#no i LOVE early 90’s curls and frizz

[mistavybe]

Favorite hairstyles I’ve had 💇🏾‍♂️👦🏾🧔🏾

💇🏾‍♂️ Classic 80’s high top fade haircut, Circa 1988. You can’t tell by looking at it (because it was dry af that day after a whole day’s worth of running around pre-photo), but my hair is actually S-Curled in this pic lol. Def needed more Luster’s Pink Moisturizer and some S-Curl Activator gel that day 🤣... but you get the gist. This was a pic of all the members of the very first band I ever joined - M-Voice. (I’m the guy in the yellow/orange t-shirt with the nerdy glasses, btw 😳🤓) #RIPShelShok (he’s the tall ass dude with the headphones on 🎧)

💇🏾‍♂️ 100% natural (“Play from Kid N’ Play”) high top fade... Pic taken of me during my Kisskidee Karavan performance at the National Stadium in 1993. S-Curls were over by then, thankfully lmao. 🙏🏾 (Yes, i’m shirtless. No, I don’t want to talk about it. 🙈) Special shout out to my barber, Slick, from back then! He was so good, we got him gigs trimming all the stars who came to record at Caribbean Sound Basin studio Trinidad in the early 90’s (Tony! Toni! Tonë!, Teddy Riley, Guy, BlackStreet, Diddy and his crew, etc).

💇🏾‍♂️ I’m guessing this was somewhere between 1994 and 1995 because I know for a fact these short “straw curl twists” (i’m in the guy in the middle) was what I was rocking when I signed my major label record deal with the boy band I used to be in, and that was 1994 for sure lol. Straw curls were the hot commodity back then for young black men. 🤷🏾‍♂️ I was going someplace more dressy in this photo, clearly, because usually in my day to day casual look i’d rock the straw curls with a bandana on, Karate Kid style lmao. 🤕

💇🏾‍♂️ Joe Le Taxi music video with Sharlene Boodram, back in 1997. Fun fact: most people thought I had dreadlocks between 1996 and around 2000, but the reality is they were just really long twists lol. I kinda hated the process of combing them out and re-twisting but at the same time, my dad had previously disowned my older half-brother for several years after he grew dreadlocks, soooo... it was either twists back then or be homeless. I went with the twists lol.🤷🏾‍♂️

💇🏾‍♂️ 2000 - 2011. I rocked what we in Trinidad call cane-rows (Americans call them cornrows) for pretty much a solid decade. Initially I just asked whatever chicks I was close to that could braid hair to “hook me up”, until eventually I found an awesome natural hair stylist (love you Safi!) who kept me in impeccable styled week after week, including the ‘do in this photo shoot. She only had one rule: “This is my hair, you’re just the one wearing it, so take care of properly until you bring it back to me to wash and re-style, Mister Man! 😡” And that’s exactly what I did lmao. 🤷🏾‍♂️

💇🏾‍♂️ 2011 - Present. Eventually, I felt like I aged out of younger styles like the canerows and twists and had to let it all go. Best decision ever. Nothing is more satisfying than hopping in the shower and shampooing your hair in 5 minutes flat, being able to instantly towel dry the hair, slap some jojoba oil in there, give it a quick brush and be out of the house in mere minutes if necessary lol. After years of sleeping in du-rags, constantly re-applying gel and/or anti-frizz spray and (a black hair tradition) having to pat the hell out of my hair if it itched for fear of runing the style if I scratched my scalp... my current low fade is the best thing ever. 🙌🏾 I don’t see myself doing anything crazy anytime soon.

This has been a Vybe hair retrospective. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk lol. 👋🏾

[mimzy-writing-online]

A Witch’s Memory, Chapter Two, Anna

I can feel Felix’s stress bleeding into the soul connection. I think that’s what woke me up. It’s seven, which shouldn’t feel as painfully early as it does, but I don’t sleep. Just because classes start tomorrow, doesn’t mean I have my sleep schedule back in rhythm.

Might not ever.

I bet Veronica’s already stressing herself out and it’s bleeding into the rest of the house. That must be why Felix is so stressed. Wonderful. Great.

At least there’s tea and pancakes. Elmsley promised.

I can hear three sets of feet hurrying around downstairs as I leave my room. The door to Emily’s room is closed.

“Felix, I need you to write your name on which boxes are yours. You and Anna both forgot.”

I knock on Emily’s door, avoiding all the glittery drawings taped to it, color on the dingy old wood. “Emmy, are you okay?” She’s an empath, she can probably feel the stress downstairs from up here.

The door opens a crack and Emily peeks through. “I don’t feel good,” she whispers. She’s still in her pajamas and her long braid is falling apart.

“Can I come in?”

The door opens for me.

“How do you feel?” I ask.

She makes a face, nose wrinkled and everything. “Everything in my chest feels like it’s squeezing. Everyone’s too…” She frowns. “I don’t have the right word. It’s like humming but really loud and painful. Everyone’s humming too loud, especially Mummy.”

“I think the word for that is either stressed or anxious, maybe both. It’s okay, Mummy will feel better when we’re in the car and moving in.”

“Which will be when?” she asks with the sort of tired cynicism I usually have but concentrated into one seven-year-old.

“I don’t know, but why don’t you get dressed. Uncle promised pancakes before we drive to school.”

Her eyes widen a little, excitement pouring in.

Some moonchildren, when they’re old enough, can radiate their emotions, like an aura. I wonder if she’ll develop that ability too.

I leave her to it, shutting her door tight and heading downstairs. Veronica’s surrounded by boxes, hunched over a clipboard, pulling at her frizzed out curls and making them an even bigger mess. Felix jumps over a pile of boxes and stands over her shoulder. He’s a giant compared to her, she’s tiny. They look the same though, have the same nervous habits when they’re anxious, the same messy, inky hair and the same pale green eyes.

And sometimes I forget she’s his aunt and not his mom.

The photo Veronica and Felix’s mom together is haunting sometimes.

“Did you make sure all your uniforms were washed before you packed them?”

“Yes Auntie.”

“And all your bedding is packed?”

“Yes Auntie.”

Then she sees me, moves in on me and makes me explain where I packed everything, help her count uniforms, make sure I didn’t forget hygiene stuff, and reorganize my box of magic supplies.

“I definitely have everything, and if I don’t have everything, I’ll be back the next weekend to grab it. It’s boarding school, not war.” The sarcastic edge at the end…

…backfires so bad. Veronica is shaking. Was she always shaking, or did I do that? I don’t know if she’s going to cry or have a panic attack. What was I thinking?

“No, it’s fine Auntie, it’s not that bad. You’re doing a good job,” I say.

Elmsley’s next to her in a second. “Come on dear, let’s go outside for a moment,” he says gently as he takes her hand and leads her away.

I lean against the wall and sink down to the floor, my head in my hands. “I can’t do this.”

Felix walks up and nudges my shoulder with his smelly socked foot. “Chill out dude,” he says. I laugh. Since we moved, he’s been using as much 90’s American movie slang as he can, but there’s no way you can say those words with such a nice English accent and not sound ridiculous.

“Chill,” I mumble back. It sounds better when I say it, with my almost-American accent.

“We can totally chill later, bro,” Felix mumbles, cracking up with laughter.

I press my hand to my face, trying not to laugh. “Fe, no,” I whine.

“What’s wrong bro?”

“Shut up.”

“Just trying to have a chill conversation, bro.”

“Felix, no.”

“Fine,” he agrees, toeing my shoulder again, “but do you at least feel better?”

I look up at him and smirk. “When has you being an idiot failed to make me laugh?”

“Absolutely never,” he says with confidence.

Somehow everything works out. All the boxes and suitcases make it past Veronica’s final inspection and gets loaded into the SUV. Pancakes and tea are obtained through one local diner. Nothing bad happens. We make it to the school. We carry boxes and boxes and bedding and suitcases into two separate dormitories.

“Boarding school looks so fun,” Emily says as she bounds across the large field outside the dormitory buildings. Over small sloped hills and behind trees and over momentarily unattended boxes she goes. She runs to where the rest of us are standing in the shade and plants herself at Veronica’s side. “Mummy, when do I get to go to boarding school?”

“When you’re twelve.”

Emily frowns and starts counting on her fingers. “That’s five years away!”

Felix picks her up. “Trust me Emmy, primary school is far better than secondary school. We don’t even get playtime; we just go to our next class.”

“That’s not good,” she mumbles, rethinking this whole boarding school thing.

“We also have to spend an hour on mathematics every day and then do even more maths homework after class,” I add evilly.

Her frown deepens and she squirms out of Felix’s arms until he puts her down. “No, I’ve decided I’m never going to secondary school. I will drop out and become an actress like Anna?”

“Wait, what?”—Veronica.

“Who told you dropping out was an option?”—Elmsley.

Of course this is the very moment they would decide to tune into the conversation, right when Emily says something incriminating.

Again.

“What is all this about dropping out?” Elmsley asks, looking between the three of us.

“Anna,” Emily chirps. “Last year she told me she was going to drop out of school and become an actress so she wouldn’t have to take those big exams she was freaked out about.”

Everyone stares at me.

“Obviously I was joking!” They stare at me, eyebrows raised. “She takes me literally all the time.”

Emily nudges Felix’s leg. “Mummy and Daddy aren’t very happy with Anna.”

Elmsley sighs and looks at Veronica, having another silent conversation before he says, “we should get going.”

Yes, please. I want to go back to my dorm and unpack.

Emily leaps into a hug, both legs wrapped around one of mine, arms clinging to me. I stumble, clutching her close in case she lets go too soon. “I’m not tall enough for you to Tarzan on. Go Tarzan Felix.”

Emily is, as always, very easy to point onto a path of mischief. Felix yelps and falls back, hitting his back on the grass and dirt as Emily giggles. Elmsley and Veronica give tired parental sighs and collect their monkey daughter off of Felix.

“Bye Anna! Bye Felix! Bye-bye boarding school I’m never, ever going to.”

“You still have to go to secondary school, no matter what nonsense Anna tells you,” Elmsley tells her.

“I was joking!”

But they’re walking away now.

“She’s seven and, unlike you, the rest of us weren’t born automatically understanding sarcasm as a second language.”

“First language, actually.”

Hi, thank you for reading this far. Please feel free to reblog, comment, or like. I would love any of those things. I really want to get myself out there and share my developing story. If you want to join my tag list just comment, I would love to add you!

[Image description: Moodboard banner. Top Left: two lane road in autumn with orange and yellow leaves on the ground and road. Center Left: Bookshelves with old brown hardback books and small bottles with potion ingredients. Bottom Left: A pile of straw broomsticks. Top Center: Table in a cafe with a cup of tea, a red tea pot, and an open book. Center photo: A girl with copper red hair wearing her hair in a loose bun and keeping her back to the camera. Bottom Center: Closed window with decorative window panes and a set of hands pressed against them. Top Right: Three magic wands placed side by side on a wooden table, all three have different styles. Center Right: Two bookshelves filled with old, faded hardback books. Bottom Right: A desk in front of a window with a cup of tea, several books, four lit candles, and a pair of glasses. End of image description]

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