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

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

Regine Hunter

Editor’s Note: This story appears in two parts because there’s simply no way to shorten it. You’ll thank me later for including every detail.

Let me get one thing out of the way: I drink, and sometimes heavily. I’m 100% sure that had I not been five glasses of red wine into my evening by the time I ran into my downstairs neighbor at two in the morning, none of this would have happened. But I was wasted, and by the looks of his zigzag gait up the street so was Mike (or is it Mark?).

There are only four apartments in my building and this typical Guido type of dude lives directly downstairs. If I leave my window open I sometimes hear his big mouth running or notice his freshly delivered men’s muscle magazines sitting in the building’s communal mail pile. Other than that we’ve had almost no interaction, which we both seemed cool with until liquid courage took over.

“Hey! Why don’t I ever see you in the building?” he asked as he opened our shared front door for me.

“I dunno,” I slurred, knowing full well that I don’t really see anyone in the building except for my overly friendly gay next-door neighbor who has a cavalcade of black dudes in and out of his apartment day and night. But that’s a whole ‘nother story. I even considered filling the empty silence with stories about Harvey the Homo and his suitors when the Guido spoke again.

“Wanna come to my place for a drink?” Oh that’s a great idea, I thought. I’ve always wanted to be asked in for a ‘nightcap.’ It’s so 1974, so “Three’s Company.” A quick drink sounded like a real gas. Plus, I’m still in my own building, what’s the worst that can happen?

The next few hours flew by, and I have red wine to thank for that, as well. Of course Mark (or is it Mike?) did what a lot of white men do when they can’t come up with a single inch of common ground: talk about race. He started going on about how the word “Guido” is as harmful to him as the n-word, how if he were black he’d be OK with the stereotype that black people are better athletes, and a bunch of other misguided bullshit that I’m sure he’d been waiting to bounce off of a black person since the 2008 election. I just told him he was wrong on all counts, and that he should shut up and pour me another glass of wine. Now, instead of our smart mouths sparking off the Race Wars, it created serious sexual tension. Maybe it was some weird “I’ll show you!” type of thing, but with all of his Napolean-esque, willfully ignorant but brolic hubris, the guy’s spunky attitude reminded me enough of that barnyard chicken hawk from Looney Tunes to turn me on.

Yeah, that thing.

So we hooked up a bit. No big deal, mostly safe for work. But part of the way through I remembered running into some chicklet who introduced herself as his girlfriend one morning on my way to work. We chatted for half a block down the street before I bid her stringy-haired ass adieu, doubting our paths would ever cross again. Now I’m up here in a drunken tryst with her man. That’s a violation of “sisterhood,” somehow, right?

“Wait, don’t you have a girlfriend?” I had to ask, a glutton for punishment, am I.

“Yeah sort of but, you know, don’t worry about it.”

Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about white love? Really? Well you know what buddy, I won’t. That shit is NOT endangered and when it comes down to it I don’t care about no white girl’s feelings. Yeah, I said it, and in the black vernacular, too. Hmph. Carrying on.

The hookup itself was as uneventful as it was low-risk, and the next thing I know I’m waking up with this doughy mufucka cuddled up on me like a stuffed animal. Nope, boo, bye. The thing was, I could not find my shirt, so I just threw on the rest of my clothes, zipped up my jacket, wrote a note with something like “Hey Mark, had fun, left something here though, when you find it please leave it upstairs by my door. Peace Out - Regine” and scurried upstairs to my own apartment. I fell asleep wondering whether I’d get my little Ross Dress For Less frock back soon, but otherwise without a care in the world.

As days, then weeks, then months passed, I started to really worry. Mark (who really STILL could be named Mike) hadn’t returned my shirt, and knowing that it must be mixed in with the rest of his random white boy clothes on the floor meant that his girlfriend could find it any minute – its easy to spot a hot pink and fuchsia tunic in the midst of khakis, camouflage print shorts, and Hollister tees. She’d see that its not hers, smell my perfume on it, and get all tough white girl with me on some Shannon Doherty shit and come a’ cuttin’. I even ran into them in the hallway once while I was with a gentleman caller of my own (don’t get the wrong impression, friends - my love life is actually as dry as the Sahara) but we both played all innocent. I certainly couldn’t ask for my shirt in front of her, now could I? As much as cute party shirts in a size 2X aren’t easy to come by, it only cost $12 so I chalked it up to the cost of drunkenness and let the whole incident go. In fact, aside from hoping I didn’t run into this dude ever again, I forgot all about it.

That is, until 9:30 on a Saturday morning a good three months later, when I heard a buzz at my door.

click here for Part II


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