I am Lois Lane

Recently I came across a quote by Assata Shakur, a Black Panther who was convicted in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper back in the day. She is the aunt of the late rapper and my would-have-been baby daddy, Tupac Shakur. May he rest in peace.

Lawd. Have. Mercy. Yummy Genius.

Did I ever tell the story of me seeing him perform live at the Ritz in DC back in the day when I was in college? I was *this close* to him and his teeth sparkled and he was amazing. He performed "I Get Around". Heart be still, I almost died. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

So his aunt, Assata Shakur, was a Black Panther. And she once said, "A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man." Despite having read her autobiography many years ago I don't remember this quote. But the other day when I saw it posted on a friend's Facebook page, I had an Oprah "aha" moment.

Ms. Assata Shakur

A couple of things: 1) Is it egotistical to call oneself a revolutionary? And if not or even if so, am I one of them? 2) Can I be bougie and be an activist at the same time?

I argue that one can, and in fact it's a very practical way to approach the revolution these days, since you're more likely to effect change from within the system than by staging a coup (at least in the US). So, I don't think that designer shoes or Mizani butter blend disqualify a person from radical or progressive thought and agitation.

So let's for the sake of argument say, that I am a revolutionary. Why and how is another topic. Let's just give me that, because I kind of think that I am. And that is the reason why the reactionary men I've dated haven't become men I've mated. (I couldn't resist the rhyme, in honor of Tupac.)

This is the story of Superman. A lovely, intelligent, amazing, sweet boy whom I liked and who liked me, but ultimately bored me to tears until I found a way to blow the whole thing up and send him on his way. I may have also done it for entertainment. Don't mistake me for a drama queen (or rather, this isn't what makes me a drama queen, it's something else altogether) I just literally was so bored by this man I used to cry about it.

Superman and I met several years ago when we started working at the same company at the same time. He was super cute, looked a little like this guy must have looked 30 years ago:

Michael Lee Chin. Billionaire of Chinese-Jamaican descent

Lots of folks don't know there are a lot of Chinese people in Jamaica, and obviously that means a bunch of mixed race Jamaicans with Chinese ancestry. That explains the curry goat/fried rice spots in the hood. In case you were wondering.

Superman was the ultimate gentleman and had an impeccable resume. Ivy league educated, nice to his momma, refused to let me pay for a thing, and he took me to great places. For a second there I thought I could really be into him and that I could fix his nerd fashion because lots of men need a wardrobe makeover and if they let you do it, inept dressing and tightey whiteys (which I didn't learn about until the absolute END) shouldn't be a deal breaker. Right?

But here's the thing. I realized over time that I did all the talking and he did all the laughing. So I said to myself, "Self, you gotta stop running your mouth the whole time and let this man speak. He's smart!" So I did and I PROMISE you...he had very little to say. Maybe his mind was tired from his 100 hour per week job (some folks roll like that, and he was one of them) or maybe it was just empty or maybe, he just didn't care to share with me. That's all possible. Unfortunately that created an experience wherein I was just bored to tears.

I'm not this old but this is an equal opportunity image blog.

We casually dated on and off for like a year or so, and this man was literally so passive he never even tried to kiss me. I finally kissed him like six months in. After chewing on this for literally months I actually don't think it was because he wasn't interested in that - me in particular or women in general. I sincerely think he was just that passive, at least with me. To encourage his man mojo I told him his nickname was Superman, because he worked so hard and was so smart and still found time to do other things. I hoped this would help him to live up to the moniker. Unfortunately what it did was embolden him to reveal his collection of super hero figurines to me, which decorated his apartment all over. Very 40 Year Old Virgin. And to make it worse, he was really a Spiderman fan but I just couldn't bring myself to call him Spiderman even though really, Spidey is more exciting than Superman...

So all the ideas I poured out and thoughts I expressed, were met with an amused chuckle to the point where I wanted to stab him in the neck just to get a reaction. I didn't do this and of course never would, but you know...something has gotta happen, sometime. It was all very whatever kind of music you like.

We fizzled. Actually, we blew up. Fizzle doesn't describe it. In my extreme frustration with his missing personality, I seized an opportunity one fateful September night in 2008, and picked a blow out fight with him on some corner in Chelsea in front of quite a lot of people, and that was that. We spoke once the next day and I did apologize for what I said. But I wasn't sorry, because I didn't care one bit. Existentially I cared, but not about him aside from caring about his general humanity, which we all share.

It is so tempting to settle into a relationship with a malleable and agreeable fellow who has enough of the right characteristics to please the crowd. I've met so many and had a shot being with more than one of them. The truth however is that a man with nothing to say, who does nothing, who protests nothing, who agitates never, is a total bore. And even worse, a man with no ideals or principles, a man who just occupies himself with the daily grind, is a bore and at the same time heartbreaking to walk away from, because these are the men who change your oil, ask about your day, rub your feet and may even be faithful. The ones you should be taking home to mama. Well not my mama because she likes interesting men too. THANK GOODNESS she doesn't like foot rubs or else the pressure would be overwhelming.

How do I find a man of action and progressive thought whose money isn't funny and won't insist I wear my hair natural and tolerate living in some shitbox? Which I have and would, just not as directed. The hair part. Not the shitbox part. That aint gonna happen again if I can help it. So is this guy on OKCupid or Match.com? Is he at the club, at the financial services professionals networking function, or is he one of my mother's friend's sons? Is he at Homecoming for my alma mater or the Alliance Française French film night? Is he chasing white girls like the Black Panthers or sweating NQW chicks like Kanye West? Is he white, brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian? Is he at the liberry?

Where does a smart woman with an active mind and a lot to say, find her match? Or should I just shut up and focus on becoming a better cook and get some fake boobs along the way? Sure would be easier...

Maybe I'll just get a dog.

Home Improvement

Note: I am design challenged when it comes to this blog. Be prepared for different looks to cycle through, perhaps some of them ratchet, until I figure it out. I'm on a journey. Any tips on how to make these Blogger templates look good, lemme know! Now back to our regularly scheduled program...

Like I said last week, this new-in-town situation has resulted in different inventory. On a macro level the quality has been an upgrade. But my personal pipeline upgrade has been mainly in terms of quantity. In b-school (men:women::2:1) we used to say, "the odds are good, but the goods are odd." So if you can believe it with less than 60 days on the ground and a dozen of those away, I already have a nutso bizarro story to tell.

My dear friend JLo (seriously, that's who she looks like) is a part time realtor. She diligently shepherded me around town to help me find a place when I first got here. In fact, she even offered her 2nd bedroom to me for as long as I needed and cooked me dinner to boot! And a whole lot of other above and beyond awesomely nice things, plus a lovely crystal pitcher with matching glasses as a housewarming gift, so this is a shout out to JLo, you're the best girl!

Anyway, I digress. We had a couple of days of looking that were pretty discouraging until one day, we happened upon the palace where I currently reside. Let's call my new residence, Villa Vizcaya.

I took it on the spot.

It needed a fresh coat of paint and my new landlord graciously offered to do so. Since that was happening, I asked if they would let me choose the color, and I (rather, JLo) provided the paint I chose.

When I arrived to move in on Mon Aug 6, the paint job was done but it was mad sloppy. The contractor wanted to touch up the paint so I left my FIVE LARGE suitcases and air mattress there and took an overnight bag back to JLo's house. 22.2 miles away. Let's call this so-called contractor, who is actually not licensed as a contractor in the state of Florida but refers to himself as such, "Home Improvement".

Home Improvement is a somewhat vertically challenged skinny Caribbean fellow. Not particularly handsome. Let's give him a five for fitness. I know he's fit because the first thing out of his mouth was how he competitively does xyz sport. zzzzzzz Sorry, were you talking? I dozed off for a second.

Just as cocky but a foot shorter and without the gold medals.

Anyway on that Monday he asked to meet me the following day at the new apartment to discuss the paint job and some additional clean up details that were left undone as of my move in date. When I arrived at Villa Vizcaya on Tuesday, he started running lame game. First, he pointed out how crappy the paint job was and said, "I'm going to do the whole thing over". Which meant, because he thinks too highly of himself to get dirty and plus didn't know how to actually DO anything, that he would hire another crew. He actually had the face to mention how it was going to cost and he would lose money on the job. I'm thinking...um...didn't you get paid $1600 for 1100 square feet and mess it up the first time? In Miami? #Jussayin. Anyway I said to him...as long as you're in here I'd like to paint accent walls here and there, and do a couple of other things, install a deadbolt, fix the curtain rod, etc. How much $?

"I'll let you know how you can pay me." I SWEAR. Bible, as my girls (in my mind we're friends) like to say. Skeevy.

Cross your fingers I don't get a cease and desist for using this,
I don't make any $ off this blog Mama Kris! 

I thought to myself...awesome! He's gonna wish he took a check after it's over. For a few reasons. One, if I were the kind of girl who charged for that sort of thing, the value of a few handyman tasks would be worth like 1 minute of my time not because I'm Sunshine from Harlem Nights but because it's a gross way to earn a living. Two, more importantly, I wasn't interested. Remotely. Three, just how lame and gross is that, for the guy with the keys to your new crib to be hitting on you after he botched the job then has to do it over and acts like he's such a great guy, doing this awesome fantastic thing and deserves some applause. And he wasn't even finished with the work before he asked me to write him a reference/recommendation! (Excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a second.)

Sunshine's been holding it down, go girl!

By day two of this ordeal, he was up in my face asking me personal questions, making comments about my color palette, my wardrobe, my perfume, a scar on my arm, tagging along and ruining my serenity at breakfast, telling me to take off my sunglasses so he could look me in the eyes (which annoys me IMMENSELY), opining unsolicited on my wall plate selection, and just generally pressing up on me in the most totally unprofessional and inappropriate way. One night I got home from a day of errands to get my overnight bag to drive the 22.2 miles back to JLo's...and he was jamming with his iPhone on my Bose speakers talking about, "I hope you don't mind". YES. I do. It is 7pm. Get the f*ck out! Home Improvement often seemed to come by after work hours because oh yeah, he's in charge of finishing properties at the Taj Mahal down the street mainly, and doesn't deal with anyone who has a property value less than $400k. That's a parking space in NYC boo, don't try to impress me.

Mind you, I was still living out of a tote bag 22.2 miles away while PAYING RENT at Villa Vizcaya. As he leisurely or perhaps just incompetently, dragged out this job because he was thinking with the wrong head, delusionally, and didn't get any of the additional stuff I asked for done at all. Like the lock. Or the curtain rod (rather, he did that halfway and another handyman, a cute one, fixed it after). Leaving things like his sunglasses in my apartment so he'd have to stop by and pick them up. Oy vey. Just go away.

My blood pressure continued to percolate over the course of the several days it took to repaint and do virtually nothing else in my place. One day he sent me back to Home Depot for new dimmers when I had the right ones all along because he didn't know wtf he was doing. It took him five evenings in a row caulking the baseboards to sort of get it right. I reminded him daily to secure the closet shelves because I had a whole lotta clothes coming. The closets didn't get done until the last second. And various other little things that I've already forgotten about.

Finally, on Sat Aug 11, I was able to inflate my air mattress and sleep in my new abode. 5 nights I was homeless because of this clown. But I was happy at last. The new paint job was great even though the painters messed up the curtains themselves and I ended up replacing them. My closet shelves weren't wobbling. I had a new lock and Home Improvement no longer had a key. It was all gully until I unpacked a suitcase and hung up 20 items. Just 20 because that's all the hangers I had, because I bought them that day. Lightweight dresses. Blouses. Tank tops. Nothing heavy. Then...

Seriously?

So I kirked out. Loudly. In his ear. Apparently Home Improvement is not familiar with the concept of anchoring shelves in wall studs. Because he's a minimalist as he told me about himself along with a bunch of other crap I gave two snits about. NO, I do NOT care about your relationship with your father or your former fiancee...I'm just being polite because you put me on the spot asking me to breakfast and then didn't even pay! Violating my serenity as mentioned above. Boo hiss.

About the apartment...the owner's realtor made everything ok. She's awesome. The handyman she sent was much easier to look at, had his own tool box, and fixed everything just perfectly in one day. Yum. And to be fair, the 2nd paint job is really quite good. Not that Home Improvement touched a brush.

Ok so, the end. Right? Nope!

This Wednesday I got a call from a Private Number. This is after the flirty text I had gotten from Home Improvement after I moved in but before the closet died. I shut that exchange down by replying, "who is this"? I had deleted his number. Anyway, since I use this phone for business I answered the blocked call.

I-think-it-was-Home-Improvement: Hey is this Black Swan? [mispronouncing my government name the way many Anglo Caribbean people do including Home Improvement.]
Me: Yes this is she, who's speaking?
I-think-it-was-Home-Improvement: This is your secret admirer [sounding just like Home Improvement]. Are you going to be home today?
Me: Who is this? Who gave you my number?
I-think-it-was-Home-Improvement: I don't think I should reveal that now, are you going to be around?
Me: If you don't tell me who the f*ck this is right the f*ck now I'm f*cking calling the f*cking police. [I learned a lot on the trading floor.]
I-think-it-was-Home-Improvement: What? Huh? Doh! *click*

Seriously? Does he not know how incredibly creepy and weird it is to call a woman who just moved to town and lives alone and ask her if she's going to be home? And how transparent it is because only a couple of folks even know where I live and everyone else has an alibi? But also how incredibly scary because what if it's NOT him and it's some pervy creep I don't already know who was looking at me through my windows while Home Improvement couldn't fix the curtains, and now is gonna come get me and feed me to the gators on some Dexter sh*t?!?!?

New season Sep 30, can't wait to see what happens with Deb!

I called the police and my cell carrier immediately. And notified my management office/doorman that if anyone wants to see me they must call first and show identification. And real talk, I'm thinking about a gun. Don't worry, I'll learn how to use it.

My last secret admirer was a guy named Golden Crews in the 11th grade. He used to slip me little notes in my locker written with perfect penmanship in purple marker, my favorite color. But then his father wouldn't let him take me to the homecoming dance because he said I ugly because I was too dark. Or maybe that was before and Golden only liked me in rebellion against his father, who was married to a white lady/Golden's mom. Golden ended up dating my NQW** good friend but I didn't care because we all dated each others' boyfriends back then. Today I'd stab a beeyatch in the neck for that. But that's another story.

Two take aways:
1) Men. Please think with your brain and not your other brain.
2) If I disappear, Home Improvement did it!




**New to the vocabulary along with ratchet. NQW = not quite white. Replaces the old school and frankly clunky "light bright almost white" in my lexicon. Thanks to one of my guy friends for turning me on to that one. Ratchet = wack or raggedy.

A Very Scientific Study

SHAMELESS PLUG: Please follow me on Twitter. I only have 14 followers and I only know who like three of them are. I'm starting to get depressed about this. @blackswan305. thx! xo

When I moved back to Miami from New York in July, I changed the zip code on my OKCupid profile from 10019 to 33137. I promptly got a flood of Bienvenida A Miami messages, in a quantity that was like whoa. Their algorithm must float people who are new in town to the top and put them in heavy rotation. In fact I have 162 notifications waiting for me right now. One. Hundred. Sixty. Two. I KNOW! That's cuh RAZY right? It's never ever happened before, I'll tell you that much! I mean, I never had more than five before and three of those were Quiver matches who never ever ever ever messaged me. I could get used to this new in town thing.

Anyhoo, the 2% of my brain that is quantitative decided to write a chart about it comparing NY and Miami men on a few dimensions on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest: Intellectuality, Physical Beauty, and Game. To make the data set more representative of the population I did not limit my observations to OKCupid. This also applies to the fellas trying to holler at Home Depot and Publix.

For those of you who think it's obnoxious of me to rate men, this is a scientific endeavor. Sometimes science has to ask tough questions in the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment.

Intellectuality: A completely made up term referring to the author's estimate of the respondent's IQ and general sophistication or worldliness. More objective data contributing to this measure include grammar, spelling, professionalism and education level. You can also measure sophistication or worldliness by a passport inspection but I haven't gotten that far with anyone yet.

If only all Thinkers looked like this too...

Physical Beauty: This refers to facial beauty (a term I learned from watching Toddlers & Tiaras), an eyeball estimate of body fat percentage, and height.

Sadly I missed the entire season of Honey Boo Boo but intend to catch up soon.

Game: A rating of the balance between attire, aggressiveness, appropriateness, specificity, and creativity. Also, whether or not the guy pays for the first date.

Note: I can't figure out where to put cool accents on this axis because they really belong half in Physical Beauty and half in Game. Maybe a little bit in Intellectuality if it's a British accent, which always makes folks sound really smart. Anyway, for the purposes of data integrity I left it out but a hot accent will always catch my attention. You get great accents in both places anyway so I would call it a draw.

Please see below for the results of this very scientific study...which took me forever to figure out how to paste into this interface because you can't just copy a joint from Excel for Mac (which SUX) and click control-v to paste, you have to command-shift-4 the thing as I found out on Google, so I hope you appreciate it, because I almost had to have a drank for breakfast cracking my head on it:

As reluctantly expected, NY men easily edge out Miami guys with respect to Intellectuality. I was totally ready to say that men in Florida are just as smart and urbane and sophisticated as men in NYC but it's just not true. Perhaps normalizing for the tremendous demands of and opportunities available in life in NYC they are equal but the first impression is that on average the fellas down here are scoring lower on that dimension. But you know, sometimes super intellectual guys are too damn emo.

Also as expected, Physical Beauty far favors the Miami crowd. NY has a very serious epidemic of skinny fatness affecting all genders. Men here generally tend to work out and most have learned to show it off in a not cheesy way. I haven't seen a muscle shirt yet. The fact is, a nice pair of shoulders is gonna peek through no matter what you're wearing, and a soft chin is also evident no matter what you're wearing. And guys, I see that gut and your muffin top. Pretending it's not there doesn't make it go away. This is a welcome change and a motivator to take my personal fitness to the next level. I have begun training for a 10k.

Game is where it gets tricky. Miami men tend to be more aggressive and want to meet right away if the introduction is online. They are also much more likely to approach you in the grocery store, in Home Depot, in the parking lot...in fact I met my late 90s/early naughts boyfriend at a gas station down here on 119th street when I was buying a bag of ice one night in 1998. This like, NEVER happened to me in NY. Maybe once in 6 years did I get approached by a legit person when I was out and about. So, while the fella following me around Publix the other day may have been creepy, the fact is that I'd rather get too much attention than too little.

Regarding the other aspects of Game - creativity and wardrobe and all that - it's hard to tell. There is so much to do in NY maybe men aren't really being creative but instead are going to UrbanDaddy.com and doing as they're told. Or maybe they just read Time Out NY. I mean, at least guys in NY know what Zagats is. Here, the opportunity set is more finite so it's hard to ding fellas for a lack of creativity. And as far as fashion is concerned, I have seen heinous offenders and super fly dope boys in both places so that's a draw. However, you CAN ding a man for not paying for your date. This hasn't happened to me yet but I'm on the lookout.

Overall Result: Miami 7.3, NY 6.3. I upgraded! Yayyyyy! Miami is the Champion!

On a related side note, can someone tell me why people post such flattering pictures of themselves online when they hope to meet someone in person? If a guy is concerned women won't accept a date if he doesn't describe himself as athletic, what does he think will happen when he shows up looking all unathletic? And no, big biceps and a big belly is NOT athletic. Especially if your boobies are bigger than mine. Perhaps online dating sites should provide guidelines as to what they mean by body type.

I think this would be helpful.