-----Original Message-----
FROM: Helga The Help
SENT: Nov 4 2006 12:00AM
SUBJECT:West Hollywood Hates Black Transsexuals
Brothas and Sistas in Black,
I am Helga LaShaunda el-Salami, Liquid Generation’s most Afro-centric uncircumcised pre-operative transsexual and the best costume award should have been mine this Halloween. I should have won.
The fact that I didn’t simply proves that my home village of West Hollywood hates the black transsexual. My costume cost like 100 dollars, Pamela Anderson was in my thoughts. And I won’t even tell you the canyons I was jumping across later that night. Whoever it was that won the award was the beneficiary of a "spreading-the-wealth type thing." This Halloween, West Hollywood lost its credibility.
I decided that I would use this holiday to come out of the closet. I attended the West Hollywood Halloween party dressed as myself but with a closet door open behind me as a reminder of how dangerously close it was and how cumbersome it always has been. How much more profound is that than any of the crap that you’ve probably seen? But my prize has been denied in favor of other, less worthy opponents.
It’s nothing new.
You see, since converting to black several years ago, I have seen all species of prejudice cast my way. This despite my being a model citizen of black transsexuality. People pay no mind to the difficulty of simultaneously straddling the divisions of race and gender as I do. They think my lofty position at Liquid Generation is the product of Affirmative Action. That I will rob them on the street and not tip my actor at the restaurant. And now, this final insult has all but enslaved my spirit.
But I am not one to give up. Indeed, I have already invested in all the appropriate attire, bought a chrome gas cap for my SUV while I save up for the donks, and watched both seasons of Ali G as a case study in behavior. I will hide my blackness no more. I will tolerate no dissent. No opposition. I have a dream...that one day, I will be able to walk down Santa Monica Blvd proud of my gender-racial canyon and if anyone should so much as cast an evil glance my way, to shove 400 years of oppression up their large intestine.
Love and Stereotypes,
Helga LaShaunda el-Salami