The Unintentional Side Piece

Isabella is one of those adorable friends that you just want to see do well in life. She is smart, she is adorable, and she is funny. She has an electric, carefree attitude about life, and she likes to go to fun events out on the town, wearing her smile and a sports jersey. She is one of the few friends that I have whose life has not been hindered and weighed down by emotional baggage. She will be a prize for some lucky man some day, which is why my eyebrows were raised when she told me that she had reconnected with a friend we went to school with; a married basketball player turned collegiate coach named Ron. Immediately, my f*!k boy radar went off.
"What did he want?" I asked, skeptically.
"He wanted to let me know that he was in town coaching. He wanted to know if we could meet up."
I didn't say anything, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"We talked on the phone for a long time. He is having issues with his wife."
I began to shake my hair vigorously, like a White girl in a shampoo commercial.
"What?"
"Isabella, don't be a stooge. If he wants to talk to someone, tell him to talk to his wife. Because I bet you dollars to donuts, when she tries to get him to open up, he just sits there like an idiot like he doesn't have anything to say." Maybe P is right. Maybe I do personalize everything. But I can't help it. This situation smelled like a similar one that I'd gotten myself into back in 2011. The situation ended in me refusing to date for a year and dodging calls from a very angry wife.
"It's not like that," she assured me. "We are just friends. He was telling me that she-"
I raised my hands, silently requesting silence. "If you continue to talk to him, you are going to become an unintentional side piece."
What is an unintentional side piece? They are usually the female villain in the takes-two-to-tango combo that has become known as the emotional affair. Married Man calls girl. Married Man spills all his marital issues. Girl gives advice and becomes a sympathetic ear. Girl becomes invested in Married Man. Pretty soon, he's not talking to his wife at all, running to Girl for advice and support. Bing bang boom, an emotional affair is formed.
Girl always loses in this scenario, because Married Man always either uses his free shrink sessions to work things out with his wife and drops Girl like a bad habit, or he his browbeaten by the wife to discontinue the "friendship" with Girl because it makes her uncomfortable.
"It's not like that with us," Isabella insisted, spoken like a woman on her way to unintentional side pieceness.
"Be careful," I warned before we changed the subject, knowing good in well that there is no way to be careful in situations like this.

Boy Poem

I look in his eyes and I swear
I think I may hate him for real
He ate all my chips
He's relentlessly rude
And he never asks me how I feel.
I be like, "Hey, didn't you say
that you had somewhere to be?"
He be like, "No." But he did.
He'd just rather stay home and annoy me.
Oh yes he lies.
And he thinks I don't know.
He thinks I'm too dumb to tell.
When really I don't want to be alone
So I'm willing to ride his lies straight
to hell.
A hell where the bills are late,
but he don't care.
He doesn't know how to provide.
I get stressed and I sink into my feelings.
He pulls me out.
He doesn't allow me to hide.
Because misery loves a friend,
someone cute to starve with and such.
But hungry and struggling are two different things
and balancing both is becoming too much.
I NEED MY SPACE
That's what I think as he watches cable splashed from next door.
I NEED MY SPACE
I repeat to myself as I pick up his clothes off the floor.
I NEED MY SPACE
I whisper as I watch him nap in my bed.
I NEED MY SPACE
I scream out loud as he lies to mess with my head.
Silence is golden.
Our future is black.
Honest to God, I think he likes it like that.
And I must too
This is a truth that hards to receive
Because if I didn't
I'd stop complaining
ad simply get up and leave.

In With The New

So Curious George FINALLY called me, but I have to say, I was not impressed or excited.
How was I feeling? Well, I was annoyed that he felt he could just call me after his stream of endless dead-end texts. I was irritated that because he never has much to say, the burden of conversation fell on me, and I was FURIOUS that he thought Betty White was the name of Betty White's character on The Golden Girls! Um, there are people on Earth that have never heard of Jesus, but even people in the Peruvian Wetlands that don't have access to phones, Internet, or even mail services know that Betty White's character's name was ROSE NYLAND!
Conclusion: I need a new beau. Nothing serious, just someone fresh and cool that I can phone cake with. It's Spring ya'll! Love is in the air...so they tell me. Birds are chirpin' and bees are gettin' it on. And it's not like I don't like Curious, but I want to actually be courted and entertained by a fella that is interesting and will make an effort to see me and CALL ME WHEN HE SAYS HE IS GOING TO CALL ME! My God, it's like pulling teeth these days to find a brotha to fill even the simplest of requirements. I don't even want to walk in the sistah's shoes that is daring to look for something committed.
The only thing about finding a new beau is the pain in the ass of finding a new beau. Men on websites only want sex. Men out and about are weird. Men your friends know all like them and for some reason, they can't tell. Eye roll. What is a sweet, adorable chub to do?
I have not figured that out yet. But I can say that I am excited about finding someone new.

The Curious Schedule

Friday, April 2- 12:27am: Curious texts me "Are you free to talk?" I would have been, had I been awake.
Saturday, April 3- 6:58am: Curious texts me "Are u up?" I think we know the answer to that. Sometime later that day, I call him. Sent to his voice mail message which is that annoying Drake and Timbaland song. That night, he texts me "Are you free?" I call him, I get Drake.
Easter- 2:08am: Texts "U up?" I actually am. I text him to call me. He doesn't.
Easter-3:17pm: As I relax after church receive text "Wat are u doin sexy?" I tell him nothing and ask him what he is doing in a text. No response.
Tuesday, April 6- 12:15am: "Call me" he texts. Don't like the demanding tone, so I don't.
Wednesday, April 7-6:37pm: "Wat are u doin bay?" I tell him in a text that I am just surfing the net. He texts "Wen can I talk to u i miss u its been so long?" I let him know that I am not that busy and he can call me, suspicious that he just wants phone sex. Find myself wanting to talk to him while being annoyed with him for this texting bullshit. His response: "Why don't you call me anymore?" At this moment I am over this phone tag nonsense and continue to talk to my friend Fran, enjoying a fun conversation. I text him that I was calling him and was getting Drake. I am secretly excited that he chucked Drake for his own voice.
Wednesday, April 7- 6:55pm: "I'm on my way home im gon call u na min" I don't believe him and don't really want to talk to him anyway. Enjoying Frances. I don't expect him to call. He doesn't.

The Hopeless Romantic

Can I just say that I am a hopeless romantic and it is killing me? It's disappointing me. It's molding me to take my place as the dreaded Bitter Black Woman that I have been hearing about for about as long as I've been potty trained. I believe in love and sometimes I even think that I feel it, but I don't see it, especially in my own life- personally and around me. When I break it down in my head, I realize that I hear about it in songs and see it on TV, but where is it really visible? I feel that my love faith in something that I can not see and that is not working for me and is leaving me depressed, tired, and just overall emotionally exhausted. I can only liken this to how people must feel before they turn to atheism, wanting to believe in God but surrounded by an overwhelming amount of evidence that proves otherwise. In short, this sucks.

Boys Don't Cry, Right?

I have always had a hard time believing that men can feel any emotions, especially over women, largely due to the fact that they are such large shit heads.
Whenever one of my girlfriends went through a break-up, they went through the whole spectrum of emotions. They were sad. They were angry. They were irritated. It is almost always a nightmare. And they do all of this, no doubt, while their ex-boytoys are single again, back on the prowl. Never once had I witnessed a boy truly broken up over a girl...until recently.
My buddy Brownie just got out of a relationship that he put a lot of elbow grease into, let me tell you. He spent a year buttering her up and a year with her, yet somehow, it did not work out. What shocked me about the whole deal is that he is actually sad about it. Sometimes he's angry. I even detect a hint of irritation.
My buddy's brake-up has me rethinking what I have previously thought about males. If they are capable of feeling, then they are capable of thinking and reasoning and the whole thing. Which means they aren't as dumb as they want us to believe- which means that they really are human! Does this mean they now deserve my respect and compassion?
Man, I am truly lost on this one. I liked it better when I was under the impression that boys were just...boys: simple and heartless.