Lunch with a Hotep

I went on a date with my first hotep.

Yep. I know what you're thinking. How did I end up in this situation? Me too.

As a self-proclaimed womanist and pro-black ehh-ting, you would think it would come second nature to identify the misfits, but as with everything, you never know what you're dealing with until they start talking.

Well here's how it all started:

“And you didn’t invite me to breakfast?”

I was walking down 125th st and Malcolm X blvd, eating munchkins with my headphones in(read: minding my business💅🏽), when some guy rode by me with his head out of the window(trying to get my attention). Obviously a savage, I should've known then, but after he parked and approached me with some dignity, I went against my better judgment and gave him a chance anyway.

He introduced himself and somewhere between his name, career interests and compliments I gave him my number and agreed to have lunch the following day. 

The following day came, as it normally would, and around 11am or so I got a text.

"GM gorgeous," it said. He was texting to solidify our date. I responded, letting him know the deets worked for me and then proceeded to carry on with my morning.

I get another text.

"I didn't think you were up." 

I said "yeah I've been up since 7am lol."

Him: “And You ain't invite me to breakfast?”

*scrunches my face at the phone.* I'm thinking, no Negro. I just met you yesterday.

But, I was working on not saying exactly what I think, so I responded "no, but it was in the best interest of both of us.“

I mean, I'm sure it was one of those annoying things guys say, but why would he think I would invite him into my home for breakfast not knowing a damn thing about him? It behooved me, but I didn't spend too much time on it.

Fast forward to the date. He gets there(a couple minutes late might I add), greets me and has a seat.

Things started off well. We were talking favorite colors, so he let me know his was blue. Acknowledging the relevance, he pointed to his shirt, which was also blue, noting that he actually needed to stop buying so many blue shirts. Then, thinking it was all cute and shit, he grinned at me, saying "maybe you'll be picking out my shirts soon."

Me: *Chrissy Teigan face* lol, maybe.

Obviously taken aback, I tried not to put too much thought into it. Women do things like that for men they love all the time, so if it got to that point, then yeah, mayBE.

The food comes out. "Do you want to pray?" I said. He smiles, "no I do not, but you can."

So, I prayed over my own food.

I then asked, are you not Christian? He confirmed he was not and also let me know he was raised Muslim, but now he doesn't believe in anything. That's when I knew.

At this point we had already started eating, so the goal was to make it through the rest of this, as cordially as possible.

That was a fail. The next topic was about what went wrong in the past with other women, and I'll be damned, if it didn't curate a medium for all hell to break loose. According to him, all of the women in his past tried to take advantage of him, which led to him sharing his thoughts on women needing to have their own and making the false claim that men have historically had to do everything and blah blah blah.

In case you were wondering, this is a perfect time to share that he was black. Can someone please let me know when black men had to do everything? That is literally a white man’s narrative. Not a black man’s, as we are well aware black women worked from sun up to sun down literally slaving and feeding white children with their own breasts to come home, feed their actual children and work some more. But, I digress.

He says, “well in my household my mother wasn't there and single black fathers don't get enough credit.” This whole conversation was personal. I let him have it.

We move along and start talking about television shows to, ya know, keep it light again. I had recently started binging Game Of Thrones, and fell in love with the series, so I asked if he watched it.

He responded: “Nah, I don’t.” Then, he leaned in with a big, cunning grin and said, “maybe one day you can invite me over and cook and we'll watch it together"

What in the domesticated hell? I wanted to scream. Lol  But, I didn’t. I just ate my food…

Next thing I know, Black-ish comes up, and BOOM, we're back at it.

Him: "Why the show gotta be called 'blackish?”

Me: Why not? Not only is it positively owning the race “black,” which has historically carried a negative connotation, but it also depicts real-life scenarios that black people experience daily. I like it.

Him, attempting to explain: *sigh* "I'm from Malcolm x Harlem…” (this was really it on this note)

Him, still explaining: “Just Google the name of the show blackish and you'll see what I mean. Malcolm x would laugh at this. I know for a fact he would think it's a joke"

You guessed it. He didn’t even know why he didn’t like the name of the show. Or at least he couldn’t articulate a logical explanation.

When I respectfully disagreed, he said, “You only learned what they taught you in school.” Mind you, he dropped out of college.

We’d come to the end of our date by this point, and I was ready to RUN for the hills. I couldn’t believe a beautiful sunny day turned into a date from hell. This man wanted to send me back to the 1800s.

I walked away from this one with my head high, thanking God for all the signs. He wasn’t the one.

By the way, would you believe he texted me the very next day, asking if he would see me again?