typically we have pleasant phone calls and everythings cool

but today she told me something incredibly disturbing.

she told me that she is going to go to my sisters house to tutor her grandchild.

i said have they discovered the cure to the contagious disease that kills senior citizens, especially minorities are the most at risk?

i had literally just posted on LosAngeleno a tweet that said

250k Angelenos this year have contracted a disease that has no cure. 

the person who implored me to be safe my whole life was telling me that she was planning on going to a home filled with people, including children,

one of whom just happens to be ill and has no idea what the malady is.

when i objected my mother accused me of being on drugs.

I AM THE MOST HONEST MAN OF ALL TIME. YOU RAISED ME TO BE THAT. IN COLLEGE I WOULD CALL YOU WHILE I WAS ON DRUGS AND TOLD YOU I WAS ON DRUGS I AM NOT ON DRUGS RIGHT NOW. IF ANYONE IS, IT’S THE PERSON SAYING SHE IS GOING TO A HOME WHERE GOD KNOWS WHERE ANYONE HAS BEEN.

it was a disaster of a phone call.

and who knows maybe my mom wants to wrap it up. who am i to stand in her way. my whole family is filled with strong black women. nearly all of them college educated going back to my great great grandmother. a rarity for our race.

she knows what she is doing.

i would be devastated without my mother.

the one reason i am as incredible and thoughtful and open minded and sensitive to the needs of women in the workplace is because of what she taught me and what i saw her go through as a single black woman in a corporate hq.

the last person i would ever want to grow up to be is someone who had done my mother wrong.

also i had a pair of grandmothers who would literally beat my ass if i was anything less than gentlemanly.

i am sure its hard to sit in the house and watch trump every day and read the Daily Kos and stare out at the window watching the leaves turn brown. but thats the struggle we all have right now.

WELL YOU GO OUT ALL THE TIME she said.

and i do. and i wear gloves. and i sanitize everything. constantly. and im in and out. and i use apple pay from my iphone. i dont touch shit and if i do i set it on fire and set my hands on fire too

and i rise from the ashes.

i dont know what these people are doing at my sisters house. i dont know who their friends are, what sort of situation is going over there. for pete sake my niece had 3 jobs last month, tell me how that is not a risky maneuver right there.

dont you think i want to go out into the world and interview people?

dont you think i want to go to every neighborhood in LA and pull back the curtain?

dont you think i want to take a road trip around the country and talk with every single person and take their picture and hug them and kiss their babies and pet their dogs and eat on their porch swings and pee in their snowbanks?

but this is not the time.

this is the time to sit in the house.

just like in the omega man.

just like in the bible.

just like in the end times.

i was so mad i drove and drove through the night in the valley and people were outside bars dining on the sidewalk, way too many of them

everyone taunting fate.

every one just exhausted of the fear and the invisibleness of it all

every one just borderline suicidal because blooming onions and a margarita are just too irresistible on the last night of summer

and i will not go to any funerals of people who die when i tell them not to die.