Copyright©2003 by Laurel Handfield
All Rights Reserved
Male Breakdown
In the midst of my drama filled corporate career, I met men that I fell in love with, men who fell in love with me and just bizarre men in general.
The first guy was Kenny. He was everything I was looking for. He was dark-skinned, tall and actually had a six-pack that I loved to touch. I had never dated a guy with a real six-pack. I had only seen them in magazines or T.V. I love-ded me some Kenny. He was from Baltimore and we had gone to college together and dated a bit while in college, but it wasn’t until later that we got involved. To this day, he thinks that he was my first sexual experience but that’s another story for another day. Of course I let him think that. (Wink, wink). Hey, I never told him he was. I had one other guy before him but to this day, he still thinks he was my first. He ended up moving to Philly and we started dating again but this time exclusively . . . or so I thought anyway. I was twenty-one years old, just started working at the company, and you couldn’t tell me nothing about life. We had only dated casually in college. In other words, we pretty much just had sex. Ok, ok, confession time. The reason we only “dated casually” in college was all him and not me. Like I said, I loved me some him, but apparently he loved him some her, her and her. The sign should’ve been when he told me that he didn’t want to get tied down with any one girl.
Ladies, if anyone says that to you, you aren’t the one. Roll on out as quickly and quietly as possible. Trust me on this one. It’s like a band-aid, just pull that sucker off quickly and get on with life.
He broke my heart, but then when I met up with him after college and felt I had grown some, he came back into my life and reduced me to that college girl idiot I was before, and again he took no prisoners. I can’t lie, it hurt just as much the second time as it did the first. At least I can say that when he came back for a third helping I finally wised up.
My mom used to tell me to wise up all the time when I was being stupid regarding men and this time I actually took her advice. (For once) So all in all, he got two burns in on me but that was it.
After him, there were a string of guys. Some of whom, I slept with and some of whom I didn’t.
Then I dated a broke-down guy with a kid that couldn’t afford twenty-dollars a week in child support. I’m not kidding, I mean that literally. He was brizzzzzzoke big time. The baby’s momma took out a court order on him for child support. His mom was an ex-crackhead and he lived in a house with a brother, a sister, her two kids, his mother, his grandfather and a shit-load of roaches and none of them worked, including the roaches. I’m talking generations of welfare and don’t get me started on that one. That was back in my trying not to be a snob day, but looking back I could’ve and should’ve been a little more discriminatory. To show you where I’m coming from, I used to attempt to spend the night in his house but had to sleep with the lights on so the roaches wouldn’t get me. After awhile, they just stopped caring and came out in the light anyway. That’s when the spending nights ceased.
They even had roaches in their refrigerator and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how they got up in there. Still can’t.
I knew I was in trouble when we used to get up in the morning and before putting on his sneakers, he turned them upside down and shook them out. (Yuck)
Then there was the next brother man I had met at one of those Young Urban Black Professional hangouts. I don’t think I need to tell you about those things. They were just hoochies and playas dressed up in suits . . . and half of those suits were red, yellow and purple.
Anyway, we danced and we had a good time. The tip off on that one should’ve been when I saw him later in the evening talking to three, count ‘em, three other women.
That’s just the ones I saw.
We had an off and on “relationship” for two years, mostly on for me and off for him. Mind you, hindsight is twenty-twenty and in this relationship, I couldn’t see a single sign, even if it was a purple neon sign on a billboard in Time Square.
For the first year, I used to go visit him on Saturday morning and leave Sunday evening. We had a ball. He had his own house, took me to dinner and lunch and we even worked out together. We did things like play basketball and taking his dog for a walk in the park. It was great in the beginning.
Tip off one: When you first walk into the house and the first thing you see is a hot-tub in the living room.
There was no furniture or anything just a hot-tub. At the time I wasn’t complaining because after our workouts I got my relax on, but think about it, a hot-tub in lieu of furniture? (Think purple neon sign)
Tip off two: I used to go down there on Saturday but when I had tickets for a show on Friday and attempted to ask him, I got the big shoot down. I NEVER saw him on Friday nights. When I confronted him about that, he said he just like to hang out at home on Friday nights and relax.
(Uh-huh, I think that sign is about flashing now).
Tip off three: When you are over there all weekend (meaning only Saturday and Sunday because Fridays were out, remember?) and his phone NEVER rang. So you think maybe no one calls him. You have him all to yourself. (Flashing sign now has sirens and fireworks.)
So when I went to use his phone, I noticed he turned the ringer off, but I still heard the clicks of the answering machine. When I “innocently” asked him about that, the excuse I got on that one was that he didn’t want the phone to disturb our time together. (I don’t even have a comment for that one.) This would be the part where he thinks I had “jackass” printed on my forehead. He had an answer for everything. They usually did. When I kept hearing the clicks of the answering machine, he eventually went as far as to completely unplug the phone. I mean, that jack was out of the wall. No lie. That too, began to be a slight tip-off for me.
Toward the end of the relationship, I got the code to his answering machine (don’t ask) and listened and surprise, surprise, I heard not one, but various women on his answering machine thanking him for a “good time”.
I would say that was Tip four.
Then there was the pornography addiction.
One time I found, what must have been his collection of like one-hundred porno videos, just stacked up in the corner of his bedroom like what. The really scary part was the name of these porno videos. They were like, “Wrinkled pussy’s”, “Suck my cock”, “Half-man, half-woman sex tapes”.
When I found the tapes, I guess he thought it was ok to come out in the open, because it became a real habit for him to take me to dinner and then off to the nasty X rated video store for his nightly fixture.
The real pathetic part (as if it wasn’t all pathetic) was that he tried to get me to get a membership at this one sleazy video store because he messed up his membership by not returning a boat-load of videos.
That would be tip five, six, seven AND eight folks.
And then there was his gun collection and after all this, our relationship eventually broke up, but it wasn’t due to any of the above. That added to the problems but the reason was because he didn’t want to get married and told me throughout our relationship.
Is it that bad out there?!?!?! (Rhetorical question because I already knew the answer.)
For more information, email Laurel or visit her at http://www.laurelhandfieldbooks.com
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