Tag Archives: interracial dating

What’s so ‘no’ about no?

13 Dec

See? ‘No’ is so easy to say that a group of middle-aged men got together and wrote a song about it and then had pretty teenaged black girls sing it. Source

I fear that when I return to my currently godforsaken place of employment in 14 hours and 22 minutes that I will have the living shit embarrassed out of me. Yes, more than usual. Here’s why:

Over the summer, a handsome man began to appear fairly regularly at the old jobby-job. In my line of work (and no, I’m not going to come out and tell you what it is) I deal with a lot of students so I just assumed he was one. All the women save for one sensible and fabulous young lady lost their minds whenever he came in. They went crazy for good reason. Picture Jason Statham’s younger, taller, balder, hotter, vaguely Puerto Rican looking brother and you’ve got this guy. I tried my best to keep my cool because I hate attractive people that KNOW they’re attractive and try to capitalize on said attractiveness and I judge attractive people with a harshness that sometimes frightens me. But not for long.

See, I figure if you look that good, something has got to be hella wrong with you. I won’t put the fault(s) I ultimately find on blast. Usually. They’re more for my own peace of mind. Since I didn’t find any right away in Jason 2.0, I figured he had to be stupid or a dick or a stupid dick and he’d show his true self eventually. Because most men and especially conventionally attractive men look past, beyond, and/or through me, Jason 2.0 didn’t phase me at first. The giggling, panting, trembling mess that I used to call my staff and coworkers wanted to know his name, so I said “Hey, what’s your name?” complete with the thug’s chin tilt and everything. They wanted to know what he did so I says to him, I says “And whattya do?” He told me while The Mess looked on like a bunch of baby deer. And that was that. Jason 2.0 was just another human male type person with a nice face. And body. Not that I was looking. Ahem.

Then his visits became more and more frequent. He was always smiling and so personable, even with me. He remembered my name. He was friendly. And I could feel my cold, dead heart start to thaw. Based on his line of work he couldn’t be THAT stupid. He had proven to be kind, even when I was a total bitch and wouldn’t give him the 20 binder clips he asked for, afraid that he was trying to pull one over on me with his handsomeness. I gave him 12 and made a big deal about it. He smiled and was polite through the whole thing.

Even though Jason 2.0 was shaving his head to disguise male pattern baldness and appeared to be wearing at least some obviously fake or heavily repaired teeth, he was still beautiful, relatively smart, and kind. I felt like a troll in his presence and made myself scarce when he came around, answering in one syllable grunts when forced into conversation with him. He had proven to be a damn near flawless attractive person which made me feel all the more ugly by comparison.

Eventually, the tide started to turn when I noticed an ever present goofiness about his personality. I’ve always been drawn to men who are basically floppy puppies in human form and he seemed to be a very eager Golden Retriever, with his big smile and enthusiasm and loud, excited talking. And maybe did I notice him looking at me, like he actually saw me as a woman and not some angry blob keeping him from the binder clips? I started to come out of my shell and actually smile at Jason 2.0 and stay in the room when he entered it. I started to think that maybe he was a safe person to like who might possibly like me back.

So I did what any girl would do to show interest in a potentially special person: I eavesdropped and I lied. While busy with other tasks I listened as he shared his Thanksgiving plans with a coworker, noting his ever present excitement over his favorite team playing on the holiday. I was unwilling to watch the actual game but made sure to find out if they won. They did, and the next time I saw him made a point of grunt-whispering (my specialty!) “Hey, your team won.”

The look on his face was so. . . bright, I guess, that you’d have thought I’d handed him season tickets. “You remembered!” he gasped. I turned red and farted out a “Yeah.” And you wonder why I’m single.

He then asked me sports-type questions and I felt my eyes start to glaze over. I initially told the truth, sort of, saying that I hadn’t watched the game as I didn’t like either team. He asked me who I did like and I lied and told him who my dad likes, as taste in sports teams seems to be genetically inherited and/or geographically based. He “reminded” me about an upcoming game between his team and “mine” and rattled off facts and figures I tried to listen to. I then shouted out names that I hoped had something to do with the sport and we had a friendly rivalry going. I had something to talk to Jason 2.0 about.

I felt particularly brave after all the fibbing I did about being a sports fan, so I sent him an email telling him how excited I was that my team was going to destroy his and thanked him for the chat. He wrote back the next day, writing that he’d be watching the game with friends who liked my team and like to “talk junk” and could see that junk-talking was right up my alley. He ended his message by stating it was always a pleasure chatting with me.

For a minute I thought that maybe I could become a sports fan. I looked up stats and read about the rivalry between the teams. It didn’t take, but I tried. His team beat “mine” by one point. I couldn’t wait for him to stop in so we could resume our good-natured teasing.

He didn’t and I was a bit disappointed, but it’s a busy time of year in our line of work so I thought I’d be brave and reply to his message. I told him I expected him to come in and brag about his team’s win, but figured he hadn’t since a one point win wasn’t anything to brag about. I then wrote the unthinkable: “Hey, would you like to get a coffee or a drink or something with me?”

And here’s where the title of this post comes in. He hasn’t written back. I haven’t seen him either. He came in looking for me on Monday, telling a coworker he had to talk to me about something and for a chunk of time much larger than I’d like to admit I was excited and hopeful. He was looking for me? He has to talk to me about something? I was ready to pick out flatware until it dawned on me: if his answer was yes, he would have written back something along the lines of “Sure. Where and when?” He’s looking for me to tell me no.

I don’t know what it is that makes ‘no’ such a no for men. Maybe it is for women too but I don’t care about them (In this context. There, is that better?). All of my unanswered messages sent on Match.com. The guy a friend tried to set me up with who wouldn’t write back to my message of “Hello! You sound great! Hope to meet ya?” The dork who took me on six dates and spent hours of valuable phone and email time that he could have spent masturbating to his Star Wars action figure collection. Why couldn’t ANY of them just say ‘no’?

Now this ding dong is gonna come all up in my job tomorrow to tell me how he’s flattered, but oh, he just couldn’t. Hey mastermind; you could have saved us both a heap of trouble and sent this to me in a got dang email three to six days ago. Did it never occur to this nincompoop that I might be getting my hopes along with my BMI up? Why would you wait to dash a bitch’s dreams of caressing your bald head? And why would you do it in person?

I guess I should be touched that he’s doing it at all considering my track record. But I’m not because up until about seven hours ago I was delusional enough to think that he was coming in tomorrow to tell me ‘yes’ until I realized how dumb that would be, waiting a week to deliver good news. There’s a reason motherfuckers never fire workers on Monday. Those sadistic bastards get their rocks off from the wait and the week’s worth of labor. The “nice” ones are simply trying to avoid the inevitable.

I am going to get fired by a handsome-ass man tomorrow. I don’t think he’s going to offer me a severance package.

“But Ambrosia, couldn’t you be wrong? What if he did want to wait and say yes and make plans in person?” you ask. Dear reader, don’t be ridiculous. What in my history would make you think that? Remember, my last surprise was some douchenozzle I called a friend decked out in blackface. Jason 2.0 showing up to my job slathered in shoe polish is more likely than him coming to say ‘yes’ to my coffee or whatever date.

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It’s now the tomorrow I was so fearful of above. There’s an hour left till I go wait in line to see The Hobbit by myself  am finished with work and there has been no sign of Jason 2.0. Actually, I can’t say that with complete certainty as I made sure to busy myself in a remote area far from my desk during the time that he usually arrives. Yes, I am a chicken.

That still doesn’t change my frustration. I’ve mentioned before ’round these parts how hurtful being ignored is. To not even deem me worthy of a response is maybe the shittiest thing ever, second only to the explosive diarrhea caused by a BK Veggie Burger. Or so says a friend of mine.

The worst part is that based on his profession he is supposed to be at least a little bit skilled in the art of interpersonal interaction. Did I miss the study that found that people respond more favorably to being ignored and possibly avoided than to be simply told “No thanks. I’m not interested/dating someone/married/involved in a plot to castrate Justin Bieber and can’t really focus on dating anyone right now.”?

I don’t know. I don’t have anything else to say that I haven’t already said before. Dating while me SUCKS.

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Weird science.

12 Nov

What I wanted was a picture of a drag queen done up like a mad scientist, but I’ll settle for this. Source

I’m gonna conduct me some experiments.

Ain’t nothing going the way I want it to, so I’m gonna go ahead and change ALL the things around. To the best of my abilities. Before something else distracts me. Like another weekend marathon of Rupaul’s Drag Race Allstars. Ahem.

My first experiment involved my logging on to that godforsaken Match.com and once I did, shit got real. I put up pictures that I took, like, yesterday, that showcase my fat ass and Bruno Mars butch queen hair cut and took down the ones from thinner, longer haired days gone by. Went ahead and changed my body type descriptor to “Full-Figured” (I would have preferred to use “Heavy-Set”, but it just sounds so masculine.). I changed the essay portion of my profile to one that accurately showcases my sparkling personality. Now it’s time to sit back and wait. For what, I don’t know.

I’ve got three more months to comply with Match.com’s rigamarole surrounding their six-month guarantee before I can get my $100-and-something-dollars back. If I can show that I’ve done all the crap that they say will get me a date but don’t actually get a date after six months, they’ll refund my money. Okay, Match. We’re on. I’ve sent something like 25+ emails to men that caught my eye and received one reply. Well, two, if you count the guy that wrote back to tell me that I had reinforced his decision to never date black women. SUCCESS!

Since I am required to contact five men during each 30-day cycle as part of the six-month guarantee, I did a search to find the next recipient of one of my unanswered emails. I like to use Match.com’s “Reverse Match” option, which is described as “These matches are looking for someone like you based on what you told us about yourself in your profile.” No one is actually looking for a 30-35-year-old, never married, fat, black, average-to-ugly looking woman; it’s just a bunch of guys who have “No preference” listed under height, weight, ethnicity, etc. We simply end up with each other in the list of results when we go searching for someone to pin our hopes and dreams on.

Curious as to who has their sights not really set on a girl like Ambrosia? Here’s one of my favorite candidates:

I love to make aehc ather so happy most to time I lessons the others and I do going out for eating any restaurants and I do love going to en

I do love cooking outside mostly the times I go to park’s a lats and I do go fishing and I go to Parks for the feeds birds and the docs and I love to cooking outside very Mach

AND I LOVE GO TO BY THE BEACH

In case you were wondering, the first part is in bold because that incomprehensible phrase is what this 48-year-old gem used as his headline, you know, that first thing that I or some other lucky girl would see that would draw us into his web of seduction and romance and outside cooking.

I laughed so hard when I read his profile! I laughed and laughed and laughed until I burst into inconsolable tears when it dawned on me that even this man probably wouldn’t respond to an email that I sent to him. I wept bitterly at the thought that unless my super real profile experiment and/or the other I’ve got cooking works, I too will be 48-years-old and still on Match.com and I don’t like feeding birds or lessons the others so what will I write about in my profile?

Speaking of my other experiment: I want to utilize the dying art of the personal ad.

I’d clearly like to have the opportunity to feel like a normal, adult human being that other normal, adult human beings with wieners see as desirable and not as just a sexless lump of too much undigested cookie dough, but clearly the online, picture-prominent dating site isn’t working for me. Set-ups don’t work either, especially ones that are dependent on the introduction being made via picture exchange. I’m just not attractive enough for that sort of thing to work. I don’t have any redeeming physical qualities that a man under the age of 72 would be interested in. But I express myself sort of well through the written word. I mean, I hope I do. The five to nine daily visitors of this blog seem to think so!

The kind of guy that is checking personal ads, which are typically picture-less, is 1.) a serial killer, 2.) desperate, or 3.) that rare breed of man who is looking for someone that he first connects with intellectually and/or emotionally. He’ll worry about connecting with the writer’s vagina later. I need to attract the last two types of men. Though I have always wanted to turn in a serial killer to the authorities. It just stinks that you run the risk of being murdered, probably quite viciously and in a prolonged manner. Anyway.

I’d start my ad by highlighting my physical flaws in the hopes that once we exchange pictures, dudes are saying “Oh, she’s not that bad” after they’ve clicked on the emailed photo attachment. I’d get all the quirky, nerdy things about me out in the open. I could be specific in who I’m looking for, if I ever figure that out. I could be my best and worst self, all in a few hundred words. And I wouldn’t be dismissed right away because I’m too black or fat or old or not fat enough or ugly! They’d HAVE to get to know me first; they’d HAVE to take a gamble on me sight unseen! I NEED the personal ad in my life!

I answered one once and lived to tell the tale. Some Indian man was looking for a full-figured black woman to date. At the time, I was really into Indian men, I thought. To be perfectly honest, I like the idea of interracial dating for myself mostly because as someone who has been bombarded for the last 28 years or so with the message that nobody wants a black women, including/especially black men, it’s pretty dope to have some guy that doesn’t look like me think I’m hot and awesome, maybe even if it’s just because I’m black. Being fetishized does get old quick though. Catch-22, man.

Anyway, I answered that ad and gave the guy a chance for a bit. He turned out to be – or at least looked – far older and hairier than the picture he sent me indicated. He was a braggart and rather materialistic. And I had a sneaking suspicion that he was married. But I lived through the experience. He seemed to like me as much as an obnoxious, arrogant person can like another. It was a short lived confidence boost, too, even if I was the only woman dumb enough to answer his ad.

As the dreaded Holiday Season quickly approaches, I am even more compelled to test out my hypothesis that a not conventionally attractive person like myself may have better luck using personal ads without pictures. I can’t bear the thought of going to yet another holiday party solo. This is why I am thinking about expanding my personal ad experiment and creating one in search of a BFF along with one advertising my need for a lovah.

Now, if you’re reading this, it’s very likely that you’re a friend of mine in real life. You may be insulted by my proposing to advertise my need for a best friend. But here’s the thing: you’re great, probably. I most likely enjoy your company and chances are I think you’re a decent conversationalist. However, you have a spouse/partner/lover and/or children and/or pets and I can’t compete with those people and animals. I need a friend who is as “free” as I am. I need a friend with benefits.

Not those kind of benefits. I’m talking about the benefit of having a friend who has a “lifestyle”, if you can even call it that, similar to mine. I know I don’t rate very highly on anyone’s totem pole seeing as how I don’t give the people in my life sex or macaroni necklaces or poop on the rug.  I know that, apparently, pushing out babies and/or sharing a bed with someone you kind of like makes one much more likely to use the word “exhausted” pretty exclusively. I need someone who wants to go out on weekends and isn’t encumbered and drained by responsibilities to others. I need a plus one for weddings and parties so I can stop being the goddamn third or fifth wheel ALL of the time. I need a stylish fat girlfriend to go shopping with and a gay boyfriend to sit with at the movies.

I sort of have those things already, but there’s always a catch. My gay boyfriends live crazy far away. My stylish fat friends don’t have disposable income for shopping because their kids need stuff. If I’m going to be single, sexless, petless, and childless, then I need a partner in crime. I need someone to whom I am very important. And I’ll say again, I don’t want to compete with the uncompeteable for their loyalty and attention.

I think I’ve provided an excellent basis for my need to conduct these pseudo-scientific experiments. The biggest hitch in my diabolical plan is that damn Craig’s List. I dread and resent having to use that service, the only and creepiest game in town, in an attempt to make my dreams come true while orange-skinned, pushing-40, Chola-brow having HOES don’t have to do ANYTHING but cheat on their second husbands to get what they want (Weirdly specific example, I know, but it’s one that ABSOLUTELY ENRAGES me. Maybe someday I’ll tell the story behind it.).

Years ago, there was a pre-op transsexual advertising her services on Craig’s List to be the live-in companion to a “real” girl, as she put it. She wanted to provide maid services and in exchange, hoped her employer would allow her to do perfectly reasonable things like watch her sleep, paint her toenails, brush her hair, and give her back massages, all while she wore a classic french maid’s costume with fishnets and heels. Change the brush to a wide-tooth seamless comb, and how could I say no?

I still regret not answering her ad. Man, I could have killed ALL the birds with one stone if I had, even if she turned out to be the Bird with One Stone Killer.

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Jungle Fever(ish).

12 Jul

Interracial dating makes me sad.

Not in the way you’re probably thinking. Other than a reflexive and obligatory eye roll, I couldn’t care less if black men want to date white women. Hell, if you like it, I love it. And I owe my very existence to The Swirl. Until rather recently I was pretty certain that the Honorable Mr. Ambrosia Jones was going to be a delectable piece of white chocolate. Now I’m not so certain that he won’t be imaginary.

Interracial dating makes me sad in the most literal sense: the times that I’ve liked white boys have been some of the most curled-up-in-a-ball-ugly-crying times I’ve experienced. It all started in the 4th grade. Sexy Kid Ambrosia was hidden under a pair of gigantic, red plastic frame, Coke-bottle thick glasses and a wardrobe primarily from Bradlees and Caldor. The social torment that would follow me well into adulthood had  begun. Then Todd waddled into my life. He was a year or so older because he’d stayed back a time or two. He was the only 4th grader who had boobs bigger than mine. The poor thing was also cursed with both a speech impediment and a voice so high-pitched that had I had any grasp of the concept of sexuality, I would have questioned mine for dating a boy with a magnificent pair of knockers and an impeccable falsetto.

Todd was kind to me. He held my hand on the playground and was as enthusiastic about planning our wedding as I was (weddings were regularly held on the kickball field for interested couples and usually officiated by the teachers who most craved our approval or some of the more bossy 4th grade girls). But my dreams of a Michael Jackson-themed reception by the swing set were shattered when he dumped me for London. Always beware of girls named after European cities. I have to give him credit; Todd was pretty direct about it, hysterically explaining to me that London had explained to him that he liked her better than me.

I didn’t learn my lesson and a year later found myself involved in a scandalous polygamous relationship with that bitch London and a piece of Euro-trash named Pierce. He had shoulder length brown curls and wore Ralph Lauren sweaters and trousers. We were the talk of the 5th grade up to and including our very messy and public break-up. It got so ugly that parents were called. Mine were less than amused. I still deny the baseless accusations brought against me. I was railroaded! I was only guilty of being a woman scorned! And maybe calling him the f-word.

Middle and high school were pretty uneventful, mostly because I was crippled by awkwardness until the 10th grade and absolutely determined to “prove” my “blackness”. I dated a biracial boy from Da Hood on and off from 8th grade until the middle of 9th grade and then focused my attentions on boys who had spent time in ESL and came to school smelling like Sazon. I don’t count those experiences as “interracial dating” mostly because a great deal of the time people assumed my exotic boyfriends were my brothers and/or cousins. That sure did wonders for my adolescent self-esteem. No, really! Being mistaken for Brazilian, Dominican, or Puerto Rican is the ULTIMATE compliment to pay to a teenage black girl suffering from an identity crises. It got a little prickly though when onlookers assumed my papi chulos were actually my hermanos, if that meant they were being mistaken for black. Yeah, those were some uncomfortable conversations. . .

My case of Jungle Fever returned freshman year of college. First there was Tommy, the Italian Stallion from Brooklyn. Then came Matt, the Golden Boy with the Southern drawl from Georgia. But it was Andrew who put them all to shame. He was my first real white boyfriend and The Great White Hope. Andrew looked like Jordan Catalano’s buffer, hotter, older brother. He played soccer and worked at The Gap. He was 21 and drove a sports car. I had managed to snag the white boy of white boys and was head over heels.

We dated for a tumultuous 7 months, breaking up no less than three times throughout. Being his girlfriend was like starring in some surreal Afterschool Special on race relations in America. He would say crazy things to me like “I always warned my mother I’d date a black girl someday” and affectionately referred to me as a/his bitch in front of everyone. He dragged me through his hometown introducing me to every member of his immediate and extended family so they could see “the hot black girl” he’d met at college. He was “secretly” half Syrian (it is a long, bizarre story that I simply can’t be bothered to tell) and would develop a very dark tan in the summertime. He thought it was “hilarious” to pick me up unexpectedly from my summer job at the mall wearing a Yankee fitted cap to the side, a wife beater, baggy gray sweat pants sagged to show his boxers, and Timberland boots. “Everybody probably thinks I’m a Puerto Rican!” he’d breathlessly whisper while attempting to pimp walk through the parking lot as I trailed behind him, not sure whether to be totally turned on or totally humiliated.

Our relationship ended for the last time when during an argument about something mundane like my wearing thong underwear (yes, this caused him great distress) or spending too much time with my friends that he found annoying, he declared that he had to start thinking about who he was going to marry as he was “older” and that he simply couldn’t see himself marrying someone like me. His actual words were “There’s a specific type of girl I want to marry and you just ain’t it.” I think he thought it’d be less of a blow if he broke the news to me in my first language: ebonics. Le sigh. He left a bag of his crap in my car or dorm room or something and I made a great show of returning it to him in front of his teammates. I included a print out of the lyrics to Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” amongst his things.  I had her haircut; I loved the song, but never really understood its meaning until Andrew took a dump on my heart, so it seemed like a very fitting way to bid him adieu. I was 18, it was the 90’s, and I was DEEP.

The next year found me without a serious boyfriend and doing a lot of kissing (all Latino boys again!) and then I met He Who Shall Not Be Named. HWSNBN was Puerto Rican, but looked like the love child of Chico DeBarge and R.Kelly and didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, so it was just like dating a horrible guy who hated that people assumed he was black who’s grandparents happened to be from Puerto Rico. As you can guess, it was AWESOME.

My mid-twenties found me pining over an Italian-Irish EMT from Staten Island that I’d known as a teenager who declared his “love” for me out at da club one night while his girlfriend wasn’t looking. Despite his declaration, he picked the girlfriend. I was in graduate school and living alone in a big city then and I’d drive around in my hoopdie crying to love songs on the radio. For some reason, Etta James’ “At Last” seemed to be on the radio station I listened to every morning and Luther Vandross’ “Think About You” was on every night, so I was getting it from both ends and not in the good way.

After graduating from grad school and moving back home, I reconnected with the boyfriend I’d had during senior year of high school. Paulo was a fair-skinned South American who had identified as Latino in high school but decided he was actually white as an adult (again, long and extremely stupid story) and I thought we were in love. I moved to a city without a proper Starbucks and 60% of its population living under the poverty line for him. I befriended his drunken, crazy mother; regularly babysat his poorly behaved niece and nephew FOR FREE, and slow danced with his sister (she was living as a man at the time so put your eyebrows back down) all in an effort to prove my undying love and devotion. His mother would say really terrific things to me in broken English like “I live with the black man when I come to America. He beat me all the time!” and “My son likes beautiful girls with the blonde hair and the good, good body, but I convince him to love you because you are so nice person to me!” Turns out, she was right. About the second part. I don’t know if the black man beat her all the time. I wasn’t there for that.

About three months after we’d reconnected and two months after I moved to the godforsaken place I am about to peace out from in 69 days (the seven weeks thing was a false alarm), Paulo told me that I had misunderstood him; he wasn’t interested in me romantically, mostly because he didn’t find me attractive. He was in Europe at the time, so he delivered this very important piece of information to me over the phone, after I’d signed a year lease on my apartment. Oh, and it was my birthday. Did I not mention that part? I spent a great deal of time after that alternating between hysterical crying and staring at the wall in my mostly unfurnished new home until a no-nonsense friend stormed in, dragged me to my feet, and made me go grocery shopping. Everything worked out in the end; Paulo found a (second) wife with the blonde hair and the good, good body, and I have this blog. Hooray.

So here we are in the present. The person that I used to know is of the Caucasian persuasion, so I was just a-quakin’ in my boots due to my unfortunate history. You may have noticed that I typed ‘was’. Yeah, turns out that home boy I was hoping to climb like a mighty sequoia once I redeemed myself of the epic fail that was our “reunion” after 15 some-odd years ain’t single after all. I became aware of that fact just a few hours ago and haven’t cried yet! But I’m still sad. So this post and my life have come full circle. That’s. . . something.

Don’t worry; I’m not gonna go all Anita from “West Side Story” on you. “Stick to your own kind” is mean and weird and hard to do when you don’t know any straight, chubby, black guys who like Jane Austen, Broadway musicals, and Doritos. But I have to admit that when I feel the JF coming on me now, I reach for the Tylenol and take a nap. That seems to be the safe thing to do. For now.

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