Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test (Another Risky Business Story)

"Has anyone ever told you that you smell?" Risky Business asked me during our last conversation. 

"Uh..." I didn't know how to answer the question because it felt like it was leading to something else, and it was. Honestly, you never know where the call is going to go when you are talking to Risky Business. 

Apparently, one of her new boyfriends thinks that she stinks. She knows this because he has told her so several times. So, naturally, she began to pay more attention to her hygiene routine when it came to showering and washing her clothes. She even only wore a fragrance he said he liked when she went to see him. This did not work. The last time they met up, he declared that she still smelled. Can you imagine?

"It is not me," she assured me.  "I shower and do all the things before I go to see him. I think that he thinks that I smell because he just doesn't like me."

I didn't know what to say. I was too busy having an anxiety attack on the other end of the line. No woman wants to be told by anyone, especially an intimate partner, that they are not fresh. NO WOMAN! Smelling good is something that most women take pride in. When I was a teen working at a fast food restaurant, there was a homeless drug addict who used to lock herself in the bathroom and take baths in the sink. It was even important to her, in the state she was in, to be clean. I also had a flashback to when boys in elementary school used to tell girls that they smelled like fish. Somewhere, somehow, they discovered that girls were serious about smelling good and found a way to dish out the ultimate insult. It was up there with telling a girl she needed a perm when it came to being mean. 

After the call, I  just sat on my bed in shock. Is there no low to the things that men will say to us to bring us down? I remember a while back on the Love and Hip Hop Reunion where Ray J declared that a female cast member had a "stank p**&y". I was horrified! P even told me once that he told a female co-worker that her feet smelled, then had the nerve to be shocked when she stopped talking to him. 

Savannah once shared with me that one of her best male friends stunk, and his now wife fixed all that when they got together. She reminded him to take showers and helped him with his hygiene. I know more than one woman who has had to do this in a relationship. Apparently, this is not the route that a man will take in the same situation. He will just bark at a woman that she smells and leave her feeling gross and unfeminine. 

I guess I have stumbled upon yet another unpleasant part of male/female relations/ sexual health. It would seem that the road to intimacy can not only be paved with so-so intentions but also humiliation. Risky Business is no longer seeing this guy. She stopped talking to him, obviously. I mean, what other choice did she have? I am hopeful that she finds love, but also hopeful that she leaves the next guy too, if she gets a whiff that he is an insensitive jerk. Telling a woman she smells. Unbelievable. 

A Whole Person

Recently, I have been making an effort to stay in touch with my 91-year-old grand cousin. He was my grandmother's favorite cousin, Larry. He has been married for about 70 years to his wife, and they are retired, living out west. I have enjoyed our conversations because he has told me so much about our family history. Tonight, he told me that when my grandma was younger, my great-grandfather used to yell at her. 

"I think he was just afraid he was going to lose her," he informed me. 

When we got off the phone, I burst into tears. I know that no one is perfect, but my grandma came pretty close. She was kind and she was sweet and she was always thinking about everyone but herself. I couldn't stand the thought of someone being mean to her, no matter what the reason. I then began to think about the tantrums I used to throw as a kid and how ungrateful and bratty I could be. I pondered on something that we don't realize until we are older: the adults in our lives had whole lives before we got here. My grandma, who got on me for not wearing dresses and insisted that I press my hair, loved me and took care of me and also had a dad who could sometimes be mean to her. She liked to dance and play the guitar when she was younger. She sang with her friends in a jazz band. She was more than just the old lady that got on me for sitting with my legs open in skirts. She was a whole person. How did her life influence the kind of life that she tried to point me in the direction of having?

If nothing else, big questions like this are signs of getting older. When my niece and nephew become teens, and I am grounding them and putting them on punishment for being obnoxious, I wonder if they will be wise enough to know that I am not just their cruel aunty. I was a whole person before they got here that liked chopped and screwed love songs and books. Perhaps they will take this into account when they are mature enough to create a full picture of me. 

Seeking Charles Christmas 2: It Doesn't Go Down In the DMs

Let me just start off by saying that only I can turn what should have been an innocent request for pics into what could possibly lead a man to getting back with an ex. 

The same day that I blogged about Charles, I reached out to him in a Facebook message. I just told myself to do it and did it. I said hey, and told him I was thinking about a kid who died of cancer in middle school, and wondered if he knew his name since they were friends. To my shock, he replied. He told me his name. Then I asked him if he married Patty when I knew that he hadn't. He told me he didn't, but said that she used to wish him a happy birthday every year before they lost contact last year. That made me feel sad and guilty. Requesting pics from a friend's ex, what is wrong with me? I don't know why I have gotten so tacky lately. I am basically a good girl. 

I then went on to ask him about what he has been doing since the 8th grade. There was some talk about gun charges and jail time. I asked him to go into more detail, but he said that since he has done way more than what he got clipped for, he couldn't go into any more detail. Yikes! Yikes and sexxy. What woman amongst us hasn't had a thing for a street gun enthusiast in the past? However, he isn't that anymore. He has a job and a kid. 

The chat ended on a good note, minus the fact that I chickened out on the pic request. I really didn't want him to think I was skanky, which is funny, because this is my first time chatting with him in almost 20 years. What do I care if he thinks I'm a skank? Sigh. I care. It's just that he works out crazy hard, and I want to see him naked! He does those intense borderline dumb workouts at gyms where they jump off of cinder blocks and hang from the ceiling. 

Riddled with guilt, I found Patty's number and sent it to him. If she is single, maybe they will hookup again and fall back in love. Undoubtedly, I will be on the dating app having pointless conversations with a guy that I won't be talking to in a few weeks. He will most likely disappear, leaving me with nothing to hold on to, not even some pictures. 

Feet

I was talking to a man from the fatty app not too long ago, and he asked me, "Do you have pretty toes?"

"Yep," I lied, looking down at my feet. For some reason, I feel like it was the easiest lie I've ever told. 

My toes are pretty in the sense that I have ten of them and they work. I mean, I trim my toenails, don't I get points for that? I have seen feet on Instagram that will make the hair raise on the back of your neck. I'm not there yet. I'd say that 9 of my toes are okay, but one of them needs SERIOUS attention and is bringing down the rating for both feet. I want to care about it, but I don't, similarly to how I don't care that, if my grandma is any indication, I am about five years away from having chin hairs. 

"So you have pretty feet?" he asked, excitedly. 

Wait. Nobody said anything about feet. My feet are feet. They are sausagey, as to be expected for a woman of my girth. The biggest issue is that they are ashy. I have had a lifelong issue with foot ashiness. The assumption is that I don't lotion my feet. Not true. I lotion them, they look good at home, then I get to church, and it looks like someone played tic-tac-toe on my foot with chalk! In college, Rudith gave me some heavy-duty African oil to moisturize my feet with that popped like sizzlean on my skin in the New Orleans heat and temporarily turned my feet black. Since then, it has been a struggle. I tried cocoa butter, which worked well, but I walk around the house barefoot, and when I got up to go to the bathroom, I nearly slipped and did a complete Jean-Claude Van Damme split between my bed and bedroom door. It was one of the scariest moments of my life! 

"So you have pretty feet?" he repeated. 

I thought about it for a moment, then started coughing and hung up. There was no way I could lie my way out of that one, cocoa butter or no cocoa butter. Here we go again. We have found yet another disqualifying factor regarding my finding a partner. Please tell me that this is something that cute fuzzy socks and boundaries can fix. 

Seeking Charles Christmas

When I was in the eighth grade, I had a major crush on my good friend Patty's boyfriend. I know, scandalous. His name was Charles Christmas, and he was the cutest little blerd that you ever did see. He had chocolate skin and glasses and wore polos and khakis. He was annoying as most boys are at that age, but I remember thinking that he was super smart and handsome. I like-ed him for real, for real, but had to keep it under my hat because I didn't want to be a bad friend to Patty, and I was in a relationship with a boy who, in another year, would come out as gay.

I lost touch with him after middle school, except for one conversation when I was on a college break. I saw him out some place. He gave me his number, and I called him. He was pretty rude, which was not how I remembered him to be. I found this to be very disappointing, especially since he was even cuter. Unfortunately, he had traded in his polos for tall tees. I don't know why people can't be themselves. 

About a month ago, I went on Facebook and saw that he had posted a video of himself working out really hard, which, of course, led me to do a deep dive. It looks like he does something having to do with real estate. He works out a lot, and he has a daughter. He must make good money because his pictures indicate that he has traveled the world from corner to corner. However, he is hardly ever with anybody. He seems pretty lonely. Tiesh reminded me that someone has to be taking the pictures on his vacations. I imagine this could possibly be a sexy, equally fit girl. Yet he looks and feels pretty single. He is bald now and has a super hot salt and pepper beard. If he truly is single, I am not sure why. 

Studying his pictures on Facebook makes me think about the movie Our Souls at Night with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. In the movie, Jane asks if Robert would spend the night with her so that she wouldn't feel so lonely at night, and that blossoms into a love affair. I say that to say that a guy I met last year told me that I need to learn how to straight-up ask for what I want. Hm. I thought about what would possibly happen if I asked Charlie to talk to me three times a week on the phone. This would put a masculine presence in my life and give my friends a break from me. I don't think that we would fall in love, but this would add a spice to my life. 

As you have probably guessed, I am really nervous to put myself out there like this. What if he makes a Facebook post about how desperate I am and tags everyone we went to school with, including Patty?! I would be mortified! Or he could give a simple no. Or he could say yes. Or he could not answer. As the guy who I met last year had warned, you don't get anywhere being scared. I will let you all know if I get some guts to reach out anytime soon. 

New Year, New Love?

It's a new year, and everyone has that all-too-familiar energy targeted at finding love. It happens every year, but I am finding that even my friends who had sworn off finding anyone are popping up with a new burst of optimism. If you want to find a partner, or at least a V-Day date, you have to put in the work (que the tight smile). My divorced friends are starting dating profiles, my friends who have experienced breakups are accepting lunch dates, and the single ones among us are leaving no stone unturned. 

I am sure that being old has something to do with it. Time hits different when you start getting text messages about helping to plan for your 20-year college reunion. Honestly, there is no way to avoid the pressure. When you are in your 20s, you want to find someone before you are the last man or woman standing. In your 30s, you either convince yourself that it is not important or that it is of the utmost importance. Either way, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and failure. Now, in your 40s, the rush is back, either in a more frantic or relaxed way. You have to find someone or you will die, or you are happy to find someone, but you are keeping it cool, no rush. Something about the new year puts everybody in any group in a mood good enough to try again...or one last time. 

I would like to find someone myself, but so far, things are not looking too hot. That is okay. I am keeping my birthday state of mind and not letting it get me down. I am happy cheering on my friends from the sidelines. They are Googling speed dating events and asking friends about the availability of other single friends as we speak. 

If history has taught me anything, this fresh take on love has an expiration date, which spans from the week before to the week after Valentine's Day. Ugh, what a horrible holiday. It is during this time that people inevitably fall back into their pessimistic slumps. However, this year, unlike in years past, I will be pushing my loved ones over the line, not leading those in the line into a depression as I have proudly done in the past. This year is going to be different for the love-lookers out there, I can feel it. 

The Not-The-One One

When I was a kid, I didn't like the song "The Wheels on the Bus". I remember we would sing it in kindergarten, and everyone in the class would really be into it, but not me. I just couldn't stop thinking of being on a bus that wouldn't stop or that you couldn't get off of. I guess even then, I didn't like the idea of being taken on a ride. The Block Circler is taking me on a ride. 

Our first ride, I guess you could say that he kicked me off the bus. I wasn't open enough. I think we all know what it means when a guy says that. It's right up there with not being adventurous enough. Get my drift? After what I thought was a conversation where we made up, he left me waiting at the bus stop for three months. To my shock, he reemerged, and I was skeptical. But then he started texting me a lot and showing me a lot of attention and telling me not to give up on "us". We had what I thought was a great conversation. Remembering what happened after our last convo, I asked him how he was feeling, and he said he too thought it was a great convo. That was over a week ago. After promising to text me he has gone completely silent. Now I feel like he was driving our bus, randomly jumped out of the driver's side window, leaving me on the bus screaming because I don't know how to drive! 

AGAIN, I am left feeling stupid. If Maya Angelou was right, and you have to believe people when they show you who they are the first time, then how does that leave any room for forgiveness or change or reconciliation or any of the things? Are we always supposed to assume the worst? Can't we try to have optimistic hearts and minds? Considering how I just took another lap on a bus going nowhere, it looks like the infinite wisdom of heavenly Mother Maya has rung true yet again. How disappointing.