- Some facts about myself.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm right-handed.
I hate my middle name.
I don't eat goats cheese.
I still don't have a driver's license.
And for as long as I can remember, I've been really
into good ramen and bad puns.
(audience member laughs)
I believe there are only two kinds of people in the world.
Those who admit they've ever peed in the shower
and liars.
(audience laughs)
I'm not religious.
My faith in God died when my godmother did
but a few months ago,
I saw my nephew's face for the first time
and now I can't help but think that maybe heaven
is not something we need to die to get to.
I go to an elite college, which means I know the most
profitable way to ship food from factory to supermarket.
But I don't know the middle names of any of the women
who cook my lunch every day.
I'm the son of a man who never misses a home cooked meal
or skips his dish washing duties.
The son of a woman told me that my name
is an earthquake in waiting.
She said, holds it in your mouth
like the most dangerous secret
this world has yet to know.
I'm only five foot eight,
on a really good day,
(audience laughs)
but being built like a short story is a lesson
in finding other ways to be the tallest tale in the room.
I don't know what it means to be a man,
and for a while I thought the weight room could tell me.
But I've heard stories of men
with shotgun barrels for arms,
who use their bodies as weapons.
I've seen them shoot their mouths off
and leave bullet holes in womens spirits.
And my sisters say that they raised me to be a good guy
but have a set of knuckles
swollen with a memory of teeth and blood.
And I'm still learning to unlearn my own violence,
reminded everyday that a righteous heart inside a male body
is just a gun with a safety left on.
And I know boys who're still searching for their manhood
inside bottles, bank accounts,
in between nameless hips,
boys who remote control their partners
because they're not strong enough to let things go.
I know that men carry an addiction to property in our blood.
And now when I was a kid I shoplifted things I didn't need
or want just to feel like there was something in this world
that I could own.
I know the most beautiful thing about love
is that it cannot be owned.
Some days I'm still the 13 year old
who's stomach origami folds on itself
every time Laura Stevenson walks past his lunch table.
And I don't watch much TV these days
but I'm still a Nickelodeon kid at heart.
So if you asked me who loves orange soda
I will tell you.
(audience laughs)
I've broken more of my own bones than promises in my life.
And I'm still not sure what has been more painful to heal.
I have a heart, the same size as a fist.
I didn't find self love until I gave myself a beating
but I was the tree that fell in the forest
when no one else was looking
and dared to make a sound.
I am the meal that this thing called depression
has spent seven years trying to devour from the inside out.
I'm living proof that that motherfucker bit off
more than he could chew.
I believe there's nothing more autobiographical than a scar.
So every time I see the remains of the barcodes I've carved
into my skin,
I read a story of a battle I win every day.
I used to wake up breathless,
when anxiety was deadly
but now I'm so sick,
I've got depression scared to catch me.
I am both black and boy,
which means that I'm the knife that threatens
to slit the neck of silence and make everything bleed song.
I am song.
I know that nothing can die that cannot be resurrected
by music and that the dance floor
is the safest place to be during the apocalypse.
I know all of this.
I'm still figuring out how to hold on
to this helium balloon called happiness.
I've got charisma down to a science,
but most days I still have less confidence
than English weather.
But I'm learning every day what it means to be human
without being whole.
Every night the sky opens its mouth
and swallows the sun in a single gulp,
just to make room for the moon.
What a wonderful way to live life,
to be so full of so much light,
but always hungry for more.
(audience cheers and claps)