During the pandemic, everyone was forced into solitary confinement with themselves. And so, many of us, especially those in the younger generations, began journeys of self identity. 

 

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We looked inward, because the outside world was so terrifying. When they kicked us out of the dorms at Wayne, we had no idea what was going to happen or what the future held. 

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With the end of my Freshman year having been robbed by the pandemic, I spent the Summer with my family, living at my Grandparents’ house. You see, my mother and my step-father had decided that it was a good time to sell our childhood home and as it turns out, they were right. 

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The housing market boomed with growth during the pandemic and sometimes I like to imagine that, perhaps, everyone was selling their childhood, family-homes. 

 

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They sold the house before they could find a new one, so we needed somewhere temporary to stay in the meantime, and my Grandma and step-grandfather took us in. My Grandma had always lived in that same area where I was raised and my step-grandfather, well, did not. He grew up in the Chesapeake Bay Area of ole’ Virginia- the same place where the British Empire surrendered to the American Revolutionaries. 

 

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They were traditional in the sense that my step-grandfather owned his own business and made the majority of money. My Grandma also worked then, though she had been retired for almost five years up to that point; but, her primary job was to tend the home, balance check books, and plant flowers in the Spring. 

 

You see, I had quickly come to notice the small gendered details of my family’s nuts and bolts; and, while I was living with them, everything about that house transformed into Man or Woman.

The Woman always cooked, served dinner to her family, and then only after they were finished would she be able to eat. The Man sat at the head of the dinner table and very rarely did he speak to anyone. They just ate. He didn’t say much, and so she didn’t say much either.  

 

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Every night after dinner, John Wayne played on the television (or if it wasn’t him then it was some other dead white guy acting as a cowboy). A fun fact about my grandparents is that they have always been hard of hearing. My Grandma was involved in a bad car accident when she was younger and lost a majority of her hearing in one ear. Ear infections got my step-grandfather. So anytime they were consuming media from a television, or a speaker, the volume was on full blast. My bedroom, well it was more like a storage room, was just over the living room. So, everynight I listened to the sounds of the glorified American cowboy. 

 

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Most of the time, the story was just about a cowboy, or a group of cowboys who were traveling from one place to another. The protagonist was always male, and always white.  He was a glorified, White Itinerant Man.  

 

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Blue collar and a red-state treasure  
Love junkie on a three-day bender     
His grip, so hard, eyes glare         
Trouble like a mug shot               
Charged up,                           

'cause the man's on a mission         
One, two ya, the gears are shiftin'   
He called, I cried, we broke          
Racin' through the moonlight          

                                      

               -Lyriccs of John Wayne                     by Lady Gaga       

                                      

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the cowboys were moving cattle westwards; sometimes there was a love interest in need of saving; and sometimes they were searching for money to support their families. But in any event, there was always, always an Indian battle scene.

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Whether the narrative was about Good Indians who aided white people or Bad Indians who attacked white people, it made no difference, in the end, to our family heirlooms in my Grandma’s glass cabinet which watched, paralyzed by the massacres, every night with me. My step-grandfather slept soundly in the living room, watching these moving on repeat every night, while I tried to sleep directly above.

At the end of the Summer in early August, I moved back to Detroit and into a small studio in Midtown just across the street from the DMC. I could talk about Midtown, or Wayne State, the River Walk, Clark Park, Eastern Market, New Center, Bell Isle, or even the Downtown scene-- each place in Detroit has contributed to the person I am today, but each place did so in conjunction with each other place in Detroit. It was not the individual locations in Detroit which transformed me, but it was Detroit itself and the energy it poured back into my soul.

 

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In the Fall, I enrolled in numerous political science courses including a course on Plato’s Republic, an introduction course on constitutional law, and an introduction course on feminist political theory. It was a hard year, both because of the pandemic and because of my course load. But, I was able to survive the winter and a break-up on New Years. I felt that there was going to be a great change in my life, and in the Spring I decided to apply to the University of Michigan as a transfer student. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t get in, but what was the hurt in trying- right? 

 

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When I received my admissions letter, in the Spring of 2020, the apex of the covid pandemic, I sat alone in my four-hundred-square-foot studio. 

 

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After I called my, barely being able to tell her the good news through my tears, I thought of my father. He was a Michigan State man (Well, he went to Western but in Michigan it doesn’t matter where you go or don’t go. All that matters is who you side with: green and white or maize and blue). And I wondered if he was proud of me, knowing he would never be able to tell me himself. 

 

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I would soon ask myself another question: are you man enough to go through with it?