Denise Mallory calls me shortly after receiving my e-mail.
“You’re a pretty good storyteller. I really got into your date. I can tell you were feeling her.”
“We had a good time, and I’ll leave it at that,” I say. “You know, it still feels funny writing all of this stuff down. It’s like nothing is really sacred anymore.”
“Well, I guess it just comes with the territory,” she offers. “Are you looking forward to your next date?”
“I don’t even know anymore. I feel like I should be going out with Sarah again—just to see if things click all the way around,” I respond.
“I understand. You should definitely go out with her again after you do your other two dates.”
So this is the price of free advertising, I tell myself. Part of me is curious about who the other women are, but there’s Angie’s voice in the back of my head whispering, “They’re pimping you.”
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Sure.”
“Is this really what black women want to read about on your website? Some dude sorting through women in search of some magical relationship?”
“Well, we don’t look at it that way.”
I can tell that I have put her in a strange space, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to stop there. “Just so I’m clear, how does Soul Sista look at it?”
“It’s all about possibilities, Cool,” she says. “Women just want to know that romance is still alive, that men still care, that a bachelor like yourself could still be looking for the type of love that a good woman has to offer.”
I don’t say anything in response, mainly because I can’t think of anything to say. She seems genuinely hurt by the inference that either I am a “man ho” or that her readers are desperate for entertainment, love, or both. The line has been drawn in the sand, and either I’m on board or I’m not.
“Hey, look, Cool. I’m sorry,” she says, which surprises me.
“Sorry about what?”
“This. We did kind of dumped a lot of this stuff on you, and for someone reason I just assumed, you being a man and all, that you wouldn’t have these types of existential dilemmas about the process.”
I grin. “Are you mocking me?”
“Why? Do you feel mocked?”
I laugh, and when she joins me, I find myself dropping my guard. Maybe I am overthinking this a bit.
“So when do I need to check in with you again about the details of the next date?” I ask.
“I’ll messenger over a packet to you this afternoon. And Cool?”
“Yes.”
“I think you’ll get a kick out of your next date?”
My eyebrow rises out of curiosity. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Well, it’s definitely not a bad thing.”
Facebook is a bitch.
People you haven’t seen or connected with since kindergarten pop out of thin air, sending friend requests. For the most part, it’s been a decent experience, but with everyone flocking to the same social networking site, other problems can sometimes arise. And I can sense one of them arising right now as I log on to my profile page.
Waiting for me is a friendship request from Rhonda (yes, that Rhonda), the woman who took my heart out back and shot it like a wounded horse. Why the hell is she adding me? The last conversation I had with her was around the time she left me to handle the consequences of her infidelity. Now her friendship request is staring me, as Grace Jones said in Boomerang, “smack” in my face. The only thing missing is her repugnant purring.
I click on her name, linking me to her Facebook page. As soon as I get there, I quickly realize that I won’t be able to see anything about her new life if I don’t add her, because her entire profile is set to private. The only information available is her name. Even her profile picture is of some flower. In order to find out the basics about her (what she looks like now, where she is living, where she is working, if she’s married and just chose not to change her surname, what her child looks like, and all of that other stuff that we claim to not care about when we break up with someone, but in actuality we do), I would have to click to accept her request. For a while I just stare at her name. Do I really want to open a rapport with her? Hadn’t she done enough to mess up my life already?
I close up the laptop and walk into the kitchen. My refrigerator is nearly empty, save a jug of spring water, some leftover Chinese food from the other night, and a half-melted chocolate bar. In the adjacent freezer, I have a stack of TV meals. I reach for one of my shrimp creole dinners. I can hardly be bothered that the shrimp are just a hair bigger than sea monkeys. It’s sustenance, and that’s all that matters.
After slitting the film on the container and microwaving it twice (once and then shaking the loose ice around and reheating it again), I walk back and take a seat at my desk. I prop open the laptop again, and Rhonda’s friend request is still right where I left it.
Seeing her name reminds me of the time that we went out to Stone Mountain to see the laser show. That night while driving back, listening to some old Maxwell songs, she nibbled on my earlobe, her tongue darting in and around my ear as she whispered what she was going to do to me when we pulled up to my apartment.
“I’m gonna fuck you so good,” she cooed. “I’m getting wet just thinking about it.”
She knew I loved it when she talked dirty. It might not have been a natural fit for some women, but Rhonda definitely had a knack for making it work with me. I would spit it back at her, too.
“You gonna let me beat it out the frame, baby?”
She would smile when I tried to join in. “If you want to,” she responded, running her tongue down my neck to the point that I could barely keep the steering wheel straight on the highway.
“You gonna kiss it for me, Cool,” she moaned, her eyes half-closed and seductive.
“Yes,” I say almost too quickly. “And you’re gonna hook me up, too, baby?”
She smiled. “You know it.”
She knew how to get me harder than an Upper East Side mortgage payment, and she always operated under the premise that if she got it up, she would put it down. And that night she put down some lovemaking on me that lives deep within my memories, even to this day. While I can’t remember every time that we made love, that particular moment stands out among all the rest—even with my hating her like I do now.
And as I sit here reliving some of the best sex in my life, I find myself staring at the screen in both curiosity and horror at the fact that the screen is flashing an approval of her friendship request, my finger hovering sheepishly above the tracking pad as if it never betrayed me.