115. I'll Have What She's Having

As I was trolling for inspiration catching up on the homie's blog, I came across a post on the infamous G Code.  We're all familiar.  This is the list of rules that define men's boundary between acceptable whoredom and complete out-of-pocketness.  It's a quality read (as usual), and inadvertantly made me realize something I hadn't really put together before.

As the last rule, we get this:

thou shall take one for the team…as the old saying (that just came into existence when i typed it) goes…sometimes you get the breast and thigh 2 piece but sometimes you gotta take the wing…it is a man’s duty to run interference with the “personality” of the group so that other members may choose the fairer maidens when necessary…you always have to remember that it’s 10 times more painful to need a friend to step up and not have one around than it is to entertain an ill-tempered booger-wolf for a few minutes…so any interference you run is really an investment in your own future success…

What's funny is that I immediately recognized times when a dude "ran interference" on one of my homegirls so his boy could holler at me,  and I was jealous.  This is how ill-suited to modern dating life I am.

I can easily recall times when I've watched a handsome, intelligent young gentleman sit casually chatting up one of my girls while his homeboy pressed thirstily all up in my personal space.  For example:

Her dude: So what do you do?
My dude: So where do you stay?

Her dude:  Did you like that movie?
My dude: What's your number?

Her dude: Yeah I love traveling. What's your favorite country?
My dude: So what are you doing later tonight?

At moments like these (which happen often enough), I am always, without fail, 100% envious of my friend.  Why does she get an interesting, witty, endearing conversation and I get "Can I bone you tonight" dude? No fair!  I'm an interesting conversationalist! I can be witty! Especially when I'm cute and feeling all confident.  Talk to me! 

And to make it more ridiculous, I always walk away (my number still safe, secure and unknown to thirsty dude) thinking that if homeboy had chatted me up like he chatted up my girl, I would've spent the night wishing he would ask for my number.  I guess it's cuz at that point he would've demonstrated something other than a raging libido and a propensity to bang random chics (neither of which is attractive by the way).

I can't be the only chic who feels this way.  I mean I guess in the ideal situation, the dude who's trying to holler begins with decent conversation and only later, after laying some groundwork, makes his way to the digit/sleepover request.  (Sidenote: I've actually seen this done quite effectively.  Some of the homies are world-class groundwork layers.  I digress.)  But even then, real talk, a man who leaves me feeling like I was worth talking to (about something other than how I look) just because, has an infinitely higher sleepover potential than one who just went through all the motions to get to an end.

Maybe I'm a nerd, and my ego is extra tied up in my intellect.  I honestly don't know.  But dang.  Just...

Dang.

114.5. Inspired by a True Story, cont'd

I was gonna put this in the comments, but in an attempt to get my numbers up, I'm cheating and making it a semi-separate post.

I felt like I was a little hard on the "How was work today?" folks.  So I wanted to offer something constructive, to show that I respect their need for regular connection and communication.  Here it is.

A list of things that would be appropriate to ask, in an attempt to connect with one's mate after work:

1. Who you got in this game tonight?

2. What do you want for dinner?

3. You wanna get tickets to so-and-so?

4. What do you wanna do this weekend?

5. Did your day go alright? (Note, it's a yes or no question if they want it to be. Or they can make it a convo.  Best of both worlds.)

6. How was your run/workout? (I always enjoy answering this one.)

7. What do you wanna watch?

8. When do you wanna [thing you've been talking about doing for a while]?

9. Have you talked to [random friend's name] lately?  (Also a fan of this one.  It shows an interest in the health of their relationships with people other than you.)

I originally had 10, but the last one was weak.  Nonetheless, there you have it.  Nine super simple ways to get what you need while not annoying your mate.  They're not all guaranteed conversation starters, but they also won't cause your mate to clandestinely flee whatever room you happen to be in.

Just sayin'...

114. Inspired by a True Story

I was recently reminded that I have a blog.  So here I am lol...

This wouldn't ordinarily get a post, but in an attempt to get back in the habit, I'm reaching for straws.  I found one over at the homie's blog.  It's a handy set of suggestions on how a chic can rub her man the right way.  He impressively stayed away from the "this is when/how/where to have sex with him" and focused on the things women genuinely might not have thought of on their own.  Do peep.

One in particular caught my eye for a comment one of the readers left.

The Homie: [Don't ask how his day was.]  The only day that I want to come home and talk about work is the day that I get a raise/promotion/bonus…on the other 225+ days of the year nothing worth mentioning happened so let’s talk about something that will actually not remind me of the last 10 hrs (or the upcoming 10 hrs) of work I just sat through…

The Commenter:  I didn’t notice until my recent boyfriend that men do not like to talk about work. I’m always asking my man, so how was your day, what happened at work? And I always get the same answer, fine, nothing.  I’m not sure if this is more appropriate for another post or if you can answer here, but can you elaborate on WHY MEN DON’T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT WORK? (emphasis in original)

Seriously???

This phenomenon boggles my mind.  "Why doesn't someone want to talk about work?"?  You've gotta be frikkin kiddin me.  No question in the history of life has ever answered itself more obviously than this one.  But here it is again for good measure.

Answer: Because it's work.

We all need to vent when things at work are bad.  We all wanna brag when things at work are good (as The Homie pointed out).  The other "225+" days of the year, it was just work.  I went, I watched the clock, I came home.  Who are these people who get off work and can't wait to spend another 20 minutes talking about the work they just spent 8+ hours waiting to get out of?  I'm home now.  I'm free.  I have no intention of physically or mentally returning to work until I absolutely have to.  Deal with it.

And stop asking.  Just thinking about the daily re-cap I do not feel like having is enough to cause my car to blow by that highway exit I'd normally take to your place, and head right on home to my own spot, where silence lives.  True story.

Now... to be fair, I do know people who enjoy talking about their day and asking their partners about theirs.  These people need to be equally yolked with like-minded individuals.  This is one of those quality of life issues that can seriously salt a relationship.  I respect the folks who need that connection, and those of us who'd rather go without it should learn to listen when our partners want to talk to us about their day.  But insisting that the other person do the same, day after day after day, is a subtle form of torture that probably goes a fair way to explaining why he/she walks in the door after work, goes straight to fridge, palms the remote, and tunes you out.

They just wanna be free.

---------------------------------------

Disclaimer: I wouldn't normally take this tone with a reader/commenter.  Not even of someone's blog.  Chalk it up to my being rusty and rushing to get a post up before I ran it through the usual "What to say and how to say it" rigamaroe.

111. If I Were a Boy...

... I would immediately cease and desist from the following:

- Those kissy face noises men make to get women's attention.  Are you seriously calling me the way you would call your dog?

- Using my underwear as a fashion accessory.  There should be more than one layer of fabric between my eyes and your butt.

- Buying a woman dinner and then being salty when she doesn't come home with me, as if she broke the non-verbal sex contract.  Try this instead: Estimate the amount of money you'd be willing to spend if you knew there'd be no sex, and then spend that.  If your estimate is $0, take her for a walk.

- Asking a woman if she has a man, and then following up with "But is he here?"  Not charming.

- Beckoning women over to my car, and actually expecting them to come.  Unless this is a monetary transaction, you're gonna need a different approach.

- Catering to every insecurity a chic has, and then wondering why every chic I meet has those insecurities.  Hmmmm.... Let's think about this...

- Insisting that a woman has her domestic game on lock (cooking, cleaning, etc.), when I don't have my provider game on lock.  If you need her to pay half the mortgage, you should be going in on half the dishes, yes?

- Hard-core clubbing after 30.  Everyone's entitled to "get it in" from time to time, but when your favorite couch at your favorite spot has permanent indentations from your "club shoes", you're doing too much.  Get off the couch, pour your drink, and put the bottle down.  30-something dudes with overpriced bottles glued to their palms are like 50-something dudes in overpriced convertibles.  We all know you're compensating for something.  We all know.

- Acting like we're not appealing when we are.  You need to be cool... we get it.  But seriously, women have egos too.  And acting like you're not impressed (when you know good and well you are) will get you a big fat SKIP card.

And to my sista friends, I humbly request that you stop responding to any of the above.  I should probably blame you most of all =(.

96. Boo-dom vs. Boredom

Around the time I graduated college, my mother and I were having one of our casual kitchen table convos (love these) when I observed that I couldn't remember ever having been boy-crazy. It certainly hadn't happened in Jr. High when it was happening to everyone else. And as best as I could tell, at 21, it still hadn't. My mother agreed.

I wasn't sure what to make of it then. I'm not sure what to make of it now. There seemed to be something about the pheromones of 13 year-old boys that drove my 13 year-old girlfriends crazy. There seems to be something about the pheromones of 30 year-old men than drives my 30-somethingish girlfriends crazy. Just not Yours Truly.

There's never been anything particularly interesting to me about men as men. Smart men, yes. Beautiful men, yes. Smart, beautiful, funny men... absolutely. Short of that, my pheromone receptors are in sleep mode.

This manifests in my social life in interesting ways. Most notably, for new people, I'm an almost impossible person to get into a relationship with, and a rather unpleasant person to stay in a relationship with. It's not enough that you're a man... a deep, interested voice on the other end of the line and a warm body in the bed at night. What was the last really interesting thing you said? Have you made me a better person this week? When was the last time I aspired to be more like you in some way?

If I can't readily answer these questions, I tend to develop a rather perceptible air of WhyExactlyAreYouHere-ness. In short, I become a bitch. The irony is that I become that bitch in an effort not to hurt the person's feelings. In my mind, the only alternative is to tell the person the truth: that in the few short months we've known each other I've exhausted the value of their companionship and I feel they have nothing further to offer. Don't call. Don't write. It's a wrap. How do you say that?

I'm told that I should simply say "I don't think we're cut out for each other but we can still be friends," or something like that. Good in theory, but I have this crazy devotion to the truth. And the truth is, we can't be friends. How do you have the "This isn't working" conversation without inviting the "Can we still be cool?" conversation?

Perhaps I over-estimate the percentage of dudes who wanna be friends with chics they break up with (or who break up with them). Or perhaps I just attract 'wanna be friends' type dudes. Either way, I'm 0-fer when it comes to neat, respectable break-ups. What do I do with that?

87. " I'm not a smart man..."

My first year of college, when I would call home, my mother had a habit of asking "So... do you have a boyfriend yet?" in every conversation. I never had a boyfriend in high school and, well... college being what it is, she was anticipating my sexual and romantic awakening at any moment. Rather than answer that question semi-daily for 4 years, I promised my mother that I would tell her as soon as I had any boyfriend-related news, and in return, she agreed to stop asking.

Fast-forward 11 years. Just as I'm settling into my grown woman groove, here come the (female) relatives wanting to know where the boyfriend is, and when I'm gonna become a We. I explain my solitary disposition and how my cup of freedom runneth over, but they're not buying it. I'm told that a lack of desire for companionship is, without a doubt, nothing other than a lack of experience in love. To love... to be in love, is to crave the beloved. All day, every day. To eat, sleep, and dream him.

I object, but I'm over-ruled. Love is need. Love is "Everything with you, is better than everything without you." Love is all the time. Not to have felt that way is not to have been in love. And I am She Who Has Yet to Love. Just wait. It'll happen to me one day.

I have stopped objecting, for now. I won't say that I have been in love. I won't say that I have craved and wanted and missed and dreamed of. I won't say that I know the feeling, and that it passes. I will never say that I have loved harder than their in loves. Or that I have melted with my beloveds over miles and time zones. I won't say that Love is deeper than love, deeper than sex, and deeper than sympathy. I won't say that I know what I know.

"... But I know what Love is."

85. "I Like a Long-Haired, Thick, Red-Bone."

Once upon a time, I was going to write an essay for Essence magazine on color (complexion) politics in the Black community. It never got off the ground. Not too long ago though I came across a discussion in the culture blog of The Atlantic on some comments Jill Scott made about inter-racial dating, ironically in Essence magazine. She referred to that feeling she gets when she sees an attractive Black man with a white woman. She called it 'The Wince.'

And in response to that thought, and some people's reactions to it, I was (at least in part) able to express some thoughts of my own. It's not an Essence article, but it's what I have for now. And though this blog is supposed to be an exercise in new and regular writing, I'm re-posting those thoughts here. I think I just want to launch them in my own space. As a way of saying, "If I were a writer, here's something I'd write about." That's the truth.

And so is this:

I've been turning this argument (and this issue) over in my mind for some time. I've read Ta-Nehisi Coates's critique of the arguments against black man-white woman interracial dating, and I found it compelling. I keep coming back to my own wincing though.

The issue for me is not that so many black men prefer white women that black women who prefer black men are at a palpable mating disadvantage. The issue is rather with a kind of aesthetic color preference that many black men still exhibit, and with what that color preference does to many black women's psyches.

However small the percentage of black men who actually marry white (or non-black) women, the reality of light-skinned privilege in the black dating world makes the sight of a black man with a white woman an uncomfortable one for many black women. In some ways, white women are simply the aesthetic extreme of (many) black men's preferences for lighter skin. Even those black men who ultimately partner with darker skinned women often exhibit (whether in speaking or dating patterns) some degree of light skinned preference (being "color-struck").

So for many black women, inter-racial dating becomes a particular instance of a very general kind of color politics they constantly contend with. As a black woman who appears to be biracial (but isn't), I can only say that being a light skinned black woman in a world of black men is like passing for white in a room full of white people who feel perfectly comfortable saying all those things they would never say in mixed company. It can be genuinely horrifying.

Looking at it this way, not simply in terms of white vs. black, but of lightness vs. darkness (which I think is what it has always been) black women's anxiety starts to make a lot more sense. We could note that many black women have similar reactions when they see black men with very light skinned black women. More interestingly we could note the euphoria amongst black women at Michelle Obama's being not only black, but darker skinned.

It's not just about black and white to black women. It's about black men's wanting a woman who does or doesn't *look* like she grew up on the South Side of Chicago, or Baltimore, or East St. Louis. A woman who doesn't have the extra exoticism of maybe being part white or Asian or Latina, but who is simply Black. It's about the extra points those women get from black men, over women who look like Michelle Obama. As someone who gets those points, even on my most raggedy day, I understand how they feel.

68. The Last Best Post on Marriage

Yes: I am almost thirty.

No: I do not give a smidge about marriage.

No: I do not believe there is a "crisis" of unmarried black woman and/or unavailable black men and/or black men who only want to date non-black women (although I am not a fan of the last one and wish we would learn to problematize and politicize how we view sexual attraction, beauty, love AND marriage since both have been problems and political since, oh yeah, slavery)

Yes: I am an enterprise and I am working on building myself up. Me. Not me plus one.

Yes: I still realize that I am almost thirty. Thirty is a number.

No: I do not want to discuss any of the above with any of my friends, colleagues, family members or even my partner ever again. We have hashed and rehashed the topic, we have circulated articles and YouTube videos and we have successfully used this subject as a foil for all other meaningful conversation.

This is the Last Best Post on Marriage. I mean really...is there anything left to say? Can we talk about the oil spill now?