Anyway, Fred had a kitchen, and in that kitchen was a juicer and a fruit bowl that held seven perfectly ripened mangoes. I remember being struck by a half-empty bottle of Dawn propping up a sponge on the sink and thinking to myself how amazing it was that this was a dude who used dishes and then washed them. Listen, I don’t want you to think I was messing around with men who couldn’t tie their own shoes or whatever, but a lot of dudes in their thirties don’t have proper washcloths or fresh produce, so when I crossed the threshold of this actual house and didn’t immediately trip over seventeen barbells and a rat king of video game controller cords, I kind of lost my shit a little bit.
We went on a lot of Really Good Dates and he never gave me a hard time for trying to rap along with Outkast in the car or acted weird when I got all giggly and gross watching Michael Fassbender’s huge dick waggle around during the movie Shame. Which we watched on a tall leather couch with no cracks in it, not a futon or a beanbag or his dad’s recliner while he was out of town. Let’s talk about the first night we had sex—no, wait, what we really need to get into is the morning after: I woke up in this massive California king with beams of blinding sunlight slicing through the curtains (MY MAN HAD ACTUAL CURTAINS) to warm its crispy white sheets. Dude was gone, and in his stead he’d left a couple of neatly folded fluffy towels and a brand-new bar of soap. In the shower I thought to myself, “This motherfucker has got to have a wife,” as I blinked shampoo out of my eyes and squeezed expensive conditioner into my palm. But from the look of things he didn’t, unless she used beard-sculpting pomade and wore size-thirteen work boots.
—
He was downstairs blasting Killer Mike and grating potatoes for homemade hash browns, and this might have been the exact moment that my brain exploded, because that kind of thing had happened to me never. Cash for a Starbucks to drink on the train going to work? Sure. Three and a half minutes to sniff at all the dried-up takeout containers in the fridge in search of something even vaguely edible before the cab pulls up? Absolutely. But from-scratch blueberry pancakes with turkey bacon, hash browns, and lukewarm mango puree courtesy of the fancy juicer on the counter? NOT EVER. And that kind of gloriousness continued throughout the course of our relationship: home-cooked meals that consisted of more than just massive blackened hunks of charred meats (seriously, it’s either they cook absolutely nothing at all or pork chops the size of your head on a grill with neither sides nor condiments); thoughtful, engaging discussions about culture and news; fresh bars of soap and neatly folded towels every morning for the shower. Despite myself, I got excited. I like to be excited about stuff, and hanging with a dude I could buy a book for who would actually take the time to read it was terribly fucking exciting.
I thought Fred was my Love Jones, the black renaissance relationship I’d been waiting for, ever since I watched Larenz Tate chase Nia Long’s NYC-bound Amtrak as it departed Chicago’s Union Station, my bougie black romance set to a neo-soul soundtrack. I would be the moody, complicated writer and he the temperamental artist; ours would be a life filled with poetry readings I couldn’t understand, artist lectures I would barely stay awake through, and gallery openings during which I would gracefully field questions about whether I was the inspiration for his finest works. I would write jokes about his dick, of course, but that would be offset by the afternoons spent digging through crates of old jazz records and evenings banging drums and talking about shit like the diaspora with our similarly head-wrapped, natural-haired friends. We had all the ingredients: paintbrushes, record players, notebooks, proximity to the Wild Hare. I spent an inordinate amount of time concocting our fantasy future.
I got dumped pretty much because I cannot have a baby. I could feel every bit of exposed upper arm fat catch a chill in that fancy restaurant he’d suggested, and I instinctively bent my arms and tucked my elbows into my sides for protection as Fred tried to find a nice way to tell me that his imaginary future children were more important than what I thought was a really special thing we had going. An hour before that we’d been strolling arm in arm through the Lichtenstein, and my heart was still full of all those people and colors and the fact that I was finally having sex with a person who had a membership to the goddamned Art Institute, and now I was being broken up with over a thirty-dollar pasta in A GROSSLY UNFLATTERING CAP-SLEEVED SHIRT.
I set my fork down. Halfway through, when the sad eyes and gentle tone made my mouth slick with humiliation, I attempted to defend myself. I thought it was ridiculous to talk about my gynecological history and the possibilities of adoption with a dude I met on fucking Facebook, but there I was, trying to fit the ocean into a plastic cup as it tossed and turned me in its waves. I tuned back in as he was saying, so fucking gently, “…can you really chase a baby around the backyard?” He didn’t mean it in the mean way, I didn’t think. Sometimes even when it feels mean it isn’t, I reminded myself. I glanced down at my left hand, curled in a stiff black brace, my feet in their orthopedic sandals. No, I would not be chasing any of Fred’s babies.
—
We broke up—amicably, of course, because I am not one to make a public scene—but then kept having sex for a few weeks because I am a total idiot. I remember paying the check and collecting his truck from the valet and driving back to his house as if nothing had changed, as if I wasn’t feeling raw and exposed and not good enough, and then dancing in his dining room with him as Prince’s “Erotic City” played on the turntable. What kind of asshole wouldn’t choose this? What monster would be satisfied with some boring old broodmare when he could just stay with awesome me and get a couple of foster kids or something?! And I’m dumb, but not dumb enough to try to talk a dude out of a major life decision. I don’t want to be fifty years old, married to a dude who resents me and hates our seventeen adopted children and our cats. Then I’d have to cheat on him to get some romance back in my dried-up life, and I’d inevitably be caught by a member of our child army because I’m careless and irresponsible. He’d fall into a deep depression, comforted only by the warm embrace of Crown Royal and thug passion. The care of the children would undoubtedly lapse, causing them to take to the streets, robbing old ladies and eating out of dumpsters or whatever. I can’t go out like that. So instead we stopped dancing and watched twenty minutes of porn before having sweaty sex in his giant bed and wasting a tablespoon of his perfectly good semen in my useless birth canal. And then I went home and deleted his number out of my phone.