in honor of slim thug (http://www.vibe.com/posts/slim-thug-black-women-need-stand-their-man-more), i decided to join in on the discussion of how black women can get and keep a man. my white side can't vouch for the usefulness or validity of my suggestions, but my black side decided to post them anyway. so let the shade begin!
5 Ways to Catch a (Black) Man
Ladies, let us break it down for you. According to a recent Oprah show, 70% of all Black women are single. And if Oprah said it, girl you know it’s true! But before you go ring the alarm, remember that the staff here at Cosmopolitan: The Minority Report has got your back. Behold our top 5 ways to scratch your way out of the singledom and slide right into black wedded bliss. You’re sure to snatch up your IBM—ideal brotha man—in no time (as long as he’s not already married to a White woman)!
1) Dumb It Down: Only 37% of Black men nationwide are enrolled in college and almost 50% are high school dropouts. The classroom is clearly not the place to snatch up a brother, so why are you there? Limit your education ladies! After all, no man wants a woman who is smarter than he is.
If it is already too late to retreat from your quest for knowledge, don’t lose hope. Just don’t talk about school! Nothing will undermine a man’s ego and flatten his interest like discussing how you spent your junior year in New Zealand studying aboriginal cultures or wrote your senior thesis about nuclear accelerators. Go ahead: seal those full lips, bat those long eyelashes, and giggle yourself right into a marriage proposal.
2) Buy a Thong: Video vixens and ass—Black men’s two favorite things. What do the two share? Thongs. “Nothing is sexier than a women in a thong,” said Mike, a 25 year-old garbage man. “Just the wiggle of free cheeks, the way they jiggle when she walks. It gets me every time.”
Now Black men love all revealing lingerie, but lingerie that puts you biggest asset on display? That’s the real man-catcher. Next time you’re at the mall, pick up that lacy thong or gold lamé G-string. Slap it on, shake it fast, and show your man. He’ll so overjoyed that he may want to wake up next to that booty...for the rest of his life.
3) Get Rich and Buy a Man: Oprah. Star Jones. Tyra. What do all these sisters have in common? Stacks of money and beautiful Black men. Now we are not saying that money can buy you love. But the brand new Beemer, Benz or Bentley that you buy your boyfriend for birthday might make him more inclined to meet you at the alter. Brothers want to be financially stable just like we do, so why not be his economic rock? Put money in his pocket, pay off his student loans, and take care of his back child support payments. His credit score will skyrocket—along with his love for you!
4) Become A Prison Pen Pal: 16 percent of all Black men between the ages of 20-29 were in jail or on parole in 1995. A sixth of all African American men were in prison in 2001. 30% of Black men born in the US are expected to go to prison at least once in their lifetimes. We’ve all heard the abysmal statistics about brothers in prison, but pause before you go lamenting the fate of the Black race—prison can be a great place to start a manhunt!
Prison relationships are a great way to make intimate connections with men away from the dating rat race. Most inmates will not come in contact with a woman for years, so not only will your jailbird be starving for your affection, but you can finally banish all those worries about fighting off conniving white women and pretty young things. Your bad boy will be all yours.
And just because he’s locked down doesn’t meant that you have to be! Whether you want your Black man deep and dark or sweet and light, prison can be your favorite chocolate shop. Not ready for capital murderers? Move down to the armed robbers. Afraid he’ll steal your stuff? Migrate to the drunk drivers. Turned off by his blatant disregard for human life? Jump on the tax evaders. Prisons are huge warehouses chock full of fit brown brothers, so why not shop away!
So girl, go ahead and lavish that brother in prison with a little of your lady love. Send him a picture. Answer his collect call. FedEx him a pack of cigarettes and the new Drake album. We promise that he’ll be yours at least until the end of his sentence.
5) Jump on the Next Man Who Hollers at You On the Street.
Don’t ask questions. Just traipse on over to the passenger side window and hand him your number. Not interested? Well, that’s why you’re alone in the first place.
We know you have other choices. Match.com, Craigslist, giving up on black men all together—all are viable options for fierce, fine sisters like yourself. But who actually has time for all that? Use our tips and we promise you’ll never spend another night alone drinking Alizé and watching Waiting to Exhale on repeat. You’ll be too busy getting ready for a date with your new Nubian prince!
(Or becoming a lesbian. Whatever’s clever.)
note: i wrote this for a freshman year writing seminar and reworked it for this post. so forgive me if some of the references are elderly. i was still fond of them.
note note: the recommendations above are jokes. i know that not all black men want uneducated women, are incarcerated, have bad credit, love ass, et cetera et cetera. because unlike slim thug, i do believe that kind, loving, successful black men still exist.
note note note: letoya luckett is probably somewhere holding herself and laughing after all this.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
who will break you?
who will break you in?
who will break you down?
who will break you now?
to be finished soon...or never. honestly, i never knew what was supposed to come after those three lines. if i ever figure it out, i'll add it.
who will break you down?
who will break you now?
to be finished soon...or never. honestly, i never knew what was supposed to come after those three lines. if i ever figure it out, i'll add it.
Monday, November 9, 2009
write myself, save myself
this has been a rough few weeks, and it's looking like i've gotta try to write myself out of this hole. so here's a very short story i've been working on. i've been working on. (i decided to try to write some more fiction/creative nonfiction since that last story.) let's hope it helps improve my mood. :)
i hold him close to me. i like the feeling of his body hovering over my own, muscles hardened years ago veiled behind soft new cushions of flesh. i like the solid thick of him. his breath on my neck, warm and damp--i feel it, wait for it cradled between the brush of eyelashes on the little spot of skin behind my ears and the drift of his scent.
i close my eyes and try to concentrate. these days i can't seem to chase away the dread. it's like i'm just waiting for us to crack down the middle. to unravel, quietly, irreparably. to shatter. i just hope the shards form a lovely pattern when they tumble down.
i feel it most when we're alone at night. cloistered in my small room, he paces my cluttered floor, cursing the indignities of the hours before, wishing away the daylight lurking behind the dark. his face is knit with worry, and when he turns to me i see the clouds in his eyes. (i used to see stars.) please, i say, stop moving. come here. i soothe him, draw his head into my lap. nothing now but breathing and silence. i stroke his hair and try to tell him something true. but all i can manage are words i've heard somewhere else. so i say them--reheat lines i stole from other people's mouths and feed them to him, spoon full of sugar and something that looks like love.
maybe he will find out the truth. maybe he won't. maybe i'll lie so good that my words will turn into life, and everything will be pretty and simple like it used to be. maybe i'll just leave. all i know is that i would give anything--any goddamn thing--to feel something, anything, again.
i hold him close to me. i like the feeling of his body hovering over my own, muscles hardened years ago veiled behind soft new cushions of flesh. i like the solid thick of him. his breath on my neck, warm and damp--i feel it, wait for it cradled between the brush of eyelashes on the little spot of skin behind my ears and the drift of his scent.
i close my eyes and try to concentrate. these days i can't seem to chase away the dread. it's like i'm just waiting for us to crack down the middle. to unravel, quietly, irreparably. to shatter. i just hope the shards form a lovely pattern when they tumble down.
i feel it most when we're alone at night. cloistered in my small room, he paces my cluttered floor, cursing the indignities of the hours before, wishing away the daylight lurking behind the dark. his face is knit with worry, and when he turns to me i see the clouds in his eyes. (i used to see stars.) please, i say, stop moving. come here. i soothe him, draw his head into my lap. nothing now but breathing and silence. i stroke his hair and try to tell him something true. but all i can manage are words i've heard somewhere else. so i say them--reheat lines i stole from other people's mouths and feed them to him, spoon full of sugar and something that looks like love.
maybe he will find out the truth. maybe he won't. maybe i'll lie so good that my words will turn into life, and everything will be pretty and simple like it used to be. maybe i'll just leave. all i know is that i would give anything--any goddamn thing--to feel something, anything, again.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
what do you say at a time like this?
it's hard to believe that a person can cease to exist but the world doesn't pause. but why should it? what will that give you? those moments will not give you the time to conjure up words powerful enough to erase his parents' pain. you will never have enough hours to explain to his friends how sorry--really, truly sorry--you are that they will never see him again. there is simply not enough time in the world to transform their burial into the wedding it was supposed to be.
maybe it's better not to have the time because, honestly, maybe it's better to pretend nothing happened. maybe our busyness, our hurry, our unthinking rush is our best homage to the dead: an admission that we know we are too small to ever create something that could fill the void they left. our reluctance to speak is a confession of fear, and oddly a confession of faith--faith that, in this world of constant chatter and bullshit statements, our silence can hold all the love we have.
maybe it's better not to have the time because, honestly, maybe it's better to pretend nothing happened. maybe our busyness, our hurry, our unthinking rush is our best homage to the dead: an admission that we know we are too small to ever create something that could fill the void they left. our reluctance to speak is a confession of fear, and oddly a confession of faith--faith that, in this world of constant chatter and bullshit statements, our silence can hold all the love we have.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
so i just finished jackie kay's Trumpet. gorgeous, gorgeous book, so beautiful it makes you ache. it's a book about a lot of things, but it centers on the love between this married couple joss and millie. it was just so lovely that it made me want to write about love too. so here goes...something. lol.
1
you. something in your eyes stirs me. frightens me. come--whisper something to me. something soft, something sweet. something full of care. something true.
come now--breathe something into me. so we can float away together. bound up in nothing but each other.
2
nothing is worse than waking up brokenhearted. you spent the entire yesterday trying to nurse your shattered self until sleep came to rescue you. shut down the smiling face, slip into the silence. now the next morning. you awake to the sun and feel full. finally you are whole again. but before that first breath is finished, you remember. the pain comes charging back, rushing into your lungs. the ease of that first breath had been a beautiful accident; the ones to come will be short painful, little stabs to an already heavy body.
the pain--it beats your heart until it breaks all over again. you put your feet onto the floor and feel the tiny pieces rattle in your chest. oh to mend again, only to unravel. each step is a stitch.
oh, to mend again. and again. and again.
i am tired of remaking myself.
1
you. something in your eyes stirs me. frightens me. come--whisper something to me. something soft, something sweet. something full of care. something true.
come now--breathe something into me. so we can float away together. bound up in nothing but each other.
2
nothing is worse than waking up brokenhearted. you spent the entire yesterday trying to nurse your shattered self until sleep came to rescue you. shut down the smiling face, slip into the silence. now the next morning. you awake to the sun and feel full. finally you are whole again. but before that first breath is finished, you remember. the pain comes charging back, rushing into your lungs. the ease of that first breath had been a beautiful accident; the ones to come will be short painful, little stabs to an already heavy body.
the pain--it beats your heart until it breaks all over again. you put your feet onto the floor and feel the tiny pieces rattle in your chest. oh to mend again, only to unravel. each step is a stitch.
oh, to mend again. and again. and again.
i am tired of remaking myself.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
you can find me in da club with a bottle full of bub...
here's a creative nonfiction story i wrote for my sex and gender in the black diaspora class. i haven't done creative nonfiction in a while but i thought i would share anyway.
We stumble, some more gracefully than others, out of the blue black club light. Walls painted with black acoustic tile and heavy velvet blackout currents have cocooned our nascent coming, goings, and carryings on. Now we huddle on the street, yanking at skirts too short and shirts too low, hiding flesh we had been proud of in the darkness. The sweat cools on our goose pimpled skin. Some of us begin to totter softly away in the stilettos that cradle our tired feet. Our steps are slow, halting stutters of a journey, weighted down by the pretense of escape and the desire to be recognized—to be wanted once again. “We are exhausted and afraid of the passion that consoles us.” But our feet hurt too much to run, and fear doesn’t match these shoes anyway.
I have been performing all night. Playing like I have only half a brain and half a voice. Playing like I’m brave. I stepped on stage damn near the moment I stepped out of the car. For me, it always starts slow, a kind of nervousness that seeps through my body and saturates my thoughts. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming I can’t even hear the bouncer ask for my ID. He sighs as I fumble with my pockets. My girls laugh. “She’s just a little slow,” they whisper. I smile wordlessly and giggle a bit for good measure. With a mumbled apology, I shove the card into his hand. One brief gaze at the plastic and finally we’re in.
Inside the dusk of the outside plunges into a deeper dark, and something—maybe the music, maybe the heat, maybe the crush of people lining the walls—pushes my nerves into overdrive. They match the throb of the bass, pounding and pounding and POUNDing until at last it shatters into excitement.
There’s something about all these damp, pleading brown bodies in one place, dressed up and strutting. Something about the naked desire of the passing glances. Something about the dancing that whispers—or shouts—promises of sex and closeness and touch. Intoxicated, I grab my friends’ hands and pull them onto the dance floor. We dance in a huddle, swaying our hips in our own little circles. But it’s hard to lose yourself here. Men with faces thrown in shade weave between the groups of women, sliding their eyes along their silhouettes until they find the one they want. Most times they don’t speak. Just judge you, silently, briefly, before gliding by. But sometimes they wait. Stay a few feet back and rest their eyes on the small of their back. And just like that the women wind up like little toys. We wind and wind, arching our backs and shaking our hips. The boldest of us might simply bend over.
Sometimes it works. We might pull them in, convince them to replace that gaze with those hands and press their skin against ours. Sometimes it doesn’t. He moves away and a cold shiver of shame kills the fire you thought his yearning lit. But whether victory or defeat, it is only momentary. He will leave and you will straighten your back, shoo away the loneliness he left behind. You will hold your head high and pretend you’re not wondering what you did to make him leave. You will scan the room and wait for the next one.
He will move but you—you will stay.
I tire of the chase and step away to join a friend on one of the couches overlooking the dance floor. For the first time tonight, I find myself in the company of only women. There’s something wrong with all of them. The girl to my right has a bad weave. Her friend knows them cheap pleather pumps are too damn small. The chick across from me think she cute but she got a gap between her two front teeth. The girl next to her just looks busted. And the trick she’s talking to…
I pause. My jealousy is so rabid that it frightens me. I don’t know these women. I have never met them before and I will probably never see them again, so why do I care so much about them? Hell—why do I care about them at all?
Maybe it’s because we have been competing all night. There are ten of us vying for the attention of every one man, and sometimes the grinding looks less like making love and more like a war dance.
Maybe it’s because we recognize what those men don’t. That the brand of jeans hugging that fat ass cost a week of pay. That the designer purse she clutches close is the one we still have on layaway. That she just got her hair done today but she’s willing to sweat it out for the chance that you’ll remember her.
Maybe it’s because I smell on them the same mixture of fear and false confidence that seeps from my own pores, tangling itself into the scent of my perfume.
Whatever it is, it saddens me. And as I sit in the silence—we all speak only to the women we came with—I know we have all been transformed. But into who, I don’t know.
Soon it’s 3 a.m. Weary, we finally file out of the club. Another night done, another performance finished. Curtains closed.
Please, no encores.
We stumble, some more gracefully than others, out of the blue black club light. Walls painted with black acoustic tile and heavy velvet blackout currents have cocooned our nascent coming, goings, and carryings on. Now we huddle on the street, yanking at skirts too short and shirts too low, hiding flesh we had been proud of in the darkness. The sweat cools on our goose pimpled skin. Some of us begin to totter softly away in the stilettos that cradle our tired feet. Our steps are slow, halting stutters of a journey, weighted down by the pretense of escape and the desire to be recognized—to be wanted once again. “We are exhausted and afraid of the passion that consoles us.” But our feet hurt too much to run, and fear doesn’t match these shoes anyway.
I have been performing all night. Playing like I have only half a brain and half a voice. Playing like I’m brave. I stepped on stage damn near the moment I stepped out of the car. For me, it always starts slow, a kind of nervousness that seeps through my body and saturates my thoughts. Sometimes it gets so overwhelming I can’t even hear the bouncer ask for my ID. He sighs as I fumble with my pockets. My girls laugh. “She’s just a little slow,” they whisper. I smile wordlessly and giggle a bit for good measure. With a mumbled apology, I shove the card into his hand. One brief gaze at the plastic and finally we’re in.
Inside the dusk of the outside plunges into a deeper dark, and something—maybe the music, maybe the heat, maybe the crush of people lining the walls—pushes my nerves into overdrive. They match the throb of the bass, pounding and pounding and POUNDing until at last it shatters into excitement.
There’s something about all these damp, pleading brown bodies in one place, dressed up and strutting. Something about the naked desire of the passing glances. Something about the dancing that whispers—or shouts—promises of sex and closeness and touch. Intoxicated, I grab my friends’ hands and pull them onto the dance floor. We dance in a huddle, swaying our hips in our own little circles. But it’s hard to lose yourself here. Men with faces thrown in shade weave between the groups of women, sliding their eyes along their silhouettes until they find the one they want. Most times they don’t speak. Just judge you, silently, briefly, before gliding by. But sometimes they wait. Stay a few feet back and rest their eyes on the small of their back. And just like that the women wind up like little toys. We wind and wind, arching our backs and shaking our hips. The boldest of us might simply bend over.
Sometimes it works. We might pull them in, convince them to replace that gaze with those hands and press their skin against ours. Sometimes it doesn’t. He moves away and a cold shiver of shame kills the fire you thought his yearning lit. But whether victory or defeat, it is only momentary. He will leave and you will straighten your back, shoo away the loneliness he left behind. You will hold your head high and pretend you’re not wondering what you did to make him leave. You will scan the room and wait for the next one.
He will move but you—you will stay.
I tire of the chase and step away to join a friend on one of the couches overlooking the dance floor. For the first time tonight, I find myself in the company of only women. There’s something wrong with all of them. The girl to my right has a bad weave. Her friend knows them cheap pleather pumps are too damn small. The chick across from me think she cute but she got a gap between her two front teeth. The girl next to her just looks busted. And the trick she’s talking to…
I pause. My jealousy is so rabid that it frightens me. I don’t know these women. I have never met them before and I will probably never see them again, so why do I care so much about them? Hell—why do I care about them at all?
Maybe it’s because we have been competing all night. There are ten of us vying for the attention of every one man, and sometimes the grinding looks less like making love and more like a war dance.
Maybe it’s because we recognize what those men don’t. That the brand of jeans hugging that fat ass cost a week of pay. That the designer purse she clutches close is the one we still have on layaway. That she just got her hair done today but she’s willing to sweat it out for the chance that you’ll remember her.
Maybe it’s because I smell on them the same mixture of fear and false confidence that seeps from my own pores, tangling itself into the scent of my perfume.
Whatever it is, it saddens me. And as I sit in the silence—we all speak only to the women we came with—I know we have all been transformed. But into who, I don’t know.
Soon it’s 3 a.m. Weary, we finally file out of the club. Another night done, another performance finished. Curtains closed.
Please, no encores.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
damn homie...
there is nothing i hate more than missing people. it SUCKS.
being hungry for someone, craving nothing but their presence. just wanting their life to join yours again, even if only for a minute. sounds real cute...in theory. in reality, shit is like herpes or bad gas--irritating, persistent and prone to sudden, nasty ass outbreaks.
missing people makes me feel crazy: always a little off-balance, a bit out of whack, and slightly out of control. and there's few things i dislike more than feeling like that. it feels like i'm on the edge of spinning out into oblivion and my next move could just be one twirl too many.
shit. ain't. cute.
it might strange, but i really do pride myself on being relatively self-contained. no one runs me but me. (well almost no one--God and my mama naturally get a pass.) sure, other people have a say in what i do. but that's just it: they have a SAY, as in they have to speak to me for their opinion to be counted. but not so with this missing people nonsense. one minute, you're walking along feeling great, whistling and smiling and waving at little kids (even the bad ones you're happy as hell aren't related to you.) and then BAM! you're reeling, just aching and aching all over, all because some stupid color/sound/sight triggered some stupid memory and gave you a glimpse of just how alone you might really be.
so you wait. you count up all your friends and all your family, trying real hard to remember all the people who love you. you breathe deep and hope it passes. and it does: sometimes after minutes, sometimes after days, and sometimes only for moments. but no matter what happens, i'm always left shook.
being hungry for someone, craving nothing but their presence. just wanting their life to join yours again, even if only for a minute. sounds real cute...in theory. in reality, shit is like herpes or bad gas--irritating, persistent and prone to sudden, nasty ass outbreaks.
missing people makes me feel crazy: always a little off-balance, a bit out of whack, and slightly out of control. and there's few things i dislike more than feeling like that. it feels like i'm on the edge of spinning out into oblivion and my next move could just be one twirl too many.
shit. ain't. cute.
it might strange, but i really do pride myself on being relatively self-contained. no one runs me but me. (well almost no one--God and my mama naturally get a pass.) sure, other people have a say in what i do. but that's just it: they have a SAY, as in they have to speak to me for their opinion to be counted. but not so with this missing people nonsense. one minute, you're walking along feeling great, whistling and smiling and waving at little kids (even the bad ones you're happy as hell aren't related to you.) and then BAM! you're reeling, just aching and aching all over, all because some stupid color/sound/sight triggered some stupid memory and gave you a glimpse of just how alone you might really be.
so you wait. you count up all your friends and all your family, trying real hard to remember all the people who love you. you breathe deep and hope it passes. and it does: sometimes after minutes, sometimes after days, and sometimes only for moments. but no matter what happens, i'm always left shook.
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