Have I Ever Told You About...
the time I outsmarted Mark Wahlberg's security team?
Mark Wahlberg and Prince were the only times I got starstruck in my life, so I remember taking this picture like it was yesterday.
The picture quality is grainy because it was taken on an old-school Blackberry. I am wearing a silver sequined top, my hair is silky straight and held back by a thick black headband. I no longer wear my hair straight and haven’t in a decade since I’ve embraced my curls, but I am pulling off this entire look. I am stunning in this photo, and I know it’s because I tried that day. That version of me was in love with Mark Wahlberg. When his handlers announced that he would not take any pictures after the press junket, I felt my stomach tie itself in knots. They mean he won’t be taking pictures with anyone but me, I thought. I had loved this man since I was a preteen.
“Marky Mark, now that’s a fine ass white boy!” the lady sitting across from me on the city bus said, shaking her head back and forth and licking her lips. I was in middle school headed to my first ever Backstreet Boy concert and while she didn’t know much about “them white boys,” she knew a thing or two about “Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch,” and she was hellbent on telling me all the things. “Trust me,” she said, “You may not understand now, but just you wait, until you see those Calvin Klein ads.”
She wasn’t wrong. Just like Marky Mark had dropped The Funky Bunch, at one point he had also dropped most of his clothes. He became Mark Wahlberg and he was plastered everywhere in Calvin Klein underwear. I went searching for those photos right as I hit puberty. I don’t remember the when, where, or how, and I don’t think it’s important because I remember the feeling. Mark Wahlberg became the first person to make my lady parts tingle and thus began a decades long, one-sided, love affair.
Now in my early twenties, I hadn’t come this far to return home empty-handed or without a story that showed I, at least, went down trying. If I had to wrestle a bodyguard, I might have. While the press conference happened around me, I decided not to participate. Instead, I envisioned meeting him. Over and over again, as he answered questions from the press, some redundant, some ridiculous, I tried to create a timeline where I would meet Mark Wahlberg. I was manifesting my victory. They took one final question, and then the press junket was over, and they were ushering people out of the room.
I had no business doing what I was about to do, but I knew I could, and so I did. Being Black in America is to spend your life collecting survival tactics, and I am a survivalist. Living in this Black body taught me quickly that if you are in a place you want to be but are not supposed to be, or people think you shouldn’t be, you gotta act like you belong. I stood up confidently and started ushering people out of the room with the rest of the press junket team, with nobody the wiser. When the team deemed it safe to escort Mark out of the room, I shot my shot. I cleared my throat and put some bass in my voice.
