What Next?
When I was growing up, there was this girl Tawanda who lived next door to my aunt. Tawanda and my cousin Annie quickly became best friends. For whatever reasons, other than the obvious, Tawanda and I took a strong dislike to each other. I didn’t like her because I saw her as a threat to my relationship with my cousin. And I’m sure if I ever took the time to find her and ask her, she would say the same about me.
Nonetheless, the animosity was thick between us. I always viewed Tawanda as a harsh “tom-boy” who wasn’t very nice. I was a smart ass who had no time for the likes of her. My cousin was our only commonality. So, when we were around each other, I was short and dissmisive and Tawanda was just rude. We never had a kind word for the other. She would call me “big lip Nicki” and I would call her a “dyke.”
Now, at eleven years old, I had no idea what a dyke was nor what a dyke did. I did know that Tawanda had an aunt who was a lesbian and she was cool. She was very butch and I never thought anything about it, after all, I was a child and her sexuality was a grown up thing. What I did gather from the grown ups was that being a dyke wasn’t a good thing. It was unnatural and not right. So, my calling Tawanda one was surely more insulting than me having big lips.
Lesbians at the time were few and far between. They were so few that the two who lived in our lower middle class neighborhood despised each other like cocks fighting over a hen house. However, now I see more and more African American women are lesbians.
I don’t know when the trend began. I do recall about four years ago, I began to notice an increase in young aged girls claiming to be lesbians. And not just homosexual girls, but butch androgynous lesbians. There were times I would have to look at a girl three or four times before I realized she was a girl. It was all so weird to me.
I remember going to Atlanta one summer and I went to the Lennox Mall. I was in wonderment because the girl’s were with girls. It put the consequences of male homosexuality in perspective. It dawned on me, if all the men are gay, then the women have to do something. And that something is another woman.
My girlfriend and I were talking at lunch about her sister and what her plans are since she and her long time boyfriend broke up. She said her sister was abstaining from relationships and sex. And then she said she asked her sister if she ever thought about being with a woman.
It dawned on me, do we only have two choices when faced with next steps after a break up: abstain or date women?
WTF!
Whatever happened to dusting ourselves off and trying again? And what makes anyone think that a homosexual relationship, whether male or female, is any different or better than a heterosexual relationship? You have the same shit, just different sex.
I think we have gotten so used to quick fixes in our fast food society that we forget anything worth having takes time and effort. Nothing, I repeat nothing, in life is free.
And while I don’t know what the solution is to a broken heart, I do know that it’s not the end of the world and with the right epoxy, it can be fixed. And while I am not dissuading anyone from a homosexual relationship, I am saying that it isn’t a choice that should be made because you can’t find a man to please you.
If you don’t have a desire or want for a same sex partner, then why would you demean or mock their lifestyle by “testing it out?” Respect their choice and clean up your own house. Don’t believe the issues or problems you have in a heterosexual relationship won’t follow you into your homosexual relationship.
