About A (poor black) Boy

There's a hole in my soul that won't heal
and there's a rage and a pain, even now i still feel
and even though i'm a man, still i don't understand
but that's what happens when you don't have
a father

There is a movie called 'About A Boy' starring Hugh Grant and Toni Collette (I don't expect anyone to know her and if you do, we should be friends!) and my roommate pretty much forced me to watch it. Its he's favorite movie of all time. I agree it's pretty great. In it, this young boy, a loser forces his way into the main character's life, played by Hugh Grant. The boy goes over to Hugh's house at the end of school every day and just watches t.v. with him until a relationship happens. Its wonderful. And sad.

I'm not ready for that. I know I need a father or I'm missing something from him. Something that my mom couldn't / can't give. And I'm not ready to force myself on to someone else to get it. Okay...lets cut the words...(oh grief) I don't want to say I need a man to teach me to be a man. (God, that sentence was so hard to type..LORD!)

In a couple of weeks I will be a father, to a son. I really thought I would have been 'okay' by this point. That this longing for a father or some man to decide he will teach me what it means to be a man would be gone. I hoped, or thought, I would of been self-taught by now and that I would not have to be in this sad place. But I am.

This is the point of my blog. I need to share what I'm learning, seeing and feeling. There are a bunch of books out there about being a man and being a man without a father but being a black man, well...there's not too many. I know this, I work at a bookstore. The black studies section and the men section is about as big as the bird-watching guide section. And there are so many of young black men in the same situation. Why do so many young black men still see themselves as poor black boys?

I want to talk about this. I want to find out all I can about this. And eventually (soon hopefully) I want to deal with this in my own life.