Head Above Water

The past few summers that I have had have been generally unproductive, so now that I am part of a gym, I have decided to try to teach myself how to swim.
For the past two months, I have nearly drowned in three feet of water everyday, dipping my head in the water and losing my footing, or attempting to float and flipping myself backward. I have nearly choked to death on my own spit and chlorine, and at one point, actually thought I was going blind, for I had been in the pool for five hours and my vision was beginning to look cloudy.
I say all this to say that yesterday, I pretty much mastered doggy paddling under water. And yes, I can only do three quick strokes before I come up gasping and coughing for air, but it is a vast improvement from last week, not to mention a year ago. Unlike other overweight people, I did not stay from the pool due to body issues. I stayed from the pool because I have a legitimate fear of deep bodies of water. And forget the beach! Flesh-eating mammals live in that water. So every summer, I pretty much stayed in the house while all my friends skipped to the pool in their bikinis.
Needless to say, I have been proud of myself for how well I have been doing, and my progress has got me thinking about some other things I have wanted to do that I have been too scared to really consider. The biggest thing on this list is starting my own business.
Those who have known me since elementary school knows that I have always wanted to start my own magazine. I do not really know the steps I would take, but I think about it all the time. I even believe that I have the skill to make it work. Sadly, my fear of failing is even worse than my old fear of water.
Yet, the more I go to the pool, the more I see myself scribbling down ideas for issue topics and cover ideas. As I get closer and closer to achieving my summer goal, I feel that I already know what my fall goal is going to be.
And yes, it's scary. If this dream that I have harbored since my youth fails, I can't even imagine how devastated I will be. But how do you know what you can do until you try? What is the old saying: "Ain't nothin' to it but to do it?"
So do it I shall, with my breath held and my feet a kickin.'
But until it's time for this Fall goal to be put into action, you can find me in the L.A. Fitness pool. Today I shall master the backstroke...or at least attempt to.

The "Trick" and the Truth

So the other night I was talking to "Sorta Beau," you know, the guy I was talking to who got some other chick pregnant? After our usual every other night hour phone cake session, I came to a conclusion: every man has a thing. And not thing as in penis, because they all have that, or at least should have that, but thing as in the little sweet personality quirk that sets them apart from other guys. Sorta Beau's thing? Telling half-truths of course!
First, let me start off by stating that I am a journalist. My job is to ask questions. I have been trained to filter people's answers to these questions in order to get the truth. So understand that when I asked Sorta Beau questions, I weened through the answers, and concluded that he was telling me the truth. However, after our last convo, I see that this guy has been able to get over on me by not giving the full story, or the full answer, usually leaving out the most important part.
Example?
Me (Late May)-So why did you and your fiance (his ex) break up?
Sorta: She was cheating on me...
Me(Mid June)-Say, since your ex cheated on you, have you been tested for STDs and stuff?
Sorta: Yep. I came back negative. My tests results were good.
Me(Late July)-Since you got this new girl pregnant(who is not his ex-fiance as lead earlier to believe, but another girl) have you been tested recently?
Sorta: Oh yeah, did I tell you about that?
Me: About what?
Sorta: About how a while back my ex called and asked me if I had cheated on her while we were together?
Me: No. Why did she ask you that?
Sorta: Because she got tested and it came back positive.
Me: Positive?! For what!
Sorta: Oh, for trick.
Half -truths. See what I mean?
"Trick." I had never heard of it, but apparently, it's a trip. Trichomonas is its Christian name. Google it. It's a fun, toe-curling read.
Can I just say that I have truly dodged a bullet here. Thank God for abstinence! Who the hell knows what other health issues this dude may or may not have that he wasn't going to tell me until he felt it mattered, like after we were "together"?
What is the lesson that the naive city girl learned from this situation? Never fully believe what a man tells you, because you don't know what he's not telling you. Don't allow a man to "trick" you, pun intended.

Crab in the Barrel

Ah, your girlfriends. If you do not have them, then who do you have? I have known many a girl who has coughed up that line about not wanting female friends because they are bratty and chatty and annoying. I have also found in my personal experiences that these same girls are usually the same ones that get ran through by their circle of supposedly less bratty, chatty, and annoying male buddies. However, these girls are right about one thing: girls are naturally jealous creatures.
I do not care who you are, the type of girl who watches Sex in the City reruns in her Gap pajamas or the type who paints her nails black, streaks her hair purple, and listens to The Cool Kids on replay, it is hard for you to be happy for your girls when something good, especially a man, comes her way.
Where is this coming from? Well, my friend Essie called me tonight to rant about how her best friend was totally pouring haterade on the fact that she is going to visit her little phone beau. Apparently, he is flying her out there. And her best friend, being a girl, responded to the exciting news by hanging up on her.
Now, many of us chicas would not have responded quite so harshly. We would have at least had the decency to be fake happy. But when it comes to guys, unless we are currently entertaining one ourselves, we are totally sour grapes on our homegirls.
What is the solution? I can not say. But I have a theory on the root of the problem: perhaps our irritation with homie hook-ups lies in the FACT that good men are soooo hard to come by. Two of your girls are beaued up. Why not you? You hang with and look like them; same values. Why are you alone?
Whatever the reason, you end up bitter. At this point in life, most women my age can swallow it and keep trekking, keeping their fingers crossed that they find someone, but eventually you become the girl that hangs up on friends who have good news while you are at home watching Waiting to Exhale.
So how do I stop from being the crab in the barrel when it comes to celebrating the new relationships of my girls? I just know that it will one day happen for me...and I fight the urge to hang up the phone.

The Rules

Many of my closest friends, especially on a collegiate level, have been boys.
They are good listeners, attentive, adorably oblivious, and funny. The beauty of my platonic boy-girl relationships is that they are just that. There is none of that thick, icky, yucky, sticky emotional goo on top, just the cake that is a meaningful friendship...well, at least not on their end.
Yet sadly, many of my little friendships have come to a screeching halt when the boy involved finds a not so platonic girl, usually equipped with glossed lips and a fat butt.
I am not against my male buds finding beaus. It's bound to happen. What bugs me is the new rules that come along with it.
Let's create an imaginary boy buddy. Let's call him Harry. You and Harry are the hetero Will and Grace, inseparable. However, once Harry meets Sally, you best believe that you will go from talking to Harry everyday to solely hearing from him in between fucks. And when you do talk to him, he will go on and on about how Sally is the best thing since over-the-counter yeast infection medicine.
Then you don't want to call Harry because you don't want to bud into his Sally time. And then you don't want to rub Sally wrong because then she will tell Harry to cut you off. And he won't cut you off...officially. He will text you when Sally goes to pee or is looking for her car keys. But he can not call you, because if she sees your number in his call history, she won't have sex with him. It's a mess.
But as a professional boy best friend, even these unbelievably irritating things don't get to me. I guess in the back of your mind, you figure Sally will meet Henry and dump Harry, and then things will go back to normal.
And sometimes that happens. Yet this year, a couple of times, I have been introduced to a new scenario: When Harry marries Sally. I have found that this situation has no rules. Once they tie the knot, unless you are a mutual friend of them both, which you probably won't be, you can kiss Harry bye-bye.
I don't know what bothers me most about this: how easy it is for friendships you assume are tight to just evaporate, or the possibility that someone you considered a friend 'til the end was not?
So I guess this is the question: what are platonic female friends to males? Are they actually friends, or are they homies with vaginas you keep around for support until you find a girlfriend? I can only go into these friendships as I do every other one, wanting to get to know the other person and wanting to make a connection of some sort. However, I guess another boy buddy I once had in high school said it best, before he dumped me for some cheerleader with glossed lips and a fatbutt: " 'Vagina your getting regularly is always going to overrule friend vagina you are not interested in." As grim as this is, I guess I would have to agree. Perhaps the goal is to be the regular vagina and not the friend one. Is it possible to be both? This I will tell you when I find out, hopefully sooner than later before another boy buddy jumps the broom.

Y PDA?

Can I just say that I HATE public displays of affection?
There is truly, truly nothing more gross and disgusting and obnoxious to me than seeing couples kiss and hug in public. Call me a hater, but I could give two fricks about how in love some random couple is to the point that they have to stop every five steps and slob each other down!
My friend Chloe says that I am bitter, and I wouldn't enjoy hanging out with her and her Latin lover because they are a total PDA couple. Bitter? Whatever. It's gross.
Last weekend I went bowling, yes bowling, with the usual suspects: Tasia and Dev, and one of their buddies. She is a nice enough girl, but she and her boyfriend got on my nerves. Whenever she would get up to bowl, she would have to come back and sit on his lap, as if there was nowhere else to sit. Then, at the Waffle House afterward, they were all hanging on each other. Riddle me this: what is so romantic about the bowling alley and the dingy Waffle House that a couple can not give each other two inches to breathe? ANNOYING!
No, I do not have a boyfriend. But if I did, I feel that there would be other ways to let the world know he was mine, like holding his hand or even just talking to him, besides PDA. It is just tacky to me. Why can't displays of love be pushed into the bedroom with everything else that was once sacred in this society? Why do innocent and yes single bystanders have to be smothered by and subjected to the random love of passersby and even worse, friends?
I'm sure that this makes me sound even more bitter than even I intended, but hey, it's how I feel.

Baby Mama Drama

Okay, so I had been talking to this guy for like six months on and off. I met him at Mardi Gras. Nice guy. Dark. Happy face, like a teddy bear.

Although I like to think of myself as cold and scorned, I found myself really responding to him. What can I say? I liked being liked back. I liked receiving cute texts and talking on the phone until early in the morning. Oh, and I liked being liked back. Did I mention that? What a dramatic difference from being some guys issue solver, I will tell you that.

Well, when we first started talking, I asked him the two essentials: do you have a girlfriend and do you have children? The answers to both questions were no. He had an ex, but she had like ruined him and he was ready to move on. I have to say, that was music to my ears.

To make a long story short, we had not talked for a while when he dropped back into my life, a long enough while that I decided to ask him that two essentials again. This time, his answer was not as cut and dry as it had been.

Apparently, he went out with a buddy to a club where his ex was. They drank together, then he woke up the next morning at his home, not remembering the part where he had sex with the ex, consequently getting her pregnant.

Could someone tell me how to feel here? I feel like I was cheated on, but I was in one of those titless situations that I actually warn people against, and now look what happened.

I will tell you the emotion that overpowers me: confusion. I am not really mad, because I learned early on that sometimes men do shitty things. I am confused as to how you fuck someone and not remember. I am confused as to how you can claim to really like a person, whether you are technically together or not, and just fuck someone else.

So where does this leave me? Sadly, I still like him. I like the attention. But now he is like at a distance in my mind. It's like I like him, but now instead of being the nice guy in my mind that he was, he is just another nigga who did something stupid to me, and that makes me sad. But what are you gonna do?

A Tight Situation

So my friend Bells calls me and tells me that she wants to have sex with her boyfriend, thus ending her 26 years of virginity, however, there is one problem: her jay-jay is too tight and her boyfriend's penis won't go in. It's the stuff sweet dreams are made of.
Ironically, she tells me this like two months after I saw an episode of Tyra about this very topic. Apparently, some of the women on the guest panel were so vaginally tight that they couldn't even wear tampons, forget having sex with their boyfriends and husbands. One guest had been married to her husband for two years and could not do it, so she had to get silicone injections into her vagina like 40 times!
This is what I thought about when Bells told me the news. It kind of gave me the chills. I mean, you save yourself thinking about the magical time that you will get to have sex, and then that time comes, and you cannot perform! What a cruel joke.
So of course, I really didn't know what to tell her. She said it was uncomfortable, and every time it was time to do it, it was just too painful to finish. She decided that she has to loosen up. How you may ask? By buying a dildo and using it on herself.
Man, until she told me about all of this, I had not really thought about the humility that goes into having sex. I mean, is this the reward you get for waiting for love: silicone injections and dildos?
Well, I guess there is a price to pay for everything. In this case, no pain, no pop. All I have to say is that if something similar happens to me my first time, I will take it as the last true sign that sex is not for me and live a lonely life that lacks intimacy, you know, like I always dreamed of.

Tossing and Turning

I can not sleep.
So I roll around on the floor of my room like a beached whale and sit up every three minutes to catch snapshots of reruns of The Fresh Prince and Family Matters, too tired to even think about going to sleep.
What's wrong? Well, for starters, I don't think that I will ever get into grad school because I did so horribly on the GRE, thus I am distressed about not going to school this fall and having to stay at home yet another long, annoying, miserable semester. And since we're going down this road, I also have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Yes, I write for a magazine, but I feel like I should be doing more and making more and trying more!
Then there are my reflections on love lost. That is enough to keep me awake forever. I go from being sleepy to being pissed, thinking of all the fastballs dudes have pulled on me. I think about the boys I can't have. The boys that didn't want me. The boys I now realize that I overlooked. The boys who will soon realize that they are men that are going to have new and improved and shitty things to do to me. God, it's so distressing that I can feel my eyes going bloodshot.
I also feel that everyone around me is moving forward and I am just standing still. Let it be marriage or new jobs, I feel like everyone is growing up and I am mentally like fourteen.
I'm tired or whining all the time, but I don't what to do. I'm tired!
Well, just had to get that off my chest. Now I'm going to watch a late night episode of King of the Hill.

The Never-Healing Story

Could anybody tell me how long it takes to truly heal from a crush?
Well, my story is similar to that of any young girl's these days: chub falls for scruffy, blunt, yet lovable character, scruffy pretends to like her back, at least, according to chub, scruffy pulls the plug, chub is devastated, chub "gets over it," chub and scruffy skip into the sunset enjoying a Dawson's Creek-like relationship. It's the stuff fairytales are made out of really.
So I, a.k.a chub, move to Atlanta and begin my young adult life as a budding young journalist in the city of Coca -Cola and nickel bags, while scruff stays behind to continue his education. He is never too far from chub's mind. They are friends.
Where am I going with this?
I thought I would give you background before I jumped into it.
It has been two years. I am still in Atlanta. He is still in school. He has had a girlfriend and I did not freak out. I was actually happy because of course, I was "over" him. He broke up with his girlfriend and I was genuinely sad because I am his "friend." Besides the occasional eye roll I allotted our past, I thought everything was good until I got shitted on. I will tell you about that soon.
After the shit affair, I could not stop thinking about him, the first guy who I feel really, really did me wrong, and I found that I was not mad about my current situation but I was steaming about what happened two years ago.
I was mad because I felt played. I was mad because I allowed myself to get played again, even though my eyes were open. Scruff was not involved, yet I felt he was responsible, and the circus from two years past kept replaying in my mind.
Question: how long does it take to heal after you are done wrong? It has been two years already! Am I always going to revert back when someone does me wrong in the future? Or is it deeper than that? Am I just not over Scruff? Can you ever really get over someone or do you just have to drag the heartache with you wherever you go?
I'm sure you were not expecting me to know the answers, because I don't. All I know is that I see him in the men that I am attracted to, and when I smell gross men's body oils or see a packed parking lot at the Mosque near my house on Friday's the wounds on my heart reopen and blossom wide like sunflowers.
Corny, huh? Oh well, was never good at analogies, but the fact still remains that I don' t know how to feel. If I don't get "over" it soon, I won't be able to feel anything at all when it comes to relationships, and although that would be easy, it's not what I want.

Playing House

When I was in kindergarten, the teacher sent home a letter to my mother telling her to buy me a bra before I came back to school because my huge boobs were distracting the other kids in the class. By the second grade, I was already in women's shoes, and by the third grade up until college, I was either the tallest girl or tallest person in my class. I say this to say that I have always developed faster than my peers.
So why the Hell, may I ask, am I developing at a slow pimps pace on the relationship front, a good 13 years behind the people I know my age?
Today I was surfing Facebook and was generally disgusted by the never-ending pictures of everyone I went to school with who is now in like one of those baby marriage relationships. Looking at all the pics of these couples joined at the hip at the zoo and in their kitchens and at the mall and so on and so on caused me to log out for like the first time in God knows how long. Looking at the displays of syrupy sweet happiness was spiraling me into madness.
I remember a time when it was hip to be single. Of course, I was five at the time but I remember all the women around me talking about their fun single lives. Now, everyone is in a mad dash to link with someone, and not in a casual way, but for real, for real. And of course, those single sistahs from my childhood are surfing internet dating sites crying with their fingers crossed.
Examples? Well, I have two friends that are in long distance relationships: my buddy Matt and my bestest Haynes. And these are not like the ones from freshman year that everyone was allegedly in. They are actually faithful to the other party involved.
My friend Quinny recently moved in with his girlfriend, a move that I feel has scootched him one inch closer to the altar. And numerous other friends I have are on on their way to the altar. And seriously, not like in elementary school when a boy bought you a cookie and you were married for a week.
I want to be happy for these people, but since I am a closet hater by design, I simply can not be, and only because I do not know where this leaves me. As much as I like being independent, I do not want to join the class of '84 on Match.com!
Yes, I know that I am still young and that I technically "still have time," but I don't want to blink and look around and be the only person in the group without somebody. I don't want to be that friend that is always getting invited to the cookout because someone's single cousin is in town.
Fo-Fum. Why complain about something that I can't change at the moment, right? I may not have a man, but I have other exciting stuff going on. I have a pretty swingin' social life if I do say so myself. As a matter of face, my friend Kelly invited me to her 4th of July cookout. Let's keep our fingers crossed:)

Fear and Loafing in L.A.

This is a festive tale about a chubby girl who decided to go to L.A. with thirty-two dollars for a weekend to go to the BET Awards.
Well, luckily my first hotel had free breakfast. I would take that food to my room to also have for lunch, so that way I only had to buy dinner. Luckily, there was a Taco Bell and a McDonald's right next door.
I had no rental car which is fine, because I can not drive. So I had to take the gross, gross, gross, and dirty Los Angeles transit to the Shrine Auditorium to pick up my credentials and to attend the awards. Man, I thought I had seen some harsh neighborhoods in the past. People were living in some of the worst shit holes I had ever seen. I spent the rides with my head down, listening to my fellow riders curse out their boyfriends on the phone and talk about how easy it is to the rob the grocery store.
So I'd calculated the bus rides would cost 10 dollars. However, after the show, I looked in my wallet to see that I was fifty cents short to get back. So I had to ask what I was pretty sure was a pimp for some change. He gave me thirty-five cents. Then, when I transferred buses, a kind spirited drunk who had the must of ten men and beaded chin hair gave me fifteen cents so that I could get back to the hotel.
The next day, as I shared with you, the plane engine blew up, so the airline put me up at the Westin that almost would not let me check in because I did not have a credit card they could hold for incidentals. Once I checked in, I went to McDonald's and overdrafted my account just to get a McChicken and fries for dinner.
Living meal to meal was kind of fun this weekend, but I never ever want to try it again in L.A.

The MJ Effect

So on Monday, I was on this huge plane coming back to Atlanta and we were about to take off when the engine exploded.
At first, the pilot lied and said that it was a blown tire. Then three seconds later after he called the technician, he announced that the engine exploded and that we had to get off the plane.
If I could have only taken a picture of the looks of the other passengers when they heard that engine go bust. As with any flight, the passengers of the flight came from all walks of life. But on Monday they all wore the same expression: a mixture of fear and this other look that read "Please God, kill my neighbor and not me!"
After I got off of the plane I was so shaken. If the plane would have taken off, we all would have been toast. That second as I stood in LAX with my laptop bag and purse after leaving the plane, I realized that I could have died. That that would have been it. That moment as I aimlessly began to follow the other passengers to the information desk, I could have either been burning to death or already dead, my soul taking a comfortable stroll to Hell where liars and people with lustful hearts such as myself reside after they kick the can.
Once I was in the information line, I began to call and text my friends to tell them what happened and of course, only one person texted me back. Later they would call me and tell me that they were in class or at work or taking a shit or whatever they were doing that was so time-consuming that they couldn't answer the goddamn phone. And they would have still been doing that task after I was dead. As I waited for my turn for a flight agent to give a rubber apology for what happened, I realized that had I had died, life would have gone on. Life will go on after I die. The people closest to you will get over it, and some of them won't give a shit. I don't know. It's something that you always know, but it hit me Monday like a ton of bricks at LAX in the information line.
After getting the information on my next flight, I seriously thought about Michael Jackson for the first time. On Wednesday before he had a cardiac arrest, he was probably at home or doing his usual King of Pop stuff, not thinking about death, and clearly not pondering over how is was going to die the next day. He probably had tasks planned throughout the week.
That night in the hotel room that the airline had set up for me, I sat up awake on the bed looking at the ceiling. Still, none of my friends had returned my call and I was beginning to feel dizzy. I had never felt so alone and shitty. I thought about all the times I had been depressed and actually asked God to kill me; all those times in middle school when I had actually tried to kill myself. I felt like an asshole.
Now I am at home and still thinking about it. Needless to say, the whole thing has been a wake-up call, so much of one that I have not been able to get to sleep. But at least I am still alive and I have to tell you, I have never been so aware of this fact.