Thoughts Internal: Opus II

Ahhh...it's been a long time, since I left you, without a strong BLOG to read to....

Yes, I went there!! I took a HOT Rakim line and made it slightly corny but that's what I do from time to time: make hot shit corny! So sue me!!!

I've been away from the blog world for several reasons. Well, I got a significant other and she's been taking up a LOT of my time. Also, I haven't been in a purely drunken stupor that usually inspires me to blog. And, there hasn't been anything truly bizarre to either piss me off or get my muse up off her ass!!!

Well...all that is about to change (except for the significant other...we're doing just fine).

*** WARNING ***

I'll warn you now. Some of this blog will be controversial and either incite a riot or some great HONEST replies from all of my Myspace friends who take the time to read my rantings.

*** WARNING OVER ***

Let's start with something fairly light. GIRLFRIEND vs. FRIEND vs. LADY!

So, me and my lady (as she will be referred to throughout this blog) head up for a cookout in Maryland. It's an old friend of mine from UD and he was turning 38. What better age to mark than by a cookout with family and friends :-) Right?!?!? Yeah! In any event, I had plans that weekend to Dj but I gave up that date leaving me free that Saturday. Out of the blue, my lady says, "why don't we head up to your friend's cookout this weekend and maybe stop by your parent's house." I'm thinking, "sure, why not. We can even go to church with my parents since my Mom's been wanting us to go." (SIDENOTE: She has already met my parents so this aint a big deal)

We get to church and after service my mother's introducing her. The introduction goes like this. "This is Michael's friend...." That struck me as odd since I was always used to hearing my mother say girlfriend. (or maybe I THOUGHT I heard the girl part) Well, the brain juices got to churning. And that begged the question:

WHEN DO YOU START REFERRING TO YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER AS YOUR GIRLFRIEND (OR BOYFRIEND) VERSUS YOUR WOMAN (OR LADY) OR MAN (OR GUY)?

Am I too old to have a girlfriend? Surely she couldn't refer to her as my fiancé. Perhaps folks would have looked at my mother strangely had she called this, clearly adult, woman a girl. I don't know. It's not a DEEP issue for sure, but I wanted to get some other perspectives. When you're dating someone, how do you refer to them to friends and family? Hell, that begs another question: WHEN WILL THE TERM 'BOO' GO AWAY?!!?!? Little kids are called Boo. Grown men are sometimes called Boo. Ghosts say that shit when they want to scare you. Is that REALLY supposed to be some kind of term of endearment?

Sidetrack...I've had some interesting nicknames for girlfriends. There was Boompi. That got used twice. Please don't tell them. There was smoochie. Sweetie, which is now a default term used for any female. And, dumplin! Where do these colorful pet names come from? Eh...just a thought.

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So, I'm listening to a song by Jay-Z (yeah, don't tell anyone) and he's talking about how 30's the new 20. Then I am watching some show where folks are getting interviewed on the street. And they're talking about how 30's the new 20. Some have even said that 40's the new 30. If this is the case, what are the 20's? The new teens? My lady is a 20-something. Yup, don't tell anybody, especially after I dogged the 20-somethings out in a prior blog. If I'm in my 20's, is she in her teens? That just sounds gross!

The TV story went on to say how folks in their 30's aren't behaving like "typical" 30-somethings. We're going to clubs and staying out late. We're buying homes but not settling down. With all this disposable income (sike), we're buying the latest toys from ipods to playstations to segways. We're dressing in the latest casual wear and we have no intentions on giving up our Toys R Us kid status. Is this true? From what I have gathered from my time in 30-something land (6+ years deep in it), we are under constant self-scrutiny. We're obsessed with anachronistic comparisons to our parents. We have a strong phobia of marriage and we've made debt our new best friend. Take all that and add a little dab of general neurosis and you've got the makings for a NUT JOB!!! Plain and simple! People in their 30's have way too much ridiculousness in their lives to be running around as if they were still 20-something.

Let's think about it. In your 20's, you were carefree. You had your whole life ahead of you. If you were fortunate, you went to college, got a decent job, and started living the "good life." You were feeling a little more independent from the stranglehold of parental influence (sike). You may have purchased your first house or moved into your first furnished-by-you apartment. Life seemed grand, full of hope and wonderful possibilities. But then...just around the corner...the reality smackdown of the 30's hit you like a ton of bricks. Those pains in the morning when you got out of bed. That slight bulge down below that wasn't JUST that bulge down below! Those Bally's commercials felt like a loud innuendo ringing in your ear constantly as your scarfed down another Krispy Kreme donut. Those commercials that asked if you were born between the years blank and blank seemed to be getting closer and closer to YOUR RANGE. And, with all that, you're (I'm) supposed to believe that I'm really living my 20's all over again?!?!!? METHINKS NOT!

My female friends who are in their 30's will tell you quickly that they're NOT in their 20's. They (most of them) don't dress like the 20-somethings nor act like the 20-somethings. Now the men, they're a different story. Most are still chasing women like they did when they were in their 20's (I was one of them). Most are thinking about marriage like it's a distant consideration like they did in their 20's. And, some are even dressing like the 20-something men!!! GOD HELP THEM!!! That was CERTAINLY not me!!! Long white tee's and shorts that can aptly substitute for pants (to me) are not my habillement de choix (hope my translator got that right).

Oh well, any thoughts?

***

Well, now the controversial shit. It's amazing that this country is well over 200 years old and race is STILL an issue. Hell, if we think about when the first folks got here (ummm...not the native Americans that were already here), it's about 400 years old. I'd really like someone to tell me how it can be a worldwide phenomena. That's another issue though. Nope, this discussion is about something a little more tangible: dating white (or dating black, if you're white). I was having a very spirited conversation with a friend about brothas dating white women and sistas dating white men. She was not having any of that!! "We have a hard enough time finding a good man without having to compete against the white girls too." I've heard the sistas decry "Fuck that shit!!" They aint having it! When ever I'd go out with this friend and we'd see a "mixed" couple (mainly a brotha with a white woman), her face would get all twisted up. I'd tell her, "what does it matter? You're out with me!" But she always declare, "I hate that shit." Or, "I'm upset for the sistas who aint out with a black man." I couldn't get her to let it go. She'd inevitably ask me how I felt about white men dating black women. I didn't like it either. I had different reasons though. I'd save it for later, but I guess I should say them now while they're fresh in my mind. You know I'm getting old.

My goddaughter's mother, a very old and dear friend of mine, started dating a white guy. I hit the ceiling. I was LIVID. My objection? I said to her, "I don't want my young (at the time) goddaughter getting the impression that black men aint shit." My whole ideology at the time was that black kids need to see black family units with a black mother and a black father. Mix up that equation and all hell will break loose. Again, this was my thinking at that time (almost 10+ years now). I stopped speaking to her for a few years because I couldn't get over it (or maybe myself). So fast forward, I'm talking to my friend and she's going on and on about the black family and how its destruction is the cause of so many of our problems today. These kids need a family with a strong black mother and a strong black father! PERIOD!!! I agree with her to an extent. Kids need a mother and a father. No doubt. No matter what color/race they are. Family is important. But what difference does it make if the mother is white and the father is black or vice versa. Nope, she wasn't trying to hear that either! If we are to correct the ills of black folks, we need to first start with that basic structure: black man, black woman. Now, I have to interject here. In this conversation, I was playing the devil's advocate. A lot of what she was saying, I agreed with and believed, but I wanted to make the conversation interesting. We'll get to MY VIEWS later.

So, here's what I usually here from sistas. "Black men get successful and they go running to a white woman!" I won't use the colorful terms that they usually say. "Why is it that y'all get a degree and forget about the black women that got you through it all?" Now, there's a good question. I've seen, on TV, many cases where a brotha is a CEO or a ball player or big time attorney and there's Susie Sally Homemaker on his arm: blond hair, blue eyes, and proud! My friend went on to talk about how white women specifically go after successful black men. My rebuttal was, "why would they go after unsuccessful men?" There are obvious differences between sistas and white women but I refuse to believe that sistas aren't going after successful brothas as well! So she remarked, "yeah, and y'all end up picking the white girl!" I had to think about a comeback to that one. And I got to thinking back to when I moved to Delaware....

I left the blackness of Philly to live in the mostly white environment of Wilmington. My school was about 70% white (if not more). Now, I'm around white girls and black girls. Whereas I had no particular affection or affinity for white women in Philly, I began developing one in Delaware. Why? I was around them all the time! I was in all AP classes. How many sistas were there? 1, maybe 2. Who wore the short skirts, usually? White girls. Who were so "friendly" and touchy-feely? The white girls. When I left for college, I was around them again. However, UD had a something else going on: a strong racial divide. With the KKK headquarters only 30 miles aways, skinheads starting to organize and just plain old racial bullshit (that happens whenever and wherever), there wasn't too much "mixing" going on. Then I got to Charlottesville. VA...the cradle of the confederacy. And, the FEVER was rampant. Tommy J's university seemed to embrace interracial coupling. The local population seemed to be totally immersed in it. It was OKAY! So, in my upwardly mobile position as a grad student, was I inclined to fuck/date/marry a white woman? They're in abundance. If my theory (oh yeah, that was a theory I was trying to develop with all that talk about high school girls) was to hold up that black men end up, somehow, surrounded by white (or non-black) women when they get in "certain" higher positions and that's why they may gravitate toward them, I needed to show how I too was so moved or be able to show some other examples!

I couldn't. Really.

That got me thinking about another perspective. Something really simple. We can't say that all black men of 'higher substance' prefer white women. We can't say that white women are out to get them some chocolate, at all costs. We can't say that any more than we can say that white men pursue black women because of some inborn desire that hearkens back to the good old days of slavery. Nope. Maybe some men have a preference for certain women! I brought up this example: dating someone who's not college-educated.

Sista bitch and moan about the number of good/worthy/eligible black men. So, I say, "most of y'all limit your scope right away!" If there are a 100 eligible black men and 90 of them are non-college-degree-holders, then you're down to just 10. Of that 10, which ones are attractive to you (on any level). As a black man, I have (had) it easy right? I could pick and choose, but what I used to say was this. Just because you have 1000 to pick from, that doesn't mean that 1000 are good/worthy/eligible. What it means is that I have a little more wiggle room in the compromise department. Whereas a sista wouldn't look twice at a dude with bad breath (if the ratio was in their favor), now they have to think about that dude (and getting him some eclipse gum). Men, however, don't have to make such concessions. Bad breath, NEXT! Kids, NEXT! No college degree, NEXT! And the list goes on. We're not going to get into a pissing contest about who's got it worse. Women do, black women especially.

Back to the topic....

I guess I want to know a couple of things. I have black and white female friends in this Myspace circle. I'd like to hear some honest answers or discussion. We're all adult and we know how to DISCUSS without being RUDE! Why do some black men end up with white women when they're successful? Also, why can't we consider that some of these same black men dated white women BEFORE they were successful. Kobe (asshole) married a woman that he'd been dating since high school. He didn't just pick her up once he got a Lakers jersey! I have heard on MANY occasions that sistas end up with white men out of pure desperation. Is that true? I'm sure my white brothers have other redeeming qualities beyond being the ONLY thing left. I've heard things like, "white men treat you better." I've heard, "that myth about them having small dicks aint true!" (well, DUH, it's a MYTH) I have friends who are fed up with brothas and "their games" and have moved on to the greener pastures of white men.

What I find interesting is that this phenomena is mainly a white-black thing. Chinese folks stick to their own. Indian (east not native american) folks stick to their own. Hell, Mexicans stick to their own. My friend made a point that these groups are doing well because they had/have that central structure: a chinese/mexican/indian mother and a chinese/mexican/indian father. If we, as black people, are to get ourselves together we need to start there! I do agree, wholeheartedly, but a part of me wants to remind her and others that WE don't have a similar history or background like these folks. We have over 400 years of slavery, not just oppression, but SLAVERY ingrained in us. That shit is ENCODED! Our thinking and the thinking that we pass on to our children, in many ways, was placed there over 400 years ago. That's sad! Let's look at our other black brothas and sistas. Ethiopians marry Ethiopians. Egyptians marry Egyptians. Nigerians (tend to) marry Nigerians. Ghanaians tend to marry...well you get the point. In some cases, these groups pass down very strong objections to marrying outside of the race/group/color. Why is it that we have such a big problem with it here? Which is right?

Well, I've done a brain dump and I apologize if some of this made NO sense whatsoever or if I lost you (or my point) at times. My blogs have never come with a disclaimer of lucidity, brevity, or consistency. It is what it is!

Oh yeah, go check out your boy Dj Izm Friday (8/3/07) and Saturday (8/4/07) at Club R2/Rapture on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, VA. I had to do the shameless plug!!!!

***

Ha...I thought I was done! I'm not. I haven't said a thing about the joys of dating again (and some of the not-joys). I guess I've never been one to jump and shout about my dating situation when my friends (majority female) are single and looking. I feel like it's rubbing their noses in it, but that's why there's the option to NOT READ ANY FURTHER!!!!

Having had a 5 year break from dating, I'd have to say that I'm enjoying being IN IT again. I've blogged about dating (monogamously) before. I've talked about what's good about it and what can be bad about it, so I don't want to repeat myself. Instead, I'd like to talk about the funny things (good and bad) that go along with dating (for me). Most of these observations are probably ONLY relevant to ME but there are a few that are universal. Let's do one of those first.

ONCE IN A RELATIONSHIP, OLD FLAMES COME OUT OF NOWHERE AND FOLKS START TO LOOK AT YOU DIFFERENTLY!!!

I could go to the SAME bar/club for 4 years as a single man and not get HALF the attention that I get NOW having a lady on my arm. All the cuties in the Ville manage to somehow START coming out when I (you) get someone special. You could be, oh I don't know, at a bar in New York City and get flirted with (on) constantly by people you wouldn't normally receive such attention from. Random women walking down the street seem to wink at you (in their own way) more when you're with your woman. I'm not going to ask WHY IS THAT. I know why. I'm just making an observation.

Folks with whom I haven't spoken in years have managed to "find" my number all of a sudden. I can't begin to tell you how many phone calls and emails I received the DAY after I became a plural :-) I'm talking about years of NO COMMUNICATION and BLAMMMM, there they are. It's like dogs catching a scent. SNIFF SNIFF..."uh oh, Michael's not single anymore!" Too funny!!!

When you've been single for a long time, you forget some basic things. For instance, weekends aren't just for YOU anymore :-) I've never been a hang out with the guys every night kind of person. I usually socialize with one dude and we hit the streets hard every now and then. The rest of the time, I'm indulging one of my hobbies. Get a woman and that changes slightly. Time to start thinking about DATE things to do. This all seems rather banal but you'd be surprised. When you're single, you definitely get in a mindset. Your time is your own. Sharing? HA!! What's that?!?!? What's less obvious is how much time you'll spend with your SINGLE friends. For a myriad of reasons, you find yourself out with the single set a LOT LESS. One, they're out looking for some trouble to get into. Your days of that are OVER. Two, they're probably going to tire of hearing about your adventures with your ONE woman. And lastly, your "plus one" will most likely be hemming up most of your time anyway :-) But, does that mean that you'll be relegated to either one-on-one dates with your mate OR the obligatory double-date? *sigh* Are these ever fun? You and the guy chat about your women and the women chat about the latest sale at Macy's. LOL! WHOA...was that sexist?!?!?! Down boy...down!

Dating someone significant means that damn near EVERYBODY wants to ask about or bring up marriage. It comes up so frequently that I have to wonder if most folks are sincere. Let me explain.

Since a lot of my recent friends (as of 5-10 years) may have not seen me in a relationship and have a strong impression that I'm not the "relationship type," they keep that skeptical "this won't last very long" look on their faces and in their speech. "So, when's the wedding," they ask with a loud doubtful undertone. "Oh, so you're in love now," they quip as if the thought is so far-fetched that they'd sooner believe in martians invading us. Every now and then, you get a sincere inquiry. "So, are you happy?" Now, that's a sincere straightforward question. "So, are you happy now" sounds more like that bullshit I was talking about earlier. Why would I be happy NOW as if I weren't happy before and I only got in a relationship to be HAPPY! Happiness doesn't follow from the instantiation of a relationship!!!! *sigh*

I'd rather folks didn't ask or comment. Shit, just say hello to me! I tire quickly of the pretenders who want to know "where's your girl at" or "how's married life?" Give me a break. I aint married. My lady is at where she's at! Nuff said on that subject.

Overall, I wouldn't want to draw a picture of complete and utter bliss. A relationship is what you make it. I've always known it to be hard work that's very fulfilling and rewarding with the RIGHT PERSON! Single life is/was fun. Dating life is (and has always been) great! I don't knock either one, but for those who are dying from a burning curiosity, YES, I'm VERY HAPPY! Are there wedding bells in the future? Well, of course there are. Are they ringing for me and my new love? Only time will tell...but that wouldn't be a bad thing ;-)

Goodnight and Peace!