{"id":658,"date":"2010-06-14T10:45:03","date_gmt":"2010-06-14T15:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dcdistrictdiva.com\/?p=658"},"modified":"2010-06-14T10:45:03","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T15:45:03","slug":"no-this-negro-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/no-this-negro-didnt\/","title":{"rendered":"No This Negro Didn't"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I met a guy at a bar.\u00a0 (Fine: my bad<\/em>, that’s what I get<\/em>, etc. But please, allow me to continue.)<\/p>\n

In the dusk and dampness of Marvin<\/em>‘s on U-Street, this man was fine: 6’4 — at least — dark and smooth, wearing a fly-but-sensible suit that says “I just came from my very good job, and by the way, I hate Steve Harvey.”\u00a0 Throw in a bald head, a goatee and his request that our first date be serving food to the homeless at his church on Saturday morning, and I was hook-line-and-sinker-sold.<\/p>\n

Since I was unavailable Saturday morning, he planned what –at first glance — appeared to be a promising evening: dinner and drinks at Masa 14, followed by jazz and blues on U Street.<\/p>\n

I wore a first-date-appropriate dress that I just happened to look amazing in, paired with my most sensible stilettos, and minimal jewelry and make-up to pull off the desired effortlessly fabulous<\/em> look.<\/p>\n

I arrived at Masa — fashionably late — to discover that he had not yet arrived.\u00a0 This gave me a chance to run to the ladies’, reapply my lip gloss, and get settled in the waiting area.\u00a0 Two minutes later, he called:<\/p>\n

“I’m here, where are you?”\u00a0 I looked around but saw him nowhere.\u00a0 “I’m right up front by the door.”\u00a0 Through the phone, I could hear a firetruck speeding by.\u00a0 Then I saw the firetruck drive past the window. Good<\/em>, he’s close<\/em>, I thought.\u00a0 (In retrospect, that firetruck was Jesus saying “Alert! Alert! Danger Ahead! Run, girl, ruuuuuuuuuuuun!” But, I missed that).\u00a0 In a split-second, he was walking through the door.<\/p>\n

Never one to hide my emotions, my mouth stood agape; my face was twisted with horror. For a moment I was paralyzed.\u00a0 He was coming towards me in what appeared to be a dingy white WIFE BEATER, some khaki shorts, some loafers with SOCKS, and an (apropos) Po’ Boy hat.\u00a0 In the light of day, he looked less like Blair Underwood, and more like Officer Ricky Ross.\u00a0 The fact that he had the nerve<\/em> to be dripping with sweat like he just finished his shift in the cotton field was all I needed to be jolted back to reality.\u00a0 I grabbed my purse and charged the door.<\/p>\n

But, he stood in the middle of the door, blocking my exit. He was smiling, apparently pleased to see me, but the look on my face soon translated into a language he understood. “Did I startle you?” He asked.\u00a0 “Yes!” I whisper-screamed. “Yes you did!”\u00a0 I pushed past him, walked out the door, and back towards the metro.<\/p>\n

He pursued, blowing up my phone in the process.\u00a0 Couldn’t he tell I was in the middle of calling everyone I knew to tell them what this Negro had just done<\/em>???<\/p>\n

“Girl!! Oh! My! Wait, hold on. *hit ignore* Oh! My! God! You will not believe — ugh! Hold on. *hit ignore* This fool had the nerve<\/em> to — oh my God is he serious?! *hit ignore*”<\/p>\n

I could barely get the story out without his interrupting phone calls.\u00a0 And him walking behind me was just too creepy to stand, so I hopped in the first available cab.<\/p>\n

He proceeded to call all Saturday — and all Sunday<\/em>.\u00a0 Then he got “clever” and started calling me from an unknown number.\u00a0 But it wasn’t just the phone calls that got me, the voicemails were equally trip-worthy:<\/p>\n

Message 1: “Hey [Diva], this is [embarrassing psycho]. Give me a call when you get a chance.”<\/p>\n

Message 2: “Hey [Diva], this is [embarrassing psycho]. Give me a call when you get a chance.”<\/p>\n

Message 3: “Hey [Diva], this is [embarrassing psycho]. Give me a call when you get a chance.”<\/p>\n

Message 4: “Hey [Diva], this is [embarrassing psycho]. Give me a call when you get a chance.”<\/p>\n

Message 5: “Yo, [Diva], this [Barry (short for embarrassing. yes this fool gave his nickname like we’ve been kicking it for years)].\u00a0 Give me a call when you get a chance.”<\/p>\n

I didn’t see the signs, Oprah. He had on a very nice suit — at a bar<\/em>— when I met him.\u00a0 Why would he invite me to a wine bar and a jazz lounge and not wear something equally as nice?\u00a0 He was talking about Jesus, for pete’s sake!<\/p>\n

And what was it about me that screamed hoodrat<\/em> anyway? Why would he feel like I would be o.k. with sitting next to a grown (39 year-old!) man in a wife beater ANYWHERE in public, let alone a nice restaurant?<\/p>\n

I called the only person who can always be counted on to discover where I went wrong:\u00a0 my dad.<\/p>\n

“Well, what happened was you blew a perfect opportunity to work on your people skills.\u00a0 You should’ve said, ‘hey, I didn’t get the memo. Am I overdressed or are you underdressed?’ Walking out was something a ten-year-old would do.”<\/p>\n

Touche’, I have a history of running and not dealing with problems \/ controversy.\u00a0 But what was to be gained from asking this clearly special man why he would wear what he was wearing?\u00a0 Did I really <\/em>have to tell this 39-year-old OLD man that a wife beater is not appropriate attire for fine dining?\u00a0 I didn’t want to make a scene,\u00a0 I didn’t want to embarrass him, and I certainly didn’t want to send the message that it was o.k. for him to put in minimal effort when it came to his appearance, so, I left.<\/p>\n

And now that the phone calls have stopped, his (hopefully) final text message shows me that we all learned a valuable lesson that day:<\/p>\n

I know that you’re not “EVER” gonna talk to me again, but I’m sorry for how things played out last night…there was no excuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah.\u00a0 My job here is done. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(Go for the gold, though. Where did I go wrong?)
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I met a guy at a bar.\u00a0 (Fine: my bad, that’s what I get, etc. But please, allow me to continue.) In the dusk and dampness of Marvin‘s on U-Street, this man was fine: 6’4 — at least — dark and smooth, wearing a fly-but-sensible suit that says “I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[233],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-usual-dithering","tag-dating"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7nB6F-aC","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brookeobie.com\/districtdiva\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}