where's your window-shade? (part I)

After a very interesting night on Friday, I had a very interesting conversation with a very interesting man. After discussing life, art, sex, and money, we got to talking about the merits of being an open person versus being a private person. 

As I'm sure you are all aware, I'm a very open person. Since I make a concerted effort not to do things that I am ashamed of,  I'm comfortable discussing virtually everything about myself and will do so with just about anyone. Mr. Interesting is the exact opposite of this. He plays things very close to the vest and spends a lot of time getting to know someone before he decides whether he wants to open up and allow them to get to know things about him. I thought that was a very interesting way to be, and I told him so. He thought my approach was very risky. Which I guess is somewhat true. 

My theory in everything is that I don't give people rules, I don't keep score, and I don't try to stop myself from being who I am. I don't release the rope in stages; I give you the whole thing and see what you do. And if you try to hang me with it, that's on you. All of which is a very cryptic way of saying that I feel that I can afford to be open with my life experiences because there's not a lot of harm that can come to me for it. 

Think about it - we are careful about what we tell people usually because we're afraid of three things. 1. They'll tell someone else. 2. They'll judge us. 3. They'll use the information against us in some way. 

As an open person, I'm obviously not worried about the information that I give so freely being disseminated. And if someone wants to judge me because they think that knowing a fact about me means they know me, I don't give a f*ck. Whether they'll use the information against me is a real concern, and it has happened in the past.

I guess the thing that I don't understand is this - how do you ever really get to know someone if you're so busy keeping your sh*t to yourself? I truly don't understand how this concept even works...if someone tells you about something that you can relate to because you've experienced something similar; do you refrain from telling them so because you don't know them well enough or long enough? Do you withhold the insight and understanding you've gained from that experience in the interest of saving face? To me, that is the worst kind of mean-spiritedness, but I think that may just be another brand of maxlogic.

I recently had the experience of a close friend of mine revealing a huge secret they've been hiding from me for a while. The information that they shared with me gave me greater insight into their point of view on the various issues we'd discussed through the course of our friendship; but also rendered a lot of the advice I had given them pretty much useless. And while I can fully understand that person's reasons for keeping the secret (it's a huge secret), I couldn't help feeling a little...used. Well, maybe used is too strong a word, but I definitely felt that this person had deceived me by accepting and applauding my openness and purporting themselves to be an open person as well, while meanwhile keeping a vital part of their life from me. 

I guess at the end of the day, we all need different amounts of light in our lives and it's up to us to decide where we're gonna keep our window-shades.  Mine is and always will be pulled open almost all the way. How that affects me in my dating life is part II of this topic. Stay tuned.

good hair

this is a topic that's been rattling around in my brain for a minute so i thought i'd throw it up here and let you guys weigh in.

anyone who knows me personally knows about my lifelong struggle with my hair. (and my lifelong struggle with men, come to think of it). i often attempt to beat my hair into submission but the reality is that i have big, wild, curly hair that is happiest when it's free to do its own thing. the older i get, the more i don't mind letting it, but the reality is that hair like mine comes with a lot of stuff.

there's a lot of talk around the internets about society's perceptions of black women with natural hair and if you're interested you can google it til your head explodes to your heart's content. one interesting thing i've been reading about lately is how men supposedly perceive a black woman with natural hair. i read this article the other day that mentioned a woman who chemically treated her long natural hair because she's an idiot wasn't getting attention from men. there are also assloads of videos on youtube talking about the fact that women with 'highly textured' hair either do not get approached by men, or are only approached by two types of men - the 'dwele' and the non-black man.

for once in my life, i actually don't have a tonne to say on the topic. i can only recall one man approaching me with my big curly mop and he wasn't black; but i also don't get approached very often no matter what my hair looks like. my male friends and acquaintances will often compliment me when my hair is straight but rarely have anything to say when it's curly; but that could be the novelty factor more than anything else.

so tell me what you think men, which of these looks do you prefer?

 

or these?

 

 source

the one that got away

My twitterbuddy Darling Nicky asked this question in her ladies quiz a couple of weeks ago:

Do you feel at this stage in your life, that you've already met the love of your life (even if not together)?

This was a no-brainer for me (if you've been paying attention, you should know the answer) but it did get my wheels turning...which led me to the notion of 'the one that got away'. Not in the traditional sense of the person that you met, fell for, and planned to have a future with until some bullshit went down for whatever reason you didn't end up together. No, today I'm thinking of the one that got away 2.0 - aka the man that got the better of me.

Let me just stop to fill you in on a fundamental fact of my life - I am slick. I am sooooo slick. I actually scare myself sometimes when I think about what an effing evil genius Ii am. When I turn my evil powers on, I have an uncanny ability to bend people to my will while they're walking around believing that what they do is their own idea. This is a great skill to have, but it does mean that I can get bored really quickly if I can work a man too easily. Which I almost always can.

Back to the one that got away. I was chatting with a friend a while back about a pebble I recently dropped (that's code for a crush i gave up on). This dude was the best thing I've come across in a while, smart and literate, masculine and well-dressed, funny and charming. And he had the nerve to be dark-skinned on top of everything else, the bastard. But after over a year of not-so-subtly sweating his ass, I had to let the crush go because it just wasn't fun anymore. Or at least that's what I thought the reason was; until my girl pissed on my parade englightened me by pointing out that this dude had out-played me.

Ii felt like Marcus Graham in when Jacqueline tells him he's getting too caught up. Just - destroyed. How can anyone beat me?

But looking back over that saga, I realized that there has never been a single moment in which I had the upper hand over this dude. No matter what slick move I made, he anticipated and countered it with a level of slickness I can't even comprehend. His game was so good that I didn't even know he was playing - and please believe me I'm a veteran (hi steve!) game-spotter.

Now the old stupid max would be so turned on by the realization of how slick this dude really is that she would immediately resurrect her crush. Max 2.0 knows the definition of insanity and is not gonna waste any more of her time. So i'll remain over my crush but this man will always hold a piece of my heart as the first - and hopefully only - man ever to out-slick me.

Do you have to be bad to be good?

So I was chatting with a couple of ladies last night when someone asked me 'why is the best d@ck attached to assholes?
This got me thinking about my own experiences with good sex and assholes and I realized that my best experiences have been with the worst dudes.
But why is that? On the way home I thought about it and talked about it with the bestie but I can't seem to find a concrete tie...I'm thinking it has something to do with confidence and swagger....a man needs that to be good in bed but that can also be a recipe for asshole. And can a dude have confidence, be a sex god, but still be nice?
It's a puzzle. Help me piece it together in the comments.

sent while running the streets

honesty is the best policy

i call bullshit!
'honesty is the best policy' is one of those things that people say to make themselves feel good, but in reality it's just a license for rude behaviour. yes, i do believe that life would go a lot more smoothly if people were like me just told the truth to and about themselves, but there are some times in life that it's just not necessary to be honest.

such as? let's consider an example:
once i went to a raptors game with my guy at the time. we're both die-hard fans, but he loves them just a tiny bit more than i do, so when he said he was hungry, i volunteered to go down to subway to get him something to eat. not being a consumer of subs myself, i was a little confused as to what toppings to put on so i guessed at it and brought it back up to him. he opened up the sub and started foaming at the mouth because i - gasp! - put hot peppers on my sub. 'why would you put hot peppers on it? who eats hot peppers on a chicken sub?!?'
admittedly that was an asshole move, regardless, but he was just being honest. and i did learn from then on that dude no likey hot peppers. but was it necessary to be honest in that situation? i think not. 9 times out of 10, showing appreciation trumps honesty.

still not convinced? how about another example:
my fellow fans of 'the game' will remember the period of time in which jason and kelly were going to marriage counseling. kelly and jason both confessed that they married for the wrong reasons (kelly - his money/jason - the tax write-off). they did come to truly love one another later but those confessions were so hurtful and damaging that their marriage never recovered.
once again, they were just being honest. but was that the right move?

i'm getting the feeling you're still not on board with my logic, but trust me when i tell you that i'm not the only one who thinks honesty is over-rated in relationships. mademan.com gives men a list of things to never, ever say to your girl. even if they're true. read the list and then come back and tell me that he's wrong.

there is no greater time to question the validity of honest than when we're talking about cheating. anyone who has ever cheated knows that the guilt you carry is a motherfucker. sometimes you feel like you're going to explode if you don't say something. so in the spirit of 'just being honest', most people confess sooner or later. then their partner is devastated, they're in the doghouse, trust is destroyed, and most times the relationship is damaged forever.(sidebar: we're not talking about 'stupid cheating' here where you have to confess before someone else exposes you. we're talking about smart cheating where your partner will never, ever find out. if you don't now the difference between stupid and smart cheating, let me know and i'll school you later.) if you slip up and cheat in a moment of weakness and you want to stay with your partner, isn't it better to just keep your mouth shut and regard the weight of the guilt as your punishment? how is honesty the best policy in this situation?


i don't know. maybe it's because i'm a pathological liar wired differently than most people but i think honesty is way over-rated. what do you guys think? drop me a dishonest comment and let me know.

would you date a blogger?

here's a random question for you: say you're a dude and you meet me and of course are instantly smitten. what's not to love, really? we get to talking, have a couple of dates, you're starting to see me as potential wifey material. but then you read my blog. and see that i regularly talk about my friends and acquaintances, sometimes even mentioning them by name. you begin to worry that one day your name will be up here for thousands (LOL) to read about. what do you do?

as previously mentioned, almost all of the men that i've been involved with have asked me not to blog about them. and if they're behaving, i usually don't. but if they f*ck around, all bets are off and if i can make a funny story out of it, I will. so in my mind, a man i date has nothing to worry about - as long as he's nice to me he'll be kept out of the blog so it's all in his control. but somehow i have a feeling that no man wants to date a girl with a relationship blog.

so men, illuminate me: would you date a blogger?

can a bad girl turn good?

i came across this post in my google reader the other day. and while the actual content of the post was bullshit had little to do with the title, it still got me thinking.... can a bad girl go good?

a wise man once said

They say you can't turn a bad girl good
But once a good girl's gone bad, she's gone forever..

and while i make it a policy to never, ever disagree with Hov, this time I wonder how right he really is.

Consider this scenario:
A good girl grows up. She dates, she has relationships. She may have one or two one-night-stands here and there but for the most part she keeps sex confined to the realm of exclusive relationships. Then she gets her heart broken. She dusts herself off and tries again, only to get it broken again. And again. At which point she decides, no more relationships because he can't take the risk of getting her feelings hurt anymore. After a while, though, she begins to miss sex. But she still doesn't want to put her feelings out there. So she decides that she's just gonna have some fun, no strings, no attachments, no breakups.

She has now entered the realm of the bad girl.

Women's lib notwithstanding, a woman who routinely has sex without commitment is bad. No reason, no bad experience, no matter her comfort level with her choices, it's not a good look for a woman to just have random sex. So once a woman decides to head down that path is she lost forever?

Consider the above scenario but add a different ending: She decides to just have some fun, no strings, no attachments, no breakups, but after a year of that she decides that she wants to risk it all again and find true love. So she reverts to her good girl ways; dating, relationships, sex only in an exclusive relationship.
Is she now a good girl who took a vacation to badland? Or is she forever a bad girl?

I think that for most men, Jay-Z's quote holds true. Once you go bad, you can't come back. And I think it's about their egos more than anything else; I don't know a lot of men who would stand up with pride and say 'yes my girl has had a lot of bone in her, but she's all mine now'.

On the other hand though, doesn't that girl's experience in badland give her a greater perspective that might help her in her future relationships? I think so, but then again what I think is almost always the opposite of popular opinon.

So what's a bad girl to do? Move away? Deny her past? Languish forever in badland, her dreams of finding her one true love never to come true? Can a baddie get some love?

The Allure of the Younger Man

Demi did it. Samantha Jones did it. Apparently Courteney Cox has a show coming out about it. It seems a younger man is the new accessory of choice for the thirty-plus woman...so should you do it?

A quick survey of my girlfriends suggests yes. Nearly all of them have a young one on standby and the ones who haven't have thought about it. Hard. But what is it about the younger man that has become so appealing to us?

Ii think it comes down to two things; accessibility and adoration. Find a younger man before his first heartbreak and you'll get both in spades. Not having experienced the kick-in-your-face pain that comes with your first real breakup, young dude has no problem putting himself out there. He has no arbitrary rules, no 50-ft thick walls, no axe to grind with wicked and evil women. If he's feeling you he steps to you. He'll call you without worrying about looking like a punk. And his innate eagerness will have him hot and sweaty to see you whenever you're free, unlike men in our thirties that pencil you in between work, house basketball leagues, drinking with his boys, his 10 other girls, and marathon sessions of Madden 10.

Which leads us to the real appeal: adoration. No reason to deal with a younger man without it. Everything you say is 'so dope'. Your body looks amazing for an older woman. He's in awe of you because you're more experienced, more accomplished, and more knowledgeable than he is with a better car, a nicer watch, and a bigger apartment. How can women, with our insatiable need for ego-boosting, possibly resist?

So is there a downside to a younger man? I guess it depends what you want from him. If you're just looking to get your parts oiled for fun, I can't see what the problem is. But if you're looking to settle down, is a younger man a viable choice?

I've been intrigued by the older woman-younger man phenomenon since I first saw Juice. And because I'm already put waaaay too much of my business in this blog I'm not gonna tell you whether I've gone there or not. I haven't. But after getting my face kicked in by men my own age, I can definitely see the appeal. But I suspect that younger men come with just as much bullshit as older guys do.

Of course, that might just be because I'm bitter and jaded. 

what's your number?

Over at The Fly Guy Chronicles reading this post got me thinking about numbers...not telephone numbers (because realistically, who needs those anymore?) but the 'magic' number - how many sexual partners we've had. Probably one of the most influential pieces of information we share with a new love interest, the 'number' conveys a multitude of things about us....or does it?

I think this is one of the rare instances in which men are more arbitrary than women. Men seem to live and die by the number (or their perception of what the number is). Too high and she gets relegated to jump-off status, too low and...well, I'm not sure there is such a thing as too low in a man's book. Men seem to get off on the idea of being the conqueror and the trailblazer. Tell a man he's the first one to do ___ to you and watch his eyes light up like Christmas.  Women, on the other hand, seem to use the number as an indication of the man's trustworthiness - the more he's been around the more likely he is to run around.

Now although I know it's a bad sign, I don't remember tell my number. Nor do I ask or encourage a man to tell me his. It's not even a matter of principle for me, it's not something that i ever think of...to me it's completely irrelevant and none of my business. But i have a feeling that this is one of those issues on which my thinking completely differs from everyone else's...

So c'mon tell me, what do you think?

PSA's for men and women

at this point i'm not sure who i've roughed up more on this blog - the women or the men - but today's post is equal-opportunity education. because you both do things that irritate me.

isn't it a lucky thing that i have a blog where i can bash educate you?

so here we go - my psa's of the day - the male and female edition:

Male PSA of the Day - you don't need to solve our problems.

oh, men. i know that you are solution-oriented. i know that it's your genetic imperative to fix things. and that when you care about a woman you want to be her knight in shining armour. but sometimes, we need you to just listen. sometimes, all we want is a sympathetic ear that will make soothing noises and tell us we're completely right going to be okay. when one of our girls makes a catty remark that hurts our feelings, we don't tell you so that you'll give us a script to use to tell her about her parts; we tell you so that you will say, 'i'm sorry. that sucks.' just like said girlfriend would if she wasn't on our shit list at the moment. when you jump in with 'what you need to do is tell her to mind her fucking business...[or whatever else you think it is we need to do]' all you do is irritate us and make us defensive. and a defensive woman who had a bad day is not anyone's idea of a good time, is it?

Female PSA of the Day - men are not mind-readers

i read this over in darling nicky's world today: "In that moment, indulge my miser, and anticipate my every need. Don't wait 'till I say 'I need a drink'. Have one waiting for me when I get home. Don't wait 'till I ask to have my shoulders rubbed. Lay me down...and do your best to massage my troubles away". 

ladies, i get it. it's our dream to have a man who knows what we want - and gives it to us - without us having to ask for it. but if you have any sense at all you should know that men are wired differently than we are. what they want after a bad day is head different than what we want. they don't deal in the realms of soft lighting, glasses of wine, and gentle massages. so why the fuck we expect them to intuit that that's what we want - and get angry or disappointed when they don't spontaneously provide it - is beyond me. please just make everyone's life easier and ask for what you want. it seriously ups your chances of getting it. and if you ask him and he doesn't give it to you, then he's the asshole and you're the victim. and isn't that what we all want?