Sometimes it's not the destination, but getting there (and why cabbies can be cool)

Airports are a great place to think. To ponder the intricacies of life. I was in an airport this weekend and I'm slowly finding comfort in the way my life has transitioned into solitude. It's a change that has brought me from sadness and self-pity to new found acceptance and sense of freedom.

This self reality check occurred to me this weekend as I traveled to the Garden State for a meeting. Me and airports don't really mix. My flight out was delayed and then stuck on the runway. While waiting at the airport, I discovered that my lodging plans were altered yet again forcing me to simple seek commercial accommodations. I HATE WHEN TRAVEL PLANS CHANGE.

I get to Jersey and find that the cheapest place to stay is an Econolodge that is located on a weird strip past all the "good" hotels, behind a truck (18 wheeler) facility. Nice. My room is all the way in the back, where I have to walk through what looks like rape alley and the parking lot to get to. Most of the lights don't work in the room and the remote has old batteries (one generic, one Duracell) in it. It doesn't work, either, but I have TBS.

You get what you pay for. I was tempted to sleep on top of the sheets, thinking that it may slow the bed bugs from accessing me, but when I smelled the sweet scent of bleach on my pillowcases, I knew I would be OK. I slept pretty well, despite being a little hungry.

The whole point of this trip, which was the meeting at Rutgers, is not worth mentioning.

So I find my way back to my motel Saturday afternoon by taking a taxi. My driver was named Jean. He is from Haiti. We talk about the cost of living in my city and how when he came to the states he didn't speak English. I ask him where are all the white people, and he explains in his tinted English the class/racial disparities that divide the area. (Rich, white people are fucked up everywhere.) He wanted to know if I needed a tour guide in the city. Now, because all my plans got screwed up, I really didn't have anyone to meet or accompany me into the city. Whatever. I was feeling slightly adventurous, what with the Econolodge stay and all - I felt practically 3rd world.

However, after fleeting thoughts of casual sex with a Haitian man screaming all things sexual to me in French, I declined...random sex was so freshman year in college (and sophomore and junior). I took a nap and then woke up and watched more TV. It was ironic that I was seeing various shots of NYC on television when I could have walked out on the street and caught glimpses of the actual skyline and the bridge to the city was another cab ride away. Moxie must be the only person in the world unimpressed with NYC. I took refuge in my dinky motel room content with having a weekend off my from second job. NYC is for bitches.

So what would impress me? I was sorta freaked that I couldn't answer that question. Omigod, did I have autism? Nothing excited me. Not even the chance to explore NYC for a day and half.

Sunday morning: After my hopes of getting an earlier flight were dashed, I decided against getting brunch in NYC (or anywhere in Jersey) and headed to Newark. The airport would be more exciting anyway. The shuttle driver, John Cruz, was rambling to the pilot in the shuttle with me and was completely incoherent. I make my way into the airport and once again pursue, at the ticket counter, an earlier flight back home. No luck. So I check in and stroll leisurely to my gate. First, I wait in security for about 25 minutes with what looked a like a group of Swedes. As we snaked our way through the partitions we kept staring back at each other. From where they stood I was some sort of brown looking freak, and I kept wondering how many boys would turn around if I just yelled out the name "Sven".

I make it past security only after this Marine reject working for TSA barks out orders. Repeatedly. To a woman who was clearly from SE Asia. The poor woman, with all her cultural garb, had to be subjected to a body check.

I pass a duty free shop. I have never shopped at one and I still don't really understand their point, but I saw fragrances and liquor and thought there was something in there for me. I sniff and sniff and settle on a scent. As I am paying, the store manager - an African man - notices my tats. He thinks that my jungle queen pin up tat is bonafide Zulu. Yeah, I wish. He asks me if I got it done in NYC and proudly say that some white kid in my hometown did it. Take that. And I still paid sales tax on my purchase.

I glide out, my head high off of pretty smells and pass a stand advertising this. Genius.

I opt for fast food since I just blew stupid money on a bottle of cologne. Then I shuffle over to a bookstore to find something cheap and fictional. All the mags looked disinteresting, so I settled for this book. Cute, but I can't believe I paid for it. Will finish it while sitting in a bubble bath...

I sit in an airport coffee shop and read. I watch planes out of the window. Strangely content in my solitude amongst thousands of strangers hustling and bustling to and from. I remember sitting in this same coffee shop at a different time, returning home from heaven-knows-where and I felt immensely sad looking at all the families and couples. The business travelers on their phones telling someone on the other end that they would be home soon. This time, all that was the same, but I felt oddly content with the decisions I made over the trip, staying in my little shell. Happy that I had to lug all my shit with me if I had to go to the bathroom, because there was no boyfriend there to watch it for me. That every costs I incurred were my own. That I had to rely on books and magazines and CDs to entertain me. That I had to keep little notes about things that I observed because there was no one to share it with. I was ok being one of the few people who had no one to call when the plane landed.

As I listened to the announcements for flights this city in that country would be boarding soon, I realized that cities far, far away would impress me. I would get lost in Dubai. I would explore the shops of Johannesburg. Or get excited to stand in line for customs at Heathrow. I want to be that person in security holding a passport, going places unknown. NYC, Chicago, Miami, D.C are all cities you can see everyday on TV, filled with people who you can find anywhere. They're overrated. And expensive. Overcrowed. Not that cities elsewhere aren't, but there's something about leaving your comfort zone. On my way in on Friday, when the plane was delayed, a woman behind me lamented that she would miss her connecting flight...to Rome, Italy. I felt bad for her, but at the same time I was jealous. How exciting that must be to have to rush across the moving sidewalks in an attempt to catch your elusive international flight.

My return flight was overcrowded and delayed on the runway. The airline offered a $700 travel voucher plus food and hotel for the night to people who would give up their seats. And after all my jealous glances towards people with their passports, I didn't give up my seat to get $700 towards the trip of my dreams. I'm still hate when my travel plans change. *sigh*

I make it home as scheduled somehow and I take a cab home. My driver, whose name starts with a B, but I can't spell, is from Somalia. We talk about Africa and where he is from. The language he speaks and the god he worships. He reminds which European countries colonized his country. He has 13 sisters and 20 brothers. Yes. He tells me to get my passport already. Do it and go. Great advice from a cabbie.

An exception to the rule

This guy rocks.

I could have told you that: Men and Happiness

A new study reveals that men are now happier than women. This finding is a reversal of earlier studies that indicated that women were happier than men.

Yeah, what with all the sexism, discrimination, bearing children, raising children, rape, domestic abuse, feminization of poverty, wage gaps, racism, double standards, unfair hiring practices, prostitution, sex trafficking, antiquated expectations about marriage, second shifts, unfair beauty standards, eating disorders, and what not, I don't find this study all that surprising or newsworthy.

I'm not social scientist, but I would assume that if I were privileged enough to sit on my ass while my wife raised my kids and cooked my food and brought in 50% of the household income; or if I made more money than my female coworker just because I pee standing up, I would be happier too.

New Moxie Phrase: Kicked in the Feelings

Yesterday I was facing a dilemma about my priorities in life. Well, actually it was about scheduling, but my life priorities came into play. So I called or emailed my trusted advisers to help me sort out my situation. No one was immediately available and in some weird act of desperation, I called my (ex) friend, Tim, who stopped talking to me over 2 months ago. I left him a message asking for his gift of rationality.

Hours go by and I was sitting on the sofa chatting with Mademoiselle Kitty, when I get a text message in response to my request for help: "I am sure whatever you decide will be best. good luck"

That burning sting of tears formed in the back of my eye sockets and Mademoiselle Kitty cooed, "Oh Moxie, it's like he kicked you in the feelings. I'm sure he didn't mean it though."

The burning sting was replaced with a tickle in my throat and I erupted with laughter. Pure genius: kicked in the feelings?!?!?!?!?!?!

I guess there is always laughter in loss.



A white version of Moxie sitting alone in life's sandbox with nobody to play with.

Stone cold

Um....just carve the damn thing already. The man died in 1968 and we're just now getting around to making a fucking statue.

Your exaggeration of this story is a crime

According to the Pee Dee, the crime rate in Cleveland increased by 11%, beating the national average. If you note the comments left in response to this article, you will find that I am not the only one who thinks this story is full of shit.

Finally...here's what I think

Actually, someone else said it, but I totally agree with him.

The Wrong Poster Children
Why the Jena 6 protests have gone awry.
By: Richard Thompson Ford
Posted Monday, Sept. 24, 2007, at 4:25 PM ET


When more than 10,000 people converged on the small town of Jena, La., last Friday, the Rev. Al Sharpton called their march the beginning of the 21st-century civil rights movement. He may be right. And that's just what's worrisome. The marchers gathered to protest criminal charges brought against six African-American high-school students, the "Jena 6." But the racial problems facing this town—and many others—are more complex than simple prejudice, and finding solutions will necessarily require more nuance than a mass protest can offer. The mismatch between the complex and layered racial tensions in Jena and the one-issue rallying cry of "Free the Jena 6" suggest that the tactics of last century's civil rights movement may be an anachronism for today's racial conflicts.

The Jena 6 were accused of beating and kicking a white classmate until he lost consciousness. The district attorney charged the six assailants with attempted murder—an absurdly severe charge under the circumstances—and then later, perhaps under pressure, reduced the charges to aggravated battery. The district attorney also improperly tried one student, Mychal Bell, as an adult and obtained a conviction for aggravated battery and conspiracy, which was duly vacated on appeal. It's plausible that this prosecutorial overzealousness was inspired by racial prejudice, but even privileged white people can fall victim to overzealous prosecutors—ask the Duke lacrosse team. So, how did a case of prosecutorial overreaching, which is tragically all too common, turn into a civil rights violation?

The hard evidence of racism in Jena showed up months before the assault, in the form of a noose tied to an oak tree. This incident was straight out of a story from the Old South: A black student at Jena High School asked at a student assembly if he could sit under a large oak tree that was unofficially called the "white tree" because white students gathered under it in Jena High's informally segregated campus. The principal told the assembly that any student could sit wherever he or she liked. After the assembly, several black students sat under the "white tree." The next day, white students hung three nooses from the tree. The school principal recommended their expulsion, but the school board instead suspended them from school for three days.

Racial tensions simmered in the following months and eventually boiled over in a series of physical confrontations. A white man threatened black Jena students with a beer bottle at an off-campus party and was charged with misdemeanor assault. A white student brandished a shotgun in a confrontation with three black students. (He claims self-defense; they claim he was unprovoked.) The black students then wrestled the gun away from him and were later charged with theft, while the white student was not charged with a crime. Then came the attack for which the Jena 6 were charged.

The Jena 6 and their defenders claim that the assault was a direct result of racial tensions that started with the nooses. They claim the white student who took the beating taunted the black students with racial epithets in what should be seen as one part of an ongoing campaign of racial harassment. And many see racism in the stark contrast between the slaps on the wrists that the noose-wielders and gun-brandisher and other whites involved in the later fights received, and the hard-line prosecution of the Jena 6. As one of the protesters put it: "Every time the white people did something … they dropped it, and every time the black people did something, they blew it out of proportion."

The disparity is striking, and it's plausible that racism was behind it. But the various incidents aren't really comparable. At most, the nooses threatened violence that was never carried out. By contrast, the Jena 6 were charged with an assault that resulted in physical injury. The more serious racial problem—and the root cause of the Jena 6 altercation—was that students at Jena High School had effectively re-created Jim Crow segregation on an informal basis—instead of whites-only bathrooms and drinking fountains, they had a "white tree" that black students considered off-limits. Such informal segregation is commonplace at racially mixed high schools (and universities). And if other cities and schools are any indication, black self-segregation along with white racism may have played a role. Reportedly, Jena High also had "black bleachers" where white students did not sit.

When racial tensions caused by this social distance and mistrust boiled over, Jena's district attorney did what elected prosecutors all too often do in high-profile cases, regardless of the race of the defendants: He threw the book at them. Such prosecutorial overzealousness is not necessarily racist, but because blacks are disproportionately embroiled in the criminal justice system, it does fall with disproportionate force on them. This made the Jena 6 symbols for railroaded black criminal defendants nationwide.

So, the demonstrators have plenty to be upset about: racial segregation; racially disproportionate arrest, prosecution, and incarceration rates; and a pervasive societal racism that is passed from generation to generation. But because none of these sadly common racial injustices have a discrete cause, none are likely to respond to the type of quick and specific reform that a demonstration can demand. As a result, the march on Jena was a bit unfocused. It's telling that the demonstrators moved between the courthouse where Bell was tried for an offense no one denies he committed and the site of the "white tree" that, with all-too-fitting symbolism, has since been cut down. "Free the Jena 6" has become a rallying cry, perhaps because, "Stop Informal Segregation and Prosecutorial Overzealousness That Disproportionately Affects African-Americans Here and Elsewhere" won't fit on T-shirt or a placard. (And the Rev. Sharpton, who has led rallies in support of self-segregation in ethnic theme houses at Cornell University, is especially ill-positioned to lead the way forward in this respect.)

The 21st century's civil rights movement will need more sympathetic poster children than the Jena 6. These young men weren't exactly engaged in peaceful civil disobedience when they ran afoul of the law. The injustice here is not that they are being prosecuted for their crime—it is that the many other wrongs that preceded the assault have been inadequately addressed. When you think about it, the logic that underlies the demand to free the Jena 6 comes down to this: These six young men were justified in kicking their lone victim senseless because other people who shared his race committed offenses against other black students. This sort of racial vendetta is diametrically opposed to the message of social justice and cross-racial understanding that underlies the civil rights movement of the last century.

And yet, all along, Jena has had a better symbol for civil rights on offer. The anonymous black students who defied the informal segregation at the high school and sat under the perversely misnamed "white tree" are the movement's true legatees. They have received so little attention that I don't even know their names or how many such brave and defiant young people there were.

As if giving the gift of Ziggy Stardust wasn't enough

David Bowie donated $10,000 to the Jena 6 Defense Fund. Dude loves him some chocolate.

Your NAACP membership card is in the mail

Bill O'Reilly has discovered the civility and spirit of the American Negro.

VIDEO OF THE MONTH