You Should Never Touch a Black Woman's Hair

For Me, on the Other Hand, it’s a Risk I’m Willing to Take

When Trena and I first started dating, and I'll be damned if that's not getting close to 20 years ago, she had one hard and fast rule I was required to follow. No exceptions. Well, there was more than just the one, but the one that is important here is… I could never touch her hair.

I'm going to take a bit of a leap and try to show some correlation between Trena’s rule and the use of foul language in my writing. You know, dropping F-bombs and whatnot without care. First of all, you got to know it was kind of a life-changing moment for me when, during my undergrad, I realized the use of fuck or damn, or any of the other entry-level swear words, would pretty much go unchallenged. At least in the creative writing classes.

I stumbled into my writing voice in a 200-level American history class, where I found myself irritated by a discussion of the hippie counterculture. I wandered off on a good rant, dropping some F-bombs along the way. That post is the first place I can point to and say that's who I am as a writer, and it’s also the first place I didn’t scrub the foul language out of my academic writing.

I want to make it clear I don't swear at people. That would just be rude.

I got to thinking about this when my friend/sister Stephanie asked Trena to braid her fine white girl hair, and by fine, I mean corn silk-like, into cornrows for a camping trip. She showed up at our house with some rubber bands and other hair-braiding accouterments, none of which was appropriate for the cornrow experience.

While they set about, saying the incantations and lighting the candles required to create a good head of cornrows, I did the dishes. And occasionally throw out a comment about the audacity of Stephanie's cultural appropriation. When it was done, she sure did look like a cute, light-skinned girl. And she went off on her camping trip without having to worry about washing her hair.

Back to the writing part. I have been told by critique partners and classmates that I should cut out the foul language. I don't throw these words around for shits and giggles. I know how to use the workarounds, the “F-bombs,” and I have even been known to f***** star things out. But, like Stephanie wearing cornrows on a camping trip, I use them when they’re appropriate, even if some people don’t like it.

In the 20 years we've been together, Trena has slowly, in fits and starts, transitioned to wearing her natural hair, at least most of the time. In the fall, when the temperature starts to dip into the 60s during the day, she begins to scour the Internet for wigs or packs of human hair that will become her “protective style” for the cold months.

This transition to natural has been met with some resistance from her family. The wigs, sow-ins, and extensions, along with the chemicals and medieval torture devices heated on the gas stove to straighten her hair, are just how things are supposed to be done. Even Trena sometimes has trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she's walking around in public wearing her own hair.

A lot of black women have complicated relationships with their hair. Thus, the no touching rule. Culturally, I think we have the same kind of confusing relationship with the use of foul language. It's natural for some of us to cuss like a sailor. I can turn it on and off. For example, I don't generally swear in church. Although Stephanie could tell you a story that would leave you wondering how it is, a bolt of lightning hasn’t found its way into the top of my skull.

There are people out there who might think it a little inappropriate for Stephanie, a white girl, to wear cornrows. But honestly, it's the perfect hairstyle for a week in the woods without running water. And if I came off as a little less of an asshole, I think more people would have something to say about the foul language I use when speaking and writing.

Everyone in our life seems to have an opinion as to what Trena should do with her hair. As far as I'm concerned, she can wear it however she wants. The extensions and sow-ins are as much a part of her as the stuff that comes right out of the top of her scalp. In fact, I think we all just need to learn to be comfortable in our own skin or hair.

So, I've taken a long and circuitous route to get us to that point, and now, for the sake of a few writing prompts, I’m just going to snatch the rug right out from under it.

You see, I think good fiction should make both the reader and the writer uncomfortable. There are times when I know what needs to be written, but I struggle to get the words on paper. Writing it makes it real, at least in a fictional sort of way. The foul language is the characters and my defense against the discomfort.

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Writing Prompts

Create a character that makes you uncomfortable. Make them different in a way that you wouldn't want to have a beer or spend the afternoon in a car with them. Ask yourself how they ended up the way they are. And when you're ready, put them in a situation where they’re uncomfortable.

Or

Put a character who you empathize with and, on some level, is a representation of you, and don't lie, we all have one of those in a notebook somewhere, in a situation where they're way out of their element. Put your sweet, straight-A student in a punk bar with black-painted walls and piss on the bathroom floors. Or drop that Midwestern farm kid into an upscale private school graduation party in Pasadena.

And if you really want to have some fun,

Take the characters from the previous situations and put them somewhere where they’ll be stuck with each other for a while.