I'm Off The Sex

I'm officially off the sex. Well technically, you have to be on the sex to get off the sex. So technically speaking. sex is no longer on the table in the future, but like I said I wasn't previously offering it up as a main course on said table. So more accurately, I give up. I know my problem. I haven't dated in so long, I really don't understand the rules anymore. So I'm on the train reading my tablet today and people board what must have been 42nd st. I'm reading my tablet doing the introverted thing. Someone boards the train and stands in front of me. Let me be specific. This person, crotch first, is adjusting their position in front of me. I'm not paying attention. Adjust. Adjust. The train is not crowded enough for all of this. One more adjustment and the shoes of the person touch my bag. Enough already. I put my tablet in my bag and look squarely at the crotch positioned inches away from my face. I look up. I look up and down. Good GOD the hot dyke who clearly wanted to get my attention whose crotch stood before me was hot. Cute as hell. Black pants with a brown belt. Brown oxford shoes with turquoise shoe strings. Grey button down with the sleeves rolled up to the mid forearm. This chick was very fucking  cute. So what the hell was all of that primal bullshit going on before I actually looked at her? I personally like to keep my crotch as far away from everyone while on the train. I think it is rude. So some chick comes on the train does all of this bullshit to get my attention and says not one word to me. It doesn't make sense. And this is the reason why I am done. I haven't dated in so long, that I have no patience for the games and I don't get the rules. I'm more of a text me 4 days before you want to hang out kind of girl. So when girls do this and they do do this, I have no idea how to react. Is this the mating call of the modern lesbian? The kindergarten notice me notice me sort of way. If hot crotch would have said anything to me, I would have stayed on the train instead of savoring her crotch for one stop. 

Golf, Tennis, and Other White People Stuff

My co-worker likes to play the "If We Were Slaves" game. If you have never heard of this game, thank god for your blessings. It is a game I could only conclude was made by an only child who spent summers alone and wanted to distinguish herself from her imaginary friends. At least once a week she plays this game to her immense amusement, while I silently weep for the future.  Here goes: "If we were slaves, we would both be house Negroes, but I [she] would most likely be confused for an out of state cousin." You get it? We are both fair skinned, but she is the fairest one of all. This clearly means the world to her. I would rather be invisible when she says it. At work.  To the public. It is funny that she is obsessed with her lightness and yet everything I do is considered "White People Shit".  I love asparagus. White People Shit. I asked what I should eat as a black person and the answer was green beans. I like salad, raw spinach and kale and I sauté instead of frying. I read everything and do research and love the violin and I don't listen to rap music. White. People. Shit. The biggest laugh had at my expense was the word "cutlery".  I use the word regularly as would be expected from someone smart enough not to waste time saying three words that have been neatly summed up into one. Cutlery. A huge confused laugh was had. "Who says that?"  Who doesn't?  What should I have said?  "Forks, Knives, and Spoons"? What idiot would say three words when one has been created to sum it up nicely? This was also White People Shit, but more specifically, I speak like a white person.  I have heard this all before. Never by my black friends from HS and college who spoke exactly like me. Dare I meet people from different parts of NY. This is when I encounter the inter-race stupidity. I am told I know everything.  I correct them and say I don't know everything.  I try to learn everything and there is a difference.

What’s worse is that everyone assumes I won't date black people. Some of my oldest friends insist I won't date black people because I “don't like black people shit." Like when I cringe when some idiot says the word "nigger" around me. In reality, I like women and I don't care what color they are wrapped in as long as they are smart and have a good sense of humor.

I like golf. I love it. My mom bought me an indoor golfing set after I asked for it when I was nine and I have loved it ever since. I love tennis. Really love tennis. I mean Monica Seles, Maria Chonchita Alonzo, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario and not just Venus and Serena.  My favorite sport to play is volleyball. I am a huge sports fan. I like to read. I love music. Are these qualities black people don't like? I sat every night drinking tea while my family watched little house on the prairie. My mom, to my dismay, loved westerns. Is this not black people shit? Or is it people shit, which is probably what my mom would say about this whole stupid conversation.

Adrift

There’s a lot to be said post-divorce; or rather, a lot that you’d rather not say. After years of voicing every concern, petty grievance, and minuscule malcontent there is a freedom in not saying anything at all. I fought endlessly with the Ex. Challenged every single statement she made, questioned every difference of opinion as if mine was law and unequivocally accused her of mental duress because, more often than not, we didn't see a goddamn thing eye to eye.

Fast forward to my current relationship and it would appear that the problem is not she, but me. I don’t want to budge. I am a curmudgeon. I want to be left alone, free to speak when the mood strikes me and free to remain distant and aloof just the same. I spent ten years fighting the Battle of Codependence and realize that my definition of freedom may just be a bit extreme for the faint of heart. I speak a language unfamiliar to most. It’s a lonely space – this place stuck between trying to be ‘normal’ and trying to make sense of the lifetime lived with another person in cohabitation and complete dependence. How does one go from the tense ‘we/us’ to ‘I/me’ without missing a beat? How does one maintain a hard fought identity ensconced in a fairly solitary life while trying to maintain a relationship with someone who rightfully demands more than just the ghost of a gf? How do I keep myself while sharing my self, yet stand firm in my personhood?

I’m just one woman adrift, seeking an answer that is probably already apparent. I am easy to love. I am hard to comprehend. I am open and willing and funny and enticing. I am hardened and battered and stoic and cold. There is now a doorway so small, so conditional, that it doesn't really matter who approaches, I will cause a retreat. I will lay it bare and tuck it away so that no matter how hard she tries, I am impenetrable.

Another Year

I always knew I would have kids. I envisioned myself being married to a doctor, having two children and divorced by 26. I was going to raise my ingenious children with my ex-husband in complete amicable bliss. My children would grow to cure cancer. Reality is somewhat of a tempestuous beast. I had fallen in love at the age of 15 and that would render all of my plans moot. My nephew, Edwin, came to live with us October 1992. I was 15. He wasn't one. I was done for. We were inseparable.

As time went on, I came out. Of what I don't know. The closet, a cloud, a funk? No one, I'm sure, expected me to be straight. So when I had a girlfriend who had a son three years younger than Edwin, it was somewhat ho hum. My life changed. I didn't go away to college because of him. I told my mom I would take guardianship of him when she died. He was 8, I was 23, and she was gone. I had a college degree in my pocket, a kid I adored in my hands and a girlfriend I couldn't live without. I couldn't have been more overwhelmed if I tried. Eventually, I had to move out of the house of my raising due to circumstances beyond my control or anyone's understanding. To Brooklyn we go. Kid in tow and me with no clue.

I'm adopted. It took nothing for me to bring Edwin into my bosom as my own and bleed for him. It is that adoption laying over  both our heads that I thought would keep us together. I was better than my mom. I was better than his mom. I made sure of it. I maintained the shittiest of jobs that would help me keep him in the things he wanted and needed and keep us having dinner together every night. I was struggling, but we were happy. Or so I thought.

When it came time for my nephew to act like the man he thought he was, it was too late. I was no longer with my girlfriend. I decided I wanted to be single so I can focus on Edwin in this foreign land called Brooklyn. I held mindless jobs beneath my intellect so I could be the parent he needed. I was involved in school. Heavily. From Kindergarten on, I was that parent. The one all of the teachers knew. That is until he hit me.

My brother called today to wish me a happy birthday just in case he couldn't call me tomorrow. He told me Edwin came to see him. He tells me this not to hurt me, but to inform me. He said he was driving a brand new car with his younger brother. He said he gained weight. See, I sacrificed everything for my nephew. My education, my livelihood, relationships, sex, but I couldn't sacrifice my dignity no matter how much I loved him. My nephew was my child for 18 years and I couldn't see myself as a woman taking that from a child. My nephew's birth mother contacted him on facebook three years ago and he called me to ask what he should do. She hadn't seen or spoken to him since he was two. They were fast rekindling old times and this kills my brother. Like he raised him. Like he is me.  

So what? Why now? I'm having issues right now and I don't know why. I'm having dreams. I plugged my hard drive into my BluRay player and I saw a video "Edwin singing in the shower". It wouldn't play. So I sang the song he made up in the shower in the video like it was today. It was over a decade ago. When I think I'm good, I'm not. When I don't think about him, my brother calls me with an Edwin story. When friends ask me about him, I'm truthful but evasive. I don't know. When I'm honest with myself, it makes me sad. 

Now here I am 3 years removed from my nephew. I don't want to have kids and I don't know how to be in a relationship. I don't believe in regret. I believe in lessons learned. So what did I learn from this? The same thing I learned from my ex. Nothing. I would do it all over again.