"Honesty is a fucking aphrodisiac." - c. Me to the delightful Huny

When I talk to my girlfriends, one of the biggest complaints they have about dating is seeking honesty.  It seems like such a simple thing.  We talk. You ask me a question, I give an honest answer.  I ask you a question, you give an honest answer.  But somewhere in the realm of relationships, we develop this fear of letting that person see who we are.  We color our personalities, avoid mentioning certain frailties or failings, and avoid angering that person like the plague.  And that’s not real life.

Fear of revealing the same frailties and failings is why we lie.  We ALL do it.  Being honest about our shortcomings requires a certain vulnerability that we aren’t always comfortable revealing.  It takes a lot to admit to anyone, and especially someone we love and respect, that we totally fucked up.  I hate admitting it.

I’ve learned that in dating, most people are going to tell a few of what my friend Melissa calls “baby lies,” lies that you know they shouldn’t tell, but it’s not that big of a deal.  They’re frustrating because when they’re over something so small, you wonder why they bothered to lie in the first place.  Sometimes, people tell baby lies about things that they think won’t come up again, and it’s done just to keep peace.  On the occasions that things don’t go according to plan (as is often the case), that baby lie morphs into hydra of deception.  That’s hard to own up to.  But the point of this post isn’t really to examine why people lie.  I’d much rather tell you why you should tell the truth.

I can deal with absolutely anything a person has to tell me, if they shoot from the hip.  It might hurt and I may not skip off into a meadow, but it makes the situation easier for everyone involved.  There’s no dark karmic cloud hanging over you.  That’s really the worst that can happen.  You don’t owe that person anything else after you’ve offered honesty.  If they constantly hang it over your head, or throw it in your face, well take that as your cue to leave them alone.

But as for me, I just want the truth.  As I mentioned, honesty is an aphrodisiac.  There is nothing like being brave enough to lay all your shit on the table, because I thrive on trust.  A lack of fear in showing me your seedy underbelly tells me that you trust me enough to handle the heavy shit.  I don’t want to see the knight in shining armor.  I want to see the bruises, scars and ultimately, the soft underbelly.  I’m flawed, bruised and scarred my damn self, and my soft spots are plentiful.  Throwing down the honesty gauntlet at me lets me know that I can do the same to you.  And that’s bigger and more important than any mistake.  Be imperfect with me. Turn me on by giving me your personality in panoramic view.  That’s sexier than any façade.

Common Sense Fact No. 1 – When a woman is raped, it is because she has encountered a rapist.

Revolutionary concept, no?  What you read about how you are dressed, where you go, how much you had to drink – it’s crap.  This is not to say that we are to disregard our personal safety.  It’s of paramount importance.  But let’s be clear:  Never in life has a normal man been going about his daily life, then said, “Wait! Drunk Girls? I suddenly and inexplicably am overcome with the need to rape.”  He was a rapist when he brushed his teeth that morning, and was simply waiting for his opportunity.

Common Sense Fact No. 2 – According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, 77% of completed rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.

So the boogeyman stories you hear about high-heeled women walking from the club down dark alleys reeking of booze aren’t nearly as prevalent as your neighbor, or the familiar face who offered you a ride home.  In fact, when that statistic is broken down, almost 24 % of those rapists are family members, and another 30% are intimate partners.  Even more disturbing, in the occurrence of elderly female rape, 81% of those crimes are committed by the primary caregiver.  Though the label “acquaintance rape” is used, it bothers me, because it seems to take the teeth out of what it is: rape.  It doesn’t matter if you could identify them, or have been to their homes.  They are rapists.  There are scores of people who do not see rape as a normal part of caring for someone who depends on and trusts them.  Most acquaintances don’t see forcing an unwilling person to have sex as an “after party.”

Common Sense Fact No. 3 – The onus is on woman to avoid getting raped.  The onus is on men to get women to say yes.  Being taught “Don’t rape,” is rare.

So we are taught to defend ourselves, avoid dressing a certain way, don’t walk here, party there, or drink too much.  Again, these are valid messages toward personal safety.  Fewer and farther between are tips on how not to be a raping bastard.  “Sometimes ‘no’ means ‘on’,” a former acquaintance once joked.  (I was unamused.)  We are almost taught to expect to be raped if we are not careful enough.  And what are men taught?

In high school, we had a health ed speaker discussed sexuality with us.  “Boys are like a light switch.  Once they’re on, they’re on.  Girls are like crock pots.  You just need to wait a while until they warm up.”  Saying no never even came up.  “No” means “later.”  No matter what she says, she wants the dick.  Just wait her out.

Common Sense Fact No. 4 – Not all victims of rape are women.

I recognize that I spoke primarily in the feminine, due in part to the fact that women were the target of that article.  That being said, men and – often to the point of being heart breaking – young boys are also victims of rape.  The theories of skirts that are too short, and women walking alone, again, go out the window.  Male rape victims underreport even more than female victims.  There are also huge incidences of rape by someone familiar to the victim.

STOP MAKING EXCUSES

Teach your children, your family, your friends and anyone else who will listen that rape is an act of violence.  It’s not something that hysterical women make up, or a prison punchline.  It is traumatic, and the range of emotions one goes through is vast:  How did a person like that slip into my social circle?  If it is someone I know, will our friends take sides? Do I report it?  Will I be believed?  What did I do to cause this?  Rape victims are completely capable of erroneously blaming themselves without any help from you.  Victim blaming is a large part of the reason rapes go unreported ever day.  Saying, “Well, I’m not trying to blame the victim, but…” is about as useful as a bigot saying “Some of my best friends are black.”  When you factor in the statistic that 60.4% of female and 69.2% of male victims were raped before the age of 18, victim-blaming becomes even more unconscionable.

The circumstances are irrelevant.  If you have raped someone, then you are a rapist.  Don’t you ever get that twisted.

I look like I got ANYTHING for these hoes?

*Sophia Petrillo voice* Picture it: Olney, Maryland. The year is 2010.  I’m in a hospital bed recovering from a rather nasty encounter with a pulmonary embolism, and I’m listening to my suite mate being discharged.  She uses “disposable adult undergarments” and discussed the whether or not she should attempt to go to the bathroom. After a slight bit of hemming and hawing, she’s silent for a moment and says, COMPLETELY nonplussed, “Well look…I just went in this one. What do we do now?”

In that experience, I saw my future.  I embarrass very easily.  I ultimately recover, it could be months, even YEARS later, and I’ll occasionally get totally red faced about it.  I won’t pretend to know what she was thinking, but the way she spoke said, “Look, this is what it is, let’s fix it and move on.”

One day, I’m going to be a really old broad, and I kind of want to be like that.  I’ll still be me, but I want to be like “Look, yeah I peed my pants, but I changed my alternator and put two kids through college. Holla at ya girl.”  Dammit I MIGHT throw up the Roc when I’m 70.

I’ve also decided that when I outlive my second husband, I won’t marry again. I’ll just have a boyfriend that everyone will call Mr. Charles. That may not even be his name.  But he’ll know how to hook up your carburetor, and Charles sounds like the most trustworthy name for that type of thing.  We’ll have family picnics and he’ll be all, “Go’on on and let that boy have a beer! Had my first beer at 15 years old!” He’ll say it with a square dangling from his lip and I’ll allow it.

I plan on being a pretty kick ass Gram.  But I don’t focus on that TOO much, because I don’t want to be the person who forces my kids to have kids.  That’s the type of thing that I would love, but it’s gotta be their choice.  My kids are awesome people though, so I’ll look forward to having a bird’s eye view of their parenting.

Toting a pistol will definitely be part of my old broad life.  I want a hand cannon.  I also want to shoot at least one person, just to show the other reprobates that I mean business.  Not the regular mischievous kids.  I’m talking about the real incorrigible ones.  I don’t plan on killing anyone, but I need to put one on JUST the right side of death so that they know I could if they try to test.

Don’t confuse that with me wanting to be an old douche.  I have no plans to hate kids.  Actually, I want the hooligans to be my friends. SOMEBODY has to watch my Lincoln Town Car when I go to pick up my post-menopausal medicinal reefer.  Part of being older, to me, means sharing with the folks that come behind you.  I came up amongst OGs, and they never “schooled” me by beating me over the head with messages.  The gave weight to who I was as a young woman, and shared what they’d learned with me.  That’s part of the joy of being old, I think.  Not to look back and hate that you’re not the young person that you were, but to build and give people the benefit of your experience in all things, including just how to love folks.  I really plan on enjoying every part of my journey here.

Though I didn’t expect a grand revelation on my 30th birthday, I thought that my experiences would improve.  I’m older, so I will meet older, more serious-minded fellas.  Sounds good, right?  Allow me to introduce you to two facts of life:

1. With age comes experience.  Unfortunately, this does not mean that with this age and experience will come the insight to benefit from what one has learned.  In certain aspects of life, age really is just a number; and,
2. There is a large segment of the 20-something male population, who enjoys nothing more than getting his smang on with a “seasoned vet.”

So here we are, right back where we started.  We’re not only dealing with the 20-somethings we THOUGHT we abandoned in our 20s, but we’re also dealing with the less than mature over-30-somethings.  Adding insult to injury, these are the same immature over-30-somethings that our younger 20-something selves laughed at for being “too old to act that way.”  Now he’s your peer.  And was quite possibly your prom date.  Awesome.

But, what about the differences I mentioned?  Well, here they are:

1. “Do you have kids,” becomes a polite and perfunctory question.  It’s code for “How many kids do you have?”  It’s not that everyone in their 30s has kids – it just seems like it.  It takes the strength of Sampson to stop your eyebrows from lifting in shock when the answer is no.
2. Everybody has advice for you.  Suddenly, dating has become a team effort.  I know for an absolute fact that I managed to date successfully for years without a tribunal.  Now everything requires a decision by committee.  And no matter what you do, the committee is against you.  Girl where yall going? Oh I wouldn’t have gone to that restaurant. How did you meet him? Oooh…there? Who paid? He did? He probably wanted to get some? Did he try to get some? He did? Ugh. You gon’ give him some? No? Why not?!  Well why ain’t you talking about him? For someone you just met, you don’t think you’re talking about him too much? Are yall doing okay? Seriously.  They’re all well meaning, but it’s a bit much.
3. The dudes in your age range either never want to get married, or they want to get married three weeks ago.  The happy medium is rare. One the one hand, you’ve got the dudes who have been hurt/are fearful of commitment and flat out don’t open up.  Often, there’s some chick out there that still has her hooks in him, whether he wants to admit it or not, and it prevents him from establishing new attachments.  In the other case, a dude may have enough self-awareness to know who he is as a person.  That’s fine, but he still doesn’t know me, or how he will react/relate to my brand of shenanigans.  “We ain’t gettin no younger, we might as well do it” doesn’t even sound good in that “Let’s Get Married,” song, let alone real life.
4. The night of your most awesome date ever, the one where you abandon all of your hangups and decide that you are going to give him all the goodies on the first night, your period is going to start.  It doesn’t matter what the calendar says.  Your body starts staging little mutinies around 31, letting you know it gives not one solitary damn about your plans, goals, happiness or (largest of all) sex life.  It’s gonna happen. You will deal.
5. You have to combat the urge to over-think EVERYTHING.  Well what did he mean when he said see you later?  Later tonight?  Like tomorrow later?  I have things to do tomorrow!  Wait…my schedule just freed up! Did I allude to being busy?  What if he won’t call because he thinks I’m busy?  Did he call? What if he calls?  Is Sprint tripping?  Am I getting all of my text messages? What if he doesn’t like receiving texts?  Can he read?  I never asked?  OMG AM I OVER-THINKING THIS!?!?!  Yes, fool.  You are, now chill out.  Things are going to be what they are going to be.  Be yourself, not your representative, and if it doesn’t work out, then you know that it’s a compatibility issue, and not something you created in your mind.

Whether you’re dating in your 20s, 30s, 40s or beyond, people are people.  Neither the players nor the game have really changed.  The only thing that does change is your perspective of them.  I’m not here to tell you how to score your next boo.  There doesn’t seem to be a true formula for that.

Here’s what I do know:  If you view dating as this horribly tragic activity, then you will always attack (and attacking is NEVER a good thing, unless you are a mother lioness eying the last antelope on the plain) dating with a sense of desperation.  If you see it as a meaningless thing, then you shouldn’t be surprised if you make a bunch of meaningless connections.  But my experience tells me that if you go into it open-minded treat people like humans rather than assembly line numbers, at the very least you’ll connect with some great folks.  Honestly, who doesn’t have room for decent, fun people in their corner?

Even when you’re not close to people – I was frankly just the older, distant cousin in Josh’s life – losing someone so young tears away at you.  A void hangs where his future stories would have been created.  Death is always painful for the living, but carrying the burden of a young death takes the light out of you.  My stepmom said Josh didn’t suffer, and I guess that should be of some comfort.  I just can’t help but be sad for my aunt, who can only be heartbroken behind losing your youngest son.  I’m also sad for the little kid who seemed to always be in for the fight of his life. So little cuz, I wish you the peace this world couldn’t seem to offer you.  Rest in Paradise.

I gush over my siblings and my parents (blood and step), because they are amazing people.  And what’s awesome about my family is that they aren’t cliquish and clannish.  If one of us mistreated a friend, the other would not hesitate to call them out.  We don’t roll in exclusivity.  If you’re at my house, you’re going to laugh, be well fed and be hugged and snuggled within an inch of your life.

When my mother passed away, there were so many of my friends who cried as though they had lost their own mother.  She was THAT person who was always listening, counseling and hugging.  She passed that on to all of us.  The importance of embracing your family, and realizing that family extends beyond blood.

When one of us has a new baby, we all have a new baby.  It’s such an exciting event. Even more awesome is how my brother and sisters have managed to marry people who add to the circle, rather than being “another branch” of the family.  Their in laws are my in laws.  Having a great family is what made me a greater friend.  This unit I’ve been blessed with is what makes me able to deal with anything that comes my way.  If I were to lose everything today or tomorrow, I know I’d have them.  Just taking a moment to gush.

It’s become something of a running joke… the differences in how cases in which whites go missing are handled by law enforcers and the media, versus similar cases in which blacks (and other minority groups) are the victims.

- Tambay – Shadow and Act/indiewire.com

Next Wednesday “Find Our Missing” will debut on TV One.  S. Epatha Merkerson will host the show, meant to shed light on missing African Americans.  The linked article quotes TV One President and CEO, Wonya Lucas who says, “Nearly one-third of the missing in this country are black Americans, while we make up only 12 percent of the population. Yet stories about missing people of color are rarely told in the national media.”  I posted this article on Facebook, my dear friend Monica had this to say:

Yep. But it should also be an eye-opener. Remember that case where the little Dominican girl in NYC survived a kidnapping after she escaped through a window in the house where she was being held? On some level, our children know no one is going to rescue them.

But what happens when our kids are too overcome by fear, stubbornness, or too troubled to protect and rescue themselves?  When that happens, you get Jakadrien Turner, the fifteen year-old Dallas, Texas resident, who was wrongfully deported to Colombia.  Each time I attempted to gain an answer in Jakadrien’s story, I unearthed another question.

Following her parents’ divorce and the death of her grandfather, she ran away from Dallas in November 2010.  In April 2011, she was arrested for shoplifting in Houston, and gave a false name, belonging to a 21 year old Colombian woman who was supposedly in the country illegally.  She was then held for 52 days and by May 2011, despite speaking no Spanish, she was deported to Colombia.

Jakadrien acted against her own interests.  She dogmatically stuck to her story, fooling  the criminal court judge, the immigration magistrate, and whoever else she was in close contact with in the 52 days prior to her deportation.  I find it hard to believe that no one who spoke to her could determine that she was neither Colombian, nor 21.

So far officials have hidden behind the excuse of this minor, “slipping through the cracks.”  Would she have slipped through these cracks were she not a person of color?  In plain English, would a 14 year-old white girl who only spoke English, regardless of how troubled, have been deported to a foreign country without concrete evidence?  A nagging question I have is the word choice in all of the articles I’ve read, which say she was “given Colombian citizenship.”  Was she just randomly shipped to Colombia.

One, it shows me how on the whole, this country does not see our children as children.  I look at her pictures, and see the face of a baby – a pregnant baby.  Not a 21 year old woman.  It also shows how a missing 14 year old girl barely registers in a major city a mere four hours away.  She was reported missing.  In almost two months, no one recognized her?  No one thought there could have been more to her story? No one picked up on the fact that she was clearly troubled?

Certainly the federal government has more resources at hand than Jakadrien’s grandmother, Lorene Turner, who was able to find her on Facebook.  And once she was found, the Colombian government was hesitant to send her back, and held her in a detention facility for a month. Tell me with a straight face that a pregnant, 15 year old white girl who had been wrongfully deported to Colombia, would have been forced to wait a month before being reunited with her family.  The country would have been in an uproar.  How do I know?

In 1994, 18 year old Michael Fay lived in Singapore with his parents.  He was arrested for theft and vandalism.  These were crimes that he committed.  In Singapore, they don’t have a whole lot of time for your crap, and their punishments are quite brutal.  He was found guilty and sentenced to six strokes of the cane.  I ain’t talking Kappas.  Basically, you strip naked and a very strong dude beats the snot out of you with a huge bamboo cane.  I knew more than I cared to know about Singaporean caning practices, because it was in the news every night.  The country was in an absolute uproar over this guilty teen, who was legally an adult.  The outcry was so great that Singapore reduced the cane strokes from six to four.  For a guilty man.

Meanwhile, a pregnant 15 year old black girl, wrongfully deported, sat in a Colombian detention facility for a month.  Just because, and with barely a whisper.

This story offers more questions and answers, for one simple reason:  No one wants to go on record as saying, “We didn’t care enough to look.”  Whenever a person hides behind “slipping between the cracks” and  due diligence jargon, it means they’ve done the bare minimum.  When it comes to our children, we have to take it upon ourselves to advocate and create the village where our children can be safe and looked after.  I brim with hope when I see people are beginning to use social media to spearhead this effort. We may never have the ear of mainstream media.  I believe that if we work hard enough with the goal of our children’s safety in mind, mainstream media may not be necessary (but will probably get on the bandwagon should it become profitable).  No matter what, it’s time to take the legs out from underneath this running joke.

Mel 7

Mel 9

Mel 21

31

35

I’ve been overweight for the past 13 years. Of course my weight did the obligatory yo-yoing, but I haven’t been within a healthy weight range since the Clinton administration.  Literally.  I never had a real weight struggle, and I thought that with time, the weight would just melt off.  It didn’t. Gaining weight didn’t really have an impact on my family, social or dating life, so losing weight didn’t seem like an imperative to me.  I’m not diabetic.  My blood pressure is slightly below normal.  My knees are a little worse for wear, but that was going to happen at 35 anyway, right?

Except, this New Year’s Eve, I spent twice as long in the mall than I should have, and spent twice as much as a thinner woman might have.  And if that weren’t enough, my relationship with food is not normal.  I’m from the South, arguably from a food Mecca, so a good meal borders on artistic expression.  It’s how we show love and give comfort.  That’s not new to me.  I always enjoyed pastries and good meals.  Just now, it seems to be more of a compulsion.

I want to go back. My relationship with food has to change.  I’d like my relationship with food to NOT be dramatically referred to as “my relationship with food.”  I think the way we gain weight is a disorder, but the obsession that this country has with losing weight is equally dysfunctional.  Because it has so little to do with the actual losing of weight, and EVERYTHING to do with how the people surrounding you perceive you and how you perceive yourself.

If you look at daytime television, particularly channels geared toward women, it’s commercial after commercial for diets, “lifestyle changes,” diet products and anything else you can think of, and it’s slightly overkill.  How do we find a happy medium, where food does not have to be the difference between victory or defeat?  Have we gone so far, that we can’t just see how normal it is to enjoy a good meal, then stop after we have enjoyed a normal sized portion?

Year after year, I’ve come up with a plan of attack on my weight, and year after year, I’ve watched myself get larger and larger.  I talk myself right into failure sometimes.  “Well, I want to be smaller, but not AS small as I was.”  It leads to me not pushing myself, and falling deeper into this dysfunctional relationship I have with my dinner plate.

So I’m trying a new strategy, where I begin to incorporate meals as normal parts of my day, rather than the parts of my day that I live for, then regret 20 minutes later.  I’m also exploring what activities I should take up that I can enjoy without relying on the gym. When I was younger, though I did spend time at the gym, I also had a lot of activities that didn’t involve going to the gym at all.  Simply put, I want my life back. And I’m gonna get it too.

“And during the few moments that we have left, we want to talk, right down to
earth, in a language that everybody here can easily understand.”

- Malcolm X (sampled in Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality”)

I’m just a woman.  With a couple of kids, a job that pays the bills, a Hyundai with butterfly doors and a keyboard.  And I want to be heard.  I want to speak plainly, directly, and be understood.  Judging by the hundreds of millions of people who divide their time between Twitter and Facebook, I’m not alone.

My desire to be heard is the reason I established my small presence on social media.  What I enjoy most about it is the fact that I’m seriously an every day girl who has bits of awesome.  It makes me think that the woman next to me on the train or the dude hooking up my latte might have a hidden awesome story of their own.  Stay online long enough, and people assign certain characteristics to your “persona.”  Or sometimes, we assign those characteristics to ourselves.

For the most part, people see me as a nerdy/funny girl/ranting maniac.  I’m also very open about my stance and experiences with domestic violence, life as an expatriated New Orleanian, and struggles as a mother, who is also single and black.  Being frank, but (hopefully) friendly is my calling card.  I try not to treat subjects as taboo, but rather, get them out in the open.

When you’ve been around enough, certain things become running jokes (like me with “your dad,” and one of my very young friends being credited with creating the universe).  Other times, people just sort of assign labels to you, which can at times be annoying and counter-productive if you’re attempting to establish discourse.  Frankly, it’s just all part of the “cult.”  Because for the most part, not even half of these people know you – a large percentage of the other half only KIND of know you.*

So when it comes to my personal relationships, I am fiercely private.  I respect my privacy as well as the other person’s.  I have three blood sisters who are on Twitter, and I don’t follow any of them.  We have discussed our reasons for that, and mutually respect one another’s wishes. Though I occasionally use my children’s real names, I’m far more likely to use nicknames.  While I may laugh at an innocuous funny or generic issue, I keep most challenges with them private.

That spills over into my dating life as well.  I’m very hesitant to discuss who I’m seeing.  It takes me a while to divulge whether I’m seeing anyone at all.  Even one of my best friends gives me the side eye when she doesn’t hear about a fella until after we’re kaput.  I’ve always been that way, if for no other reason than because it don’t have a damn thing to do with yall.  I don’t think that people would single me out and attempt to torpedo my relationship.  Quite frankly, I doubt THAT many people care about my romantic maneuvers one way or the other.  But I care, and I care enough to guard my relationships with people.

I’ve developed friendships and relationships with people that I have met through social networking sites.  When that happens, our friendship and interaction typically goes off grid.  If I see a person as a confidante, then I like to keep a certain level of confidence.  Not everyone will rock that way, and that’s understandable.  But as much as I enjoy being heard, how I connect with my folk is something I like to keep very quiet.

*Sure, there are people who get on Twitter or Facebook and give the cheat codes to their entire existence.  I’m not referring to them.

Ignore the lumpy fro and look at the awesome background

I’ve lived life.  There are lots of big things I have yet to do, like skydiving and seeing Table Mountain; but as far as everyday, tangible things go, I’ve done a lot of them.  I sometimes forget that I still have a lot of everyday firsts left in me.

So last night, I participated in my first open mic.  I was nervous and my voice caught and I…may or may not have jumped around on stage to “Niggas in Paris,” (the ratchet burrows itself deep down into my 9th ward bones), but I did it.  And it was totally fun.  Despite at times feeling like I choked through it, it seemed the people in the place dug it, and that also made me happy.  I’m always conscious about how people will receive me.  I can only be me, but I also wonder if, when the pressure is on, I’ll be choppy or off putting.  And I managed to gulp down my nerves and make it through my (mercifully) short poem.  I liked the feel of the mic though, so I can’t say this will be my last time.  I guess we’ll see.