Shapeshyfter begins where some modern men's stories begin - mucking through the trauma of a deadbeat father.
THE ALGO
Every morning, before warm caffeine or the bite of a cold energy drink takes effect, instagram interrupts my peace like a pesky gnat. We call them debt collectors where I come from.
Instagram whispers
"Good morning Alex"
"Here's what happiness looks like."
I sip earl gray and watch the feed roll down like hostage footage from the cult of lifestyle aspiration.
Perfectly aesthetic wrists chained in steel Rolex.
Happy smiles bleached like Cee-lo Green's teeth.
Espressos frothing on hydrangea-covered terraces in picturesque towns that sound like luxury perfume bottles... Positano, Amalfi, Heaven.
Men's lifestyle media has become a kind of softcore propaganda, a wolf in sheep's clothing – proof of life for soul-dead status chasers.
Every post a lecture on attainment. Every tripod shot a promise that if you hustle hard enough, bow to the algorithm, and manifest until blue-in-the-face, you too can sip overpriced coffee beans on a terrace where nobody lives, because authentic living leaves dust mites.
What do I know? I'm a man scrolling myself into oblivion. Gawking at insta-perfect lifestyles, placing myself and my visible trauma in every artfully curated scene like I belong.
Each scene whispers
"This if fulfillment."
I whisper back
"Looks exhausting"
My life isn't perfect. Often not happy. Rarely soulful. But it's real. Real is rare, something no men's magazine has a filter for. Until now.
Welcome to
BUCHAREST ROMANIA
A city where strays of every four-legged variety outnumber tourists. The air is clean, fresh, smells like ambition and evaporated fumes. Bucharest is a landlocked, feisty city, clawing its way out of its concrete past. It's people - stoic, inquisitive. The women are attractive and gregarious. I dare you to find more beautiful eyes. Most youths speak english at better levels you'd find in Louisiana.
Startup hunger pulses here like Tiesto beats. Internet speeds blaze faster than warp engines. A plethora of aging people, not as grumpy as you might think. A plethora of younger folk too – artists, coders, designers, dreamers – all plugging into a nation trying to rebrand.
Not it's my turn to plug in.
THE CALL
My father's voice crackles through my iPhone 13 like Paul Revere.
"COME BACK TO CALI"
He yells like a crazy bigot against his own race with inside intel on the apocalypse.
"The Russians are coming! You know they hate Californian coons!"
Russia had invaded Ukraine days earlier. My old man, clinging on to his unassisted fertile imagination envisioned tanks pulling up to my Airbnb, soldiers with AKs and accents too thick, shouting "San Francisco" before raining flurries of bullets.
He's seventy
I'm forty.
Somehow, he's the one still afraid of monsters under my bed.
I've survived a Haitian ex with emotional artillery and dimples you'd compensate bad behavior for. New York crack years. California quakes. Miami hurricanes. West Indians stealing my catalytic converter during one hurricane. Economic collapses. Spiritual collapses.
Now suddenly – now – at the threat of doom, he decides to father up.
THE INSTRUMENT
My father was a one-time musician – not in the literal sense. He hit one high note and left the stage. Like many black fathers in America he made me. And poof... gone.
No catch. No "birds and bees." No "how to shave without looking like I lost a knife fight."
For most of my life, pops was less a parent and more an origin story. A biological instrument, living to serve one purpose.
But alas, guilt ages like fine bourdeax.
THE FRESH PRINCE OF WALNUT CREEK
Dad left in '83. I was three and terrifying. A sausage-legged destroyer of all things delicate.
Mom packed up my brother and me, swapping the Bronx for Walnut Creek, California. Think Fresh Prince, but swap Bel-Air for a two-bedroom apartment, and Geoffrey the butler for a blue Ford Maverick with a bullet hole in the driver's door.
Mom's rule was simple... "I can't afford bail. Don't get in trouble."
She meant it so deeply she marched us to the police station, introduced us to the captain.
"These are my boys. Don't shoot them."
That was love, 80's black mom edition.
THE CODE
Other families had curfews. We had the code. Not code-switching. Code-rewriting.
Kid brother and I were to become Shapeshyfter's before I even knew the word existed.
Blend in but stand unique. Speak clean. Dress sharp. Shake hands like you mean it. Become all things to all people. Be so adaptable, multidisciplinary the world can't tell what box to check.
We we're two black boys raised in highfalutin suburbia. Mom didn't think we'd survive if we merely adopted suburban-sameness. We were taught to transcend. We had to.
And no – pops wasn't there for any of this soul-building.
THE SOUL BROTHER
I'm forty-five now, writing this section fall of 2025.
Every man I know – no matter race, age, or tax bracket – is fighting an invisible war. A war between who they are and who the world demands they be.
The world demands we become clones. Copies, copies, copies of each other. No growth, No individuality. No unbridled creativity. Drones floating adrift in a endless sea of sameness.
My father lost his war early. The day David died.
MANHATTAN, 1979
David was my father's soul brother – closer than blood. They were young men chasing the dream in Queens, moving apartments, hauling happily lived in furniture, sweating through polyester button downs and bell bottoms.
120 inches of sofa didn't fit in the elevator. So David, 160 pounds dripping wet, rode it on top the elevator car – a local New York Hack ubiquitous in those times.
You ride the roof, someone stops the other elevators, the move gets done quickly and efficiently.
Except that day, maintenance forgot to stop the other elevators.
My father waited upstairs, prepping the next load. He heard the screams first – multiple high pitched screeches tearing space and time.
One moment... two young men moving forward in life. The Next... darkness.
David shifted his head over, looking down the shaft as a descending elevator...
Well, he never saw it coming.
Death by a people moving guillotine.
Maybe broken heartedness pushed him out the door.
Maybe I inherited running.
To be continued.
ManyFace
Respect for today's creative world is fundamental. I have respect for creativity. I merely wish creativity was more unique, less cookie cutter.
I wish more creatives lived soulful, less polished, authentic lives, free from what the algorithm deems trendy.
The creative ones, the soulful ones, the crazy ones, we risk everything to keep the static out.
thx for reading