"A New Cloud of Beauty" (Cont.)

The first part of the story can be viewed here... Just incase you missed it. :) New Cloud of Beauty. Part 1






“You’re lucky you go in-state,” I said after we picked up two of his friends, JJ, a guy I knew vaguely from middle school, and Freddy. Chris nodded. He had the luxury of going to school with people who knew who he really was.
Club 7 was a sweatbox of rum, cologne, and long hair extensions. Like any club in the city, its patrons gyrated under a cloud of smoke and weed, but unlike most clubs, the crowds came early to Club 7 because at the best joint on 8th Street the prospects of a good DJ and a good hookup were always high.
Chris grabbed my arm and led me to the dance floor once we’d all gotten through security. Turquoise and fushia and gold flashed above our heads and we danced and we danced and we danced. I wasn’t drunk but my head was light and the room was swirling, as I swung my hips in every which direction. I saw a girl jump in front of Chris and mash her buttocks against his groin to the base beat of the music, and Chris’s friends paired off in a similar fashion. But I chose to sway alone. I closed my eyes and reveled in the freedom of the dark.
After a dozen songs I felt a tap on my back. I turned around and JJ motioned for me to follow him.
“What’s up?” I yelled in his ear, but he didn’t reply. He led me through the undulating horde of people to the back of the club. I squinted, and in the dim light I saw Chris and Freddy standing in front of the fire exit among a group of ten or twelve people.
“Here she is,” JJ mouthed, and he nudged me to the center.
“Thanks,” Chris said. “Hey, Jess, these are some people I want you to meet. You know Jay and Shanice.” He gestured to a light-skinned girl who looked like Naomi Campbell and a darker one with a tighter dress, who looked like she needed birth control. “This is Jason, Eric, Larry, Sean…”
The boys all smiled and waved or tipped their hats in greeting. I smiled too, at first, but then I realized that everyone was looking at me.
“Hey,” I said. “Nice to meet you.” But my cheeks were trembling. I felt their eyes around me and upon me, and I knew they were judging me. I tried to hide my discomfort as the room spun and my vision blurred, but still I crumbled under their gazes like a speck in a swarm of ants. My skin crawled and my eyes darted. I tried to look up, but I couldn’t, so I flashed a smile as I watched the floor, and I prayed for a conversation to start.
“Do you go to school here?” drawled one of the boys; Kingsley, I think. He crossed his arms and he looked at me sideways.
“No,” I stuttered. I tried to drop the stupid smile still trembling on my face. “I go to school in Atlanta.”
Kingsley nodded and frowned. “What made you wanna go there?”
“We’re really good in the sciences, and I’m pre-med. And the campus is—it’s really beautiful.”
“You coulda stayed here,” said another one, Darius, who was next to me. “Mid-west got a lot of trees too.” He grinned. “Ya’ll got a lot of parties up there?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t drink, so...”
“Oh,” he said, and he looked disappointed.
After that it was silent for a while, but eventually Jayla said something funny, and the whole group united in laughter without me. They went back and forth about some girl and some guy, and I chided myself for thinking I was well enough to be there. Conversation is an art form, I thought, as smiles flashed from one side of the group to the other, and I wondered who’d given Chris and his friends permission to be happy.
Suddenly a hand was waving in my face. “Yo, where you at?” laughed Darius. “I said, ‘how you like this song?’” But I was startled, and confused, so I didn’t say anything. He jumped in front of me and looked over his shoulder at Chris. “I think she must’ve had something, dog, her eyes look gone.”
And at that, my best friend came over. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I mumbled. My mouth was like mush. Now they all probably thought I was stupid. “I’m just a little tired.”
“You’re spacing out, girl.” He put his hand to the small of my back and walked me towards the lounge area. “Why don’t you go sit down or something, then?”
Chris jogged back into the party. Maybe he wasn’t angry, but he was probably embarrassed. I sat on one of the plush, crimson couches and crossed my legs. There was a prostitute perched on one butt-cheek on the couch in front of me, and a man was sitting beside her. As her breasts bounced like Jell-o before the man and he pulled her closer, I thought of the last time that I’d been kissed, and how that had been my first time. I sank back into the chair and remembered the cloud of beauty that had overwhelmed us and how I couldn’t sleep for days after. But then I waved the thoughts of him away. He was gone, so there was no use in feeling anything.
The DJ turned the music up and I realized that “A Millie” by Lil’ Wayne was on. Damn I hate a shy bitch; don’t you hate a shy bitch? blared the stereos, and someone offered me a Smirnoff and I took it. My throat burned, and I began to think of the many ways that I could punish myself for being afraid of human beings. I’ve been numb for weeks, I thought, and the tears came when I realized that I wanted to destroy my wrists to feel.
I took another Smirnoff off of somebody and downed it. I turned sharply to my left and everything swam before me, and when I came to, the man sitting next to me was looking at me.
“You seem thirsty,” he said. He was dark, and his teeth gleamed when he grinned. “My name is Kirabo. It means ‘gift from God.’”
Immigrants, I thought. My parents were like that once.
“Where are you from?” he said, moving closer to me. His accent was thick and rich like syrup.
“I’m Nigerian,” I slurred. “Where’re you from, gift from God?”
“I am from Uganda. You do look Nigerian,” he said, and he grinned again. “You’ve got a pretty nose.”
I frowned, but then I smiled at him and he held my gaze until I dropped it. Usually, I would’ve avoided a random guy in a club, but I was drunk and he seemed innocent, so I kept up the conversation. He asked me gently what I was studying and I told him I wanted to be a doctor and write on the side.
“That’s amazing,” he said, and he smiled. “I can’t write to save anything.”
And I relaxed. Like my family, like my mother, writing was a natural part of me that I could talk about without blinking. But then I remembered attending a writing workshop earlier that month, and sitting at a round table and being surrounded by eyes, and I winced.
“Do you want to dance?”

My Beliefs, My Experience, and Setting the Record Straight..

                                                 

Well, hello. I thought I would take an opportunity to introduce myself. I am Controversy's cousin, but as you will soon notice he and I disagree on a lot things, especially religion. I'm glad to be joining this site as a proud, Born-Again, non-denominational Christian. I am not stupid, I am not brainwashed, I am not uneducated (I am getting a double-major in Biology and Creative Writing, Pre-Med. Yes, I want to be an OB/GYN after medical school, and if that grosses you out, well, someone has to do it, right?). I am a fundamentalist when it comes to the Bible, and I am always up for a good discussion of actual, Biblical text... but when it comes to personal beliefs, honestly I won't waste my breath fighting because there is nothing to talk about between me and a potential opponent unless that person also beleives that the Bible is the Truth and God's Word.

When I was younger, being a Christian was something that was a part of me mainly because of my mother, and the fact that it made me feel good. But when I went through my first year of college, I was on my own and little by little I began to compromise the standards that I'd always secretly wanted to break. I didn't drink, do drugs, or have sex (proud virgin talking), but I did end up in a relationship that I shouldn't have been in, and when I broke out of that relationship, I went through a very hard time. It wasn't exactly depression, but it was very close to it. I felt so lost and so bereft and so raw with pain... I had never felt that kind of loss before. Sure, I broke up with him at my mother's request because she saw the change in my character and she knew I needed to get back on track. But I really liked him and even though I knew he was bad for me, we had really good times together and the attraction between us was so strong...

It would take so much more than this blog post to describe how lost I felt. It was at this time that I rediscovered my connection with Jesus. Before you click away to another blog post, hear me out. I repented to God for turning away from Him and I began to pray and read my Bible again. I read the Psalms over and over, because my self-worth was so low and I needed to be reminded of how God loves me. It didn't happen overnight, nor in a week, nor a month (it took time for me to break myself down, it would take time for me to build myself up), but God gave me the strenght to go through the day-to-day and one day I woke up and I was over my ex. Basically, over weeks and weeks of prayer and dedication, I discovered the goodness of God for myself without my parents' help, and I realized that I truly couldn't live without Him. The peace and the joy that I feel daily is overwhelming, and I wasn't feeling like this when I was disconnected from my Maker.

I need to take a break here and stress to you people: if you are curious/doubtful about God, ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU! Do NOT rely on what OTHER people think. I'm not bashing the other writers on this blog, but you should view this blog as what it is: a gathering of opinions. Why don't you try crying out to God and ask Him to show himself to you?

That would have been a perfect place to end, wouldn't it? But I'm not finished :) A very wonderful young man by the name of Controversy asked me a question about Christianity that I couldn't answer at the time, and I felt very bad, because it was a very smart and valid question. He asked me over Skype, "If God is so good, then why did He command the Israelites to destroy the inhabitants of many towns as they marched toward the Promised Land?" Well, I'm going to throw a lot of information at you all in a short time, so hold on to your office chairs.

Basically, the Bible says that "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever." This means that the same love that He has now is the same love He had back then in the New Testament. The problem with most people is that their view of God is warped. IF God is love, and if He is PERFECT as the Bible says, then He must equally hate. God does NOT hate his creations. He hates the things that destroy his people, like sin and wickedness---the people that God ordered the Israelites (who were his chosen people) to destroy, were people who were dedicated to sin, wickedness, and false gods; God did not want these people to lead the Israelites astray and lead them to destruction! On the flip side, you also read in the Bible what happened when Israel failed to carry out God's instructions. The tribes that worshiped false gods attacked Israel. NOT because God was punishing them, but because by sinning, the Israelites removed themselves from God's protection.

In conclusion, Controversy is right that God is love, but the thing is that God is also holy, so holy that He cannot be around sin. Just because a lot of people have venom towards the Most High God doesn't make Him any less of what the Bible tells us He is.

And that's all for now folks :) I'm gonna do a follow-up post on this later. Time for bed...