Be-Longing: Triumph in the Mirror

By Julius Dion Bailey

In this moving and lyrical coming-of-age story, Julius, a troubled kid from the south side of Chicago, battles haunting demons, both perceived and real, in his search for love and acceptance. Throughout his journey, he struggles at his core to find the meaning of love and what it takes to be open, vulnerable, and present. Follow him through years of seeking connection, failed relationships, and depression until at long last, his journey brings him face-to-face with God.

Dr. Baileys memoir is a much-needed tome that highlights both the reality of black male frailty and the necessity for self-introspection. His personal journey serves as a reminder of the need for rituals of healing, therapy, and wholeness (Kamasi Hill, PhD, educator and filmmaker).

Julius Bailey is one of the leading philosophers of his generation. In this powerful and painful memoir, he delves into the profound depths of his own wounded soul and emerges with a shining dignity and witness. Dont miss this timely text! (Cornel West, professor of public philosophy, Harvard University).

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532026867

Julius Dion Bailey

Julius Dion Bailey teaches philosophy at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He is a philosopher, cultural critic, social theorist, church administrator, and diversity lecturer. Dr. Bailey has been a guest on numerous media outlets and is often sought to speak at colleges, prisons, and community organizations across America. He authored two other books, including the award-winning Racial Realities and Post-Racial Dreams: The Age of Obama and Beyond and edited two others, notably the widely circulated The Cultural Impact of Kanye West. He can be contacted at www.juliusbailey.com.

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Copyright © 2017 by Julius Dion Bailey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2685-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2686-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911666

iUniverse rev. date: 07/28/2017

To all men who suffer in silence.

Also To

The Brothers in the Illinois and Ohio Department of Corrections

Remember each decision we make lays a foundation for our destiny

In Memory of

Deborah Chinaza Lee

And

Marshonda Rhodie

You both spent part of your (much too short) adult lives loving me unconditionally.

"Your spiritual health is the revelation of not

just what you believe and know;

it’s what you put into action and live."

Prophetess Lisa Jones, PLJ Ministries

CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: The Mirror Moment

Chapter 2: In Search of a Dad

Chapter 3: Confessions of Puppy Love

Chapter 4: On Our Own

Chapter 5: From Strawberry Kisses to Suicidal Thoughts

Chapter 6 :Cast Out

Chapter 7: A Howard University Man

Chapter 8: Proving My Manhood

Chapter 9: Hanging Up on the Call from God

Chapter 10: Senior Year and Post-Graduation

Chapter 11: The Cornel West Effect

Chapter 12: Decatur, Illinois was like Selma

Chapter 13: She Had Me at Bacon and Raisin Toast

Chapter 14: Decatur, Illinois: The Fatal Return

Chapter 15: When the Bacon Wilts and Toast Dries

Chapter 16: A Handful of Russet Tulips

Chapter 17: Annette Let Me Eat Cake

Chapter 18: Michelle’s Way or Else

Chapter 19: The Dr. House in Me: A Turning Point

Chapter 20: Time to Seek Professional Help

Chapter 21: Chinaza’s Me

Author’s Note

FOREWORD

I want to do it, but I am so afraid. I know how to do it, but fear won’t let me. And, when I feel the fear, I feel stupid, so, to avoid that, I just stop trying.

His words pierced my heart like a hot knife.

This beautiful, powerful, strong, and loving man spoke with a depth of vulnerability that I have rarely experienced with Black men. At age forty, he was desperately seeking a way out of the conditions of his life, many caused by his bad behavior that had been labeled irresponsible.

I knew better.

I knew that he was not irresponsible or unemotional or disconnected. I knew that he was terrified—terrified of failing, of looking stupid, of being wrong, of being judged. Like so many others that I had coached, I knew that he was terrified of his own power and his authentic identity. However, it wasn’t until he spoke that I understood why.

The answer was simple; in fact, it was so simple, I was tempted to dismiss it. I chose against the temptation. I realized that he, like so many others, was terrified because no one had ever taught him that he had the right, the capacity, and the power to know himself, be himself, and create his reality. He was suffering from arrested development.

As the mother of a Black man and grandmother of six Black boys, I am continually amazed and dismayed each time I recognize the overt and covert ways Black men are devalued, diminished, dehumanized, criminalized, denied, and disrespected.

It happens in their homes. It happens as a function of the education system. It happens in the socioeconomic and political systems that elevate some of them while ignoring most of them. It has become so normalized that it often goes unnoticed until one of them kills or is killed. What is even more disheartening for me is when I witness the ways they do this to themselves.

Long before Black men began to wear their pants below their waistlines, exposing their asses to the world, they internalized the distorted images and low expectations promulgated about them. Their mothers taught them how to do it. Their absent fathers demonstrated how to do it. The girls and women they slept with allowed them to believe it was acceptable, and no one seemed to have ever taught them to stand powerfully as themselves and create their own realties.

For Black men in the world today, empowerment goes way beyond a good education and a successful career. While the process of self-awareness, self-realization, and self-actualization is important for everyone, it is an absolute necessity for Black men in the twenty-first century. I knew this back in 1994 when I wrote The Spirit of a Man: A Vision of Transformation for Black Men and the Women Who Love Them (Harper, 1996).

I wrote that book with the intention of sharing how spiritual development, spiritual discipline, and spiritual grounding were critical elements for the elevation and evolution of Black men. I shared everything I had been taught about the process of spiritual unfolding, adding to that knowledge that I had intuitively gleaned from my experiences of teaching and ministering to Black men. To date, the book has underperformed the other seventeen titles I have authored. Black women felt I was blaming them for the plight of Black men in the world. Black men just couldn’t understand or accept that a woman could tell them how to be better men. Neither of these was my intention or the purpose of the book.

What I shared in The Spirit of a Man (Harper, 1996) was a process that men could employ to learn how to love, heal, and grow themselves beyond the false images promoted about them in the world. The real challenge was that the process I presented required work—deep, inner work that Black men have come to believe they cannot do, do not need to do, and/or do not have the capacity to do with or for themselves, within themselves. They would much rather achieve success by traditional or untraditional means, giving the appearance that they are accepting of a world that continues to perpetuate false expectations and images of them.

After talking to my son and having my heart pierced by his words, I came to recognize, realize, and understand they are simply afraid to do the required work.

Dr. Julius Bailey has done in Be-Longing what I and many others have failed to do; he has told the painful truth about what it takes and what is required for a Black man to heal his mind, his heart, and his spirit.

Like my son and so many others, Julius was suffering from arrested spiritual and emotional development caused by his childhood experiences, distorted social images, and a basic lack of self-love. Added to those things, he was overweight, which contributed to an even deeper level of devaluation. His weapon was his intellect. He could be dismissed, denied, and ignored like his brothers because he was a Black man; however, in certain circles his intellectual development demanded that he be respected.

He also suffered from what so many human beings experience, regardless of their race or gender: Julius longed to be loved whereby opening the door of his heart and mind to the divine healing tool of relationships. Through that door walked a healing angel, my goddaughter, Rev. Chinaza Deborah Lee. She loved him. In the depths of her soul, she loved him. Not only did she like big men, but she loved the beautiful, brilliant essence of who he was (her words, not mine). She also knew that she could not have him until he learned he could love himself. My goddaughter was able to pierce through the veil of his terror with encouraging acts and words of love, giving him the courage to do the very thing he feared: to know himself as loved, loving, and lovable.

Chinaza and Julius, across the many years and states, were a couple in love with the idea of being in love. I knew him for years before I ever laid eyes on him. I knew him through her memories and her tears. I spent much of the time I knew him being mad at him for not recognizing how he had and was hurting her. But then one summer evening in 2015, I saw him see her, and I just couldn’t be mad in the presence of their love. It was electric. It was electrifying. It was pure and sweet and so short-lived.

In the weeks that followed, I waited for her to bring up the subject of him. I asked her if she had spoken to him. She said, Please don’t! I can’t right now! I just can’t! When she did bring him up, I listened carefully, asking nothing, waiting for her to ride out this new cycle of pain and confusion. The day she told me that she had finally accepted the reality that they would be friends forever but never together like that again, I felt sad but relieved. I wanted him for her because she wanted him so badly. She wanted to be-long to him. I wanted freedom for her because her longing was simply too painful to watch.

His story, their story, is one that represents many untold stories; however, the beauty and power of Be-Longing lie in what Dr. Bailey is courageous enough to share about himself and his process. It is no secret to anyone that Black men need to heal and be healed. The questions are, how? And, to what end?

I believe they can and will be healed through their relationships, beginning with the one they have with their mother because she is the first teacher. This relationship begins in the womb. Who Black men are, who they become, and how they see themselves, begin with the energy they marinate in within the womb.

This then gives rise to the need for their mothers to get clear, be clear, and stay clear about who they are as Black women. Should this happen, Black boys will become men who know who they are and how to be in relationships with Black women.

This, however, is just the beginning.

Black men will still need spiritual understanding and grounding to deal with and move through the issues of life that may confront them: poverty; abandonment by fathers; physical, emotional, and sexual abuse; distorted social images; economic disenfranchisement; and the normal issues associated with being human. It isn’t easy being a human being, and the work required to master one’s self and the issues of life is not easy work.

For this reason, Be-Longing is an important work. Dr. Bailey’s story, struggles, questions, issues, and triumphs epitomize the challenges of personal empowerment that frighten many Black men. His writing is a personal testimony of how the work is done, why the work must be done, and what can happen when the work is not done.

My hat and high heels are off to you, Dr. Julius Bailey. Your work is a gift to the world.

Rev. Dr. Iyanla EgunYe Vanzant,

Author, Master Spiritual Technician

Host: Iyanla Fix My Life (OWN)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It must be said at the outset that I could not have had the temerity to approach this project without the grace and mercy of God, who has kept me over these forty-five years. A project like this is a labor of emotional anguish as pretense to miracle work. As such there are some folk who performed their own forms of miracles to ensure that this project was birthed.

My mother Sandra, sister Bianca, and daughter Heather, we all we got!

To Momma Irma Jones, Lisa, Letrisa and all the Jones family, thank you for loving me.

The angel of this project is Marie White Small and her husband, Frank. You allowed me in your home to eat good ole Vermont food, into your minds to help me shape this memoir, and into your hearts to soak up love and encouragement. Not sure how I could have pressed send without you.

My Degreed Money Ent Family: Dr. Sha’Dawn Battle, Dr. A.D. Carson, (the almost Dr.) Dalitso Ruwe, and Adam Schueler, thank you for the years of trusting my mentorship. My prayer is that the bond you three share never breaks and you have the continuous strength to be the excellent examples of scholarship and service that you have been.

To my colleagues who, in their own way, helped to push me ahead with this project: Dr. Lori Askeland, Dr. Tommy Curry, Dr. D’Arcy Fallon, Ken Irwin, Dr. T’Hasan Johnson, Dr. Mike Mattison, Dr. Nancy McHugh, Dr. Malik Raheem, Dr. Elaine Richardson, and Dr. Steven Spoonover. Your collegiality has been deeply appreciated.

The great students in my three semesters of teaching Love, Death, and Desire at Wittenberg University deserve much appreciation. Your trust in me, your belief in yourselves, and your courage to be, give me the strength to continue to talk through my love hurts. Oh and shout out to Karlos Marshall and Brian LaDuca at the Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation (IACT) at ArtStreet (University of Dayton) and Anisi Daniels-Smith (Hiram College) for allowing me to incubate a chapter with your students. Thank you.

I am indebted and grateful to all my academic institutions who reared a knucklehead to the man I am today: St. Gerard Majella (Markham, IL), St. Jude Thaddeus (Chicago, IL), Quigley Seminary South (Chicago, IL), Brother Rice High School (Oak Lawn, IL), Thornwood High School (South Holland, IL), the great Howard University (Washington, DC), the esteemed Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), and finally the University of Illinois (Champaign/Urbana, IL).

Sarah Horowitz and Bryan Szabo for your roles in securing the release of this project.

Faculty Endowment Fund Board at Wittenberg for the grant to assist in this project.

To my Main Street Church family in Decatur, Illinois, my earnest gratitude for helping me to Be-Long (again).

To Bennie Bailey and the entire Bailey family, thank you for always accepting me as yours.

To Kortni Alston, Toni Blackman, Doug Caridine, LaMetricia Johnson-Eaddy, Bre Harris, Yolanda Sandifer-Horton, Chaka Jenkins, Raymond Jones, Dr. Laurie Joyner, TeeJ Mercer, Terrance Robinson, Adam Schueler, Rev. Philip Turner, and Janice Williams, thank you, dear friends, for generously giving your love, time, gifts, and talents to my life.

And finally to all those women who have loved me and whom I have loved or tried to love, thank you for our season together.

CHAPTER ONE

The Mirror Moment

I woke in a dusky room that smelled faintly of hibiscus and strongly of coconut oil. My head turned toward the window. I watched Marshonda toweling herself, sitting in her brown, silk boudoir chair. Her sienna skin, enhanced by the room’s light, gave off a radiance of its own. Her full breasts glistened with water. While I watched, she began to comb and condition her wild hair. For as long as I had known her, she always tried to tame her mane, but I liked it best as it was when she was fresh out of the shower—as wild and free as she was. She rested her chin in her hand and smiled softly at me. I smiled back and turned to the window, watching the dust motes dance in the early morning light.

Come sit by me, she cooed, solicitously patting the chair beside her.

She tried to put me at ease, wanting me to feel as comfortable in my skin as she did in hers. She always seemed most comfortable in her apartment, surrounded by her pretty things—most of them pink or green. She appeared to be comfortable almost anywhere, though there was a faint difference between her inside and outdoor selves—one I had learned to recognize and appreciate. Marshonda was a thoroughly independent and modern woman, a successful educator, a lady of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She was a vigorous, vivacious, and beautiful Black woman, and I envied her comfort, envied her equally effortless movement and stillness, envied her equanimity.

I was a fat man, a self-conscious man, and embarrassed by my size. Even in bed—especially in bed—I hid my body from my lover. I hid my flesh beneath T-shirts and pulled the sheets high up on my chest. During sex, I insisted that the lights be turned down low or off entirely. I was convinced that if my lover took all of me in, I would quickly be shown the door.

So, beneath sheets and shirts, I hid, nevertheless seeking all of this five-foot-four, caramel-skinned, sensual southern belle.

From her prissy, high-heeled gait to her sweet perfumed scent, Marshonda’s style was overwhelmingly girlie. Equally overwhelming was my ravenous desire for her. I struggled to believe that I was actually with a woman of such style and beauty, as I didn’t see myself as worthy. If I could’ve wrapped my mind around the fact that a woman like her sincerely wanted to be with me, then maybe I would have allowed myself to feel deserving of love as well.

Marshonda’s green eyes both enticed me and scared me. I was weak-kneed in her gaze. She was catlike in the bedroom, quiet, unassuming but full of fire. I often called her Maggie with the cat eyes. She never knew I was referring to the Tennessee Williams play or that I was Brick, living in mendacity.

I wanted her hands on my body. I wanted her to rub my belly and kiss my chest, but the thought of her exploring my body with her eyes, her hands, and her tongue also terrified me. The minute she discovered what was beneath the shirt or under the covers, I was convinced she would forever see me as undesirable.

And now Marshonda wanted me to come to her, to come as I was and to sit by her, both of us nude. She wanted me to lift the sheets and parade myself in front of her. Sit by you? I asked. Now? I could hear the distress in my voice.

Yes, Julius, she said. Come sit with me.

I wasn’t prepared for this. I had counted on her leaving the room so I could reach for my pants and shirt at the foot of the bed, but she wasn’t about to give me that chance. I was cornered.

I’ve run a bath, she said. I thought we could soak together.

I blinked at her. I could feel my mouth hanging open.

Or maybe, she said, I could bathe you.

I was flummoxed, at a loss for words. Rather than throwing off the covers and joining her, I pulled the sheets tighter around my body. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing my body in the light, heaving itself out of bed and across the room. I always avoided looking at myself in the mirror until I was fully dressed.

I wrapped myself like a mummy in the top sheet. I shook my head at her and went on the offensive: "I don’t want you to bathe me, I said. I’m a grown man. I can bathe myself."

Lord, go ahead! she said, raising her eyes to the ceiling. Help me endure this sarcastic man. Yes, Lord, he knows he’s an arrogant man. He knows he looks at life as a transactional affair. He gives only to get, and, of course, he gives less than he ought to and receives less than he deserves. What he doesn’t know Lord is how you love him so and how I love him so. He doesn’t know that there is love all around him. Lord, he doesn’t know how to love himself.

What do you mean I don’t know how to love myself? Of course I do. I know my own mind, don’t I? I influence young minds, don’t I? I’m well educated. I have money. I—

Come look at yourself in the mirror, she said, cutting me off before I could finish. She stood at the foot of the bed with her arm stretched out toward me, her palm open and waiting.

When I didn’t release my grasp on the sheets, she took another step toward me.

Come on, she said. Show me how much you love yourself. Show me that you know what a beautiful man you are. You’re not fooling anybody hiding under that sheet. You know you’re a fat man, the Lord above knows you’re a fat man, and yes, I know you’re a fat man.

My blood pounded in my ears. I tore back the cover and stood nose to nose with her. How dare you—

"No, no, love. It’s you that has to dare. Turn around. Look at yourself."

Marshonda seized my shoulders and pivoted me on the spot. There I stood, naked, every inch of me reflected in her full-length cheval mirror. We were silent for a second, both of us looking at my reflection.

Do you dare to love that man? she asked.

I couldn’t answer as I continued staring at myself. Loving myself was something that had always been beyond my capacity. I wasn’t sure I knew how to love… Surely my father had not loved me. Was I unlovable?

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My father, Michael Hill, met my mother, Sandra Hoskins, when he was twenty and she was just fifteen years old. The two of them were both relaxing at The Point, a beach hangout on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, one of the few such beaches in a still deeply segregated Chicago where Black folk could congregate. Michael, fresh off a stint with the US Army, was playing football professionally with the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Fire. His time with the army had marked him, as it marked so many other men of his generation, indelibly. He was imperious, treating those who crossed paths with him as though they were subordinates, barking out orders and making unreasonable demands. He had very strong and unenlightened beliefs about what it meant to be a man and equally narrow-minded views about what a woman’s role in the home and in the broader world should be.

Although Sandra considered herself a worldly woman, she was no match for the ex-military man who had brought back from Vietnam a nearly unquenchable thirst for alcohol, drugs, and sexual conquest. Michael took Sandra to a local nightclub. A few dates later, not long after her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a gift that would grow inside of her for the next nine months.

To her credit, Sandra refused to see herself as a conquest. She was an active and willing agent in the development of her own sexuality, but this was not enough to tip the scales in her favor. She was still the sheltered daughter of a pastor, just a teenager masquerading in adult-like autonomy. She was in over her head, and the behavior of her future child’s father made this all the more apparent. Michael’s overbearing and raucous behavior and his propensity for extreme political and social views scared her half to death. Here she was, a pregnant sixteen-year-old, and the man who would-be the father did not seem to be father material—not even remotely.

The two of them sat side by side on the steps of her father’s church on a scalding summer night. She was watching him carefully as he eyed passersby, sizing up the men and ogling the women. He took a slug from a bottle of Wild Irish Rose wrapped in a bag.

Put that away, she said. Daddy would be scandalized if he saw you drinking at his house of worship.

Girl, you getting kind of mouthy, he shot back. Who you think you are telling what I can and cannot do? We ain’t actually inside no church. He spat through his teeth and went back to eyeballing pedestrians.

Sandra bit her tongue. She already knew there was no use arguing. He didn’t so much as acknowledge she had her own opinions, and once he’d decided to do something, there was no deterring him. She knew she was in over her head, but she hoped if she started kicking now, she could get above the surface. She took a deep breath.

I got something to tell you, she said.

Yeah, what’s that?

I’m having your baby.

Say what? A baby? Michael jumped off the step. Grinning broadly, he strutted from the church steps to the curb and back again. He was mumbling to himself and swigging back the bottle. Within a few seconds, he had a plan.

We got to get married, and it’s gotta be right away. Right away, you hear? He said this not only to my mother but to everybody else within earshot.

Please, my mother said, lower your voice. I don’t need Daddy hearing you ranting and raving, and there’s no need to announce to half the neighborhood that I’m pregnant.

He shot her a look and went on. My son’s gonna be named Ra’Hasan. The boy’s gonna be strong and audacious like his daddy. He’ll be virile and handsome because I am all that and more. He had it all figured out. If my mom hadn’t interrupted him, he might have planned what my first child’s name would be, or maybe what should be written on my gravestone.

My mother had other plans.

"I’m not going to marry you, Michael Hill. You will be a daddy, but you are not going to be my husband. I know you been with other women, and I know you still prowling around like some kind of feral cat."

He rounded on her, coming close enough for her to smell this alcohol on his breath. He shook his fist under her chin. "You will marry me, you hear? That’s my boy in your belly."

How you know it’s a boy? Maybe it’s my own little girl.

He scoffed. Whatever. All I know is you and that boy in your belly will be mine. Otherwise I’ll write you and the baby off forever, you hear me?

Perhaps he expected the threat to change her tack, but she was made of stronger stuff. I hear you. I hear the way you speak to me, the way you disrespect me. I’m not signing up for a lifetime of you.

And just like that, true to his word, he wrote mother and baby off forever. He was gone.

My mother did not name me Ra’Hasan according to my father’s wishes. She had her heart set on Julius; she had just read—and loved—Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in English class that year. Nor did she raise me to be the audacious braggart that my father hoped I would be. I often wonder how my life might have been different had my absent father been present. Though I was not short on positive male role models, I longed, in my youth, for a father to call my own. I envied my peers with present fathers—even when that presence was less frequent or uniformly positive than they hoped for. I identified most with those whose fathers were either entirely or mostly absent. I knew what it meant to grow up in a fatherless home, what it meant to yearn for something that could never be—namely, for my father to walk up the front steps and take his place beside my mother at the table.

In 2009, Michael Hill died in Cook County, Illinois. He was alone, with few assets, and no family or loved ones came forward to bury him. I didn’t find out my father had passed until he was already five years beneath the ground in the Abraham Lincoln Cemetery—only twenty rows away from where my mother’s father was laid to rest.

My daughter and I visited his grave one gray and drizzly Thanksgiving morning. The trees were bare, and the gravestones and crosses stretched to the horizon and beyond. Our breath hung in the brisk early morning air and we stamped our feet and shook our hands to keep them from going numb. My daughter, then a tender seven years of age, was too young to understand the sadness that moment held for me. By this time, I had run out of anger and resentment for the man who refused to be a father to me.

I was now, once and for all, truly fatherless. The fantasy of the father returning like Odysseus was no longer a bauble I toyed with in idle moments. I would not get the reckoning I had long desired. I would never be granted the satisfaction of acknowledgment, never shake my father’s hand, never break bread with him. The answers to my questions—why he left, why he never returned, what kind of man he was—went with him to his grave.

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In the absence of a father, my grandfather, Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins, gave me and my mother all that he could and all that he had. He had escaped the oppressive South by joining the army but soon discovered he was not made for violence. Rather than face the long uphill battle of conscientious objection, he deceived his superiors, telling them he was a man of the cloth,