Infamous in Oakland

Oakland, California is a beautiful town full of all types of characters. Mark Twain, Gertrude Stein and Jack London all spent time here. Stein famously said of Oakland, “There is no there there. I'm not sure why she would say that. 

Oakland can also be a cold place. Many people wander the streets at night with nowhere to lay their heads. It's estimated that 40% of the homeless population is Black while we are only 13% of the national population. This fact has been normalized. 

The coldest part though is that many people living in the streets may never have an abode of their own again. One evicted is enough for one to be barred from leasing for life. 

It physically hurts me to see all this housing being built around the Bay Area and know that you can never qualify for leasing because your credit score isn't high enough or whatever excuse they use to legally discriminate against Blacks. 

No, this housing is for the monied immigrants and transplants from the Midwest. Actual natives get no love in the housing market. Thus, they are forced to leave the Bay and head to places like Pittsburgh, Antioch or 

even further– down South to places like Atlanta and Houston.

Recently I found housing in a spot in Oakland. I was elated and eager to leave a living situation that was untenable. I may have jumped the gun. There were a lot of rules and regulations where I had been for nearly 2 years. You see, it was a board and care. The price was right. They called it “The Program.” There were many rules. We had to be in by 9 pm and couldn't go outside until 7 am. We could not snack in our rooms. We could not dye our hair because the owner didn't want us to damage “her” sink. 

The biggest, most detrimental rule was that we were not allowed to shower in the day time. We could only shower between the hours of 6 pm and 8 pm. If we were out during these hours, we were literally assed out. We would have to wait to the following day. We could wash up in the sink. That's it. Toward the end of my stay she even disallowed us from using wipes because she didn't want them going down her toilet. It didn't matter that I told her that I was intelligent enough to put them in the trash. It was her way or the highway.

It wasn't long before I went into a deep depression. I wouldn't go anywhere. I did the bare minimum. Fortunately, I was able to stay on a medication regimen. A blonde about my age watched us take our meds. When I first got there she gave me my key on a lancet which she referred to as a"dog collar.” That struck me as odd. 

I looked for work for the longest time with the help of a job coach. He was a super nice Mexican guy. Very positive. I was able to find a remote position. 

After that job ended I was back to square one. I began working with a new job coach. She was a sistah and super motivated to help me. The restrictions on the hours I could leave the house and be back proved to also be an obstacle to finding work. I was extremely thankful that I could make ends meet with my disability insurance. 

I applied to a waiting list for a place in Chinatown and six months later I was invited to attend an interview. Shortly after that I was notified that my application was accepted. I saw a glimmer of hope that I didn't have while I was living in The Trap, also known as Ghost Town. 

Since I moved to my new crib that is subsidized by the Oakland Housing Authority I've encountered a lot of hostility from certain neighbors. It's been an intervention of the cruelest kind. I have become infamous from Oakland to Sacramento for smelling like shit. They even gave me a new moniker– Skunk. The skunk is a beautiful black creature but when crossed or frightened sprays a scent that will knock you out.

I'm all about growth and learning. I am committed to getting to the bottom of this issue with my doctors and with myself. I'm not dead yet. As long as I am breathing I will grow. God’s got me.

Meanwhile, I am suing everybody. Many people have violated my privacy, especially violated HIPPA. Some Latinas eager to knock me out of the box out of their superiority complex when it comes to Black women. I got something for them. Big. Fat. Lawsuits. You see, these people are the new house niggas.

I've made many mistakes in my life, but this is still my Town and I will not just lay down and die like roadkill. Nope, ain't doing it. I'm a Jones. A double Jones. I mind my business, pay my rent on time and am courteous to my neighbors. I live in a way Christ has commanded us to live. Yet, I've been called everything but a child of God. 

It's funny to me that Sex and The City is one of the biggest franchises in entertainment history yet people act so chaste and frigged in real life. It's a tale about a writer living a single life. When it debuted I was also in the thick of my journalism years living in Oakland on E. 18th Street by Lake Merritt. 

I subscribed to HBO just to watch the ladies take a big bite out of the Big Apple. If I had a dollar for every time I was told by a gatekeeper that I wasn't really a writer, I'd be very rich. Their disbelief is out of racism. The forces that be have actively scrubbed the internet of the work I produced as a journalist and editor for YO! Youth Outlet, a youth paper I co-founded (I even named the muthafuckah) and was Senior Editor of for about 10 years before I was blacklisted. At the same time, I suffered complications due to bipolar disorder. 

I've been made infamous here in Oakland. I don't have a car. I have to use public transportation. I have a life to live. I cannot seek a gig until my symptoms are under control. Until then everyone can do like Whitney Houston would say, “Eat my ass!” I still have a long American heritage. I simply can't be erased. Try as you might, the mighty Califia energy lives in me, a writer touched with fire.

Hoe

Since I moved into “The Hell Hotel” my life has been turned upside down. Demons have been tracking and stalking me. They've bugged and cloned my phone. They've even intruded on my dreams at night. I've been praying to my Almighty God for them to go away, to find some true villains to put under– not me. I am not the person they are trying to make me out to be. 

In this world everything is upside down. Good is bad and bad is good. My stalkers’ identity is a mystery to me thus far. All I know is that they are evil to the core. They are true devils who have turned me into the villain. I hear their voices in my mind and through my devices. They persist in calling me a “hoe” A hoe. They constantly comment on my scent and my every move. The voices are Latino, Black and white. This would be laughable if it wasn't so detrimental to my reputation. Finding a job now would be impossible. Bottom line-- they wish me great harm.

White ass Sarah Jessica Parker gets paid tens of millions of dollars to portray a middle aged single writer with a serial body count that would make Dr. Ruth blush. In fact, Sex and The City is one of the most successful franchises in television history. 

I'm a middle aged Black female writer who was blacklisted 25 years ago with a severe chronic illness. I don't get the same allowances as Carrie Bradshaw. For me there are no Prada or Jimmy Choos.

It's sort of like a supernatural experience. A metaphysical head game. Everyone around me is on a different wavelength than me holding a hi-tech secret. Y'all are trying to judge my mental fitness as I peruse through each day trying to figure out my next move out here all alone. 

All of Northern California has been turned against. My anonymity is gone. I don't know what's worse. The public has apparently been told I stink so people are always up on me to get a whiff, invading my personal space. I'm certain I'm being recorded and they have developed some type of high-tech way to smell me through my own nose and devices. They even hate for me to have my natural pheromones present. To them that's stinking, too. 

I shower daily, most days twice. I'm a creative, and artist. I am not consumed with smelling delicious all the time. Steve Jobs was notorious for his b.o. but that's not how he is remembered, now is it? What i smell like is irrelevant. I am deserving of respect simply by being a human being. This human zoo I've been put in is cruel and inhuman. They cry over beaten animals but have no empathy for others. 

They say you haven't made it until you're very well hated. I'm just wondering where my check is because a lot of people are putting in man hours and I'm penniless here. I plead for the Black brothers and sisters who I've ridden for since my journalism days to step up and blow the whistle on this conspiracy to malign me to insanity or death. I'm not a cautionary tale. I am a life and my potential is yet to be determined.

Y'all think I'm living too good. Little do you know that it costs the taxpayer 3 times as much a month to institutionalize me than for me to pursue happiness in the free world? Why should I rot in an asylum when I can be free? You call me a hoe because I can still pull ‘em. You watch my intimate moments, invading my privacy, while you revere Kim K. Give me a break. What kind of a hypocrite are you?

They hope I kill myself or get Sonya Massey'd 

(say her name). She was a Black mother who called the police for help after hearing a disturbance outside her abode in Peoria, Illinois. She also struggled with mental illness and experienced auditory phenomena. One of the arriving officers was a demon who got triggered by her prayer to God. She was as good as dead from calling on Jesus in the face of a devil.

I'm feeling like this may be a genocide. A vicious attack. A way to take us out, one by one.

They're justifying my cancellation on my being a “musty little wench.” A “slut.”  A "hoe." There are no better at being judgemental than your own. Then there are the Latinos still bothered over a piece I posted about Black-Brown unity being a myth, later retracted and apologized for posting even though I'm part Mexican. 

I long for the Obama Era when people knew how to mind their business and have compassion. Since the Trump Era reemerged I haven't had a real private life. Y'all think I'm living too good because I have a nice air fryer and an array of spices (I heard the voices talking about that one day). Too easy breezy for someone who's disabled.  

If you really knew what I've been through you'd treat me a lot better. In the last 5 years alone I've been institutionalized, incarcerated, car jacked, abducted, had the manuscript to my memoir stolen, a machete held to my face, a knife pointed to my eye, shoes stolen off my feet, put out in the middle of the night, given a black eye, made homeless, et cetera. Let's just say I've not been treated like the queen that I am. 

All y'all can say is "hoe" and “you stink.” Shiiit. The real hoes are on E. 14th and y'all should know that. However, demons have laid the groundwork for my early demise. I will fight for my life to the bitter end because despite all the name calling I desire to live. Suicide will never be the case. So, you are stuck with me and I am stuck with you. I am hoping for a more harmonious union. Grown folks don¹'t name call, its rude. Be a grown up. If you smell me, congratulations, you smelled a queen. Go home and write about it. 

Judge Yourself

Since my blog blew up and hackers have sought to humiliate me by invading my privacy, I have been catching hell from every direction. People have been looking at me like some type of “Welfare Queen” because I receive disability benefits. You'd think I'm the only person out here getting help from the federal government. 

The funny thing is none of these people know me or my struggles. I get my benefits because I worked for it. It is literally an insurance guaranteed to those with a solid work history. Nevertheless, everywhere I go people are commenting about me. 

This is the holiday season. One where we are supposed to feel the spirit of kindness and warm-heartedness. Instead I'm being insulted; even by Guatemalan illegal migrants talking about I stink and I’m lazy when I know for a fact I don't and I'm not. I've held down part-time work whenever possible. 

I have to remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. went through a lot worse. He was fighting for Civil Rights. He was beaten and spit on. The irony is these people wouldn't even be here without the movement. I'm just trying to make my way through perimenopause. It's taken months to find the right deodorant and I believe I finally have, thank goodness! 

So, all you motherfuckers out there who believe you wash your asses better than me can go eat a dick. I have things to do. I've basically been in a coma for many, many years. My chronic illnesses cannot be chalked up to laziness. No one judging me has an MD on the end of their name.

People just don't know how to mind their business anymore. But this is what can be expected in these lawless times. I'm subsisting on so little and the fact that people have a problem with that is disturbing to me. What type of Christians are these, really?

I paid into this system and I'm getting what is guaranteed to me according to FDR’s New Deal. Believe me, if abuelita could qualify, these people would be all for it. It's a system that has been working well for 80 years. However, that never stopped people who like to wreck working systems. Wrecking social services is more about disenfranchising people than it's ever been about finding fraud.

My life has been turned upside down, as if it were so great before. Like Nipsey Hussle said, I've sold everything but my soul. Now the demons are coming for that, but I say not so fast. I am the embodiment of the first goddess– wide hipped, thick lipped, buxom full. Call me Lucy or Eve, no matter. I'm prototypical and that's why I catch so much hate– envy.

Y'all know that I've been hacked but no one is willing to stop it. I'm your apocalyptic entertainment. My stalker thinks he can lead me to insanity. He thinks I'm doing too well. You all are watching and waiting to see my next move in this human zoo I live in. You see me naked, overhear my phone conversations, watch my mobile screen like the ding dongs that you all are. All the while I go through dozens of regrets in my mind, over and over again. 

This holiday season I wish for you all to take inventory of your own lives and judge yourselves. 

Daddy Issues and Memories of My Father

In our own way, we are all scientists. In the concrete jungle, the mating scene is an exercise in Social Darwinism. We are drawn to select the best in the bunch and then we put that person under our microscope even further. I've spent my dating life either choosing or being chosen by men I very consciously compared to the very first man unconditional love ever flowed through and that's my Dad.

Indeed, there seems to be something to the Freudian notion that we play out our relationship with our opposite sex parent with our opposite sex partners. Men love to accuse an unstable girl of having "Daddy Issues." I've heard my homeboys say this about women a hundred times. Yet, most men I know want a Mommy in their women but would never acknowledge that fact.

I decided I would take a microscope to my own life and look into my own so-called daddy issues. I had a few memories and thoughts.

As a baby growing up in a townhouse apartment on Oakland's High Street, I was mostly a Daddy's Girl. My dad would pick out my puffy Black Power 'fro and combed and braided my ponytails as my hair grew. He would take me to the A&W Drive-Thru in the Fruitvale District, carefully maneuvering the town's hills with me strapped in the stock adult-sized car seat. Child car seats were not the law then. Instead, my father would stretch his right arm out over my tiny body as if it were a steel bar only covered in mahogany flesh as we entered intersections, met stoplights and crossed crazy drivers. Funny thing is that I've been searching for that sort of security every since.

During the fall of my second birthday my parents divorced. Irreconcilable Differences. Daddy quickly remarried a woman from his hometown in Tennessee in the summer of 1976, year of The Bicentennial. My stepmother came with a new older brother, my only brother. We would play and laugh with my older sister, having a genuine bellyaching good old time. By the time I turned 4 my dad informed me that he, a Vietnam vet, would re-enlist in the army. This was the first time I felt heartbreak. My Daddy, my protector, was going away to lands unknown to me. It would be 8 years before I would lay eyes on him again.

When Daddy left, I didn't just lose my king, but I lost a little piece of myself too. Sure, he sent cards and checks and I received the occasional phone call from Colorado, Germany or South Korea, however, for all intents and purposes within the hood, I was a fatherless child. I clung to a photo my father took shortly before he left Oakland of him dressed in a Saturday Night Fever chic white suit, wearing a gold chain and a Fu Manchu mustache, leaning on one knee prominently with a toothy smile.

That summer I was molested by family members. There was no one to hold the culprits responsible, really. Virtually fatherless, there was no one there to exact my revenge. I was accused of being fast, yes, at 4 years old. The shame pained me to my core and I was determined not to be a victim again. Food became my protection. I took to eating butter to quicken my fattening. In my mind, layers of fat could protect me from predators sexualizing me anymore. By the time I entered the first grade I weighed 100 pounds. My mission was accomplished.

By 12, my body had been stretched passed capacity. In regard to my father, I teetered on feeling a sense of abandonment and then cared for when I received phone calls and gifts. My father sent for me that summer. He had just been stationed stateside. I was not the little darling anymore but an obese adolescent. He knew nothing of the abuse. A stern man, Daddy was dismayed by my posture, stance, walk and weight. For him my obesity showed my weakness. Again, I felt shame. I was on course to becoming a 300 pound woman. A lifelong battle with my weight began. By 15, I shed enough fat to be considered a thick treat. As much as I loved the attention I feared it. Sexual objectification unsettled me so much because of my past, however, as I grew into a woman I learned to compartmentalize my sexuality from victimhood.

I stopped talking to my dad about men every since he accused me of acting like I was looking for Mr. Goodbar when I was in my 20's. Like most women, I turn to my mother and my homegirls. Homeboys offer harsh truths and are often right on the money about the men I date. I've shared moments with men who have made me feel as special as Daddy's little girl, but never as safe as my Daddy could with one outstretched arm.

That sense of safety has never been simulated. I'd like to say I've stopped looking for it. In the concrete jungle you just can't expect your inner girl to be indulged. In a landscape of Social Darwinist, no one gives a fuck about how you think or feel but the people who love you. I've come to realize that I expect a lot from the men who claim to love me or want to be more than friends. After all, I think I'm a great thing. Maybe it's because I'm a Taurus that my love is demonstrative. Insofar as I show love I expect to receive love action in return. Talk is for the birds.

Upon my own scientific examination, fear of abandonment and a love of emotionally unavailable men seem to top the list of my so-called daddy issues. Classic, right? No doubt these "issues" have bleed into my love life. However, what a man may consider a daddy issue I call having standards. A man is not going to come in and out of my life and if he can't give he will get the door.

My daddy and I still have issues. I resent the fact that he never came back to California. On a bad day, I feel like I was left like a sack of potatoes. I think if my father had stayed, a true Alpha male, the abuse would never had occurred as my abusers would not have dared. I have to remember that times were different then. Folks didn't expect there to be predators within families and daddies of yesterday were not as involved as they are today. The upside is that I was able to become my own person as I didn't have to live in his shadow. He still defines me as being weak as he's never understood the artist in me. I see myself for all that I have survived as tough as nails underneath the soft exterior.

At the end of the day, I know my daddy loves me and that I love my daddy. The fact is that his replacement is not on the scene. At best, my Ph D in Love will score me a really good dude, not another Daddy.

Facebook Watches Us: Trump's War on Wokeness Comes Home

I don't know how they did it but Meta has piped into my crib. You see, my building is secure with cameras throughout. I found a comfort in this initially but my feelings lately have changed. I feel surveilled.

I think that the good people at Meta have taped into our video server and seek amusement by just watching us. I have been made aware that the whites enjoy watching us in our most private moments. Zuck. you hired some real sick fucks.

They have tapped into our feed no doubt for DOGE and the Trump administration in search of the Woke. Trump has declared a war on the so-called Woke. This is how they plan to annihilate us, playing with our lives to the point of attempting to drive us to the point of madness. Blackmail, too. Putting an eviction on our credit which would lead to permanent homelessness. 

They are engaging in psychological and spiritual warfare with the tenants of my building. Their plan was sophmoric. I figured it out within weeks. The plan was to make me feel like my personal issues were somehow very public. To weaken my confidence by making me feel that I "stink."

Dumb, poor, white trash. Absolute basura, that crawled out here from the Midwest trying to take a piece of prime affordable housing. What they fail to realize is that this is Huey's town. It is the only Chocolate City on the West Coast and due to our history, will ALWAYS be a Chocolate City. 

I insist that Oakland Police Department and Menlo Park Police Department launch an investigation into Meta abusing it's immense power in the Bay Area to try to evict Black tenants to swap in white ones. Some white people are so stupid. How on earth they have all that they have is beyond me. 

On second thought, I know how-- from theft, rape, murder and racketeering. Trump said he wanted war. Like Pac said, I got myself together and I'm preparing for war. I'm indigenous mixed with Negro. This is my country by at least 15 generations. Let's fight. Im a heavy weight. Like Muhammad Ali, I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Viva la peuple!

What Whitney's Death Means To Me

Whitney Houston's death shocked the globe. Houston's songs were a fixture for three decades. If you lived through the '80s and/or '90s chances are Houston's voice had graced your ear in some memorable way. Since her passing she has been honored from Detroit to Dubai. 

She was to pop music what Billie Holiday had been to jazz. She left this life the most awarded singer of all time. We hear little of this Guinness Book of Records fact in the media these days. Her greatest accomplishments have been usurped by her greatest fail, orchestrating her very own death with drug and alcohol abuse at the age of 48. How will she be remembered?

Whitney Houston was my generation's answer to Diana Ross. She was statuesque and glamorous with a voice of pure soul. We presumed she had a certain class about her in the early years and readily put her on a pedestal reserved for virgin princesses. I suppose it was a lot of pressure being R&B royalty at 22 and in the mid-80s. Cocaine was ubiquitous in Hollywood and omnipresent back home in Newark, NJ. Add the pressure of living in the public eye and the excess of a music business celebrity lifestyle and Houston's eventual drugs addiction can read as probable.

By 1992 Houston had married Bobby Brown and rumors of their drug use circulated through the Black community. Some said Bobby got her hooked on coke. Some said don't believe the hype and contended that Bobby was simply on marijuana before Whitney introduced HIM to coke. Still, some couldn't truly admit that Whitney was an addict until watching her and Bobby's reality show, "Being Bobby Brown" where their strange behavior could only be explained as that of folks hiding something. When that tabloid shot surfaced of Whitney's vanity sink covered in what was suppose to be her vice trash-- cigarette boxes, a beer can, some crack rocks on a plate-- her public image noose-dived. She spent the years since on the fringes.

Bill O' Reily proclaimed on his show that Whitney wanted to kill herself. Some folks were in an uproar over his statement. Albeit he was curlish with his words, I think he made an interesting point. According to Sigmund Freud,  all self-destructive behavior can be explained by a death drive, a  death wish, we have as humans in this society to kill the pain of living.

If one subscribes to Freudian theory, the compulsive, repetitive behavior of abusing drugs and alcohol was Whitney's way of living out her death wish. No one would imagine on a conscious level Houston wanted to leave her prized daughter Bobbi Christina. However, she knew the dangers of her lifestyle but continued on a destructive path as her demons took over. Houston clearly lived in a world of pain and pressure as even she knew her voice was no longer The Voice. Under normal circumstances it's difficult for a singer to maintain the voice of her youth into the golden years. However, with abuse to the cords and body a singer cannot often maintain her optimum sound.

Yet she did what all great talents do, she mounted a comeback.

Many great women in the music industry have fallen victim to drug abuse and premature death while navigating the scene. Phenomenal singers from Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin to Amy Winehouse suffered from infamous addictions before untimely deaths. Fast and loose living is not a recipe for longevity.

If only she would leave Bobby they said. She finally left Bobby. Still, her drug addiction ensued. Ray J, her sometime companion, claimed he had no knowledge of her cocaine use. Either the man is an idiot or he's lying. Neither of these possibilites bodes well for his character in my opinion.

Houston's life will serve as one of the great cautionary tales of fame, love and drugs. While watching her tell her story to Oprah in 2009, I was struck by what a survivor she was. A real tough broad. May she alwaysbe rememberedas TheVoice. She certainly will be to me.

To Catch A Snake

To Catch A Snake

When I was 3 years old I was playing alone on our balcony when I saw a jump rope miraculously turn into a green snake and slither across the cemented ground. That's when I knew that I could see and sense things that others could not. 

I had the gift of discernment. Fast forward to 2025. According to Chinese astrology, we are living in The Year of The Snake and I have been bitten, I suspect, by a good friend. 

I met her nearly 20 years ago on a junior college campus where I took a Statistics course. One day after class I was walking to my candy apple red Mitsubishi Eclipse when I heard a voice addressing me from behind. The voice flagged me down with a bevy of, ”Girl, girl, girl.”

I turned around to discover a woman who was as wide as she was tall. She had dyed blonde hair and gang tattoos all over the parts of her body that I could see. I stopped to talk to her. She asked me my age. I told her. I must have been about 32. She said she was looking for a girlfriend for her son, who had to have been 6 years my junior. I let her know that I was in a relationship but that I was flattered. 

The following week our instructor put us in a group together with several other students. We gravitated to each other and would hang out outside of class and group meetings. 

The first thing I noticed about Linda was her loud mouth. She always had to be heard and have the last word. What I've learned in life is that the loudest person in the room is the weakest, most insecure person in the room. Let's say she was very insecure. Anyway, I passed the class but she didn't. Nonetheless, we would stay in touch. 

Our friendship quickly turned rocky. We had a love/hate dynamic that I found troubling. We would go months without talking. I couldn't stand how competitive she was with me. She had been a teenage drop-out/runaway at 13 turned into a teen mom at 14. She liked to wear a facade of toughness and for the most part I would let her. I really didn't care either way.

We did the on again, off again thing some friends do as if they were lovers. I really grew to trust her because she groomed me to look at her as though she was my consigliere. You know how you get a vibe off someone that they are not cool people to be around? I catch vibes all the time as an empath. So, let me tell you how shook I was to find out that my good friend was not really a friend to me. 

 

I suspected there was something odd about our bond when she got 2 cars just like I had– a Mitsubishi Eclipse and a Ford Focus. Wouldn't that throw up a red flag to you? On some Single Black Female shit, am I right?

I'm a Taurus and she's a Gemini. It's said that we can find harmony in our friendship but I'd have to say Katie provoked the majority of our quarrels. She would turn on me like a vicious, junkyard dog. Truth be told, she was just a mean girl.

During our last hiatus Katie (name changed for privacy) got a body by Stanford Medicine. She dropped 125 pounds and got all the surgeries to remove her flabby skin. She also had her gang tattoos removed. I was happy for her. 

I, on the other hand, had picked up 25 pounds since we'd last spoken. I'd gained the weight while caring for my mother in her last days. She was very dejected to hear about my mother's passing. However, as soon as she could she had to point out the irony of her losing weight and me gaining weight. I was like, “whatever.” 

I made the choice not to fall into the trap she tried to set up for me. I'm too mature to be jealous of the next female. What I felt was that I was dealing with someone with the emotional intelligence of a goldfish. In The Year of The Snake I found one that I called a friend. I began to hold her at arm's length. This is something I had to do with the contrarian. The thing is that I loved her but I love myself too much to deal with someone I can't trust. Toxicity is not my get down.

I have a gift for picking up vibrations. Katie gave up good vibes until she turns into a transformer. Then hold your hats, folks. In the last couple of years I've been single. Not much to write home about. While we were on good terms, Katie would always probe me for information about my dates. I look at it as a little invasive but I didn't see the harm of sharing these things with someone I considered to be a good friend.

One thing I noticed about Katie that I never liked is the amount of gossiping she engaged in. I should have known that she was spilling my tea as much as she spilled everyone else's.

Her treachery was confirmed to me last week when we fell out for good. It started with a simple text I sent her on what I thought was the day after her latest surgery. I basically texted her, “Tag bitch, you're it!” I didn't think much of it. We curse all the time. Well, she decided she'd get all bent out of shape. She reached deep into her gutter world to accuse me of “opening my legs” to 7 men. I was flabbergasted. First off, I'm grown. I don't report to her. Second, that's a straight lie. And third, we can't all let cobwebs form over our stuff.

I will not use this opportunity to bash her because I was raised to have more class than that. I'll just say she's in no position to judge me. None at all.

So, I find that I must ghost a good friend because she's a snake. I know with certainty that she spread my supposed business in the streets. The best parts of her will be missed. But that Alpha female energy won't be missed.

If there's one thing I learned from Coppola's Godfather saga I would say it would be to keep your friends close but your enemies even closer. I'm still trying to figure out which end of the spectrum Katie is on. Who really sent her my way. Time will tell.