I Don’t Care About White Love…Should I? : Part II

by today' Urban Chameleon contributor

Regine Hunter

Editors Note: In Part I I’d just heard a knock on my door. Now what?

I figured it was some Jehovah’s Witness and ignored it, but the noise woke me up enough that I figured I might as well get out of bed and start my morning. It just so happened that on that particular day my gay best friend AND a platonic male friend were sleeping over (yes men on all sides and still no booty for me - I said dry as the Sahara.), so while I was standing around waiting to get into the bathroom I hear a timid, yet strident, knock on the door.

A shaken, limp-haired white girl with tears streaming from her crossed-eyes was standing there and asked if she could talk to me for a minute. Now, everyone knows I’m kind of a bitch and once again I DO NOT care about white love, but when people start crying and shit I just feel badly. Not only that, I knew who she was and I knew I was damn guilty.

“So um…I know you were hanging out with Mike a while ago (YES! That’s it! Mike) and I found your shirt, and he says nothing happened, but I really need to hear it from you…”

See, this is that decision moment. Its kind of like in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas when Cindy Loo Who asks the Grinch why he’s taking all of the presents and the Christmas tree up the chimney, and he’s forced to lie to the big-eyed little cherub and say he’s fixing a broken light on one side. ‘Cept this broad was no cherub, just a pitiful white girl with a shitty boyfriend who got busted cheating and his dumb ass inexplicably gave me license to do his dirty work. I could either watch her heart break in front of me or get to lyin’. Guess which one I did?

Just like the Grinch, I thought up a lie, and I thought it up quick.

“Oh no honey, please don’t cry, nothing happened at all. I had on a tank top underneath and forgot all about that shirt.”

Knowing exactly what she wanted to hear, which is all she came to my door for anyway, I had no choice but to lie, especially since she could turn into the psycho white lady from a Lifetime special at any moment. This interaction required some sophisticated performance art and my motivation was a quartet of falsehoods about the black woman’s experience that will pretty much get you through this type of situation every time.

a) I have concern for white love. I am not Jennifer Hudson in the Sex and The City movie, OK? The white race and white love will somehow persevere without my help,

b)I have concern for the feelings of little white girls. The news media may go crazy when little white girls go missing or fall down wells but I do not,

c) I would never hook up with anyone’s man. This chick imagines me going to ‘da club’ and maybe smoking weed, not getting wasted and hooking up just like a white girl would do, and

d) your white boyfriend would never hook up with my overweight, dark, nappy-headed ass. This is the falsehood that seals the deal, because no little white girl who thinks she’s fat and depends on Pantene Full & Thick Shampoo to keep her head from looking like a cue ball considers what I’ve got going on remotely attractive, and therefore neither should her man. White girls if you’re reading this, watch your back – its very possible (in fact probable) that your man is intrigued by what I’ve got going on just by virtue of him being a man and I being a woman.

To top it all off I used a deep, soothing voice and rubbed her hand as I delivered my bundle of lies. I maintained eye contact and threw in a colloquialism here and there, just to add to the imaginary divide between my wise, all-knowing blackness and her lost, inauthentic whiteness. In sum, I Oprah Winfried this bitch. And she ate it right up. I was so pleased with myself until I realized, hold up - whatever happened to my shirt?

“Oh,” she sniffed. “Me and Mike had an argument and I threw it out.”

What!? No this bitch didn’t! Still the guilty party, I told her it was fine, suggested she pull herself together, and closed my door. Inside my gay best friend had already heard every detail thanks to the classic “listening through a glass to the door, “ move and Mr. Platonic was just getting up with a “wha- happened” look on his face.

After a few hours of reflection and chats with my boys I got pissed! How dare that chick have the gall to knock on my door first thing in the morning lookin’ for answers like a KGB agent? What on God’s green Earth possessed me to hook up with someone who lives in my building anyway? And more than anything else, how dare that fool-ass dude pass the buck and even put my name in it, so I can do his job for him when it comes to preserving his wack little relationship? Oh HELL no. I was kind of wishing I’d told the truth instead, but now what?

The first solution was no more red wine for me, and second was to take pity for the girlfriend – she’s obviously got low self-esteem, a boyfriend who cheats on her, and - I wasn’t just being mean earlier – significantly crossed eyes. Naturally, the final flourish was petty spiteful revenge against the man. The next time I saw mail for Mike or Mark or whatever generic shit his name is, it happened to be from the state probation board. O RLY? I opened it and it turned out to be a letter requesting his attendance at a probation hearing. Words like “mandatory,” “legal action,” and “correctional facility,” popped up as I scanned the letter, and I hoped that this would be the hearing that got his ass off of probation that he’d never even know about. The day that could change his life for the better and undo whatever jam he’d gotten himself into previously. This is why mail tampering is illegal - what a crucial document.

I promptly tore the letter into a million pieces and put it in a dumpster down the street. I certainly don’t care about keeping white men out of jail. Months have passed and I still haven’t seen the dude around, and I hope I never do.

Oh the hell well. Shoulda given me back my shirt.

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