From a thousand miles away, you can smell the black middle class wafting from her double breasted lapel. I don’t even know if that’s an accurate description of her coat but I know fancy shit when I see it. Fancy shit has buttons on the side instead of the front. Absolutely impractical but shit tends to look regal. Who shows up to a date looking like Oprah? I didn’t know what to make of how she looked me up and down at first sight. Was she taking in this fine Adonis or was she noticing the loose stitching on the $5 boat shoes I got from Goodwill 3 years ago. We met on the corner of 19th and Pennsylvania Avenue in a delightfully gentrified restaurant called D Bar. Don’t get too excited, the D isn’t what the sexually depraved among us think. The only orgies hosted in this restaurant feature pistachio macarons and creme brûlée. But for her type, I figure it will do. Boujie black folks don’t like white folks but the more they surround themselves with them, the happier they feel…and eventually, the more miserable. It’s the circle of life in a racist society. The oppressed always find themselves inextricably attached to their oppressors.
“You live in this neighborhood?!”
Another way to say, what type of rich negro are you really?!
Nah I don’t. Hell, I don’t even think the air is free here.
I remember her boujie tendencies from the Match.com profile. What kind of woman makes $75,000 to $100,000 AND only wants to date someone who makes $100,001 to $150,000. That doesn’t even scream golddigger. It screams pure capitalism. Love ain’t got nothing to do with it. It’s proof that no matter how many degrees you got, black folks are always out here just trying to survive. Can’t afford to slide back into those humble beginnings ya know? I read somewhere, from a very credible source, that class is more dictating than race of who we marry. What is a bachelor’s degree-wielding black female engineer supposed to do? Date the broke ass motherfucker who couldn’t catch a break in high school when his father went back in and had to take on more hours at King Soopers to keep the heat on? Hell no! At most, he’ll make $50,000 in 12 years with piss-poor health benefits and half of it going to this or that baby mama. Can you blame her?
“My parents did quite well for themselves.”
Something about my dysfunction says whenever someone answers yes to this question: “would you be happy recreating what your parents had?”, then there’s most definitely something wrong with them. What kind of human being comes out of a wholesome loving parental relationship where good communication and trust is routinely modeled for you? Nah I’ll take a twice-molested woman whose mother beat her senseless over that Seventh Heaven/Brady Bunch shit any day of the week. Trauma builds character. The crack addict’s daughter ends up with more interesting shit to talk about than the girl whose mom became a real estate mogul.
Nevertheless, on this date, there was just one strike. It came at the 56th minute. 4500 seconds away from a graceful exit with a chance at date #2.
“I love their God-filled marriage.”
Learned that shit the hard way from the last one. Don’t pretend. Don’t do it. By the end, you’ll find yourself lying to her mother, her father, her siblings, her aunts, her grandpa, and even the trifling uncle who for some reason can quote Ecclesiastes. You’re not a bible-banging church-goer. You’ll never measure up to the cruel families who sent their children to church on Wednesdays. I could never understand that shit. I could barely make it through two hours on Sundays while some opted into two-a-week. Why? Why, Lord?!
Soon, she’ll find some hotepian-Greek-letter-wearing house negro trying to work his way up in Finance. He’ll come from a good Baptist family. In five years, they’ll have their first child. In 30 years, their son will probably marry a white girl. That’s how this shit works out. It just is. Hotep squared equals sellout. It’s either that or some Nubian mathematics-teaching super-Negro likely to invent a new religion and gain unlucky working class followers looking to catch a break.
How’s that for modern romance? Welcome to the god damned circle of life in a racist society.