Exactly when did I become an adult? And did I become an adult, or am I just playing the role of one? If this is a role, I’m definitely not being paid for it. Instead, I am obliged to pay for it. Fuck.

I wrestle with adulthood. Twisting and turning. Achieving an inhumane level of calisthenics just to squeeze by. Our generation struggles amidst a dilapidated and crumbling societal structure. All too often, millennials are seen as immature, clinging to our childhood—an era of perceived stability. But where else does one find release?

I grapple with the premature loss of innocence.

Little did I suspect the Afro-pessimistic reality that perched, waiting for me. Black children are forced into early adulthood, a rigged game in which the rules are always changing. My inheritance was to learn how to play this rigged game—yet, I still can’t play spades. So, we cling to our toys, figurines, collectables, and games in an attempt to keep our inner child alive—even if we feel like discarded toys.

Play is extremely important for animals and humans alike for social development, and toys are a part of that matrix. Dolls have existed for millennia. Yet, once we discovered the self, anthropomorphic dolls became an extension of our imagination. In our youth, we learn to see the world through these toys, but all too often discard them as our innocence is chipped away. Eroded by forces we are yet to understand. But like a jolt of electricity, certain truths bear their fangs.

Gender! Sex! Sexuality! Race! Ability! Class! is violently encoded in us, distorting our perception of the world and those around us. Our curiosity is often met with, ‘Boys don’t do this, and girls do that; boys don’t play with dolls, boys play with action figures.’ Reinforcing what has been, we begin to align with what society determines acceptable, and if we do not, it’s beaten into us through shame and oppression.

Children experience untold amounts of violence. Abuses we couldn’t name at the time. The ills of society seep in like phthalates, attached to the synthetic materials that many modern dolls are made of. Capitalism! Industrialization! Mass production! Corporate Personhood! Profits! And…Plastic! Chemicals and microplastics flood our endocrine systems, disrupt our hormones, and yet, here we are, still playing.

My earliest memories of the Russ Troll Dolls of the eighties and nineties were of freedom. Ask my mother, I even stole one as a child. I wasn’t scolded for playing with them like I was when I would reach for a Barbie doll. And those oddly racialized, weird little broad-nosed babies appealed to me. Were the original troll dolls born out of racist caricatures? I’d rather not know. Let me be ignorant. The world is fucked up as it is… can I have this one? Similarly, I always wanted to reach for the baby dolls, but I knew they were off-limits. America can’t have little queer Black boys aspiring to fatherhood. Unironically, I am averse to parenthood as I ruminate on the ethical implications of willingly bringing Black children into a world of hate, violence, and climate catastrophe.

I want to run back to my innocence lost, and so … This body of work is a visual autobiographical vessel as I work through some shit … or play.