I came to a point in my life where I wasn't sure what the problem was. I was in my early 40's and hadn't had an actual relationship in 15 years. I had been deep in poverty the whole time so I imagined that had alot to do with it. You just don't meet quality men at the welfare office or the food bank. The men working at the Salvation Army are usually right out of rehab, which is where I usually shopped.
When I broke up with my last boyfriend Kevin in 1995 I promised myself a few things. 1.) That I wouldn't settle in with the first guy who showed me attention and 2.) I had to find someone that I had things in common with. Who had an interest in creative things, or was creative himself, who liked music and could be a little obsessed with it. Someone who had a love of the cinema and could have long conversations about them. Someone who dreamed and worked toward them. Someone good looking and preferably of color, so I wouldn't have to deal with the does he or doesn't he of dating white men anymore.
I had been shipped out to live with my mother Carolyn (Curl to all her childhood friends) in the fall of 1983. I would start 9th grade at Everett High School that was located in the middle of downtown Everett Washington. Everett was a small city about 20 miles north of Seattle, that really didn't have much going for it. Now it has a Naval base, but back then it was paper mills. My mothers brother Sylvester had moved to Washington back in the mid 1970's. He had taken on engineering in the Navy and had gotten a fantastic job working for Boeing. Uncle Syl was sort of a hippie who loved Jimi Hendrix and walking around barefoot. He smoked dope and dated white women. One in particular whom he couldn't shake no matter what. Donna was a small white woman with stringy brown hair, blue eyes and an overbite. The legend has it that my uncle was very ill, and had no place to stay. She took him in and nursed him back to health, and she just latched onto him after that. No matter where he went or who he was with she would show up. After about 10 years of this he just gave into her. However when Syl drove across country for the fun of it again like he was known to do, and stopped in at my grandmother Anna's house that summer, he wasn't with Donna. He was with another hippy white girl Michelle. She was a little on the heavy side with long brown hair down to her waist, and squinty green eyes. She and my uncle dressed in denim bell bottoms and flowy peasant shirts. She sat on my grandmothers sofa drinking lemonaide and telling me about how great Everett High School was. "It's right downtown, so you can go shopping after school." I thought this sounded great. I didn't think of the fact that my mother would be terminally poor and not even offer me an allowance to shop with. The reality of the situation was I didn't have a choice in the matter, the adults were just trying to ease the blow of being shipped off again, and trying to make where I was going sound glamorous in some way. I had no idea what I was about to face.
Where I grew up in Ohio was an all black community. The neighborhood where my grandparents Anna and Junior lived was built from the ground up in the 1960's when my grandparents had finally started doing well. The neighborhood was called Princeton Park, and it was populated by middle class and upper middle class blacks. Every house had been designed by it's owner so none of the houses were the same. Every house had a father in it, that had a great job or owned a business. The story goes that my grandparents house had been built backward accidentally because the contractor hadn't marked the plans so he'd read them the right way. That left the bedrooms in the front of the house and the livingroom in the back. The driveway was supposed to go to the left and it actually went to the right. It was a lovely house dispite the error. Their house was like a mansion to me, though in reality it's a simple home. Every room had a television, and there was an intercom system that went through the whole house, so grandma could call everyone to dinner, or tell grandad he had a phonecall without having to search the whole house. I had my own room at their house, with a large color TV, a shelf full of all sorts of books, and a giant bed all to myself. There were banks of windows on two walls; if I sat on the ledge by my dresser I could see the screen to the local drive in at night.
Many of the kids on my grandparents street were my age, however many of them had older brothers and sisters. They all went to the same high school, Jefferson, and I used to watch them coming home from sporting events, or going off to dances all dressed up. All the boys were so handsome and the girls always dressed perfectly. I had a friend up the street Candyce who was a few years older, and drop dead gorgeous. Her older sisters were beauty queens. When I went to their house I was amazed at how perfect they all were. Her sisters Mary, and Karen were the most popular girls in town, and were always on the go to a dance, or party somewhere. Mary was a tall, leggy golden brown bombshell of a girl, who always wore her hair in a long page boy haircut. She had sparkling brown eyes, and a huge white smile like the girls on toothpaste commercials. She had won pageant titles, and Miss Car Show, and had the trophies to prove it. Karen was a light skinned girl who was of average height, with light brown hair, and green eyes. She had little freckles on her nose and always wore pale pink lipstick. She straightened her hair and pulled it back into a pony tail that flowed to the middle of her back. She rarely ever wore her hair down, she said it was a real 'pain' if the weather changed on her.
If there was a hot band that came to town, you can bet Mary and Karen had dates to go, and they would always tell us all about it the next day. If I knew a band I loved was playing one night, I would ride my bike over to their house the next afternoon, knowing they would be lounging in the back yard on their reclining lawn chairs reading magazines and drinking pop, ready to tell us all about it. I couldn't wait to grow up and do what they did. I couldn't wait to go on dates with the handsome brown princes they went out with. I hoped I would have the gorgeous outfits, and curvy physique they did, so I could have the perfect life too.
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