Ain't Never Scared pt 1: The Vixen and the Baby Daddy

I think I need to get into my Bible. No, I know that I need to get into my Bible, because when I start thinking nasty, gross, inappropriate things about men that I know, that usually means that I am beginning to backslide back into the state of sticky, grotesque, thick horniness that I had previously been delivered from. 

"What is bringing all this about Holly?" 

Okay, I will tell you. 

One of my homegirls Reese recently texted me a picture of a beautiful woman in a flowing dress with a baby bump. A man was standing behind her, holding her baby bump with his hands around her waist. 

"Bones," I said to myself. I recognized him immediately. 

"Is that Bones?" Reese's texted asked. He had his head down in the pic, but it was definitely him. I was shocked. He has had a kid before, but none of us could ever figure out who the baby's mother was. What a difference a few years makes. For baby number two, he took styled, professional photos that were then blown up to enormous posterboards to be displayed at a chic, trendy baby shower where guests could partake in mommyhitos handpicked from an elaborate wall refreshment display. 

Let me be clear: I am happy for Bones. He's fine. Mrs. Bones is fine. And chances are that baby is going to arrive catalogue model ready. Bones is just representative of someone that I used to like and didn't tell. And let me be clear again: I am in no way Bones's type. He likes cheerleaders and women that look like they were created by Mattel. I didn't say anything in college because I was scared, and I didn't say anything after college because I was mortified. The closest I got was writing him a poem that I only shared with Liz and that I will now share with you. 

Asked the vixen to her master:

"Where do I touch you?"

Said the master to his vixen:

"Touch me where you touch yourself."

I remember that Liz was silent on the other end of the line. After about two minutes of deliberation, she said, "Don't ever send that to him. If you ever want to send it to him, send it to me, and I will respond like I am him." 

Okay, Liz was probably right. Erotic poetry was probably not the way to let my feelings be known. 

"But Holly, why would you tell him you liked him when you know he wasn't going to like you back?"

Good question. And the short answer is so that I can stop being scary. As you know, a closed mouth does not get fed, which is probably why I am love starved as we speak. Bones is just one of many, and as I get older, I have become more and more impatient with my being scared. And this isn't just with men, it's with everything! One day I want to confidently be able to proclaim, "I ain't never scared!" and mean it. Until then, I'm just a vixen without a master. But I'm working on it. I can't be scared of being scary anymore. 

Boy Excited

As many of you know, I volunteer with teen girls. I met with them on Saturday, and many of them were giggling for no reason and walking around with huge, huge smiles. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know what that means: they have boyfriends. One of my favorite girls who, until recently, only wanted to date a Korean boy similar to her K-Pop crushes has found a super tall boy at her school that she can not stop talking about. He is apparently the best thing to happen to high school since excuses to get out of gym. One of the other teens I mentor is quiet and moody and has found another equally quiet and moody boy to laugh on the phone with. He is into anime and making dance videos on Instagram.
Seeing them made me smile. I remember what it feels like to be genuinely excited about a guy. I would like that feeling again, but I told Kyndra on our ride to church that I am not sure I can ever be again. What my teen mentees don't know is that with every ounce of boy excitement you have, the bigger the shoe is that is inevitably going to drop. I have been excited about so many guys, from the one that had a fat fetish highlighted by the tattoo of a fat woman on his arm to the one that seemed really community minded but only wanted to get close to me to get me involved in a calling card pyramid scheme.  Now, whenever I even so much as see a cute guy, I imagine what could be wrong with him; the boatload of unnecessary drama he could bring into my life.
The last guy I was excited about was Third Ryan. His other shoe dropped when he told me he was in love with one of my best friends. That was the cherry on top of an already melting love banana split for me. Now I kind of look at guys the way I look at purses at the mall that I can't afford: from a distance with a sad face. Just as the purse would be my obsession before it was inevitably snatched from me at an Atlanta bus stop, that man would have me excited before he inevitably lied, revealed his array of side families, asked to borrow money, or ate off of my plate without asking. But hey, who says you can't be excited about an idea? I did. I think I said that.

Church and the Broken Vagina

Going to church on a regular basis has broken my vagina. At the very least, it has essentially depleted my sex drive, and at the most, has catapulted me into early spinsterhood. I was alarmed by this at first, but Tasia assures me that this is the effect that church should have on you.
"Yeah, that sounds about right," she said over brunch. "How did you not know that that is what church does to you?"
Uh...because no one told me!
As you know, I am a girl that loves to have a crush on somebody. It has always been fun for me to have little secret crushes on men. This has helped my heart to fill full during the lonely times and given me a good list of people to stalk on Instagram. Now when I look at pictures of these crushes, I feel nothing in my lady parts. All I see are brown faces of boys that I once went to school with. My jay-jay is unimpressed.
I want to get to know God. I want to become a better Christian. But no one told me that that would include me putting my vagina on the shelf with an Out of Order sign taped to it!
It is my belief that there's a science to this whole thing. Once I started going to church, my heart started to change. I began to allow the word of God to cleanse it, purging it of lust. Well, everyone knows that your heart and your lady parts are connected. You see, my heart is trying to do better now. But since my vagina truly doesn't know how to do better, it just shut down completely. She is a team player, and she wants my heart to win. So she took one for the team and is now on vaykay for God knows how long. I hope she comes back soon, I miss her.
Her hiatus has shown me that I was giving her a little too much power in my life, allowing her to take the wheel. I think that I have a crush on a man that I met at church, but I can't tell you. My vag is giving me cold silence. My mind should be able to tell me what's up, but it can't. I see now that this whole time, my mind has been in my undies. Not cool.
The plus side is that now that I am no longer fantasizing about running away with that boy from my old sociology class, I now have more time to pray and read my Bible. I guess my vaginal breakdown was all a part of God's plan. Man, He works in mysterious ways.

Friend Crush

I think, no, I know, that I am developing a friend crush. Like many other diseases, a friend crush is most treatable if diagnosed early. I would say that I am in stage 2.5. I think there is still room for reversal, fingers crossed.
If you didn't know I will tell you: friend crushes are the poison that I am sure are responsible for more than half of opposite sex friend dismantlements. They never work out, and once you have put those feelings in the air, you can not take them back. The friendship is doomed. Sadly, there is a lot of bad information out there about this epidemic, especially from those who grew up on shows like Dawson's Creek where the friend crush was glamorized. Don't eat the friend crush cookies: those shows were fiction.
I have suffered from getting friend crushes for more than half of my life, so I know what I am talking about. And I have found that taking these steps are the most suitable form of treatment:
Acknowledgement: You have to first admit that you have a friend crush. Most people don't shed tears of joy just because their friend has called them. Face the music, you have a crush.
Idol Preoccupation: The key is directing your love for this friend towards an idol that you could never obtain; a person you can crush on with no repercussion. My go-tos are D'Angelo and Boris Kodjoe.
Slight Detachment: Don't ignore your friends, just back up a little. Maybe you guys don't have to talk EVERYDAY and yes, texts do count as talking.
Depending on how emo you are over the crush, these steps can clear up the situation in days or months. I am banking on a week. That is all the time I can a lot myself to get over something else silly I have put myself through.

The Crushed Crush

Recently, I made a vow to let go of some of these boy crushes I have been harboring. Some of them I have had for nearly five years already, and not only have they long ago begun to get boring, but I hadn't revealed my feelings to the guys in question, so they are beginning to get draining. So I figure hey, it's summer! I'm working out, I'm feeling good, I've got a tan, and I'm in my twenties. Why not chuck the boy crushes for man love possibilities, or at the very least, some new replacement crushes.

Well, one of my crushes is getting married. This crush was one of the deeper ones that I have always felt low about. While in college, I formed a crush on this guy nearly instantly. He was smart. He was funny. He was cute, and he knew how to do things the sad girly men I was around at the time did not know how to do, like fix a car and work. But I knew he could not return the feelings. He had a girlfriend for Christ's sake, and I clearly was not his type. However, somehow, my crush became obvious, and he began to detach himself from me. Not totally, but enough for me to get the drift. It was a song and dance I am more than familiar with. But, dare I say, I thought he was different. Gross right?

Anyway, shall we fast forward two years? He is getting married to the girlfriend he had while we were in school. This I have known for about a year now, even though it was just recently confirmed. And since I have not spoken to him in a year, I thought I did not care. However, I went to his wedding site, and can I just say, I spazzed out!

It was crazy! All of a sudden, the reality of the whole situation just hit me like a ton of bricks! But I am not sure why I was so surprised. Was it because all along I did not believe that they were going to get married, or because I am so disappointed in myself for not saying anything all this time? Primarily, I think my initial devastation came from me thinking I was over him.

So again I pose the question, as I have in previous posts, do you ever really get over someone, or do your feelings for them just harbor themselves in the back of your mind or the bottom of your heart until you are FORCED to confront them?

The latter is what happened to me; however, I am not sure if this is the universal way that things work. What I do know is that I have my eyes on a couple of dudes, and hopefully these fresh feelings for them will send my old interests packing. Hopefully, I am more mature now at 24 than I was at 22, and when these men come and go, the spazz cycle will not repeat, fingers crossed.