Tayo Omisore | National Geographic covers a College Park House Party

December 2018

Tayo Omisore

National Geographic covers a College Park House Party

and here humanity is like a single cigarette and your life is the lighter which makes sense since the more you breathe, the quicker you die but shh shh listen … someone’s Tidal playlist just shuffled into TLC’s No Scrubs and nowadays that’s a dog whistle loud enough to resurrect Selma canines and angry fire hoses so all ten of us colored people in this forty person house party rush into the family room and pretend we can’t see all the other theater kids single file out behind us. In these situations, we run towards the fire with no regard for who or what set it, we just have to keep moving. Like all we were taught was movement and agility and how to outrun a shadow so it doesn’t lay bare on top of you like a mid October breeze, cracking itself all over and naming that slime skin. I catch the twerk and the woman in front of me asks,

Do you ever get tired of running from your own skin?

That’s why we’re bumping and grinding like it’s ‘04 and we’re all at the HotSkates on Thursday night because Thursday was always kiddie night back home and back home means a mother’s arms wrapped around your name like Kevlar, and that means everyone you love is leaving here and getting on the school bus tomorrow except there’s no school tomorrow, because we actually grown now. Can’t nobody parents tell us to stop that all dancing before we have to use our lunch money for child support now, ain’t no song that our bodies can’t bleed out for until all that is left of us is a church colored carpet, soaked in sins we haven’t attempted yet. Ain't no dirty bullets catcalling my brother Moses into a poorly lit avenue, no

ain't nobody dating bullets at this party tonight.

Tonight, we are celebrating the fact that we made it out the fall of ‘04, and every fall after, that spring taught us that if we wait for anything long enough, time start to feel guilty and gives a little back. We call it nostalgia. That when summer took a child or 2, as is it wont to do, Mama always made the gravy a little hotter on Christmas morning, always gave me the plate they behind, see the smile on my face and know the fallen have a buffet of joy to feast on. That Tboz and Lefteye and Chili are Black Gods and we can only hope that this offering of sweat and staggering oxygen will appease them. So we give all of our breath to the four not-white walls, and when the song ends we leave with the paint chips still gasping.

This piece comes out of a experience I had at, unsurprisingly, a house party. Going to parties isn’t antithetical to my personality but the times I go to seem be more sparse as I get older. This particular party was a wrap party for a production of Antigone that had finished on campus. I was feeling really isolated by the fact the theater parties are strange microcosms of all the “artists” stereotypes people talk about and it’s rather jarring to come into contact with so many personas all at once. Added to the fact that I was one of the few black, non theater majors, I quickly found myself nursing a mixed drink in the corner of the kitchen. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, some saint’s phone made it onto to the bluetooth speaker and started playing 90s RnB throwbacks and immediately all the other minorities I hadn’t noticed and myself teleported to the source of the music and took over the space. It was all very cathartic and reminiscent of middle school dances, reminding me something about music that I love. It not only operates as a soundtrack for our lives but sometimes becomes the flare signal to make more life happen.

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