Why I Need a Man....

I need a man.  After moving yesterday I realize this. Forget what your girlfriend said, forget what your mama said, women need men. I know, I know. Didn’t my mama raise me to be a strong Black woman? She did. In fact, my mother is one of the “strongest” women I know. Now is she happy? That’s a different story.  In fact she constantly repeats the infamous mantra of many “strong” Black women, “Niggas ain’t shit!!” As a young girl this idea was pressed into my palms and sown into my thoughts. Chanted all around me like Tina Turner did nam myoho renge kyo.            

Niggasaintishitniggasaintshitniggasaintshiiiiiiiiiittttt!!!  

Long before I even had the opportunity to experience a man in any relationship, other than my father and brother, I was raised with the expectation to be disappointed and suspicious of Black men.

            Granted women like my mother have their reasons for believing all men are no good. My mother was abandoned by her father and, unfortunately at the time of their marriage (yes, my parents were actually married), my father was off the hook too. Why I’m sure he loved my mother and I know he loved his three children, but his addiction to drugs ruptured my mother’s love for him. Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be married to a drug addict and even though my father was one, he never abandoned me.  He’s been clean for majority of my life and we have a great relationship.  But still my mother reminds me, “You do not know what your father put me through!” She’s right, I have no idea. My mother is very strong……

             I do not have the desire to always appear “strong”. I believe this is an idea sown into us from slavery, from being bred as chattel. It is a dangerous myth. Michelle Wallace wrote a book about it called Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. I read it when I was 18 and I was suffering from strongblackwomanitis. This idea that I should be able to take any amount of pain, struggle and suffering because I am a Black woman and not even shed a tear. Not only should I be able to take it, but that shit should be a banner across my chest. A sash announcing to the world who I am like Ms. Virginia in the Ms. America contest. “Here comes Ms. Strong Black Woman. Able to work forty plus hours a week, and raise five children with no help from their father! Give her a round of applause!” It is a trap because it becomes an excuse for the world to heap more shit on our back. Then we turn around with a paradoxical mix of pride and anger and say, “Look at all the shit I got piled on my back!”

But after moving yesterday, I realize I have no desire to break my back to show the world how strong I am. There are some things that a man should do. Period, end of discussion. Call me sexist. I should not have to touch garbage. When I was married, I never ever took out the garbage. Yesterday, I took out so much garbage from my apartment, it looked like a garage sale! Now, I did hire movers though. I ain’t crazy! Those Russian men were sweating and breaking their backs carrying my boxes, bed, bookshelf and dresser down the stairs. But they are men, that’s what they are supposed to do. 

As a woman, I don’t want to have to lift anything heavy, or put furniture together. Now I am not the prissy type. All of you who know me, as either Tameka or Shepsa know I am not prissy. I probably look very strong to you. And I am in the way of being focused and handling my business. I know how to get shit done and I know what I want. But what I have observed from women—beautiful women like my mother who do not have a man around---is a hardening of their shell. They begin to take on a sort of roughness, a coarseness that smells like the aroma a’la angryblackwoman. We have all smelled this before. On the train or the bus with the woman who probably really loves her children but is cussing them out. Why? Cause she’s angry! She’s tired and frustrated! She, by nature is feminine but life has forced her into this masculine sphere for her survival. Does she really wish she could be soft? Yes. Does she want a man to come and take care of her and her kids? Yes, yes, yes! But right now she’s being the man and the woman so her energy is way off.

What I am saying is that I have no desire to be that way. I desire to have a man/men (wink) around me to fulfill the masculine sphere so my energy will stay in balance. So why did you leave your marriage then? Hey, I explained that in my first blog! I have no desire to be single forever (I have no desire to be legally married again either). What I do desire is deep, intimate relationships with men who can lend me their yang as I nurture them with my yin. And this is not just about moving furniture. This is about moving life back into balance.  Ashe.

Letter to My Man (for tonight.....)

Letter to My Man (for tonight)

(summer fling 2010)

I am thinking of you letting you in.

Your words having already copulated with my thoughts,

speaking to me of healing our tribe in East Flatbush

with herbs grown under the sun and moon of Mexico.

Made ripe from squatting in moist virgin forests,

wet with potency.

My medicine man,

you speak a language to me that vibrates on frequencies

ears cannot hear.

Shooting out God-rays, your mouth is the sun,

come rotate them around the equator of my hips.

Claim this earth as your inheritance.

May your hands map my body’s topography,

plant your fingers in the valleys and sticky rivers of my geography.

Yesssssssssssss………

I have decided to unravel for you tonight.

The redness of your eyes whispered to me that you needed a healing.

I’ve got some new medicine for you to uncover.

There are rose quartz and peacock feathers,

Sade and sandalwood

burning.

Anoint my chakras with the blessing of your tongue from

Crown to root.

Let’s massage a new recollection into each other’s flesh.

Awaken in me our hidden histories,

sensually stimulate the recall of our past life memories.

Whisper to me how we made love under palm trees in Ghana,

you draped my body in kente cloth and gold.

Heal the scars left behind when they sold you away

from me on a Georgia cotton plantation.

Reunited in another life we made love and Revolution,

naked under black leather and berets we fucked for freedom.

So tonight, your body is a temple of the familiar.

My kisses are prayers dancing across the sanctuary of your chest.

Your amber arms cocoon me,

balancing my feminine with your masculine energy.

A magic wand pulsating inside of me.

You are a thunder god between my thighs,

I am a honey river for you to swim in.

You be butterfly soft yet black panther rough.

My hips make figure eights around your tip

as I ride you into infinity.

Watching our orgasm explode in each other’s eyes,

our love spell echoes

into the ethers of eternity. 

Married and Divorced by 30

So today I did it and it was so, so very easy. I initiated the meeting and began the conversation of telling my husband I wanted to divorce. I had been having dreams about him for the last two weeks. In a lot of the dreams I was cussing him out, once when I was ovulating we were actually having sex! Whatever the content of the dream was, my subconscious was telling me it was time to deal with it. It had been two years since we separated and had any conversation about our relationship. Severing any relationship—especially a marriage is not easy. If children are involved then of course there is no complete disconnection but a new way of relating—as parents solely and not lovers.

Why had I waited so long? Because I was afraid. I had been the one to choose our separation; he wanted to work it out. As a Black woman to have been the one to break up your family is a hard pill to swallow. In my mind, it was as if I was standing in front of a counsel of old grandmothers with them asking,

Dem- Is he cheating on you baby?

Me-  No.

Dem- He beat you?

Me- No.

Dem- He got a job?

Me- Yes.

Dem- Then what the hell is wrong with you?!

Me- I’m not happy.

Dem- (Raucous, uproarious laughter) Chile, PLEASE!! Get outta here before we throw the shoe at you! Happy? Ha! Get real! Nobody’s happy chile!!

To leave a marriage because you were unhappy seemed like some white woman’s shit. An honorable discharge from a marriage for a Black woman usually involves more drama. Drugs! Domestic violence! Multiple baby mamas popping up around town! A nicca that can’t keep a job and leaves you to foot the bill for everything! All real life shit that my mother and plenty of women around me experienced. My reasons were more esoteric. I want a man who is my spiritual partner. A man who is actively on a journey toward higher evolution. Some of them were more womanist—for lack of a better word. Why do I have to be in the house all day taking care of the baby while you get to deejay parties, play basketball and interact with the world? I often felt like a single mother though I was in a relationship. But honestly none of this was his fault. It was none of our faults. I never articulated what the hell I wanted in a relationship, what I thought my family should look like. I was operating without a vision, reacting badly when things were not going my way. 

Slowly, I started to realize that this was not the intimate life partnership I wanted. I realized that I in fact had never really dated or experienced any other relationship. I had always been very serious and goal oriented. As a teen and in my early twenties, this made young men run. All my energy went into me and I accomplished great things because of it. While other young girls were getting finger fucked, I was leading the debate team and winning writing contest around the country. In fact, when I met my husband I was a virgin at 21! I was suffering from chronic play it “safe” good-girl-ness . So I wanted to experience more of life, more of myself. I wanted to be free....

I was questioning all of the beliefs I held dear. When I married him, I also married a spiritual community. A global community with temples around the world. Hard to explain unless you’ve been in that community or ones like it but it was like changing your citizenship. My whole way of thinking, living and breathing literally changed. It was beautiful and intense but I began to feel limited. I needed out of there too. I needed to experience other traditions and find the path that is right for me. I started having religious affairs and began checking out other systems. I even had an emotional affair and began to desire another man. That turned up the heat in my marriage real quick!

Things were falling apart, so I left him. I left the people eating tofu, chanting and wearing all white (though I still chant, sometimes eat tofu and wear all white). It was hard. Hard because I felt bad that I hurt someone who I cared about. Hard because my son still cries sometimes when his dad drops him off. Not the gentle tears rolling down the face quiet crying. No. Full out tantrum, stomping on the floor top of the lungs screaming, “I want my daddy!” crying. Hard because I knew that despite it being hard, this is what I needed to do.  So all our interactions over the past two years were limited to conversations about our son and the few remaining financial connections we have.

Until today.  Today we met and I told him that I harbored no negative feelings toward him. I do not blame him for our marriage going wrong and asked that he forgive me for anything I did to him. Especially not telling him how I was really feeling. I told him how when we first met I was very, very young and inexperienced at relationships. I didn’t know what I wanted and now I’m finding that out. I do not regret our relationship and was happy to have learned from it. He echoed my sentiments back to me. He too was young (we still young, lol!) and inexperienced. He holds no ill feelings toward me and no regrets. I took a sigh of relief as the air between us began to clear out and breathed in to push out my next declaration. As I stammered getting out the exact words he said with a smile, “Yeah, we gotta get the divorce.”

I was relieved. No screaming, no crying. No finger pointing. We spoke about our terms and came to agreement. It was so easy. No need for child support orders or over paid lawyers! Shout out to 60minute.com! Their slogan is, “Got an hour? Get a divorce!” We will be going there next week. We have promised to work together for the best benefit of our son because no matter what, we are still family. And you can’t divorce your family, we are in each other’s lives forever.