Somebody already broke my heart…

Child, three days ago I was so in love I couldn’t stand it. Yes, I literally made myself sick. In the last few months someone who’d been out of my life for the last few years had re-emerged. He is spiritual, intelligent, ambitious, funny and… fine! On top of that, this man thinks I am supremely talented and supports the work that I do creatively. (Sigh…) Perfect, huh? Not quite, years ago I had a major crush on him and nothing ever evolved from our friendship and now… well now… we have a joint venture we’re working on together and shit, I am scared to tell him how I really feel. Rejection is a hell of a drug….

A few weeks ago I reconnected with an artist I know from my hometown, an extremely talented guy, a painter. For as long as I can remember I have always fallen for talented, dynamic men. For me talent is the best aphrodisiac in the world and this brother has no shortage of it. Phone calls about business quickly turned into personal and a conversation ending with him saying how he was attracted to me. (Sigh…) Attraction is a hell of a drug…

It has been a long time… two years to be honest, since I’ve been attracted to anyone. It’s difficult for me because over the years I have developed standards. I can’t just date the corner boy who hollers at you while you’re in line at the post office because saying, “A yo you sexy than a motherfucka” just won’t cut it as a pick up line. Nor can I date the Jamaican man in his 50’s who smokes weed outside in a public park who wants to “elevate me spiritually” but didn’t offer to purchase my meal after he followed me to the restaurant. Kick rocks weed head, Dred! And I cannot date the man whose self worth is caught up in what he drives and where he lives who thinks that registering as a Republican makes him special and smarter than the rest of us. I also can’t date someone who doesn’t read, watch the news, have a spiritual center or himself have standards! Standards are a hell of drug…

So when these two men entered my life imagine my happiness, joy, euphoria. Days and nights spent exploring one another’s thoughts, being honest and ones self… being admired. (Sigh…) Then it all started going south…

Mr. Ten Years Gone Too Long never talks about dating anyone and almost never inquires if I am either. To be perfectly honest I never ask him about it either because his answer, should be it that he is indeed dating someone, would be a piercing blow. Not good, I know… I should ask but… like Sade says, “somebody already broke my heart” and I am not willing to let my feelings change for him just yet… the fantasy I have of us being together building in my head is, to borrow a line from Seal “like an addiction that I can’t deny.” I just like being in this state of ignorant bliss (sigh)… Ignorance is a hell of drug…

Mr. Talented Attraction thinks we may be soul mates. We were born on the same day three years apart. We both want successful long term relationships. We both are tired of serial dating and meaningless sex. We both want a muse to inspire us creatively. (Sigh…) We haven’t seen each other in at least three years. We have never actually gone on a date or even hung out. He isn’t as financially together as I would want him to be, though to be fair neither am I. He is talking about moving back in with his mother to save money to move to Toronto. Sometime he rhymes when he talks because he is also a spoken word artist and sometimes he has VERY sexist views about women. Last night he said he thinks we should just do it… get married, this after a 2 hour heated debate. Love is a hell of a drug…

Yesterday, Mr. Ten Years Gone Too Long dropped a bomb on me. All of my plans went right out of the window… I wish I could elaborate but I can’t. I can say though I was disappointed in him and with everything going on. Our business venture may even be on hold for a while things are sorted out. My fantasy of there one day being something more gone blowing in the wind like cherry blossoms shaken from a tree. Oh the love is still there like the tree but the beauty of the blossoms, the fantasy, is gone. Reality is a hell of a drug…

I always want what I can’t have and what I have right now may not be enough… like the song says, “somebody already broke my heart” years before these two came along so I am asking God to please send me one that won’t.

Chris and Ri Ri and nem…

Remember him? He was fine… skin like butter, straight teeth, fresh fade and washboard abs. He was tall, short, medium, dark, caramel, light and handsome. He was the pretty boy or the roughneck, the one everyone wanted and when he chose you, YOU, over all of the dozens of girls who swooned over him you told yourself that you were lucky. Everything was wonderful at first. He told you, you were the only one and you believed him. You ignored the rumors about him and other girls because they were all jealous. Everyone was jealous of you both but most of all HE was jealous. He didn’t like for you to talk to other boys even if they were just your friends and if he caught a boy looking at you he wanted to fight… them. When he told you that he didn’t like it when you wore certain things because it attracted the wrong type of attention you thought it was kinda cute, even gallant. And when he told you that you should stop talking to your friends because they were always saying something negative about him and your relationship you listened because you wanted your relationship to work. Besides, they were all jealous… right? Then one day the two of you got into an argument, you were both really upset and both said some things you’d later regret, and out of no where he hit you… hard enough to make you stop talking. It took a moment then the pain and shock radiated throughout your body. Instantly, he was sorry, he even cried with you and wouldn’t let you leave until you forgave him. You covered up the bruise, the one on your face and the one in your heart, and pressed on… that is until the next time and this time he was less than apologetic.

In my late 20’s I dated someone who was, while not F-I-N-E, good looking. He wasn’t as intelligent or as mature as I was, didn’t have a job and smoked copious amounts of weed and I knew we had little if anything in common but I was bored and he was cute. (It had been a while since my last relationship.) After a couple of weeks of dating he moved in and that’s when I started noticing he had a problem with his temper. He pouted when he couldn’t get his way like a five year old… lip poked out, sullen and defiant… on my couch! I learned to ignore him but then one day when I took him to meet a business contact, that could have resulted in employment for him, he crossed the line.

He sat in my contact’s office in earshot of the staff cursing because the man we’d come to see was late. When I reminded him that we were still sitting in the contact’s office and that people could hear him and he needed to quiet down he said, “Don’t you ever tell me what the fuck to do. See that’s what your motherfuckin’ problem is you talk to goddamn much. You ain’t my wife or my mother don’t you ever tell me what the fuck to say!” I was in shock. It was like someone had kicked me in my gut. No one had ever spoken like that to me in my life. As I opened my mouth to speak the lobby door opened and an older gentleman entered. I told the man I was with that I thought it was time to leave. He agreed and we left. As I started the car, my car, I gathered myself and said in a very calm voice, “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again in public,” (as if private would’ve been better). He began to scream and curse, jumping up and down in my 1990 Hyundai hatchback and hitting his hand with his fist. “See,” he said, “I knew you wasn’t gon’ just let that shit drop! I told you, you ain’t my motherfuckin’ wife or mother you don’t tell me what the fuck to do, etc…!” I couldn’t believe how this fool was performing! I pulled over on the side of a busy street and yelled for him to get out. I was so angry tears streamed down my face, my voice cracked and my body was shaking. He got out albeit reluctantly. I went home and packed all of his things, one box and two duffel bags worth of stuff, which were picked up that night by a third party. The relationship hadn’t lasted a month!

Our tight knit Pan African community was upset over the news of what he’d done. My parents and brothers were relieved he didn’t hit me, that we broke up and that they didn’t have to risk losing their freedom by putting him in the ground. I demanded an apology from him and got it. He started calling again and we saw each other a few times after that but we never got back together. I couldn’t. Shortly thereafter he began dating a woman I knew and was friendly with. He blacked her eye, twice.

Okay, maybe you’ve never experienced physical, psychological or verbal abuse, but we all know a woman who has. If you are one of the fortunate few who doesn’t know anyone who has experienced abuse you do now with the continuing saga of singers, Chris Brown and Rihanna. Turn on the TV, they’re everywhere! Now, I’m no expert or psychic but I’m willing to guess that this is not the first time that these two have fought and he’s hit her. There was an ease and comfort with which the abuse flowed from him. God often sends you a pebble before he sends you a rock and people tell you who they are, it is up to you to listen. My pebble was when the man I was dating decided to verbally abuse me. The way he jumped up and down in my car pounding his hand with his fist let me know that, sooner or later, I was next. The transcript provided by Rihanna to the LAPD reads like the ghetto playbook for wife beaters and girlfriend abusers. “You know I’m gonna beat your ass when we get home,” “Now, I’m gonna kill you.” If this was the first time he’d abused her those statements were the pebble and his fists were the rock.

Message boards on social networking sites have been all a buzz since the news broke about Chris and Rihanna and I have been amazed by how many women, African American women, have either outright defended his actions or said that we shouldn’t judge because we don’t really know what happened. These women began citing instances where a man has hit a woman and they thought he was justified in doing so. To me, this type of attitude is indicative of how acceptable it is for domestic violence is in our community. It also made me wonder how many women on those message boards have been abused by their partners in some way. Now that’s not to say that women are always right in their dealings with men but it is never okay for anyone to put their hands on someone else, debase someone else or attempt to control someone else. Love doesn’t hurt, love doesn’t hurt, love doesn’t hurt!

A few nights ago I dreamed about Chris Brown… someone said something to me and I jokingly said, “Alright, I’m gon’ do a Chris Brown and do you like he did Rihanna.” I could tell by everyone’s reaction, the “oooohs and aaaaaahs” that something was wrong. I turned around and Chris was there. I apologized, I told him I didn’t know he was there and I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known he was there. I told him it was not my goal to be offensive in any situation. Then I talked to him about his current predicament and that he had to use this as an opportunity to explore why he thought it was okay to hit her, to really get inside of himself. He seemed to genuinely listen to my advice. He seemed sorry for what he’d done and knew that this incident could potentially ruin his life. When I awoke I wondered if anyone was telling Chris these things since the whole world seems to be talking to Rihanna then I thought hell, I just did…

After the Afterglow… Waiting with Baited Breath (Me and Barack Obama's Presidency)

It’s been almost two weeks since we elected our first African American president, Barack Obama, and I’m feeling like I feel after I’ve had sex with someone for the very first time. “Does he feel the same way about me as I feel about him?” “Did we rush into this?” “Did we know enough about each other to take this step?” “Is he the one?”

Now I know some folks, black and white, see Barack Obama as the “second coming,” but I’ve been through this sort of thing before… falling for the dream and not the man. I still have high hopes for my relationship with Barack Obama and the Obama presidency but relationships of politics past keep haunting me. There was Washington DC’s former mayor Marion Berry smoking crack with his mistress while in office, former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson taped saying he’d like to cut off Barack Obama’s nuts and having a love child with his mistress, former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s affair with his chief of staff then perjuring himself in court about it in addition to a federal investigation into his possible tax evasion and funds misappropriation and last but not least, Clarence Thomas who sexually harassed Anita Hill only to still be appointed a Supreme Court Justice who not only opposes Affirmative Action but is one of the most conservative judges on the bench. I could go on but I won’t (and for the record Colin Powell was on this list of disappointments with the outright lies he told the United Nations to invade Iraq but he redeemed himself recently with his admonishment of the Republican Party’s hate mongering and his open support of Barack Obama).

Yes, I know white politicians have their fair share of scandals but I don’t have a relationship with them. I do feel though that I have a special relationship with these African American politicians because by and large it was our, MY, community that supported and elected them. And every time they do something to dishonor their office and position they dishonor our ancestors, themselves, their families and every person of African descent. I know it is a heavy cross to bear but that is the reality of the situation. One misstep by these politicians is all the racists (some blatant and some closeted) needed to justify their beliefs that we are inherently inferior to them, that we lack the ability to lead and think rationally and that to be criminal is our nature. So, I worry about an Obama presidency because one misstep by him or his administration could set us back another 15 – 30 years in our struggle to gain economic and political power in this country. The effects would be devastating and far reaching in both the public and private sectors. (You think the systematic dismantling of Affirmative Action is bad... you ain't seen nothin' yet!)

So, I sit back, wait and watch patiently, taking note of who Barack chooses for his cabinet because you can tell a lot about a man by who he chooses to surround himself with. Grandma says, “Birds of a feather flock together, Crows and Canaries don’t hang.” Truer words were never spoken! So far I like his first choice, his wife, an educated, successful, dark skinned African American woman. A sho’ nuff sistah! Not bad, not bad at all... if all of his choices could be this good…


Signed,
Waiting with Baited Breath