A couple of weeks ago, my brother was moving some furniture with
his brother-in-law and friend in my house.
The brother-in-law (let’s call him Mark) has been trying to get at me
for quite some time. He’s not my type,
and more importantly, he doesn’t move the thermostat. I’ve always been courteous to Mark because he’s
family by extension, and the only reason why I know he’s been trying to get at
me is because my brother laughs about it.
I know my brother well enough to know that the following “transcript,” though my words, are an accurate representation of the conversations that
take place between them whenever my name comes up.
Mark: “Hook me up
with yo’ sister.”
Brother: “Fuck no,
nigga.”
Mark: “She just what
I need.”
Brother: “Nigga
please. Yo’ ass ain’t even in my sister’s
league. You can’t keep no job, you ain’t
got yo’ own place, and you ain’t got nothin’ to offer her.”
Mark: “I can give her
what she need.”
Brother: “Yo’ broke ass
don’t even know what that is. You can’t
pay none of her bills. She got fuckin’
standards.”
Now being my brother, he’s always been protective of me and
has shielded me from guys, especially ones he
knows. Not so cool when I was in school,
but I do appreciate the loyalty. My
brother knows who and what I am, and he’s not afraid to let other guys know
that they can’t hang. For the record, I
don’t need my brother to run interference because we’re not in high school
anymore. I can handle the riff-raff.
This is what I know for a fact about Mark: 1. He has a criminal record. 2. He’s
got a kid. 3. His employment record is spotty. 4. He
lives with his parents. 5. He’s in his early 40s. We ain’t
got shit in common. While I think he’s cool in terms of his
relationship to my brother, there ain’t no way on God’s green earth that I
would ever even consider considering going out with him. We don’t bring the same weight to the table. That’s what the Bible calls “unequally yoked”
and what I call “No-fucking-way.” I will
not support a grown-ass man with a kid that ain’t mine who may or may not work
and ain’t got a place to call his own (he for damn sure can’t stay with
me). Sadly, I know a lot of women who
would take him with all his flaws simply because he has a penis and they’re
sick of being lonely (and he has had plenty of girlfriends and even a fiancée
once). But I digress.
Now while Mark and I have never had any chats close to
discussing this (our “conversations” consist mostly of “Hey, how you doin’. Fine, you?”), I’ve been told by my brother
that he describes me as being “mean as hell.”
When I ask why that is, especially since he doesn’t really know me and I’ve
never been anything but polite, my brother says it’s because I won’t give him
any play. Doesn’t make a lick of sense,
does it? I’m mean because my brother
considers Mark below my standards. Mind
you, Mark has never heard me say anything of the sort; he hears this from my
brother. But I get painted as being mean.
This sort of delineation isn’t new or exclusive to me. Men who want women they can’t get deal with
their rejection by projecting their anger onto said women. They soothe their bruised egos by insulting
the object of their desire (whether or not she knows they exist). Hence you hear some men calling women
everything but a child of God, including but not limited to, “She’s a whore,
she hates men, she’s a lesbian, she’s an angry (black) bitch, she’s stuck-up…she’s
mean.” It makes them feel better about themselves to
insist that the problem isn’t with them,
it’s with the woman.
Now I will say this, and followers of the Dark already know
it, Mark is absolutely beneath my considerable standards. My life and comfort level speak for themselves,
and any man worth his salt knows what the bottom line is before I even open my
mouth. But I’m not callous enough to rub
something like this in any man’s face. Mark’s
issues are his own. I suppose the fear
of getting shut down quick, fast and in a hurry has paralyzed him enough that
he’d prefer to think of it as me being “mean as hell” rather than deal with his
own inadequacies. He knows that
everything my brother says about him in relationship to me are dead-ass
right. He knows he doesn’t stand a
snowball’s chance in hell in getting my attention, but the point is that he doesn’t know for sure because he has
never tried to talk to me like a real man should. I’m sure he knows that he really can’t step
within my sphere and that is why he never tried, but as long as it’s my fault and not his, he can live with it.
Women have gotten the short end of the stick since Lilith
left Eden and Eve took up with the serpent.
If insulting me helps Mark to sleep at night, I’m fine with it. I don’t mind being the villain, especially
when I sleep even better than he does. I guess I am just mean then.
