Noni Jones in Harlem

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GENEVA

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My director looked like an African-matriarch, sprawled behind her desk attempting to whisk the sweat bullets from her brow with a palm fan. She wore a crown of intertwined locks, and the beads of sweat that seemed to be born at her hairline, soaked the ebony skin of her face, neck and decolletage. The cotton of her b lousy dress was suffocating and probably damp in a few places. She was hot. I was hot. More hot from looking at her suffer in the still air . The AC was broken. Again.

I glanced at the second hand that had to be moving backwards. The anal-retentive play wright didn’t know who he wanted for a lead and I was ready to tell him to flip a coin and call it a day. I wanted to be escape, to be anywhere, an-y-where, but there at that moment, talking in circles in a small office where the air felt like hot breath.

In the days that followed my break down, Paul morphed into the sweetest man on earth. He bought carnations to the house. Called to say he loved me. Put smiley faces at the end of his text messages.

As the days passed I grew suspicious.

This was not my man. Showing up unannounced it. Grinning in my face. That shit was making me nervous. He had me coming up with all kinds of scenarios. Like was he about to confess to poisoning one of my roommates dogs on the sly? Paul’s inability to escape his own genius thoughts is what makes Paul Paul. Believe it or not, chasing him, craving his intimacy, is like crack.

And crack is whack. Thanks Whitney.

I had nothing to confirm my suspicions, so I shrugged his niceness off and avoided it. We were in the process of casting for the next play and I was spending extra hours at work and more time crashing at my friend’s places. We were playing hide and seek and I wondered how long we could keep it up. Something crazy was bound to happen.

And then the shit hit the fan.

The doorbell chimed at the theater and I jumped up to answer it. Finally, an opportunity to escape. I wish I’d known I was headed toward Dante’s Inferno.

She was bony, old and she looked as if she’d been walking all day long. Her tiny jeans clung to her gaunt frame, her pixie cut had outgrown it’s perm and strands of crudely bleached hair clung to her forehead. She looked permanently bewildered, like a woman who furrowed her brows too much for her own good. She was wearing a wrinkled ‘I Heart New York’ t-shirt, and some black tennis shoes.

I figured she either needed to use the phone or she had the wrong address altogether.

“Are you Geneva?”

“Yes.”

“Bitch!”

She lunged across the doorway and shoved me to the ground with all of her might, which suprisingly, was great. I fell straight back onto the mosaic tiling and from my horizontal position she looked possessed. Her eyes twitched like they were performing silent incanatations. Maybe she was willing my destruction. The pain spread from by back to the rest of entire body. My legs were trembling. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I couldn’t sit up. The pain was too great. I was helpless.

I was expecting to see her eyes roll back and her head to spin in 360 degree rotations. And then she’d take her bony balled up fists and finish what she’d started. She looked so tired. Like she’d never had a comfortable place to rest her head. Like she had witnessed a lot of grief in life. Like she didn’t have a damn thing to lose.

I wanted to scream, but the shock alone pulled the wind from my body. My mouth hung open, just like the window, letting out all my body heat. My heart pumped. My skin burnt. We were warring on the stoop of hell and I was unsure of the spoils. Homegirl made it plain.

“I told you to stay away from him. I told you! You bitch. You mother-fucking whore! Try me, try to come near me again.”

I heard foot steps, four of them, in lop sided syncopation. Slow thuds alternating with the quick taps of the playwrights loafers against the tile. When Mother Africa discovered me staring at the cieling, grimacing in pain she began to cuss. She her palm fan to swat at my unwelcome visitor like she was a house fly. “Get out! Get the fuck out!” Her warm alto rose to a menacing shrill. She looked like she was willing to kill for me. I still couldn’t move.

I overheard the playwright recite our address to the 911 operator.

“Be glad I don’t slice that bitch whore right now. You think I’m scared of you? You think I’m fucking scared of you. Don’t try me! If you was smart you’d get your fat ass out the way!”

“I’m not scared of you either,” Mother Africa shouted back, standing her ground. If the two were pitted against each other it would be an unfair match. The woman looked like she might topple over if Mother Africa so much as tapped her. “Get off of my damn property. We’re calling the cops. I’ll have you arrested. You will spend the night in jail!”

The woman began to back away, but not quietly. She called me a cunt, a whore, a tramp, a witch and a bitch. She spelled out my death. Announced all the people who would participate in my demise. My back hurt so much, it took over my entire body. I was burning and then my lids snapped shut.

I woke up in the ER at Columbia-Presbyterian.

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The doctor trying to talk to me looked like he walked off the set of General Hospital. He was beautiful. Beautiful tan skin, nice mauve lips, brown eyes that reminded me of a llama’s heavy eyes. “Geneva? Geneva?” I thought I was answering but it turns out my lips weren’t moving. I looked away. Mother Africa was by the door shaking her head and muttering something inaudible. I turned back, and it was Dr. Feel Good. It felt like I was 10 feet under water and someone was quickly pulling me up to the surface. As if I’d been abrutly awoken from a horrible dream. His voice grew louder and less muffled. ” Geneva, can you hear me? Can you hear me talking to you? Are you able to respond.” He put his hand on my forehead and I wanted him to keep it there.

“Yes.” But my mouth felt like I’d been sucking on cotton balls. I’ve never been thirstier in my life. I soon learned that I’d spent the past 2 hours unconscious. The shock, the heat, and the pain had ruined me.

I moaned.

“Look, you may have damaged your tail bone. You’re pretty bruised back there.”

“You’ve already seen my behind?”

“We examined you when you came in,” he smiled.

“This is awkward” I said, trying to make light of a crazy situation.

“It shouldn’t be. I’ve seen worse.”

Dr. Feel Good smelled like Christmas. Like chestnuts roasting, and hot cider, and gingerbread men. And when he leaned over me and wrapped his toffee hands around mine, a shock of pleasure flew through my body. This was an outer body experience. Had I died? Was this heaven?

“We’re going to get some x-rays done and take it from there okay.” He stroked the loose hair from my damp brow and left the room.

Long story short, I fractured my tailbone pretty badly. My back side was black and blue. I was out of the hospital after two days, and I can walk okay, but it’s painful to sit and lie down. Go figure. Hence why I’m writing this while sitting in one of those donut seat cushions.

In the week that followed my fall, I cleaned house. Figuratively.

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Paul came over the day after I returned from the hospital. Caroline answered the door. My mom, Caroline and Noni are taking turns making food for me. I know. I’m loved. Caroline made him wait outside the apartment and asked me if I wanted to see him. Wait, she actually was scowling. I really did want to see him. I wanted to know if all this madness was really what it seemed. There was a part of me that wanted him to tell me that trollop was just a crazy stalker who lived in his building. Someone who had it twisted. But I followed Caroline’s judgment. The pain was shooting through my body as a reminder of all the emotional pain he had caused me. I was exhausted. let Caroline get rid of him. I don’t know what she said. Something stank. The door slammed seconds later.

Then my phone buzzed.

“How you doing queen?”

“My back feels like death.”

“Anything I can do to help.”

Wait, did he figure that if he just acted normal everything would be normal. Because there ain’t shit normal about me catching a beat down.
“You can make sure your girlfriends don’t get my phone number and addresses.”

“Look, I feel I really need to apologize, but for real though. I had no idea she was tripping like that.”

“Who is she?”

My question hung in the air like an ice cycle prepared to cut either of us when it broke free.

“She’s someone I used to mess with.”

Woosh. I felt another hard blow to my stomach. Tears began to well up in my eyes. My face burned. Why the hell was I crying over this fool? Why?

“How long ago?”

“It’s over.”

“Really Paul? You’re going to play games now even though you know I actually got my ass kicked over some of your shit. Really? ”

“I mean, it’s over. What else do you want to hear?” Now was not the time to be smug. Now was the time for him to be humble, drop down on his knees, and beg for my forgiveness. Wasn’t I worth that?

“You know what, nothing.”

I hung up. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t handle the truth, or the sound of his voice, or the thought that all of my suspicions were right. He played me. He played the shit out of me.

When the phone rang a second time, I turned it off. I didn’t even want to see his missed calls. I fought the tears and the darkness, but not hard enough. I curled up in my bed until Caroline found me and promptly scolded me for giving that clown my grief. It was tough love that at that moment I needed. Still, I cried on her shoulder until I had no more water and we drank wine until the wee hours of night.

I woke up with crust all over my eyes and lips. I had a hang over. My back was stabbing because I’d fallen asleep without my back cushion. But I was on a mission. I tip-toed to my bedroom, fished my for phone in the darkness and cleared his number. There. It was a start. But getting rid of Paul and his demons wasn’t going to be that easy.

This trollop still had my number and for a week she called me from different phones just to hang up. Talk about adding insult to injury. Literally. My life! My world! I thought about doing a little investigation and taking out a restraining order. That was Noni’s suggestion. But really, I just wanted to stay at home, nurse my bruised behind, and watch day time television during my week off. Mother Africa had given me a week of sick leave.

Right now, it hurts to rest but it feels amazing to be alive. I didn’t know how good it could feel to fall out of love with someone. Looking back on it, maybe God arranged my beat down on purpose. Maybe it was the very brutal wake-up call I needed to move on. I feel excited, for what I don’t know. I’m proud of myself, for not turning ack and letting him smother his way back into my world. And now I feel like it’s time to try something new. Travel. Give the stage another shot. I don’t know. I’m going to let myself heal, in all senses of the word, and then see where the wind takes me.

-Geneva

Geneva

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So… Exactly why are you here?

Each time I watched Paul grab OJ from the fridge to drink from the carton or warm up some more leftovers, that question went off in my head.  It wasn’t tripping over his free-loading; laying around the house engrossed in a stack of books, eating up the food, being here when I closed my eyes at night, and at first morning blink. I wasn’t tripping over that.  My roommate’s never around any way.

I was annoyed that Paul was suffocating me when I needed to have some privacy. I needed to sleep alone. To eat alone. To be left alone.

He finally left on Thursday. He fled into the Harlem night like swirls of dust after a good porch sweeping. He journeyed back to Brooklyn for another 2 -3 day period of absence. Good-grief. It felt like fresh air returned to the house and I could breath  again. He’d been stifling me.

By the time he left, the gloom had passed. It always does, like a storm cloud that exhausts itself then casts the sky steely gray. But even in the damp quiet, I needed to figure out my life, my existence. Figure out how I’d so easily slipped into another dark episode. He wouldn’t give me space to do that.

And  honestly, I didn’t ask for it. My ass is too polite. Instead, I let him crowd my space with his twisted energy and shards of chatter that occasionally erupted silence like the smattering of glass.  Paul is the only man I know that can avoid someone and suffocate them at the same time. When he wasn’t on campus, he was sitting on the living room couch, comforted by an open window, reading a  book. Not talking to me, talking through this, trying to figure out if we could salvage what was left. No. There was no love happening. There was the only the turning of pages, fan blades cutting through air, and the occasional siren and curse word shouted on the other side of the window.

Shame.

“Yo, I’m about to pick up something from the bookstore.”

I had just walked home from work and I was changing into  a cotton dress. Our AC was broken. If Paul wasn’t there, I would have stripped naked, and curled  up next to the fan. “Okay.”

“You wanna come with me.”

“Yea, that’s cool.”

We walked down  into the 145th street subway platform and waited on the C. It was hot as hell. I could feel beads of sweat crowding my kitchen. He wrapped one arm around my waist and held my hand with the other. “You alright?”

“I’m good.” Since when had I become so delicate? Since when had he grown so quiet. Where was the man that hosted Fight Night in undergrad, shouting at the TV screen like he was ringside. Where was the man that gave Black kids from New Haven tours of Yale? Where was he? Still it was a nice gesture and the only one I can recall from the week. Paul held my hand until we made it to the used and rare bookstore in Noni’s neighborhood.

I had been feeling guilty that his being there wasn’t the healing I needed. A month ago, the only thing I wanted was Paul to come around. To know where he was and to know he was thinking of me. I felt the guilt of a sinner when he finally tosses a prayer in the air and  it lands unanswered. His presence wasn’t my healing. Let him tell it, it was the healing, the salvation and the testimony.

I don’t know why men think that their jism is the cure-all, like it can mend a broken-heart and fix a relationship. No. Cum is not super glue, it’s just cum.

Every night, like clockwork, he’d come in from the shower, hit the lights. Take off his boxers. Force my legs open and pump me like with enough  sweat he could cum inside my mind– skeet all over my thought process. His body felt good to me. Better than I should admit. But something wasn’t right.

This wasn’t the same sex that made me fall asleep with a smile on my lips. This wasn’t the sex that made me want to get up and make him breakfast, make him feel like a King at my kitchen table. I felt like he was feeding me left overs. Spoils that he’d either been sharing with someone else or had been left sitting for so long, they’d gotten stale.

I wanted his love when it was fresh but when it was fresh he was stingy. I wasn’t  satisfied with the day-old, caked up kisses he was feeding me. It wasn’t filling it any more. I was hungry. Hungrier than I ever knew.

Nobody knows the exact time when fruit goes bad, you just know if you leave it at the bottom of the fridge long enough it will.

I don’t know when but at some point our love reached it’s expiration date. Paul and I had exploited all romantic possibility. We were fasting and it wasn’t for the spirit. But  unlike food, it’s not so easy to throw love away.

-Geneva

Geneva

Pablo Picasso had his blue period. Geneva has her black periods. La vie noir. Crazy stretches of time when the world’s rotation slows and seconds inflate like beads of water. Everything is covered in soot. It feels like the sun doesn’t want to rise, like even the sun doesn’t give a damn. It feels like slumber. It feels like sleep, sleep, sleep.
Caroline and Noni left town. On Friday, I really didn’t want to go to work. Would rather have laid in the comfort of my small room, damp, unwashed skin against satin sheets, and have stirred in and out of sleep. I didn’t want to have to shower, dress, do my hair or talk to anyone.

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Too bad I had to go anyway. I mean I basically did nothing. It was me and the director there all day. I read 15 pages of a script we are considering and clicked around on Facebook, .staring at faces I haven’t seen in person in years. She left early, around three. I waited fifteen minutes and went home too.

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My roommate had made some sort of spaghetti concoction that I helped myself to. She wasn’t around and her dogs were barking. The windows were up, letting in a nice breeze, but the sound of kids cackling on the stoop below was driving me crazy. I shut the windows. I shut my bedroom door. Nodded off.

I was having this crazy dream, where I was alone in the theater at night and a man breaks in. I couldn’t see his face, just his tall body, tan arms. No face. I froze, even though he was coming for me, my legs couldn’t find the strength to run. It was like my mind was ordering them to flee and my legs were paralyzed. He reached for my neck and tried to take me down. I was screaming, but I wasn’t actually making sound, as if someone had yanked my voice. He started shaking me, violently— And his cell phone was ringing, loudly. It was in his pocket. It wouldn’t stop ringing, went far beyond the standard four rings. I wanted him to answer it so I could plan my escape. Give my legs a second chance. I felt like I only needed a few seconds.

The phone was ringing.

I woke up.

My cell phone was in the bottom of my purse. It stopped. One missed call. Paul.

I threw my body across the bed. He’d called twice before and I didn’t know what to do. At the point, I felt like Paul was the reason my life was fucked up. The reason I didn’t want to wake up, or go to the theater or to yoga or comb my hair for that matter. He was the dark cloud and the thunderbolt. He was the darkness.

I stared at the ceiling. My heart was racing, my breathing heavy.

I don’t know where the courage came from, but I found myself digging for the phone, as if I had something to say. I speed-dialed his number, and immediately hoped he wouldn’t answer.

“Geneva.”

“Hey, I missed your call.” I sat on my bed.

“Yeah, yeah…. I’m on campus,” he said. I heard a crowd of voices around him. He had to be outdoors. “Come meet me.”

“Paul, I’m taking a nap.”

“Then I’ll come over there.”

“No… I mean, what’s wrong? Why do you want to see me?” I didn’t want my space invaded. I was craving loneliness. “I’m trying to see you. What’s good?”

I wanted to stand up to him, and treat him like he treated me. With silence. But I couldn’t. “I mean, I kind of don’t feel up to hanging out today.”

“Can I come over when I finish up here?”

Damn. “Okay, fine.”

I rolled over and half-way went back to sleep. I think I was scared I’d return to that night mare.

He came over hours later. The sun was setting behind the curtains. I still didn’t feel like turning on lights. The dogs weren’t barking any more, I realized as I went to the door. My roommate was home. She’d fed them.

“Hey beautiful! What’s going on?” He entered my world like a pin ball. Arms swinging, he was full of energy and full of life. We had swapped moods. I was low. He was elevated. Sometimes I wondered if his brain worked like mine and if our volatile mood swings was the tie that really bonded us.

“Hey!” He engulfed me with his hug, buried his nose in my hair, and kissed me.

He followed me to my room. The sun was sinking fast. It was charcoal grey pierced by the light of my computer screen.

“You straight?”

“I’m alright.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing… nothing I want to talk about.”

He kicked off his shoes, and laid back. He pulled me down beside him. He turned to his side, kissed my ear lobe. His hand crept beneath my shirt. It felt natural.

“Let me know what’s on your mind.”

“I just, you know, sometimes don’t feel like myself.”

He covered my neck , cheek, and ear lobes with feather weight kisses. He paused. He was familiar with my dark periods. I think it was this side of me that turned him on. Made him feel powerful, and normal.

“What happened?”

It was the time to confront him about the woman who’d rang my phone, the old woman with an attitude. I should have told him then, that I had a gut feeling she was the same woman he’d been on the phone with that night. And then, without opening my mouth, I would tell him that I was terrified of being without him. He was my first love and his craziness was a part of my world now. But I didn’t tell him any of that. I just said “Nothing, going through a moment.” I couldn’t tell him my truth because I didn’t want to face his.

I let him be the hero.

I wondered if he knew about the phone call. If he did, he didn’t let on to it. Instead he acted like he was a roots doctor, with the cure to my ailment. Like his jism was the cure to my sickness.

He rolled on top of me, forced himself between my legs. I felt myself sinking into the mattress, the heat of his breath spread over my face. I felt him growing and at once, wanted to shove him off and egg him on. I didn’t want to be entered but I wanted to make him happy. He undressed me, suckled me, as if he was doing this to make me happy. As if his virility was penicillin.

He rolled off me and undressed. His sex faced me and I faced the root of my problems, the sex that enslaved me and made me crave him and the sex that always made me forgive him even when he was an ass.

He was violent. He went deeper than what was comfortable. He made the bed shake. He made me scream, partially because I was reaching orgasm and partially because I was in pain. It was like each thrust alternated between pleasure and pain and the more I cried out the harder he stabbed. I was his cheer leader cheering him on. He pulled out to finger me, and to speed my satisfaction. I realized that he wanted to see me come. In the midst of his feeling powerful, he needed to feel the ultimate power. I did and he did shortly after.

He rolled over and fell into a deep slumber. By then it was dark. The dogs were quiet. I could hear nothing but the hum of silence. The ripe smell of sex was taking center stage. It was all over both of us. He looked so happy. I suddenly wished I could take back that orgasm, and give him back all of the pleasure and pain. I felt dirty. I felt like he knew how to control me. I felt as if he had found me in my darkness and taken advantage of me at my most vulnerable moment.

I put my panties back on and tip toed into the backroom. I shut the door and turned on the shower, the sound of the water drowning out the wail of my tears.

-Geneva

Geneva

He called… wait actually he straight harassed me for two days, with text messages and phone calls until I finally picked up and asked, ‘What do you want negro?!”
In my head.  But my “hello” was definitely more of a question than a statement.

He acted as if nothing had happened.  He asked me how I was doing and how the show went. Now I know this fool is crazy.

All his eccentrities aside, when he asked me to come over somehow I ended up in BK, on the foot of his bed hearing him out.

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He told me he had to make a trip home at the last minute to see his folks and he said it in a way that made me  feel guilty about  asking further questions.  So I didn’t. 

Instead I looked him square in the eye and attempted to let him know what I’m feeling.   I’m not sure I knew. He was leaned back in an office chair, wearing black sweat pants and wife beater. He smelled like incense and  Shea butter, life if ‘Black Man’ was a cologne, he was wearing it. I  hate that when we’re apart, I can’t stand him,  and when we’re together, I just want to cuddle and talk. That night, I didn’t  feel like having an argument, which with Paul, is more like a melodramatic monologue recited before an audience of one.

I was careful to choose the right words. “I need– I need to know what we’re doing, because lately it doesn’t feel like we’re together. I don’t know. I don’t feel connected to you any more.”

“I mean, I don’t know why  you would  feel like that. Everything is cool.”

Take a deep breath. Calm. Just woo-sah.  Do. Not. Yell.

“Except for it’s not cool–” I said slowly. “Like when you call me,  I answer. When I call you, you don’t. Everything we do is on your terms.”

“So you trying to say you have a problem with me not answering my phone?”

I wanted to say “No fool! I have a problem with you acting a crazy hot mess!” But when you love someone, and  you’re trying be civilized, you don’t say things like that.

” I just don’t know what’s going on. You seem distant. I don’t hear from you for days-”

“We don’t have the type of relationship where we have to be together all the time. We’re beyond all that.”

“But at least I should hear from you!! Like what is the excuse? You’re not taking classes or TA-ing right now. Why couldn’t you just call… no send me a text message? Why couldn’t you even send a text message to tell me you weren’t coming to the show. Like I need help. Help me understand you.”

I lost my patience, and Paul decided to stop acting like an apathetic ass. He became gentle. He leaned toward me.

“I don’t know what you want me to tell you Geneva. I apologize, I didn’t know my being there meant that much to you. But don’t start doubting me and us… I love you. I tell you all the time that your my queen. ”

He leaned in from his chair and placed his hand on my knee. I had nothing else to say. So I just looked at him, let my crossed arms fall and he came on the bed to join me. He kissed me, then asked if I wanted a t-shirt to sleep in for the night.

****

I’m not working this week because it’s slow at the theater.

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Paul rode the subway with me home and the way I was feeling was so problematic. This man is capable of making me feel high, but that morning, everything was a crazy  blur. Something didn’t add up but I couldn’t even call him on it. He walked me to my  building with his hands in his pockets. He was deep into what ever music was playing. We hugged at the stoop. He kissed my cheek and our night of reckoning was over.

I was reading my daily blogroll with my door closed  since my roommate insists in allowing her wild ass dogs run free in the area also known as a living room. My  phone rang.  I was hoping it was Paul needing to get something off his chest.

It wasn’t. It was a 917 number that I didn’t recognize. Wait, before I go into this, let me just suggest as a good rule to live by; if you don’t recognize the number, just let the phone ring.

“Hello?”

“May I ask who I am speaking to?” It was a woman’s voice, like an older womans voice and she sounded like she had an attitude.

“May I ask who I’m speaking to?”

There was silence.

“Hello?”

“Yes, I’m still here. This is Paul’s woman and I would appreciate it if you would stop calling him.”

Wait, what?  “Excuse me? Who is this?” It had to be a practical joke, but she sounded like she was too  old and too stale to be playing ridiculous  phone games.

“Don’t worry about who I am, just stop calling my man.”

“How’d you even get this number? Why are you calling me?”

“Because this number is all over his fucking caller ID.”

I hung up. She called back. I didn’t pick up. Who in the hell was this crazy woman and why did she have access to his phone in the first  place?

My first instinct was to call  Paul, but he wouldn’t have answered. Instead,  I took a shower, shoved my hair back with a scarf, and caught the subway into financial district. I was going to need for Caroline to take a two hour lunch break.

All this happened yesterday and I still haven’t talked to Paul. It’s not like I don’t think he could cheat on me… but the chic on the other end of the phone didn’t sound like his type.  Paul was a professional student. She sounded ignorant, old and belligerent. But actually, damn, I don’t know.  If you were me, what would you do?

- Geneva

Geneva

I didn’t know what Paul was going through.  The last time he and I spent the night together, it was amazing…. Earth-shattering…. The truth, what ever you want to call it. And then, I didn’t hear from him for another three days. I didn’t bother calling him because this man doesn’t believe in answering a phone.

I didn’t dwell. We were in tech for The Colored Museum and I was spending all my time at the theater.

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So last night was opening night.  I reserved three seats for Noni, Caroline and Paul in the front row. The last time I had seen him was Monday, when he came to rehearsal. He’d walked over from his boxing gym and sat a few rows behind me. He was still sweaty… a little funky.  Had a towel rapped around his neck and he was wiping his face while I worked on a scene. During a break, he came over, gave me a massage. Kissed me. Asked me how I was and told me he’d see me on opening night.

So where the hell was he?! The show was amazing, but I couldn’t even get into it. I was distracted by the empty chair next to me and the fact that Pauls butt wasn’t in it.  “Is Paul supposed to be here?” Caroline whispered.

I rolled  my eyes.

At curtain call, I was so focused on not crying. It’s actually embarassing how upset I was. The cast and crew went to a bar aand I think Noni and Caroline could tell I was not in a merry making mood.

Paul never misses anything I do. I mean, even back in undergrad when he pretended to only be interested in friendship, he came to all my shows.  So damn. I have to face it– maybe we are really over. I feel empty without a project on the table or… a man. I wonder if he’ll call with an excuse.

After the show, we went to Caroline’s and watched the Real Housewives of Atlanta season II and the mood lightened quick. I usually can’t stand anything that has to do with uppity Black folk, but these women are a crazy hot mess. Can someone please explain to me why Sherree is having an Independence party (especially when your tacky ex left you high and dry)?  Why she hired that ghetto hot mess party planner who went back to “yo mama” jokes and why this clown really did look scared when Sheree said “You gon’ check who?” And why is Kim starting a wig line? Wait, is that thing on her head supposed to be fly? Wow. All I can say is –wow.

We watched tv, ordered a pizza, finished a bottle of wine and I fell asleep on my friends couch.

-Geneva