America hasn't always been the land of the free or the home of the brave but you wouldn't know it by the way these jingoistic simpletons go at it in the rest of the country, with their love of all things USA. (You wanna love all of it, huh?I’ll just bet you do.)Independence Day is July 4, but it really depends on who you ask and where they live. When is Mexican Independence Day? A lot of Latinos in my neighborhood celebrate Cinco de Mayo. As an honorary Texan, I must-- but I know it's not entirely accurate. Sometimes I wonder if any of the Dominicans that surround me know that, too. Then again, I'm sure there are plenty of (white) Americans out there who don't know why millions of African-Americans (and quite a few Native Americans, actually) celebrate Juneteenth.

In a perfect world, I would have been at the beach, or at someone's cookout, or down South with my parents in the backyard, eating something grilled and smoked and glazed. But my world is far from perfect. I had rehearsal yesterday and I have a gig tomorrow, so I couldn't skip town. Even if I could, there'd be hell to pay, with traffic and heat and crowds everywhere, 'cause everyone is thinking what I'm thinking: Let's get away for July 4^th weekend. Usually when I get away, I end up wishing I'd stayed home. So I did.

In my neighborhood, hellzapoppin'. It's loud on the weekends anyway but this is over the damn top, with little girls jumping rope in sing song, pretty babies screaming from their mother's hips, half naked children running along the sidewalks in their bathing suits, jumping into the fray of a fire hydrant that's shooting into the street like a geyser. Every two minutes there's an explosion. Firecrackers, bottle rockets, roman candles. Bullets. Whatever anyone can get their hands on to make some loud noise. They put it in the middle of the street when traffic clears and blow it up. If I'm inside, most of the time I don't know if a car backfired or if a gun went off or what. Someone set off some firecrackers in the hall in midday and I just about jumped out of my skin. It sounded like a machine gun, amplified. And then there was the sound of children laughing. Who knew that terrorizing me could be so much fun? I just want to duck and cover on days like this: in an air conditioned movie house, a cold shower, in bed with a fan at the window, blowing the gnats off of me.

I didn't feel so independent on Independence Day. I felt trapped.

I settled in with the most recent Zora Neale Hurston biography I could find, some leftover Vietnamese food and a couple of independent movies. I knew that someone was going to get their hand blown off, or a foot, or maybe they'd get themselves killed out there, playing with pipe bombs and such. I did everything I could to make sure it wouldn't be me.