loins the injustice of a child who eventually destroys him, the belongings in his nut-sack being the strange fruit swinging in a north by west nine breeze, where in lies the dignified reluctance losing to the penchant-willingness to fuck, with aggression, with implicitly, with disdain, the nature of the sex and its drive going to the core of motivations swindled out of the opportunity to live like men.
As far as the “the flesh is weak”, and Porn has a hub, and Instagram “chicks” assimilate and probate what their ‘Mama’, and their Lord in his profound wisdom gave them, essentially the appetite for tolerant categorisation- life awkwardly fitted into inappropriate pegs- for the consciously inclined has arguably led a stream of sexual morality, to a wall with ‘paradoxical torment’ inscribed on it top to bottom, in essence a maze of confusion dictating what feels good, as opposed to what is good, principally a breakdown of a collective meaning once renowned for its Brotherhood of man, and his superlative boding to woman.
Consequently, for the fourteen year old who wanted to practice the art of love for love’s sake, ending up branded as a member of the broadly defined carnal man, branding that in its purest essence motivated an internally intimate principle, or not, essentially a provocation that makes it impossible that lives shall be anything other than superficial, this dovetailed with, and breastfeeding on, a dazzling, perfunctory culture which has adversely complicated the simplicity of freedom and belonging, sexual and otherwise.
Like the music of our soulful peers, with their art, and eloquence amidst the unmitigated circumstance of a lineage soul deep, like their departure from the neon-light successes, when their tones effectively regulated the breath of a nation, with their peers singing songs about the one and only principal quality, cut away; this attribute being the relationship that morale and community bear to one another depth of attachment, and hushed recognition of mutual experience creating congenial ways of life- now emerging for what they are: a mirror of a collective chaos, and panic motivated by the believeth in an innocence loss.
The riddle, yet to be decoded, in effect yet to be reconciled, in pursuit of a lovelorn renaissance yet to claim back self, despite the fever in the “jungle”, dead set against the defiled normality, readily accusing the sullied physical expression of self, with the audacity of a “good men still breathe” placard, waved frantically at the forefront of a #MeToo rally, even though I know what 'nothing' means, and keep on playing, old skool approaches still gets high on the luxury of telling a narrative, that isn’t confined to cliché.
for the luxury of telling a narrative that isn’t confined to cliché.