In Which Lights Go On And Doors Open

When Will You Come Home?

by BRITTANY JULIOUS

I

We don't talk about status. We pretend that we are black like everyone else and that we are still "real." But our conversations over holiday dinners acknowledge the separation. There's a lot of "them" and and a lot of "us." Blackness is not a monolithic culture. I know this inherently as a woman whose tastes run counter to what I've been told I should like. These tastes were not a choice to be different, but the things that shaped me as an individual. They continue to evolve and so too does the notion of blackness. 
 
I think of this in relation to my parents, my family, and our summer holidays together. Fourth of July or Memorial Day barbecues were a way to connect to the other side of the family that didn't live in the suburbs and live like we lived. My sister stopped attending years ago, first due to her job, then college, then friendships and adulthood. But I always went, in the back of my mind feeling like these trips down to the South Side were a means of rectifying the wrongs of breaking away from the community. 

II

This summer, my mother called from her car. She was outside of my new apartment, ready to pick me up so we could ride together to join the other side of the family for the Fourth. 
 
"It's not happening," she said. 
 
"What does that mean?" I asked. 
 
"It means they celebrated and didn't tell us. It means we're not going down there." 
 
There was a visible anger in the tenseness of her body and the direct stare she gave me as I entered her car. I sat in the passenger seat as we drove to Oak Park.  

"I knew this would eventually happen. This is so like them. This is what they do," she said.

What they do is stay down South. They like where they live. This is their home, their streets and sidewalks. This confused me as a child, but as I've grown older, I've understood the symbolism and importance based on where one lives. Place holds meaning and meaning changes with age and time.  

What we do is take the expressway past Chinatown and Bridgeport and straight to the neighborhoods that "blend together." I went to school on the north side of Chicago. Years later, I still live up here. When I discuss this part of the city, I break things down by neighborhoods, official and emerging. I live in Wicker Park. I live in the East Village. I live in West Town. I live in Ukrainian Village. These names encompass large areas and then smaller groups of streets. But to me and to many Chicagoans, this makes sense in a way that saying Back of the Yards or the South Shore may not. Everything is just the South Side past 35th street. This is not the reality, but place also builds stereotypes and laziness. It is easier to dismiss than understand. 

III

Our new part of town, the South Side of Oak Park, was about the same in terms of beauty. We lived off of a major avenue filled with boxed businesses that attracted temporary visitors. Before, we had a run-down Dominick's, a Subway, and a Blockbuster. Now we had a Walgreen's, a car dealership,and a laundromat. 

Our blackness existed on the other side of town. Blackness as a whole existed on the other side of town. The Austin neighborhood, predominately Black and predominately troubled, was across the street. We lived over there too, nearly two decades ago, but I still claim the vast, cold, and penetrating neighborhood as my own. 

When I mention Austin to New Chicagoans, they don't understand. It is a part of the city that is not: is not nice, is not new, and is not desirable. It is not where they live and walk and ride. It is the city that is vast and the city that we tend to forget about, or the city that we ignore.  

My memories are of my grandmother's living room, the expansive backyard, and the few friends I made on the street where my grandparents live. To the Chicagoans who were born and bred here, a mention of Austin is a point of fear and respect. Even they don't meet a lot of people from that side of the city. It shuts them up. There is no question of authenticity. It is an unknown Chicago, and therefore a respectable one. It is not for tourists, but people live and work here. They have done so for years and will continue to do so.  

The other Oak Park was no less beautiful, but the residents were largely black and they moved into that part of town perhaps because they could see faces like their own. Or maybe, as my parents did when we first "crossed the street," to be close to the place they were before. That part of Oak Park was a reminder of that part of Chicago. It was a reminder of where they came from, where they're going, and the structure of this city. 
 
On Madison Avenue, past Taylor Boulevard is where the Black businesses begin. They are not always Black-owned, but they cater to the Black customer, and in particular, the Black woman. A number of beauty supply stores sit next to and across the street from one another. They are always large and always packed, but I've grown to love them the older I get for their convenience and comforting familiarity. I can always find heavy, curly wigs or tiny bottles of neon-colored nail polish or make-up that is sustainable for exactly one day. No one store is owned by the same person, but you can walk into any and find your way around with ease.  

I came home during the holidays and I pointed out the new beauty supply store across the street. It was the first such business to exist outside of the segregated neighborhoods this town pretends don't exist. It was a bid deal, at least to me, and symbolic in its arrival. It took over an old pharmacy. Neon lights shine long into the night. This store, this space for this particular culture that I know and participate in, but does not define me, surprised me.  

My mother hadn't noticed it, or perhaps she blocked out its existence along with the new cheap shoe store, the other hair braiding salon just a few doors down from the one she's gone to for years, and the low-income housing apartments being constructed from the long-dormant remnants of a local cable company.  

These spaces were empty before, a true dimming on the small community within the local community inside of the town. But it is these new businesses that inspire a fear of change. It is a gentrification of the dilapidation that arose from the break in the economy. It is a renewal. It is an expansion of what it means to live here on this side of town and in the town as a whole. It's not just us anymore.  

At first she said, "You know what kind of store that'll be," but last week, the lights were on and the doors were open.  

"There are mannequins in the windows, modeling clothes," I pointed out as we drove down the street.  

"Hmm," she said. "That's unexpected. Maybe it won't be that bad."

Brittany Julious is the senior editor of This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She tumbls here and twitters here. You can find the first part of this series here.

Photographs by the author.

"Umi Says" - Mos Def (mp3)

"Light to Dark" - Jesse Boykins III (mp3)

"Drowning" - Clams Casino (mp3)

In Which They Will See A Hundred Other Things

That Girl Is Poison

by BRITTANY JULIOUS

I write this as a woman who does not consider herself sexy, but understands the power of sexy, and the seduction sexiness gives towards women who can manipulate the world around them to fit their goals. Sexy is real and true, but the performativeness of sexy - of tight clothes and short hems and high heels - means that true sexiness is a choice. Sexiness does not just happen. It is observed and then developed. It is executed and then maintained. It morphs through time and situation.

Being young means understanding sexiness as a force of the tangible. I remember short skirts as sexy and body glitter as sexy and extensions in the hair as sexy. This was power in the sense that I could manipulate myself, my body, in ways that I began to crave more and more as an adult. There was a freedom in the control and a freedom in reactions. I expected my mother to not like my clothing. I expected her to want me to dress just as she saw fit.

"You have to remember," my mother, beautiful and seemingly confident, said, "that regardless of what you see in yourself, they will see a hundred other things - true and not true - born before you." The positives are irrelevant. The negative forms reality and stem decisions. They see what they want to see. They remember what they want to remember. They observe, and take away, and move forward from there.

The reality of getting older was not that I craved sexiness less, but that I recognized my sexualized being was beginning to be enough. Not that I am particularly beautiful or attractive, but that just existing warranted attention - usually lascivious, definitely unwarranted - from the men around me.

Chicago has no spring, and summer comes swiftly and with great force. The weather makes a clean break. I welcome the heat, the sweat that forms against my limbs, that sticks to the bus seats or metal bars. In the summer, my body is both everywhere and nowhere. When it is everywhere, I have the ability to feel what was always there but trapped between the lining and stitches of my clothing. The breeze takes on a sensual quality. Nothing feels as wonderful as thick air washes against one’s skin. It is so sweet against your face. It is so real against your thighs.

My legs are long. I think of them as a separate entity, a different set of limbs that just happen to be attached to the rest of my body. They have a mind of their own, a certain agency that demands long walks and fresh air. In the summer, my shorts are not that short, not really, but they exist in a world of codes and rules. Sometimes I think about the ways in which this became true - the time in which I finally understood.

Years ago, my mother and I went to a Chernin's Shoe Outlet on the West Side of Chicago to pick up a pair of day-to-day gym shoes. The young man helping me gave these long looks that complicated his deep brown eyes and thick eyelashes. He smiled a lot and was thin, slightly gawky, but in a charming way that made me wish that I would meet a man like that when I was older, when I knew more.

He took off my gym shoes and gave me a small foot massage. I turned around, cautious, but soon realized that my mother wasn't looking. She was nowhere to be found. I panicked, assuming she had left me in the store with the young man who was quickly moving away from charming to lascivious. He licked his lips and it reminded me of a family member from down south that I met, earlier that year, at a reunion.

"I bet you don't remember me!" the older man said that afternoon as I sat on a bench, in the shade, eating a plate full of macaroni and cheese.

"Nope!" I said annoyed, and turned away.

My mother frequently tells me stories about my attitude as a young girl.

"You were always so angry, so eager to let the adults know what was up," she often says. I had outbursts, she said, but I can't remember any of them, only snapshots of the moments proceeding and following the confrontations resonate in my memory.

That day at the park, the older man hovered above me and I did my best not to look up, afraid of what he would say or do next to grab my attention.

"I'm talkin' to you!" he shouted. He licked his full lips and smiled. I ran away.

At the shoe store, the young man said, "You're very sexy."

Right then, my mother reappeared. I don't know where she was beforehand. Perhaps she was there all along, and I didn't notice her because I was too caught up in the moment with my new shoes and new acquaintance.

"How old are you?" she asked him angrily.

"Sixteen," he replied.

My mother grabbed my arm and squeezed tight.

"Well, she's eight, so I suggest you look somewhere else." We quickly left the store but came back. I was only wearing one shoe.

One summer, the season came late. At a bus stop, I rested against the brick wall of a local bank and waited to head north after a long day at work. A man crossed the street. His face was angry and his eyes bore into mine.

"Those shorts are too short," he said.

I'd never heard that before, at least from a stranger. Every summer before that moment, I thought those same thoughts, worn down by interpretations of flesh. By September, I anticipate the fall. I like tights, I start to think. They reflect my quietness, the "goodness" that exists in me that this man implied did not. I am sexual, but the world does not need to know. I am sexual, and you can't judge me for it.

"Too short?" I asked that day at the bus stop.

"You look like a slut."

Later that evening, I called my mother and told her what happened. She asked me why I was trying to be sexy, why I was trying to be this person. But this was fashion of circumstance. I gained no power from those shorts except for my own comfort.

"It doesn't matter," she said. These things don't matter. Ideas are born before and will exist long after one ceases noticing them.

A placed upon sexiness is rarely good. If I pursue and cultivate sexy, it is not the same as the idea of sexy, the culmination of images, caricatures, and supposed morality that is not a part of me. It is often dirty or cruel, but most often, it is an accusation, an assumption that is fueled by anger and stereotypes. They are saying, who are you to dress like this? They are saying, why should I respect you like this? What power lies in the body?

I began to dance as a young girl and the more I danced, the more in control I felt. These are my legs that bend and curve, my arms that flex. Freedom stemmed from the control I gained and to dance was to be free. I didn’t recognize it then, but I pushed through the grueling rehearsals with the knowledge that once I learned a routine, it would become something I could call to on a moment’s notice. At any moment after, I could become this powerful being in control of my movements and myself, unhurried or torn apart. My movements were choreographed and not choreographed. When I had a moment to move about the floor on my own terms, that is when I felt most alive. It was a moment without judgment, just sadness and anxiety and excitement manifest through a pirouette, a switch leap, a flick of the wrist.

At 23, I dance less and the desire to cover my body, to protect and hide, becomes more urgent. Summer progresses and my body becomes less my own and more a product of the people who view it. A few weeks ago, it was unbearably hot and I put on a pair of shorts that my mother told me were "not okay." I do not know if she was right emphatically or if I have ingrained in myself the ways in which she sees the world. I do not know if how I feel, how we feel, is “alright” or “good,” but I do know that my shorts were "not okay." They would draw attention. They would put me on a stage. They would project a state of sexy that was not my own, that was not a choice in power but a decision thrust upon me. They would put me outside of the body that I claimed too well in the winter.

Sometimes a person looks right at me and I think, to whom is he or she talking to? At 23, I dance less and the ownership of myself seems more like a glimpse at the past. Why would I cherish what is not my own? Why would I let free the thighs and arms and breasts of another woman, this other woman these strangers praise or defile?

I remember sexy. This is not sexy. It is a mutated, weird, different sexy. A pseudo-sexy. A play sexy. A not-really-sexy made by others. This is something else entirely.

Brittany Julious is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She tumbls here and twitters here. She last wrote in these pages about the quiet storm. You can find an archive of her work on This Recording here.

"Butterfly Knife" - EMA (mp3)

"California" - EMA (mp3)

"Breakfast" - EMA (mp3)

In Which You're Listening To The Quiet Storm

The Return

by BRITTANY JULIOUS

We were in the car, most always coming from rather than going to, and no one spoke, which was strange for a family as passionate as mine, and for a child as inquisitive as I was. It was dark except for the street lights which increased in number the closer we go to our home. My sister usually fell asleep as soon as we pulled out of our parking spot, but I felt antsy, and was eager to find sleep in my room, which never seemed as perfect as in those minutes we spent coming from, out on the road. The evening had settled and the only destination after parties and dinners and clubs was the comfort of home. Quiet storm would soundtrack that transition, the in-between of two, successive major events.

There were others, I'd imagine, but I most remember Ramsey Lewis' voice on the radio — all honey-drenched and welcoming — and how it resonates with me now after all of these years. I wish I could remember what he spoke of, but back then what I focused on was not particular. His voice was a complement to the expressways of Chicago, coming North and West, and the main boulevards that divide Oak Park from the parts of Chicago that my grandparents live in, and that I called my own whenever I sought authenticity among my peers.

At 23, I am re-discovering this music that I grew up with, but I could never call my own. I listened to it as it lulled me to peace in the car, or at night during the end of a barbecue as we prepared our plates of my grandmother's macaroni and cheese or my father's ribs. It was music to bookend our festivities, to find respite after salutations. 

A part of me still believes that my parents own quiet storm. Back then, when I was a little girl, they certainly did. The believed that we were asleep drink those trips back home. I sat quietly in the back seat watching my mother sing along, occasionally off-time. I liked the way my father snapped his fingers to a song with a most perfect groove.

I didn't ask my parents about their music until I got to the age where I wanted it to define me. And then, I scoured their collections for proto-House and mutant disco — sounds that were already aligned with my burgeoning tastes. Attempting to describe the songs now seems misplaced an effort. I hate to admit that to me, each one has a homogeneous aesthetic that blends from one song to the next. But my memories of that time are shaped less by specific incidences and more by the ideas and themes that shape how I remember the past. To attempt to talk about the past is to frame the events of my childhood and adolescence as stories with a narrative arc that is resolved. Every piece is continuous. The things that happened then continue now. My stories of the past are sculpted glimpses of what once was. And quiet storm was full of adjectives of aesthetics: warm and then icy, sparse and heavy.

Sade was my favorite. In my mind, Sade did not exist, for even now it is impossible to imagine a voice like that — endlessly haunting, deep, provocative — could have been born into this world. I performed in choir, where my voice was trained for the sort of staid clarity and elegance that couples well with classic arias and Broadway showtunes. Her voice whispered in my ear as if she and I were alone. It is still difficult for me to discern the reality of her music. It was made — is made — for a variety of different audiences who want to cherish her as his or her own. Sometimes she sings and the words seem more personal than incidental. Back then, I would look out the window and "Smooth Operator" would play and I would resist turning my head away from the passing scenery of the urban and suburban environments I called home. To turn away from the window would mean recognizing that Sade was not — despite my hopes — wedged between my sleeping sister and I, providing a live, personal soundtrack for our ride to our house.

My mother cherished Luther Vandross similar to how she cherished Marvin Gaye. I can't remember my childhood without remembering his music. My mother used to grip the steering wheel and stare straight ahead while singing Vandross' songs. She sang as if in a trance, connected to Luther with an invisible bond. I stayed quiet while observing her listening to him. His music seemed “above” everything else we listened to during quiet storm. I didn't mind.

The day Luther Vandross died, my mother picked me up at night from my sales associate job at the Marshall Field's in Oakbrook, Illinois. Unlike my peers, I did not obtain a driver's license until I was seventeen years old, on the day before my senior prom, and even then, only because I was forced to do so. My parents never added me to their insurance that summer before freshman year of college and I did not question their reasoning. Despite my initial hopes, the prospect of starting over again, without the comfort of the suburb that I loved but openly claimed to loathe, became a daunting reality I would inevitably not be able to handle. So those summers we rode together.

That evening she gripped the wheel real tight, and then she shook her hands as if flicking off excess water. I hadn't realized what happened until three of Luther's songs played on the radio in a row - a sure sign that a musician was ill or had passed.

"He's gone?" I asked.

"Yep," she said, with more anger than sadness. It was not just that he would no longer make any more music. Something changed fundamentally in the way she could and would listen to this music. Something sad and heavy would cloud his work, at least temporarily. For her, and eventually for me, the must was not just about the transition from activities outside of the home. There was a musicality beyond the visceral, lyricism built on more than the incidental.

After graduation, I moved back to Oak Park where I spend more time in cars than I do walking. And before coming home, I couldn't discern that my interest in quiet storm music was not just nostalgia for nostalgia sake. As I get older, I more and more idolize the memories of my childhood. The experiences are so rare now — the freedom to do nothing all day and feel no guilt and shame, the constant feeling of love and warmth, the near-insatiable hunger for sugar cereal and sweet taffy — that my memories of back then are greater in emotion than in detail. Before moving home, my memories of quiet storm focused on the sense of relief I felt leaving my father's side of the family who, even then, began to recognize that I would grow up to be a little more inquisitive, a little self-righteous, a little different. It was the conclusion of the evening, the moment of winding down, of unloading the experiences of the hours before the car ride. During college, my CTA or cab rides home at 3 in the morning were similar, but there was an element of weariness stemming from the presence of strangers that made listening to any sort of music at that time more like a defense mechanism. In Oak Park, my mother and I can bond over the cadence in Luther Vandross' voice or the weight in Anita Baker's intonation.

I follow music blogs that occasionally traffic in resurfacing these quiet jams because so many contemporary musicians unsuccessfully attempt to emulate an aesthetic born out of necessity and availability. More likely, I suspect the authors are my age and as they continue to look forward while consuming music, they also look back and discover that the fleeting pleasures of today are no match for the heady joy and memories of the quiet of late nights back then.  

Brittany Julious is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Chicago. She last wrote in these pages about the tragic Black woman. She tumbls here and twitters here.

This Quiet Storm-themed playlist includes jams by Roy Ayers, Luther Vandross, Sade, Lenny Williams, The Gap Band, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson's “Quiet Storm,” the song that started it all.

the Quiet Storm playlist (mp3)