Bitches Be Repressed

The opening scene to the “Pilot” episode of my 2025 series—tentatively titled: BITCHES BE REPRESSED—begins with me sitting.

Sitting is the only thing I’m self-disciplined at. The thing I’ll use as a motif throughout the season where I loosely play myself in a universal way.

I.e. I been sitting in the same

spot for thirteen years.

The word I use to describe why I didn’t show up.

I.e. I been sitting in the same

spot for thirteen hours.

During the credits, the camera pans in overhead, chasing to find out where we all end up. I wonder if it’s purgatory. It’s so hard for me not to lay.

I’m outside of a Hyatt drinking a frosé, eating cold beignets out of a paper sack, and for the past two and a half hours—listening to the same Denzel Curry song on repeat. It’s about two in the morning. I’m supposed to be crying but I can’t while I’m thinking.

In a droned overview, there I sit, on a block of concrete that extends across both sides of a street. If I take off on either side, I’ll be a star. The song fades out. Then restarts. I still smell the shells of the crawfish on my fingertips from morning blending into the powdered sugar. New Orleans is my favorite place to be.

The drone comes down over my head—circles towards my face. Slides down. Pans back out into its prior wide shot. We at the bottom of the brain. This is the constant shutter of the season. You never know if we’re at the beginning or the end, I just need the audience to force the symbolism, to know I’ll recreate memory until I get a resolution.

From this angle, my whole body fits above ground. My shoes swing back and forth. I wish I knew height before ever having to jump from it. The shoestrings and headphone cord attach themselves and if I can hear I can run and if I can hear I can run but if I can run I can hear if I can run I can hear if I can run I can hear. This show isn’t a comedy or drama. This is futurism.

The screen turns from static to scene static to scene and static and static during this episode. I give you seventeen minutes before you get tired of me. Each time we cut back to scene— there I sit, sole to ear, ear to soul. Then I rip my face from the bottom of the shoe.

and cut.

Ok, scratch that. Let us remember how. In tall doses this time.

I start at Bourbon alive and surrounded in garments of pride. I walk in it when I leave, blasting Denzel Curry, syncing my steps to every downbeat as we pass the trolley tracks. I’m almost at a light skip. I’m both sides of the family deep for the first time ever. I hear jokes being made through my headphones about how drunk I was last night and tonight as the top from the frosé cup hangs between my thumb and ring finger. It’s dark out but still early by New Orleans standards.

None of this is going in the show, but it’s the moment after I hear them laughing that I really begin to feel the song that’s playing from the phone tucked into my front pocket. You giving me all of your stories in the littlest amount of time . . . The words coming through my body blasting, explosive, exposing me out of whatever enjoyment I was previously having. I knew you wasn’t normal ever since the age of nine. Somewhere between Canal and Poydras, I stop hearing other voices. They disintegrate into flickers of sound, into little grievances I need to get away from. I don’t want to be with people that love me. I speed up my pace like strangers are following me. Dig in and out of bodies hoping to lose them. This song—the intro to a complete picture, and I only acknowledge the negatives. I swear I ain’t processed one thing fully. I, heard you were molested when you hit the age of five. I ain’t never lost a person in life that I wanted to keep. I pop a squat on that block and don’t say goodnight and don’t move for hours.

A week prior to the sitting, my first and only book is released to the world and I’m rethinking what it means to lasso a lineage. A few weeks after this, I barely finish my second year of grad school, settling the entire semester high on my futon after realizing to own anything means you gotta care enough to ask it how it feels, or what it’s gone take for it to stop fucking wit you for good. It’s been 90 days of therapy and who I am is clear but what I do in panic of it is troubling. Each time Denzel Curry attempts to finish his verse, I start it over. I’m basically begging. I’m an only child but people have never not lived in my home.

By the time I get to Loyola, I’m in distress, but people keep laughing. I can’t go back into the hotel, but I see the stoop. I sit and tell everybody I’m good. That it feel good out and I wanna sweat. They stay believing me. I stare at the moving figures stumbling in and out of the hotel doors for hours. This is what I love about this city—these streets I mean— everyone disguising and tucking away and coming out and eating way past full until you don’t get a choice in whether or not the bubble guts make you show your face. I lick the powdered sugar from my hands. Roll the sack down. Rub grease stains into my shirt. I wish for a larger cup.

As the frame pans in overhead, There’s me. Being disciplined. Extended across the hotel doors on both ends. I only breathe out.

This scene lasts an entire episode.

The point is, the opening scene to the pilot episode of my 2025 series—tentatively titled: BITCHES BE REPRESSED—begins with me sitting. I’m outside of a Hyatt drinking a frosé, eating cold beignets out of a paper sack, and for the past two and a half hours—listening to the same Denzel Curry song on repeat. I start at Bourbon alive and surrounded in garments of pride. A week prior to the sitting, my first and only book is released to the world and I’m rethinking what it means to lasso a lineage. I should be crying. I ain’t never made up a scenario a day in my life.

Welcome to the darker side of taboo . . . plays consecutively and each time I feel as if I’m being choked underwater. All I got is permanent scars and tattoos . . . Blood might feel good down my body, something thrashing against bone and hip, but I’m gurgling water bubbles. It sound like the subdued production of the first eight bars and why do I pay attention to all my surroundings, to everything except for what I’m feeling. The sound is full of distortion, muffled by its might and holding back. I swear I’m that powerful.

Every few minutes there’s a slight breeze coming in, a chill I can feel on the back of my neck but even this early into morning, it’s still hot, pushing a dry eighty-five where the sweat doesn’t drip but gives you a sticky coating. Each time the song starts over, I start it over. I place the beignet back in the bag and lick my fingers, put them under my thighs so that they meet the cement under me and rock like I’m in the cold of a Southern summer home. It’s May. I’m a child who likes to wash her hands of things too much. I’ll stand by a sink for hours.

I sit until my phone dies. Swing my legs because they’re my favorite body part as an old man comes out of nowhere, claiming to have smoked crack with Tyler Perry back in the day. He stays with me even when I ask him to leave—stands over me for a while until both of our liquor settles. When it does, he starts mincing words, dicing them my way, but all I can think about is how bad I want some sunflower seeds. Not to spit the shells at him for calling me out my name, but to share. I need to hear a story. This is me needing someone. I want to tell this to the woman who comes over to ask am I ok after he gets louder that I’m not ok, but it ain’t got nothing to do with him. He walks away anyways. I sit by myself, cupping my hands around the 16 oz. Styrofoam cup, sucking the rest of the frozen alcohol through the straw. You, swallowing all of your pride, won’t, let anybody inside.

In an eight-episode season, the only thing we’ll learn is this:

I’m scared to look at my palms.

Kendra Allen is the author of the essay collection When You Learn The Alphabet (University of Iowa Press), winner of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, she holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. Her poetry collection, The Collection Plate, is forthcoming from Ecco. Sometimes she tweets @KendraCanYou.