I cried in the shower.
 

You have to understand that it hasn’t been a weekend worth crying about. Despite yesterday’s blackout, I spent a great day with my sisters and little niece. Friday, I talked to the Gent, and then Halo called me right as I was leaving work. He’d gone to his best friend’s birthday party. I could hear in his voice that he’d had a great time, and I was a little jealous, until he turned being tipsy into loving on me. Long distance on the phone, at three a.m. his time, he totally made me drop my panties with, “You’re the love of my life. Why are you so fucking adorable? Why aren’t you here? I could do so many things to you right now.”
 

In the moment after I got that call, I lovingly laughed it off as things that tipsy boyfriends say. I went to get some dinner, and I went home where I caught up on a few website maintenance things, then decided to take a shower and go to bed.
 

I don’t know why I decided to sing in the shower. That’s not my thing. I usually think in the shower, but instead, I went straight to Aretha Franklin’s “Natural Woman.” I’d recently invoked that song as a part of our soundtrack, so I went for it with gusto when memories of his voice, hot on the phone line, came back to me. I imagined how much I would suck doing karaoke to that song. Then I realized that he would love to hear me sing it, in private, in the shower, even if I did suck.
 

Whenever I talk to Halo, he ends up in this big sigh, and asks, “Why do you look so fucking…?” Adorable. Beautiful. Sexy. Cute. Whatever it is about me that catches his fancy, and something always does. He sees something worth a compliment in me whether I’m wearing ugly footie pajamas, or a ten year old family reunion t-shirt, or a flimsy nightgown. Maybe he just sees me.
 

So there I was in the shower, singing badly and having an epiphany, and I cried. My hair was all wet, and water drops stuck it to the shower wall when I leaned against it. I just stood there and sang, loud. Loud like I wasn’t embarrassed to let my feelings hang out. Loud like I didn’t have to impress anybody. Loud like I knew he’d want me to sing if he were there, pushing up on my ass and playing in my hair. I know he would do exactly that, because I wasn’t able to take a shower in Manhattan without Halo getting me dirty instead of clean.
 

It’s weird when you know a song. I’ve been hearing “Natural Woman” all my life, but I think I just really got it last night. It took me to a Bonnie Raitt song that spoke to me when I first heard it, and now I know why. I’ve lived in my natural self for years, and finally I have someone who wouldn’t want me an iota different from who I am now. I think that’s partially because I don’t want be an iota different. I’ve arrived, so to speak. I earned being this woman, and I earned this man, with my naturalness.
 

They said we couldn’t have this, Dark Dirty Difficult girls. They said this tender and abiding love wasn’t for us, but fuck them. Don’t believe it. Do you, and the love will draw near like whoa.
 

I’m so in love, children. It collapses me in the middle, collapses things I’ve been holding up that I didn’t know I didn’t need, if that makes sense at all. If I turn around next week, and try to get all intellectual about whatever happens in Holland, hold me to the fact that I cried last night.
 
 

Except for the bright spot of going to Cali to visit HotROD and meet Baby HotROD (who totally stole my heart), it’s been a weird month. The two weeks before my book came out, I was obsessed with making sure that everything was in place, and that my shit looked professional, especially here on the website where I do almost everything from scratch. Prior to that, I’d spent months making tedious preparations, promoting myself, putting money into advertising, etc. Now that the book as been out for two weeks, I think I tried too fucking hard, to be honest.
 

Getting a book published has been a serious let down, more like getting a new job than a big accomplishment. It’s exactly like what it’s been like to self-publish my short stories: like a fisherman, you put something on the hook, wait for bites, then change your bait and location until you make the catch of the day. Maybe because The Way That You Play It is a collaboration with a company bigger than me, I was expecting more. It’s only been two weeks, but you have to understand that I’d been busting my ass for nine months to make that book perfect. Human beings have been made in nine months. When I put in that kind of time and focus, I expect solid footing in my career path, not just a maybe. And right now, I feel like I’m hanging by a maybe. The impatient, self-starter in me can’t handle remaining in this state for another nine months.
 

So I’ve decided to self-publish my next book, Hot Under The Halo, and see what comes of that. Instead of finishing editing in a month, then sending it through the grinder for another nine months, I’m going to pay for the proofreading and shit myself, and put it out in the Fall. That’ll be my gift to myself this year.
 

Now that I’ve been through the publication process, I’m even more convinced that I’m not in this for prestige, or fame, or friends. I guess I already knew that, but now I know, and I want to have the same certainty about the upper limit on what I can accomplish on my own. My close family and friends have been intensely proud of me for pulling this off. Other than that, every bit of popularity that comes my way, a fan, a “like”, a mention, to me is a step toward making money doing what I love. That’s the only kind of success that I care about. I’m not trying to write a great American novel or a best seller. I have a very specific goal for the next few years: I want to move to Holland, where I would like to write for a living, fuck my cute Dutch boyfriend, travel, and learn to dance. I don’t really want to do any book signings, or win any awards, or rub elbows at writing associations. The work is my passion, and the royalties should make the rest of my life possible. I think those are modest desires.
 

When I was working on my practice catalogue, and even when I self-published my short stories, I was really good about moving on to the next one. I hoped for the best, but I didn’t expect the best. Everything I made was a personal challenge to do better and keep it fresh. I was focused on the process, and found a lot of fulfillment in that. With my publisher, there was a lot of focus on the product. To me, it’s like they’re running a cookie company, developing and packaging new varieties to put on shelves. It’s a different vision than I have. I see my writing as working at a bistro. Every plate is going to be different, and taste like it’s straight from the source. I don’t have to make a choice between writing with a publisher and writing by myself, but I certainly want to know what the difference is, when it comes to my money and peace of mind.
 
 

Today in two cents, the lovely Nita left a comment about this documentary trailer. I’d posted the trailer with my own little love letter to the pretty plum girls in our tribe. Besides telling them that I love them, I mentioned that there is “an animosity laid between us” that I don’t want to be there anymore, so then I removed that post because I wasn’t sure if it matched how I felt about the matter. Plum girls are called dark, just as plush girls are called fat, so that we are forced to rank each other and in-fight about who is making who look bad or feel bad. I don’t identify as light for the same reason that I don’t identify as plus sized, because it implies that I am a derivative of some standard. It doesn’t say anything about my intrinsic qualities.
 

Give me a color wheel, and I can tell you easily what I am: brown, somewhere in the nuts shades, like cracked pecans, almonds, walnuts, and peanut butter. However, as a social referencing term in the Black community, I get a lot of side-eyes and snorts when I say that I’m brown skinned. When I first moved to the South where my father lives, I met a lot of people who’d heard of me but hadn’t seen me before. My Dad is a panther of a man, tall, handsome, and strapping, with very ebony skin. Many more people than I care to remember didn’t believe that I was his because of our colors. One person literally asked him, “How did you make such a pretty girl?”, totally ignoring the fact that I have my Dad’s eyes and eyebrows, shoulders, build, long arms and legs, and his entire personality. Pissed is not a strong enough word for how I felt about that comment. I adore my Dad with the same fierceness that I adore HotROD. When people encourage me to report as light, when they try to deny me brown, they are trying to deny me the pride of having such a father. Fuck that. In my relationship with my Dad, there is no separation between me and him. Our Black is the same, even if our colors are different.
 

That’s how I feel about plum girls. I don’t feel a distance between us, my lovelies. That’s why I cried when I saw that trailer; your pain is my pain. In Nita’s comment, she shared an opinion from another woman who wondered why negativity about plum girls is so widely spread. That woman didn’t like the trailer because she thinks that such films only deepen the divide, and I can understand where she’s coming from. Just like the weight debate, I don’t doubt that the color debate is perpetuated to keep us at each other’s throats. But that doesn’t change the fact that some women’s hearts are hurt and they want to talk about it. That’s what I saw in the video: someone I love is hurting. For me, the solution to this is not to stop talking about it, as though with silence and wishing, we can make colorism go away. My solution is the same as it’s always been: we make our own tribe and say that up in here, we hold to each other. Whatever has to do with you has to do with me too. I’d rather be humble before what you need to have addressed, than to stop bringing it up because it’s difficult. I have dark (literally, levity and optimism obscuring) aspects to my personality, and maybe that’s why I don’t naturally compute that term as a reference to color. You’re radiant to me, plum girls. Know that.
 

The secret of my positive self-image is that I don’t describe myself with terms that compare my body to other women’s bodies. I’m plush; that’s what I know about the quality of my body, and what I enjoy about it. Sometimes I call myself big, because physically, mentally, and emotionally, I aspire to what is grand. I have no desire to be little, quiet, demure, or dainty. I like swagger, big talk, and big hair. I live in the layer of how I experience myself, rather than in the fog of what people think of me or call me. I call myself brown because I like the rich, nutty color of my skin, and I will fight anybody who tries to take that from me. I call ebony women plum, because when I was writing one of my characters, Caroline, that’s how her lover, Trent, described her skin, and it made perfect sense to me. A ripe plum, round and supple with that velvety veil over its flesh, is exactly what ebony girls’ cheeks and lips and asses look like to me, delicious and ready to be bitten. The flesh looks so firm, but as Trent also says, it’s easily bruised if you don’t handle a plum with delicacy.
 
 

Last Saturday, I asked Wood not to email me anymore. He hasn’t yet, so I think he is respecting my wishes, but even if he ever does, I’m not going to reply. Corresponding was a game that we both enjoyed playing, but I no longer need the satisfaction of him coming back, and he needs to move on.
 

I’d already disclosed that whole relationship to Halo, and when I told him that I’d closed that door, he was pleased but not relieved or even very interested. Wood didn’t worry or impress him. Halo seems to think that nobody can take me away from him except me, and I like what that says about his opinion of my strength and honor. He went past the story of his long term ex and told me a bit about some of his more casual women past. I was surprised to find that I have good company. His old chicks were all lovely in the same mold as me, round, colored, and plush with pretty smiles and wild curly hair. It was satisfying to see that Halo has known what he wants for years, unlike Wood who still doesn’t seem sure. Fairy tales try to convince us that when a man has a huge emotional upheaval in our direction, that means love, but it doesn’t necessarily. Love has a lot more to do with consistency than seems romantic on the surface.
 

I’ve had further proof of Halo’s consistency in the stories that he tells me about his family’s reactions to me. Though they were surprised that he met me online, they haven’t questioned my race, age, or intentions, whereas the Irishman’s family did exactly that the first time that I was supposed to go meet them. To hear Halo tell it, his people are eager to meet me, and constantly tease him about being sprung. I think if he fell in love all the time, or was given to having dramatic relationships, they wouldn’t be wishing him well, when it comes to spending so much time, money, and devotion on a woman who lives an ocean away. Basically, I think they aren’t suspicious of me because they have faith in him, the same way that HotROD and my Dad give the benefit of the doubt to anyone that I date because I don’t suffer fools or assholes. Who I choose is an extension of what I’m made of, and the same seems to be true of Halo.
 

I know that his folks aren’t suspicious of me because last week, Halo’s granny pulled a fairy godmother on both our asses. He went out to dinner with his mother and granny, and shared stories about me as usual. I was supposed to go over in July for the North Sea Jazz Festival, but I couldn’t afford that and a second trip in September, so I’d opted for going in the fall for my birthday. Halo reported to Granny that he would be going to the festival with friends and not with me. He gets this wistful look on his face when he talks about me sometimes; I’ve seen it. He must’ve had that look on his face when he talked to Granny, because she said that he was “hopelessly in love” and declared that she would get the plane ticket so that I could be with him in July.
 

To put that in perspective, plane tickets from here to Holland are running about $1500 right now.
 

When Halo first told me this, I told him no. I rattled off a list of reasons why not: I can’t; it’s your granny. I can’t; it’s too much money. Didn’t you say that you wanted a laptop? Spend $1500 on that, not on me.
 

Halo listened very nicely, then cut right to the root of what I wasn’t saying. He told me that it wasn’t an act of charity toward me. His granny had come into a surplus of money when her husband died, and since then had been spending it on her children and grandchildren by way of a grant-a-wish system. Whenever she finds out that one of her people needs or wants something, she sometimes supplies it, to surprise and delight one of her loved ones. Halo told me that an uncle had just gotten a two thousand euro scooter. He could have asked his granny for anything, he said, but what he really wanted was me there sooner than September, and so Granny offered to give what would make him happy.
 

I nodded and said, “Uh-huh, yeah, I’ll think about it. Give me a day to think about it.”
 

Halo let me get away with that, but he knew better. He said that he’d already told his Granny that I would probably say no.
 

I chewed on that all day, and even asked HotROD about it. I had tried desperately to save up money to make that trip, but even if I could have gotten the ticket, the expenses and the money that I would have lost in time off from work would have hurt me for September. After I’d told Halo that I couldn’t go, I almost cried when he told me that Prince would be performing, at the end of a night that included Rafael Saadiq, Tom Jones, Bootsy Collins, and Snoop Dogg performing the entire Doggy Style album with a live orchestra. That’s not to mention Seal, Chaka Khan, Selah Sue, and Sergio Mendes on Saturday, or Esperanza Spalding on Friday.
 

On top of the Festival, a trip in July would give me an additional opportunity to check out Holland and make a more informed decision about moving there. I’d been praying earnestly for the Big G to give me some certainty about moving to Europe to live with a dude. I wondered why I didn’t take the unexpected blessing as a sign that his family would welcome me, or that Halo was ready to put his money where his mouth was. He’d already offered to buy our show tickets for the whole weekend, and that line up costs hundreds of dollars, children. When he said that he missed me, he meant it, and evidently with a fervor that was obvious to everyone around him.
 

I jokingly use the term bribery to describe how Halo makes these offers to me. I know it isn’t bribery because I’ve experienced the real thing in the past, with men who tried to bind me to them with things when I was weak or in need. I don’t need to go on this trip, but I want to be there and share something so once in a lifetime with Halo. He’s offering me something amazing that has no reason or consequence except pleasure, but my mind can’t stop questioning it: Why me? Why would something this wonderful come to me? There has to be a reason; he can’t just think that I’m worth it. I’m not lucky. Life has never given me anything that I didn’t have to sacrifice for.
 

Notice that I didn’t say work for, which implies an even trade between effort and result. It strikes me as strange that I expect everything that I enjoy to cost more than it should, more than I expect. Usually I have to acquire the thing, then I have to weed out a space around the thing to enjoy it, weed out guilt, unworthiness, haters, and the voices saying that anything I get will not last or flourish if I don’t guard it fiercely. I’ve written it off as foolishness to think that anybody will do anything for me without it being a deal with the devil. I think that’s because only fairy tale princesses get amazing things unexpectedly or undeservedly, and I’m no princess.
 

But I think I’m confusing what it means to earn something, and to deserve something. I may not have earned this trip, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not worth the effort that Halo has made. He’s doing the sacrificing and planning. His life has lined up to accommodate this visit, including exams being rescheduled so that he can take them before I arrive, and a request for him to perform at a local event benefitting kids, so I’ll get to see him on stage probably for the last time in his life, he says. He has harnessed the world for this trip, and if he wants to show me that world, I’m not going to say no. I don’t want to be a princess, but I don’t want to be a cynic either, and doesn’t being blessed start with gratitude? I think because this gratitude humbles me and puts a soft and wondrous texture on my heart, it must be right, because the Big G is made of love and wonder, and fairy grandmothers, apparently.
 
 

Prompt:Do you favor a primary color or set of colors for periods of time? Think back to the palettes that you’ve surrounded yourself with in the past few years. How did they reflect how you felt about yourself or what your life was like at that time? Is there a color that’s strongly attached to a very specific memory for you? (B)
 

• Black: This is the color that I wear most. For me, black has no melancholy or menacing aspect. It’s calm and pensive, full of possibilities like the rich darkness of topsoil. Part of the reason that I like black is because it’s my father’s signature color. Mum raised me with a lot of anemic, powerless palettes. I only got bold colors when my Dad took me school shopping during my summer visits to the South. With him, I chose how I expressed myself in my fashion, unlike with the Rents who tried to tell me who I was. At the beginning of college, I got up the guts to get a pair of heavy black combat boots that I knew Mum would hate. I called them my trompers. The boots were hideous, looking back on it, but I loved to wear them with long, flowing dresses in earth tones. I think that ensemble was a perfect representation of how I felt at the time. I wanted to be light and fluid, but I felt hobbled and weighed down.
   

• Blue: I can remember, in detail, every blue dress that I’ve worn as an adult, including the one that I wore on my first day of college, and my confirmation dress. They’ve all been deep shades of blue, like cobalt, indigo, and peacock. Blue is kind of a regal color, to me. It invokes what is honorable, like the color of a knight more than of a queen. I don’t see myself as royalty, but I deeply identify with rising to the need to be a champion for various things. I feel powerful when I wear blue, but not in a provocative way. It’s more like being draped in the amazing. Blue also belongs to specific memories. Navy blue always reminds me of HotROD. Blue and white reminds me of my bedroom and of a quilt that my grandmother sent me to college with, a quilt that I still sleep under. Blue is also the color of the pills that I took when I was suicidal. Maybe that wasn’t a majestic moment, but it was deeply transformative, and I protect that moment in my life from shame, so blue is my badge of courage.
   

• Red: Though it’s one of my favorite colors, I don’t actually wear a lot of red. It’s a provocative color, so I like it in splashes, and only in certain shades. Cheap reds easily irritate me. I have one claret colored dress that I like to wear when I travel, and I usually wear a classic red lipstick. In the past, I’ve had special blouses because I hate to waste the color on ordinary clothing. Last year, HotROD hooked me up with a gorgeous pair of red zipper sandals, and this year I’m extending that to a pair of ferocious heels that I’m planning to wear on my birthday, with a peacock blue dress. That will be the best of me.
   

• Yellow: For the past few years, I’ve had a love jones for shades of yellow between canary and ocher. It gives me a thrill, greater even than the color red. I don’t know why that is. I have a pair of ocher leather gloves that I love and can’t wait to wear out in Holland, where gloves will be more than fashionable in the winter. I also have a burning desire for a yellow dress, but haven’t yet found one that carries the spirit that yellow inspires in me. A lot of people think of spring and of sunshine, along the lines of “yellow is mellow.” When I see yellow, I think of caution tape and sports cars. I think it’s a deceptive color, inviting but easily overpowering. I will not rest until I get that dress.
   

• White: This is the color that I like least, and wear even less. I probably wear one article of white clothing, usually a dress or a skirt, every summer for a few weeks, and then throw it out. I don’t know what my beef is with white, especially since people exclaim that I look great in it. White doesn’t say anything to me. I think it is what black is to other people. It’s a void, waiting to be filled. I totally understand why in some cultures, white invokes death. Bury me in a white dress. If I get married, it’ll be in vivid color, the way that I live.

I think I’m having a Marlowe Ross moment. Halo is definitely a Jacob Leverett, but I’m not really a Michaela, irresponsible and snide and shit. Michaela and I share dilemmas, but Marlowe and I share character. Today, I’ve pulled a SloMo, stopped the world, and tucked into my turtle shell to figure out what the fuck is going on.
 

Yesterday was a really weird day in what has been a weird week. I haven’t been sleeping much, because I was trying to break myself off of an earplug addiction that I’ve had since I was with the Irishman, who snored. Getting off of the earplugs was kind of a nod to Halo, who doesn’t snore and tried to whisper romantic things to me in NYC, only he couldn’t because I had rifle range orange foam jammed in my ears. I’m not sure what prompted me to break this addiction smack in the middle of a work week, but I think it’s the fact that Halo and I have been talking about the realities of me moving to Holland. More on that later.
 

I get cranky and a little loopy when I’m not sleeping well, so this week’s talks with Halo have been awkward and shorter than usual. Yesterday, I didn’t get to talk to him at all. At the end of a long workday, I had to drive to Atlanta four hours roundtrip in the pouring rain, to pick up a guy that we needed to do some specialty work. Freakishly, the guy was from my same almost-Compton part of California. We had a nice chat about the old neighborhood, Southerners, and our families. Talk of his kids segued into him asking whether I had any. When I said that I didn’t, he asked why.
 

Children, you know me, so you know that’s a complicated answer. I settled on, “I’m not in a hurry.”
 

He pulled a face, probably because we’d divulged our ages, and me not having kids at thirty four seems like a firm decision, not something to be casual about. I told him that it was a possibility with my new guy. He asked how long we’d been together, then pulled another face when I said eight months.

Dude: Only eight months, and you’re talking about kids? What’s wrong with this guy?

Me: We’re not talking about having kids right now, it just came up in the course of talking about our future plans. We’re going to be living together next year.

He pulled another face.

Dude: Living together, so soon? You should still be just dating next year. What is wrong with this guy?

Well, nothing. The things wrong with me made the kids conversation come up, and the dude’s reaction made me wonder if living together was another symptom of something wrong with me. Moving can’t be avoided, because I sure as shit can’t date Halo long distance. I didn’t say any of that, though. I just shrugged.
 

Even though he’s only five years older than me, the dude spoke down to me like I was a youngster, with all the smug authority of having a teenage son and being married.

Dude: You’re too agreeable.

That’s probably the most surprising thing anyone has ever called me. Off hand, I wouldn’t believe it, since I have a reputation for being hard to keep in touch with, but then I went back to what I learned from my failed friendships last year. Like I said, I’m a Heathcliff. I don’t let a lot of people into my affection, but I seem to throw the door wide fucking open for anyone that I do let in. Mi casa es su casa. But they don’t offer me the same, usually. I’m too generous, some say.
 

I might have shaken off the dude’s condemnation, except that Wood chose yesterday for his scheduled check-in, and my relationship with him was a good example of almost letting generosity get the best of me. We had the usual conversation. I’m great, mastering writing more everyday, blah blah. He’s great, mastering weapons more everyday, blah blah. Then as usual, he got right to the point:

Wood: I miss you. Let’s get together.

Me: No way. I’m with that Dutch guy that I told you about the last time. Don’t you have any respect?

Wood: I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just trying to have dinner, and I’m going to keep trying until you tell me to stop.

I was forced to reflect on the fact that I’ve never told him to fuck off, and I know why, children. It’s not pretty, but I think we all know why. It satisfies my ego, doesn’t it? This man cut me loose a year ago, and since then has been hitting me up for a date like clockwork. It reinforces the fact that he knows what he lost. Of course that feels good.
 

But even before I met Halo, I never went on the dates that Wood proposes because I’m not stupid. I know me and how I react to sexual chemistry. I could have dinner with the Irishman tomorrow and just shoot the shit, but not with Wood who aims for the jugular. I’m not trying to run into him anyplace that even has closets big enough to fit two people. I’m owning that because I can’t be one of those women who acts like her newest hero is the only man she ever wanted or will want. I wouldn’t trust me alone in a room with Javier Bardem either. I don’t like the notion that love compels women to do things. I have agency. I make choices, this man, and not that one. I like the responsibility of monitoring that choice. It’s called honor.
 

That responsibility isn’t just to Halo, it’s also to myself, and that’s why I’m in the turtle shell today. Maybe I’m freaking out about this at exactly the right time in the process of moving to another country, right when I have enough information to make this decision, but before I’ve committed any resources to the decision. Last night, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels between Halo and Wood. They aren’t as different as I would like to think, and my paths have been very similar with them both. The biggest difference between the two is me. I was scared of everything when I met Wood, scared of vulnerability, and I’m willing to admit that may have played a part in the end of us, because I was fucking difficult.
 

I’ve got the emotional stuff down pat with Halo, but there’s still the lingering fear of being trapped. At the end of last summer, when Wood made his most serious effort to get back together, he had everything to offer me, even his submission, but only at his pretty house. My castle is your castle. Aren’t I getting the same offer from Halo, only in Holland? It’s not moving that I’m scared of, but the shared authority that comes with moving in with someone. Mi casa es su casa is easy to say when I’m making the offer, because I can kick anyone out of my shit when I get ready. It’s different if I’m joining someone’s life. I would have to go, and I have a history of staying poised to leave people. The bouncer that I sang for at the redneck bar? He offered me a key to his house, and I broke up with him. I was with the Irishman three years, and never kept more than a toothbrush and shampoo at his place, though I stayed there every weekend. When we broke up, I didn’t leave behind a single photo of myself for him to keep. I knew where they all were, and I took them all with me.
 

I can’t go to Holland with a fucking escape plan, like I’m expecting it not to work out, because then I’ll hoard my resources to myself instead of investing in making it work. With caution and a back up plan, yes, but I can’t be checking the exits every day and threatening to leave. That’s how I kept my emotional distance from the Irishman and Wood: Cross me, and I’ll leave. I haven’t said that to Halo, but I pull away, don’t I? I’m not even talking to him today. I said that I need a break, but from what? Reassurance? His enthusiasm for talking to me? His concern and care? And we’re asking what’s wrong with him?
 

To borrow a line from Lucas Klein, I’m not moving to be Halo’s roommate. I’m going there to become part of his life. I would like to focus on what that life is actually going to be like, and stop worrying about what I don’t want it to become, when it shows no signs of being that way. I’d like to stop reading the riot act to Halo every time the words “kids” or “marriage” come into conversation. He’s not trying to knock me up, or put a ring on my finger. He wants us to travel, cook together, go shopping together. He wants me to have more time for my writing. All he really seems to want is the relationship that we would have if he lived up the street. If he did, we already would have been staying over together on a weekend here and a Wednesday there. I need to calm down from thinking that I’m doing something that I wouldn’t otherwise be doing. Even moving was already in the cards.
 

I said in an old blog that sometimes you can want a man but not the relationship that comes with him. I refused to accept that with Wood, which is why I graduated to Halo. I was so sure of myself in that regard, the day before yesterday. I think I’m peeling back the fear of being trapped finally, and underneath that is the fear of being the kind of woman that I can’t respect, the kind of woman who loses her head and takes what a man has to offer, instead of pursuing what she wants. If I want something, and its offered to me, that’s called a gift. It’s not a trick, like Snow White’s poisoned apple, because I’ve spent my life trying not to be one of those dumb fairytale bitches. A relationship without an escape plan means compromising, but it doesn’t mean that I will be compromised. I have agency, and also, I’m not my mother. One of these things is not like the other, but it’s not the men. It’s me. I can trust me, I think.
 
 

Dear Weird Dude Who Goes Out Of His Way To Try And Engage Me In Personal Conversation At My Workplace,
 

Do you think I’m new to this game? You’re not the first weak-willed man to ogle me on the job, then try to draw me into conversation under the guise of “just teasing me,” because you don’t have the balls to make a well-intended overture and face refusal. Even if you were “just teasing me,” what the fuck for? I’m at work, and you’re a customer. This isn’t a pub, where I can reasonably be construed as inviting social and personal attention.
 

On top of the fact that I turn off my sexual aspect at work, when I see you, I make every effort to say what’s in my professional script and no more, but what do you do? Comment on the way that I say the script, in an attempt to read between the lines of my tone for any sign that I give a flying fuck about you. I DON’T. How many times to I have to reinforce that by not responding to your attempts to be personal? You’re exactly the kind of man who whines about wishing women wouldn’t be bitches to you, but that’s impossible to do when you insist on being a dick. Stab me, and I’ll stab you back. Expect that.
 

Today, you said, “It doesn’t seem like you mean it when you say ‘Hello’ to me, because you don’t keep your eyes on me.” Of course I had to look at you then, because you were speaking. You said, “Now, I can see your eyes. Now we’re here.” You sleazy, manipulative, domineering little fuck. I know all about the rules of eye contact engagement, and how to establish authority over people. What you did towed the line of sexual intimidation, and I don’t stand for that shit.
 

At that point, my choices were to let you go on thinking that you had command of the situation, or to bitch you out, or to pull the silent treatment. Yesterday, when I was sleepless and cranky, you would have gotten the yelling of a lifetime. But today, I flat out stopped speaking to you, and gave you a dose of my, “Don’t fuck with me anymore” face. How’d you like that for eye contact?
 

Apparently you didn’t like it, because you said, “I’m not trying to mess with you.” Twice.
 

When people are pissing me off, what I try to do before I hurt their feelings is to say less, to say what’s required for civility’s sake, and cut them off from everything else. Men like you don’t deserve my conversation, or warm crumbs from my interior world, because you don’t ask. You probe and poke, trying to jam yourself into who I am, like sticking your dick in your woman. But I AM NOT YOURS, MOTHERFUCKER. I am not yours to take anything from. I am not community property because you were told that men run this shit. You were told wrong. Not this bitch. Not never.
 

Silence was your warning, and you’d better get that through your head, or I will cut you down the next time you try to put me through this.
 
 

Prompt: Are there any expectations or standards you’re held to in your family that you wish you could change? (S)
 

Maybe because I’m from a Southern family, traditional gender roles are heavily emphasized. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve enjoyed growing up with men who are raised to be jacks of all trades. There’s a feeling of safety that comes with someone who can handle a tire jack, a toilet, a tractor, a truck, and a weapon with ease. There’s also a lot to be said for men who are raised to respect and value traditional female roles. Household goddesses in the South still get credit for their work, as a job and as an art, whereas some metropolitan women are still doing all the work but not getting the high praise that they deserve.
 

My beef isn’t with the roles, but with how I haven’t been able to escape the one that I was assigned, despite all the evidence I’ve shown of being fit for more. In my family, women with fiery and commanding spirits are cherished. Our men support us, and also tend to marry women from the same spunky mold. Still, my family expects that someone is going to lead me, instead of letting me follow a natural path to being a leader. Some of my stupidest male relatives have been given resources to carry on the family entrepreneurial spirit, but overall, my informed opinions on directions for the business have been ignored. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been slighted. Rather, my father and grandfather have in it their minds that any day, a man will take me away, and anything that I initiate in the business will wither after I’m gone.
 

Am I leaving the family business for Holland and Halo? Yes, but this is after a dozen years of busting my ass with my head squashed against a glass ceiling. I’m not proving them right; they are losing me because they didn’t think bigger. I refuse to be small, in any sense. I realized some years ago that in this town, I would never be more than my Dad’s daughter, so I put my name on my own website, and have spent years establishing what my name stands for. As long as anyone has known me, I think I’ve upheld the same standards of authenticity, boldness, and stepping up my game. This is my legacy in the world, partially because my family legacy won’t yield to my leadership, and I’m not a fucking follower. I’m Be, not a beta, and Imma be me.
 

Even if for some reason I had to take over the business, no one here would take me seriously, and that’s despite my best efforts, sacrifices, and tenacious loyalty to a place that sometimes has starved me. My family, and my home town, won’t see past their expectations to the history of my actions. I paid for two college degrees with my brain. I studied to be a scientist, but I taught myself to be a novelist, an amateur website and graphic designer, and now I’m dabbling in being a publisher. Given half a chance, I’m going get my stories into film. I’m always looking for an opportunity to be excellent, and to surpass what I thought was my best. That is the essence of an alpha personality. That’s my character. Spunky is just a demeanor.
 
 

Prompt: Make a collage, or describe a collage that you’ve made in the past. How did you make it, and what was its significance? (B)
 

Throughout my education, I spent a lot of time being one of a handful of Black girls in academic programs with hundreds of White kids. I’m not complaining like, my life would have been some kind of miracle if there had been more Black kids around me. I’m not a fan of homogenous race environments, and I had friends and boys of all types who appreciated me. If I felt lonely, it was definitely my own fault, or anyway a symptom of the social and emotional problems that I had at the time. But along the lines of how the preponderance of skinny models and actresses skews our expectations of beauty, having mostly White girlfriends to talk to made me feel like I was hopelessly flawed, until I met HotROD. It’s not that we don’t share some of the same concerns, White ladies, but it’s been my experience that we’re moving in different directions with our awesome. Most of the White women that I’ve met who are my size and shape are not happy about it, whereas among women of color, I kick ass. Even among HotROD’s peeps, Persian women who are on a totally different scale of tiny than me, my beauty makes sense and is well regarded.
 

I’m not pointing any fingers here, but I am pointing out that it was necessary for me, in college when I was trying to find my sexual self, to find examples in women who were like me. I wasn’t just looking for Black women, but plush sassy women with big parts that they rocked, whether that was big hair, attitude, a smile, or a clothing style. I was particularly enchanted with Lisa Nicole Carson who played Renee on Ally McBeal. A photo of her led me to create a collage of magazine clippings on my college dorm wall. Every day when I woke up to this collage, I was inspired to be myself, and I think it made a healthy boundary between me and my White girlfriends’ beauty issues.
 

In general, I think people throw around “You’re brutally honest” the same way that they throw around “You’re a bitch” or “You’re mean.” I don’t fight being called those things because I don’t want to distance myself from the behavior that I’m being accused of. If truth telling is a crime, I’m guilty. My only disagreement is that the labels suggest that the behavior is negative when, in fact, it can be positive. I think the difference between positive and negative comes down to intentions, though people condemn me (and most women) because of our tone.
 

On behalf of all us brutal bitches, fuck you very much.
 

At the end of last year, I wrote a fair amount about some friendships in my life that were in various stages of decay. The beginning of this year has brought those friends back to me, better and stronger than before, once again. Who knows why? Things go through life, death, and rebirth cycles all the time, sayeth Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. You never know what it’s going to take for a person to realize that she can count on you to be just exactly yourself and not some caricature of a friend. I think it takes longer for people to see the value in that, but when they realize it, everything seems to click. Noel did an audio blog about a conversation that we had recently, and I think it sums up nicely what it means to be a friend. HotROD and me practice the same: honesty without discouragement, or selfish motives. It’s brutal to barge into someone’s feelings and thoughts, uninvited, and cut up the woman’s spirit. It’s flat out wrong to be invited into a woman’s feelings and thoughts, and give her a lot of fakery instead of feeding her. I don’t barge in, but when invited, I won’t tiptoe around your personal space like a visitor. I’ll go right in the kitchen, and start cleaning out your fridge.
 

To hear some of my friends tell it, you’d think I was some kind of self-esteem whisperer, but I’m not. I simply don’t settle for less in friends than I do in myself. I don’t expect us to be perfect, or the same, and I’m certainly not talking about having comparable status symbols. Rather, I can’t let a woman slack on herself in a way that I wouldn’t let myself slack. I can’t let her do it because I hold myself to the very best standards that I know about and am capable of at any particular time, so if I let her settle for less than that, I’m cheating her. I’m not being loving to her. That would be like making a meal, and offering her the scraps. My friends have figured out that though I’m not perfect, I’m always offering them water from the very same well where I drink, and thus I protect that well. I’m not letting anybody poison it or drink it dry.
 

That leads me to a little situation on one of my forums that I resisted writing about before, because I wasn’t sure that I have a point to make about it except that it makes me mad. I’m still not sure, but it’s an example of how I define brutal honesty, and why I don’t believe in being truly brutal.
 

In one of my forums, in a thread where people share details about their day to day lives, I met a couple who had an amazing story. The woman was a single mother who had been through a very hurtful relationship and some radical gynecological surgeries. The man was a friend that she’d known for years online and a little in real life, who fell in love with her through the course of her trials and tribulations. Basically he fell in love with her wounded self, and then made it his mission to make her happier through love. He has been extremely persistent about pursuing her. He moved several states to be near her, even though they weren’t established in a relationship, and bought a house big enough for a village, in the hopes of making her and her child his wife and child. On paper, he was perfect: former model, rich, creatively employed, so in love with the child that he was taking singing lessons from her, and so in love with the woman that he’d already bought a diamond ring and had been trying to slip it on her finger in her sleep. High romance.
 

Then, abruptly, he died in a car accident. We were all devastated because they had been sharing daily reports of their funny and charming life together. One day, he was on his way back from a job, and she was ready to accept his proposal. The next day, she was in the hospital by his side. The next, he was gone, and she hadn’t even gotten around to admitting that she loved him. Tragic.
 

Then I received a private message from her, saying that the guy was alive but in FBI protective custody. The FBI had faked his death and whisked him away to another hospital in another state, fearful that he and his loved ones would be harmed by a shady character who had shown up to the staged funeral. The FBI had told his parents, and even her child, but not her. She shared this same story, by private message and then in public, with many of the people who had replied to their posts, even though many of us were not particular friends of theirs. In the span of a week, they’d gone from near fatal car crash injuries, to protective custody/fear for their lives, to him driving home to resume their engagment. Miraclous.
 

If you’re thinking, “I saw that movie,” I thought the same.
 

I don’t know how to explain to you why my bullshit meter started clicking when I received the message. Aside of the fact that it contains some fatal flaws regarding the FBI, discretionary practices, and moving critically injured people across state lines, I’m a writer, and I know all the nuances of crafting a story for an audience. There had always been something too show-and-tell about their relationship reports, but I thought maybe they were exhibitionists and got off on that. Then there were the pictures that they shared. The ones of her were always very clear, whereas the ones of him were always inconsistent, and word on the street was that the only picture that showed them together was lifted from someone else’s video. We’ve all used a celebrity picture to represent our style or feelings, but who passes off such a picture as one of yourself and your lover? Those who don’t want to show their faces online usually just don’t post face pictures, but where you propose to be revealing every detail, why fake the funk? It reminded me of doing photo manipulations for fanfiction, but why would a real person feel the need to make their story seem more real? None of that stuff is conclusive, but it all pushes past the boundaries of plausibility. Then there is the sinister fact that the woman drew attention to herself by sending out that FBI email, calling a bunch of us back to a story that had died after we thought the dude had passed away, instead of, I don’t know, grieving? Worrying about why your child was involved in a dangerous FBI matter? Being afraid of what else would come out of the woodwork, and whether you were protected, instead of spilling information that could put you in harm’s way all over a forum? But maybe that’s just me, taking things like FBI protective custody too seriously.
 

I wrote back to the woman, “I call bullshit on this story.” She replied that she was sorry and didn’t blame me for doubting it, but she continues to play out this soap opera for all those who continue to believe. Most of the believers have splintered off into a smaller group where they rhapsodize over this ludicrous story. It’s so silly that if they don’t see through it, I think it’s because they don’t want to, and I understand somewhat. Before the dude died, I shamed myself into putting aside my doubts, because I wanted to believe in a love so grand. Now, I’m pissed that my feelings and other people’s were played with, by one obviously nutty woman who is desperate for attention. I just hope the people in the believers group are at least questioning this mess in their own minds, because I think any reasonable adult has to do so. I would worry about my grip on reality if I didn’t question it.
 

I haven’t gone into their group and publicly called bullshit on the whole business, because that would be brutally honest in the worst and most true sense. No one is being victimized that I need to rescue, no one is asking for my opinion, and maybe I’m the only one who instantly feels hurt by lies whether or not they add up to any damage. It goes back to what I was saying about the well. Lies make the water bitter, and eventually poison it. I’m convinced that what we tolerate in others is an extension of what we tolerate in ourselves. This is why I’m always saying that if you’re not happy with the people in your life, you need to check yourself first, because you are attracting those people and allowing them to stay. I may not have called Nutcase out in public, and hope that I don’t have to, but I have put it on her heart that she’s a liar, because the feedback that she’s getting from other people isn’t going to help her to stop that shit and get to the root of why she’s doing it. For me, that’s what makes the truth necessary. Noticing it doesn’t make any of us special; it’s there for all to see. Pointing it out, judiciously, rarely wins any awards, but you’re not supposed to do right by people for a reward anyway.
 

This has only sharpened the carving knife that I keep for cutting people out of my life. None of my friends are anything like Nutcase, but that’s because I stay diligent about whose company I keep. Rolling like I do might make me a weirdo, but that’s better than being a whacko, and I’m not letting any crazy in my water.
 
 

Our vacation ended very much like it had begun, with rain and with Halo marking me. I haven’t said a lot about our sex life and about our kink for a few reasons. One, the sex wasn’t the story, and if you know me, that’s a noteworthy change. Two, we didn’t dive into kink. I feel that play is something you add on top of satisfying sex, which has to be established first. I’m not saying it should be that way for everyone, but I’m not an extreme kinkster. Play, outside of sexual situations, is not my cup of tea. So we devoted the week to setting up our love life.
 

That’s not to say that nothing kinky happened. I think we’re both natural players. For example, Halo is inclined to spank. He can’t pass by my ass without taking several licks, as a gesture of admiration and desire. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes it irritated me because my not-submissive nature bristled against a dude taking licks without permission. But when I smacked him back? He didn’t complain, heheh. Then there was the way that he would say, “Let’s take a shower together,” only neither of us got clean during that time. Then there was the way that I couldn’t go into the closet for a dress without ending up pressed against the closet wall.
 

Tuesday was such a day, except I couldn’t get into the usual cuteness of our gestures because we were leaving each other, plus I get cranky when I have to deal with getting up early in the morning. We finished packing, cleaned everything up, and still had time to burn before a town car arrived to take us to JFK. Halo’s flight wasn’t until late that night, but mine left at four. I’d told him to stay in the city and bum around, but he made a face and insisted on going to the airport with me.
 

I was glad, to be honest. It felt like a possessive and also protective gesture, and dudes don’t always make those to me. Sturdy women often don’t get offered the same kind of constant embrace that demure, delicate women get, and I think that’s why women agonize over being one of the strong ones, or one of the soft ones. I think a lot of us have been convinced that we’ll have to give up something whichever way we go, but not so, children. I’ve gone about my business refusing to accept that as true, and Halo is my proof. Two days before, after I’d picked a fight with him? He’d gone out and bought a blood red rose with my breakfast, just as a gesture that embraced me being me.
 

He reported that he’d gotten a lot of flack for it, with the insinuation that he’d done something bad to have to buy it. I kept the rose in its plastic sleeve instead of letting it bloom, because I wanted to dry it. I wanted it as a momento to go with the hickey that he’d left on me. The one on my neck had passed, but he’d left another, accidentally, on my breast:

Yeah, that’s a heart shaped hickey. I don’t know how, and he doesn’t know how because we were just fucking around, but there it is.
 

So I wore a mark of his all week. I was very aware of it, tucked inside the neckline of my dress, while we went to get some flowers for our hostess (Halo’s gentlemanly idea), and then while we rode to the airport. I tried to be chic and not lean on him during the drive, but I think I did anyway. We’d hoped that he could check his bag and hang out with me until my flight left, but he was too early and in the wrong terminal. So he put his bag in luggage storage, and escorted me to my terminal. I got cranky on the way. How could I not? I hated the JFK Air Train system, my luggage, my tickets, everything that was taking him away from me. You should have seen him, serene in a white and green Ecko jacket that we’d picked out together. How could I let him go?
 

At my terminal, I had to self-check in, and that ended pretty quickly, then we were separated by the security line. We didn’t make a scene when we parted, but after I got into the line and in the first turn, there he was, waiting behind the divider, though I’d thought that he’d left. We exchanged a hug and a kiss over the divider, as he had no qualms about being demonstrative in public. Then it really was time to go, and a couple in line in front of me remarked on my rose.
 

“Oh! You have a lover.”
 

It became a running joke for the rest of my flight. The JFK staff were particularly jovial about teasing me. When I was pulled out of line for a security scan, a French businessman made sure that I got my rose afterward. Maybe because society is dark and uncertain these days, so many attached to the simple pleasure of a woman carrying a flower. I don’t know, but it got a lot of remarks.
 

I flew home with a few delays, but no real problems. Then the next day, I was back on the phone with Halo as usual. He talked to me about coming to see him in July for the North Sea Jazz festival. That doesn’t look so feasible for me, as I have another trip to see HotROD in June, but Holland isn’t too far off in my schedule. He’s trying to book up my schedule for the rest of the year, in fact.
 

And that’s that. I think some of you were expecting a big finish, but where love is consistent and well-suited, it’s not like a fairytale, children. Get it out of your head that love sweeps in and changes everything. At best, it gives you an occasion to rise to, but whether you rise is entirely up to you. After hearing the story, a friend of mine talked about how she’s had an epiphany along the lines of when I got on the wagon toward being capable of this kind of relationship with Halo. Today, I wondered whether that really was an epiphany for me. See, I already had all the information that I needed to make a great relationship back when I was with the Irishman. HotROD has told me, time and again, everything that I need to know, and I already had the skills, through other relationships, to deal with the age, race, distance, and international factors that come with Halo. But I wasn’t ready to wield my skills until a year ago. I think that’s why I harp so much on what you need to change in yourself to get things done. Life is always trying to throw love and beauty our way, but we don’t take it because we’re scared and whatever else. I used to call it protecting myself when I caved in to the fear of being trapped. Because I wouldn’t let anyone close enough to the vulnerable me, I was only protecting myself from an idea. That’s not a fear but a phobia.
 

If I have to leave you with a moral of the story, it’s this: A little bit of Why Not? is how I got here. I’m not special, or particularly beautiful. But I’ve always been the sort who doesn’t need a special reason to make conversation, or to reveal who I am. I wouldn’t have this blog if it were otherwise. We must have a reason to stay with someone, but to try someone on? Not so much. Where you can afford to be open, do it, or else you’re only letting your phobias cheat you. How do you expect the world to know that you want to be embraced if you don’t throw open your arms, not all the way, but as far as you can afford? All of my famously amazing relationships, with HotROD, with the Gent, and with Halo, started with Why Not? see what comes of this. Why not try to be my most worthy self, and let like attract like? The alternative is to not let your light shine until the weather’s perfect, and that could be forever and a day. Waiting for perfect circumstances is a waste of time. You can’t see someone else’s halo at a glance, if only because the really impressive people in life aren’t trying to impress you, and it’s worth realizing that you’re not so fucking fantastic that anyone is going to put on a show for you anyway. But if you have the balls, or the humility, or both, to invite people in and listen, you’ll see amazing things everywhere you look. I have, several times over.
 

I take chances, because I’m not afraid of making a mistake. Mistakes can be corrected. Second chances can’t be bought.
 

You can not be afraid too.
 
 

Among Halo’s endearing habits is the difficulty that he has saying goodbye. Every Sunday when we talk, getting off the phone with him is an ordeal. I usually have to warn him twenty minutes ahead of time, so that he can reconcile himself to the idea. Sometimes he’s gracious about it, and sometimes he’ll try to distract me with flattery. Today he said:

Halo: How can I go, when you are so beautiful?

Me: I look that way to you because you love me.

Halo: No, I don’t just mean looks. You’re a beautiful person. I’m so happy I’m with you.

How can I get off the phone from that? Especially when he says such sweet words to me, but his eyes look like trouble, dreamy whisky brown fuck-me eyes. You should see his posture, all leaning into the computer screen like that makes us closer. Fucking adorable.
 

Because he hates to say goodbye, I was sure that he would get all sentimental near the end of vacation. Funny that it was me, Sunday morning, who started to ache. We had an afternoon date with Nuri to go see Memphis and tour Brooklyn, so we stayed in until then and made a banquet with the food in the fridge. Halo had put on Selah Sue’s “Black Part Love,” and the song was chic and fitting to our little apartment, and to the way we’d gotten comfortable cooking and eating together. We had already accumulated a cache of couple’s jokes, and I had turned him on to guacamole. I didn’t want sitting at the table with him to end, and that desire was particularly poignant because he had asked me about moving to Holland the day before. Sitting at that table eating leftovers was a taste of a life that I could have with him, a life that he had offered me. It was weird and wonderful, how I didn’t freak out. Instead I got choked up.
 

Halo saw it on my face, and he says that it breaks his heart when I cry. I don’t think I did, but I certainly got sentimental, and then he made it worse by putting on Lenny Williams “’Cause I Love You” and dancing with me. It was a completely ridiculous moment, sublimely and hopelessly romantic.
 

We went to the show, which Halo actually enjoyed instead of just tolerating it for me, and then we bummed around Brooklyn. We had the best pizza I’ve ever had at Front Street Pizza, and then we carried on to a lovely neighborhood called Fort Greene where we had Silver Spoon real frozen yogurt, the kind that’s a little sour but so much more delicious than the sweet, fake ice cream kind. Halo had never had it before, and joked that he needed to import it to Holland. Nuri and I invented a shop for him, in which he will sell the yogurt, guacamole, and his grilled cheese sandwiches. After we got home that night, I thought about his imaginary shop while I watched him sleep. He was stretched out on the bed while I sat at my laptop, finalizing some reservations for the next day, and trying to blog about the experience. I wasn’t able to start writing then, I think because I wasn’t ready to wrap my head around our ending. How could I let him go? He doesn’t snore.
 

Monday, I slept in, and then helped Halo to repack his bag. He had bought clothes and gifts for his folks at home, and we were able to fit everything in his bag except for a pair of dress shoes. Being a street fashionista, he said he wouldn’t need them again anytime soon, and asked me to take them with me. I offered to mail them to him, but he said I could just bring them when I go to visit him. You have to understand how he said it, with no hesitation or question in his voice. He’d brought up being in love with me and asking if I would consider moving in the same way, not forcefully but with reassuring certainty, the way that a man sounds when he has thought something over. It comforted me that he wasn’t giddy and emotional. He was my lover, but he talked to me, frankly, like a husband, like he’d been thinking of us as a unit for a long time. He doesn’t talk a good relationship game, and he isn’t in love with love like perhaps Wood was. Halo treats me like I’m his to take care of and to include in his plans. It’s fucking magnificent.

For dinner, I took him to Rosa Mexicano where we had guacamole made fresh at our table. He loved it and even took pictures to show to his friends at home. We went back to the apartment and dressed for our last evening together. Halo had decided to rent a limo to take us on a champagne tour of all the places in the city that we’d been together. I wore my vintage black dress, heels, and the stockings that he’d bought, since that had been his favorite of my outfits. Though we’d ordered a six passenger limo, the one that pulled up could have fit twenty people. It was one of those swagger-mobiles, a stretch Chrysler 300 that was tricked out like a nightclub on the inside. Halo was impressed, as limos like that are an American rap video kind of thing.
 

Inside, he poured champagne, we took a few pictures, and then we cuddled up and listened to hip hop while New York made bedroom eyes at us for the last time. Curled up against his side, I looked up and watched him while he watched the passing streets. It was probably the first time during the trip that I’d caught him not staring at me, and he looked so happy, so engrossed and exuberant. It was the look that I want to put on his face at least once a year. That’s how I knew that the trip with him wasn’t just another one of my adventures. The ending that I want for this story, our story, is that look on his face. I’ll move to Holland for a while, have a little crumb snatcher, even wear a ring, if it would make him that happy. That’s what love is for real, not how you feel but what you give. I mentioned how happy he looked and said that the limo was a great and inspired idea. He said that it was great because I was with him.
 

Yeah. Swoon.
 
 

Prompt: What do you think is your sexiest body part and why? What have others told you is your sexiest body part? (S)
 

Over the years, there have been different frontrunners for my sexiest body part. I couldn’t tell you what it was in high school. I was presexual then, because I was a late bloomer, depressed, and also the Rents were Jesus freaks. In college, the consensus was that my brain was my sexiest attribute. I remember one night, I was sitting in a room half full of guys and girls who lived in our house. The guys were asked to make a perfect girlfriend from parts of the girls in the room. All of the guys said that they would take my personality as the best. I wasn’t fucking flattered, I can tell you. Miss Congeniality is not a prize that you want to win in your twenties. Even now, I prefer to be thought of as a hands on beauty.
 

When I arrived at fully mature sexuality, I drew a lot of people in with my skin. It’s funny because I had moderately bad acne until I got on birth control pills, but the rest of my skin has always been bright. Not bright in color; I mean bright in tone. Luminous. I’ve blamed it on having oily skin, having red undertones, using only natural skin care, and even on wearing sunblock all the time because of my vampirism (I’m allergic to high UV). I don’t know why, but I shine. Halo remarks on it all the time: “Keep your shine on, Be.”
 

When I got on birth control during the Irishman’s reign, my boobs took center stage. I went up four cup sizes. To be honest, what makes my boobs noteworthy is the cleavage. The space between the breasts at the sternum seems to determine that, and mine are naturally close together, so it doesn’t take a push up bra for them to pack a lot of va-voom.
 

My preference switches between three things for sexiest part. My lips absolutely kill a classic red lipstick. I also have a delicious cup of the ass, like right where the bottom of your butt meets the top of your thighs. Though I’ve always longed for a classic onion booty, my teardrop shape is good stuff. I can’t walk by Halo without him spanking it. But I think my favorite thing is the area above my breasts, the decolletage and shoulders. The downside of having a busty, lusty figure is that it rarely seems elegant. If I don’t look sexy, I look kind of dumpy. But around my shoulders, which are wide, and upper chest, which is a canvas of luminous skin, I feel glamorous, and glamor is intelligent sex appeal, in my opinion.
 
 

I don’t remember exactly when we started holding hands, but it was a rather unremarkable moment having to do with subway bustle. That made me happy because I’ve always thought that holding hands was the sort of thing that Be doesn’t do. I will admit that it felt nice, because Halo has big, well kept hands with a firm soothing touch, and also he learned the best grip for us because he’s taller and my hand hangs lower. I will also admit that it felt nice to have a man who knows where he’s going leading me, because I have a terrible sense of direction especially in crowds. Still, holding hands seems to diminish my street cred or something. Hey, I’ve never claimed to be a big person with deep ideas.
 

Saturday started with beautiful weather that was perfect for a hand-holding stroll, particularly since it had been raining most of the week. We had reservations that night for a post midnight show at the Blue Note, which was Halo’s idea, and also for an eight-ish show at Cafe Wha?, which was suggested by our hostess at the townhouse. We decided to see everything in walking distance from our apartment, including the Hudson River and Central Park, since our only other plan for that day was visiting a lingerie store.
 

You have to understand how excited I was about the lingerie store. I’d researched it ahead of time, and had a good lead from a friend of mine, Honey Baby, a man with fine taste in lingerie, women, and erotica. Honey pointed me to a store called Intimacy, but I followed reviews of that store to another called Town Shop, where women in my bust range had reported finding a wider selection. Halo was as excited as I was to go to the store, but we started with a walk along the Hudson River.
 

It was a nice day, and we looked great, so of course he took as many pictures as I would tolerate. I didn’t find the river particularly fascinating, as natural beauty is abundant where I live, but I loved the contrast of peace against the bustle of the city just feet from the river walk. We wandered a bit, and then we walked along the waterfront toward a bridge. I’m terrible at geography and incorrectly guessed at the name of the bridge several times, while Halo gently corrected me, as we were not in Brooklyn or Queens or any of the other place names that I threw out. Eventually I gave up, and instead of giving me a geography lesson, Halo swung our joined hands and grinned over the weather.

Halo: “I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day…”

I haven’t mentioned that he sings, but he often does in little inspired snippets. He isn’t a great singer, but he can hold a note decently. I’m only decent myself, so I joined him in that Temptations classic. A few lyrics later, we were fully bellowing “My Girl” on the Hudson River walk, while people jogged past us and everything.
 

Children, it’s exactly the sort of thing that I would write into a story and then delete, thinking that it’s too saccharin. It’s exactly the sort of thing that I would say Be doesn’t do. Maybe everyone’s a fool in love, or maybe love strips the fear away from being vulnerable in public. Holding the hand of a man who appreciated my poor and silly singing, what other opinion could touch me? I felt a little humbled, I think, because his approbation was a magic shield that cynicism couldn’t penetrate. It almost took me back to what it was like to love the world with open arms, when I was young and didn’t know better.
 

It makes me wonder if what I know now is actually better.
 

We left the Hudson River and moved toward Town Shop, which was a pleasant walk away. The shop itself was unremarkable, I’m sorry to say. In my mind, lingerie shopping is always an aesthetically pleasing and elegant affair. In reality, the shop was cramped and crowded with women, the carpet was shabby, and there was only one chair right by the checkout for Halo to sit on while I tried on lingerie by myself. We’d both very much hoped that he could attend me, but no dice.
 

Still, I was excited because it’s been a long time since I’ve had he pleasure of buying lingerie from a store. Ever since I got on birth control pills with the Irishman, my boobs have been a ridiculous size. Town Shop was a store that did fittings. My lingerie consultant was happy to discover that I’d been vigilant and almost wore the right size. With some expert eyeballing, she switched me from the 38G that I had on to a 36H.
 

When I complained to Halo about my bigger cup size later, he wasn’t sympathetic.
 

The bras that she offered me fit divinely, but most were more matronly than I’d hoped to show to Halo. I tried on half a dozen before I found a pretty black lace number with nude underpinnings that lent it some delicacy. The lace wasn’t even frilly; it was mostly a pins and stripes pattern with a very fine, soft texture that yielded to the breast. I was pleased because lace bras are often poorly constructed and unflattering. Because it looked amazing on, I didn’t balk at the price tag. As little as there is for women in my range, I was happy to have it. I paired the bra with two garters, a black one with contrast red stitching, and another black one with vertical lace inserts in sheer fabric, ruching down the ass crack, and a longer silhouette reminiscent of 40s lingerie. The ensemble didn’t look like something just for show. It was something that I could wear under my favorite cocktail dress, which I had already laid out for that evening.
 

Back in the showroom, I clutched my garments to my chest and went to Halo. He had sat very nicely in a chair for an hour, though he was the only man in the room. When I went to him, he wrapped an arm around my legs, and I was pleased to see that just being in a lingerie shop turned him on. I declined to show him what I’d picked out, but I said that I would give him a preview before we went out for the night, so that the image of what I was wearing under my dress would haunt him for hours. He seemed to the like the idea of that torture. I asked him to help me pick out some stockings, and we went to the hosiery kiosk. I’d had my eye on some back seamed thigh highs, which I usually wear, but they didn’t have them in my size. In the end, Halo and I settled on a more expensive pair of pin striped and dotted thigh highs that matched my bra. When we got to the checkout, he insisted on paying for the stockings.
 

He whispered in my ear that he might rip them, and definitely intended to take them with him.
 

After that, we went back to the apartment for lunch, then carried on to Central Park. Though I’ve visited Manhattan before, the park seemed brand new to me, more like Disneyland than the rugged woods where I live. Halo wasn’t as impressed. He said that there are “parks in Holland too” and went about taking the requisite photos of his visit to such a noteworthy NYC locale. As there were a lot of tourists taking similar photos, we were surprised to be stopped by two men wearing suits and jackets that marked them for Native New Yorkers. One of the men was a Brown guy and asked Halo, “Where did you get a beautiful Black woman like that?”
 

Imagine how we laughed, since we’d heard the same from the comedy tickets dude two days before. You have to understand that I’m not even that show-stopping to look at, but that’s the thing about New Yorkers. They see show-stopping all the time, and so what catches their fancy seems to be something singular, intimate, and warm. I’m sure that we looked that way, as Halo dotes on me excessively. When we were stopped, he was taking pictures of me.
 

You must know what he replied to the two guys: “I got her on eBay.”
 

In a good mood, we returned to the apartment and got dressed for our night out. Even though I’ve tried to write the days slowly so as not to miss a thing, I know that I have. I’ve left out the way that our hostess peeked out of her apartment to speak to us because she could hear our cheerful laughs in the main hallway. I’ve left out how the light fell into our apartment and across the Windsor back of our salmon colored sofa, where I sat to check my messages while Halo made very chic drinks with perfect tiny ice cubes and Jack Daniels, his favorite. Before I ever knew New York, I’d thought that I wouldn’t like it. It seemed too much like the pinched something that I’d been escaping when I left Los Angeles. Now I think that when I left LA, I was only escaping the Rents and not that town, and also I think that Manhattan is every cliched thing that I’ve ever been told about its beauty. New York is not pretty, but it’s beautiful. If you don’t know the difference, I venture to say that you don’t know women.
 

Before the vacation, I hadn’t know that we would be going to the Blue Note, but I’d brought a fabulous outfit just in case. It pleased me that that night’s outing was Halo’s idea; it said something about his taste, since I’d planned almost everything else. Though I hadn’t been shy about wandering around naked in front of him, I went to the bathroom with my new lingerie to put it on. I think I wanted to experience his reaction, and he didn’t disappoint when I returned to the bedroom wearing hundreds of dollars worth of scanty stuff. I didn’t make a show of it, because his stare was heavy on my body even as I went to the closet. He was at my back before I pulled on my dress, a vintage St John sheath with jet black sequin appliques that make the dress seem to be dripping wet. Halo touched me just in time for me to request that he zip me up, and I can’t tell you how exquisite I felt. Some women say that labels and fashion mean nothing to them, but I disagree. A label isn’t everything, but where you’ve invested in fabrics that cling perfectly, and lingerie that disappears, your body rises to the occasion of the clothes.
 

I know this because Halo was dumbstruck after I stepped out of the closet into the light, and put on my Michael Kors patent leather heels that I’d already told him had hurt several men’s feelings.
 

We got lost on the way to Cafe Wha?, mostly because I have a poor sense of direction, and Halo couldn’t stop staring at me. It was a strange stare, not, “I’m so delighted,” but more like, “I’m so distracted.” I wasn’t impressed with Cafe Wha? which was too crowded and felt kind of like the bar side of an Outback Steakhouse. But charmingly, our table had only interracial couples! Maybe it was an unintentional prejudice on the part of the woman who sat us, but it worked out for those of us at the table, another White guy with a stunning Black girl, and then a gregarious Black guy with a White girl. The house singer, Byron, had an amazing voice, and his lead guitarist, Amadou Guy, was a marvel. We were also entertained by a comedian and a female singer who performed several Tina Turner songs that I love, including “Simply The Best” which I sang to Halo.
 

How could I not? He had dressed up for me again, and I could see why Ye Olde Standard White Guy Dinner Clothes didn’t get it done for him. While he looked handsome, the verve of his street fashion was missing. I only saw what he was really made of behind his glasses, and in the way that he got wine service for us while everyone else was drinking beer by the bottle. His wasn’t an elitist gesture, I think, just a way of matching what he thought of being with me. He’d already said that he thought I looked lovely, but I could see in his eyes and could tell from what he didn’t say, that he was a little awestruck. Again, it’s not that I was so great, but a man appreciates when you go out of your way to look good at his side, and I doted on him in a way that had to arouse his pride. For me, there was no other man in the room but him. He knew that underneath my dress, and down to my skin which I’d scrubbed with sugar, I was looking good for him. I know it isn’t modern anymore, but I still believe in the power of mutual glamour. What better way to show a man that I care than to be my most amazing self for him alone, especially when I don’t have to, when I know that he would take me in my ugly old footie pajamas.
 

The house band did a cover of Kings of Leon, “Use Somebody,” and we both exclaimed. Halo had wooed me with that song months ago. He whispered that he preferred Laura Jansen’s intimate cover to the Cafe Wha? rendition, and I agreed. Like “My Girl,” we sang some of the lyrics to each other.
 

And then he told me that he loves me, apropos of nothing but the overwhelming impulse of the feeling.
 

I wasn’t even surprised. I think I said, “ I know. I love you too.” Because it wasn’t sudden magic, children. It was a confirmation of something already present.
 

The rest of that night was amazing. A midnight show at the Blue Note featuring Nina Vidal. An even later lingerie reveal. Was it a perfect night? No. I didn’t adjust the garters correctly, and ripped a hole in the band of the stockings he’d picked out. We drank too much, then I kinda picked a fight with him about rushing past my expensive ass lingerie, but shit happens, and I’m that kind of unintentional bitch-in-the-moment that could be a dominatrix if I applied myself.
 

He took me in graciously, and in the morning when I said that I was sorry for picking a drunken fight, he said:

Halo: Doesn’t matter. I still love you.

Sober, I said that I loved him too, and meant it, down to the root of the almost-dominatrix in me.
 
 

I’ve always been lukewarm about flattery. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a compliment, but so often, compliments seem to come with an agenda, or as substitutes for a more genuine gesture. It’s easy to say that a woman has nice legs or pretty lips, but what does that matter to me when those are just my genetic gifts? Anyway, pretty is in the eye of the beholder. Rare is the man who will say, “I like the way you carry yourself,” which references the total package of looks, demeanor, and swagger that I’ve cultivated for myself. I will never forget the man who gave me that compliment, Elliot with the Polynesian tattoos and the dark hair. He watched me a eat a strawberry shortcake. He was fine as fuck but not attracted to me; his flattery was a pure gift.
 

If HotROD never told me that she thinks I’m beautiful, I would know it from her gestures. She was the first person to play in my natural hair and to discourage me from straightening it. She was the first person who took me shopping for clothes that emphasized my figure, instead of hiding it. Whenever we’re together, she takes dozens of pictures of me. I hate taking pictures, so we negotiate on photo ops when we’re on vacation together. She’ll give me a general idea of which pictures she plans to take that day, and I agree to be gracious up to a certain number of photos. I’m pretty sure that I have her to thank for almost all of the pictures that exist of me in my twenties.
 

Halo also turned out to be a fucking picture taker. I gave him a warning before vacation started. If he didn’t want to see my really cranky face, he would not take any unauthorized photos, and he would not keep a camera in my face all day. He unwillingly got with the program, and I was surprised to see how many authorized photo ops he seemed to waste on mundane pictures.
 

Friday morning, he started bringing me breakfast. Having risen earlier than me, Halo had gone out for a smoke and a walk, and had come back with croissant and a “surprise.” He served me croissant with fresh sliced strawberries and orange juice because they didn’t have a pineapple orange juice that he’d seen me drinking a few days before. I’m disoriented first thing in the morning, so it took time for me to warm up to all the little details of his gesture and realize that he’d really thought about me. The details hit home when he pulled out the surprise. It was a raspberry tart that I’d seen in a deli case two nights before. He’d gone back to that deli and gotten that tart for me, fresh in the morning.
 

I got giddy. It was fucking delicious. And while I bit into it, exclaiming over the tart’s not-too-sweetness and delicate pastry texture, he wasted one of his pictures on me. I really didn’t get it because I was just wearing an orange sleep shirt, with my not cute nighttime bra hanging out, and my hair piled in a mess on top of my head. After breakfast, I showered and changed into a black and vanilla striped day dress that I think is really chic; HotROD helped me pick it, of course. Halo spent another picture on me standing near the bed post in that dress. I called him silly, but they were his limited number of pictures to waste.
 

We spent the day in Macy’s, where he took advantage of the exchange rate to stock up on urban fashions. He leaned into my opinion of his clothes, and while he wasn’t going to stock up on collared shirts and slacks for me, he did upgrade to some less baggy and less street ensembles. I think he was encouraged by the way that I grabbed his ass when he put on some pants that he called too tight, though they were the furthest thing from it.
 

We went home a bit early as we had dinner reservations at Le Souk, a Moroccan restaurant and hookah bar. I’d chosen the place so that just once, Halo could smoke indoors in NYC. He was very excited about the evening, because of the hookah, and also because I dressed in a flirtatious silk skirt and some animal print heels that he’d seen before, in a photo that I’d sent of me wearing red fishnets and a garter. I let him know that I had brought the red fishnets with me. His photographic memory kicked into gear, and his grin was classic.
 

He dressed with care in clean jeans, a dinner jacket, and a blue dress shirt that I’d complimented from some of his holiday photos, another nod to his attention to detail. He explained that he couldn’t go out shabby with me on his arm looking so fine. I might have shrugged that off as cutesy flattery, except that he took another picture of me in my outfit. At dinner, he had half a dozen pictures taken of us, and then he took more pictures of me on the way home.
 

I didn’t realize it at the moment, but at the end of the trip when I reviewed the pictures, I saw the story of how beautiful he thinks I am. Like the photos that HotROD takes, his capture my smiles, my style, and my funny facial expressions that I think are nothing much, but that my loved ones find endearing. To look at all of the pictures Halo took of me in mundane moments, it was like he couldn’t turn around without thinking that I was breathtaking. I’m not saying that I am, or that the pictures made me feel more beautiful, but the weight of his gaze, as translated through the pictures that he took, constituted a tangible kind of love. The pictures matched Halo’s favorite way to flatter me: “Why are you looking so sweet, woman?” Sweet isn’t just what I look like; it’s who I am in the shape of my cheeks and the squint of my eyes when I wear my deeply happy smile. Sweet is how I am around people that I love.
 

If I could go back in time, I would have taken more pictures of Halo that night. Our dinner was divine, and he made fast friends with our waiter, a charming Moroccan guy named Tariq, who kept our fresh apple hookah on point. It was the first time that I’ve smoked in a few years, and the high was sweet and mellow while we watched a belly dancer, then bathed in some atmospheric ethnic music under the low lights. Despite his penchant for street fashion, he had elegant table manners and understood pairing wines, savoring dishes, and timing the ebb and flow of a meal. I felt like I was in a Hemingway novel.
 

Reclined on a leather bench, I hugged up on Halo, and my fingertips often went to the back of his neck inside the collar of his shirt, which has always seemed to me to be an ideal place to caress a strong man, right there were the worries of the world seem to pool. He had let me select his cologne, and I really felt that he was mine while wearing the shirt that I liked and the scent that I loved. Every single time that I looked at him, he was looking right at me. I think he watches me when I don’t know that he’s doing it. He smiled a lot that night and said that he was having such a good time, and he thanked me for choosing Le Souk with him in mind. Something melted was in his eyes. I don’t know if that would have come across in a photo, but I should have tried to capture it. Instead, I’ve promised to make him look that happy at least once a year, if I’m so lucky as to have the chance.
 
 

We had tickets for a Yankees game Wednesday night, so we took it easy Wednesday morning. Halo was very jet lagged, and I’d planned our activities to give him time to get over that. I couldn’t help being sympathetic since his first trip to the US had been for me. We went out for breakfast, during which Halo had his first encounter with Strange Things That Americans Do. After a waitress came to our table with menus and water, he looked askance at the water and asked if I’d ordered it.

Me: No, it comes with the meal.

Halo: For free?

Me: Yes. Don’t they give water in Holland?

Halo: You have to pay for it.

He tried the water, and didn’t seem impressed. The many colorful varieties of coffee sweetener also disappointed him, as they were all viciously too sweet. Finally, after he paid for breakfast, he commented on how easy it was to fill a wallet with American small change but not have any real money to spend. Coming from a country where coins come in two and one euro varieties, he doesn’t understand the point of dollar bills, and nickels are no friends of his.
 

After breakfast, we bought some groceries because we were having my friend Nuri over for dinner Thursday night, and then we learned how to use the subway so that Halo could go to the Adidas store. The man is a street fashionista. He had an apple green Adidas jacket and cap that I love, but he wasn’t content because he only had white Nike sneakers to wear with them. As the whole ensemble looked fly, I didn’t understand the problem, so Halo had to explain to me the intricacies of matching brands, and also of matching colors but not overmuch. We hunted down a pair of green classic Adidas sneakers, but he didn’t get to wear them that night because of the weather. The Yankees game was rained out, so we went home and made another early night of it.
 

He smelled of Davidoff Adventure.
 

The next day, we went to a butcher and bakery for more dinner provisions, and Halo made lunch before we went site seeing. You may recall that he has promised me cupcakes a la “Sugar Mama” whenever I visit him in Holland, and if that sounds like bribery, it is. If I visit in September for my birthday, he has offered to take me to a baller ass strip club because I think they are fun, and I’ve complained that none of my exes would ever take me to one even though a single woman can’t get into the best gentleman’s clubs by herself. If I visit in July, he has offered to take me to the North Sea Jazz Festival to see Esperanza Spalding, Janelle Monae, Selah Sue, Raphael Saadiq, and Bootsy Collins.
 

Besides those big ticket items, he has promised me food. A lot of men have told me that they can cook, when really they can only warm things up, so I was impressed to find that Halo’s Dutch grilled cheese was inventive and delicious. He made it with Gouda, fresh baguette, tomatoes and oregano, and thin sliced beef salami. He was disappointed that it didn’t have garlic in it like the Dutch kind does. He assures me that the grilled cheese at his house will be superior to what he served me, and I’m not sure how that can be. I begged for his sandwich every day for the rest of the vacation.
 

After lunch, we took the subway to photo ops across town, including the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Grand Central Station. On the way across Times Square to pick up tickets for a Sunday matinee of Memphis, we were accosted by a guy trying to sell tickets to a comedy show. I tried to ignore him, but that was hard to do after he followed us across an intersection hollering about how Halo “likes pretty Black girls, huh? Huh?” I didn’t look at the comedy dude so I’m not sure what happened, but Halo must’ve looked the guy in the eye with that look. The next thing I heard was:

Dude: Oh, you’re a brother from the hood! You ain’t scared of nothing.

I looked back at that, and Halo was laughing. He has told me before that he is from the hood part of Holland, and he told the dude the same.

Dude: Where’d you get that girl? Ebay?

We both had to laugh, since that also wasn’t too far from the truth.
 

On the subway ride home to make dinner, we saw an advertisement for Alternatives To Abortion that we’d already seen a couple of times. Halo pointed out that the ad seemed to be following us. Long before vacation, we’d talked about our testing history, contraception, and what would happen in the event of a pregnancy. I guess it’s part of my screening process with dudes, talking boldface about those things, because the man who flinches is exactly the kind of punk that I’ve never had in my life and never want to have. Halo took that opportunity to amend his previous declaration to stand by my decisions. “If it happened, I would prefer that you think about keeping it,” because of my age. I’ve never been pregnant and have no desire to be, and he knows that my reluctance to have kids isn’t about kids themselves, but about the fear of being trapped. He squeezed my hand and reminded me that he could be the Mr. Mom type.
 

It was strange, sitting there on the subway, and listening to him dip a big toe into talk of the future. He didn’t seem at all trepid, yet he also wasn’t being pushy. It was a classic example of putting your cards on the table. Earlier on the subway platform, we’d heard a PSA about reporting sexual intimidation to MTA authorities. He crowded me up against the subway door, and stared down at me with his big eyes the color of whisky.

Halo: Mmm. Sexual intimidation on the train.

Far from intimidating, it was cute and sexy, and I know that I’ve grown because I didn’t flinch from The Future gleaming in his gaze.
 
 

It’s love, children, all grand and romantic and nurturing.
 

I feel irresponsible saying, “He’s the one,” even though he is, because I know some of you will misinterpret that to mean that magic happened. As I retell the story, bear in mind that I put myself on the path toward having and being able to return this caliber of love over a year ago. Halo’s not so perfect that he made it all work out wonderfully. We aimed at wonderful and arrived there together. Being swept off your feet happens (it has happened to me), but it’s a lot like being swept up in a tornado and spirited away to the land of Oz. It’s not a reliable way to travel through a relationship, whereas there’s a lot to be said for falling into stride with someone.
 

I’ve been in stride with Halo for seven months now, and I was surprised to discover that he wasn’t looking for me when he found me on a dating site. In New York, he told me that prior to meeting me, he’d had a friend whose computer was broken, and who’d started coming over to Halo’s place to get on the internet. The friend was into interracial dating as well, and had signed up for the site. The friend also set up a profile for Halo who wasn’t interested at first, maybe because he’d come out of a long term relationship, or maybe because it just wasn’t his thing. I like to think that a little bit of Why Not? led him to browse profiles just to catch a glimpse of a big American booty, since he’s so fond of them. It was also a little bit of Why Not? that made me reply to his initial email to me, asking about my writing.
 

Before I even got to New York, it was raining like crazy. My original flight was delayed, so I switched to another flight that got me into Manhattan several hours before he was to arrive. I checked into our room on the Upper West Side at The West Townhouse which I highly recommend. I’d thought that the spare time would allow me to get settled, but instead it was a breeding ground for nervous energy. By the time he arrived, there was no way around being awkward, and after I opened the door for him, I slapped my hands to my face and screamed.
 

He teased me about that all week.
 

Halo was everything that I’d expected, only a little blonder and a little taller. He brought me Dutch sweets, some caramel filled waffles and some coffee candy, along with a pair of over the knee socks and a jersey for his hometown soccer team, Feyenoord. We ordered dinner in and went to bed early, which sounds unremarkable, but it was so natural, see? The intimacy was easy as though we shared space all the time. It wasn’t about libido like my encounters usually are, and I know that because, well, uh, erHMM… we might have broken the bed a little and right at a pivotal moment. It went kind of like this:

{Making out}

{CREAK!}

Halo: What was that? Did you hear that?

Me: No. Shut up. Keep going.

{Bed frame pops and mattress tilts like a wobbly pool raft. I jump up out of bed with an enormous hickey on the front side of my neck.}

I have to wonder whether the Big G was getting over on me. After we called the broken bed frame into the townhouse owners, imagine how I looked when they came to investigate: hair love-snatched and totally wild, with a fist-sized purple hickey on my neck. Before the vacation, I’d specifically told motherfucking Halo not to put a mark on the front of my neck where people could see it, and of course he went right ahead and did exactly that. He said he was sorry and that it was an accident, but I don’t believe him, and I don’t think you will either after the rest of the week’s events unfold. I’m not completely complaining, but I’m making a note, HALO.
 

After that, there was no choice but to move the mattress onto the floor and wait for the bed to be fixed in the morning. I lost my libido, children, since the room was full of antiques and I was freaked out about how much repairs would cost. Halo reassured me that it wouldn’t cost anything because it wasn’t our fault, then he caressed and cajoled me into enjoying our first night together on the floor.
 

HotROD tells me that rain is good luck in Persian culture, and I’m going to believe that a broken bed is a little bit of good luck too. It could have been a disaster, but he helped me to see that it was hilarious, and we made what we could of it. HotROD can tell you that I need someone who can see silver linings on my team, as I am a hopelessly dark thinker. Every great relationship is built on the same.
 

After the sex happened, he christened us R&B because his name starts with an R, mine with a B.
 

And he smelled of Givenchy.
 
 

Prompt: Describe three of your favorite people by haiku. (S)
 

Prompt: If you could be a man, who would you be and what would you do? (S)
 

When I first read this prompt, I thought about men whose work I admire. All the great ones came to mind, including Dr. King, FDR, and Ernest Hemingway. For Whom The Bell Tolls is one of my favorite novels, and certainly my favorite capture of the essence of masculinity. And yet I can’t attach to wanting to be Hemingway while he wrote it, or even to being Robert, the hero of the novel. I adore their stories from the outside, but I don’t think I want to get inside their hearts and minds. It would probably tarnish what I think I understand about their greatness.
 

So then I wondered when I’d ever wanted to get inside of a man and see through his eyes. It feels self centered to say, but I’ve only ever wanted that with men that I’ve been involved with. To see myself through their eyes would be epic, and probably also heart breaking. I would love to be a man who has loved me, and go back in time to live out the day that he knew. I would love to know how love added up in his mind, what I was doing right in his life, what he saw as my strengths and my fragile places. Along those same lines, I wouldn’t mind being an Austen hero, and falling for Elizabeth Bennett, or Fanny Price.
 

When it comes down to it, every man who loves a woman well is a hero to me. I talk a lot about the burdens placed on women because I am one, but every day, there is mounting evidence of how much men are pressured men to care less. Those who resist the temptation to be domineering peacocks end up nurturing some of the most brave and beautiful women that I know. To be a man who champions love would be amazing, but only for a day, as I like living on the receiving end.