Until I Get Married

Some may have noticed that on the right margin of this blog, I have a Formspring account (See: “Ask Jozen Anything”), allowing readers the opportunity to ask me questions anonymously. Unfortunately, I haven’t been as prompt with my responses as I should be, so starting today I’m going to answer most of these questions via my daily posts every Monday and Friday. To those who think they’re going to be reading some dry questionnaire, give me more credit. I’m still going to be answering these questions with the hopes of entertaining in a thought-provoking way.

Also on the right hand margin of this blog, you will notice a new widget promoting an event I’m going to be a part of in New York City on June 2. It’s a relationships panel/music performance/party, and it should be a great time for everyone who comes. I, of course, am going to be on the relationships panel, and I sincerely hope all of you who are in the NYC area will (PAY TO!) come out.

Now, I’m already expecting most people who know me in real life to ask me for a hookup of Free.99, in which I will politely say “hell no,” but I do have an exclusive discount code (“Bachelor”) for five dollars off  for anyone interested.  To those who have never met me in person or heard me speak about the things I discuss here, this is your chance. Hopefully with this blog I’ve given you enough incentive, but if you still need some convincing, consider this post in which I share more of myself, to be my attempt at giving you a preview of who you’re coming to see. Enjoy.

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Last night on Twitter, I noticed a dichotomy between genders via my feed. At around 10 p.m., majority of the men I follow were tuning into the series premier of Treme, David Simon’s brand new series about life in New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, at the same time, most of the women (again, I stress, most, MOST, MOST!) I follow were tuning into VH1′s brand new series, Basketball Wives, a reality show about exactly what the title says for 30 minutes. Then, the second half hour, they were watching some show about Chili formerly of TLC.

The whole thing made me laugh a little bit. I thought it funny not because women were indulging in such a simple-minded show while the men were taking in something a little more high brow. As a matter of fact, in defense of the women tuning into VH1, I think they all agreed at least one of the two shows they watched was degrading and pretty bad. What made me chuckle is how I know if I had a woman in my life, at some point, I would be watching a show like Basketball Wives, if not Basketball Wives itself.

Every woman I have ever dated for an extended amount of time has put me on to some television show I watched long after we ended our time together. Some of them are high-quality entertainment, some of them scrape the barrel. But either way, I appreciate these shows and the women who introduced me to them. Below are five of them, and as always, feel free to contribute your own list of shows significant others put you on to.

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Today, over at VIBE.com, the team and I came up with a list of the 10 best black romantic comedies of all time. To compliment this list, I wanted to create a list of the five movies I have seen over and over again all in the name of getting a girl to sleep with me.

Manipulative? Not really.

This list isn’t made up of some cheesy love stories, nor do they all fit into one particular genre. What this list consists of is movies that are good enough to watch even if we have watched them before, but not so good that my guest and I are going to sit through the whole thing. If all goes according to plan, my guest is going to get bored enough to want to do something else, and if all really goes according to plan, that “something else” will take place in my bed.

So without any further ado, here it is, the five movies I have watched over and over again and will probably continue to watch over and over again until I get married. Feel free to add your own list in the c-section.

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When hanging out with my boys, there always comes a moment where to a casual outsider, our buddy-buddy camaraderie can be mistaken for something it isn’t. I should say here, I have no issues with gay people, I just have an issue with being mislabeled as gay, and that’s only because I’m not. These days, a lot of women are very cautious of male bonds because of the down low behavior that runs ramped in our society, so I always am somewhat aware of the impressions I give off to the opposite sex.

This is not to say I’m some extroverted, chauvinistic pig beating his chest at an establishment, talking about “I AM MAN. HEAR ME ROAR!” This is just to say, when me and my boy go get a bite to eat, and he orders the apple pie because he has a “sweet tooth” (his words not mine), I must speak up. And yes, this actually happened to me a week ago.

“Man, c’mon,” I told my boy. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Man, what?” he asked rhetorically. “This is what I want!”

“You can’t order dessert with your boy,” I protested. “Everyone knows that!”

“Whatever man,” he turned to the waiter. “Get me the apple pie.”

I said no more. The last thing I wanted to do is perpetuate the possibility that we were together together by arguing like we were together. But that’s just one example.

Below, five things I can’t do with my boy besides the obvious.

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The other day I was talking to a friend of mine about the perfect time for a booty call. It sprang from a discussion on the difficulty of negotiating a good time for the booty call and how in the hell it came to be between 11:30 and 2 a.m.? When did that law pass and who voted on it?

One of the main problems with these late night arrangements is they encourage sleep overs and I hate booty calls that turn into sleep overs.

The other issue is there’s no flexibility in the late night creep. A person has to either come over, do their thing and be out, or come over, do their thing, and stay for breakfast. Not only that, but who is truly at their best at 2 a.m.? I know I’m not. The best thing I do at 2 a.m. is either sleep or drink.

Why must something so good be done so late? Booty call hours need to be rearranged and put in a totally different part of the day, one where sleep-overs can be avoided and the room to do whatever we want do afterward is permitted. This is why I propose a national movement to restore booty call hours to a new time of day. Here it is.

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When my ex and I moved in together, it was more than just gathering her things and putting them at my place. She moved clear across the country for me. Her whole life, about to mix up with my own, and we had to find room for it all in my moderately-sized one-bedroom apartment.

Most of it was easy. She had her own closet, I had mine. We shared dresser space. I think, to help get her a proof of address we even changed my name on the gas and electric bill to hers.

Yeah, there were a lot of things we did to merge our lives together because I think for both of us, we wanted to fully immerse ourselves in this idea of being a team, a unit. But one of the most pivotal steps we made towards embodying the idea of being one unit is when she put me down on a form as her Emergency Contact.

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How is it that two people agree to sleep with each other, only to agree they will never sleep together again?

I’m not talking about two people who have said beforehand, “Hey, this is a one night thing.” Or two people who say afterwards, “Yeah, we’re not doing that again.” They could be one night stands, they could be long-standing trysts. It really doesn’t matter. What I’m talking about is two people who had sex, perhaps enjoyed it, and then without saying a word to one another, agreed they weren’t going to do it again.

Well sometimes, the answer lies not in the overt, but rather in the subtle. Here are five of those signs that the person we slept with will never sleep with us again.

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What I’m about to say is going to shock many of my female readers, so let me be blunt.

Men fake orgasms.

Now I’m sure some women have heard of this phenomenon that is the fake male orgasm, while others are surely rolling their eyes and would also like to sell me a piece of property called The Statue of Liberty for cheap. Those women think I’m lying, while the rest of the women are upset I have just reminded them of a very sad truth. Meanwhile, my male readers are probably hoping and praying I don’t reveal the methods we utilize to fake an orgasm.

Don’t worry men, I won’t.

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For those readers who pay attention, they may notice the lengths I go to to avoid talking about relationships and dating through the prism of race. This is intentional not because I’m colorblind to the factors race plays in dating, but because I honestly believe when it comes to matters of the heart, the only two groups that really matter are males and females; that what truly separates people from falling in love is more about gender, less about skin color and ethnicity.

But every now and then, I can’t sidestep the race issue. Every now and then, I must go in and acknowledge race matters. Today is now and I hope you all pay attention to what I’m going to say a little bit closer than usual.

Last week I was interviewed for a news magazine show on CUNY, one of New York City’s local channels. The story was a response to a story Nightline did earlier this year on this large number of single (beautiful!) black women. During the interview, the question was posed to me (I’m paraphrasing here), “A lot of black men feel they were portrayed in a negative light when this story came out. Do you feel that way?”

Of course I answered the question as succinctly as television allows, but if given the room to say more, here’s what I would have said.

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I’ve spoken about compliments before. Receiving them, giving them out, the ultimate compliment, and so on and so forth. Compliments are important, not because they help raise self-esteem, but because when we receive just the right one, they make our day. I know how good it feels to receive a compliment, but I know the greater joy is in giving one to a woman who upon hearing it, smiles so deeply I can tell her face is going to stay like that for the rest of the day.

But the question remains, how do we give them out? There is an art in compliment giving, as I’ve said before, as Esquire once wrote an entire article about. One specific rule of thumb I apply is to be specific when giving out a compliment. I don’t like the umbrella types of compliments where I’m acknowledging everything about a woman. I mean, she could be fine with ashy elbows. Who knows? So, instead, if I see she’s wearing some flashy accessory, I acknowledge that accessory. If I like the way she’s walking, I might say something about her walk. Fly hat? “Fly hat.”

But as a lady friend of mine recently pointed out, sometimes specifics can do more harm than good. If a woman just got her hair done, and I’m complimenting her shirt, what’s that say?

With this logic applied, sometimes the umbrella compliments, ones like “Hey beautiful,” or “You’re pretty,” are our best bet. What’s left to figure out is what umbrella compliment do I apply? I’ve thought about this for a couple of weeks, and I finally have what I like to call  the compliment translator.

Below, a break down of the most general compliments men give and what they might mean.

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