Page 19 of Don Caselli

“Same.”

“You like to read spicy books, too?”

I looked up from the book she happened to be reading. “Nah, I like to do the spicy shit that you be reading about in books.”

Navy sank down in the chair and covered her face. “Don, please.”

“Landon.”

“Everyone calls you Don, though,” she replied, peeking through her fingers with a goofy smile on her face.

“I can tell you not about to beeveryone.”

She smiled bashfully and then held her hand out. “No kids club… me and you. First one to break it owes the other thirty-thousand dollars.”

“You gonna give me thirty bands?”

She faked like she was offended. “You think I’m gonna be the first one that breaks this pact? Wow, Don… thought you believed in me.”

“Landon,” I corrected her.

Her small hand slipped into mine. “Landon,” she corrected, doing that voice and fluttering her eyelashes.

Navy Bleu was trouble.

4

Navy Bleu Perkins

One of myfavorite movies wasMy Big Fat Greek Wedding.It was a movie that no matter how many times it came on, I could rewatch it every time. Mostly because it reminded me of my own crazy family. Every time I watched the movie, I thought of my aunt, cousins, uncles, or grandparents because we were one crazy bunch, but we loved one another. The one difference was that instead of Greek, we were one big Guyanese family.

We loved hard, fought harder, but came together in the end. Every Sunday, you could find us making the walk to my grandparents’ apartment for dinner. Our family all lived in the same area, and any given Sunday, we almost always ran into each other heading to my grandparents’ apartment. I could make it to my grandparents’ house in three blocks, and my parents’ house in two.

Greene lived a few blocks down from me, and her mother lived a block over from her. Family, and being close to each other, was very important to us. I grew up living close to family and walking to their apartments whenever I wanted to bearound them. Other than when Greene’s father moved them to another part of Brooklyn, we had never lived too far from each other. After her parents divorced, her mother returned right back to what she was used to.

When my grandparents came from Guyana to Brooklyn, New York, they knew they wanted to give their children what they didn’t have back in Guyana. My mother, aunt, and both my uncles all graduated from college and settled into their city jobs.

My mother was a social worker for the city, while my aunt worked in corrections for Riker’s Island. Both my uncles were firefighters for the FDNY. Since I had been a child, I had been reminded that once you got a city job, you kept it until the day that you died. A city job in New York City was like hitting the jackpot, and not too many fumbled that when they got it. They stayed in those positions until they retired or died.

Imagine my parents’ face when I decided not to go away to college. Me and Antwan had planned on going away to the same college and worked hard to get in. It had always been our plan to go away to college so he could play ball, and then eventually become drafted, and I would follow him wherever he was drafted to.

The plan had always been one that we both wanted, but one day I woke up and didn’t want that anymore. I didn’t want to chase a man around while he followed his dreams. It was very much one sided when it came to Antwan and our dreams. My dreams never mattered because the goal was for him to play for the pros.

We grew up together, so everyone, including my entire family, wanted that for him. The closer it came to us graduating from high school, the more I realized that Antwan following his dreams meant there was no room for mine. My parents loved Antwan and encouraged our relationship because they saw it as something positive.

They had always wanted me to go away to college, and the fact that I had gotten accepted into the same school as Antwan was amazing. A week before graduation, I sat my parents down and told them that college wasn’t for me.

It was less about Antwan and more about what I wanted. College was something I had been working hard at because I wanted to be with my boyfriend. This had been our dream, more his dream than mine, but I was rocking with it because I didn’t want to break up with him. He was my first real boyfriend, and we had done everything together for the first time.

Traveling had been what I was passionate about. Documenting my entire life and showing girls that it was alright to choose you and be yourself. I’ve spent years watching different content creators and could never relate to any of them. Some days I wanted to go all out in pink and be all princess like. Then there was other days when I wanted to toss on the baggiest sweatpants, timbs, and an oversized hoodie to accomplish the day.

Music and fashion were my loves, and I enjoyed writing music and singing it. Even with me being scared to ever release it, I enjoyed it and loved to encourage others to do what they loved and go where they were loved.

Music was my first love, and I had been writing it since I could write my name. I kept every lyric and song I’ve ever written, and when life became too hard or the noise in my head was too loud, I retreated to music. As much as I was an open book and shared my life online, that came with a lot of negative backlash that I wasn’t strong enough to handle.

I could have a million people telling me they love my content and what I bring to the content creating world, but one person could say I was overrated, and I was harping on that one person. It was a vicious cycle, which I tried hard to work on without getting into my head about it.

Antwan and my parents were both angry when I decided not to attend college. As mad as both my parents were, they never turned their back on me or kicked me out. They were trying hard to give me the space to make my own decisions without forcing me to do what they had to do when they were my age.

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