Some cats think it’s easier to play a zone than one-on-one, but I don’t recommend any kind of double-dating scenarios on Valentine’s Day, because—hello?—-aren’t her people up in the mix enough as it is? Some of her peeps are more destructive than others, and you really don’t need any bad energy while you’re trying to get your Benihana-and-straight-to-the-hotel maneuver off.
So, as a public service to all my dudes out there, I present…
The Five Peeps Likely to Ruin You and Your Girl's Valentine’s Day.
(from my forthcoming book The Denzel Principle, due out this Fall on St. Martin’s Press)
1. Lazy Linda—Lazy Linda gets 6 checks a month, no kids but has madd scams to squeeze money from your local human services. She hasn’t held a job since that lemonade stand she had in first-grade. Her life is consumed by collecting Coach Purses, staying ahead of government investigators, dating on MySpace and trying to convince your girl to follow suit. Lazy Linda wants nothing out of life, wants your girl to get nothing out of life.
2. Juliet— One of her peeps reads all the romance novels, sees all the romantic movies and is looking for love just like that, and rags on your girl for settling for less than the Ultimate Romance. Juliet is waiting for Romeo, Prince Charming yet, somehow she always ends up with Prince Alarming, a man anyone could see is a mental case, but may have looked good on paper—the toilet paper he wrote jailhouse poetry on before he got let out. She’s going to make him into her Harlequin Romance. He may make her into a hand puppet.
3. Sister Soldier— Sister Soldier is SuperBlack. Never voted in an election, preferring instead to get down with a 16-point plan to save the Black Nation and up-lift the family. The problem is she can’t afford busfare to the revolution for her, her boyfriends and kids. She’s so caught up being black, her life is in shambles. Yet, she tries to impose her plan on other, and questions everyone’s blackness and the blackness of their union, whatever that is. Unless you and your girl are dredlocked-out, wearing dashikis and sandals chewing bushwick, your blackness is suspect. When she turns up homeless, she wants to crash with your girl. Trouble ahead.
4. Dr. DonHavamon—The Doc has five degrees, three cars, two houses and has joined the vibrator of the month club. She don’t NEED no man, and don’t know why you think you do. She’s spent so much of her life trying to be Ms. Independent, that she gives off an air of superiority and high maintenance to any real man. She wants your girl to go back to school and get a suitcase full of degrees, so that she never needs a man to take care of her. Yet and still, the good doctor is always home every Friday night watching Tyler Perry DVDs and eating sorbet. She hasn’t learned that success need not come at the expense of your social life. But she knows that she needs some company and wants your girl to be it.
5. Dear Abby—Abby always has the best advice, but her own life is jacked up. Yet and still, she mounts such a good argument and her words makes something like sense to the point where people—like your girl—will always listen to her. She’s a cancer, with this strange power to influence—like the Jim Jones of beauty salons and hen sessions. She’s a menace.
Single Father, Author, Screenwriter, Award-Winning Journalist, NPR Moderator, Lecturer and College Professor. Habitual Line-Stepper