The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (15 page)

“I kicked this guy’s ass for talking shit.”

I was silent on the other end. I had never been with a guy who had kicked anyone’s ass before. While I was disappointed that he was expelled, the simple bitch in me was impressed.

“Hello?” he asked.

“You kicked a guy’s—what happened?”

“He was just all in my face, talking shit and asking for it. I lost my temper and now I have to figure out what to do.”

I wasn’t terribly worried about him. There were countless schools in Los Angeles, and surely he could enroll in a community college while he applied to a new school. Only a couple of days later, he called me with some more news.

“I’m going to be a Marine.”

“Like a swimmer?”

“No, like the military. The Marine Corps.”

We had known each other only a month, but he’d managed to leave me speechless twice in one week.

“Why,” I asked. “Do you have a death wish?” We were still in a war and, in my mind, he would certainly be deployed to go fight. I had been reading every day about suicide bombings and mass military rapes and women and children being killed mercilessly. Why would anyone who had options want to voluntarily subject himself to that? I didn’t see bravery; I saw stupidity. But George was determined. He wasn’t asking my permission; he was just gauging how I felt about his decision. I hated it, but it didn’t matter.

“Well, I saw a recruiter today and if I’m accepted, I go to boot camp in three weeks.”
Why did he even call me?!

“But the good news,” he continued, “is that I can come spend the weekend with you before I go.” My mind and loins raced. He would be the first gentleman visitor in my new place. I tried to play it cool, while still being outraged that he would decide to embark upon this suicide mission without actually taking my feelings into consideration.

“Well, you’d better.”

He made plans to come up by Greyhound bus a few weeks later. Most of my friends had taken trips abroad, and so I had no one to call and get advice from except Suzanne, one of my high school best friends who attended UC Berkeley. She wasn’t that experienced with gentleman callers, so couldn’t offer any advice beyond “Have fun!”

I picked him up from the bus station bumping Rasheeda’s provocative “Georgia Peach,” just in case he needed some subliminal signals as to what was about to go down. In case that wasn’t enough, I had lit “smell-good” candles all around my house to set the mood. I had fleeting thoughts of returning home only to find my apartment engulfed in flames, with Gemma my Fargo-accented landlord “Gee
golly”-ing in horror. But when I pulled up to find him waiting at that bus stop, a single duffel bag in hand, smiling with contained excitement to see me, I didn’t give a damn about any fires.

I watched him walk to my window. He leaned his head in and smiled.

“You’re not gonna get out and give me a hug?”

I promptly swung my door open and hopped into his arms. Then we shared our very first kiss.

When we got back in the car, I popped in a 50 Cent CD, his favorite rapper of all time, and we headed back to my place.

George was my first relationship since my high school boyfriend, and now he was leaving me to go become a soldier. I’m pretty positive I cried after he left. We’d known each other for only a couple of months, and while his incessant back-to-back phone calls and “hey” texts would annoy me, I still missed him. A topic we frequently broached, and that George was often too eager to talk about, was Laila, his ex-girlfriend who still lived in London. I’m not the jealous type, but I’m the jealous type. Appearance-wise, I didn’t feel threatened. Feelings-wise, I did. Laila was George’s first love and she dumped him. I’m always wary about guys who’ve been dumped by girls they loved, because it typically means they have unresolved feelings. George didn’t hide the fact that he’d enjoyed the years they spent together, but he frequently insisted that he was completely over her. This didn’t stop him from putting her in his Top 8 on his MySpace page, however. The Top 8 was like a public acknowledgment of one’s clique, a blanket endorsement of the people with whom one associates heavily. Because she lived in London, however, I was willing to excuse this as a simple oversight on his part.

When George graduated from boot camp, I was there. I made
the trip to the San Diego base, excited to be reunited with him, fantasizing that he’d pick me up and carry me across the auditorium, as Richard Gere did to Debra Winger in
An Officer and a Gentleman
. I think I was oblivious to the fact that my friends’ absence had caused me to gain weight—having no one to hang with left lots of time for quality snack time. So when we were finally reunited, George’s first words to me were, “Damn, girl, you’ve been eating good.” I think I can safely pinpoint that as the moment at which my insecurity about our relationship started.

This was also the first time I met George’s mother, his sisters, and his brother. They were all nice enough, but I felt inadequate—partly because Laila had made such a positive impression on his family before I was in the picture, and mostly because I hadn’t been faithful during George’s thirteen-week stint in boot camp. Over the course of his absence, we exchanged letters, but I found that just wasn’t enough for me. Plus, his enthusiasm to be a Marine and shoot guns and kill people wasn’t exactly compatible with my liberal, nonviolent views. So, when opportunity knocked, I answered, justifying my infidelity by telling myself that he still had feelings for his ex-girlfriend anyway. Still, a part of me felt guilty. Until, that is, I returned home from his graduation, where I was only able to spend a brief couple of hours with him as he stayed behind with his family, who had come all the way from London. Back home, I logged on to MySpace a few days later. It was during a bout of bored curiosity—which is typically the mood in which if you seek, you shall find—that I clicked on his ex’s page, and there for all the world to see was a heartfelt wall message from George, addressing her as “baby.” I was angry, slightly hurt, but mostly livid about what I perceived to be public disrespect. Nobody really knew about our relationship, but how dare he?

I called him and immediately ended our relationship. Over the next couple of weeks, he called me back to back, apologizing, begging for my forgiveness. I grew satisfied as my hurt feelings turned to general irritation. Plus, by that time, I had already moved on with Taz.

Taz, ruggedly handsome and with brash confidence, would probably drive a girl with low self-esteem to suicide. Had I met him during my high school years, I would have either succumbed to his blunt aggression or tucked myself away, deciding that I was out of his league. However, he met me during a time when I felt my confidence rising. I’d started to feel more comfortable in my skin, as many college students tend to; never mind that I knew absolutely
nothing
about life. I was amused by Taz’s hot temper, which was cutely mismatched with a deep, raspy French accent. When he grew upset with a joke I made at his expense, he sounded like a peeved Pepé Le Pew.

Taz was generally extremely closed off, more so than I was, which drew me to him. An heir to his father’s prosperous textile business, he attended school in Pittsburgh and held a 4.0 GPA, despite English being his second language. Even with his academic obligations, he managed to talk to me on the phone at three in the morning Eastern time every other night. With each conversation, he’d let me in more and more, and we grew to appreciate each other’s opposite senses of humor.

Taz and I had a strong sexual attraction to each other, one I still can’t explain. But to that end, our relationship was often volatile. He could make me irate in a way that I didn’t know I could be and vice versa. Though we were never officially an item, he was insanely jealous of my time, and I, too, wasn’t unaffected by his love for women. When we were great, we were amazing. When we weren’t, it was
severe. All these factors, despite his dedication to seeing me as often as he could, made me decide internally never to pursue a serious relationship with him. Though we remained in touch throughout the school year, we would each pursue other love interests, much to his dismay.

By the time summer rolled around, I decided not to go home to Los Angeles. I had an apartment and freedom, so why would I? I took a temporary volunteer gig in Menlo Park as an after-school workshop instructor in the arts for kids aged twelve to seventeen. The only thing I remember about those kids was that not
one
of them knew who Michael Jackson was, which made me wonder what kind of sad kids Menlo Park was raising.

I met Oladife at the grocery store during the summer where my best girlfriends, Megan and Akilah, and I took a vow to be open-minded to everything that came our way. We made this decision specifically to add peer pressure to the youngest member of our trio, Akilah, whose standards for men were ridiculously high, undoubtedly based on her virginal status. So we made a pact to resist the inclination to say “no.” Every time one of us would consider backing out, we’d simultaneously guilt trip one another by trailing off the refrain, “I mean we
did
say . . .”

So that summer afternoon, when he approached me in the aisle of Safeway, nearly two inches shorter than me, with a colonial English and South African hybrid accent, I shrugged and said, “I mean we
did
say . . .”

But Oladife was just too much. He wanted to be romantic far too quickly (and not even in the sexual sense, which would have made me have a bit more respect for him, but in an emotional way that absolutely grossed me out). After going out on one date with him, I realized that he took himself and his feelings far too seriously;
this was evidenced by the verses of poetry he texted me the same day we met.
Ew
.

I don’t even remember what we did on our first date, honestly. My memory is quick to efface and shield me from the irrelevant. Before I’m subject to harsh judgment, I’d like to assert that my callousness can’t be attributed to “nice guy” unappreciation. He wasn’t a nice guy in the sweet, gentlemanly sense; he was overbearing in his attempts to suck me into his fog of emotions. I’ve dated and politely turned down nice guys before and felt super bad about it; this was not one of those times.

I do remember that we hung out close to Stanford’s campus and at the end of the night, we found ourselves near the posh plaza adjacent to Embarcadero Road, one of Palo Alto’s main streets. I recall this part of the date only because it was then that he kept trying to hold my hand. Listen, I’ll let you stick your tongue in my mouth before I let you hold my hand. It’s mostly because of my own insecurities. The condensation that can brew between the heated concave part of hands that touch is enough to drive me insane. Also, I have big hands with long, skinny fingers, and whenever I have to hold hands with people (in prayer or to help them safely cross the street), I’m worried that they will a) comment on the size of my hands, à la “Damn! You got some big-ass hands for a woman!” or b) remark how disgustingly sweaty my palms are as they pull theirs away. Or worse, not say anything at all and just endure my sweaty hands hoping I don’t notice them abruptly wipe their own hands immediately after we disengage. But in this particular instance, because my empathy gland is oversized and it pains me to be the cause of hurt feelings and rejection, I briefly obliged his third attempt to lock my hand to his. If only I had the visual defense mechanism that porcupines do. If only my hands were equipped with quills to defend
me from the fingertip rubs he inflicted on the lines of my palms.
Are you trying to predict my future mid-stroll, mother$#@%?&!
I thought, furious with myself for my genetic failings.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I made up a reason I needed to go home and, fortunately, he obliged and drove me back to my apartment. No later than two minutes after I had barricaded my door behind me, heaving with the relief of freedom, I received a phone call. Worried that he would come back if I didn’t answer, I picked up.

“Hello?”

“Look at the moon.”

I paused. “What?”

“Look at the mooooon,” he whispered tenderly.

“What about it?” I asked, tapping my fingers with impatience.

“Are you looking at it?” he prodded.

“I am.” I was not.

“I’m looking at it, too . . . I just wanted you to know that. So you’ll think of me and know that I’m thinking of you whenever you look at the night sky.”

I felt my vagina dry and shrivel up, like a raisin in the sun.

“Unh-huh,” I managed, incredulous.

“Good night,” he cooed, then he slowly and softly traced every button on his phone before he hung up. Probably.

After days of curt responses to his texts and avoiding his phone calls, I wrote him a carefully crafted text, telling him I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship. He called me and told me it was my loss. Oladife made me realize how much I hate overly sentimental gestures—especially if they’re from the wrong guy.

The final month of summer, my friends and I got into work mode, making sure we’d be set up financially for the impending school year. Megan was working at a law firm, making connections
to secure an opportunity the following year. Akilah, who worked at a tutoring program, was helping middle school kids get ready for their upcoming school year. I had gotten another job—my dream job, a position I’ve wanted since I was nine years old. Ever since my little brother, Lamine, and I simulated owning a fast-food restaurant called Hamburgers Everywhere! I’ve had ambitions of owning a restaurant or being a waitress. Nine-year-old me clearly thought the two were interchangeable. When I got a job as a waitress at the new Counter burger restaurant in Palo Alto, I got to see a restaurant built and managed from the ground up and learned that my stress levels would be more fit for waitressing. Aside from some shitty managers and a couple of horrible co-workers, I loved waitressing. Even today, I maintain that if nothing works out in my life, I would be content working as a waitress.

I met Martin while serving tables during one of our busy lunch shifts. He wasn’t in my section, but I kept passing by his table, making sure he had everything he needed. He smiled politely and shook his head. After the third attempt with no words exchanged between us, I shrugged. Well, I tried. And just as he was getting up to leave, he spoke. In a heavy French accent, he asked me my name.