Last weekend, I had a date. I bathed, put on blush, and slipped into my favorite little black dress. I steered south towards a favorite outdoor spot newly open for service in Berkeley. Due to COVID-19, it was the first time I had left the house to “go out” after 8:00 p.m. in three months.
A few minutes late, I pulled up to the place and stood in the socially distant line while I waited for my date to trot the two blocks from the place he was scouting for us as a back-up, mindful that I wouldn’t be cold at the agreed upon “outdoors-only” date spot.
Waiting in line in a socially distant manner, wearing my face mask, my phone rang. A good friend of mine, yet another world-changing, family-loving, master’s degree holding Black woman was on the line. I had a few minutes before my date arrived, so I picked up. Let’s call this friend K.
“Hey, girl.”
“Hey. What you doing?”
“Girl, about to go on this date.”
“That’s what I am calling you about. I have this date with this guy tomorrow, and he’s being kinda flaky. I don’t know…”
“K,” I said, shaking my head, not minding if the white people behind me were about to get an earful they weren’t ready for. “It’s a racial pandemic out here, in addition to a health pandemic. Black people are getting killed just for being brown skinned. COVID-19 is raging all around us. If there is anything Black women don’t have time or energy for right now, it’s anything ‘flaky.’”
Anything that’s going to take life rather than give it right now, I don’t have the space for. None of us should allow the space for.
The date that night went fine. He was a gentleman, and he paid. Walked me to my car at the end of the night. He was a student at Berkeley, identified as a Christian.
The deal breaker came when he revealed that he was a conservative. Very conservative, apparently, as he identified how hard it was for him to live in a “blue” state. If that wasn't already a "red" flag, I was done the moment he said that Black people were victimizing themselves. That someone like me, with a MA and breathing, growing intellect,
was the exception. This person was someone America would identify as a Black man, even if his family had immigrated here from Cameroon!
The irony of K calling me about her date right about the time I was about to embark on mine, face mask in place, got me thinking.
I personally know ten beautiful, accomplished, graduate-level educated women of color who are starting their own organizations, creating change in their communities, being bad-asses in multiple fields, all while being loving and compassionate to those they come across in the streets daily, let alone their close friends and family. Let’s call these women K, J, K, M, M, S, G, T, A and H. All of these women are incredible human beings, and they happen to be single. The fact that dates are plentiful but life partners for these groundbreaking women are few and far between confounds me, honestly.
As I drove home after this date, the following thought descended on me:
“If God can provide a job which teaches me how to be a director of our own wellness center by supporting the director of a renowned center on reinventing education; while we start our own business; even in the midst of COVID-19 across the world and racial, political, and economic chaos in our nation; could They not also place my person right where and when I need to meet him?
Maybe, for all of these tenacious, beautiful, giving, loving, accomplished, sexy, single women (all the K, J, K, M, M, S, G, T, A, H’s out there) it’s time to draw the boundary lies of what we will and will not tolerate, yes; what we do and don’t have capacity for, definitely; but also to call in the supernatural back-up we need but can’t always see, to make a clear way for us when it comes to dating. Because it can be rough out here, in these streets, especially in the times of COVID-19.
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