CJ Hunt - Blonde Bowl Cut

 

My dad is black, you know? And I say, you know, you don't know. My dad is black. My mom was Filipino, which means that I spend most of my time looking Dominican. [audience laughter] We have Dominicans here? Yeah. What's up? [audience cheers and applause] 

 

If you're Dominican, you may have seen me on the subway locking eyes with you and being like, “You and me, buddy. Blasians. Right? Am I right, Blasians?” You're like, “Nah.” But it's weird. For anyone else, it is weird. It is confusing experience growing up ambiguously brown. Partly because all of my politics are very black, and all of the things I want to talk about on stage are very black. When audiences hear those words, I think they go, “Who is this fragile Mexican teenager? [audience laughter] Which struggle is he referring to? Why is he talking about the Middle Passage? He is confused.” They're not wrong. For a long time, I was very confused. 

 

My dad insists that until I was four, that I didn't even know I was black. Which side note, dad, if you're watching, whose fault is that? [audience laughter] But he tells a story that we were walking down the street in Boston, because I lived with my Filipino mom. Shoutout to Filipino moms. I lived with my Filipino mom in Boston. And my dad came to visit. We were walking down the sidewalk, and I looked right up at him and I said, hey, dad, why do black people think they're so cool? which is a question that horrifies me now, especially thinking about white children who may have asked their white fathers that same question throughout history with equally horrifying answers. 

 

But my black father looked down at his confused, mixed child and said, “CJ, I am black.” What? “And you are my son and therefore--" Therefore, what? “Therefore, you are also black,” which is a sentence that hit me and made me think, oh, oh, cool.” But knowing something as a fact about yourself, as a biological fact, doesn't mean that you are immune from becoming confused again, especially if you are in a community, say, Northport, Long Island, where most of the people do not look like you, where most of the kids are white. 

 

And in 1996, I was living in Northport with my dad after the death of my mother. And in 1996, if you remember, the coolest thing, the hands down coolest thing to have was a blonde bowl cut. [audience laughter] Y'all don't remember the power of a blonde bowl cut? Let me refresh you. It was like the Jordan 11s of white kid haircuts, okay? I'm talking about the Macaulay Culkin hair. You know what I mean? I'm talking about that Jonathan Brandis hair. I'm talking about that hair that effortlessly falls like two little pieces of silk and perfectly frames your face as you hold a soccer ball and pose for a photo that will then be photoshopped to make it look like you are on the cover of sports magazine. I'm talking about that type of bowl cut. 

 

If you don't know those references, that means you grew up in a community that reflected who you are. But I wanted that kind of hair. I wanted white kid hair. I wanted my hair to be cut with a bowl. I wanted to walk into my dad's black barbershop, and when they asked me, “Do you want a one or a two or a three?” I wanted to hold up a picture of Tiger Beat magazine and say, make me look like all of the boys in Home Improvement. [audience laughter] 

 

I think about how my dad brought me to his black barbershop in Huntington. I wonder what must have been going through his head as he sat me down in the chair and looked the barbers in the eyes and said, “My son would like blonde hair.” And the restraint, the superhuman, self-control it must have taken to sit there for the entire period that it takes to turn a black boy's hair blonde and not say anything. 

 

I think he didn't say anything. I don't know, maybe out of respect, maybe he was too angry to open his mouth, maybe he knew that if he opened his mouth just a little bit, the words would just come spilling out and he would grab me by the shoulders and start shaking me and being like, “You're black boy. You are a black man in this world, son. Stop all that white shit. If you weren't chasing so hard, son, you'd realize you were already home.” I think maybe he would shake me and say that, but he didn't. He just held his tongue and he said, “Looks good. Let's get in the car.” 

 

I think maybe held his tongue that day, because he knew that eventually time would teach me that as soon as I got to college, that hair would be long gone. As is the case for some mixed folks who grow up in very white places on Long Island, all of my wardrobe became either like outlines of Africa or a Black Power fist. That was all my shirts for four years. He knew that in time, I would figure out how to start adjusting that thermostat of my own identity, dialing up and dialing it down. But no matter how much I dialed up and down my own blackness, there was something that still didn't feel whole, something about me inside that didn't feel at home in this skin. 

 

A few years ago, I went with my mother's brother to visit the Philippines where our family is from. We were in this place called Tagaytay City, and we went to the top of a mountain to this place called the People's Park in the Sky. And it's exactly what it sounds like. I've been in spaces before that where there are no white people, but it's always temporary. It's an intentional space in college, or among filmmakers or it's a place in New York that I'm just passing through. But what struck me about that day, that looking around, not only were there no white people, but on this normal afternoon in the full sun, no big deal being made of it, every single person I put my eyes on was brown. Was brown like me. 

 

Not black with a footnote. Not “Oh, well, you see, my mom is-- My dad actually was, so that's why I look.” It’s just brown who look exactly like me. It made me realize how hungry all of us are for that, that there are some things that aren't real to you until you see them reflected back to you in your world. And standing up there looking at everyone brown like me, I can imagine what my mom was thinking, that if she was here, she'd put her hand on my shoulder and saying, “See, this, this is what I wanted you to see. If you would stop all that chasing, you'd realize you were already home.” 

 

In six days, my first feature film is going to come out to the world. And anything written about that film describes me as black and Filipino filmmaker. I'd never seen those words in print before about me. And I look at those words, black and Filipino filmmaker, and I think, yeah, that's cool. Thank you.