His name was ________   __________ and he was amazing. Tall, dark-skinned, slight of frame, beard. The most beautiful teeth I’d ever seen.

I can still tell you where I was the first time I saw him.  I was new to campus, and desperately in need of black friends. I was sitting cross legged on the floor in the Student Union building during the course of a Black Student Alliance meeting. He entered 20 minutes late with his fraternity brothers, and I was floored.

He was darker than all of them, and taller, by a head. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a wifebeater. But over the wifebeater was an open, blue workman’s shirt; the kind a mechanic would wear. A wide-brimmed straw hat rested atop his head.

He was the first man I ever wanted that I was able to make my own.

Only, he wasn’t my own.

At all.

He’d made it very clear from the beginning that he didn’t want a girlfriend.

“No titles,” he’d said. And I’d agreed.

And we hung out, messed around, went out on dates, exchanged gifts, he met my parents. But he’d been clear. No titles.

Clear as mud.

When it became evident he had a whole other non-relationship, and a smattering of women around campus, AND off of it, I was heartbroken. And confused. When I’d confronted him about his indiscretions, he’d been as tolerant as he could before the shame of it all and realization of his position had his back to a wall. Unable to withstand the hurt in my voice and accusation in my eyes, he’d shouted, in anger, “DAMNIT! YOU ARE NOOOOOOOT MY GIRL!”

I will never forget that moment. As long as I live.

We grew and changed and our lives took us into different directions. We both matured into the adults we were meant to be, and he remains one of my best friends. And we laugh about it all, today. Well, I laugh. He’s still rather ashamed, and gets defensive.

But the fact of the matter is, no matter how much I love him, today, or how my life has changed, or how I barely recognize the girl I was at eighteen, those words, and the vehemence with which they were shouted, continue to haunt me.

I knew then, that was a lesson I’d learn one time, and one time only.

I’ve never had my heart broken again.

So my question, dear readers, becomes: Why are women still learning this lesson, today? Why are grown women paying taxes, getting bikini waxes, possessing expensive gym memberships making this mistake, today?

I’m going to stand on this working hypothesis:

When a man says he does not want to be in a relationship with you, he never will.

The end.

When a man says he does not want to be in a relationship with you, he never will.

I know no one wants to hear it. I know life changes. Circumstances change. People change their minds.

He won’t.

I’m trying to save you some time, here.

He won’t.

Oh. He might change his mind about being in a relationship. Being with you and experiencing the creature comforts of boo-hood might certainly whet his palate in terms of being properly loved and cared for by a woman.

That woman just won’t be you.

Let’s examine it further.

When a man tells you he doesn’t want to be in a relationship, he is stating straight out, point blank, that he doesn’t want you.

This is so powerful because it is entirely antithetical to how we’ve been led to believe they operate. This man doesn’t even want you enough to lie to you to convince you otherwise; he doesn’t even have the time to blow smoke up your ass. He is going to tell you something he knows you don’t want to hear, and risk the chance that you will walk away. He won’t even try to sell you a dream.

Because it’s NEVER going to happen.

That’s how committed to that shit he is. He is willing to risk you WALKING AWAY rather than tell you something different. Because, he could take or leave you.

I suspect, at this juncture, many of you are in disagreement with me. You think that I’m making a broad, sweeping indictment of all non-title situations. I haven’t taken care to look in on each specific instance, and the motivators and driving factors that have led your particular breed of noncommittal man to his anti-relationship platform.

Maybe he just got out of a horrible relationship.

Maybe he just got divorced.

Maybe he’s been hurt before.

Maybe his parents never loved him so now he can’t properly process genuine affection.

That’s a bunch of bunk.

He likes sleeping with you, doesn’t he? He likes hanging around you, doesn’t he? He likes it when you cook for him, fold his drawes, and pick up brews for he and his trifling friends, doesn’t he?

That’s RELATIONSHIP SHIT.

AND HE LOOOOOOOOOOOOVES it.

What he DOESN’T love is being accountable to you. He doesn’t love being a conservator of your feelings and emotions; taking them into account and letting them influence his course of action. He doesn’t love having to come home only to you without the freedom of flirting with or sleeping with other broads.

But, that’s really neither here nor there.

The POINT is, whatever reasons he’s offered you are crap, but even if they weren’t (which, they are), they’re inconsequential. The POINT is, he has already TOLD you that he doesn’t want you for anything serious. If you want something serious, you need to get a move on.

And this isn’t a reason to be unhappy. It may be disappointing, yes, but be of good cheer.

This situation is one of the only times in life that a person will look you in the eye and tell you, outright, that if you stick around, he’s going to screw you over. This is one of the only times in the course of your entire adulthood when someone is going to tell you he has no good intentions where your heart is concerned; that this is going exactly nowhere. This man is doing you a favor. You should be grateful.

But no. You don’t see that. You see a challenge. You think you’re gonna change this man’s mind.

Now, my friend, D, a PhD candidate, and chronic over-thinker, has rather wisely pointed out the fact that women are conditioned to think this way.

D says that society has taught us, since our birth, tales of our persistence being rewarded with success. Women, specifically, have been given tricks of the trade to keep a man happy –keep quiet, don’t be too argumentative, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”—that he might somehow suddenly realize how good he’s got it and find his way back to us, back to love.

D makes a good point. And I agree.

But I suspect there is something else at play.

Arrogance.

I know.

It’s a big word. And it stings. But it’s appropriate.

Arrogance.

Something is so great about you, and your love, and your sex, and your macaroni and cheese that you can overcome his relationship trepidation.

He hasn’t known love like yours. He hasn’t met a girl like you. What y’all have is different.

Bullshit.

This man has seen you. He has known you. He has kicked it with you and laughed with you, and knows enough about you to realize that he DOES want to spend time with you.

He knows your love and what it’s capable of juuuuuuuuust fine.

Trust that, in the weeks and months that y’all have been not-titled booed up, he has inventoried your character and your you.

And made a determination that he doesn’t want a relationship with either.

You know what men do when they are thinking about having a relationship with you? When they’re open to the option?  NOTHING.

They do NOTHING.

They keep their mouths shut, they scope out the situation, and they let the chips fall where they may. They watch as things are progressing, and if something blooms within their hearts, they come to you with an offer.

THAT’S what men do.

They don’t start out from the GATE with, “I don’t want to be in a relationship.”

Men who say this have a very distinct reason for doing so. And this is what women need to realize.

At some point, very long ago, before all of us were alive, men and women entered into a tacit agreement, whereby men were only responsible for their words. We were to take a man “at his word,” and punish him only when his actions belied those words; when he acted in opposition of them; when he failed to make them true.

This is controversial.

This is controversial because we all know that men in a no-title relationship BEHAVE the same way as men in titled relationships.

And these behaviors are what lead us to believe that change is possible; that they are warming to the idea of being with us.

They’re not, though.

They’re enjoying the moment. They’re enjoying the benefits of the boyfriend experience while remaining indemnified against poor-boyfriend liability.

All because of their initial disclaimer.

And it’s messed up and unfair.

But there’s a grace to it. There’s a comfort in words that people are bound to. There’s a safety there.

Because actions are subjective.

You see the intimacy of a spoon; its suggestion of long-term affection.

But that man just likes to hug.

You see the sweetness and tenderness of a frontal lobe kiss.

That man was just saying, “Hey.”

If you have found yourself on the wrong side of a failed non-titled relationship, before you rally like hell against this man for what he has led you to believe; before you call his job and key his car, and tell his friends he isn’t worth a damn, look at yourself.

Look at who you are.

Why are you okay with someone telling you he doesn’t want you?

Even if you both start out on noncommittal footing, if your feelings change, and his remain the same, why are you staying?

Why is it okay to be with someone whose mind you have to bring round to the idea of you?

That man who leads you on, he’s an asshole. Make no mistake about it. He knows what he’s doing.

And he’s dogged you out for sure.

But you’re the bigger asshole.

Because you dogged you out first.

A stranger, no matter how close you fancy him, doesn’t have any obligation to you. At all.

The only person charged with a duty to protect you and your well-being is you.

You are the only person accountable for you. You are the only person who can keep you from being hurt.

When a man tells me he doesn’t want to be with me, I take him at his word.

It very well might be the last good thing he says to me.

“Okay, here it is…your choice. It’s simple. Her or me. And I’m sure she is really great. But, Derek, I love you. In a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way…that makes me hate you…love you. So pick me. Choose me. Love me.”

After a good deal of self-analysis regarding the matter(s) of my own interpersonal estrangements, I’ve come to the slow realization that Meredith Grey wasn’t some iconic figure of modern-day romance. She wasn’t emblematic of all that is true and hopeful, and ever-resilient in our own collective quest for love against all undefeatable odds.

That bitch was a hater.

A tried and true, dyed in the infidelity-strewn wool hater.

The i-know-you’re-with-someone-else-but-seriously-let’s-walk-out-this-motherfucker-together-and-never-look-back choose me is the signed, sealed, stamped and delivered verified move of every grand-scale hater throughout the annals of real and fabled history, alike.

Lancelot said that shit to Guinevere. Tristan said that shit to Isolde. Alicia Keys said that shit to Swizz Beatz.

It is the Hail Mary of Hail Marys.

And frankly, it’s highkey selfish.

Because there’s a reason that person isn’t with you in the first place. I’m not going to say that reason is some fault or lacking in you. Only you know your life. I’ll draw my own conclusions.

But you are literally asking the object of your affection to accept one of two troubling options:

1. Leave your situation and walk away with me. Fucked up me. Non-committal me. Flaky, unpredictable, wayward me.

Or, in the bold, almost-as-fucked-up alternative:

       2.    I’m doing better now. This is a new, improved me, standing before you. I promise this situation with me will be better  than  where you’re at, but, at the very minimum, will at least be comparable to that great shit I’m inducing you to leave behind.

Is that love? Do we lead the people we love from the warmth and security of their new lives, back into the darkness and unknown of our own potentially-despicable company? Is that be-with-me-at-all-costs-come-what-may shit love? Are we really so self-absorbed to believe that any life that person creates with us is better than the life he/she leaves behind?

“So pick me. Choose me. Love me.”

At what cost?

Can this set-fire-to-the-rain love be quantified?

Where do we get off?

Where do I get off?

How dare I presume to make an assessment of your relationship, and where you should stand (preferably the fuck outside of it and with me) with respect to it? Who am I? Who do I think I am?

I had a thought, today.

Who you are with is not—as is commonly held—a reflection of who you are.

Who you are with is a reflection of what you believe you are worth.

Granted, this theory gets tricky when you move towards an entirety-of-the-person analysis, and further from the inclination to compartmentalize a human being into bits, but I’m certain it holds water.

I’m currently sitting at Soho Tea & Coffee, and the most obnoxious of upperclassmen girls is sitting behind me, scrolling through her phone, fastidiously determined to tell each and every friend not preoccupied with the drudgery of exams (all zero of them, it seems) her struggles with her live-in boyfriend. Struggles that drove her from the quiet of the Georgetown University Library, to this very place—she apparently can no longer concentrate (In the interest of full disclosure, I have sincere doubts as to this child’s ability to concentrate and/or function in the aggregate, under the best of circumstances, but, whatever).

Two days ago, she made dinner for Horrible Boyfriend (who I’m assuming wasn’t quite so horrible then), and left the dishes in the sink to “soak” (Haven’t I told you people about this shit? This shit ruins relationships. I swear by it. Wash your fucking dishes or put them in the GD washing machine. You people are fucking animals). Horrible Boyfriend (who, I’ll note, in his own fuckshit thoughtlessness didn’t consider doing the dishes himself despite the fact Simpleton Girlfriend made dinner) in a feat of first rate bitchassTed passive aggression, watched the dishes sit in the sink, “soaking” for two days. On this, the third day, Horrible Boyfriend walked over to the campus of Georgetown University, where Simpleton Girlfriend was studying, and, before a cast of characters including but not limited to, her peers, library staffers, and an assortment of similarly studious strangers, laid her out like the trifling, making-dinner-but-not-washing-the-dishes-and-then-letting-them-“soak”-in-water-for-two-days bitch that she was. Simpleton Girlfriend says that Horrible Boyfriend was all fury and righteous indignation, blew the entire situation out of proportion, humiliated her, and what’s more, does this “all the time.”

I don’t judge her mate.

I judge her.

Clearly, something in this girl thinks that she doesn’t deserve more than a man who is given to temper tantrums and embarrassing her in public.

And who am I to say she does?

I don’t know the secrets of that bitch’s heart.

Maybe Shout-y McDish-Nazi is precisely what her lot in this life should be.

We all need to look deep within ourselves for these elemental truths. We’re so quick to reassure ourselves, and our troubled friends, that we and they “deserve better.” But is that true? Is that really true?

Your boyfriend’s dick doesn’t work. He hasn’t fucked you right ever. He is at best, quick, and at worst, impotent.

But he’s your boyfriend.

Bitch, CLEARLY you don’t think you deserve better.

So, neither shall I.

That non-fucking sonofabitch is your soulmate.  Something inside of you, like his dissatisfactory dick, is broken, impotent. Y’all belong together.

Fooler, you’re a shit. We all make sacrifices to be in relationships.

 Sure.

Agreed.

I submit to you that each sacrifice you make is a concession of “don’t deserve.”

Stanley doesn’t pick up his dirty drawes, but I love him anyway. That’s a sacrifice I made when I said “yes” to this relationship.

Word.

You don’t believe you deserve a man who picks up his dirty drawes. You have looked inside you and found yourself lacking. Maybe you’re the type of bitch who uses the same towel for a month. Whatever the case, you’ve cast your lot in with dirty-drawes Stanley. I assume that man is the full measure of your worth.

 “So pick me. Choose me. Love me.”

Maybe instead of trying to lure people out of their relationships, or making an outside assessment of how successful they are, we should look to ourselves; to our respective worths—to the question of whether said worths were equally-yoked.

Maybe the object of your affection looks at his/her current partner and sees the fullest, most natural extension of himself/herself. Maybe he/she has run the numbers, weighed the cons, and come to the conclusion that this person is what he/she deserves. For better(than us) or worse(than us).

And maybe he/she is wrong. Maybe he/she has mischaracterized his/her worth, or your worth.

Derek Shepherd certainly had.

But if this is love-

If this is the shit bards poeticize, and singers lyricize, and school-girls fanaticize—

If this is the real thing-

Such that it is-

I can’t see myself forcefully pitching it to you…..

Romantic a notion though it may be…

Particularly those that are the byproducts of social mores and puritanical constraints that seek to micromanage my preferred brand of sexuality and individualism, with little comment as to the efficacy of their method, or long-term sustainability of their practices.

I care little for rules.

I have oft laughed in the face of womankind’s attempt to impose a dogmatic schema to the loosely structured world of sexual politics; to the notion of sexual politics in and of themselves.

This “no kiss on the first date,” “no sex til the third” ideology that acts to strip from us our fluid sensuality, rob us of our spontaneity, and further solidify within us this frightening concept of good girl versus bad girl.

I care little for rules.

Be that as it may, I am forced to concede the existence of certain boundaries. Not rigid, stringent, asphyxiating boundaries that would have us chained and hog-tied to our seats, nickel clutched tight betwixt our throbbing knees.

But rather that ominous, invisible fence that keeps us suspended in the gray, protected from the nebulous, forgotten, distant world, shadowed in black. Mine is a world of small compromises; a tiny system of checks and balances that exists not for the sake for having limits, but rather acknowledging them because there ARE limits; the difference, perhaps, between dabbling in sexual deviance, and BEING a sexual deviant.

For while we make allowances for straying from the path, even forging your own path, the concept of there being no path is altogether too much for society to bear.

Conventional wisdom seems to indicate there needs be a finite method of distinguishing wheat from chaff; discreetly freaky librarian from open-assed slut.

And it has been a manageable feat to a degree.

At least in my own instance. I know of no examples where my own name has been bandied about the streets, tales of my mouth-sorcery heavy on the lips of young DC urbanites.

But the game has changed.

The advent of technology has increasingly blurred the lines between the Dos and the Don’ts.

And day after day, it becomes more difficult for even the most free-thinking among our female ranks to answer that all-important question: “Wait….wait…can I fuck him yet?”

Certainly, as educated women of a certain age, in a certain age, we’ve come round to the idea of a man’s awareness of our capacity to behave like whores (under the appropriate circumstances, of course)–liked it, encouraged it, even.

But to actually be perceived as a whore; to have a man legitimately THINK us whores—irrespective of how insignificant a man he may be—that is a fate to which the majority of us simply cannot yield.

Which brings me to my point:

Twitter won’t let my faux-chastity be great.

Not even a little bit.

Twitter is a setup from the getup.

Twitter introduces to our varied states of consciousness, and, by proxy, our pulsating, tumescent genitals, a chat room whose geographic locale is THE WORLD.

And here’s what happens.

You invariably come across that stranger, whose likes are your likes, whose humor is your humor, and whose avi is sexy as a motherfucker, and you’re hooked.

What begins as witty public banter moves to the discretion of your direct messages. But, texting is a far simpler platform, so you, of course, exchange numbers. And when your fingers are just too tired to type, why, calling seems like the natural conduit. And let us not forget that all-consuming desire to see his facial expressions and where, exactly he lives, so skype, necessarily, is the logical next step.

At first blush, one wants to make something like twitter comparable to online dating, but it is far, far different.

In online dating, people’s romantic interests are present from the start. It is the very reason they are in an online dating forum.  The urgency to find commonality with another person leaves little room for real build up. The goal is to see the person and get this potentially monogamous show on the road. So there’s no long-term intellectual stimulation. In online dating, because the object is to meet the person and establish a meaningful relationship, the ordinary “rules” are already in place. The traditional, time-honored chase the pussy, date the pussy, capture the pussy system of governance rules the day.

(I’ve never online-dated, btw. Not that I’m judging. I mean, I’m not. But.  Just to be clear…not my particular flagon of whiskey.)

But, on twitter, it’s all lighthearted.

Til it isn’t.

And the object of your cyber interest is, in all likelihood, some great distance away. And all you have is conversation. And build up.  Until the day you two determine to meet…….

And the annoying question springs to mind once more…..”Wait…..can I fuck him?”

I mean, do I even know this man?

Can I know a man if I’ve never seen his legs?

Does he travel from place to place slow-boning his top tweeters?

Does he have a list of brown-skinned, sassy girls whose orifices he’s connived his way into with his glibly well-timed wit?

Am I twitter easy? Like, how many tweets does it take to get to center of my mons?

And what are the mechanics of the twitter hookup? Will it be awkward? Do I wear drawes? Do I pretend I had something else in mind? Should I buy board games?

All of these (very legitimate) questions are dauntingly overwhelming in the macro.

But even when I make effort to fix my mind upon the very thing, the Universe responds with more questions.

Twitterboo shows up at the crib, at long last.

Twitterboo has a fresh haircut, clothes are decent, pants are the appropriate length beneath his ankles, no purposeful display of chest hair spilling forth from his button down.

My chemistry with Twitterboo is great. I like Twitterboo. He’s mad chill. I can easily see letting Twitterboo nestle that perfectly edged up head in my thighs’ mocha hollows.

I mean, from there, the problems can only be typical ones. The ones you encounter with men you’d meet anywhere. His dick doesn’t work. He doesn’t wash his ass. His uncircumcised member is hidden between the folds of his flesh-snuggie.

The ususal.

In which case the solution is easy: I systemically remove any hint of him from my life and behave as though he never existed.  

But, what if Twitterboo is good? What if Twitterboo, who has—from lands afar—followed the North Star across leagues of mountainous, arid desert terrain, all the way straight to my warm, quivering girlbox– is a beat master?

What if Twitterboo comes through to the crib and has the unmitigated gall to unleash Chernobyl-style devastation inside my vaginal walls? What if my shit starts to whistle a medley of Julie Andrews songs when Twitterboo withdraws his Harlequin-esque, glistening man-shaft?

Like, do we twitter-go-together now?

Is Twitterboo my real life boyfriend?

Is Twitterboo my cuff?

Is Twitterboo my interactive jumpoff?

The truth is, I don’t have answers to these questions.

Nary a one.

As is oft the case, the answer may, indeed be, that there are no answers.

At day’s end, my greatest act of folly may be posing the question of my twitter seduction to the Universe.

She can hardly regard me as a whore when she so diligently fucks us all…..

So I put it to you, Cyberspace….

Sweet-stroking the internet crush–

Twitter do or twitter dont?

Me: It was a month ago, Keeg. Of course I remember.

Keegan:  Are you busy now?

Me:  Just doing some work I should have taken care of earlier. What’s up?

Keegan:  You’re working on the weekend?

Me:  Wow. You really are 18. What do you want, Kid?

Keegan:  Have you ever been in love?

Me:  Beg your pardon?

Keegan:  Love. Have you ever been in it?

Me:  Uhh. Sure. A time or two, I suppose. What’s this about? Where’s this going?

Keegan:  I need to ask someone about love.

Me:  Keegan, I have a lot of work to do.  I thought you had some sort of 8:30 lab.

Keegan:  You SAID I could call for anything. That if I needed ANYTHING–

Me:  Yeah. But I MEANT “money.” I CLEARLY meant “money.” You know. For books, or going out, or those little ugly ass cheap ass clothes you like to wear. Not intrusive, silly questions.

Keegan:  Please? Look at our family. You know I can’t ask anyone else.

Me:  If you knew anything about me, you’d know I’m hardly the go-to person.

Keegan:  So tell me about you so I know not to ask again. I need an old person’s opinion.

Me:  I’m not OLD, Keegan.

Keegan:  Old-er.

Me: Keegan, I’m nuts about you, but your timing is so unbelievably off on this shit, right now.

Keegan:  Please. Fifteen minutes, tops.

Me:  *sigh* Ten minutes.

Keegan:  Yay! I love you! Okay. Have you ever been in love?

Me:  Sure.

Keegan:  How many times?

Me:  Idunno. More times than I’ve wanted. Less times than I should have, I suppose.

Keegan:  I don’t know what that means.  I need a number.

Me:  Somewhere between two and four, Keeg.

Keegan:  How can you not know?

Me:  Because shit looks different in retrospect.  Things that looked like love might have just been an unwillingness to let go out of habit. On the other hand, situations that I’ve let go thinking they were nothing, could have been more than they appeared while I was in them. Feelings look different when you deconstruct them.

Keegan:  So you’ve thought you’ve been in love, but really haven’t?

Me:  Yeah, that’s the jist of it. Although, I don’t know how fair it is to assess these things in the abstract. Could be that how you’re feeling in the moment is the only thing that matters. Idunno.  Like I said, I’m not the best person to ask.

Keegan:  You’re doing fine. How old were you the first time you think you were in love?

Me:  Mmm. Your age. 18.

Keegan:  Did he love you back?

Me:  He loved everybody back.

Keegan:  Oh. So that didn’t really work out?

Me:  I went a little crazy, cut off all my hair, stopped eating meat, and wrote some epically shitty poetry.  On the plus side, I still keep my hair short, am still a vegetarian, and realized I should never attempt poetry. So it wasn’t all bad.

Keegan:  Mmm. What about the next one.

Me:  Keegan, I ain’t fixin’ to sit up here with you and go through the roster of my love life. This is bullshit.

Keegan:  Okay, okay. How do you know when you’re in love?

Me:  You know, I’ve maybe answered my phone three times in the last 4 days. And I picked up for you. Will NEVER make that mistake again.

Keegan:  Hey, I COULD have been asking you for money.

Me:  Somehow, I think it would have been less expensive than this call.

Keegan:  Answer.

Me:  *sigh* It’s different for everyone, Keegan. And honestly, I don’t always buy into it, myself, so, I don’t know.

Keegan:  What do you mean “don’t always buy into it?”

Me:  I’m not going into that with you. I’m not prolonging this discussion any more than necessary.

Keegan:  Fine. Then just tell me what it feels like when YOU’RE in love.

Me:  Ummm. Well—

Keegan:  Hold up, hold up. That’s Jakeema. Lemme conference her in.

Me:  Ja-what?

Keegan:  Jakeema. You met her. We went to high school together, member?

Me:  That fastass girl with the big ole swole up donkey booty? THAT’S a friend you took with you to fuckin’ college?

Keegan:  Shut up! Be nice. Hold up. Lemme get her.

Keegan:  ‘Keema, you there? She’s getting to the good part.

Jakeema:  Hey, Fooler!

Me:  Hi, Jakeema.  I guess you don’t have any homework either?

Jakeema:  I finished it.

Me:  Mmm hmm.

Keegan:  Go ‘head, Fooler. How do you know when you’re in love? You, personally.

Jakeema:  I think you just know.  Like that moment you look into his eyes and you just know.  Like y’all was meant to be together.  Like y’all are gonna be together forever.  That’s how it was with me and Eric.

Me:  Wow.

Keegan:  “Wow” what? “Wow,” it’s true?

Me:  Wow, it’s incredibly stupid.

Jakeema:  What?

Me:  Just dumb.

Jakeema:  I’m saying. That’s just how it was for us. Might not be the same for you. Errebody different. Me and Eric been together for nine months.

Me:  Is he at school with y’all?

Jakeema:  Nah. He at Norfolk State.

Me:  Wow.

Keegan: “Wow,” what?

Me:  Just dumb.

Keegan:  Anyway, come onnnnnnnnn. Answer.

Me:  You don’t wanna wait and see if Jakeema’s gonna fell us with some more of her 18 year old, long distance, we both go to large HBCUs, nine month old first relationship ever wisdom?

Jakeema:  Do you even have a boyfriend?

Me:  Nope.

Jakeema:  Mmm hmm. Keegan, she don’t even have a man.

Me:  You won’t either by the time this semester’s through.

Jakeema:  KEEGAN.

Keegan:  Fooler.

Me:  Hey, y’all called me.

Keegan:  Are you gonna answer?

Me: I don’t remember the question.

Keegan and Jakeema:  How do you know when YOU’RE in love?!

Me:  *sigh* It happens slowly, for me. A series of revelations. Wow, this person isn’t stupid. Wow, this person is kind. Wow, this person puts up with my moods.  Wow, this person makes me laugh. I want to spend more time with you. I want to tell you more about myself. I feel different when I’m around you. Less guarded. Idunno. I let you touch me more. I wanna write you shitty poems.

Keegan:  What then? Do you tell him?

Me:  Level with me. Did you call to find out what *I* do, or what you *should* do?

Jakeema:  Her.  She don’t know what to tell Shawn.

Me:  Mmmm… “Shawn,” Cousin? I thought you told me there wasn’t anybody.

Keegan:  I don’t know how I feel. I just don’t want to look stupid, you know. That’s what you always say, right? Don’t let anybody make me look stupid.

Me:  Jesus. Is that what I told you?

Keegan:  Yes! A hundred times.

Me:  Kiddo. There is a fail-safe way to not get pregnant.  There is a fail-safe way to not catch VD.  There is, however, no fail-safe way to keep your heart from being broken.  Not any way I’d recommend, anyhow. To the extent that you are able, avoid whores, and smooth-talkers, and men who are careless with other people’s feelings. But don’t adopt tough at 18.

Keegan:  So now you’re telling me it’s okay to look stupid.

Me:  I’m telling you there’s no way to avoid it. Jakeema seems happy enough.

Jakeema:  Least I got a man.

Me:  Hold on to that, Princess.

Keegan:  So I’m gonna look stupid, no matter what? Is that what you’re saying?

Me:  I’m saying you don’t look any less stupid sitting home alone because you choose to regard every person that crosses your path as a liability. Be smart. But be reasonable.

Jakeema:  How come you’re by yourself, then?

Me:  I’m unreasonable.

Keegan:  I bet you don’t look stupid, though.

Me:  It’s a good thing you’re in college, then, with no real money to wager.

Keegan:  *sigh* So I should tell Shawn I love him?

Me:  How the hell should I know? I don’t know your life.

Keegan:  FOOLER!

Me:  Look. I can think of a million reasons not to tell him. Namely that you’re 18, just got to school, and wouldn’t know a proper emotion if it tea-bagged you in the face. All I’m saying is, don’t NOT tell him because you’re afraid to look dumb.

Keegan: Okay.

Me:  Now I have to go. Y’all have taxed my nerves.

Keegan: K. I love you.

Me:  Yeah, yeah.  You apparently love everybody. But, I love you, too. Congratulations on that strong black love, Jakeema.

Jakeema:  Whatever.

**A PROLOGUE**

A casual observer would have described my reaction to his leaving as “indifferent.”

In truth, he had been leaving for some time, slowly taking himself out of the picture, his own defense mechanism to my unyielding emotional resistance.

I’d felt it. I’d had ample time and sufficient opportunity to right it, to say just one encouraging word to indicate that I, too, had felt the shift in what was to be our casual time passing.

But I hadn’t.

I’d let the silence between us take over because it was comfortable for me; familiar. I played it cool better than any other, and this was my go-to zone.

This time was different, however. I was literally “playing” it cool. I was acting the unaffected. But I was affected. And I hated it.

His last attempt to reason with my stubbornness came in the form of an email.

My glacial reply was the stuff of legend. Fingers knew no compassion as my relationship antipathy took hold, pouring over my keyboard in a rush of abrupt, clipped tones.

And that was that.

I had known he wouldn’t reply, and he didn’t.

And I hadn’t wanted him to.

Only part of me had.

Tucked away in the furthest recesses of my heart, that part of me had wanted some forceful showing. For him to make a mad dash to my door in the rain. For him to shove his way inside my home. For him to shout at me words of frustration until I relented; relented and just once, in my small life, surrendered the steely guard that had kept so many others out, and me too long in.

But I wasn’t relationship ready. Or relationship stable. And I’d thought the same of him.

Until I signed on to Facebook.

“_____________ is in a relationship.”

I’d known he’d been nursing a situation with someone else, biding his time, attempting to make odds and ends of my own volatile behavior.

But the cold reality of his new union on bold display for all the internet to see was jarring. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach. Repeatedly. By Wendy Williams’ Louboutins. With Wendy Williams’ big assed feet still in them.
My eyes returned again and again to the one sentence that would be my dignity’s undoing.

I downed the scotch that had long sat idle by my laptop.

I exed out the Facebook window, and opened my gmail account.

“THIS motherfucker right here, though……” I said to myself aloud through clenched teeth.

***********************************************************************************

**DOROTHY PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE……………..OF ADOLESCENT AGED GIRLS MASQUERADING AS ADULTS……**

“Dear friends,
I will not waste your time re-hashing what I think we will all agree are my somewhat complicated, and indeed, well-documented relationship struggles.
The sad fact remains that I’ve continued on in my pattern of destructive interpersonal behavior, and have, once again, due to my emotional retardation and sensitivity failings, managed to make yet another romantic interest hate my guts forever.
Bygones.
As we all know, the person who appears the least affected by a break up wins.
I don’t need anyone to point out the juvenile tenor of my argument.
I know it’s childish.
We ALL know it’s true.
As such, my continued dignity requires that I have Facebook pictures documenting me having a great time without this motherfucker.
I would like to call this project “Happiness Weekend 2011.”
This weekend, I would like us all to commit to making sure lots of pictures are taken of me having the best time of my life. Even if they’re entirely manufactured. Actually, the more perfect
the production, the better.
Naturally, I will serve as Creative Director on this project, and as such, humbly request that my approval be sought for any and all depictions of me intended for public consumption.
I also need there to be looooooots of pictures of me smiling and laughing, preferably with my head cocked back in raucous delight, but most especially of me in the intimate company of men. Think me having shared whispers with men, me sitting on men’s laps, me with my hand affectionately placed on a man’s cheek, me receiving a delicate butterfly frontal lobe kiss from a man, and lastly, Linesister’s suggestion of me tucking my hand in a man’s back pocket.
They need not even be men with whom I’m acquainted. I welcome stranger motherfuckers into the fold.
Now, I realize that this is something of an unusual request, made even more so by the fact that it’s coming from me.
I’m generally above all of this shit, and can seldom muster up enough energy to care.
I think this is the first time in a long time I’ve actually been sad at a path-parting….
Whatever.
We need to make this happen, ladies.
As always, I appreciate your help in the resolution of these matters……

Xoxo,
F”

We hit Tabaq with fastidious determination.

If any of my friends thought my plan ridiculously stupid, they had the grace not to say so.

Except Linesister. Her oath of loyalty and pledge to hold my literal and metaphorical brick obligated her to do my bidding. But she wasn’t happy about it. Linesister is a first rate hater.

I’d known that the girls were surprised by my behavior. My airtight code of privacy allowed for little investigation into my personal life. I also was not prone to emotional attachments or displays of regret. But one by one, they appeared lock-step at my side, prepared to support me in all of my fuckery. I was grateful.

I was also grateful for the fact that the Howard-Morehouse Classic made the U Street Corridor the perfect backdrop for my photo shoot. Tabaq was wall to wall with available men, and I’d arrived in Kelly Green silk and complicated eye makeup with a crew of beautiful, smiling girls.

Emboldened by the spirits raging through all of our systems we got to work. It was almost sad how easy it was.

Asia: “Excuse me. Hi, are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? Can you take a picture with my friend?”

Bewildered man: “Uh? What?”

Me: “Hi. I’m so sorry. I know it’s weird. But I’ve just had an awful breakup, and I know it seems pathetic and crazy and psycho, but I assure you that I’m not. I just need a couple of pictures with men who look like they adore me so my get-back is sufficient. Do you mind? I’m really sad.” (I had to embellish a bit. Men love to feel like they’re rescuing a bitch.)

Bewildered man: “Uh. Sure. What do you need me to do?”

Me: “I just need you to look really interested in what I’m saying.”

*Asia starts snapping pictures*

Me: “I’m also going to need to touch you a little bit. You can touch me too.”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Me: “Don’t be alarmed. I’m just going to rest my hand on your cheek real quick.”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Me: “That’s right. Just inch a little bit closer. A littttle bit closer. Niiiiiice.”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Bewildered man: “What should I say to you?”

*I grip his face, cock my head back, kick up my heel, and roar with fake raucous laughter*

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Me: “Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. What’s your name?”

Bewildered man: “Paul.”

Me: “You’re really cute Paul. So you don’t have a girlfriend, huh?”

Time and time again, me and my faux paparazzi accosted lingering men, my tale of woe becoming larger and more grandiose with each new male subject.

The more I complimented them on how good looking, or tall, or sexy they were, the more willing and active of a participant each man became.

I had to pinch myself to keep from laughing.

Me: “Michael, you have the most beautiful mouth. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Karen, with her camera phone ever at the ready, began a quick succession of snaps.

Michael: “Um, well…I mean…I don’t—“

Me: “Honestly. Your lips are seriously sexy. I can’t even focus right now. I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable.”

*Rests hand comfortably on Michael’s chest.*

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Michael: “Um, no. Not really. No.”

Me: “Where do you live, Michael?” (Note how often I’m saying his name. Dudes love bitches who say their names.)

Michael: “Manassas.”

Me: “Word? That’s quite a drive to DC.”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Michael: “You know it?”

*Leans in to whisper to Michael.*

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Me: “Sure. I’m in Prince William County all of the time for court. I’m a lawyer.” (Men love bitches who are lawyers.)

Michael: “Really?”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Me: “Really. I wish I had a card with me to give you.”

Michael: “I could just take your number.”

*Snap* *Snap* *Snap*

Swag.

By night’s end my ego was on one hundred thousand trillion, and I had a portfolio to rival anything Wilhemina could put out.

I soberly looked to my friends, who were all smiles and laughter at our embarrassment of photographic riches.

And my heart was decidedly less heavy. They’d backed me up without question or (visible)scorn, and made all of the night’s achievements possible.

Especially considering the fact that I didn’t own a working camera.

I promised myself, then and there that, irrespective of my communicative failings in the romantic department, I’d never stop letting these women know how much I appreciate them, or how entirely awesome they are (starting with this entry. I really love you guys. Thank you so much).

Gathering our things, and preparing for our next venue, a goofy smile plastered across my face, I looked at Asia. “Yo….why the FUCK haven’t we ever done this shit before?”

She once told me that the act of child conception was the greatest miracle there is; that the female reproductive system is little more than a matrix-style labyrinth of an obstacle course, designed to ensure that only the strongest and most persistent of sperm reach their target.

Respectfully—

That’s a bunch of bullshit.

You want to know the greatest miracle there is?

Good sex.

I happen to know this for a fact, because I haven’t had any in a while.

Now, to be fair, I haven’t had any bad sex in a while, either. We don’t need to belabor the point, as it pains me to discuss it, and detracts from my underlying premise—

Which is—

Finding your way to good sex, is a miracle.

And as any good, flesh-rotting leper knows, the days preceding the arrival of the much-anticipated miracle can get pretty fuckin’ desperate.

In my own estimation, the devolution into forced celibacy has been very much like a breakup.

You think about the good times you had (when you were fucking).

You think about how you didn’t appreciate the good thing you had while you had it (ring-side seats at the Pleasuredome).

You wonder if you’ll ever have what you’ve lost, again (pillow-biting, back-scratching, knee-quivering scream fests).

And you rehash it, again and again, with your girlfriends, dissecting every facet of your trauma ad naseaum, hoping to make sense of some seemingly senseless thing, often, to no avail.

Which is where I was, Saturday night, posted up with Micah and Carrie, on a plush loveseat in a darkened corner of Eighteenth Street Lounge.

I patiently recounted for them the lonely planet saga of my vagina, my potential new crush, and my hopes of turning water into wine; conversation into fuck.

“Well, what’s the hold up,” asked Micah.

“Idunno,” I answered. “It’s been a while. I don’t want my first venture out to be horrible.”

Micah looked at me for a moment before responding. “Are you sure that’s it?”

I frowned. “ Yeah, why? What do you mean?”

“I just think that, underneath it all, you’re afraid you’ll really like him,” she offered. My friend Micah was the most beautifully, spectacular true-believer of a fucking optimist that ever lived.

“You’re sweet. No, no. I really am just worried about the sex being horrible.”

Micah rolled her eyes in defeat. “Fine. What could be so horrible?”

What I knew, for certain, was that the possibilities of penile ineptitude were limitless. “He could be quick. He could have minimal to failing stroke capacity. He could have a teeny tiny infant baby dick,” I ticked off in blunt, quick-fire succession.

I took a moment to consider whether men ever had similar concerns about women.

Carrie interrupted my reverie.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “I had a baby dick once. Swear to God, it was *this* big,” she said, using her fingers to indicate a length just short of a glue stick.

“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed. “You did not!”

Carrie nodded her head in earnest. “Did too! Swear to God.”

“OhmyGodwhat’dyoudo?” rushed Micah.

“Howthehelldidhegetinyourbed?” I shot off, right behind her.

Carrie gave a resigned shrug. “I don’t know. He wasn’t really my type in the first place, but somehow we started making out. Then he was going down on me and it was cool. Next thing I know, we’re in the bed. But then I saw it. Swear to God, y’all. *This* big.” Carrie again, indicated the less than glue stick size with her index finger and thumb. I visibly shuddered.

“So……” pressed Micah. “What’d you do?”

“Girl, I picked a fight with him and he got mad, got up, and put his clothes on,” she said, casually.

I let out a riotous guffaw. “Wait, wait…wait. You didn’t sleep with him?”

Carrie looked at me as though some growth had affixed itself to my head. “*This* big. Seriously. What the fuck was I going to do with that? Girl, no.”

Micah was barely containing her giggles. “You couldn’t have at least finished him off? Not even out of pity?”

Carrie looked dumbfounded. “And how was I supposed to do that? What was there to do???” Carrie again set her fingers to show us the miniscule amount of space her guest’s baby penis could muster, then vertically jerked them back and forth as if shaking a mini-pez dispenser.

“You see!” I shouted. “THIS is what the hell I’m talking about. I can’t go out like that. THIS is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Girl, please,” Micah weighed in. “That dude I showed you, the other night. That’s over, and we didn’t even get that far.”

“He didn’t have a baby dick, too, did he?” I asked, genuine panic about to set in.

“No, he was straight. But he’s a liar. He lied about some old bullshit, and I’m done. I don’t have time for that mess. I didn’t do anything but dry-hump him anyway,” she answered calmly.

I looked at Micah for a moment, trying to assess whether she was shitting me.

She wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, you did what?” I asked.

“I don’t know him like that. I can’t just be out here fucking just anybody. So we dry humped,” Micah said.

“And he let you do that?” I asked, trying desperately to hide the incredulity in my voice.”

“Girl, yeah. It feels good,” she asserted, confidently.

“Swear to God, Micah, I don’t even have any words for that, right now. I’m going to need a minute on that shit,” I said, attempting to stifle a giggle, and failing.

“This is a mess, “ I declared.

“Yeah, girl,” added Micah.

We’d all let out a collective sigh, lost in a myriad of our own thoughts, reclining into the darkness, when Carrie revealed, “I just want to be swept up, you know? Overwhelmed.”

“Me too,” offered Micah.

By some dick, I thought.

Laughter, the sounds of bodies moving in rhythmic cohesion, clinking glasses and filling cups , all thundered beneath me.

With each new musical selection, each newly minted guest, the party gained momentum–as if in contest with itself to reach some epic crescendo.

And I lay there, still and quiet, praying against being discovered. Despite the early hour, I’d been relegated to a state of suspended animation. My mind raged, tirelessly, trapped in a body felled low by its vices.

I thought in images, as opposed to succinct concepts—my condition would allow for little more—but each flashback was clear. I recounted, again and again, one after another, similar nights like this one—nights when the party didn’t stop, when the music never died, when the fun never ended.

And the only sentence I could thoroughly process, the one that continued on and on throughout my reverie, was a refrain from an old Billy Joel song: “I’ve loved these days.”

And I have.

*****

All of my hard-partying friends, my personal squad of derelicts, hover just under and just over the “30” mark.

And while we all have good degrees, better professions, mortgages and car notes, in the general scheme of “traditional” life, we have little else to recommend us.

And as our betters nestle themselves in the certainties of matrimony and parenthood, their decisions pre-ordained by Domesticity, we’re treading water in a sea of unknowns. We’ve met all of our goals. And now we struggle to create new ones. No one ever taught us how to manipulate this vacuous “what next?” part of our lives.

And it would be vacuous; by all rights, it should be vacuous.

Only, me and my derelicts—

We’ve filled it. Filled it full.

Bottomless mimosa brunches on Sundays, where the vulgarity of our humor is as low as our blood-alcohol concentrations are high.

The familiarity of strangers drunkenly learning a line dance under a copse of trees at a barbecue in Rock Creek Park.

Bodies slick with sweat, eyes closed, voices in unison, belting out “Magdalehna” on a Monday night at Marvin; “Heartbreak Hotel” on a Saturday night at Axel F.

I’ve loved these days.

Looking out at the Washington Monument from the balcony of the W, in the company of some of the most fascinating people I’ve met, and feeling so overwhelmingly lucky to be alive, in just this moment.

Drag Bingo at Nellie’s, Salsa at Habana, raucous margarita-inspired laughter on Wisconsin, slow, lazy Hookah smiles on 18th; vomiting outside of my car after a failed post-night-out-church-attempt-on-Sherman Avenue, getting pulled over on 15th in a car filled with a thousand drunk lawyers…………..

I’ve loved these days.

While we might not have run these streets, we certainly ran hard and fast in them.

And with every passing week, we run harder and faster still.

We’re well aware…………..there will be a time—

A time for the payment of debts; for the closing of tabs and the settling of accounts. A time for sensible shoes and moderation of drink.

There will be a time for severity.

A time for minivans and coupons, for talk of the market. A time for chastity of speech and even more chastity of action.

There may even be a time to be sorry for our current excesses.

But not yet.

Last night, I lay prostrate on the third floor landing of a house in Ledroit, my fellow party-goers, politely stepping over my near-dead body as the celebrants down below danced happily into oblivion.

Make no mistake about it—

I’ve loved these days.

“In your eyes…the light, the heat…I am complete…I see the doorway, of a thousand churches…the resolution, of all my fruitless searches…”

I don’t believe in love the way most people do.

And despite what are sure to be my mother’s many protestations to the contrary, this is a direct result of the southern, black pragmatism, she, herself, instilled in me from birth.

I believe that what we come to know as love is absolutely the one hundred percent construct of our mind’s willingness to do so at the time. That is to say, we fall in love when we are of the mind to fall in love.

It hardly matters.

If I indicated two doors, one appropriately labeled “reality,” and the other, “resolution of all my fruitless searches,” I’d wager all that I own, the threshold of the former wouldn’t be so much as breached.

Love is the only instance in which we shamelessly grant ourselves permission to vest all of our hopes into another person. And we do so with the express proviso that we will, indeed, find in that other, all that is lacking within our own selves.

The weight that removes from our stress-addled minds; the notion that another will be there to shoulder, if only the tiniest of our burdens, is so great to create a euphoria that transcends all else—common sense, reason, hard, concrete facts.

In defense against this, I’ve allowed my rational mind to carefully de-construct love, as there is no fail-safe in a Lloyd Doblerian approach. Romantic comedies peppered with attractively quirky white people are hardly an accurate portrayal of what lovers of love are up against.

Know what is?

The “Maury” show.

Maury fucking Povich is what we should look to when considering the weight of love—its ebbs and flows; its successes and failures.

I dvr “Maury” every, single day. Every day, hordes of women bring their mates to the show to debunk their allegations of infidelity.

What’s crazy, is that the women don’t come simply with intuitions. They come with “sex-soiled” bed linens, condom wrappers, other women’s panties, other women’s earrings.

And they all say the same thing: “Maury (pronounced “Mahw-ree”), if he fails this lie detector test, today, it’s OVER! I’m done with him! He can get out!!”

And every day, the men fail the lie detector tests. And every day, like clockwork, the women drop their evidence-filled ziplock bags, falling to the floor, or running off the stage in a fit of wailing frenzy, cry-screaming the same thing, “I can’t believe it ‘Mahw-ree’! I can’t believe he’d do this to me!!”

Those moments precisely before and directly after the lie detector test—that’s where the love is. Those brief minutes showcasing the triumph of foreign drawes-and-rubbers-in-a-plastic-bag optimism and the crushing blow of if-it-walks-like-a-duck-it’s-because-he-fucked-a-duck realism—that’s when you begin to understand this power love holds over us.

I challenge you to find a greater optimist than a woman who finds another’s earring in her bed, and takes her man on the “Maury” show.

You won’t.

The whole ride there, the whole interview process, the entirety of the wait before the revelation, all she is doing is hoping against hope that there IS some zany explanation for why she’s clutching a gold-plated Chanel doorknocker.

And irrespective of all she’s seen, and all she’s heard, there’s no way to prepare her for the crippling agony of defeat; she hasn’t just been let down by this man. She’s been let down by love.

I (cautiously) submit to you, that every relationship is like a “Maury” lie-detector vignette.

We all optimistically enter into these relationships with willful disregard of our own ziplock bags, each of which are filled to the brim with the same hard pieces of evidentiary fact:

1. That monogamy is hard. And it fucking sucks. Like it sucks so bad, sometimes. I know no one wants to talk about it, but for real. It truly sucks. Oh, you don’t think it sucks? Be super duper mad at that motherfucker and have an overly-sympathetic, sexy as hell co-worker invite you out to drinks. Monogamy is hard. And arguably, unnatural. So…right.

2. That living together or spending an inordinate amount of time with each other is akin to an active state of captivity. And while animals in captivity *do* spend a great deal of time fucking (and believe me, I respect that. I respect that more than I can ever say, animals in captivity), they spend a healthy amount of time fighting as well…sometimes to the death.

3. That putting all your hopes into another human being will, in all likelihood, screw you in some capacity. Not because of any deliberate malice on the part of the other person; not even because of some insensitive negligence. But, simply because we are all human, and fallible. As such, our lot is to forever be a disappointment to those who perhaps thought more of us, or who, with no encouragement at all, canonized us.

4. That you will probably break up. There are seven billion people in the world. If any of us have been in long term relationships, it’s fair to say that at some point, we thought that other person, the one who preceded your current person, was the one. And he/she wasn’t. This is going to happen over and over again until we say “enough,” “amen,” or “I do.” And then some more.

So there we stand, our plastic bags full of these things that we know good and damned well should restrain us. And what do we do? Close our eyes, wade in, clutching the ziplocks, and wait for the great revelation, all the while hoping, praying, that in some zany scheme of events, this one will be different.

Here’s my truth.

I get it.

I envy those women who can look through all of the rain, and all of the darkness, straining their eyes, squinting against the glare in the window pane—

I get it.

Despite all of my logic, despite all of my rationale—there is something inarguably beautiful in the prospect of holding something like love, more ephemeral than a moonbeam, in my heart, if only for a second.

I get it.

And every fair to fair, when the night is thick and the rain is heavy, even I look out into the black. Because the smallest, minutest chance of a man standing there with a stereo, the resolution to all my fruitless searches, is too enticing…

Even for a “cynic” like me.

Hello.

My name is Fooler.

I’m a closet romantic.

And fucking optimist.

My mother seldom inquired about my blog as my father had long-ago forbidden her to read it. Still, the narcissism propelling my ongoing attempt at internet validation piqued her interest, every fair to fair.

“Yep,” I answered.

“Block over?” she followed.

“Only time will tell. Seems so for the moment, however,” I casually replied.

“Anything interesting?” she asked.

“Nope. Not particularly,” I answered. “ More humdrum meanderings about my romantic life and personal convictions.”

“What romantic life?” she snapped.

“Precisely, my dear Watson.”

My mother contributed one of her long, resigned sighs. The kind she reserved exclusively for her only child who would never give her grandchildren. “For the life of me, I don’t know how you came to be so cynical.”

“Oh?” I responded, my voice full of mock surprise. “Not exactly a sunny rainbow of starbursts and ju ju bees, over there, Sweetness.”

My mother’s reply was swift. “There was love in our home! There IS love in our home. I bet your readers would like to hear about that, for once. Instead of all this ‘I’m not getting married’ foolishness.”

I was certain my mother could feel the strength of my eye-roll from the backwoods North Carolina farm from whence she’d called. “I never said I wasn’t getting married, Smitty.”

“Well, are you?” she asked saucily.

“I’d sooner chew off my foot.” I replied.

“You are so unbelievably negative. I can hardly stand it.” I could sense the irritation in her voice. We had, after all, had this very conversation one thousand times.

“Negative? I’m PRO- love. I’m PRO-marriage. It’s because I respect them so much that I bitch. These are serious things that people enter into blindly; with little more consideration than one selects a window treatment.” I hoped my impassioned rationale would calm her before she suggested I sire a bastard.

Battle worn and wary, my mother relented. “It takes me a long time to pick out window treatments.”

“Well you, Madame, are a member of a very distinct minority. Besides. You’re a snob,” I teased.

“Do something for me?” my mother asked abruptly.

I sighed, then. Nothing good could come from this. “Yes, Mommy?”

“Just this once, write something nice about love. Do it for your Mother.”

All at once the living room’s occupants turned their attentions toward me.

The topic of my waxing/waning, mysterious, but most assuredly nascent dating life was always a hot one in my family.

And everyone had loved Ex Boyfriend. Velvet and her siblings in particular.

I pretended not to notice the cessation of other side conversations, and fixed my focus on the rather deliberate bit of stitching at my dress’ hem.

“I can only presume that he is off somewhere with his newer, better girlfriend, V,” I said, now frustratingly attempting to align a particularly defiant stitch with my thumbnail.

Velvet was not to be deterred. She had had high hopes about the entry of Ex Boyfriend into the debacle that was our family. “So, you haven’t talked to him, at all? Ya’ll were together for so long. I knew you’d broken up, but—“

“At some point you’re going to have to let this go,” I said, furrowing my brow, and wanting, more than anything, to tuck the fabric into my mouth and free the seam with my teeth.

“Are you dating at all?” Velvet’s sister, Winter, chimed in.

“Trying my damnedest not to,” I replied, casually, still very aware of the stares drilling holes into my bowed head.

“How are you gonna get a boyfriend if you don’t date?” came her ready query.

“Fairly certain we’ve seen the last of my girlfriend days, guys. Me and relationships don’t quite seem to suit,” I offered. I’d finally righted the wayward stitch, and was rewarded with one tiny, frayed thread I had nowhere to put.

“You don’t get to be a good girlfriend by not being a girlfriend. You have to keep trying. You’ll get the swing of it,” contributed Velvet’s friend, Anna.

“I’m 30, Anna. I think I’ve got a solid grasp of my strengths and weaknesses. I can’t force it.” I tried to subtlely tuck the thread between the cushions of the ottoman.

Velvet began, again. “Look. We’re all about you being out there, doing your little DC thing. We love your little DC thing—“

“Thank you,” I interrupted. “There’s much to love about my ‘little DC thing.’”

“But you have to keep trying. You can’t just say you don’t want to be a girlfriend, anymore, because where does that leave you?”

I looked up, just then. Even well into her forties, my cousin was one of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. There was no way I could look at that face and put forth my well-thought out plan to let every clever, charming, and otherwise eligible super-sexy man in DC get a passing glance at my areolas until I was good and ugly.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t force it. Bad stuff happens when I force it. People get hurt when I force it. By myself, I suppose.”
__________
I don’t fuck with piñatas.

Don’t bring a piñata around me. Don’t suggest we get a piñata. Don’t offer me candy that fell to the ground as a result of some other piñata enthusiast’s backswing.

I don’t fuck with piñatas.

I’m thinking you’ll want the backstory.

I was five when I learned to respect the piñata. Its dangers. Its powers. The treachery obscured in its brightly-colored hollows.

As a kindergartener at Tabernacle Baptist Church School (you read that right), I found myself one of five blacks in a student body comprised of children whose parents viewed the school as the only viable alternative to homeschooling.

Corporal punishment ruled the day, polygamist clothing covered our bodies, and the sweet Lamb of God heard our constant entreaties.

Mrs. Parsons, my teacher, had hated me. I had done any number of things that possibly offended her, but I remained her brightest pupil. Even at five, I’d reasoned this certainly had to count for something. It had not.

The only person who held me in lower regard was her daughter, Matilda. Her translucent skin was covered in an unfortunate smattering of freckles, and the top of her head blazed fire, just like her mother’s. My parents weren’t religious. They weren’t members of the affiliate church. I was an only child with a never-ending sea of new toys and clothes. Matilda made little effort to hide her resentment.

It was early spring when Mrs. Parsons had called us in from recess for our afternoon surprise. With the help of the custodian she’d managed to affix a piñata from a coarse rope and suspend it from the ceiling.

Though I can’t recall the exact reason for such a surprise, I can only assume it was a last ditch effort of our administration to insensitively include the slightest bit of culture into our otherwise homogenous routine.

Mrs. Parsons, of course, utilized Matilda as the example, blindfolding the girl and spinning her around five times with an old wooden pole in her tiny hands, before excitedly yelling, “Hit it!”

I knew, at once, I wanted no part of this. None.

I cared little if candy was inside. Frankly, I’d doubted it, given Mrs. Parson’s staunch anti-junk food stance.

This could only end badly.

Besides, I hated being spun around; hated being dizzy. I’d just wait until everyone else was finished, and take a piece of candy. Surely they wouldn’t begrudge me one piece of candy even though I hadn’t participated.

When Mrs. Parsons looked to me and said that it was my turn, I quietly conveyed to her my desire to sit this one out.

She’d exhaled in frustration, seeing this as yet another in a long series of nonconformities. She’d tried to forcefully put the pole in my grasp, but I’d been adamant, keeping my spine rigid, and my fists clenched.

Exasperated, Mrs. Parsons pulled me aside and said that I was ruining everyone’s afternoon. She indicated that she had taken the time out with Mr. Williams to hang the piñata as a special surprise, and I wasn’t being very appreciative. At five, I had not the precise words to convey my decided failings in the area of hand-eye coordination (not that it would have mattered given the blindfold, and purposeful vertigo), but somehow managed to utter the terminology my father had assigned to the subject—“clumsy.“

She’d laughed then, and called me a “silly little girl.” She even gave me what she fancied a pep talk in the vein of “standing up to our fears,” and “confronting things head on, even when we’re apprehensive;” that the “only way to do it was to do it.”

Her pudgy hand firmly rooted to the small of my back, she pushed me forward, once more. Loosening my still tightly wound fists, she placed the wooden pole in my hand. It was taller than me. I could feel my insides melding as she blindfolded me and began to spin me around.

“One……”

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

“Two……..”

It’s okay. It’ll be over in a second. Everyone else did it.

“Three……..”

It’s okay, we’re almost done. It’s not so bad.

“Four……..”

Get ready. It’s coming. It’s okay.
“Five……”

I propelled that heavy stick forward with all of my might, never-minding that I’d skipped one integral step—the part where Mrs. Parsons stopped me and placed me rightly before the suspended piñata.

But I’d survived the spins so I struck. And I hit something!

I heard Mrs. Parsons cry out in excitement, and I considered myself successful. I was good at this! She was right! I had done it! I was gonna be the one—ME—to break open the piñata when everyone else couldn’t! Mrs. Parsons had been right! I could do it! I struck again—another scream of excitement! And really hard, one final time before I heard Matilda’s frantic, “Stoopppppppppppppppppppp!!!!!”

I stopped.

Making an attempt at standing still, but still wobbling, I gently removed my blindfold.

I was grinning my toothy smile of success at all of my classmates, but their attentions were fixed in one direction, looks of horror covering their faces.

Matilda was crying and screaming incoherently.

I pivoted around to see Mrs. Parsons, who was making gurgling sounds and whimpers. Her entire face was a bloody, broken mass of lumpy flesh and open crevices.

Those hadn’t been screams of excitement at all.

She’d been crying out in agony with every blow, apparently unable to control my determined, fevered strikes.

As the fountains of blood were streaming from her face, I could tell that she was crying. And Matilda was crying. And soon everyone else started crying.

I didn’t know what to do, or what to say, so I just stood there. Even as help came and the ambulance took Mrs. Parsons away, I never said anything.

My mother later informed me that Mrs. Parsons had to have thirty-seven stitches in her face, but that I was not to worry. It wasn’t my fault. If I wanted to talk or cry it would be okay.

But I never cried.

I hadn’t wanted to play in the first place.

Anyway, of all her truly fucked tales of woe, what follows is my favorite. It honestly has to be the second greatest story ever told.*

So, without further ado, The Fooler Initiative presents its very first guest blogger…Linesister!

hookers. pimps. grapes.

sometimes…in my fixed determination to escape reality….i take a lengthy journey down memory lane. it’s not always pretty. but it’s never boring. this one is a fave.

i was headed home on the A train one night in september. the journey uptown from where i was…took about 30 minutes– long enough for me to witness the highest level of human fuckery i can remember to date.

the cast of characters included a few hookers, a homeless pimp, a “school teacher”, “school teacher’s” friend,. and a retired senior citizen…an old white man reading a book….maybe something by tennessee williams.

anyway….the hookers got on the train first. just trust me when i say they were hookers. one had several healed cuts on her face and another was crying and had smeared makeup running down her entire greasy face. come to think of it. she sorta resembled the joker. their clothes, as would be expected, were of the most micro and spandex kind. no bras. platform shoes. they sat together and it appeared the hooker with the cuts was attempting to comfort the crying hooker. they passed a few crumpled dollars between themselves. no big deal.

anyway, a stop later, an older man….dressed in nothing more than a pair of zebra patterned pants and matching zebra faux fur coat got on. and a matching zebra hat. i know he was a pimp. everyone on that train knew. either that or he had time traveled from the set of a 70s blaxploitation film. nevermind the obvious stereotypes he was promoting with his obvious ass getup. anyway, his coat was completely unbuttoned so his scrawny, bird chest was fully exposed. pimpin’ hadn’t been kind to him. he looked homeless. holes in his shoes. dirty fingernails. tart scent. he seemed to know the hookers from around the way. or maybe they were just networking. i guess hookers and pimps can network too. or perhaps he was their actual pimp. the hookers sat upright the minute he boarded the train and the one that had been crying all along shut that entire shit up. anyway, they spoke. seemed like light hearted banter. i learned that day that communication between a pimp and his hoes isn’t always serious. it’s not always about bitches betta be havin’ that money. there’s room for shootin’ the breeze sometimes.

it’s important to note at this point…that like anyone living in the city, i had my earphones on and a gaze that seemed to indicate i wasn’t present or paying any attention to my surroundings at all. of course…i saw and heard everything. and it almost blew my weak, weak soul into teeny tiny smithereens to be feasted upon by the subway rats.

anyway…so, the pimp and the hookers chatted for awhile. a few stops down, a man–we’ll call him the “school teacher”–got on. He was clean and looked like he was…well, a school teacher. he was wearing what i call “spectacles”. he had a friend with him. he also had on neat clothes and his shoes even looked polished. nothing strange there. except……………they all knew each other. the homeless pimp, school teacher and school teacher’s friend exchanged daps accompanied by shoulder bumps. scarface & the joker acknowledged them and in no time, it seemed everyone was happily chatting away.

then……the pimp opened his dirty coat pocket and pulled out a handful of red grapes. they shared the grapes. chatted some more. ate more grapes. FUCKIN’. GRAPES. school teacher got off the train. the hookers got off at the next stop. but not before the pimp told them to “go right back to the cut”. they took some more fuckin’ grapes for the road.

then….the pimp looked around and went into his coat pocket one more time. this time he brought out a handful of old cigarette butts. he threw them in the air and yelled “weeeeeee!” a few landed by my feet. then he started break dancing. no music. no context. he spoke in gibberish. or raps? no one knew what was going on. i’m pretty sure everyone was mapping out exit strategies behind their disenchanted stares.

then….the pimp noticed the old white man reading a novel. he ran toward him and slid down the entire length of the subway seat. feet first. legs wide open. he stopped right before crashing into the old man. he farted. literally. farted. in this man’s face. the old man turned the page of his book. he blinked repeatedly. i’m pretty sure he’s wasn’t reading. actually i know he’s wasn’t reading. he didn’t turn from that one page for the rest of the 15 minutes i was on that doomed train apparently headed straight to hell.

somewhere along the line, my mind left me and took a stroll. it refused to be a part of the buffoonery. i blacked out after that.

i swear this is non fiction. i couldn’t make this shit up if i tried.

Follow Tosin on Twitter, @Tee_Tos, and also, tumblr, http://flummoxedbird.tumblr.com/ ……..

*Jesus

ps..y’all know i’m not web-wise….there’s this annoying whistle in the background….but, i couldn’t record it over again….apparently, my entries are long as FUCK. who knew?

agnes final sound ii

I am fairly well-versed in the language of me.

That is to say—I get me. I get how I work; how I “do.”

I spend a great deal of time keeping to my own counsel.

You aren’t going to enlighten me on too much shit concerning the body of work that is me.

That said, a rather large part of being an adult—a well-socialized adult—is one’s ability to be receptive of criticism; particularly criticism coming from those that wish you well.

Right.

So my mama thinks I’m stuck up.

I’m not going to elaborate on this, as it’s ridiculous, but, that’s what my mother says—I’m stuck up.

Now, as the only child of a Southern Black woman, I, of course, trained myself, at an early age, to distinguish between sage wisdom and unfounded-potentially-hurtful shit.

But I lend considerable weight to anything my mother tells me.

Some of her advice gets thrown out with the wash, but never ever before I’ve turned it over in my mind and examined all the angles.

*****
I had been at my parents’ house an entire thirty-six hours before my mother accosted me with her most recent allegation of sadditty-ness.

I was certain the arguments my mother used in support of her assertion were fundamentally flawed, but, her accusations loomed dark and foreboding; eagerly awaiting any concession, or breakdown of my resolve—prepared to play vulture to my carrion.

Sunday morning came, however, with little to no incident.

And the day had started out pleasant, enough. My father, recuperating from surgery, had suggested that we skip church in favor of a restful morning at home. My mother, eager to tend to her flowerbed, had whole-heartedly co-signed.

And it was quite nice, actually. My father had ultimately found sleep in our den. My mother, sun-weary, napped in the chaise longue beside her bed. And finally convinced that our three dogs were no longer trying to murder each other, I, myself, was nearing slumber.

*****
The dogs heard her first.

All three had been tucked away with me on the third floor, but they’d heard her. One after another they went barreling down each set of staircases, barking in righteous indignation at the audacity of someone entering our home, uninvited.

But that was how Cousin Agnes always entered our home.

Just walked the fuck in.

What you should know about Cousin Agnes is that she is my father’s cousin. Like, fifth or sixth. I don’t really know as I prefer not to dwell on any genetic predeterminates that legitimately bind us. Cousin Agnes isn’t so much a relative, as she is a threat you wield over the heads of misbehaving children (e.g. “Keep it up…I’ma sit you over at that table with Cousin Agnes and ‘em.”)

While Cousin Agnes isn’t necessarily an unattractive woman (as I’m sure her five previous husbands will attest to), a cursory overview of her will let you know, straightaway, her elemental truth; a truth that will be confirmed the second she opens her mouth—

Cousin Agnes is hood.

Real hood.

Malt-liquor drankin’, misquoted-Bible-verse-interspersed-with-her-profanity spoutin’, hootie-hoo my dude we-fittin-to-go-to-the-grocery-store-and-cash-this-good-check-so-we-can-buy-us-some-stretchy-clothes-

Hood.

And she’s like, sixty.

Matter of fact, in my sheltered childhood, Cousin Agnes was my first indication that old people could actually be hood. I think I thought that hoodness was some shit that you eventually grew out of. Cousin Agnes destroyed that illusion for me.

Now, the most important thing you need to know about my Cousin Agnes is that she’s a whole lot of woman.

She’s tall—about 5’10, and stocky. Not obese or any other descriptor of gratuitously fat—just stocky.

But check this—

She seems bigger….on account of her voice.

Like, think Jim Carey’s “Vera” on In Living Color.

Cousin Agnes likes to call it “husky.”

But, on everything, I swear that shit sounds like she waits til low tide to emerge from the Deep, and feed upon the small children of aboriginal island-dwellers; like, twenty years ago, unbeknownst to the world, Cousin Agnes managed to get her hands on some deceased Andre The Giant DNA, and through the miracle of modern medicine cultivated some Andre The Giant stem cell in a petri dish until her clone Andre The Giant baby reached the age of maturation, when she promptly murdered him and used his dissected testosterone sacs to line the walls of her larynx—

Like….no bullshit.

‘Shit’s that deep.

Anyway-

Cousin Agnes was standing in our kitchen, nearly beside herself with fright at the onslaught of our raging dogs. I greeted her, warmly, and calmed the animals, offering her a drink and a seat. She refused.

“Uh uh. Where yo’ favvvva at? I wanna see yo’ daddy? Where yo mama? Where yo mama?”

I tried to explain to her that they were both asleep, but she was having none of that, and insisted I take her to my dad.

Begrudgingly, I led her up the back stairs, and nudged him awake.

As my father begin to engage her, I started to walk away when Cousin Agnes called after me: “Go get yo’ mama too! Wake huh up! I wanna see yo’ mama too!”

I bit my tongue, and walked in the direction of my parents’ bedroom. I reluctantly woke my mother, and let her know that we had company…and that that company was Cousin Agnes. I then beckoned the dogs to me, informing my mother that I would be upstairs.

That’s when I caught it.

My mother’s look.

She hadn’t uttered a syllable, but the narrowing of her brow said it all. Stuck up.

I met her gaze in silence, the unspoken language of her challenge clear. Turning stiffly back to the direction from whence I’d come, I returned to the den, three dogs in tow, my mother not far behind me.

Everything was going fine—well, typical of any Cousin Agnes visit—

I offered up commentary when I managed to manipulate my way through the veritable sea of her verbal ratchetry—

Through a series of well-applied pinches to my forearm, I trained myself not to laugh-outright, or visibly cringe at the cascade of horrors flowing from her mouth.

And things were going smoothly—and I was proving my mother wrong….when it happened.

Somehow my mother and Cousin Agnes had stumbled upon some salacious piece of gossip concerning a man they both knew who had left his wife for another woman.

My mother received the information with no real problem, but Cousin Agnes could not seem to get over the injustice of the man’s lover not being up to her apparently exacting physical standards.

Over and over she slapped the tops of her thighs with her heavy, open palms, protesting, “She ain’t even cute, doe!!! She ain’t even cute!!! Look, doe!!! She ain’t even cute!!!”

My mother, in her gentle voice, and I thought, rather patiently, tried to explain to Cousin Agnes—who now sat comfortably amongst our couch cushions like some retard giantess—that sometimes, appearances counted little in matters of the heart.

And even as my father and I nodded in tacit agreement, Cousin Agnes remained undaunted. “She ain’t even cute, doe!!!”

My mother was shaking her head in casual resignation, when Cousin Agnes perked up. I could nearly see the light-bulb go on in her thicket of unkempt, ratty braids, and my gut warned that I should fear it.

“But you know what doe,” she began, “Dat guhl is younga dan him doe…She is younga dan him.”

No one commented, and she continued. “And you know how dem young guhls like to do…they know what men like and they be givin’ it to ‘um…Dey be givin’ it to ‘um.”

In the next moment, my whole world would come crumbling down at my feet.

Cousin Agnes looked first to me, saying: “You know how dey do…” then looked to my father, saying, “Excuse me Jay-rome,” then half-cupped her left hand, covering the left side of her mouth, but absconding nothing from view. Her gaze returned to me as she made her open mouth into an oval, and proceeded to bob her head backward and forward.

I whipped my head away, pretending that I had not seen, what my racing mind was telling me I had. “Cousin Agnes!” I cried out, in pleading—

She didn’t give the FIRST FUCK…

Cause she did it again….

Simulated oral sex in the den of my parents’ home—the home my parents had lovingly built from carefully-spun dreams——on the Sabbath…A day the Lord God Himself had admonished us to honor; to keep holy. She simulated oral sex in front of BOTH of my parents…my mother AND my father…..

And she had done so, whilst looking directly at ME…looking directly into my thirty year old eyes for confirmation, for acknowledgment.

My father sat so quiet, and so still, but my mother wore a look of confusion on her face. I like to pretend that she was in a sort of fugue state—like her body had gone into shock to protect it from the trauma her whole being had just experienced.
But Cousin Agnes wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, cause she took their quiet as indication for her need to clarify.

AGAIN, looking to me, she called out my name, and said, “Fooler knows….BLOWJOBS…”

I’d liked————————to have knocked———————alla the shit in that room——books on shelves, trophies in cabinets, crystal in curios, chess pieces on chessboards———-I’ddddddddddd liked to have knocked allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllla that shit down………………..

BITCH….WHAT in THE FUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK are you looking at me for?

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY in the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOTHERFUCK are you looking into MMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYY eyes, saying words like “blowjob” to my parents??????

Why?

Why?

And I was concerned, like, on a multitude of levels.

I didn’t know if she looked at me and saw like, some kind of neon halo of dick residue all up and around my person; I didn’t know if I’d been traversing this land, all these years, with the faint echoes of blowjobs-past nipping at my dick-sucking heels—-Why had she chosen me?

And what had she wanted from me?

Was there some expectation of high fives; of chest bumps? Were my parents gonna stand on either side of us as we formed a soul train line and did the give-head dance around my mother’s art collection?

I didn’t linger long in my mental landscape of uncertainty.

At THAT moment, I realized I didn’t give a damn what my mother thought of my temperament if it meant enduring one millisecond more of the indignity that aged broad had brought to my home.

I picked up as many of my dogs as I could carry, and ZackGalifianakisWalked my sweet ass the FUCK out.

Cousin Agnes bellowed after me in her hobo-baritone, but I did not look back.

I did not look back.

I’m fresh off a weekend with my linesisters and their extraordinary husbands and boyfriends; fresh from the nuptials of our 9 to yet another extraordinary husband.

I was awash with love.

And it is, perhaps, for this reason, that, in an about-face from my traditional measured dose of snark, I afforded my mother some contemplative sincerity when she inquired about my love life.

Still, despite my best intentions, I had nothing new to offer when she asked for the one millionth time, this life, “What are you looking for in a partner?”

I had no clue.

And why should I?

I’ve been unwavering in my praise of previous romantic interests.

They’ve all been great people.

Sure, Matt wasn’t nearly as cautious as I thought he should be when it came to open, public display of his baby-Negro chest hairs from generously unbuttoned shirts.

And Eric’s excessive use of faucet water during these eco-conservative times certainly earned him a questionable frown or two from my general direction.

But, for the most part, I was a woman of few complaints.

I could ask nothing more from a future partner than I’d already been lucky to find in ones past.

Not until I’d finished speaking with my mother did it dawn on me that she’d asked the wrong question. All of this time, she had been asking the wrong question.

This was not about what I was looking for in someone else.

This was about what was—what is—lacking in me.

Frankly stated—

A desire to put another person’s needs before my own.

That variable, that lone compulsion, so entirely absent in my own selfish heart, rang out so true and so sound in the shared whispers, shared laughter, shared glances, shared touches between my linesisters and their mates.

But not within me.

Rather, mine is an only child’s well-constructed cynicism.

I’ve dedicated years to this doctrine of self-reliance, unapologetically putting my own self first. I’ve expended countless hours proselytizing the responsibilities one has to herself, and only herself; how we enter this world alone and die alone; how we must comport ourselves accordingly in light of this stark truism.

But, when you embark upon a relationship, you are vulnerable to the elements. You are expected to forfeit this mentality. You must conceptualize an appropriate model of trust, and incorporate it into your sensory framework.

Enter my reticence.

This act of forfeiture—this veritable surrender of guard—is far too high a price for my risk-averse pocket.

But, in a perfect world, where all conditions are met, and a suitable, trustworthy partner chosen—you relax.

You disable your selfish.

You put your partner’s needs first, and he/she yours.

And there are no worries, for each of our respective fronts is covered. Each of our respective sets of needs met.

In the face of my epiphany, I was forced to consider all of it. And I did. I tossed it all around; I moved the mountains of my mind and forged every briar-laden pass my overly-analytical psyche could conjure, until I reached a conclusion:

Yeah.

I don’t wanna do that shit.

Like, not at all.

And let me tell you why….with a story…because, you know….that’s my way.

******

Jack Jacobsen had hired me to be his attorney.

He was neither a defendant in an action nor a plaintiff. Rather, he was summoned by the Commonwealth to be a witness in a criminal action against his wife (don’t bother to question the basis of this or worry your precious minds with concepts like “spousal privilege.” Just trust your narrator when she informs you that there was no such protection in this case).

You’ll also have to trust me when I tell you that his wife, Molly Jacobsen, had done nothing wrong. An unfortunate set of circumstances, and a naïve faith in the police and municipal government had landed her on the wrong side of the law. Be that as it may, no crime was afoot.

So, Jack Jacobsen had hired me to be his attorney—to apprise him of his options and represent his interests to the Commonwealth’s Attorney, and if need be, the Court.

Essentially, Jack needed to know the ramifications of not testifying, and wanted the prosecution to be aware of his position that his wife had committed no crime, and that he would never say she had.

Upon meeting Molly and Jack, my sympathies immediately went to Molly. She was clearly fragile and overwhelmed by the situation she’d created for herself and her family. The both of them were in their early fifties, and only married for a few years. The thought occurred to me more than once that the two were castoffs, hopelessly destined for a life of solitude ‘til finding their other misfit counterpart (which I’d suspected had happened through the miracle of match.com).

Jack was all fire and bluster, and given to lengthy speeches about his commitment to family, and dedication to his wife. I watched, time and time again as his eyes brimmed over with hot, fast tears, as he became swept away by the conviction of his own oratory. He used powerful words like “Gestapo” and “attack” to describe the prosecution’s relationship with his home. He was adamant about his decision not to testify; to not be his wife’s condemner. He repeatedly drove his stubby index finger into the rich mahogany of the conference room table to emphasize his willingness to defy the Commonwealth, the world, even God if it meant preventing undue harm to his wife.

From our first handshake, and my inhale of his stale, tart breath, I’d sized Jack up. I’d known that he was all false bravado, and feigned masculinity. I would help him, certainly. I would attempt to shield this family he claimed to be the sworn protector of. But I would unveil his inner bitch, too. And I’d take pleasure in so doing.

So I’d sat quietly in that conference room amidst the boom and thunder of his voice. I’d sat, slightly slouched, legs crossed, chin resting on my thumb, index and middle fingers pressed comfortably to my temple. I’d let the sonorous timbre of his voice ricochet between the walls that housed us, my face impassive, unaffected by his demonstrative changes in inflection.

And only when he’d cried his last tear; only after he callously (though guised as reassuringly) rubbed the back of his lady-love and declared himself the last good man; only after he’d dulled the finish of the table with his tiny, closed fists while volunteering himself up as a lamb to the slaughter—only then did I speak.

“I understand and respect your position, “ said I. “I appreciate your willingness to convey how sincere your affections are with regard to your family. My job is to protect you. Not your wife. I am here to advise you.”

He interrupted, then, as I’d known he would. “MY job is to protect my wife. I will protect my wife at all costs. YOUR job is to help me understand how I can protect my wife.”

My face remained unchanged, but I was all smiles inside. I began, again.

“Very well,” said I. “I will communicate what you’ve shared to the Commonwealth’s Attorney. It is possible that she will consider your unwillingness to testify, and re-evaluate her desire to pursue an action against your wife.”

“And if she doesn’t?” Jack demanded. He was playing right into my hands.

“You are under subpoena. If she doesn’t, she will insist you take the stand anyway. If your aim is to protect your wife, you will do so and respectfully decline to answer any questions,” I calmly replied.

“Then that’s what I’ll do!” he asserted. He looked dramatically into the eyes of his wife, just then, and softly repeated for effect, “That’s what I’ll do.”

“At which point you’ll be cited for Contempt of Court, and face a maximum $250.00 fine, and up to ten days in jail,” I stated plainly. Gotcha bitch!

Jack’s face jerked back to mine. “What?!”

I watched as all the blood drained from his face, and the fire fled from his tear-filled eyes.

My eyes never straying from his, I said, in even tones, “Molly, why don’t you leave us, now. Have a seat in the waiting room, and we will be with you, momentarily.”

Molly’s shoulders slumped under the weight of her guilt, as she shuffled from the room. There had been a palpable shift in power. I pulled my chair close to the table, and sat upright for the first time since our meeting began. I gently latticed my fingers, and placed them before me, waiting for Jack to speak. I knew he would not long keep me. Weak men grew quickly uncomfortable with silence.

He didn’t disappoint.

“Ms. Fooler,” he began, “I want you to know that I love my wife.”

I said nothing.

“You have to know that I do not want to testify against my wife.”

I held up my right hand to indicate that I would hear nothing further. “The time for talk of what you want is done. That is over. Your wife is no longer here. The time has come to speak of what you will do.”

Breaking my gaze, and looking down at the table he had pummeled in fury only moments earlier, he whispered demurely, “I cannot go to jail.”

I picked up my pen, and opened the file folder that had lain, untouched, before me throughout the entirety of our meeting. “Then let’s discuss your testimony.”

*****

Molly Jacobsen has no idea what was discussed in that room.

She left, confident in her husband’s commitment to her; certain of his willingness to put her needs before his own.

And he fucked her.

My mother will have to forgive me if I hold fast to my own self-reliant, survival ideology for a little while longer.

*Quite naturally, the names have been changed to protect the…..well….to protect myself.

I was reluctant, because I thought the premise was stupid.

I didn’t know why anyone would give a damn about up-to-the-minute shit I was doing with my life.

I certainly didn’t expect to give two cusses about what anyone else was doing with theirs.

But, as is oft the case, Linesister was right, and one year later I am, of course, firmly entrenched in the Twitter beast.

I prefer it to Facebook.

As a matter of fact, it is my refuge from Facebook. It is my refuge from many things that have the taint of real life upon them.

Twitter is where I go to talk to people I don’t know. There’s a quiet solace in the company of strangers that I underestimated when first I began.

And I’ve come to love it, and treasure it.

Which is precisely why I can’t understand why so many of you fuckers are mucking it up.

6 Things I need all Twitter participants to do or know:

1. Get your titties off Twitter.

Immediately.

Look. I don’t have a problem with titties. I can certainly appreciate that titties are a crucial staple in the lives of a significant Twitter contingent.

I’m not trying to take titties away from anyone.

You wanna show your cleavage in your avi, all the while beguiling the world with excerpts from your doctoral thesis to evidence how you are both sexy and profound— more power to you.

You wanna twitpic yourself in your I-make-bitches-hate-me dress— fine, do the damn thing.

But honestly. This is getting ridiculous. Yesterday, I saw THREE broads whose backgrounds were nothing more than pictures of them posing in bikinis.

What.the.FUCK kind of latch-key, thatch-roofed, mother-less, Southeast Asian bordello were you raised in that makes you think this is okay?

Bitch, you are naked on the internet.

And like, for free.

No one’s giving you a dime to see those free titties.

It’s not sexy.

And even it if is, the desperation of it all far outweighs any aesthetic.

Have you no one in your three-dimensional world to tell you that you look alright?

You gotta arm yourself with a swath of lycra and an iphone to achieve some tiny measure of validation in your life?

PLEASE get thee to a grandmother’s loving embrace, and entirely the fuck off my timeline before I wretch in my mouth.

2. If English is your first language, speaking it well should be a priority.

Stop getting mad when people hashtag your illiteracy.

Someone correcting your abject retardation shouldn’t upset you.

Being 35 and unable to read, while utilizing a program that specializes in communication via 140 characters or less should upset you.

I bet Twitter is frustrating as FUCK for some of you.

Maybe, instead of making my soul weep each day with your fucked up grammar (which I’ll interpret as dispositive proof of the American educational system’s failures), try developing a simpleton-friendly web program—perhaps one that makes liberal use of shapes and pictures as opposed to actual words—

Or, you know….

FUCKING SPELL CHECK.

3. Tyrese is NOT your life coach. If he is, you deserve whatever bullshit life you’ve got.

I’m not gonna lie.

Once upon a time, before I knew Tyrese could neither read nor write, or properly effectuate any semblance of deductive reasoning, I was rather keen on letting him “make me feel good on the inside.” *

But that was pre-twitter lust.

Today, Tyrese tweeted, “Atl if you’re hear…I’m on the air on V103…”

He told the world REPEATEDLY about his presence at “Barnes and NobleS.”

The man is on a BOOK TOUR and he doesn’t know a homophone from a xylophone.

He has made several appearances at the nation’s premier book retailer, and doesn’t know its name.

And he cautions us all: “As you move to the next chapter in your life remember.. You will never shine Tryna sit on somebody else SUN!!”

Someone on my timeline retweeted that. Beside it, she wrote, “Preach!”

Are you fuckin’ kidding me?

Look. I’m not gonna shit on Tyrese (anymore).

He’s rich, and successful, and I am a nobody with law school debt; he bests me in any capacity that is of value to the world in which we live.

But if you have bills like me, and retweet this man as though he’s some fount of new, Black intellectualism, you’re a low-functioning, generic battery-operated dildo.

I mean it.

If Jody motherfuckin’ Jo opens your eyes to some shit you ain’t never seen before, close them.

Post-haste.

4. I wish I had an interactive glass of ice cold water…maybe it could quench your palpable THIRST.

Listen. I love a Twitter crush as much as the next one.

Twitter is a place where people showcase their wit in concise, delicious snippets (and show their titties), therefore making it a veritable breeding ground for crush prosperity.

So, I get it. Crush on.

That said, these outwardly expressions of wanna-fuck-you-so-bad make me uncomfortable.

And you know why they’re outwardly, don’t you?

Cause she doesn’t.wanna.fuck.you.back.

The innovators of Twitter, in their infinite wisdom, made it impossible to direct message a person not following you; a decision—I noted a few weeks ago—for which many unsuspecting people ought to be grateful (seriously, you don’t want to know how many people I’d internet woo with slam whore antics should this function become disabled).

This is my point.

She won’t follow you¸ so you can’t direct message your tom fuckery for her eyes only. Your only remaining option one of public courtship, you smear the evidence of your XY chromosomal fail across my timeline, and the tragedy of your romantic, dehydrated desperation is clear for all to see.

I’m fairly certain that if a woman won’t follow you back on Twitter, she won’t reward your Arthurian Twitter gestures of chivalry with ass.

It’s not gonna happen.

@-ing her constantly, telling her how fine she is daily, preceding your retweets of her with overly enthusiastic declarations of her awesomeness won’t make tender her heart, or otherwise incline her to do it to you.

It will, however, encourage her to make note of your IP address in the event that a bitch comes up missing.

5. ATTENTION all persons with the following words in their bios—“sexy,” “pretty,” “model,” “mogul,” “rapper”:

Nope.

6. If a stranger incites within you extreme rage, compelling a series of angry tweets——Stop everything you’re doing and Dougie.

You are obviously carefree and winning at life, and as such, have elected to lose on Twitter.

For my money, a person who allows a complete stranger to get him/her Twitter-enraged is tantamount to the man who gets in a fight at the club after someone nudges him or steps on his shoes.

The shit might be annoying—hell, it might be infuriating—but odds are, it’s something that can be let go.

What the fuck do I look like letting a complete stranger—someone who doesn’t even know my real name—who is, no doubt, sitting in some darkened corner, thousands of miles away, thumb-typing ignorance on his phone at lightning speed, get me all tight in the chest over the fucking internet?

How the hell am I gonna get fiery mad over some shit this dude typed with this thumbs?

It’s not that serious.

And if it is, it sure the fuck shouldn’t be resolved over a medium whose logo is a big, periwinkle bird.

*sigh*

I just want us all to let Twitter be great.

*Monster’s Ball shudder-inducing Halle Berry quote.

When someone determines that she does not believe in something, hers is one of two separate realities.
On the one hand, she actively doubts the existence of said thing. I don’t believe that all black men have big ole dicks.

On the other hand, she is disavowing the proven existence of said thing due to its incompatibility with her own personal credo. I don’t believe in fucking black men with little itty bitty baby dicks.

See the distinction?

It is with this mindset that I make the following bold assertion:

I don’t believe in friendzones.

In any scheme of reality.

At the most basic level, I don’t believe in their existence; they are entirely fictitious in any Fooler-esque conception of the time/space continuum.

However, with a mind’s eye towards the alternative, should friendzones actually exist, I don’t believe in them as a matter of principle.

In the Courtroom of Life, I, the Complainant, move the Universe to enjoin all practitioners of aforementioned abusive exercise from continuing on in such a fashion from this day forward.

Now, before we begin, that we might progress in the spirit of solidarity, I’ll address some ancillary themes/issues/concerns.

As I see it, any and all logic behind a friendzone-favorable argument is rooted in failure.

That’s right.

Failure.

At the most elementary level, the failure is one of linguistics.

So, for the sake of this entry, please allow for the following definitions:

Friend—n. from the Old Eng, freond. A person you care about deeply, with whom you share intimacies. A person you spend time with or talk to on a consistent basis (my friends will turn their noses up at this as I am a reclusive asshole, but, notwithstanding the occasional reclusive asshole, the definition holds).

Friendzone—n. from the Latin, bullshiterus maximus. An alleged place where one puts a “friend” she wouldn’t sleep with. Like, ever.

Great start.

Now, I like to think of my mind, and indeed, its fruit (this webspace), as a place open to exception.

Therefore, I would be remiss, were I not to present several acceptable exceptions to my “No Friendzones” assertion. Here they are:

1. The man is a known or suspected gay.
2. The man is married.
3. The man’s penis is infected with, or suspected to be infected with loathsome disease.

That’s it.

Don’t try to think of any more cause there aren’t any.

On with the show.

There are but two types of women who’d take respite in the notion of a friendzone. We will refer to these women as “Little Picture Bitch” and “Frigid, Selfish Bitch,” or “LPB” and “FSB,” respectively.

Statement, The First: I don’t believe that friendzones are real. But you know who does? Little Picture Bitches.

Friendships start with an attraction.

All friendships.

Person A is attracted to something in Person B.

That something can be as innocuous and unsubstantial as how the other person appears.

Perhaps Person A has heard Person B speak, and likes Person B’s sense of humor.

Either way, all friendships begin with an attraction.

Now, with time, commonality of circumstance, shared secrets, the bond between A and B has an opportunity to grow in value. It is at this critical juncture that we begin to see the divide that separates friendship from fuckship.

It could come about from something as simple and run of the mill as basic sexual preference:

Person A likes Person B. The more time Person A spends with Person B, the more she likes Person B. Person B is a woman. Person A doesn’t like women. The two become girlfriends.

It could come about from a critical misstep of the other party:

Person A likes Person B. Person A finds out that Person B voted for a Tea Party candidate during the last general election. Person A still adores Person B, but now thinks he’s a fuckwad. Person A wants to have babies and can’t make them with a fuckwad. They remain close friends.

Here’s my point.

Notwithstanding prevailing matters of sexual orientation or the three exceptions noted above, where there was once attraction, there is ALWAYS potential for repeated attraction, UNLESS……………………………………..you’re a little picture bitch.

LPB says shit like, “Marcus is fat. We’re real cool, though, for real. But honestly, Chubbs is like my brother, man. I don’t even think of him like that.”

CLASSIC LPB assessment.

Why is she a LPB?

Because she has failed to account for ALL of the angles and potential scenarios.

Let’s return to my definition of a friend: A person you care about deeply, with whom you share intimacies. A person you spend time with or talk to on a consistent basis…

Let’s assume LPB and Marcus really are friends, in accordance to my definition, and not just hang partners, or party homies. Let’s assume they spend real time together, talk consistently, and tell each other the secret desires of their hearts—hopes, dreams, unicorns, Neruda, alla that shit (try not to become overwhelmingly distracted by the obvious fact that Marcus is a hardcore sucker MC if he allows any of this).

You mean to tell me that, on her worst day of all days– LPB has caught her boyfriend cheating, her boss thinks she’s retarded, her mother called for the express purpose of telling her what a big ass she has—on this dark, rainy, cold night she calls Marcus, the one person she can count on for anything, tell anything—and he brings over a bottle of Crown (FACT: ALL dudes named “Marcus” drink Crown), and they drink from the bottle in front of her fake fireplace, laughing her cares away…..

And she cheers up……

And then………………………………………………………..

SENDS THAT GOOD, CHUBBY BASTARD HOME??!?!?!

HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL NAWWWWWWWWWWW.

You are a LITTLE.PICTURE.BITCH.

And you’re lying to yourself.

Know what really happens?

Marcus makes one move to tuck that stray tendril of tear-soaked hair behind LPB’s ear, and overwhelmed by this sweet, understanding, always-there man’s affectionate gesture, in an extreme moment of weakness—LPB gives it up.

And know what Marcus does?

This dude, who has been diligently sitting in the background while you dated chumps, and fed him scraps from your table; this man who has been plotting patiently on this moment for what must now seem like a whole lifetime; this dude, Marcus—-

WEARS YO’ ASS OUT.

Stomps a MUDHOLE in that box. ( © N.S.)

Know what you call a man who listens to your crappy ass dreams by day, and puts a dent in your lower lumbar by night?

“Boyfriend.”

Statement, The Second: Should friendzones actually exist, I don’t believe in them as a matter of principle. But you know who does? Frigid, Selfish Bitches.

While one is inclined to overlook the shortsightedness that is LPB’s mindset, FSB is a horse of a different color.

I have known MANY FSBs in my day.

These women have thought nothing of taking up hours upon hours of poor Marcus’ life, only to send him home at 2 am in the rain.

Now, please note that I am in no way advocating a set of circumstances that gives rise to compulsory sex acts as some quid pro quo tradeoff rewarding good friendship.

I’m just trying to establish a line of demarcation between “homegirl” and “cocktease.”

Lookit.

I very seldom hand out gender-determinate behavioral assignations.

That is to say, “Men do this,” while “Women do that.”

But trust and believe me when I tell you that no man on this EARTH, puts excessive time in with a woman (she could look like a Chow in the face and this still holds true) he’d NEVER sleep with.

Doesn’t happen.

Scientific impossibility.

Marcus might be there for you. He might care about you. He might really want to see you
through your time of sorrow.

But best believe—-he would fuck.

He would fuck and have ZERO qualms about it.

I’m not saying that you have to oblige him, either.

I’m saying that it takes a frigid, selfish bitch to consume that level of his time and commitment, only to shut out even the most remote possibility of romantic involvement.

I’m saying that it is patently disrespectful to Marcus, and his manhood, for you to utter the words, “I would never…he’s like my brother.”

No, bitch.

That 6’2, 250 lb dude sitting on your dirty ass IKEA rug, in the middle of the fuckin’ night, holding your crying, snotting ass, is NOT your brother.

Your BROTHER is at home, asleep, because he knows whatever the fuck is wrong can wait until daylight.

The dude in your living room is a man.

A man who would tear that ass up, if given only half the chance.

Even beyond a lack of consideration, the FSB’s lifestyle is a greedy one; a gluttonous one; one that spits in the face of the most basic economic principles.

That a person would spend that amount of time with someone she couldn’t sleep with when times got hard—in times of Recession—is just wasteful.

We should be achieving the maximum level of use out of good men, either in the present, or on standby. It just makes better sense. Why waste all that time building intimate ties to Marcus, who you wouldn’t sleep with, when you could be investing in Jamie, who’s ten times sexier?

I’ll tell you why—That option’s not available to you. Jamie’s a dick.

Jamie won’t abide your non-stop chatter, only to be ushered out the front door at 9 with nothing more than your well wishes and a frontal lobe kiss.

Women build these one dimensional relationships with the Marcuses of this world, because they can count on them to be too “good” to request anything more; they’ve taken Marcus’ good naturedness for granted.

And THAT, makes you frigid, selfish bitches.

The takeaway—

You don’t have to sleep with ‘em, ladies.

You just don’t have to play them.

*I chose a fucked up lyric, cause this is some fucked up shit.

Pay attention.

I have a public service announcement that you need to afford the utmost consideration.

Now, I don’t want to frighten you, but this is serious. You need to educate yourselves and guard your personal effects accordingly.

I have every reason to believe that something once relegated to the realm of mythologized, idiosyncratic phenomenon is growing in force and number.

This body of persons, once a small, concentrated group, is now finding its way into the mainstream, and posing a very real, viable threat to life as we know it.

That’s right, ladies.

I’m talking about boy-soldiers.

Little.teensy.tiny.baby-sized.men.

Now, we’ve all seen smaller men.

I’m a mere 5’2 myself, and I’ve never had any qualms about dating or being attracted to short men. As a matter of fact, I’ve advanced several theories on what I believe to be the more-awesomeness-factor of short men versus their tall counterparts (I’ll save that for another day).

But I’m not talking about short men.

I’m talking about little, itty bitty baby sized men.

Not dwarves.

Not little people.

Fit-in-your-pocket, I-thought-you-were-sitting-down-but-awww-shit-you-were-really-standing-up, man-infants.

Boy-soldiers.

Let’s get to the core issues.

What is a “boy-soldier?”

A little baby-sized man.

Now, don’t be mistaken. Determination of his fetal-sizedness is not limited to height specifications. In fact, the strongest factor of his babymanism deals more directly with his tiny-ness in stature, as opposed to any definitive distance-from-the-ground measurement.

Simply put, boy-soldiers are generally more slight of frame than regular men (though some will work their tinkertoy-sized hearts out to add a little gristle to their Estelle Getty-ish bodies). But, don’t feel sorry for them. I’ll later explain that, as a rule, boy-soldiers are markedly accomplished in their professional lives. Notwithstanding this elemental truth, they’d still find success in a variety of vocations should white collar life not suit (think derby jockeys, hand weavers of fine silks, tiny print calligraphy artisans, and moon gymnasts).

What are the non-physical characteristics of boy-soldiers?

1. Suits
Boy-soldiers looooooooooooooove suits. On everything I cherish in this world, I swear to you that NOTHING—not even the love of our Savior, Jesus the Christ—can come between a boy-soldier and his established fancy suit collection. A boy-soldier dons a suit to go to Waffle House. A boy-soldier wears a fancy suit to the gym, where he changes into a matching jogging suit. Boy-soldiers don’t own jeans. Boy-soldiers own denim……………………………………………….suits. They own shiny, high gloss, well-tailored denim suits. If you’re out at the spot, talking to a boy-soldier (God save you if you ever willingly do this), and you compliment him on his suit, and inquire whether he’s just arriving from work, 99.999 percent of the time, he’ll look you plainly in the eye, and reply, “No.”

Which begs, what I deem to be the greater question: Where in the FUCK are these pint-sized, mini-men buying these suits?

Seriously.

Is there some hidden boy-man store that specializes in tiny-neck cravats, fancy shortpants, and 3T cummerbunds that has its headquarters in the DC Metro? I’ve got to find out, as there is no logical explanation how these grown-up dollbabies can be turned out so well day after day after damned day.

2. Huge Personalities
I am not certain whether the next characteristic is a function of circumstance, or is simply endemic to their race, but, boy-soldiers all have huge personalities. Boy-soldiers allllllllways gotta shine.
A boy-soldier doesn’t just wanna buy you a drink. He wants to buy your whole crew drinks. A boy-soldier doesn’t just want to dance with the illest honey in the room. He wants to create a free space in the middle of a crowded dance floor so the whole club knows he spent 2 years of his life zipped up inside Alvin Ailey’s fannypack. A boy-soldier doesn’t just want to be in a conversation. He wants to be in every conversation. And when he’s done talking, he wants the conversation to end so the participants can watch him do something else spectacular. Wherever he is, wherever he’s at, a boy-soldier can be spotted out and about doing THE absolute fucking most ever.

3. Good Jobs
Get caught sleeping and think a boy-soldier’s gonna fold shirts at Baby Gap for the discount if you want to. No, ma’am. Boy-soldiers have the best jobs around. A boy-soldier has been hitting the books his entire life, staying inside every weekend for 35 years, and starching the lapel of his tiny suit jacket EXTRA crisp for this one moment that he has your attention, ALL for the express purpose of withdrawing that Goldman Sachs embossed business card from his gossamer waistcoat.

The ONLY thing a boy-soldier loves more than his Carnivale-worthy attire is his fancy job. It has provided every creature comfort, from posh abode to over-stated import. But while his corner office has indeed afforded him a happy “Fuck you,” to the world that has shuttered him in darkness, the only place a boy-soldier seeks ultimate gratification…………….is pussy.

Are you out at the club?

Probably yours, then.

4. Not Afraid to Holler at Women
Nope.

Not even a little bit.

And guess what, ladies? The taller you are, the more likely Man-bit is to approach you.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s gonna dance with the shorter and intermediate-height honeys, too. As Lord High Imperial Grand Puba of All Things Ridiculous Fuckery, boy-soldier owes it to himself, and indeed, his court, to grind his tiny, underdeveloped hips on the backside of every woman that moves.

But best believe, he’s gonna open and close with the giantesses.

And when you politely decline his advances, boy-soldier’s gonna laugh it off, as you clearly don’t know who he is. Bitch, don’t you see this mutha–fuckin’ suit? Have you seen the keys to my whip? Bitch, my car is parked at valet. We on U Street. U Street don’t even have valet, Bitch. I just gave a hun’ned to a dude in a hoodie outside and told him to keep the seat warm til I get back. C’mon girl, quit trippin’ and let’s dance.

Getting a boy-soldier to leave you alone has about the same limited probability and intense pain threshold as full body tattoo removal.

So, why is a boy-soldier a threat to women?

With his lightning-fast maneuvers, determinedness of purpose, and willingness to make a complete and total ass of himself, the boy-soldier has secured his spot as the world’s tiniest, two-legged, upright predator.

That’s right.

The boy-soldier—in his elaborate peacock dress, unabashed bafoonery, and dogged, feral pursuit—is the honey badger of the human race.

He has, within his tiny frame, the wherewithal to make a total jackass of you. One moment you’re talking happily with your girls. The next moment, this diminutive bastard “got the folded fingers on [your] waist,”* his tiny head nestled in the hollow of your breastplate, and you’re slow-dancin’ with your eyes closed while the entire spot watches on in awesome wonder.

Don’t laugh.

This shit has happened to me.

Many a time.

And also, last night.

The boy-soldier is no joke.

He is to be respected as a worthy opponent—

Feared as a masterful hunter—

And lest you get irretrievably caught in the vice-grip of his tiny little baby-man hands—

Avoided at all costs.

* my second favorite line of Mos Def’s ”Miss Fat Booty”

Probably for all the same reasons everyone else does.

Someone’s always coughing, spitting into something. Children are always crying, mothers are panicky. Hordes and hordes of people are standing around talking excitedly in foreign languages. There’s mass confusion everywhere, and those charged with the task of triaging things are generally insensitive to anyone’s individual set of circumstances. It’s Turn of the Century Ellis Island all over again—only decidedly less hopeful.

Frankly, I’d rather die alone in my house.

Be that as it may, I’d undoubtedly live from the injuries I’d sustained.

I’d live, and, if not treated immediately, I’d scar.

Dying I could deal with.

Abject facial deformity, on the other hand, was a horse of a different color.

So, it was my vanity—married with a generous helping of copious blood loss hysteria—that motivated my visit last night.

After dealing for several tense minutes with a rather nasty bit of a scrub-clad troll, I took my seat next to a rather long-seeming white man with mussed brown hair and a blood-drenched tee shirt. He was holding a cloth ice bag near the middle of his forehead, and looked fairly relaxed considering the setting.

“Looks like someone was aimin’ for your kisser, but caught your chin instead—“ he drawled.

“What?”

He indicated my chin that I was supporting with a blood-dampened hand towel. “Socked you right in the chin, looks like. You’re all busted up.”

Who the hell was this clown? I began to fill out the mass of papers before me. “No one hit me, Sir.”

I could hear his smile without even looking up. “Hey, whatever,” he said, mockingly holding up his free hand. “Sure, sure.”

I busied myself with paperwork.

“You got insurance?” he asked.

“What?”

“You got insurance?” he repeated, undaunted.

“Yes,” I sighed. Surely he could pick up my disinterest.

“Good, good,” he said, nodding.

“You come by yourself?” he began, again. Nope, not picking it up at all.

“Do you see anybody else?” I asked nastily.

“Boyfriend could be parking the car,” he grinned.

“You mean the one who ‘socked’ me in the ‘kisser’?” I replied, not looking up.

“Haha! That’s funny,” he said pointing his index finger in my direction. “You’re funny.”

“Yep.”

“Wanna know what happened to my nose?” I was beginning to think he would never shut up.

“Nope.”

“My girlfriend broke it. At least I think it’s broken. Won’t stop bleedin’. Hurts like a sonofabitch.”

I gritted my teeth and tightened my grip on my ball point pen. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Guess she’s kinda my ex girlfriend now,” he mused, good naturedly.

Rolling my eyes, I exhaled the longest sigh ever. “Looks that way.”

My seatmate leaned in closer, just then. I could feel my back tensing. “She’s not parking the car.”

“I’ve every confidence she’s off somewhere enjoying the quiet,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, am I talking too much?” He asked. “I’m a people person. Never met a stranger, that kinda thing, know what I mean?”

I didn’t respond.

“You’re not much of a people person,” he resolutely determined.

My head jerked up from my clipboard. “What?!”

My unwanted companion casually shrugged. “I can tell. Real sour type. It’s fine, it’s fine. Just makin’ an observation.”

I could feel the heat rising in my neck. “It’s 4 in the morning. We’re in a fucking emergency room and I have blood coming out of my face. I don’t know if these are the right conditions to be assessing how winsome my personality is.”

He just shrugged again. “Nothin’ wrong with my attitude. I’m here.”

Who in the fuck WAS this guy? “You’re here because your girlfriend punched you in your face and broke your nose,” I fired back, angrily.

“Nope. No, she didn’t,” he calmly replied.

“You just said—“

He casually shuffled his long legs, and turned to face me. “I said she probably broke it. I didn’t say she punched me.”

I sighed, not clear on how I’d ever been sucked into this conversation. “Whatever.”

“Wanna know how she did it?”

I looked at him for a minute before answering. “No.”

“She took a clock and smashed it into the bridge, right here, see?” He removed the icepack bag to reveal a bumpy purplish area between his eyes.

“Don’t care.”

“Said I couldn’t make it home when I said I would cause I was out cheatin’ on her. She always thinks I’m cheating on her,” he supplied, more than happy to fill in blanks I didn’t give a damn about.

“Don’t care.”

“You’d probably take her side if you did, though, huh? Women all stick together on shit like that.”

-Silence-

“It’s different for women. Y’all gotta feel somethin’,” he continued, unphased.  “Like y’all attach some real meaning to it. Like ya’ll think it means something if we sleep with other women, and that’s why y’all get upset. It’s not like that for us. We’re just doing it to be doing it. Cause it’s there. ‘Sides…no matter what I do, she thinks I’m cheatin’ anyway. Eventually, I’m gonna do it, right? Guess you don’t understand any of that, huh?”

“Nope,” I was having a hard time focusing through this man’s idiocy.

“See! Like I said. Y’all all stick together. You can’t even understand what I’m saying because you’re a woman,” he clamored excitedly.

Clutching the towel to my face, I addressed him in clipped tones. “I can’t understand what you’re saying because it’s stupid. I’m smart.”

He smiled broadly before letting out a long whistle. “You are a pistol! I like that. Yes, ma’am. I like that. Don’t look like you’re gonna get seen anytime soon. Want me to look at your chin?”

What? “I do not.”

“I’m James, by the way,” he confidently offered.

-Silence-

“You are?”

I kept my eyes glued to the print before me. “Still trying to fill out paperwork.”

James released an exaggerated sigh. “Come onnnnn. I’m just being friendly. I’m all bruised up here. I’d talk to these Mexicans but you know they can’t understand no English. And those ladies over there—they look downright mean. Not nearly as cute as you holdin’ that towel to your chin all frustrated-like.”

“I’m mean,” came my tart reply. “You already said I was sour and not a people person.”

“C’mon. I was just kiddin’. Tryin to get a rise out of you on account of your not wantin’ to talk to me. You can’t tell me your name?” He had those smiling eyes. I hated smiling eyes.

This man was never going to let me have any peace. “Fooler. My name is Fooler.”

“See there. That wasn’t so hard was it?” I could tell he was tremendously satisfied with himself.

“Whatever.”

“You like pancakes, Fooler?”

I looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“Pancakes. Hot, warm, sweet. Kinda like waffles, only smoother,” he teased.

I furrowed my brow. “I know what a pancake is.”

“Good. Do.you.like.pancakes?” he repeated, slowly.

I sighed for millionth time. “Yes.”

“I make amazing pancakes. They’re just the thing after a long night out. Or a long night in, if you know what I mean,” he laughed. I got the impression the icepack bag was the only thing saving me from a creepy white man wink.

“Are you—are you making a pass at me—in an emergency room?”

“Just thought you’d like to share a plate of pancakes, Sweetheart. Not askin’ for your hand in marriage.” He again casually shuffled his feet, and shrugged.

“Oh. Well in that case, why don’t you call up your girlfriend and see if she can’t fire up that griddle so it’s good and hot for us by the time we get there.” I couldn’t tell if I was impressed or appalled by his nerve.

“IHOP, then,” he quipped.

It was everything I could do to keep my mouth from gaping open. “Really? That’s your answer? IHOP?”

“It’s the international house of pancakes,” he smiled.

This had gone on long enough. I returned to the papers before me. “I’ll pass.”

“Why?” he asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

“I don’t know you,” came my reply.

“All the more reason for the breakfast, Darlin’,” the snide saccharine sweet of his drawl was starting to irk me.

“I don’t like you.”

“Tut, tut, tut,” he said, smacking his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “You just said you don’t know me. How can you dislike a person you don’t know?”

“Look, James—“

“My friends call me Jim—“

“James, I don’t know where you’re from—“

“Abingdon, originally,”

“But around here, women don’t go accepting early morning breakfast invitations from whoring men with broken noses who just happen to share their same emergency room,” I rushed all at once.

“Oh, I know you can’t be scared, tough woman like you. I’m sure you took that blow to the chin like a champ. Hate to see what your boyfriend looks like.”

“My boyfriend didn’t fucking hit me! I don’t even have a fucking boyfriend!” I shouted.

James’ answering chuckle was the only sound to be heard in the suddenly -quiet room.

I looked around, awkwardly. “I’m sorry. Please excuse me.”

I glared at James. “You’re an asshole,” I whispered, harshly.

“You’re sexy when you’re angry,” he mockingly whispered back.

“Can you please stop talking to me?”

He disregarded my request. “It’s an improvement, you know.”

I sighed again. This was starting to appear an unwinnable battle. “What is?”

“Angry you,” he answered. “I saw you when you came in here. Looked like you’d been cryin’ the whole way. Almost broke my heart, you were lookin’ so sad. Figured some conversation, even from an ass like me, was better than none at all, sittin here waitin’ forever in a place like this. So, you know.”

I looked into my paperwork, a little embarrassed at his revelation. “Thank you,” I answered softly.  “It’s probably bullshit, but thank you.”

He answered with a shrug.

Finally completing the documents, I delivered the clipboard to the still-taciturn goblin, and made my way back to the set of chairs. I eyed my seatmate who now had his head cocked back, eyes closed.

“Lemme ask you a question, Smart Girl,” he began, anew, eyes still closed.

“I guess the possibility of your being asleep was too good to be true,” I replied.

He ignored me. “What do you think the odds are of us going in to see the doctors at separate times, but coming out here again around the same time?”

I fidgeted with the towel at my face. “Slim to none.”

James sat upright, just then, and opened his eyes to face me, fully. “Me too. So why don’t we strike a deal.”

I laid back against the seat and attempted to get comfortable. “Nope.”

He looked at me sternly. “Here me out, Woman. If you come out here, and I’m gone, no harm, no foul. Two ships passing in the night, some shit like that, this whole night is very soon a distant memory.”

“Mmmm,” I answered, looking up at the ceiling.

“You come out here, and I’m still here, you let me buy you a meal at the breakfast establishment of your choosing—“

“Of my choosing, huh?” I said, glancing at him from my periphery.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, heartily. “Provided it serves pancakes—“

“Those would be the hot, warm, sweet things that are kinda like waffles, only smooth,” I questioned.

“The very same.”

I turned to face him. “Why in the hell do you want to go to breakfast with me? You have to know I think you’re a complete ass. I’ve said so. Repeatedly. And I know you can’t possibly think I’d sleep with you.”

He smiled, slowly, then. “Yes you do. And yes you have. But I’m willing to wait til after breakfast to weigh in on that last one.”

I sighed. “James—“

“Jimmy–”

“James—I’m tired. I’m sore. I’ve had a long night. I’m a straight shooter. What do you want?”

He paused for a moment, and then shifted his position in his seat before looking me directly in my eyes. “Seen what you look like after a good cry. Reckon it’d be nice to see that face after a good laugh. Also, with not so much blood at the bottom.”

–Silence–

“Are you –always- this difficult?” he asked, finally exasperated.

“Yes.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ to breakfast, or a ‘yes’ to the question?”

I deliberated for a second. “It’s a ‘yes’ to the question. But if you’re here when I’m here –“ I sighed, “it can be a ‘yes’ to the pancake-serving establishment of my choosing. Please know, I will kill you, if you attempt any shenanigans.”

His grin was a mile wide with his reply. “Ma’am, I left all my shenanigans on the living room floor of the apartment I share with my now-ex girlfriend.”

I shook my head, but had to relent to my own smile; the first one all night. “Whatever.”

My name was called 10 minutes later, and I spent an eternity with my doctor discussing stitches, scarring, infection, and the fact that I was positive I wasn’t pregnant.

I could see traces of brightening sky through the windows as I made my way through the double doors, back to the room from whence I’d come.

I’d fully expected to greet an empty space, but sprawled before me, long denim-clad legs propped casually on a nearby chair, sat James/Jimmy.

“How in the hell—“ I began.

“I’d already seen the doctor when you got here. Been here for hours, in fact. Just needed to wait on the x-ray results, which, you’d have known, by the way, had you bothered to ask me even the slightest question about myself,” he smugly answered.

“You cheated.”

“Fooler, my girlfriend smashed a clock in my face. I’m a cheater. Looks like they cleaned you up pretty good. Where to?”

Shaking my head, I began to walk towards the exit. James/Jimmy knocked over a chair as he jumped upright to try and keep pace with me.

“I’m going to regret this, I just know it,” I said, increasing my stride.

“What are you talkin’ about? It’s gonna be great. And hey, look—the sun is out! You know what they’d say if this were the movies, don’t cha?”

I sighed. “What?”

“My dear Fooler, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…”

I simply shook my head. “You’re driving your own car.”

Who in the hell is looking out for the interests of loose women?

Can you tell me that?

Who is watching out for the hoes?

Sure, we all keep warm the hearth for our virgins; for our sanctimonious pillars of propriety.

We make certain our virgins and well-meaning nice girls are fed and spoken kindly to, but—

Who’s lookin’ out for the hoes?

Who’s giving the hoes comfort and succor?

Nobody.

That’s who.

Nobody.

Hoes are walking around malnourished, and unloved, cast out from all good society, and it isn’t right.

It just isn’t right.

Well, I want everyone to know that I, myself, have had something of a conversion.

And my newfound interests and desires have aligned me firmly on the side of the hoes.

I’m championing the plight of the hoes worldwide (I’m not saying, I’m a ho, mind you…keep up).

But, my newfound position has given me considerable insight, and brought forth, from my otherwise cold and constricted heart—empathy.

More on this in a second.
******

There is, perhaps, no more patient a man; no more meticulous or methodical a man, than he that hunts.

To have any chance of success, this man must lay the foundation for his hunt, weeks in advance.  He scouts choice locations. He returns to his designated spot time and time again, spreading feed on the ground , encouraging game to congregate.  Then, and only then, after the animals have become comfortable in their environs, slack in their defenses, does the hunter nestle himself high in the trees, and wait.

And wait he does.

Until he is certain of his target¸ certain of his accuracy. Palm to hilt finger to trigger, he releases.

And it is done.

Granted, there is meat to be enjoyed for a long time after.

But it is done.

And though no one will dispute the feeling of accomplishment that overcomes him when looking at the buck’s antlers stoically mounted above his mantle–it is inarguably done.

The thrill is gone.

The thrill is in the hunt.
*****

Two days shy of the Equinox, I am confronted with the same troubling compulsion I imagine we all have this time of year—the intense desire to have sex with something.

In particular—something new.

For the select few of us—a great many somethings new.

For some time now, I have regarded myself a proficient sportsman; knowledgeable in the ways of big game; a master of the hunt.

But in this, my 30th Spring, my 30th Equinox, discontent has settled in.

Some button, some switch, normally on, is off.

Now, don’t mistake me.

I’m scuttlebutt slut-happy as ever.

The “ fuck me “ battlecry of my wanton girlbox hollers out, loud and clear.

But I’m tired of the hunt.

The patient stillness that was my greatest asset in the wild has abated, and the spirit of restlessness has taken hold.

I fear—

I can no longer work for my meat.

But why?

Because I’ve out-assholed dating.

I am concerned that I may have out-assholed dating.

You see, there comes a point in the life of every educated black person when she begins to question things that, during earlier, less bourgie phases of her life, were perfectly acceptable. In the last five years, alone, I’ve out-assholed: drinking water from a faucet, listening to music from artists anyone besides me and 7 other people have ever heard of, cell phones that flip open, “business” suits that have any type of stretchy material in them, carpet, and domestic “vacation” travel.

Essentially, the art of out-assholing occurs when a hyper-educated, pseudo-intellectual over-analyzes some innocuous, basic, accepted thing or practice to the extent that it loses its utility.

Dating has lost its utility.

Oh, I want the sex.

Just not any of that cumbersome courtship business.

I don’t have it in me anymore.

I don’t want to hear another word about your dreams.  I don’t wanna know about who your friends are. I don’t wanna work through your abandonment issues or your mama issues or the father you never knew. I don’t want to accompany you to work functions, or social functions. I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to hear one more solitary, ill-formed word out of your mouth. I don’t want to hear you butcher known euphemisms and epithets as though English weren’t your first language.

I don’t wanna hear you chew ice. I don’t wanna hear you sing in the shower. I don’t wanna see that elastic-indented skin around the tops of your ankles when you take your socks off.

Mean right?

I know.

I’ve out-assholed dating.

So here I sat…in the valley of the shadow of hoes…

Yep.

A girl.

She is so pretty that it makes your heart break.

She is thoughtful, and understanding, and compassionate, and
well-intended.

In essence, she is everything that I am not.

Anatomically, we have all the same shit.

Boobies, check.

Girlbox, check.

I like fancy clothes. She likes fancy clothes. Different,
fancy, but fancy, nevertheless.

I like eyeliner and mascara. She likes eyeliner and mascara. Different brands, but eyeliner and mascara, nevertheless.

Mind you-

I’ve never really been attracted to women.

I can’t remember there ever being a time when I have looked at a woman and thought, “My land, she could get it.” Ever.

Conversely, the thought occurs to me regarding men 12-14 times a day.

And those are the days when I stay indoors.

But there she was—so pretty, so thoughtful, so well-intended…

Who was I to say “No?”

Who was I to accept, unthinkingly, this compulsory societally-imposed manufactured standard of human sexuality?

Sexuality was fluid, was it not?

Kinsey Scale and all of that bullshit.

And maybe this was different than everything else.

Because, in all of her compassion, in all of her thoughtfulness, in all of her well-intendedness, she was more than happy to fall back when I took to my moods.

She didn’t complain when I fell silent, or cut short her questions; when I corrected her on grammar or points of order when I felt her wrong.

She didn’t utter a hint of complaint when everything had to be my way, when I said “No” where she would have said “Yes.”

She was nothing, if not accommodating, and accepting.

And, in the beginning, I didn’t mind us being around each other constantly, because she so easily molded herself into my stark world. If an unbreakable silence was the order of the day, she was still. If it was my manic and incessant chatter that colored an empty afternoon, she was attentive and engaging.

She didn’t read the books I read or watch the cable news I preferred, but she was sweet.

She was more an appreciator of jokes than an author of them, but I was at home with my shtick and her rejoining laughter.

And sexually—sexually I was all in. I’m a far cry from prudish, and have certainly engaged in the more unseemly elements of heteronormative sex, so nothing freaked me out. I was down for whatever. And it was good.

And for a while—a quiet, contented while—I was satisfied to let the earth, and indeed, my life, fall away, if, but for one blissful moment, and enjoy the novelty of her. “…and possibly… the thrill / of under me you/quite so new…” as cummings would say.

Here’s the thing—

Failed heterosexual or no–

The fact remains—

My basic, sad, elemental truth is—

That I am a monster.

A devourer of men (and apparently the occasional woman).

I’m all about confronting truths, you see.

I’m not built for sustaining ever-lasting unions with people.

I’m selfish.

And perhaps—even a little bit cruel. Not because of words or sheer abuse of action, mind you.

But because I’m not unhappy.

Neither with my present state or circumstance.

And monsters should be unhappy right?—

Cast out from all good society, grumbling irascibly under their breath, skulking about, ever-present grimace on their goblin-y faces.

We’re not.

We walk among the decent, and the upright.

We laugh gaily (pun intended), and make you comfortable, and you trust us when you shouldn’t.

In the ten years that have comprised my active romantic life, I have never not divulged the truth of my makeup to anyone I’ve been involved with.

And no one’s ever believed me—
Until it was too late.