Man Curse

by Raqiyah Mays

  “So yeah, girl, you gotta try match.com,” she said, standing outside the car, pulling down her skirt. “It makes the search for a man so much easier. You can cancel out a lot of crap without wasting your time or an outfit on a whack date.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t like crazy people,” I said, watching a homeless man wrapped in a tattered brown blanket limp by, talking to himself. “Online dating seems—and no disrespect to you—but it seems desperate.”

  “You can meet someone crazy in the street.”

  “Yeah, but I just want something natural. Not computer generated.” I let out a deep sigh and continued. “I want something old-fashioned, like bumping into a man on the sidewalk, looking up, and having that magnetic attraction where time slows and you know in that moment, at that place and time, that God has sent you something, a once-in-a-lifetime find. A love, an energy so strong and magnetic that it defies odds and space, shifting thoughts and patterns, ideas and expressions into a kind of collage of hearts and question marks that make you question your fears, insecurities, life, the who, what, where, when, why, and how—”

  “Um . . .” Meredith said, cutting me off, “not to interrupt your monologue, but just a quick reality check. It doesn’t really happen like that in real life. I mean, I’m sure there are cases. But honestly, it’s those caught up in thinking they’re cursed who imagine that. Which is why so many women are alone. Buying into the fantasy. The fantasy is the curse. I ran into a couple of classmates the other day, and they were man-bashing and talking about being cursed. Beautiful ladies. Single. And both wanted to meet love like you. Like some Disney princess fantasy. You can control how it happens. Just be open to the fact that it will and you might not know when or how.”

  The words stung like a scorpion. I hadn’t mentioned the curse, at least not outside of therapy, in months. And I preferred not to give power to something that had affected my family so negatively. But it was always there, lingering, ready to make an appearance and soak me with insecurity.

  “That was harsh,” I said, feeling caught off guard by her blunt words.

  “Notice I said ‘thinking’ they’re cursed,” she said. “Listen, Meena, I don’t think you are cursed. But you think you are. You are what you think. And the emotional barriers you put up by doubting that men are telling the truth when you don’t even know them make you unavailable and automatically feed into that so-called bullshit curse of yours. I give people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t automatically distrust what they’re saying, until they show me why they’re untrustworthy. And it’ll be not because my dad abandoned me or some ex broke my heart. It will be because they hurt me. No one else.”

  Thanks to Meredith’s lecture, I sat sulking at the bar that night, surrounded by men who were too old and women who were too big. Young boys with fake watches who wanted to be ballers. And girls in cheap, tight dresses looking for them. I sipped a screwdriver made with too much vodka, looking around at snakes in a smoky mirage, wondering: Where is my soul mate? When is he coming? When will I notice him?

  “I know I’m venting, Lord,” I said to myself, pushing aside an empty glass to make way for a new one. I closed my eyes. “I’m thankful for the path. Just please show me the way. Show me how to enjoy the moment. Show me how to stay in the moment.”

  Meredith came over, pulling my hand. I followed her to the dance floor. And when the DJ dropped an old-school eighties segment we busted all of our middle-school moves on the dance floor. The running man, the Wop, the Kid ’N Play. We sweated profusely and cracked up like goofy kids the entire time.

  After leaving the club at three in the morning, I drove Meredith back to my apartment and watched her stumble up the stairs in her platform heels, fall on my couch, and pass out, muttering something about “He was cute, he’s the one . . . I need to go study.”

  After she headed back to Jersey the next day, first thing I did was turn on the computer. “Okay, match.com. Let’s see what magic you got,” I said as I created the login identification using my middle name, last initial, month and day of birth: FeyB22. I added a picture, zoomed in to reveal only my eyes. Muslim men fell in love with women who only showed their eyes. Something about that was romantic to me, taking away the pressure to be judged by my body. If the soul could be seen through the eyes, then that’s all I wanted to reveal. When I logged onto the site, pictures of men popped up. Colorful headshots, smiles, some with kids, others with dogs, most with serious faces, a few purposely looking stupid.

  Ken28: Direct. Funny. Likes to drink. Lawyer. Goes to movies. Eats well. Travels a lot. Better to meet in person.

  WaitingForTheOne31: I find myself spending Friday nights alone, watching romantic movies and pondering in places where I ask God, “When will I find the one?” I’m a good Christian man who believes in traditional Christian values. Looking for a lady to settle down with and make my, no, our, dreams come true.

  GScan20: Brooklyn born and raised. Italian Stallion, that’s right. Poet by day and night. I cook, clean, love a great book at night. Mama taught me right. On here in a rather last-ditch attempt to find my lady right. I just wanna take you out for a bite. See if we vibe and can talk through the night. Will you click my page and like?

  And I did. The corny poem made me laugh. I loved a Brooklyn boy, a book reader, and a guy who wanted to take me out to eat. Plus his picture, a close-up with a goatee and light eyes and a New York Rangers hat tilted to the side, was rather cute. After speaking on the phone a few times, and a couple of dinner dates, I decided to head to a jazz show with George.

  “So . . . I enjoyed the night,” he said, smiling. Sitting in his black Toyota in front of my apartment, he smiled a toothy grin. “This is our third date, ya know?”

  “Oh, yeah. I didn’t even realize that.” I did. I lied. But didn’t want to point it out.

  He moved closer. His seat belt stretched across his shoulder.

  “So . . . I really like you. I think we have a connection and I haven’t had that in a long time.”

  I knew George wanted to kiss. And I may have kissed him back. But his breath smelled like onions fresh from the fried loaf we’d ordered at dinner. I’d popped a peppermint into my mouth an hour prior. But when I offered one to him?

  “Nah, I choked on one of those things as a kid,” he’d said, shaking his head. “I’m still traumatized.”

  Should I have said “Your breath stinks”? Should I have offered a mint again, and hoped he got the hint?

  As he stretched closer, I moved back. Thinking of what to say.

  “Okay . . . well, I gotta go write,” was all I could think of. “I got a deadline. But this was nice.” Keeping an eye on him, struggling to unhook my seat belt, I clicked it open and reached for the door handle. George pounced on my lips. Swallowed. Slobbered. Tongue all over. His entire onion face of sloppy spit ate my mouth alive. I finally found the knob and opened the door. The click of the handle moved him back to the driver’s side. My face was twisted into a crooked, mushed mouth of disgust.

  “Okay, well, good night,” I said, trying to feign my best fake smile. Trying not to show that I never planned on calling him again.

  When I shared the story with Dr. Weisman, she laughed. Louder than I’d ever heard her before. She’d always been so prim and proper, emotionless and direct, and now she was coming out of her shell. Cracking up.

  “That was a colorful story,” she said, smiling. “Onions, ya say?”

  “Onions. It was the most gross thing.”

  She laughed again.

  I smiled at the silliness. And beamed when she ended the session with “I’m glad you’re starting to date again, Meena. I think it’s good for you. I’m glad you’re being brave.”

  As usual, I couldn’t wait till next week’s session.

  Chapter 29

  My dildo and I had become best friends. Mr. Do was his name. First name, Dil. He had ten
levels of vibration and was shaped like a thick, nine-inch dick with the feel of Silly Putty. He had the ability to turn and morph into numerous positions with a circular suction cup at the end that I could use to stick it to any surface and ride it like a cowboy friend. And I did. For many months after, my first orgasm was so loud I moaned and groaned, my echoing screams bouncing off brownstones outside.

  But the more I used it, the more I had to use my creativity. Coming up with unique ways to stretch my legs wide, on a pillow, over my head, wide like a gymnast. I began timing orgasm attempts to see how fast I could make myself come and scream to beat my best time of seven minutes. But after months of using a dildo that I bought after my embarrassing hookup with Sean, the August hot sun collided with the approaching end of fun that made me horny for something real. A real man, a real boner, a real someone I could grind and ride.

  So I called Terry. Although I wasn’t sure whether I truly wanted to sleep with him, I was willing to explore the possibility. A local Brooklyn MC who went by the name of Terror One, he’d been calling and begging to take me out, off and on for years, after we’d met outside a Buzz party. Each time he asked, I’d always say no. Entertaining his conversation, flattered by the attention, but more concerned with my reputation as a journalist. I had one unbreakable rule: Never sleep with rappers. Never be like so many other female writers who’d moistened sheets by blurring the line between groupie and media professional. Never kill the delicate reputation I’d spent time in the business building. But Terry kept begging, wooing, texting little blurbs that were romantically driven and lightly written, bouncing from cell phone screens into my head and slowly tapping at my heart. Although I still wasn’t fully convinced, the next time he called I agreed to meet him one late afternoon for a movie and dinner. He ruined it with one question:

  “So you wanna see my penis?”

  “Do I wanna see your what?”

  “My penis. It’s small . . .”

  When this conversation occurred, we were sitting at the twenty-four-hour diner on Thirty-fourth and Eighth, down the block from the local theater. I sipped my cheap house wine while flipping through the oversize menu. Appreciative of the length, I was able to use its gigantic size to hide my face from his horny, adoring glances and anyone who might notice that I was on a date with (gasp) a rapper (double gasp).

  “You want to see it?” Terry stretched wide the elastic waist of his basketball pants and looked down. “Well, I think it’s small. Look . . .”

  “No, I don’t wanna see your penis,” I replied, face twisted in disgust. “What kind of question is that?”

  “Well, why not?”

  “’Cause . . . I don’t,” I said, suddenly remembering the clear boundary words Dr. Weisman had taught me. “And I’m not interested in sex with anyone outside of an exclusive relationship.”

  “But it’s small,” he replied dismissively. “I just want you to see it.”

  “Excuse me, did you want a large or small?” a slim brunette waitress with a nose ring asked. She seemed to pop up out of nowhere, holding my cranberry juice and his cold milk.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing at me. “I believe you said small, but I couldn’t remember.”

  “Actually, I ordered a large,” I replied, glancing at Terry before refocusing on the waitress. “But I’m thirsty, so I’ll take what you got.”

  She placed the cups on the table. Terry smiled, picking up his milk and using his finger to stir the ice.

  “Ill,” I said, wincing. “Why are you drinking milk?”

  “’Cause milk does ya body good.”

  “That’s an overused cliché,” I said, sucking my teeth. “Milk was a bad choice.”

  “Well,” he said, taking a long gulp. “I need to grow.”

  “Grow into what?”

  “A big boy . . .”

  “Here’s your large, ma’am,” the waitress intervened, placing a tall glass of cranberry juice in front of me. “You should have what you want.”

  Terry and I looked at each other and began cracking up. The waitress, stunned, walked away confused.

  The truth is that he and I had fun together, laughing in easy ways that made me forget he was an MC. That is, until he’d bring up sex. Or begin rhyming about shooting someone and “bitches in the studio.” I remember the day he spontaneously grabbed my arm on an empty sidewalk, spun me around, and kissed my mouth as if a slobbery glob of wet jelly was smothered on his lips. It tasted like whiskey and Pepsi mixed with cigarettes and weed.

  I stared at him in shock after the kiss, before pushing him away and screaming, “What the fuck!” I looked around frantically, making sure we hadn’t been busted, before stomping down the block to hop on the train.

  Fast-forward three weeks later, date number two, where I stared at him from across a restaurant table. Disappointed that his idiotic words had turned off my horny plans for him. Bored, ready to leave, I watched across the restaurant as some idiot manhandled a woman and, like a cop, dragged her by the upper arm out of the diner.

  “You ever hit a girl before?” I asked, anticipating even the most minor reaction.

  “Yeah, once or twice,” he answered nonchalantly, twisting his hair. “You know her?”

  “Do I know her?”

  “No, I meant to phrase that as a declaration. ‘You know her.’ Joya. Joya Kelly.”

  A model turned actress, Joya had a role on one of the biggest TV dramas on NBC.

  “That was your girlfriend?”

  “She was my fiancée.”

  “You hit her?”

  “She hit me first.”

  “Must’ve been a reason.”

  “She thought I was cheating.”

  “Were you?”

  “Yeah, but she didn’t know. She was just on some ‘I had a dream’ shit. Moody as fuck, on her cycle.” He sipped his milk. “We used to fight and hit each other all the time.”

  My stomach flipped in a gassy, crampy limp, like the second achy day of menstruation.

  “Why’s your face look like that?” he asked, wincing at me.

  “Oh,” I said, getting up to leave. “I don’t feel well.”

  “We’ll take a doggie bag,” he said to the waitress, standing and grabbing my coat. “Let her pack ya food, and I’ll get you a cab.”

  “Nah, I’m good.” I began digging in my bag, looking for something, anything, a tissue. A nervous move to avoid looking at Terry. “I’ma just go.”

  “You a’ight?”

  “No, my stomach hurts. I told you.” I pushed down the uncontrollable aggravation mounting in my chest. “I gotta go. Maybe it was the food.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Yeah, um.” I couldn’t figure out what to say. “Well . . . thanks for dinner.”

  “But we didn’t eat,” he said loudly.

  I speed-walked out the door and headed to the C train.

  Never took any of Terry’s calls again. Deleted his texts. Saved his name in my phone as “The Abuser.” And that fall, when his song “She Left” hit no. 1 on the radio, with familiar lyrics like “She said good-bye / Without looking in the eye / When I told her the truth / About a time in my youth.”

  I initially wanted to call and say “Congratulations!” Tell him how flattered I was that he wrote a song about us, but I didn’t because the truth was that I shouldn’t have gone out with him to begin with. Breaking my own rules of journalism ethics. Embarrassed to even be seen with the man. And besides, if he abused her, he’d do it to me. Mental note: Stay in therapy.

  Chapter 30

  After ten months in therapy, with holiday time approaching again, it became less weird to endure Dr. Weisman’s long pauses. The sessions allotted by my insurance were running out. I became expectant of her nuances. She’d wait, twisting her pink breast-cancer-awareness pen between wrinkly, skinny finger
s, forcing me to speak. She’d strangely stare at me expressionlessly, paid to be patient with her clients by not blinking, but instead peering inside our brains. I’d uncomfortably attempt to look anywhere, out the window, at a tree, at something. Just not into her Medusa-like hypnotic eyes, trying to pull secrets from my soul and break them into tiny psychoanalytical pebbles.

  “How’s work?”

  “Amazing,” I said, relieved she’d broken the tension. “I found an agent who’s shopping my book. She says the feedback is good. And I just got offered an editor’s position with a new magazine start-up.”

  “Congratulations,” she said, nodding with approval, jotting down notes. “How’s dating been going?”

  “Dating myself or men?”

  “Both.”

  I’d made a fun habit of taking myself out weekly. Movies, restaurants, video arcades, museums; if it was something I wanted to do with a man, I did it by myself. If it was something I wanted a man to buy me, I bought it myself. Flowers. Brunch. Sexy panties. The love song I sang to myself harmonized with the golden suggestions of advice I followed from Dr. Weisman. “Date yourself before and while you date others. How can you want someone to do something for you if you haven’t done it for yourself?” Amen.