My weird relationship with 12 years a slave

There is a particular scene in the movie 12 Years A Slave, that deeply reminds me of my most recent relationship, with what I would describe as a severely troubled middle class white woman named Jen, who had 2 babies outside of marriage , with no fathers in sight. It occurs about halfway through the film, long after the main character, Solomon Northup, has been kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery in Georgia, where his name was changed to “Plat”.

The scene contains only two characters: Plat, and then the white wife of his slavemaster, who is standing on the porch of a beautiful house -- presumably built by slaves--- in a rather elegant dress. Her face is mean and her stare very cold, and the scene concerns her handing a tiny sheet of paper to the slave, that has some groceries and items she wants, written down upon it. For a very quick second, the slave takes a brief look at the paper, as if he's actually able to read it. The audience of the film of course, by this point, knows very well that Solomon can read, and rather well at that, but the wife of the slavemaster, she just knows him as Plat the slave, and has no idea. When she sees him glance at the sheet very quickly, however, the audience is left mortified for a brief moment.

Why? It's simple: At this point in the film, we have unfortunately already witnessed Plat destroy his life once before, by enthusiastically revealing to his previous master, that he was able to read , play a violin and even plan how to navigate successfully on a river boat. En route to being sold as a slave in Georgia, Plat was warned by other slaves “never to reveal he could read, or that   he knew how to be anything except a nigger.” They said he'd probably get himself in even worse shape, if he revealed what he was able to do, how well he was able to read, etc. Solomon of course, couldn't comprehend this. With his first master, he was very eager to reveal his intelligence. He wanted to differentiate himself from the so called “field niggers”. So he leapt at the chance to show the master just how smart and intelligent he was. As I say, it was a big mistake. In fact, he almost even wound up hanged for it. Eventually the master let him off the literal hook, and just sold him to another slavemaster-- this one being one of the cruelest in the South.

Hence, when we watch this scene with him and the wife of the second master, we are all terrified, because we know ful well that, if she realizes he can read, she's either going to have him killed right away, or, more likely, she's going to subject him to an even crueler and more vicious style of enslavement. For a quick moment, though, we have no idea if Solomon is going to be able to resist telling her he knows how to read. Is he still the same man as before, the freed man from New York who is rightfully proud of his intelligence, we wonder, or does he now realize that those slaves he met en route to captivity  were correct, that he's better off just pretending he's a Georgia slave, an unlearned man, and has always been one?

Every time I have watched the scene back to myself, in recent weeks , since my seperation from that evil white suburban being named Jen, I get literal chills down my spill. In fact, the very first time I even watched the film 12 Years a Slave, which oddly enough, I only became curious to watch after escaping Jen, I identified with this scene in particular, immediately. I saw parallels right away. Yes indeed.

“Where you from Plat?” says the white woman slavemaster, when the scene begins.

“I told you.” Solomon says.

“Tell me again.”

“Washington.”

“Who were your masters?”

“Master had the name of Freeman.”

“He was a learned man?”

“I suppose.”

“He learn you to read, Plat?”

This is the moment when, as I say, we are all mortified, praying that our heroic character will not give up the truth, and that he will instead do as he must, and lie.

A quick moment passes; you almost think he hesitates; but then he answers wisely: “A word or two here or there.” The slave says, “but I've no understanding  of the written te-”

Before he's even done saying his words, the white woman slavemaster, with her cold and ugly miserable white face, so pale and milky -- and which reminds me so much of Jens--- cuts him off and replies. “Well don't you trouble yourself Plat. You're same as the rest, and Master brought you here to work. That's all. Any more,” she says, turning her demented face upwards, “and you'll earn a hundred lashes.”

Now I understand very well, how the common reader might think to themselves, that no white boy on Earth, could possibly relate to this scene, the way I'm saying I do, and yet when I tell my reader, that I not only relate to this scene more than any other in my life, period, I really mean it. And it isn't just because of Jen either , or my relationship with her, that I relate with it. Yes, she and the story I lived with her definitely made me relate much deeper with it --- but this scene, of a man having to literally hide his intelligence, in order to not start trouble, literally feels like it displays, to an extent, the entire troubled story of my life. Why? It's simple: No matter who it seems I've ever come into touch with, it usually seems as though, 9 times out of 10, my intelligence simply is not wanted. Just like Plat, I'm usually told that there just ain't no god damn use to my intelligence. Beyond that, it's also usually strongly implied that it makes me rather unattractive as a man….in just the same way it's clear to see that Plats intelligence made him significantly less attractive and likable, as the slave the Southerners wanted him to be.

My reader of course is probably curious why Jen in specific made this all stand out to me. It's because Jen was a middle class white girl, from a town that's considered “above my own”, and the two babies she has created, she had done so with two men who were-- you guessed it--- from my exact same town. Unlike myself, those two men fit , to a literal tee, the precise stereotype of my modest white working class town here: They are obsessed with the Us Flag, they've been to prison, they listen to rap music and cal thrmselves niggas, they have probably never read a book in their life, and they are always very eager to put down and insult women. Often they're very violent; in fact, both of them have domestic violence on their criminal records .

The reader might think-- if they're rational--- that no woman on earth would want a man like that, especially not to make babies with outside of wedlock, and especially not a woman like Jen who, as I explain, wasn't working class, had two college graduates for parents, and who graduated from her high school as-- believe it or not -- a claas president. And yet the truth, for some odd reason, was that those were the exact men that Jen chose to make children with, and to allow, no questions asked, to live in her house, until of course they eventually beat the living hell out of her (and even then, she still embraces them).

Most people might ask why. I certainly did myself, more than a few times...until I turned this 12 Years A Slave film on, and began to understand it all. Here's what I deduced of it: Jen , who always seemed simultaneously annoyed and obsessed with me, didn't actually want to be an equal with the men she dated. Jen purposely, being the daughter of college graduates, went out literally hunting for a dumb illiterate stereotype , of a working class white boy. When she met me --- and she did meet me through the second child's father, from my same hood--- I believe she thought she was about to receive a third dumb working class stereotype. She was, it should be noted, extrmely eager to strike up texting conversations with me, very soon after we met. She was very curious about me, which didn't surprise me, because another girl from town had told me that “Jen Snyder will chase any man from over here. Literally any one of them.” Jen of course did not know anyone had ever said this to me...

When she discovered, however, that I was actually able to read and write in that same pretty way she surely remembered doing, long ago,as clas presidenr of Greenley High School, she went a little nuts. She didn't know what to do, in my opinion, or how to react. In truth, I even remember having this distinct thought years and years ago, when first I met her, and remember, I had never seen this scene then, yet I can recall the feeling distinctly: “This woman is very angry that this baby daddy of hers, actually knew somebody like me. She's enraged about it.”

In jens sick head, i wasn't supposed to be in existence, and of course, the baby's daddy, since he was a high school drop out, from my territory, simply wasn't supposed to know a single person like myself. To Jen, everyone this kid had ever met, was supposed to be just another stereotypical moron. A nigger. She had two babies from two men...all the pretty people in Greenley had stopped going to see her...any contact she had once had with “intelligent folk”, she herself often remarked, had basically ceased the year high school ended, since she had a baby just a year later . So how on earth was it that this imbecile baby daddy, who was so much lower than her, could possibly drag someone so smart out of the city of mad hell in which we live?

I was, after all,  from what she repeatedly called “the bad town”. I was supposed to be a bumbling illiterate. I was supposed to wear a baseball hat backwards and say nigga constsntly, and call 50 Cent and Eminem my favorite artists . I was supposed to be a dumb man that she could easily suck into her lunatic web and create a third illegitimate child with, at which point she could start having me arrested for random things , same as she did the others.

I was supposed to be someone Jen was going to easily exert power over, someone she was supposed to be infinitely smarter than, someone she would be able to seduce and get to break back for her kids for...someone that, as I often watched her do with her second child's father, she was supposed to be able to endlessly mock with her college graduate parents, since he never knew anything they were often “discussing” around the dinner table. Oh, how they would laugh and laugh at him, for not knowing the answers to their incessant discussions about specific pieces of information they'd go over.

I saw it often with my own eyes, as he would invite me over, perhaps because he also eventually saw, that it made Jen very very angry, to see that someone from this side of town could actually read coherently and deeply. Even though he wound up beating the hell out of Jen and now might go to prison for it, the same as her first “baby daddy”, who did a year for beating  her, in her fathers enormous house (where the father never is), I think he made sure I knew Jen, almost just because he wanted to show her “some people from this so called hell town you hate, aren't so bad as you think. In fact, maybe they're even smarter than you!” I think, too, sometimes, that this unforunate soul, also knew himself, that Jen had only ever let him in her house, to fulfill some sort of gross stereotype, and anger her mother. He knew he was being used based on his troubled background; he did not like it. He said it to me a number of times. He felt, I believe, like Jen had cornered him like a vulture, after he was released from prison, because she purposely wanted a convict. Jen Snyder was actively looking to encourage troubled boys from a poor mans town, to get in trouble, and to constantly see how far she could get them to go in their lunacy. Just like the slave masters in the movie were always trying to see how much they could provoke the slaves, because the moment you provoke that slave, you get even more of a justification, especially if you’re the wife of the slavemaster,  to shear his head off.

And of course, where does it all really leadi n the end? Well, as I’m saying, I think it lead to somewhere like this 12 Years A Slave movie. I think that Jen, being at once so annoyed and yet so fascinated with my “unstereotypical intelligence”, tried to obsessively suck me into her lair, to ensnare me, the same as she did those other two unfortunate slaves, but sadly for Jen, I was somehow able to escape her hellish plantation, before it ever truly got its hooks in me. Did I nearly get the shackles of enslavement put around my poor white boy wrists? Indeed, I nearly did, because I was almost seduced at times, but ultimately I was able to flee and successfully escape, before anything serious went down, and I think the reason for it, is similar to the reason Solomon Northup ultimately escaped the 2nd plantation he was sold to: I revealed my intelligence to Jen, as I’ve written, but I didn’t necessarily reveal it all at once. I was somewhat careful with it, and many things I purposely never mentioned to her. I also made sure to sometimes “descend” into the stereotype that I knew she wanted, to make sure she would always stay somewhat tricked, and never get too angry with me. If she got very angry, after all, i knew she would want to ruin me, which would mean she would get in a hot pursuit of me. Thankfully,iIn the end, I feel i was able to escape because I wasn’t seduced when she finally did try to seduce me. Mostly the reason I wasn’t seduced is because of the exact opposite reason Jen seems to enjoy men from my troubled town so much: I don’t like dating people who are significantly dumber than me, and I certainly have no intention on making babies with any such people….

So ya. Solomon Northup, man. Crazy.