HOW DID WE GET FROM THE PYRAMIDS TO THE PROJECTS ?!

A Fly Girl

Thirstin Howl III Knows How 2 Hit That

I was thinking of something the other day, something Thirstin Howl said to me once. He really made me stop and think when he said, "Yo, I done fucked a ugly bitch before, just 'cause she was fly."

I've been reminiscing a lot lately about that ol' fly shit, thinking back to when it all began. Besides the magenta dress from India with the little mirrors all over it I had with the matching shorty-pants I used to rock when I was 2, my first recollection of being fly was standing outside of my auntie and uncle's house on Norton Ave. I was watching my cuz and his crew busting backspins and windmills on their square of linoleum in the front yard, the sun was shining, blue Cali sky, green grass and palm trees swaying in the breeze, Hip Hop bangin from the ghettoblaster - and there I was, a pre-teen beauty queen replete with long ponytail, t-shirt, lavender cords and matching lavender Nike Cortez over white and lavender pom-pom socks. You really couldn't tell me shit.

Junior high brought a new sort of flyness to the game, and even though it was hard playing Powder Puff football with 2" long curved acrylic nails, I was doin' the damn thing just the same. With my red or burgundy lips, black eyeliner, mascara AND liquid eyeliner, and stone-cold beautiful visage, there was only one way to call me in Spanish... La Muneca. China Doll. Back then, it was all about the face. It didn't matter that my clothes were cheap and basically just jeans, t-shirts and sneakers. Or that I hadn't yet discovered accessories, acoutrements, and all the little extras that would later raise the fly bar. I was young enough, and fine enough, and fly enough, so that my face was enough to get me in the place.

High school was all about the brands. I had to step up my gear game. And step it up I did, with the help of a wonderfully handsome and O.G. gangsta named Kenji. He never had a problem giving me a fifty dollar bill before school, and a c-note after school; plus buy me whatever I wanted to eat or needed to wear. With the aqua metallic flake paint job on his 'Lac, plus the dual exhaust and racing engine, he increased my need for speed and gave me a passport to a futuristic and fresh new sort of fly. Crip to the death, even Kenji couldn't be mad when I showed up in the 'hood in my red leather Gucci boots, matching handbag, Gucci watch, my teen dream body poured into painted-on Guess jeans, fly Calvin Klein bra and panties bursting at the seams; the only distant memory of years past still visible were my red lips. It wasn't long before he introduced me to 14K bamboos and shrimp, diamond tennis bracelets, and sapphire-and-diamond rings and studs. In high school most girls compete to fit in. There was no competition. I won with my hands down. And wasn't I the lucky one? I hardly had to play Jezebel to get what I got. At least not with him.

I've been blessed with a good set of Karma when it comes to flyness. I've always had it, always will. I never needed a magazine to show me how to do it, or some type of "make me fly" magic pill. Even today, about to be 31 in a few days, having been ousted from the fashionista-heavy NYC scene, banished from Brooklyn, and transplanted to the Midwest with nothing but my wits and my name - I'm still fly. Too fly to be exact. I don't wear makeup anymore, and my sneaker collection is somewhere floating around the east coast. All my fresh-dipped gear has been lost in the shuffle. Even my trademark hair-past-my-ass is gone, shorn away to cut the dead people and ex-boyfriends out of its locks. I've put on a few pounds, and it's possible my age is starting to show. But if there's one thing I know, it's that my beauty is irrefutable and untouchable, irrevocable and omnipresent. My mind, whether in a state or totally lost/found, is divine, refined, and can't be undermined. My energy is intoxicating, that's why they call me Mary Jane. To put it simple and plain, I've got it made.

I'll put it like this, I'm the antithesis of that ugly bitch Thirst fucked 'cause she was so fly... I'm simply too fly to be fucked.

posted by WALASIA "MJ" SHABAZZ @ 11:20 PM