The song starts:
a single caress of piano key.
The whisper of a note, that first plunk played. Then the next tinges of tone inch up,
stroked keys that work, float, flow—a progression of strong sounds now starting their journey.
Crescendo. Melody—a lyrical instrumental. Ascend. An introduction, and a swelling sense of a
first verse that wants to break free, break from, leap into liquidity.
Rippling, ripening.
Then:
piano notes pause.
The beat of a breath.
Listen.
I sit, earbuds in ears, so I can hear, really hear—and how hear turns into feel turns into
know and live then love—every bit and all of it, tympanum pulsating, enthralled. I want to know:
How can words flow from, follow such a precise performance, this sweeping opening, a piano’s
robustness?
Throat readies. Releases.
His
voice
waterfalls
forth:
I’m in the crib butt naked, bitch. She said my dick could be the next black president. [1]
My History of Dickering
Athena, my Australian shepherd/blue heeler mix, wore a shirt that said “I eat dicks for breakfast.” My college friends and I Sharpied the phrase on a kid-sized baby blue T-shirt, then put that shirt on her. Athena sat there, staring at us for a bit, uncertain as to how she felt about the cotton thing clinging to her body. She looked down, inspected the new attire, then lifted her head, stuck her tongue out, and smiled. She looked stellar.
Athena hated men. She could sense penis within a mile radius, and so when she smelled dude, she would begin to bark-growl-bark-bark (which loosely translates to: “Fuck off, motherfucker. I will cut you.”). If a woman walked in, though, Athena would prance up to her, tongue a-hanging, butt a-waggling, shove her snout into the exact location of the lady’s camel toe, drool a bit, then lie down and expose her belly for some good tummy rubbing.
Yes—my dog was a total dyke.
How did this happen? Like this: Being a total dyke myself, I never knew but a few dudes. Athena wasn’t accustomed to men because women were my thing. Raise a dog in a penis-less environment, and every man is an intruder.
A common conversation amongst my lesbian bevy during this dog-eats-dick-for-breakfast-Tshirt time: “Oh my god. Dicks are so gross.”
End of conversation.
When you’re part of the clit-licking ilk, when you’re used to slurping up the hurricane that can be an orgasming pussy, putting some hard, cylindrical thing in your mouth that is guaranteed to shoot ooze into the back of your throat sounds ick-ish.
Plus the whole involuntary movement thing. Lust shown with a lift. Way to not be subtle, dick.
We lesbos told jokes, too:
“Did you hear about the lesbian who faked an orgasm?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Taking all of this into consideration, I have to ask myself something. “Chelsey,” I ask myself, “why in the fuck do you love Lil’ Wayne—a rapper whose interests only include pussy or money or both (e.g., Come put that million dollar pussy on me, make me rich [2] ), or weed?”
Well, I would talk about my dick, but man that shit’d be a long story. [3]
The Story of Lil’ Wayne’s Morning Routine (Abridged)
8 a.m.:
I woke up this morning, dick rock hard, dick harder than an armadillo. [4]
8:02 a.m.:
I got her over here blowing me like coffee. [5]
8:09 a.m.:
The best part of waking up is breakfast after a nut. [6]
8:30 a.m.:
I let these bitches ride my dick. Carpool. [7]
9 a.m.:
Giving me a blowjob like 9–5. [8]
Not a Long Story, but a Tall Tale
“Chelsey,” I say to myself post-previous segment, “you didn’t answer the question. You just did a creative thing with time and Lil’ Wayne dick lyrics.”
Excellent point. Let’s try this again.
Fact: I have an MA in Women’s Studies. Meaning: I certifiably know all about what’s offensive, misogynistic, and how both of those elements are the cornerstone of Lil’ Wayne’s music.
Fact: I like Lil’ Wayne.
Meaning: I rap along regardless of how pissed I should be about his lyrics.
’Cuz I got mad respect for the ones who don’t give a fuck and do whatever they want.
Such balls.
And then I think of balls and dicks and digging deep and all the metaphors a rapper can make for the act of fucking. Disgusting. Offensive. I tear her ass up like a parking ticket. [9] Hate the sentiment. But I do praise the artistry—pure genius. Rap as linguistic acrobats, and what I feel in me is the shared strength of creativity. Regardless of the high level of disrespect apparent in this lyric: All my niggas wanna fuck, and she gon’ let us like a salad bar—that’s one damn creative sentence. Yes, I wish men could remember women’s bodies are more than the sum of our holes. So here’s what I conclude from all of this: these rapped sentiments suck. Though Lil’ Wayne would have a retort to that: I make that bitch cum til she come to a conclusion. [10]
What doesn’t suck here is his exquisite usage of writing craft techniques, literary devices, and other various elements of creative writing.
Allusion: I’m lying to these bitches, they call my dick Pinocchio. [11]
Anecdote: I’m fuckin’ bitches and getting’ paid. [12]
Anthropomorphism: Money talks, yours like “no comment.” [13]
Aphorism: Had my heart broken by this woman named Tammy, but hos gonna be hos so I couldn’t blame Tammy. [14]
Aposiopesis: I’m so fucking hot I ssssss…. I’ma need some more S’s. [15]
Biblical Allusion: And the Bible told us every girl was sour, don’t play in the garden and don’t smell her flower. [16]
Comparison: Blunt longer than a tongue twister. [17]
Cultural Reference: I’m just makin’ all these deposits—neighborhood nice and quiet, thought I saw Mr. Rogers, nigga. [18]
Explication: Yo bitch sent some naked pictures to me, then she shoot over to my house, I scoot over in the bed, I shoot off in her mouth then she get the bullet. [19]
Fragment: I could still taste her pussy. Memorabilia. [20]
Glossolalia: Your bitch speak in tongues every time we speak in private. [21]
Idiom: She tried to jack me off, can’t beat it, join it. [22]
Juxtaposition: She like it in her ass, mouth, and pussy. Three-car garage. [23]
Metaphor: This dick a superstar, they want stardom. [24]
Onomatopoeia: Niggas think they He-man, pow pow the end. [25]
Proverb: Two rights don’t make a wrong, three rights make a left. [26]
Pun: My ex wanna work it out, bitch try yoga. [27]
Rhetorical Question: Life is such a fucking roller coaster then it drops, but what should I scream for? This is my theme park. [28]
Salutation: I wrote a letter to my competition, it started off with “Dearly Departed.” [29]
Sentence Diagraming: I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate. [30]
Simile: She say my ver-dick is hung like a jury. [31]
Vernacular: I’m countin’ money, I’m smoking plants, call that shit math and science. [32]
• • •
I Don’t Know Dick
Here’s some other vocabulary for you:
Gold Star Lesbian: a lesbian who has never slept with a man.
When put to use properly and consensually, dicks probably aren’t that bad. I don’t really think they’re all that exciting, though their movement is interesting. I do find it weird that we talk about dicks as if they are their own entity.
I have never given my arm a name.
Visually, I don’t know much about dicks. The word mass fits in well here.
Experientially, I don’t know dick about dicks.
I’m a dyke.
Or, was.
Because four years ago, that dyke identity was no longer true for me, due to one dick in particular.
My husband’s.
Eh?
Hasbian: a lesbian who decides to date and marry a man, thus leaving the dyke clan.
A veteran lesbian married to a human with a dick and actually enjoys heterosexual sex? Hello, fucking with identity and definitions! It’s good to see you.
This is called my sexuality.
For seventeen years, my sex partners had names such as Courtney or Ashley. Then Sabrina, and Jennifer, and Julie. Stacy, Jenelle, Marie, Heather, Jen, Debbie, and probably some other female names I’m forgetting at the moment because during the time of the same-sex sexual intercourse with whomever, I was usually (a) drunk, (b) fucked up on some drugs, (c) manic, or perhaps (d) she wasn’t that memorable. Oh! Carrie. Brittany, too. I don’t know if Amanda counts. Guess it depends on your definition of sex.
Gold Star Lesbian, indeed, until I was a month shy of my twenty-ninth birthday, when I let a dick inside me. I’m not quite sure how that happened, just like how I’m not quite sure if Lil’ Wayne’s dick should be the next president. [A] One day, I was a total dyke, but then admitted an unstoppable attraction to a man, and, a few weeks later, I’m telling him to “show me A) Though I do agree with his sentiments from “Trap House”: “These crooked ass cops still winning, black mad family still mourning. Black president ain’t do nothing. We need a real nigga up in that office.” the goods,” which he does, then comes inside me. I used to cringe at the thought of straight sex, at the fact of some jerk dude’s mass going after my insides with absurdly jerky movement. But then he happened, and then my crush on him, and then straight sex and how I actually loved it, and also how it all happened so swiftly, gloriously. How it was that I was going after my desire, regardless of my historically preferred sex partners. I loved it. Loved him. I went for it.
While my husband helped me figure out the logistics of how to smash our bodies into each other, I needed guidance in accepting and claiming my new identity. I needed some education. I needed empowering language. My lesbian comrades weren’t too verbose on this matter.
• • •
When You’re an Adult White Chick, There’s Dick-All You Can Do to Get Black Youth to Like You. Mostly.
I’m really, really white. However, I do have ass-length dreadlocks that score me some major cool points. Especially with black youth. They see a white chick with dreadlocks (and not nasty ones, either, I must add), and I get a lot of Damn girl! Nice locks! It’s an instant “in” with black kids.
When I got a job teaching leadership skills at an all-black high school, I wanted to go beyond the “that chick’s locks are dope” perspective, and be able to connect with the youth on another level. As a former teenager, I knew that music was a way to do this. Considering I was a white lesbian feminist, though, my music tastes leaned toward white dykes with guitars. Thus, I didn’t really know who the cool rappers were, so I listened to Eminem on Pandora, which led me to Lil’ Wayne. It’s been six years, and I have yet to move on from Lil’ Wayne.
After I quit that Leadership Skills job because it sucked (no youth wants to lead anything at high school, because they hate being at high school, and so they just want you to fuck off), a lot of changes in my life occurred. I moved to different states a few times; I could recognize some of the beats bumping from a car that would most likely be pulled over by a cop at some future point (if it hadn’t already) because the driver was driving while black; and I fell in love with a man whom I then married. Lil’ Wayne was with me through all of this, and he actually contributed to me not having a total identity crisis with the new dick in my life thing.
Which is to say that I found the possibilities of my relationship to sex in rap music. Where sucking dick isn’t bashed or banished or a cause for a dishonorable discharge from one’s lesbo faction, and where men just love going down on you, rap music made my liking a man a totally okay thing to do. Plus, the references to new positions, new moves, new vocabulary and stunning innuendos tangentially showed me what all sex was—what all it could be.
Such as:
• Put your hands on the toilet. I put my leg on the tub, girl this my new dance move. I just don’t know what to call it, but bitch you dancin’ with the stars. [33]
• I ain’t ever seen an ass like hers. That pussy in my mouth had me lost for words. So I told her back it up like Burrr Burrr. [34]
• She grab that dick with two hands, like she about to pray for it. [35]
• If that pussy sweet, I want that candy, trick or treat. [36]
• She get on that dick and stay on, all night, like porch lights. [37]
Offensive lyrics accustomed me to straight sex. With rhymes all about fucking, it’s easy to glide into that space in which sex is exploratory. Fun. Crafty, even.
• • •
This Doesn’t Mean Dick
I sense a counterargument coming. Something about complicity or de-sensitivity. Something about how if you witness men calling women bitches on the daily, then
woman = bitch becomes an unquestioned equation. I get this—because that’s the whole point. Hearing about what one can do with and feel toward dicks made me a bit more complicit with them, generally speaking. Is that kinda fucked up? Perhaps. But it’s also not that simple. Because aside from Lil Wayne’s talent with language, there’s another something going on here that further complicates the situation.
I can identify with Lil’ Wayne.
For instance:
• I put that pussy in my face—I ain’t got no worries. [38]
• Pussy so wet, Imma need goggles. [39]
• I’m down here waiting for her to cum like payday. [40]
• I’m trying to eat healthier, so I ate a veggie. Sucked on that pussy, I feel better already. [41]
In other words, when he’s not being totally fucked up to women, Lil’ Wayne’s all about pleasing them. How could one not applaud someone who loves and so frequently participates in the act of going down to kiss her Pearl Harbor [42]? The dude loves eating pussy and giving women orgasms. That, I could relate to. What dyke wouldn’t?
• • •
Are Tom, Dick, and Harry Convinced Yet?
“So, Chelsey,” I say to myself, “have I answered the question yet? Have I successfully explained why I love Lil’ Wayne?” Personally, I think I’ve done a smashing job arguing my case. Though, should you disagree with and/or still question my stated excuses, please refer to the following FAQ section before calling customer service with your concerns—by which I mean e-mailing me and telling me how fucked up I am.
Five Lil’ Wayne Questions:
As in:
Five Lil’ Wayne Answers:
As in:
Five Lyrics to Explain Why I Like Lil’ Wayne:
As in:
A Handful of Some Epitomes of Word Play and Lyricism as Presented to You in this Lil’ Wayne FAQ:
As in:
1.
Question: I ain’t nothing like your last dude. What’s his name?
Answer: Not important. [43]
2.
Question: Shoot ’em in their heads, what’s that?
Answer: A no brainer. [44]
3.
Question: Don’t you hate a shy bitch? [45]
Answer: Yeah I ate a shy bitch, she ain’t shy no more, she changed her name to My Bitch.
4.
Question: This a gun check now who do I write it to?
Answer: (Implied—anyone who pisses Lil’ Wayne off.) [46]
5.
Question: She tell me, “Make me a wife.” I tell that bitch “you crazy. Fuck wrong with you?”
Answer: And excuse my French, but I’m a long kisser. And then she try to tell me I’m the only one that’s hittin’,
Follow-up Question: and I say, “What about them niggas?” She say, “What about them niggas?”
Answer: You right, what you doing tonight? Put on something tight. [47]
As in:
Question: Dare I say I like Lil’ Wayne’s brain? [B]
• • •
I’m Not Dicking Around Here
Do you think I’m stretching this? Do you think I don’t realize that I make her take this dick like advice [48] or that pass that bitch down like an heirloom [49] and I told her give me that pussy and fuck my bitch [50] are in no way offensive? I know these lyrics are totally degrading to women. I could have written an essay about how offensive all of these lyrics are, but there’s more here to look at than what can make a feminist pissed. Regardless of how negative or positive a lyric is, rap imaginatively discusses the intricacies and facets of sexuality. So many ways to see how far we can go. Rap allowed me to go there. It encouraged me to see straight sex as something I not only could (and eventually wanted) to explore, but to do so creatively. I encountered words that made a smile widen across my face at all of the ingenious thinking. This is an equation of how we perceive of our sexuality versus innovatively profane one-liners. Feminism got me to define queer sexuality as a beautiful and freeing thing, but rap gave me a new vocabulary in order to think of my shifted sexual experiences in an inventive and super-fun way.
Bad bitch with a nice throat, she ice cold and she like hoes, oooh she just my type, these other hoes just typos [51]
Rap gets us to think differently—which is never a bad thing.
We are forever trying to sync up our desires. Where two people meet and the places we take our bodies is a location that incites a connection. It’s about multiplicity. It’s about the ways we hook up with each other. Our lovers. Two bitches at the same time, synchronized swimmers. [52] I’m the feminist who finds him so offensive, but I’m also the writer who admires his lyricism, agreeing that, yes, Lil’ Wane is the greatest thing since wet pussy [53] (which is pretty great).
And you can dis him. And you can dis me. But I’m a woman who lives for creativity, lives for her desire, who’s not afraid to claim who she is, to see things differently, how I’m not going to take your possible objection to all of this and think it over—bitch I’m thinking forward. [54]
I sync myself with the merging of music and meaning.
This is me dropping my beat.
Like that first piano key.
Footnotes
A) Though I do agree with his sentiments from”Trap House”: “These crooked ass cops still winning, black mad family still mourning. Black president ain’t do nothing. We need a real nigga up in that office.”
B) Answer: Which is not be confused with liking to give Lil’ Wayne some brain, because (a) I’ve never met Lil’ Wayne, (b) I’m not attracted to him, and (c) blow jobs are gross unless they’re in the context of what my husband and I do with our time.
Endnotes
1) From “IANAHB”
2) From “Tapout”
3) From “No Worries”
4) From “UOENO”
5) From “IANAHB”
6) From “Romance”
7) From “IANAHB”
8) From “Getting Some Head”
9) From “Levels”
10) From “Same Damn Tune”
11) From “Amen”
12) From “Don’t Like”
13) From “FuckWitMeUKnowIGotIt”
14) From “6 Foot 7 Foot”
15) From “Days and Days”
16) From “A Milli”
17) From “UOENO”
18) From “Senile”
19) From “Levels”
20) From “Levels”
21) From “No Worries”
22) From “Faded”
23) From “Amen”
24) From “Mercy”
25) From “6 Foot 7 Foot”
26) From “Trigger Finger”
27) From “Roman Reloaded”
28) From “Forever”
29) From “Trap House”
30) From “6 Foot 7 Foot”
31) From “Amen”
32) From “Mercy”
33) From “Truffle Butter”
34) From “Lollipop”
35) From “Cashed Out”
36) From “Days and Days”
37) From “Rich as Fuck”
38) From “No Worries”
39) From “High School”
40) From “Wowzers”
41) From “Wowzers”
42) From “Trap House”
43) From “Truffle Butter”
44) From “IANAHB”
45) From “A Milli”
46) From “Cream”
47) From “High School”
48) From “IANAHB”
49) From “Hold Up”
50) From “Mercy”
51) From “Trap House”
52) From “6 Foot 7 Foot”
53) From “Days and Days”
54) From “CoCo”
Chelsey Clammer is the author of the award-winning essay collection, Circadian (Red Hen Press, 2017) and BodyHome (Hopewell Publications, 2015). Her work has appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, Hobart, Brevity, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Normal School and Black Warrior Review. She teaches online writing classes with WOW! Women On Writing and is a freelance editor. Her next collection of essays, Human Heartbeat Detected, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. www.chelseyclammer.com