Until I Get Married

A couple of months ago, I received a letter disguised as a comment, and it was so good, I decided one day I was going to share it with everyone, instead of just approving it like the other comments I get. Well, that day is finally here. So below, the comment, and below the comment, my thoughts.

I am writing this to let you know that I can no longer read your blog. I’ve been down with you since the start of this blog. I find you to be a highly skilled writer with a keen sense of how to present the complexities of life and the most complex relationship of all, that of human beings / man and woman, into the simplest of terms. Many of your writings seeming to be well thought out with a profound moral or deep sorting of what is held in you pensive mind. However, these last post have turned me off as a reader. It seemed as though you were not confronting the behavior displayed by some men with deep thought, and instead making an excuse for it with your own indiscretions as a man. Then it became clear, that this isn’t a blog to edify yourself and readers, rather, it was a blog to selfishly chronicle your own relationship woes while never challenging or probing yourself to do what would seem so natural with time, and that is to simply Grow. Maturity and wisdom are afforded to us with time. However it is clear that some and many men (and women) choose to waywardly peruse through life as hollowed out beings void of feeling, void of storing memory, void of internal confrontation with ones self, and void of ever possibly growing. If you’re not growing, then you’re dying . Thanks for the crass jokes, satire, bitter analysis of some points in love, and most importantly the laughs Jozen,this blog, is dead to me officially. Cheers until you get married. — Anonymous commenter

When I first started publishing this blog back in August, most of my readers were women, and most of those women knew me in real life. As a matter of fact, when I was researching backgrounds for this blog, I was at the apartment of a woman I was dating.

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I’m tired of getting girls phone numbers.

Tired.

The passing of the phone to her hands, the letter-by-letter spelling of the name, the “I’ll call you”. I’m tired of it all, which is not to say I’m retiring from asking for a girl’s phone number. Hardly the case. I’m a man of tradition, and this is a tradition I love. But when I say I’m tired. I do mean it. I’m tired of asking for a woman’s phone number.

I remember the first time I pocketed a woman’s phone number. It was something I wrote about a couple of months ago. Getting a woman’s phone number is still one of life’s small pleasantries, but I have been doing it for so long, the act has lost it’s shine.

What I want to do is start getting the phone numbers of women I like. Not just women I see, like the one I saw last night. I talked to her for about as long as it took for me to ask her for her phone number without it feeling uncomfortable, awkward, or forward. And now I don’t even know why. Well, actually, I do know why, but the reason has no staying power. I could call or text her today, or wait two days, or never. It won’t matter to me, and honestly, it won’t matter to her.

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I like a lot of girls.

Japan, Los Angeles, D.C., Boston, Mississippi, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Harlem, Brooklyn, Dominican Republic, New York. The girls I like are everywhere. They’re far away and down the street. Sometimes right in front of me, and sometimes on the peripherals. Out of sight, but on my mind. Out of mind, but in my sight. In my dreams, in my bed, on my phone and on my screen. Everywhere.

And all of that, all of that is just hard sometimes. I like them all at once, and one at a time. Seems impossible, I know, but trust me, it’s very possible. As a matter of fact, it’s too easy. My heart sometimes acts as a magnet for feelings that come from more than one woman at the same time, and like a kid trying not to laugh when they’re telling a fib, I’m a man trying not to feel when I’m telling a girl how I, well, feel. Of course I like the girl, but of course I like others. Actually I like to like them, and some would call that being a romantic but I don’t. I call it the ugly beauty of being single and social: Meet a lot of great women and in the midst of these chance encounters, get blind sided by a few who really know how to get liked back.

For the sake of clarity, what I’m not talking about is random hook ups and one night stands. I’m talking about liking more than one person at one time. It’s really that simple, and yet, people want to act like a heart comes whole; like it can’t be split off into bits, pieces, slices and slivers. If liking more than one person at one time makes me a player, pass me the ball.

I like a lot of girls. And a lot of girls like me back, but with all of them,  we have this unspoken agreement they can like other guys too. Especially those who don’t live anywhere near me. They can make out, sleep with, go out with, cake with any guy not named Jozen and I can’t really have a problem with it. But I kind of, sort of, definitely, absolutely do. Kind of one day, sort of the next, definitely the day after, and absolutely usually by the end of the week. It all depends on how I feel and sometimes, it depends on how they feel about me too. Because liking a girl is one thing, but when the girls like me back, we are headed to the problem land.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Before I get into today’s post, a quick plug for my new blog hosted on VIBE.com called “The Eldrick Woods Relationship Blog”. There, I will be able to vent my thoughts on the latest celebrity relationship news, like a Dr. Phil without the doctor part. Posts will be made there every Wednesday, and I ask that anyone who is a fan of this blog to please support the EWR blog on VIBE.com. After all, VIBE asked me to be a part of their blog lineup after they saw the support I get over here, so please, show them they made a smart move.

Now on to today’s post.

Ladies, please don’t bother enrolling in anymore pole dancing or fellatio classes. At least, don’t do it for me.

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I have a crush on a woman, who to my knowledge, has only been in one movie. Her name, Tracey Heggins. The movie, Medicine For Melancholy. I saw it last year, three times, not because of Heggins, but because I actually did enjoy the movie. So much so, I encourage anyone who hasn’t seen it to order it on Netflix. It was an independent film and a  few months ago, was released on DVD.

But enough about the movie, back to Heggins. Seriously. Someone please, put me in touch with this girl before she blows up and becomes the next big movie star. I need to meet her now and ask her out for soup before she goes the way of so many other women I’ve crushed on – the way of the red carpet.

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Today, I just had to make a quick dash into the brand new Applebee’s on 125th and Madison in Harlem to catch some sports highlights. But it took everything in my power not to ask for an application by the time I left because the women I saw working in there were absolutely, positively fine, and provocatively so. For a second, I thought Applebee’s and Hooters merged companies to form AppleHooters, and were sponsored by Apple Bottom Jeans.

As I was leaving, reluctantly, it made me happy to know this new Applebee’s has upheld a proud tradition of keeping the front of the house staff flush with fine women.

When I took an unpaid internship in the summer of 2003 at Vibe, I had to get a part time job to have a little spending money, so the first place I went to was a brand new Applebee’s opening in Rego Park, Queens. Why? Because I knew from, my years of being the son of an Applebee’s manager back home in California, it was an establishment crawling with beautiful women who needed to make some money before they went off to community college (or, in some cases, regular college).

Needless to say, when I began to work at the Rego Park Applebee’s, I fell in love three times at the orientation alone. Those were some of the finest women I’ve ever seen wearing sweatpants, no makeup, and a baseball cap. They looked like strippers about to start their shift. Not only that, they were all so friendly. Just like strippers.

In any case, walking into the Applebee’s today has inspired today’s post, dedicated to all the women who I call blue collarettes. These are the women who do the jobs very few women want to do (social work) or the jobs nearly every woman does (waiting tables) at places not high up on any one’s list of Dream Jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the doctors and the lawyers and the business women of the world. I really, sincerely, honestly do. But if I can, for a moment, tip my hat to the women who are working at one of the places I list below part time or full time. I see you, ladies. I just hope you all see me too.

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Every month, a woman has a stretch of days where it is best if they don’t engage in any type of fornication whatsoever. Physically, it’s still possible, but it’s best we don’t, unless we’re at a point in the relationship where we don’t give a damn and have towels to spare.

I have these times too, although, one can’t set their watch to it like we sometimes can with the female dilemma. For me, the times I don’t feel like having sex are stretched out over certain times of the day or certain times of the year and unlike the mother nature-induced female situation, the times I don’t feel like sex are more about my mood. In other words, sometimes, i just don’t feel like it. Here are five of those times where it’s more than likely to be the case.

RIGHT AFTER I EAT

Food, you perverts. I don’t know how anyone else feels about sex after dinner or breakfast, but me personally, I’ll pass.

A long time ago, parents told us it’s never good to go swimming right after we eat, which in retrospect is weird, because I feel like a lot of kids got the same warning and like me, they always got it when there wasn’t a pool anywhere in sight. Anyway, I say all that to say, someone should have said not to have sex right after Thanksgiving dinner, because I tried that once, and I had tears in my eyes, not cause it felt good, but because my whole right side was cramping up as she told me to keep going.

Home From The Club

Now, if I am still inebriated, of course I will want to make the night complete with some good old fashioned sex. But if I’m sober, and my 20/20 vision is working at 100 percent, and I can see that run in her stocking, the sweat on her forehead, that smudgy eye shadow and those tired, red eyes, all while she’s finishing up her four stack of pancakes at IHOP, not only am I going to pass on the implied plans, I am going to drop her off or asked to be dropped off. Sometimes a woman leaves the club looking like she needs some sleep. And a shower.

Right Before Bed

For all my readers who have ever lived with their partner, this time should be easy to understand. I just spent all evening with this woman, who I love very much, who I find incredibly sexy most hours of the day and who turns me on by doing the littlest things. She just spent all evening with me, but now (right NOW), after I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my basketball shorts, she wants to get it on? Why now when we had all night or sometimes all day? Was it the way I gargled and spit my mouthwash out? Or did we just become a  married Quaker couple and I forgot it was time for the Friday night special?

It’s been my experience that really good sex rarely happens during an orchestrated moment. Really good sex happens at a moment’s notice and puts both parties to sleep.

Right After She Has Finished Using the Bathroom

I know I’m not the only one to whom this has happened. I’m making out with a girl, things are going really well when all of a sudden, she hits me with the, “Hold up, wait. I have to use the bathroom real quick.”

Damn.

Ladies, I understand when one has to go, they have to go, but please understand, unless the toilet plays R. Kelly’s “12 Play” when it flushes and when you step out of the bathroom there is another woman right behind you who has been hiding in the bathtub all along, going to the bathroom right before sex is a momentum killer.

Special Ocassions

For VIBE, I once wrote a blog inspired by last year’s hit single, “Birthday Sex” by Jeremih. In it, I basically called the whole idea of real birthday sex overrated. I also feel the same way about things like Valentine’s Day.

The fact of the matter is, any healthy relationship between two people is going to have good sex pretty much all the time. My birthday is on July 18, five months and four days after Valentine’s Day, and I honestly hope any woman I am with is doing her best to break me off steadily between those dates, because I know I am. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have sex on my birthday and on Valentine’s Day, but I’m also down to do it the day before and after either of those days. And I’m down to do it well. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Birthday sex, no matter how many candles she wants to light or how she wants to dress it up, is not a gift. It’s like wrapping up the television I already own and when I unwrap it, she’s screaming, “Surprise!”

But I already had this. Yesterday.

Some Fine Print
Author’s Note: The trouble with hosting this blog and having to come up with fresh, new content  five days a week, is there will be times when I might repeat myself or some variation there of. This is one of those times.

In a post I wrote months ago, entitled “Hell Yeah I Don’t Want to Have Sex With You“, I listed four moments I don’t feel like having sex. I completely forgot about this after I wrote the post above, and because I am not going to re-write another post, I am sticking this quick note  at the bottom so people know that I know, I did something like this already. Besides, I like this one way better than the last one. I hope you all did too.

Those who have been reading my blog for a while now, know I’m kind of opposed to the whole dinner-as-a-first-date thing. Some say it’s traditional, I say it’s unoriginal. There’s no thought in taking a woman out to eat, it’s something our parents parents did, and thus we do it too.

But I am the kind of guy who really enjoys a great meal, who is insulted by the vastness that is the Cheesecake Factory dinner menu, and prefers to find holes in the wall and places where the demand for a table is so high, they only accept walk ins. My motto: If there’s a line outside, I probably want to eat there. Hell, ask my mom, my first words ever were “I Eat.” So, for me, eating is an intimate act akin to sex, because anyone who has ever gone out to eat with me knows the whole experience gets me to open up about my own childhood growing up in my grandmother’s restaurant. 

Of course, the other reason I don’t like to take a woman out to eat on a first date is the same reason a lot of men have a problem with it. What has any woman done to deserve to eat on my dime? As I just said, going out to eat with a woman is something like sex, and if we’re not going to have sex on the first date, we’re damn sure not going out to eat on the first date.

This has been my attitude for about four or five years now, and though there have been occasional exceptions (she was fine, what can I say), and accidental first-date-dinners (I was hungry, she was just around), I have been steadfast in maintaining this line in the sand. Especially after I lost my previous job at VIBE. Those who were reading way back then remember one of the first posts I ever wrote was a declaration that I would not go out on a date of any kind until I found a job. Those who started reading later, remember the post where I said I lied, I was still going out on the occasional date or two.

Which brings me back to this whole dinner-as-a-first date thing. To be honest, one has to be 1,000-thread count smooth to always avoid taking a woman out to eat on a first date. Or, they have to be a recluse. Either way, most times, taking a woman out to eat on a first date is just easier. Still unoriginal, but  then again, some first dates are not worth the effort to be original in the first place. But I have developed what I believe is the best compromise for a first-date meal. It still involves food, but not expensive food, and not just any kind of food either. This compromise is very specific. You all ready? Here it is:

For the remainder of the winter season, I’m only taking women out for soup.

Yep, that’s right, I said it and I mean it. Me and her, whoever she is, are only going out for soup. I’m not talking Hale & Hearty either, unless of course, they carry a specific soup she likes. We can go to other restaurants, nice ones even, so long as they carry a good soup. Even if she is particular about her soup, she only likes chicken noodle or split pea, then we’re going to go and find the best split pea and chicken noodle soups in New York City or wherever my dating life finds me.

The way I see it, not only is this compromise apropos for the season, but it is also economical. A really good, quality Pho-Binh noodle soup doesn’t cost anything more than $5.00 in most places that sell them. Throw in a couple of fried won-tons and we’ll be full for the entire night. And for those women who are into breaking a man’s pockets on the first date, some soups, like a quality lobster bisque or bouillabaisse can cost upwards of $14.

On a more personal note, as a self-entitled foodie, I tend to get into these fits of culinary compulsions. When I really am digging a specific type of food, I want to try as many variations of it as I can. For instance, at one point, I was into finding the best burgers possible in New York City and so, three or four times a week I would go to a new burger spot. This whole soup thing is sort of like that, except now I am allowing women to accompany me on this journey, but let me be clear: I am not, under any circumstances, going to wave on this soup-for-a-first-date-thing until further notice. So for all those women who try to weasel their way out of it, talking about how they want some solid food on the first date, proceed to the next guy. For right now, I’m all about soups, and soups only. There will be no exceptions made.

Well, wait, there is one.

You all know how I feel about my tacos. 

When I was a kid, all I had was the house phone, and not my own line like some of the other kids I went to school with. I shared the phone with my folks and my younger sister. But guess who had the phone the most? That’s right. I.

From about 7th grade to the time I graduated high school, I would say 70 percent of the phone calls to our house were for me, and about 90 percent of those calls were from girls. And because it wasn’t until my sophomore year of college I received my first cell phone (my mom was old school to a fault, she refused to even get me a pager back when Airtouch was all the rage), the ring of that house phone was my favorite noise in the world, because I knew there was a good chance that on the other end of that noise was some girl’s sweet voice I wanted to hear. 

A lot has changed since those days, the late 90s, when one either had a cell phone and voicemail or they had a house phone and an answering machine. In 2010, we have all sorts of ways to keep in touch, from email and instant messenger services, to phone calls and text messaging. Skype, Twitter, Facebook messaging, I can’t even begin to count how many different ways a person can get a hold of me. 

But in spite of the numerous ways we can keep in touch with each other in this day and age, one thing remains: The feeling we get when we hear that noise or when we see that glow illuminating from our screens. 

That glow, these days, is right up there with that noise. It’s the glow of a person’s name we have been waiting to find online, an indicator of their current status. Are they available? Are they idle? Are they busy? Red light, green light, slightly orange, but maybe a dark yellow light. Sometimes it’s dim and sometimes it’s so bright, if a person was looking into our dark apartment from outside, they’d think lightning was coming from the ceilings. And when we see it, we walk into it as though it was The Light itself. There they are, we think.

Sometimes, the glow comes with that noise. 

We have all types of ways to be alerted to someone calling or messaging us. Scroll through any phone’s options and see dozens of different ring tones, not to mention numerous ring tones of our favorite songs available for purchase. Yes, indeed I was one time so smitten with a woman I changed the ring tone of her phone calls to a certain song I will not name, lest I want to hear the wrath of my boys. And yes indeed she also gave me my own ring tone for whenever I called her. It was all so silly, two adults, acting not like the kids we once were, but the kids of today who spend their little bit of change on things like Top 40 ring tones.

But I tell you, that noise, that song, my phone played when it was her who called was music to my ears. Sometimes, I would even let the song play out a little bit, not because I liked it so much, but because there are few feelings more satisfying than the one we get when the person we want to hear from most in the world finally calls us. It’s a feeling so good, we just want to keep it, because we know the minute we press the Talk button, the feeling is gone. Replaced by a greater feeling (that of said person’s voice), but still, we need a second to enjoy the moment of an honored call. If we have the phone on vibrate, let it shake in our palm just one more time.

Of course, the only reason we enjoy the feeling of that noise is because we have waited so long for it, or sometimes, not long at all. Sometimes, we just waited for an intense five minutes, a five minutes in which we did everything we could  do to not make it feel like five hours. We left the phone where it was, and walked around our place, searching for something else to occupy our mind, because we learned a long time ago, a watched pot never boils. So we tell ourselves to watch some television instead, but it doesn’t help, because every single sound the television makes sounds eerily similar to that noise we’re waiting to hear. If we find ourselves waiting too long, if say six minutes (didn’t they say five minutes?) have gone by without so much as a peep from the phone, we change the ringer. Put it on silent, because we don’t want to hear that noise anymore, from anyone. But then, just as soon as we have turned off the ringer, what’s this we feel? A vibration, a call’s coming through.

Wait for it…Wait for it…The screen glows, and here comes the name of the caller. Who is it? 

Mom. Dad. Sister. Brother. Best friend we talk to every freaking day.

Damn.

And so it goes. That vibration, that glow, that noise. All of that, never gets old.

Sex.

That right there is the ultimate compliment.

For far too long, we have glorified the age-old adage, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.” The only people to whom that applies are the people who have already established they have a mutual attraction to what’s on the outside, so much so they’re willing to give the ultimate compliment to no one else but each other.

I have heard a lot of nice things said to me. As a matter of fact, I once wrote a post about some of the most memorable compliments I ever received. But when I think about all the compliments women have said to me over the years, none of them come close to the feeling I get when a woman wants to have sex with me.

Maybe it’s because I still remember my virgin days like they were yesterday. Back then, I used to think women only have sex with the best looking guys because that’s all I saw on TV. I thought, In order for a woman to have sex with me, she has to like me enough and think I’m cute enough. It took me 17 years before I met a girl who thought I was both of those things at the same time, which says a lot about my teenage years, but I digress.

After I lost my virginity, I got hip to the game, and realized sometimes I don’t even need to be that cute to the girl, I just have to be there. Or, sometimes, I can be a complete jerk and a woman will be so turned on by my jerk-ish ways, she actually will want to sleep with me more than the nice guy buying her drinks.

But even in those instances, when a woman has decided it is I she will be making faces with solely because she feels like it and not because I look like her crush, there is a compliment being paid to me. I may not be all that, but I’m good enough, and there are a lot of people in the world who are good enough, but not more good enough than me. Add on to that the vulnerability of sex, how it involves our most covered up areas, ones we don’t show to the world, but only a precious few, and the entire experience makes for one big giant compliment.

It’s an act of pleasure, of course, but it’s also an act that says, “I want to feel good with you and you with me.” No matter how casual or mindless the affair, and no matter how many people we exchange this compliment with, when one thinks about all the people we meet with whom we don’t want to have sex, people we don’t even want to see in sweaters and jeans let alone t-shirts and underwear, the fact that someone wants to have sex with any of us is mighty nice of them.

And yet, women still want to question a man’s motives whenever he asks her to come over or he’s trying to get her alone. A woman will tell a man there is more to them than just sex, and if he cannot keep his hands to himself while they’re watching a movie, he isn’t being respectful of her. How dare he want more than just her company while watching this movie. How dare he try to take her into his bedroom where there is no television and no movies can be seen. Doesn’t he know she is a complete being, filled with feelings, emotions, and intelligent thoughts? Why can’t he see what’s on the inside, instead of trying to get in the inside?

Okay, I totally get that. A woman has so much more to offer me than just her body and I respect women more than anyone will give me credit for, but when I want to have sex with her, I actually am respecting her, in the form of a compliment. Just follow me here…

If I just want to talk to a woman about things like the weather and Obama’s health care plan, it is a fool proof sign that I don’t want to have sex with her. And why wouldn’t I want to have sex with her?

Exactly.

She’s not cute enough for me to want to have sex with her.

How uncomfortable does that make any of us feel? Even if the woman wasn’t ever thinking about having sex with me, I’m pretty sure she would like to believe I would want to have sex with her given the opportunity. But I don’t. I don’t because I don’t want to see what’s underneath her clothes, and there is honestly, nothing respectful about that. Or maybe there is, but really it’s just respect by default. There’s nothing on it.

In my opinion, true respect is both complimentary and understanding. True respect is when I make a move on a woman and when she tells me to slow my roll, I slow my roll. It is not when I treat a woman like my sister or my mother, because I have never felt good when a woman tells me she sees me as a big brother. Sure, such praise is a testament to how nice of a guy I am, but it’s also a testament to the fact that she will never, ever, in a million years, want to see or feel me naked.