Discovered by Mollie Fermaglich

Dear Diary,

Hi!  I’m Alexandria!  What’s your name?  Oh, that’s right.  You’re my diary and I have to name you.  My favorite names are Alexandria, Fidelita and Hannah Montana.  I could call you “Kitty,” but that was the name of Anne Frank’s diary and I don’t want no name she used because she had white privilege.  I think I’ll call you “Dear Diary,” until my peeps – my staff, who tell me what to say because I’m better at putting together a Frozen Margarita than an intelligible position paper –  can think of something better.

I know what you’re thinking, Dear Diary  – maybe I’m a little too old and too hipster-like to even have a diary.  And like why am I using like an old-fashioned journal-diary, and it’s not even a Moleskine, instead of an Apple laptop or some shit like that? Two words, Diary – methane.  Fossil fuels.  Bio-diesel junk and junk.  And hamburgers and even bacon cheeseburgers.

DIARY:  That’s more than two words…

Shut up.  You’re my diary, not the other way around, so check yourself, yo.  What can I tell you about me?   Well, like Jennifer Lopez, (JLo for short), I’m Alex from the Block.  Like this is how my song goes:

Don’t be fooled by the red lips that I got
I’m still, I’m still Alex from the block
Used to wear it thick, now I learned to blot
No matter where I go, I know where I came from (from the Bronx!)
Don’t be fooled by the gloss that I got
I’m still, I’m still Alex from the block…

Can you keep a secret, Dear Diary?

DIARY: You only have to ask once, ALo.

Hey, I like that.  ALo.  It’s got swag and it’s better than AOC.  Maybe I could be AOC-Lo.  No.  That looks like some damn thing on that Periodic Table of those elements, which are in danger because of climate change.  Damn!  But, Diary – and I ain’t making this shit up – some of those elements?  They’re not real.  They’re just a tool of the white oppressors.  Like Europium, (Who’s from Europe? Dat’s right). Moscovium, (Trump, Russia – white, white, white).  Tellurium –  where the white devil likes to ski and drink hot chocolate.

DIARY:  Oh, that’s terrible, ALo…

Can I tell you a secret, Dear Diary?

DIARY:  I’m all ears.  Well, I don’t have ears, but it’s an expression…

I haven’t been from the Bronx since I was five years old.  I grew up in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, New York (mean income $110,000 a year), but shout-out to my peeps in da Bronx if you still live in Parkchester Housing, because it’s been like 25 years.  I still got the keys to our old apartment. Watcha gonna do about that?

DIARY:   Nothing, Alexandr… AOC… ALo from the Bronx.

That’s “da” Bronx but I appreciate the sentiment.

DIARY: Sentiment?  Are you sure that’s the right word?

Damn, STFU, you Diary Grammar Nazi.  So, my “neighbors” in #Bx, and the pizzeria guy and the dry cleaner said they haven’t seen me in a long, long time.  That’s because I’m stealth, yo.  And the mailman up near East Tremont says he has so much mail waiting for me, I might need like an Escalade to pick it up.  Like what’s up with that? I think there is something in the water there because these homies might all have that dementia disease.  Parkchester, the Bronx – represent!  When the Green New Deal passes, I’ll make sure my Bronx BFFs have clean drinking water. But their cows gotta go.

DIARY: There are cows in da Bronx?  I mean, yes –. Go green, chica!

You ain’t Hispanic, so stop appropriating my language.  I am the only Latinx here.  They say in America, anything is possible.  Yeah. Right.  For Caucasians.  I’m just a bartender who got elected to Congress – that is, like, so unfair.  I bet if I was white, I would have been elected to Queen.

DIARY:  You’d get my vote, ALo.

Thanks, Diary. You remember that book, The Year of Saying Yes, by that Grey’s Anatomy chica , Shonda-something rhymes-with-Rhimes… you ever read that?

DIARY: I can’t read. Or hold a book – no opposable thumbs.  You understand.

Yeah, you got like a disability.  Sad.  Well, this is my year of saying whatever comes to my mind. I don’t give a shit.  Like some Caucasian reporter, probably like from Fox News, asked me how to spell ‘orange.’  He was trying to mess me up, make the proletariat think I’m like stupid or something.  I showed him, ‘cause I answered, “Orange, the fruit, or orange the color?”

DIARY:  You showed them…

So, sometimes I’m gonna say no, like, “AOC, you could lessen your carbon footprint by taking the Acela train from New York to DC, instead of an airplane.”  Hell no.  I gotta get to DC as fast as I can to help my constsc…constitey…consistency…the people that elected me.  Them…

DIARY:   But the Acela takes 3 hours, and the plane, including getting to the airport, making allowances for traffic, flight, then a cab from Reagan International Airport to Capitol or your neighborhood can also be almost 3 hours.  A chance to reduce your carbon footprint by taking the train is something you…

You ain’t on my staff. Besides, I’m addicted to those slivered roasted almonds and fig bars on American Airlines.  So, yes to that, and yes to, “How’d you like to move into a fly DC condo with an indoor pool, private massage rooms with hydrotherapy beds, saunas, a demo kitchen with wood-fired pizza oven, rooftop definity pool, indoor lap pool, Peloton cycling studio and  a fireside lounge featuring a Steinway player piano.”  Hell, yes!

And sometimes I will be saying, “hell, no!” like if anyone asks me to bring them a plate of hot wings and a frozen Margarita.  No mas.  I be telling those waiters up at the definity pool to bring me my drinks, thank you very much.

DIARY: First, I think you mean “infinity,” not “definity,” which, btw, isn’t even a real word.  And your new condo sounds great, but, ALo, – that complex has no affordable housing.  It’s just, microcosmically speaking, a Plutocracy. 

Yeah, right.   I seen exactly three people working out on those Peloton Cycles, all pimping Mickey Mouse t-shirts.  No Pluto shirts.  No Goofy shirts.  No Minnie shirts, even though she is a person of color and a woman.  And let me tell you, my place is fiii-ine, even though those Caucasians who own the building (probably Jewish ones), tried to trip my ass up by putting in that garbage disposer – like, WTF?  But as long as I don’t have to recycle and can dump all my shit down there, well good for me.  Watcha think about that?

Well?  I’m waiting…

DIARY:  Good for you!  I’d clap but I don’t have any hands.

I gotta go in a minute.  I’m meeting my Squad at Equinox, the YMCA in whatever the poorest DC neighborhood is, where we will formally protest the “M” and “C” in YMCA – Young Men’s Christian Association.  Really?  I don’t think so.  Some Republican told us that Young excludes older people, but hey – Omar, Pressley, Tlaib and me?  We be young, so, later for you, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosiwitz.   We’re like the Beatles, only we ain’t white and we don’t got those sad mop-top haircuts.  But everyone’s like scared of us. That’s people of no color for you.

DIARY:  Um, I don’t think Nancy Pelosi is Jewish…

She is to me.  And Omar can’t stand her, so I know I’m right.  It’s time for those old codgers in Congress to go away.  If they die, the planet will be greener and will take care of part of my existential whatever.  Besides, old people smell like Gold Bond Powder and flowery perfume and rotting fruit skins all rolled into one big stank.  Old people don’t have all their teeth, and like they don’t even replace them with implants or a grill.  Pelosi wears dentures but she probably uses like generic PoliGrip, because her teeth always seem to be rattling around in her nasty mouth.  That’s her existential problem, her – you know – her World War II.  Whatever that means.

DIARY:  Yes.  I’m a little confused.  It’s been a long day…

Confused about what?  I am the voice of the New Democratic Party because I say so,  and if you don’t say so, then you are a racist and misogynist who hates brown people and eats processed food like those white Twinkies and that nasty canned asparagus.

DIARY:  I hate to keep reminding you of my many short-comings, but I can’t open a can.

You have like two disabilities. Sad. Sad.  So, anyway, have to go now but I’ll write more soon unless the world ends, because I calculated that, but when I add a lot of columns and have to borrow a number from the tens column and give it to the ones column, and then I worry that maybe the ones column is rich and now I’m stealing from the poor tens column and giving to the wealthy ones column, which is why this country doesn’t care about people of color, and I wish I had a Snickers bar right now because, yo, I’m like craving chocolate and that nougat shit and…

DIARY:   Zzzzzzz….

TTFN,

AOC
ALo

Note: The AOC in this piece occasionally uses elements of street dialect while speaking with her imaginary diary. This is a commentary on AOC’s selective use of elements of street dialect as a public speaker. It in no way disparages any street dialect but is only a commentary on the selective use of one by a politician.