During the “Black women ain’t got no man” public lamentation tour earlier this spring, I refrained from writing a blog on the so-called man shortage, or on my alleged inability [...]]]> There, I said it, but I probably don’t mean what you think I mean.

I never want to see another talk show cover the “single woman epidemic”… EVER!

During the “Black women ain’t got no man” public lamentation tour earlier this spring, I refrained from writing a blog on the so-called man shortage, or on my alleged inability to find a suitable mate because I’m educated and particular. Honestly, besides registering my shock at the likes of Steve Harvey and Sherri Shepherd telling me why I suck because I’m not married, I just didn’t feel that I had anything to add to the discourse. Twitter had already allowed me to register the usual “what?”, “Oh, HELL no”, “bitch, please” and “that big gummed Negro?” reactions to the 2010 single-black-woman minstrel show; all the other sister-bloggers covered quite adequately my outrage at being told there’s something wrong with me and my subsequent wonder at why there weren’t similar conversations about why White men were still single.

Today, however, I want to bring up the Single Black Female meme yet again, but I’d rather look at what we’re looking for in a marriage rather than the (erroneous) fact that we’re not getting married. A Twitter friend called my attention to a January 2010 New York Times article dispelling the myth of the educated married woman over 40. Notably, the article pointed to shifts in economic dependence as the reason for women marrying later. To put a fine point on it, we don’t need your money, so we’re not looking for your companionship, no matter what Slim Thugg or whatever his name is says about it. Which got me thinking about the real reason the successful, educated, attractive, otherwise eligible Black women I know are still single: our view of marriage has not kept pace with our image of ourselves, or with our lifestyles.

My Grandmother Wouldn’t Even Recognize Me

As a woman, I look along my maternal line for signs of successful marriage and find both my mother and grandmother. Granny was born in 1908, the daughter of a Black woman and a White man. I don’t really know if my great-grandmother was married when she bore massa’s child. I will, however, hazard a guess that she’d jumped the broom with the Black father of her other children, and imagine my Granny’s birth was. . .interesting at the very least.

Being a mulatto “love child” influenced Granny’s marital choice, and she stated outright that she married my granddaddy because he was the darkest man she could find, lest she be accused of trying to pass. I’ll assume that she at least liked him enough to bear him 14 chilluns. Then again, I don’t really know anything about my grandparents’ relationship other than the fact that by the time I came along, they were sleeping in separate bedrooms. As was the case for poor Black folks in the south at the time, my grandfather was a sharecropper and my granny picked, washed and cleaned whatever she needed to in order to keep the kids clothed, fed and under a roof. Marriage was probably as simple as this: you did it for survival.

Many times in the last few months I’ve marveled at how different my life is from the one my grandma lived. I have no husband and no children at an age when she was already well into both. I went to college, even graduate school when she may not have finished high school. I’ve traveled outside the U.S. while she inhabited the same few square miles for her entire life. Granny might be astounded that her progeny could even have a life like mine, and perhaps proud that her work with her own children lead to such interesting leaps forward. Then again, she might feel sorry for me because I don’t have my own family, even though I hardly need a baseball team’s worth of kids to work the farm these days.

In spite of the myriad differences between my life and my grandmother’s life, I still expect to meet and marry a man, have some kids, and live with him ’til death do us part like she did. And I pretty much expect him to work as hard as my granddaddy did to make a life for me and our children. Perhaps I won’t want my husband to be as strict a disciplinarian as my grandfather was, but he had 6 daughters and knew where the Klan lived, so strict is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t fault my grandparents for choosing each other and turning out the kind of children they did: poor Black folks in South Carolina did what they had to do with limited resources. On the other hand, how can I look at my grandparents’ relationship as “successful” just because it lasted until they both knocked off for the big plantation in the sky? Longevity may be a goal in marriage, but it isn’t the only barometer of success.

Good Role Models Screw You up Just as Good as Bad Ones

I’ve often that my parents gave me a great model for marriage, and that they ruined my life in the process. Well, they didn’t ruin my life exactly, but they gave me very high expectations for partnership and, thus, no man I meet is ever good enough because he’s not like my Daddy. Before you start talking Oedipus and nonsense, let me break it down for you.

My mom got married at 32, which was late for her generation and was the last of her siblings to do so. Apparently, Mommy always wanted to be a stewardess and would definitely have looked cute in the air hostess outfits. However, she fell deathly ill shortly after meeting my father, so health concerns put the kibosh on her plans to see the world from 40,000 feet. As fate would have it, she married an over-protective type of man who wouldn’t have wanted her to work anyway, so it all worked out financially. My dad was the UR-husband, Provider Extraordinaire. He always worked 2 jobs to keep both wife and daughter protected and decked out in Lord & Taylor finery. Good times and big closets were had by all.

“Traditional” marriage means something different for Blacks than Whites.  Chew on that.

In the context of the Ward and June Cleavers of the world, my parents had a traditional marriage, one where the man made the money and the woman made the beds. However, my parents’ marriage was certainly an anomaly in my extended family – and among many other Black families that I know – because we had a single-earner (not single-income) household. Mommy was the only one of her sisters that didn’t work outside the home, and the only one with a single child. While my parents’ situation presented me with a stay-at-home mom role model, it still showed me that Black folks need two incomes to make it happen in the world.

Even though my mom made none of the money, she made all of the decisions about finances and everything else. For someone who calls himself “simple”, my Dad always had a lot of vision but lacked self-confidence. He needed my somewhat overbearing Mom to goad him into action with a combination of pep talks and ass-kicking. She was the proverbial woman behind the man, the not-so-silent partner. My Dad, bless his heart, still generally needs to be told what to do and when to do it because my Mom was the perfect person to tell him what to do. Which might explain the heart attack she had in her 40’s, but I digress. Before my mother died, she told me that I’d be lucky to find a man like my dad. After she died, Daddy told me that she was his soul mate and he’d never marry again. Since nobody else was in the room when each of them professed their love, I’m gonna say it was legit. Occasionally I find myself longing for a husband like my Dad, someone who’d try his hardest to take care of me under any circumstance. Then I wake up and realize that I don’t really want a man to take care of me. Furthermore, I don’t see men lined up around the block clamoring for the chance to relieve me of my financial obligations. Yet, I want a man to want to take care of me in ways that have nothing to do with money or shelter or basic necessities but I don’t really have an appropriate role model for that kind of relationship.

If you’re gonna talk about relationships, either help a sister out, or shut the f@$& up!

I’d like for the love pundits, the armchair relationship gurus and the rest of the talking heads that tell me I’m wrong for being single and picky and almost 40 to take a look at what marriage has meant in American society.  Then I’d like for them to take a look at the institution in the Black community and how we’ve managed and made do with each other for 400 years.  After all that inquiry, I then expect those so-called “experts” to tell me how the hell the species has managed to stay afloat.  I won’t hold my breath, but I’m definitely expecting some answers.

I said that I wasn’t going to write another post about Friend Boy, but this one is a special request. The other day, one of my Twitter followers mentioned [...]]]> Excuse my French, but I’m a grown-ass woman so why do I have a “crush” on a man? And why the hell am I using that word?

I said that I wasn’t going to write another post about Friend Boy, but this one is a special request. The other day, one of my Twitter followers mentioned that she liked my relationship blogging and we started talking about a crush she has on a friend.  It struck me then that the word “crush” is pretty juvenile. Remember when you got those indescribable tingly feelings in junior high if the cute boy walked in the room? Or how you felt when you got that poster of Michael Jackson in the yellow sweater-vest? You were experiencing burgeoning physical desires, the beginnings of puberty, and decidedly one-sided relationships with people you didn’t know.  You described those feelings for a boy or a girl as a “crush” because you weren’t mature enough for love, and perhaps not informed enough to want sex, but you knew you felt different.  Your parents – and Donny Osmond – might have called it “puppy love”, which is to say it was a little obedient, a little obsequious, and it would disappear as soon as you saw another cute, fuzzy doggy.  Depth of feeling aside, another key to those middle-school crushes was your unwillingness to tell the object of your affections about your awkward feelings, choosing to share them with your friends at the lunch table in hushed giggles and secretive tones.   You wouldn’t have even thought to make your feelings known for fear of rejection, embarrassment, anxiety, public humiliation and so-forth. Then again, you didn’t really know what your feelings meant at 12 or 13, so what was going to happen anyway?

I never had the least notion.That I could fall with so much emotion. – George and Ira Gershwin, I’ve Got A Crush On You

Flash forward to adulthood and some of us (and by “us” I mean women, mostly) still approach our feelings as though we’re teenagers.  For example, when I casually refer to Friend Boy, I call him “this guy I kinda have a crush on,” at least when I don’t feel like going into details.  My Twitter timeline is replete with all manner of crush conversations at any given time, and I wanted to get to the bottom of what it all meant.  A number of women between 25 and 40 professed to having crushes on people they don’t know:  the striking female basketball star, the gorgeous politically-conscious actor who blogs about socialism.  Other women use “crush” to describe someone they don’t know well:  the casual acquaintance or person they met once and now follow on Twitter.  Other crushes are friends, ex’s, coworkers that women know well enough to care for yet refrain from calling the relationship anything but a crush.   None of the women I talked to have sex or intimate relationships relationships with their crushes, but have varying levels of interest in getting something started, if you know what I mean.

For all the childhood meanings attributed to our crushes, they tend to take over our collective minds and at least some part of our hearts and bodies.  One of my girlfriends professes to “need” a crush on someone to keep her occupied.  Said “occupation” doesn’t include spending her time with the guy she likes, just the occupation of countless braincells in the plotting of where to see the crush, what to say to the crush, what the last conversation with the crush actually meant.  Yeah, it sounds just like fifth grade.  I don’t think of Friend Boy as a crush, yet I do spend some amount of brain power pondering our non-relationship, whether I want to actually have one with him, and why he never makes any plans to hang out with me.  Even though I’m not passing him any notes in study hall, I still feel a little giddy when he calls/texts/Tweets/Facebooks me and calls me “babe.”  (Don’t judge me!)  Yeah, I think I’m a little pathetic, and my friends are pathetic too.  You’d think we could see our way to act like we’ve been dating and having sex for a good number of years instead of hiding away our real feelings and reverting to junior-high shorthand to describe romantic potential.  Or are we just hiding from relationships in general?

I’m not a player, I just crush a lot. – Big Punisher, Still Not a Player

Men, it seems, break down the crush nomenclature a little differently. A male Twitter follower described it like this: “if you day dream about sex with her its simple attraction if you day dream [sic] about GFE then its a crush“. Apparently “GFE” means “girlfriend experience“. I’ve never heard that before, which likely explains why I’m still single.  Anyway, this male crushing behavior is about having a relationship, wanting a girlfriend, seeing something happen.  I know I’m looking at a sample-size of one, but take the rap lyrics I quoted above and note that the word “crush” was actually a substitute for “fuck” in the radio edit of Big Pun’s hit song.  So, he’s not a player but he gets a lot of tail.  In this context, crushing is all about the physical relationship vs. the GFE, but it still connotes action, closure, and disclosure.  After all, Pun isn’t going around fucking a bunch of women who don’t know he’s at least interested in them for something.  Which brings me back to why the women I know – myself included – are carrying a torch for any number of people and keeping it a secret?

There was one thing I didn’t show, I love him and he doesn’t know – Zhane, Crush

One of my favorite “where are they now?” groups, Zhane, hits the nail on the head with the lyrics of their aptly-named Crush: “Will he turn around, walk away/Will he leave or will he stay if I tell him?”  Okay, ladies, we’re afraid of what will happen if we fess up to ol’ boy (or ol’ girl) that we have some romantic feelings for them.  We’re some punk-ass bitches, and I use the term with the utmost love and sisterhood.  Rejection feels bad, but so does stewing in your own juices.  I’ve given a lot of lip service to thinking about my feelings and proceeding cautiously into romance, but sometimes I’m just kidding myself and hiding behind the positive self-talk.  If you like a guy, or a girl, or a few of each, who not tell them?  If this crush you’re talking about is really about the significant-other experience (like the dudes say), then get off your ass and do something to make it happen.  If your crush is, as my friend Tanya says, something you need to entertain yourself, figure out why you MUST occupy your mind with fantasies that you don’t want to turn into reality.  I’m serious about this.  Decide if someone is worth your mental energy, then pursue them or let it drop and start thinking about something useful like where to put your 401(k) savings or how SB1070 will impact national immigration policy.  Just stop acting like a teenager, WOMAN-UP already, and go for yours.

Now I’m gonna take my own advice and spend the rest of the day getting my FTP site to work.  My tech issues might be less appealing than thinking about how Friend Boy’s hands would feel on my body, but I’ll definitely have something to show for it when I’m finished.

Today, March 10, is National Women and Girls’ HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD) and while it’s not my usual cause, I’m gonna talk about it. Here are the facts, directly from the CDC:

In 2007, more than [...]]]>

Ok, so it's not a pump, but these Birkenstocks are the only red shoes I have. You get the idea...

Today, March 10, is National Women and Girls’ HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD) and while it’s not my usual cause, I’m gonna talk about it. Here are the facts, directly from the CDC:

In 2007, more than a quarter of diagnoses of HIV infection in the United States were among women and girls aged 13 years and older.

More than 278,000 women and adolescent girls in this country are living with HIV; and almost 94,000 American women and girls with AIDS have died since the epidemic began.

In 2007, for female adults and adolescents, the rate of HIV/AIDS diagnoses for black females was nearly 20 times as high as the rate for white females and nearly 4 times as high as the rate for Hispanic/Latino females.

Then I read this idiocy with Antonio Cromartie of the NY Jets having 7 kids with 6 women in 5 different states.  Of course it’s absurd that the Jets are paying him $500M to clear up his lingering paternity issues, and that will be the subject of another blog post.  But the fact that these 6 women were willing to have unprotected sex with some dude just points out how sexually transmitted diseases are being spread within our community.  The CDC also released this week the alarming spread of herpes in the US, with the rate of infection among black women at 48%.

Don’t sleep on herpes: its a viral infection, treated with the same kinds of drugs (antiretrovirals) that treat AIDS and HIV.  As such, individuals with genital herpes are “two to three times more likely to acquire HIV and they are also more likely to transmit HIV infection to others”, according to Dr. John M. Douglas, Jr. of the CDC.  So just because its “only herpes” doesn’t mean that it will remain as such through the course of your life.

I’ve never been so happy to be celibate in my life, or to have been born at a time when sex without a condom wasn’t really an option.  Generation X was raised with sex education and birth control in schools, and fear of AIDS coinciding with our sexual awareness.  Younger generations are not so lucky, and they’re paying for it with their lives.

What can you do?  EDUCATE yourself and those you love about the spread of HIV/AIDS among girls as young as 13, and on the ways you can prevent the spread of all sexually-transmitted disease. For the love of God, use a condom.  Or choose to abstain from sex, or at least limit your sexual contact to one partner.  Do something.

For more information, check out my Twitter Girl @luvvieIG and “The Red Pump Project”, as they raise awareness about the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls.  If you’re in Chi-Town, the organization’s inaugural fashion show, “Rock the RED: Bold. Fashion. Awareness.” will take place on March 25.

Photo courtesy of [...]]]> Blame it on #WetJamesFranco, an entity that I created solely to deal with my reaction to photographs from the actor James Franco‘s new Gucci campaign.  One of my friends posted a link to Facebook or Twitter or something like that and I haven’t been able to stop drooling since.  Or thinking about sex.

Photo courtesy of http://hollywooddame.com. And God. Thank you both.

Ordinarily I ogle photos of near-naked celebrities for sport.  Just because I’m celibate doesn’t mean I’m dead and/or blind.  And everyone needs eye candy, particularly during the winter months when all you see are people’s bulky outwear and the tips of their noses.  Except for the young fellows in my neighborhood who still insist on showing their thermal underwear under extremely low-slung trousers.  Looking at them isn’t appealing; it just makes me feel cold and sad.  Enter #WetJamesFranco at exactly the right time, all cheekbones, pouty lips, sinewy muscles and clingy t-shirt.  To be perfectly honest, writing this blog with the photo on the left visible is raising my blood pressure.  I’ve always thought the actor James Franco was pretty, and he was very funny on SNL making fun of himself in the very ad campaign currently getting my knickers in a twist.  But there’s nothing like a wet shirt clinging to a man’s perfectly formed pecs to move him from “aw, that’s pretty” to sex on a stick.  #WetJamesFranco has become, to me, an entity completely separate from the actor from whom I’ve never gotten such a strong reaction.  Ok, so his skin looks a little too airbrushed, but the contrast in the black & white film, the textures of the dripping clothes and, well, the wetness have made me a little obsessed with #WetJamesFranco.  Since seeing the photo shown on the left, I have rediscovered a host of feminine stirrings, yearnings, and urges.  I am horny!!! Gulp…

I haven’t seen a naked man in a while, and it really didn’t bother me much. Until now.  I should probably let #WetJamesFranco off the hook a little bit because my brain has been focused on sex, or at least on the connection between sex and dating and relationships.  I’ve got to contend with my attraction to Friend Boy, who I haven’t even kissed let alone seen naked.  Ok, I have seen pictures of Friend Boy in cycling gear – which doesn’t leave much to the imagination – but I don’t think that really counts for much.  My interest in his spandex was much more to rule out unseemly physical defects than to acquire positive visual stimuli, if you know what I mean.  Nevertheless, I’d completely rejected the idea of coming on to Friend Boy, as that behavior has

The full Gucci Sport ad. Let's take a moment to thank James Franco's parents. And God.

always been the point at which my relationships go all pear-shaped.  I’d convinced my conscious mind to conjure nothing more than a hand-holding situation with Friend Boy. Then I see #WetJamesFranco‘s photos and all of a sudden I’m dreaming about Friend Boy and I rolling around on a couch, unable to keep out hands off each other.  If I had cigarettes when I woke up from that dream, I would’ve smoked them.  Yeah, more than one!

You see, here’s what I think is going on:  my brain and my body are actually working together.  I’ve opened up my rational mind to the possibility of relating to someone romantically.  More amazingly, my rational mind doesn’t associate positive emotions with fear and rejection, as has happened in the past.  I can acknowledge that while I may hope for a romantic outcome in my relationship with Friend Boy, I don’t expect it to happen so I can focus on the enjoyment of actually getting to know him without getting all hemmed up in subterfuge.  And because my brain is enjoying itself, and my heart is a little more open than it usually is, my libido is getting ready to follow along.  Thankfully, the libido is not leading the discussion these days, so I can relegate my x-rated activities to REM sleep while maintaining my actual celibacy.  At least for a while.

It has come to my attention that if Friend Boy actually reads this blog, and our relationship takes an undesirable turn, I may no longer feel so positive about myself.  Perhaps, but a therapeutic breakthrough is a breakthrough.  And I’ll always have #WetJamesFranco.

I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive

Y’all know Sade ain’t never lied about a broken heart, and she really nailed it with “Soldier of Love”.  All the sisters and some brothers too, understand what she’s talking about.  Love rolled over your ass like like a wooden pin over Granny’s biscuit dough [...]]]>

I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive

Y’all know Sade ain’t never lied about a broken heart, and she really nailed it with “Soldier of Love”.  All the sisters and some brothers too, understand what she’s talking about.  Love rolled over your ass like like a wooden pin over Granny’s biscuit dough and you feel just as squishy and shapeless.  Or you’ve been used and tossed aside repeatedly like an empty crack vial, thinking you’re just as dirty and useless.  Yep, I’ve been there a few times.  Sometimes it really hurt, sometimes it didn’t even register, and every time I wondered why I didn’t just let the errant hairs grow out of my chin and adopt a houseful of cats.  I must confess that I have gone a fair amount of time without using tweezers.  And, I have stared longingly at the “Crazy Cat Lady” action figure on my bookcase.  Eventually though, I give in, commence to plucking, put the Cat Lady face down on the shelf…and get hit by another grenade in the war of romance.

And now? Well I’m suited up, Lieutenant, put me on the front line.  Okay, I’m not so much ready for battle as sitting in the barracks inspecting my weapon and praying for safety.  I kinda met someone (!) and I could possibly be interested in maybe going on a date with him (!!).  Potentially.  I’ve hung out with this guy – who shall henceforth be known as “Friend Boy” -  exactly twice, and my rational mind has wisely declined to set expectations and engage in unrealistic fantasies.  But somewhere in the hazy recesses of the brain, my emotional mind is telling me to “make a move” on Friend Boy and and go for mine.  When I can’t equivocate her into shutting up, she concocts a scenario in which I tell Friend Boy that I like him, grab him by the ears, and plant one on him.  This dream won’t, will not, come to fruition, which freaks me out a little.

I’ve been torn up inside, I’ve been left behind…I have the will to survive

Since I started dating at 17, I’ve been trying to manipulate men into doing what I want them to do.  I blame my subterfuge on being a late bloomer who was never on the receiving end of the numerous crushes I had on male friends.  I lobbied my first boyfriend into initiating physical contact; I made the first gestures toward holding hands, kissing, making out and he followed willingly.  Those awkward teenage moves got me into relationships through my late 20′s, all of which ended at my bidding.  The boyfriends that pursued me willingly also broke up with me, and broke my heart in the process.  Not to be defeated, I set my sights on the “adult” sections of Craigslist for the kinds of relationships (read: sex only) I thought I could control.  It turns out that no matter how I tried to intellectualize my foray into commitment-free nookie, I couldn’t get into it and I decided to be celibate.  Following said decision came a few weeks in the psych hospital where I learned that the last 16 years of this love warfare have been against myself.  Doing battle with my heart to feel good at any cost.  Entering periodic skirmishes with my mind to escape the sadness, the uneasiness, because I didn’t want to pay attention.  I’ve been out for over a year, and through so much therapy that I catch my negative self-talk in process.  Dialectical behavior therapy is my friend, and I am doing my work to diffuse negative patterns and form alternatives.  Marsha Linehan would be proud.  But I’m still shell-shocked, suffering from mild relationship PTSD, and looking for my new love playbook without sex and manipulation.

I’m at the hinterland of my devotion, I’m in the frontline of this battle of mine but I’m still alive

So back to Friend Boy.  When I met him we engaged in some mild flirting as might transpire between two people who are digging each other.  The last time we saw each other was at a party, and I felt comfortable thinking, “Hey, I like this guy.”  I believe there is some level of interest on his part, though I don’t know for sure.  And when I don’t know something for sure, I get antsy and forget everything I know about being a normal human being.  So I waged an internal war with myself, and there was no clear winner.  I spent 1/3 of the time playfully ignoring Friend Boy and another 30% of the time touching him too much and looking at him (I believe) like I had stars in my eyes.  I spent the remainder of the evening mentally mounting a familiar offensive to corner him in the kitchen; then I’d catch myself and literally sit on my hands and/or turn away.  Crazy much?  Why yes I am, thank you for asking.  I’m kinda hoping that Friend Boy was so enamored with me that I didn’t seem that erratic, or that he was thinking about something else and didn’t notice.

I will see Friend Boy again in a few days, and I will behave in a manner befitting a celibate, late 30′s woman who has a handle on her own sanity regardless of the silly things she sometimes does.  For all I know, Friend Boy is a sane, late 30′s man trying desperately to step over the casualties in his own relationship past.  I’m pretty sure I could love with that.