Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes

by Phoebe Robinson

  PHOEBE-ISM #6: DOGS AREN’T MY BEST FRIEND. WE HAVE HUMANS FOR THAT!

  I know, I know! This is blasphemous to express, but I gotta live my truth. I don’t get the hype about dogs, to which folks see that as a challenge and say enthusiastically, “Wait until you meet my dog!” I do, and still nothing. I am not moved. My heart has not expanded. I’m still just me and thoroughly unimpressed by it all. Yep, I saw them do the thing where they shake your paw and get a treat. Uh-huh, nice party trick. And yes, their ears perking up when they know they’re about to go for a nice long walk is cute, I suppose. Them wanting to cuddle up beside you every time you sit on the couch is . . . a bit thirsty? Don’t you want space? No? Okay, guess I’ll just stand over here, third-wheeling it.

  Before I go any further, now would be a good time to state that I’m not anti-dogs. As a Black person, I have to make this clear. Thanks to yet another ignorant stereotype about Black people, it may seem that because I’m not down with dogs slobbering all over my face I must want them to vanish from existence like this is the end of Avengers: Endgame. False! I’m just a Black person who happens to not care much for dogs. And before some of you get too excited, I’m not a cat lady either. Like, this isn’t a cats vs. dogs situaysh. I’m disinterested in it all, to be honest.

  I never had pets growing up nor did I yearn for one. I was content with my Sega Genesis, my TV shows, and tagging along with my older brother on whatever ill-advised adventures he wanted to embark on. Believe me, I’m surprised, too, because I was definitely a kid who, if her classmates or friends got something, I was asking Ma and Pa Robinson for that very thing. Cable? Def. American Girl doll? You betcha. But if someone got a dog, I was #TeamHardPass. I’ve just never desired having a pet in general, which the average person seems to accept, but in the same breath will be like, “But dogs, though. You should get one.” Thankfully, I’m allergic to any and all pet dander, which was my Get Out of Jail Free card, meaning I didn’t have to interact with anyone else’s dog, and it was an easy way to shut down conversations where I was being gently encouraged to change my mind and get a dog. Then hypoallergenic dogs became all the rage once I became an adult and all of sudden, my Get Out of Jail Free card was viewed as an excuse, or as a sign that I lack the belief that I, too, can fulfill my destiny as a pet owner.

  It goes like this. I tell people I’m allergic to dogs, so I’d rather not. But my dog is hypoallergenic. It’s fine! Bitch, I’m trying to be polite. Even if I could handle being around pets without an itchy throat, a runny nose, watery eyes, and routine sneeze attacks, I. Don’t. Want. To. Touch. Your. Dog. Why do people act like because their dogs are hypoallergenic, it’s a game changer for my respiratory system and I’m all of a sudden gonna want to snort a line of labradoodle fur straight up my nostrils? Sometimes, a dog lover will take it a step further and offer advice on how I can easily change my entire life to accommodate the thing I do not want. Oh, you know what you could do? Get a hypoallergenic dog, and if it’s still a problem, you can just take allergy medicine every day for the rest of your life. That’s what my wife / husband / mother / cousin / best friend does, and that way you can still experience the transformative love you’ll get from having a dog. That . . . is too much.

  I’m actually quite fine with not experiencing profound love if it requires this much effort. I mean, I stopped shaving above the knee about four weeks after my boyfriend and I started dating. I’m pretty sure a big part of love is people agreeing that putting in sustained effort is not really what they signed up for. Like the goal is to find your partner in crime who is also done trying. So if I’m low-key phoning it in with my soul mate, what makes you think I’m willing to resign myself to a life of taking Claritin in the hopes that I can breathe out of both nostrils for twenty-three minutes a day? But when you get home from work, they’re RIGHT there, so happy to see you. I can think of few things more annoying than my big toe barely grazing my entryway rug and having someone getting all up in my grill with their excitement. But they’re your best friend. My best friend is a grown-ass woman who, like me, knows how to handle her tequila, supported my questionable fashion choices throughout the years, and loves talking shit via text message when we’re both in our respective business meetings. Fairly certain a rescue dog can’t top that. Honestly, the only thing that is remotely appealing about having a dog is when people tell me they have to bounce from a party or a work event in order to get home. That’s tight. I mean, the main joy of going out is coming the fuck back home and having a built-in reason that you can use anytime you want to leave (and that no one will make a fuss about) almost makes me consider having a pet for half a second. But then reality kicks in and reminds me of the plain and uninteresting truth that everyone refuses to accept: Dogs simply aren’t my thing and that’s okay.

  That’s it. There’s nothing gnarly lurking in the shadows. I’m not emotionally closed off. I cried at Marley & Me; I feel things. I’m also not against being responsible for another living being, nor is my not wanting a dog because I’m a contrarian. I’m not secretly waiting to meet the one dog that’s going to convert me into a dog lover. And finally and perhaps most important, I don’t judge others whose lives are enriched and enlivened by having a dog. We’re all entitled to need or not need certain things, people, experiences, journeys that will help us feel as though we’ve lived an overflowing, juicy, love-filled life. Me not having a dog is not an indictment against anyone else and their choices. I don’t think you don’t have taste because you have a dog; I think you don’t have taste because you’re walking your dog while wearing toe shoes, which is certainly the “fetch” of footwear. Get a grip. Oh wait . . . don’t, actually. That’s how you ended up in this footwear nightmare.

  PHOEBE-ISM #7: IT’S NOT TRUE LOVE IF . . . YOUR PARTNER DOESN’T GET WEIRD WITH YOU

  After British Baekoff and I started dating, I constantly talked about how I wanted to finally go to Paris. He, being from the UK, is fully over Paris. He would always respond with some variation of “I could take the train to Paris anytime I wanted. The people are rude. The streets are dirty. It’s overrated and not special.” Okay, well, it is to me! A two-hour train ride from London got you to Paris. I’m from Ohio; a two-hour ride from my childhood house got us to Cedar Point Amusement Park. Clearly, our lives were drastically different growing up. And because BB knew that, he set aside his ill feelings about Paris and took me there during a summer vacation to visit his mom.

  Baekoff and I were there for only two and a half days, but it was heaven. The food was delicious, the architecture was incredible. Romance was in the air. But the pièce de résistance? There was a bidet in our hotel room!!! Y’all, I lost my damn mind. He did not. Baekoff had used a bidet before, so he was very business-as-usual about it, even though he was amused by my childlike wonder. Honestly, no matter how many times one uses a bidet, how can they act chill when their bumhole is being shot at with a water gun like they’re a carnival game and a stuffed Sheriff Woody doll is the reward? Anyway, I had never used a bidet before, let alone seen one IRL, so I wanted him to help me though this journey, so he offered to stand outside the bathroom door. But that wasn’t enough for me. I made him stand in the bathroom, mere inches from me, with our eyes locked, as I peed and then used the bidet. DATING ME IS A SWEET TREAT! Could you imagine your partner forcing you to lock eyes as they’re relieving themselves and then you had to go whisper sweet nothings in their ear over a shared croissant? Well, British Baekoff did it and did it with aplomb. In fact, the other day, I asked him how he felt about being a party to my bidet experience and he responded, “I felt undeniably closer to you.” Nothing I appreciate more than a statement from the love of my life that I can’t tell whether it’s a compliment or a sad realization. Gotta love a man who can keep you on your toes! Anyway, the point is Baekoff just knows that sometimes I have to do things in my own little strange way. And holding a staring contest with him while I bidet’d for the first time in my life was one of t
hose things, unbeknownst to both of us. What can I say? I’m a good improviser, so I can go with the flow. Oh, you thought improvisation is only for jazz and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre? That’s just being small-minded.

  * * *

  Wow. I covered a lot and I probably have way too many opinions, but I’ve made it this far in life, so I must be doing something right. Thank you for letting me be your surrogate auntie. It’s been an honor to overshare about my sex life, and if we were in the same room, I’d give you a handful of Halls and fifty dollars for your troubles and send you on your merry little way. Anyway, I hope you learned something and next time we hang out, I promise to be 3 percent less ignorant. Oh! One more thing: If you still have any questions about this whole sitting on your or anyone else’s bed in your outside clothes, send them my way. I’m honored to be the Dr. Ruth of interior hygiene.

  We Don’t Need Another White Savior

  If, when you read that title, you did so in the melody of Tina Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome),” then you’re my kind of person. Even if you didn’t, you bought this book, so all the royalties I’m about to get (I’m talking them sweet, sweet FDR dimes and George Washington quarters) will help me continue to be able to afford some Calvin Klein bralettes—#JusticeForTheBoobDeficient—so you, too, are also my kind of person.

  And since you’re all my kind of peoples, may I be frank for a second? To be a person of color, especially Black, and live in America is to be born with the title of this essay in your bones, in an “I think, therefore, I don’t need another white savior” kind of way. Shout out to René Descartes and the Descartes estate for letting me put the Bad Boy Remix on that centuries-old philosophical proposition. In all seriousness, rejecting the messiah complex energy that many white people can, intentionally or unintentionally, exude is innate within Black people, and rightfully so. Given (loud-as-fuck stage whisper) slavery and literally every single thing after it, being on guard is the safest and most sensible thing a Black person can do. So we tread lightly, especially when we encounter well-intentioned or newly enlightened turned know-it-alls, because one of two outcomes usually happens.

  At best (but is it a “best”?), it’s virtue signaling, which is rooted in easy, surface-level solutions to problems that are intrinsically complicated and difficult to solve, but, hey, at least these solutions let the world know these folks are on the right side of history. And at worst, the results can be self-serving. The actions reinforce the narrative that the only way to fight racism is to center whiteness and have white people swoop in to “save the day” by speaking on behalf of Black people in a “we know best” kind of way, which history has shown (e.g., white chefs attempting to lead the “soul food fusion” genre) is typically in direct opposition to what Black people actually want (in that case, proper seasoning), and also removes Black people’s agency and disregards the knowledge and experience Black people have accumulated from their decades upon decades of antiracism work. And while both of these aforementioned outcomes are nothing new, in 2020 they appeared in record numbers. This is understandable given the way our society functions; however, I’m deeply concerned and more than a little frustrated that these signifiers of “progress” don’t lead to changes that benefit Black people in any real, tangible way. And I know I’m not the only who feels this way, especially since we’re all still living in a post-traumatic fog of the events of summer 2020 while enduring more harm with the string of violent 2021 attacks on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

  Simply put, summer 2020 was a gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, blood-boiling, debilitating, and scarring season that galvanized not just America, but the world. Racial uprisings happening against a backdrop of a global pandemic is something that no one should live through, and as heartbreaking as it was to have footage of George Floyd’s murder circulating all over social media and news outlets,* it created a collective fury. While the jury is still out on whether that passion will bring about substantive change, there’s no denying that it was a historic summer. A groundswell of outrage, marches, and demands to defund the police mixed with a “Well, the world is on fire, so I gotta do something” energy was a chaotic combination that birthed something no one expected and very few wanted: social justice “warriors.” These weren’t the sjdubs of the past or recent past—Kimberlé Crenshaw (professor of law at UCLA and Columbia Law School), Alicia Garza (cofounder of Black Lives Matter), Rashad Robinson (president of Color of Change), and Marsha P. Johnson (trans activist and one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprisings) just to name a few—but a new breed. A breed that was comprised of many who were for the first time acknowledging systemic racism’s existence and/or that antiracism is not just labor to be done by Black people, but work that everybody needs to participate in, and boy, did they participate.

  You ever watch a group challenge on the OG Project Runway when host/mentor Tim Gunn would take the contestants to Mood Fabrics and give them thirty minutes to shop for materials? The designers would barely confer with one another, instead running off in different directions only to come back together when time was up to see what everyone bought, and it was an utter shit show. Just a whole bunch of chartreuse, gold lamé, zippers, rhinestones, and tweed, and then when the last straggler, who was overwhelmed by having too many options, finally arrived at the cash register, all they had to show for their frantic efforts was a spool of periwinkle-colored thread. When I saw that, I was like, “Oh, that’s the bitch who’s going to be sent home at the end of the episode. Southwest Airlines. Middle seat. Luggage will be lost, even though the person didn’t check any bags; Southwest will find a way to lose their carry-on suitcase somewhere in Des Moines, Iowa. #TheLordWorksInMysteriousWays.” Point is that chaotic, throwing-anything-at-the-wall-and-seeing-what-sticks mindsets are kind of how some of these reactions to 2020’s social uprisings came off. Nothing but frazzled energy and barely formed ideas and solutions driven by a slight desperation to not get caught “making a mistake,” and this concern, of course, overshadows what should be the focus: Black. Lives. Mattering. In all the ways. In case you don’t remember, here’s a sampling of what we got:

  Corporations released carefully constructed statements of “committing to diversity” and sent out newsletters with JPEGs of Black people in them. Uhhh . . . Black people had to die in order for y’all to dump some Shutterstock pics of them looking at pie charts in a Mailchimp newsletter template about the company ecosystem? I mean, thanks for blessing our eyeballs with that dose of melanin, but really, just employ Black folk, so you’re not typing the following into Google: “Yikes, I really forgot to hire Black people for the past thirty years, so can you show me images of bootleg Daniel Kaluuyas that I can use, which should be a sufficient make ’em up for my . . . ‘oversight’?”

  Remember when that one woman’s protest in Portland, Oregon, for Black Lives Matter consisted of her sitting butt-ass naked on the ground and spreading her legs, and so many people were like, “Yaaaas! Pussy power,” nicknamed her Naked Athena, and proclaimed, “This is how you use your body as a shield.” Oh, word! Would’ve been nice if someone told King Shaka and the Zulu Kingdom this. Maybe they would’ve put down their handcrafted wooden shields and instead instructed the Zulu women to open their legs like the suitcase from Pulp Fiction and blind the colonizing Brits with their poonanis, and then the Zulus probably wouldn’t have lost the Battle of Rorke’s Drift and the Battle of Ulundi.

  Or how about that time in Cary, North Carolina, when a group of white religious leaders and several community members, during a Black Lives Matter demonstraysh, washed the feet of Black religious leaders and served up a prayer repenting for the sins that Black people have had to endure at the hands of a white supremacist society? I mean . . . okay? I feel like . . . Black people never asked to . . . have their moisturized feet dried out by . . . Pert Plus 3 in 1 Shampoo + Conditioner Plus Body Wash? Again, totes preesh the effort, but this ain’t i
t.

  And then there were the panels. Oh! We cannot talk about these uprisings without mentioning the explosion of panels. Y’all, there is nothing some media folks love more than sitting in a velvet Wayfair chair with a glass of San Pellegrino water and asking people of color to talk to / educate audiences in exchange for a tote bag, a room-temp turkey club sandwich, and reimbursed Uber fare. This past Black History Month, I got more than my fair share of the annual “Heeeey, being Black is something, huh? Care to talk about it in a forty-minute block between a segment on beauty secrets and a talk delivered by a popular twentysomething white actress on how she found her voice?” Y’all, for real, if a white chick named Heather is hitting me up anytime between February 1–28,* I already know the deal: It’s because she just watched a movie from iTunes’ “Black People Shit (Mostly Slavery & Learning Poetry / Starting a Dance Team at an Underprivileged High School)” section OR she wants me to talk about why the Black experience should be recognized. Sigh. Ya know I can talk about other things besides being Black and performing the “Blackness Is Hard” Masterpiece Theatre that people just love to eat up, right? I have opinions on so many “non-Black” things! Like Mel C was the best vocalist in Spice Girls and we don’t talk about that enough. Whenever your boss tells you they don’t have money to give you a raise, that’s usually bullshit. And I don’t care what anyone says, rare steak is disgusting. See?! Tons of things I can talk about.

  Oooh! How about alllllllll those other times I saw online and in “extra special” episodes of TV where folks were asking how to make Black friends? I just. Y’all. I can’t. Like if this is what we’re going to do, I’d rather go back to people not giving a fuck. Are we really asking in the 2020s how to make Black friends? While I’m certain this question is asked in earnest and in an effort to change, it’s just . . . bizarre. Like, comically so. I don’t really know how to help middle-aged white people who think forty-eight years old is a good age to start befriending Black people. It’s like waiting until you’re sixty-two to begin building generational wealth because it just dawned on you that you’d save a lot of money if you start couponing. It’s kind of too late, no? Furthermore, making it known that you want to start being around Black people can come off like, “Here’s a new pet project I can dabble in! Got any tips?” That’s why I think the better question would be, “Why did it take countless horrifying deaths to see Black people as human instead of simply as trauma porn?” But if you are still curious as to how to make some amigos negros, maybe these tips will help. Like try and be their office Secret Santa. Go to an Anita Baker concert and flawlessly sing along to her performance of “Caught Up in the Rapture.” That’ll surely turn heads and help you make some fast friends. Win an award and then spend the majority of your acceptance speech pretending to be “embarrassed” that you won and proclaiming how a Black person should have won. J/K. Don’t do any of that goofy shit. Just speak to Black people. And no, I don’t mean during transactional exchanges in which they are in subordinate positions to you—waitstaff, receptionists, makeup artists—although engaging in respectful small talk with the people providing you a service is always appreciated. But what I’m suggesting is sparking up conversation with folks you meet in line, at happy hours, networking events, while at the gym, etc. I mean, it’s really not that complicated. Don’t be weird about it and it will happen. But honestly, trying to add Black people to your friend Rolodex is soooooo beside the point. You don’t need to be Black people’s friend in order to fight for their humanity. And if you think you do, I guarantee all that will end up happening is that the handful of Black people you know will, in your eyes, become the exception (#BlackExcellence) to the rule (Black people are a problem that needs fixing). And this leads me to my next point . . .