Back in 2011, the Seattle jazz musician and comedian Ahamefule J. Oluo wrote this feature for The Stranger. Almost a decade later, some of what’s described in the feature is now in a motion picture starring Ahamefule himself. It also stars his sister Ijeoma Oluo. The film screens online on Saturday, September 12 at the Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Charles Mudede, who wrote Police Beat, which is screening here, directed and co-wrote the Oluo film, which is called Thin Skin.
The men in my family love drugs. They love their meths and their cocaines (both cracked and uncracked), they love their pots and their heroins. They have deep and committed relationships with their drugs. I have always had a deep, committed, and loving relationship with my teeth, so I took a decidedly different route. My mother (never known for her eloquence) will call me and shout through the telephone: “Can you believe it!? Your cousin Kurt burgled again! Burgled!”
“Yes, Mother, I can, in fact, believe it.”