Why You’re Still Single

The Interrupting Cow

2021-02-03T17:05:35Z

Recently, I sent the following to a short story contest. The challenge was to write a story that included a joke and someone crying. Oh, and it had to be less than 600 words. Sadly, I didn’t win. Short stories are tough for me, which is one of the many reasons I’ll be entering an MFA program this summer. Thought I’d share the piece here.

Interrupting Cow

Emma was mesmerized by a guitar-playing lemur bounding across the television screen on its way to scouting zebras in the Sahara. She lifted the hem of her polka dot nightie, revealing striped Barbie panties and a bandage covering a scrape on her knee. Mark reached out to lower the hem, but the five-year-old swatted his hand away. As Emma became more enthralled by the Saturday morning kiddie show, Mark bounced one of her pink rubber balls on the floor and thought of what to say. He hadn’t been home much lately, what with prepping for the Endicott case. Still, he’d fantasized himself the beloved papa whose arms Emma would run into whenever he made an appearance.

Mark was in love with her in the sweet way he used to love his own mama, his grammar school crush, his Mary the first time he saw her hiding in a corner at senior prom. But his love for Emma was even sweeter, the kind of deep down adoration where he knew the world really would end without her.

Mark grew up in a family of men. Eagle Scouts and football players, military men and firefighters. He thought this put him at a disadvantage. But Emma was his girl. Spawned from his seed. There was no way he wouldn’t break through.

“Knock knock,” he said, tapping his coffee mug.

Emma turned, considered him for a moment as if she’d forgotten he was in the room. “Who’s there?”

“Interrupting Cow.”

“Interrupting Cow wh—”

“Moo,” he said before she could finish.

Immediately, he sensed the eruption catch fire in her belly. It began with her smile turning into a frown and her cheeks glowing red. Finally, the volcano blew and Emma let out a wail that echoed through the halls. When he went to her, she dropped to the floor kicking her heels.

“You never let me say what I wanna say,” she whined through a throat clogged with mucus and tears.

Mary came into the room holding a bunch of roses she’d been arranging for a client. “What happened?”

“I was just telling her a joke.”

“What joke?” Mary held her trembling daughter. “You obviously scared her.”

“Interrupting cow is scary?” Mark shouted. “Interrupting bear maybe. Interrupting jackal. But interrupting cow?”

“You always bark at people.” Mary bounced Emma in her arms. “The whole world to you is a court room. You have to be sensitive. She’s a girl.”

The room became agonizingly quiet. The only sound was Mary’s sloppy kissing noises against the side of Emma’s head. She’s a girl. As if this was the answer to every question on Earth.

This was his first mistake. The next mistake would find him suggesting Emma not wear her princess crown to the grocery store. The next he’d warn her about her belly growing pudgier if she kept eating whoopee pies. Years later would come the weekend she locked herself in her room after the neighbor’s puppy was hit by a car. Mark never rapped on the door. The next year, she’d nurse a painful crush on a mascara-wearing drama dude with a girlfriend. Mark’s only words of encouragement were, “you’ll get over it.” In between were the moments she’d shut the door during phone calls or he’d sit at the dinner table listening to conversations he knew nothing about. But all those moments evolved from this one. If he’d known he would never get Emma back completely, he would have told a different joke.

Mary plopped Emma on the floor and returned to the kitchen. Mark rolled the pink ball between his hands. He was about to leave the room when Emma giggled, opened her mouth and said, “knock knock.”

Grease is the Word

2021-02-03T17:04:55Z

Few people realize that puny, brown, not particularly cute girls from dull Midwestern towns can morph into Sandra Dee-like bombshells by watching Grease throughout their adolescence. At least, that’s what I believed when I was a child. As a second grader in Ohio, creative stimulation was kinda hard to come by. My neighbors’ folksy blandness barely piqued my curiosity. The monotonous pace and flatness of the region was a lousy canvas on which to unfurl my imagination. The only other student “of color” in my class was Chinese while I was black with a picked out ‘fro. Thus, I was considered an outsider and a bit of a freak. All I had to look forward to was cattle tipping in high school.

Small town kids inevitably come to one of two realizations; either you know you’ll escape one day because you’re destined for fabulous things, like becoming Madonna, or you say to yourself, ‘this is where life ends so get used to the cows.’ Grease led me toward fabulous, proving the world was bigger and more colorful than life in Ohio. Until seeing the flick, I assumed adulthood in the rust belt would mean working at a gas station and gorging on Cheez Whiz sandwiches like my friends’ moms.

I was eight when I saw the movie. My single mother was working the night shift so her younger siblings brought me to the cinema. I expected Disney and a bucket of popcorn. Instead, I got Pink Ladies and T-Birds, cheeky one-liners and loads of sass. Every inch of the screen had something to ogle; butter-colored costumes and blue cotton candy bouffants, boys shaking their hips against Greased Lightnin’ and a gymnasium crammed with hand jivers. Rydell High was full of sunshine and dancing, it was opulent with color and life. Even sad moments were filled with song. So giddy and overwhelmed was I while watching the flick, you’d have thought Santa Claus had landed in a UFO on my front lawn.

At the center of all this wonder was Olivia Newton-John, the goody-two-shoes country singer turned pop star who played Sandy. To this day, I wonder why I became so enamored of her. Maybe I assumed little, brown girls like me would always fade into the woodwork while shiny, golden stars like Olivia got noticed, especially in yawny old Ohio. If I could be like Olivia, my friends, my day-to-day, my entire life would shimmer.

After seeing the movie, I made my mom enroll me in acting lessons and started teaching myself to dance, using the numbers from Grease as guides. I was too young to realize Australian stiffy Olivia wasn’t the best dance teacher (and also too young to recognize the tragedy of a black girl longing to be white). By fifth grade, when I rewrote the movie’s script and begged my friends to perform it with me, I could out Sandra Dee my heroine. What followed were arts classes, piano lessons, ravenous book reading and a spell in a performing arts high school. With college, I finally got out of Ohio.

And by golly, what a life it’s been since! I’ve had the ordinary – marriage, divorce, nine-to-five rat race. I’ve also come into contact with the extraordinary. I did Manhattan for a few years, lived in three foreign countries, traveled into some juicy corners of the world, survived two terrorist attacks (in New York and Madrid), and spent a lifetime following my dreams of literary stardom. Though I haven’t lived with the maximum amount of carpe diem day seizing I dreamt of in my youth, and have yet to become a literary star, I doubt my life would’ve looked anything like this had I stayed in Ohio.

But here’s the kicker. At the tail end of my thirties, I find myself missing the relative calm of my childhood, even missing Ohio. There was a genuineness there, a kindness I’ve had trouble finding elsewhere. Maybe the crux of the matter is I’ve arrived at that late thirties crossroads where you’re asking yourself what it’s all about. Regrets start haunting you, disappointments leave permanent scars. My career isn’t where I want it to be, my relationships could use help, the gap between reality and my dreams stands wide as the ocean. So life isn’t really making me sing, “shoo bop shoo wadda wadda yipitty boom de boom.”

Maybe I’ve just been disappointed to find adult life isn’t as friendly or exciting as I’d fantasized while watching Grease. Challenging times and triumphant moments aren’t commemorated with musical numbers. Days can be dreary and lovers don’t float into the sky in’48 Fords. So while I still think of the movie as the slingshot propelling me into a meatier existence, I wish I’d been more realistic in my expectations. Though I suppose things could be worse.

I could be realizing this in a gas station in Cleveland.

Why You’re Still Single

2021-02-03T16:25:06Z

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You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You have a Masters degree (or two). You have flat abs and white teeth. You volunteer. You play volleyball—and flag football! You own a car and have your own house. You’ve travelled around the world. You floss every day. Your panties and bras match. Why then are you still single?!

I’ll tell you why.

You want to be single.

Being single is not an affliction that people must be cured of. Lots of men and women enjoy the freedom of not being in a dyad. Maybe you just got out of an intense relationship. Maybe you are working on your own inner spiritual development. If you choose to be single, and you don’t care about finding a man right now, this article is not for you. This article is for those women out there wringing their hands in frustration, wondering why they just aren’t finding that special someone.

You don’t go on dates

Some women have boyfriends and never had to really “date” them. They met once, became friends, and then one day woke up in a relationship. It doesn’t happen like that for most people. You have to be out there in the dating pool, meeting people, ladies! You are not too “normal” or too “good” for Match.com or speed dating. Join the rest of the world and go on a date!

You believe that all the good men are taken, gay, or bastards.

This is not true! And by repeating this mantra to yourself, to other people, or even just thinking it, you are manifesting this in your life! Withdraw your troops from the Gender War. You certainly should avoid dating men who are taken, gay, or bastards, but not all men are.

You aren’t happy.

People enjoy being around happy people. If you are constantly stressed out, complaining, bored, or tired, you can bet that your withering energy can be felt right through your cashmere sweater. A man who senses an unhappy woman will run in the other direction (often after sleeping with you).

You sleep with men too early or get clingy after you have slept with a guy.

Sleeping with a guy you really like very early in the relationship will often dampen his interest in you. However, it doesn’t have to spell the end of the relationship. If you stay composed and “normal” after sleeping with a guy, he will be less likely to be scared away by you trying to “trap him”. Many of you may say, “Well, good riddance to him if he runs!” The thing is that lots of men will pursue a woman until he can sleep with her and then his interest will suddenly drop off, because she no longer presents a challenge to him. However, staying composed, calm, and normal after you have slept with a man will put him right back into pursuer mode. Thanks to Sherry Argov for teaching me this one!

You try too hard.

Asking men out, throwing yourself at men, staring men down at parties like a hungry wolf, or constantly showing the world your girls like a pair of hot sticky pork buns on display at dim sum are all signs of trying too hard. Men like to chase. Let them chase.

You don’t try hard enough.

If you’ve ever said this:

“I should be able to dress however I want and get a man! If he doesn’t like the way I dress, forget him! I don’t want to date anyone that materialistic and shallow anyway,”

You are in denial.

Men are visual creatures. They buy with their eyes first and foremost—and then see if they want to get to know you better. You do not have to be a knock-out to catch a man’s attention. Just wear clothes in eye-catching colors that flatter your body—the size that it is now and not what you wish it was. Carry yourself with poise and confidence. Get your hair done. Get your nails done. Shave your legs. Get your eyebrows done, and your upper lip waxed. Just like it’s nice when men have muscular, toned arms (one of my favorite things in a guy), men appreciate women who put effort into their appearance as well.

You spend too much time alone or with other women.

Alone time is essential to rejuvenation, reflection, and recentering. Girl friend time is also necessary for bonding, sharing, and just plain fun. However, if all your free time is spent alone or with other women, how do you ever expect to meet a man? Even if you are out at a club, if you’re surrounded by a pack of women, when is a guy supposed to have the chance to approach you? An easy fix to this particular problem is to separate from the group every 40 minutes to go to the bar and buy yourself a drink. The 5 minutes of alone time is enough for a man who has spotted you to move in for the pounce if he wants to. You should also practice going to the ladies room alone. How fun would it be to emerge from the ladies room refreshed and ready to keep dancing to be greeted by a guy that saw you confidently saunter in there by yourself and waited for you to come out so he could ask you out? Now, once you are steadily dating someone, it is essential to maintain your alone time and girl friend time so that you carry on having your own life instead of letting your life come to a screeching halt as soon as you enter a relationship. Men like women who have their own lives.

You refuse to date outside of your “type”.

Many of us have what we consider our “type” and refuse to date outside of that. Whether you only date Black men, or only date men who are in perfect shape with all their hair, or only date men who like art as much as you do, you are limiting yourself. Many times, the person we end up falling in love with was “not our type.” I completely overlooked Mr. C because I was intent on dating a Black man, and now I just adore him. I would have missed out on our relationship if I had refused to entertain the idea of dating him since he wasn’t my “type”.

So these are just some of my thoughts on why you are still single. Crazy Girls, why do you think you are still single?