That Awkward Moment…..

I’d known ever since I first realized that boys were kinda cute. I had dealt with my own demons about it. But no one had ever asked me and I had never actually expressed the fact that I preferred white boys. I just knew I did.

I tried to pretend that I liked a couple of black guys I went to school with. I thought it was what I was supposed to do. Both of them were on the basketball team and they were like the Big Men on Campus and they had their choice of almost any girl they wanted.

I had known one of those boys for years. Our parents had been the best of friends and I suppose they thought we would end up together. Nope. He had his eye on a girl who was much lighter skinned than me and she already had womanly curves and most important – she had “good hair.” She had long thick wavy black hair down to her shoulders that never needed to see a hot comb or a perm kit. No matter that she was dumber than a box of said hair. She had what it takes and I didn’t.

The other boy’s mother thought I was “too dark” for her son and not cute enough. (She regretted that later when I matured.) But it didn’t really bother me. I heaved a big sigh of relief and figured that this was a sign that I should not try to pretend any more. So at that point, I said to myself, “I like white boys.”

I thought about it for a long time. Was I missing anything when I heard other black girls swooning over some guy and saying, “Ooh, damn I love me a chocolate brother!” or “Oooh, that n&*%a is so fine!”

Was there something about black men that was alluring that I was missing? Did my preference set me up to not get along with other black women? I didn’t really have any close friends that were black at that point in my life. I didn’t share their enthusiasm for “bruthas.” And did it make me some sort of “race traitor” because I didn’t like “my own kind?”

Was there something wrong with me?

Over the years, a few people including my mother tried to set me up with guys they thought I would like. I didn’t.

When I left home, I met some other black girls who felt the same way I did. We all preferred white guys. I had never met any other black girls who felt the way I did and it was great. We might have felt like we were different with other black folks, but we were totally comfortable with each other. We didn’t have to explain or say anything. It was all right to like white guys.

One night I was in a bar back in my hometown with friends and one of the guys I grew up with came and sat at the bar next to me. We started talking because we hadn’t seen each other in years. He asked that question that you know is going to preface another question that you probably don’t want to answer: “Can I ask you a question?”

I said yes.

“What did us brothers do to make you hate us? I mean I know we kind of gave you a hard time in high school, but was it enough to turn you against us all forever?”

I suppose it’s simple to always think there is a reason or that you’re turning against something. But that wasn’t it at all. There was no reason. I don’t hate black men. There was nothing political, no cultural or revenge based reason why I like white men. I just do. That’s all. I just do.

I laughed and told him that I just preferred them and that was all. And then I asked why he would ask me since he was married to a white woman himself. I guess it was all right for him.

I went on never really putting voice to it but handily getting out of dating any black men who crossed my path. I am sure all my friends and family knew it but since I didn’t say anything, they didn’t either.

I noticed that some of my white girlfriends were actively dating black guys and seemed happy. But some of them were friendly with black men but never got serious or even considered dating them. So I asked one of my friends why she didn’t. She hemmed and hawed and said that she didn’t want to do anything that would upset her father.

I knew that was a crock. Her father would have been just as pissed if he knew some of the things she was doing with white men and I said that to her. And did that mean her father thought he was better than me? I recalled a conversation I had had with her father a few years before when I went off to college.

While she and I had been friends for years, she had been the one who got pregnant when we were teenagers. She had been the rebellious one who had started drinking and sleeping around with various men. Not me. I had gotten a job and had stayed with it for over 10 years. She had been unemployed just as much as she had been employed. And I went back to college and got my degree. She had dropped out of high school.

He smiled at me one night and said, “There must have been a mistake when you were born.”

I asked what he meant.

“YOU should have been my daughter,” he said.

All this was leading up to the moment when my Mom and I finally brought it out in the open. We were arguing over something and she brought up my only dating white men. She couldn’t see it at all. She grew up in the Jim Crow south and she had had a hard time at the hands of white people. While she had raised my brothers and me to be tolerant, she didn’t like the idea of us dating or marrying outside our race.

I told her I could do whatever I wanted to do.

She said, “No white man is going to marry you. They will sleep with you but they won’t take you home to their parents.”

“Maybe I don’t want to meet their parents. And maybe they won’t care. Everybody isn’t a bigot,” I said.

“They just want to use you,” she persisted. “They will never love you. It will only be sex. You will get hurt and I don’t want that for you. You deserve t be loved. You are loving and sweet and you need a man who will love and cherish you.”

I could have made some comment about how her first husband beat her till she left him and my father cheated on her constantly. I didn’t. Not yet anyway.

But then she said, “Don’t you ever bring me some peckerwood and tell me you are going to marry him. Don’t bring me some zebra kids either.”

I didn’t want to fight anymore so I said, “Fine. When I do get married, I will keep my husband away from you and my little zebra children too. I don’t want any of them infected with your hatred.”

She went to my father in a huff and told him what I had said. He got very angry with her and came to me and said, “Don’t you think for a moment that you can’t come home no matter who you marry. You are my child and I will always accept your choices. Your mother is wrong.”

She grudgingly accepted the fact that if I did get married, it would certainly be to a white man. We never argued over it again.

Years later, I overheard her talking to a family member. One of my cousins was dating a white guy and nobody in the family liked him. He was unemployed and lived in her apartment and was so broke he was wearing her clothes.

My mother said, with some measure of pride in her voice, “My Brenda dates white men but she has never dated any trashy ones. I know I will never have to be ashamed of any man she chooses. She has good taste and she is very classy and I trust her to not embarrass us all like your daughter has.”

Ouch.

Mom took a trip to Scandinavia with some of her friends and she came home telling me about the gorgeous men she had seen there and that I should go there because I’d be sure to find a husband there.

By then she was hinting almost daily that she wanted me to get married and have a granddaughter for her. My brothers had had only boys so far and it was my job to give her that precious little girl she wanted so badly.

“Mama, you trying to set me up with a Viking?”

She grinned and said, “Why not? I need a son in law kind of bad. A Viking will do. Some of those guys are so big and gorgeous! I showed a few of them your picture and they wanted to meet you.”

My Mom, the Matchmaker.