Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating

by mitchell, alan

  Disappointed, disenchanted, and disheveled, I laid curled up in the fetal position on Caesar’s chocolate sectional. It was a habit I had developed at a very early age whenever I was really bummed out. He offered me a drink from the well-stocked bar he kept, but that was the last thing I needed.

  The replay of the day’s events ruminated in my fragile mind. I was having a hard time processing it, and an even harder time letting it go.

  I tried to call Kennedy, but she had already changed all of her phone numbers, not wanting to speak to me ever again. From that point forward any contact we had would be through our lawyers, or should I say her lawyer, since there was no need for me to hire one.

  It was a pretty cut and dry case. I owned nothing, so she didn’t have to split nothing. I could have been a real asshole and made her sell the house and split the revenue with me, but since I screwed her over pretty bad, I decided to be a man for once and walk away. I left with what I came with— a few shirts, a few pairs of jeans, and my raggedy ass couch.

  “So what you gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. I can't believe it’s over. No warning or nothing.”

  “You were warned. The writing had been on the wall for years.”

  “All I did for her...”

  “All you did for who? You've got to be kidding me. Don't make me have to break it down?”

  “Let it be broke then,” I barked with my bloodshot eyes.

  “You spent all of her money...on other bitches. Crashed her car...while you were with another bitch. Slept with one of her girlfriends...and threw up on her mother at the wedding reception. Need I say more?” He preached while annoyingly rattling the ice in his empty glass from the Dewar’s on the rocks he was drinking at eleven o’clock in the morning. Cez liked to start early and was a big fan of the three-martini lunch.

  He was right, though. It didn’t sound quite as bad at the time, but to hear it aloud from someone else put it in perspective.

  “I guess not. But you're the one who told me as long as I'm hitting the ass right, she'll never leave me.”

  “I know. But there probably should have been an addendum. It takes more than good dick to keep a woman these days. Now, take me, for instance. I am a stallion. A bonafide stud. I mean, I take that shit to another level. I'm sucking toes, tossing salads, making ginseng and Viagra cocktails. I may not have the biggest dick, but if someone keeps poking you in the same spot consistently for about an hour, that shit will eventually hurt. But why do you think I own a multi-million-dollar crib in Manhattan, drive German cars, eat French food, and wear Italian clothes?”

  “For the hos?”

  “For the hos. When you have all the shit I have, it takes the pressure off your little soldier. Chicks can get dick anytime they want it. It's just a phone call away. But they can't always get dick that’s gonna take them to a five-star restaurant, shopping, the opera, then take them home and blow their doors off. You need to step up your game and get your shit together. Not even for them hos, but for yourself.”

  “I don't know. I loved her so much.”

  “No you didn't. You loved fucking Kennedy. You loved the fact that you were familiar with her. Fuck that bitch.”

  “She’s not a bitch.”

  “That bitch is a bitch.”

  “How come you hate her so much?”

  “’Cause you ain’t never you when you’re with her.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Kennedy brings out the worst in you which makes her your kryptonite. You don’t fit into her bourgeois’-ass lifestyle. You may have gone to private school, got your degree, and lived in exotic places, but you still just a nigga from Newark. And when you’re with her you seem to forget that. Like I said, fuck that bitch!”

  He had stepped over the line this time. I

  cobra-ed up and rose to my feet but thought better of it when common sense kicked in, reminding me that Caesar was a black belt in karate and it wasn’t pretty the last time we got into it. The scar from the three stitches that were needed to close the gash he put under my left eye refreshed my memory.

  “That's my wife, motherfucker!”

  “That was your wife, motherfucker! And I'm your boy. I've known you longer than she has and I know what you're capable of and you’re not reaching your full potential. You're a commodity. A straight, good-looking, college educated, Black man who has never been to prison, doesn't sell drugs, and doesn't have any children. The world is yours and you can have any woman you want. So once again I ask you...what are you gonna do?”

  “I don't know. She was my best friend.”

  “Well, find a new best friend,” Caesar snapped back. “Clean yourself up, get a haircut, get a job, burn them sweats you’ve been wearing every day for the past month and get back in the game. You used to be the man in college. What happened to you?”

  I wasn’t in the mood for Caesar’s brutal honesty, especially this early in the day. We glared at one another as we had on many occasions throughout our thirty-year friendship coming close to throwing hands. I could feel my chest rise and fall with each heavy breath I took. My eyes were burning then they were stinging and I didn’t understand why. Without warning, the floodgates opened and the tears could no longer be held back.

  “Kennedy happened to me,” I sobbed.

  Caesar may be a lot of things, but he’s not the type to kick a man when he’s down. We had genuine brotherly love for one another. He gave me a sympathetic pat on the back.

  “I know.”

  Fatima Roma, a sexy giraffe-like Italian runway model, wandered from the bedroom wearing nothing but her sinewy birthday suit, totally uninhibited and not caring that I’m dying of heartbreak on the couch, and disappeared into the bathroom. A few seconds later the Vogue model reappeared, still naked.

  “Cesare`, vuoi fare la doccia con me?” she whispered. He answered her back coolly in Italian. “In puchi minuto”.(in a minute). She disappeared back into the bathroom.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that his services were needed in the shower. Caesar was an international player and he was fluent in Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanglish, and Ghetto. Nonetheless, it seemed to satisfy her timeline.

  “I told you these chicks love me.” And he reminded me of this every chance he got.

  Whatever It Is

  After lying on Caesar’s sofa for another hour and wallowing in a puddle of self-pity, I decided to take my act over to Khalil’s pad, seeking sympathy from somewhere else. Khalil was the third part of our little crew.

  I hopped on a bus leaving Port Authority and headed out to Montclair, a New Jersey suburb nestled just twenty minutes from Manhattan. Montclair was a hotbed for artists and musicians. The town had gained notoriety for its small theatres and quaint restaurants. It had also garnered national attention by being named one of the most acceptable cities for interracial couples. I couldn’t believe how just the day before I was pushing a black Yukon Denali (Kennedy’s), and just that fast I was riding the fucking bus.

  Khalil was a pretty good screenwriter and had penned ten or so screenplays of which one was bought for $250,000 and never produced. Two others were optioned, also. Ten years later and they still haven’t been made.

  That explains how he’s able to live in a $3,000 a month condo in downtown Montclair though. He never had anything actually produced and that used to fuck with him. Caesar warned him to be happy he’s getting paid, but Khalil wasn’t going for that and neither was I. Every artist wanted to see his or her work come to fruition and gain the appreciation that goes along with it. However, paychecks are a worldwide-accepted symbol of appreciation as well. I curled up on his futon just as I had done on Caesar’s sectional.

  “I thought we had finally retired your ‘my heart is broken again’ spot on my couch?”

  “Fuck you, bitch.”

  “Too soon I guess. Anyway, sorry to hear about your wife, homey. I really liked Kennedy.”

  “I r
eally liked her too. She was my best friend.”

  “Find a new best friend.”

  “I just don't know what went wrong.”

  “Hello? Do I need to spell it out? You took her on vacation and put your side chick up in the same hotel. She read the X rated emails you sent to your other side chick, and you threw up on her mother at the wedding reception.”

  Was I really that fucked up at the wedding? I was drunk before I even said “I do.” The day remains in infamy and no one in my family ever dared to discuss it. As far as I’m concerned, August 15th no longer existed and needed to be removed from every calendar.

  My eyes swelled with tears once again until they finally burst. “I fucked up the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “You damn right you fucked up.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t tell me. Tell her. Don't worry, you'll bounce back. Get yourself together. Spend some time alone.”

  “I can’t be alone. Some people are lonely, but never alone. Some people are alone, but they're not lonely. I'm lonely and alone, and I don't like either one of them.”

  Khalil couldn't believe what he was hearing. First the Fat Boys break up, now this. He sat close to me on the sofa and peered at me over his Malcolm X style glasses. “The reason you don't like being alone is because you don’t like being with the person you hate the most—yourself.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Take care of Dapper Carter. Put yourself in a position so that in the next relationship you can offer somebody something other than your good looks and dick.”

  That seemed to be a recurring theme. “Am I that shallow?”

  “You were the one who said, ‘All a woman needs is some good dick!’"

  “But that was actually Caesar’s advice.”

  “You can't follow Caesar's advice to a tee. That boy is an anomaly. No one else can get away with the shit he does. He's got it! Whatever it is. He's got it. I can't explain it. Stop worrying about things you have no control over and get your shit together.”

  I was stumped. “Maybe I should talk to a therapist?”

  “You don't need any goddamn therapy. Black people don't go to therapy; we go to work. Start journaling or writing poetry to keep yourself sane.”

  He was right. Things were going to be different next time. My eyes lit up with the possibilities. The best revenge is success and not that I had any animosity toward Kennedy, but I had to get motivation wherever I could find it.

  Jack

  For nearly two years I was down and out, having to move back home to live with my parents. That didn’t make my dad too happy, but he reluctantly let me stay thanks to a little coercing from my loving mother.

  My dad didn’t play that grown ass man living at home shit. It was virtually guaranteed that I was going to earn a basketball scholarship to college, but it didn’t matter. I would still find brochures for the Army on my bed when I would come in late at night just reminding me that I had to get the hell outta here!

  I grew up in the Weequahic section of Newark. When I was about four years old my parents bought a house in Hillside because we got tired of coming home to our front door standing wide open from yet another break-in. This one fool actually had the audacity to break into our house, rob us, and take a bathroom break. We arrived home from the movies while the robbery was in progress. Or should I say the bathroom break was in progress..

  My dad grabbed his .38 and bust in the bathroom placing the barrel of the snub nose to the robbers head. Fortunately, he was in the right place because he literally shit on himself. My mother called the police and remarkably they arrived in under twenty minutes to find my dad holding this idiot face down on the sidewalk with his pants around his ankles.

  Moving to Hillside (five blocks west) wasn’t that much of a come up, but growing up in Newark most of us was trying to move to Woodbridge, not Wood-Ridge! It was a dream come true if you got the chance to leave East Orange for South Orange. We were so regular that my family used to summer in southeast D.C. We were just plain ole folk.

  Regardless of what Khalil said, I started going to therapy. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which meant that I cycled back and forth between extreme lows and extreme highs. My issue never had really been with the depression part of it. My issue had been the mania. I loved it and hated it at the same time. On one hand, it would cause me to stay up all night, go on exorbitant shopping sprees, and frequent strip clubs, spending all my money.

  It wasn’t uncommon for me to end up in a hotel room in Atlantic City with a stripper three days later during one of my episodes. But, on the other hand, it would make me energetic and creative; people would be naturally drawn to me. I had always been the type of person who was going to howl at the moon. The only problem was that I was going to do it on your front porch. I fought this notion for a long time, but the more I think about it the more I realized that maybe I was bipolar.

  The one good thing that came out of therapy, if you can call it good, was that we got to the root of a lot of my behavior issues. My shrink inquired as to if I had ever been molested or sexually abused as a child. Of course not. I mean, my eighteen-year-old babysitter used to give me oral sex when I was ten years old and coerce me to have sex with her, but I was never abused. Her jaw hit the floor. Evidently the recurring abuse was the reason why I was having so much trouble sustaining relationships with women.

  It was a tough situation for a young boy. Who could you tell that you were having sex with your eighteen- year-old babysitter? The other boys would wear that as a badge of honor, but that wasn’t the case for me. I was ashamed of myself and I thought I did something wrong. It was why I was so hell-bent on pleasing women and when my infatuation with older women began.

  So there began my relationship with Zoloft and Depakote for the depression, Paxil for my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (not OCD), Ativan for sleep (sleep too much already), Synthroid for my thyroid (thyroid whacked out due to meds) and Jack Daniels. Numbing myself seemed like a good idea at the time so I started drinking excessively, not wanting to deal with my guilty conscience regarding my marriage. None of that shit worked. I was a zombie because of all that shit I was taking and it made me slow and lethargic. The twelve hour naps and the gallon of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream I consumed every day caused a significant gain in weight. Everybody likes ice cream I thought. I just happened to like it a little too much.

  I ballooned from a fit one hundred eighty five pounds to an unhealthy two hundred and twenty pounds just like that. My mother thought I looked robust with the extra weight but I wasn’t feeling it. My body financed my education and I needed to take better care of it.

  Sixteen months and thirty pounds later, I had had enough. I needed to make some changes and the first thing I had to do was get a job. I majored in business, but I had always been interested in the fitness industry, but that was when I was in shape. I use to be able to bench press over three hundred pounds, deadlift three hundred and fifty pounds, and squat four plates on each side (405 lbs). But not any more. Not even close. If I were going to work in fitness, I had to look the part.

  I remember the first day of my struggle to get back into shape. I ran exactly one block before it felt like my lungs caught fire. My head was pounding and I was dizzy and nauseous. I laid my ass down right there on the sidewalk, unconcerned about who was watching, trying to regain my equilibrium, my oxygen, and my dignity. I was once a star athlete now I was a staggering two hundred and fifty pounds and couldn’t even run a city block. I had to get my shit together.

  After lounging on the pavement for five more minutes, I finally scooped myself up and began my walk home.

  It was time for me to get back in the game. I hadn’t been on a date since Kennedy left, which meant I hadn’t had sex in two years either. I didn’t even miss it. Food and alcohol became my surrogate for sex. I would be celebrating my 35th birthday soon, and I didn’t want to go out like this. My new order of business would be to g
et a job, get my own place, get back in shape, and then find a new Mrs. Carter.

  Why Did She Kill Her Sister?

  Summer nights “Down the Shore” as New Jerseyans like to call it were the best. The cool thing about going down the shore was that everyone in Jersey went to the beach. Even thug-ass niggas from Newark in Timberlands and jeans get caught all “boo-ed up” down in Seaside Heights. They will stalk the boardwalk all day, winning oversized stuffed animals and buying cotton candy but won’t go anywhere near the water.

  Blacks have gotten a bad reputation for our hydrophobia and who could blame us? If your ancestors witness 400 million people die during the Slave Passage, mostly by drowning, wouldn’t you pass that fear on from generation to generation? Jews don’t vacation in Germany!

  There were droves of people out, mostly teens and young adults running to Point Pleasant from the sweltering 90 degrees the thermometer was still reading. The boardwalk was my favorite. I grew up playing skee ball, shooting baskets to win stuffed animals, as well as gorging on cotton candy, salt water taffy, and Kohl’s vanilla custard ice cream.

  I had acquired a spare tire around my waist for the first time in my life thanks to the Kennedy Fried Chicken, which used to be chicken Kennedy fried, and Dunkin’ donut diet I was on, so it was good for me to get outdoors and do some walking. I hooked up with an old friend of mine from college on Facebook.

  Monique Devereaux had hazel eyes, light brown hair that was cut in a short bob, juicy-ass lips, and could stand to lose 15 pounds. But who couldn’t once you reach your thirties. At least she had the extra ten pounds in the right place, as I couldn’t help but admire her maximus gluteus in the Apple Bottom jeans she was wearing. I figured she'd be just as good as any to test the waters with, seeing as though we had a little bit of history from when I attended Rutgers on a basketball scholarship. She was in my economics class, which I was failing miserably. But we know that there are certain perks to being a scholarship athlete in college. Monique was paid off by an anonymous booster to take my economics final for me. I (she) got an A.