So many are used to seeing a version of me which is fearless, strong beyond imagination, and who they wanna be when they grow up.  I still want to grow up myself most days though.

I had the immense fortune of attending the last Weekend Reunion.  I made 4 out 5.  5 out of five wasn’t possible based on my life but 4 ain’t at all bad.

I’ve written about it here, the event.  I never feel like I do it justice though.  I think because it is so personal to me that I rarely find the words.

It is an event which has defined a segment of my life when my life defied definition.

What I take from those long weekends is more than a girl should if I am being honest.  There is a part of me which has to be corporate, mother, sister, etc.  At Weekend Reunion I could just be. If you’ve followed me these past 4 years you get a slight inkling of how important that is to my ongoing survival.

When the event producers announced, I was passionate in my support of them. How could I not?  They were stepping in to fill a void.  I don’t think they knew what this event would become.  I think they just didn’t want to miss the annual connection with the family. I think after all this time it is fair to call each other family.

In less than 6 months they put together a placeholder and sowed the seeds of what would become legend.

Weekend Reunion could not have have happened without those 3 specific women.  When you look at each of them and their specific talents, you should understand that what WR eventually became was because of their specific journey and personalities.

The level of inclusion doesn’t happen if you don’t have a woman as unique as our Tee.  Her journey is so special, and her history so rich.  Since I’ve known of her, she’s both defied and embodied every label one can think of in kink.  A woman who is every woman can stand no less than seeing all that she is welcome without hesitation.

The education that so many insisted would suffer never did thanks to Goddess M. Every class doesn’t have to start at 730 and be 2 dry hours of lecturing.   We went to college for that, lots of us are older now.  This is a woman I’ve watched teach a class on water sports and figure out a way to pee on her husband and still share factual information on urine.

If you want to party, and who doesn’t, you need coffee. Not coffee as in caffeine, coffee as in our pint sized fun fluffer who facilitates fun in ways most of us didn’t think possible.

That holy trinity came together to deliver to our POC community something we’d never seen before.  We will see something else in the future, but we won’t see Weekend Reunion in that fashion again.

I understand more than many what we are losing but I don’t mourn, instead I celebrate.

I have to because of what that event gave me.

A long weekend with brown Kinky people is always going to be something I need. At some point in the future, a different event will manifest for that to happen.  It won’t be on the fly like our women had to do, and I will love that event too….I hope.

I won’t love anything as much as Weekend Reunion though.

My first weekend reunion was just a place to get away from the day to day stress of being me.  It was a place to see people I only get to see once a year.  It was a place to get my ass beat, and have some sexual intercourse and return to my mundane life until the next time I would get to turn up.

It became a place where I could heal some after ending the relationship with the love of my life. It became a reminder that I was still sexy and still desired. It became a place where a lifetime joke with my spoon was born.  It became a place where my romantic love for a magnificent man could blossom.  It became a place where I finally felt safe to be every version of myself, which is rare.

It was the place where a big ass and a smile would be the poison Bell Biv Devoe warned me about.

One might wonder how I could ever attend again after the incident. I wondered myself. It was where I met her after all.

Weekend Reunion heals me though in ways these deep cuts cannot fight.  The strength of the love is greater than the pain of those who would harm me.

Instead of a memory of how my life went off the rails, it became a testament that I am stronger than I think, and I think myself fragile most of the time. It became my own Gloria Gaynor power song of existence, with dicks and whips.

Missing the year I did hurt in ways I won’t share. I just can’t.

Attending this year is something I can’t do justice in 1000 words. 10,000 might be a good start but y’all ain’t got that kind of time, and neither do I even if they all exist within my head and heart.

That photo came from the famous twerk contest. I came out of twerk retirement to celebrate this event. This testament to the special kind of kink WR was.  It was something I joked with Tempest about in the months, yes months, leading up but it was my greatest source of anxiety.

No matter how fabulous you see me, there is always a girl who neve thinks she is smart enough or sexy enough, or enough.

That me didn’t ever exist at Weekend Reunion and it was important to me celebrate that by actually twerking for once. I didn’t think I would win, but I thought I could show through dance my love.

I had lots of ideas of what I would do.

I practiced choreography. I fell on my ass repeatedly trying. I worked out a little. I knew exactly what I was gonna do and had a song picked out. If I were able to do that rehearsed gyration, it would not have been the same.

What the audience got was 💯 me.

There was a little planning, the old woman to young woman transition was planned, everything else wasn’t. It was just me, loving the moment, living in the moment, not thinking just feeling. Just breathing. Just. And to cherry the ice cream sundae I got to lick the leg of my girl crush and her calf is better than Popeye’s chicken.

In my current world, there is no just. For 120 seconds there was though, and the thought that I wasn’t did not exist.

Those women gave me that space. They didn’t tell me what to do with it, they just presented it and said go.

I love these women dearly. The gift they gave me in Weekend Reunion is beyond monetary value. It is truly soul food. I cannot ever properly thank them for what they gave to me because in so many ways they don’t know they did.

What I will do however is make sure THAT girl who they gave space to exist never retreats for very long. She will come out and play and slay.

This post is for 3 of my heroes

coffee

Tee

Goddess M

from both Nicole & Aphrodite with love.